Just Go With It, The Dilemma, Love and Other Drugs, Conviction, Red Hill, Ride Rise Roar
What the hell has happened to romantic comedies? Once upon a time we had Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman co-starring in Cactus Flower from a screenplay by IAL Diamond. Now we get Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston in a barely recognisable remake, the very title of which makes me want to stick pins in my eyes and pour glue in my ears.
In Just Go With It (2011, Sony, 12), Sandler plays an allegedly lovable plastic surgeon who discovers that he can bed more women by wearing a wedding ring. Having duly deceived the girl of his dreams (Brooklyn Decker, playing a life-size Barbie doll), he must enlist amenable assistant (Jennifer Aniston) to pretend to be his estranged wife in order to further the romantic ruse.
Next thing, they've all gone on holiday to Hawaii with a couple of comedy kids in tow, one of whom does an impression of Dick Van Dyke which left me longing for the halcyon days of Fred: The Movie. The good news is that, despite his peculiar hold over Sandler, Rob Schneider is not in this film. The bad news is that Jennifer Aniston is the only person on screen who vaguely resembles a human being.
Sandler's comic antihero is a slappable slug (and not in a good way) who laughs at his own jokes, which is useful because no one else does, and scary-faced guest star Nicole Kidman pops up midway to remind us once again that being funny was never her forte. Somehow it all climaxes in two of the most successful women in Hollywood doing a toe-curling hula dance-off for no apparent reason other than to prove that they are both still "hot", followed by the revelation that one of their partners is gay. Oh, and someone does a comedy German accent ? for the whole film. Gott im Himmel!
Things are no better in The Dilemma (2011, Universal, 12), the tagline for which is "The truth hurts" (although not as much as watching this bloody awful movie). Despite having formerly proved his rom-com mettle with the fabulous fantasy Splash, Ron Howard wears his "director of The Da Vinci Code" hat, with appropriately dark and gruelling results.
The increasingly sweaty Vince Vaughn plays (guess what?) a boisterous, middle-aged jock who sounds like someone doing a bad impression of Vince Vaughn and who spies the wife of his best buddy (Kevin James) snogging another man. Should he tell? Who cares? Howard describes The Dilemma as being a "comedy drama" with a "kooky notion" put through "the filter of Vince Vaughn" and dealing with some "grown-up" issues. Balderdash; it's an unoriginal, infantile dirge which is neither comic nor dramatic, less "filtered through" than infested by Vaughn's overbearing bozo act.
I struggle to remember a movie more woefully misjudged, swinging unevenly from knockabout slapstick to creepy relationship car crash, to (bizarrely) Top Gear with eco issues ('"electric cars are gay!"). Why is Jennifer Connelly in this film? Why is Queen Latifah making jokes about "lady wood"? And how come Winona Ryder still appears to be doing her borderline psycho act from Black Swan? The running time is less than two hours but watching it felt like from here to eternity.
The most excruciating thing about Love and Other Drugs (2010, Fox, 15) is the fact that it provided the cue for Anne Hathaway to make an embarrassing "get naked, get nominated" gag while co-hosting this year's awful Oscars ceremony. The film itself has a certain twisted charm, particularly in the early stages when director Ed Zwick seems to be channelling the jet black satire of Thank You for Smoking or Glengarry Glen Ross.
Jake Gyllenhaal is the corporate drug-peddler who makes a killing pushing Viagra and winds up sleeping with the patient whose degenerative condition requires more and more medication. Inevitably humanism gets the better of him and we fall out of love with the film just as our heroes fall into it.
The result is uneven (the DVD cover artwork is misleadingly perky), but Zwick remains a force to be reckoned with, conjuring moments of emotional electricity and teasing impressively open performances from his cast. No masterpiece, then, but in a league of its own when compared with the rest of the rancid rom-com rot on offer.
In the true-life drama Conviction (2010, Fox, 15), Hilary Swank plays a tough young woman who puts herself through law school in order to challenge her brother's (unjust?) imprisonment for murder. There are echoes of Erin Brockovich in this David and Goliath struggle, although there is sadly little of Steven Soderbergh's cinematic flourish in Tony Goldwyn's essentially televisual tale.
Swank is as earnestly convincing as ever, while Sam Rockwell acquits himself with honours as her believably disreputable sibling. Shame, though, that the once mercurial Juliette Lewis seems to have downshifted into snaggle-toothed trailer-trash supporting turns, roles which do little to showcase the full range of her talents.
In the reliably muscular antipodean chiller Red Hill (2010, Momentum, 15), a remote town is besieged by a high-plains-drifting dark rider hellbent on destruction. Part western, part horror, part "race revenge" fable, this no-nonsense B-movie benefits from a powerful performance by Tommy Lewis (star of The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith) as the silent "monster" whose ravaged visage is a living reminder of collective guilt.
Finally, Ride Rise Roar (2010, Kaleidoscope, 12) finds David Byrne putting together a dance troupe to accompany him on tour with agreeably angular results. It's diverting fare, although not a patch on Jonathan Demme's concert movie of Byrne's old band, Talking Heads, Stop Making Sense or Byrne's oft forgotten musical drama True Stories.
January Jones Christina DaRe Malin Akerman Melissa Joan Hart Bianca Kajlich
No comments:
Post a Comment