Hercules (2014)

(M) ★★½

Director: Brett Ratner.

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, John Hurt, Rufus Sewell, Ian McShane, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Rebecca Ferguson, Reece Ritchie, Aksel Hennie, Joseph Fiennes.

Hercules was extremely disappointed to learn it was not Silly Hat Day.

Aside from being a cracking Greek myth, Hercules has helped kickstart Arnold Schwarznegger's career, was a linchpin of Italian cinema in the '50s and '60s, and even briefly made Kevin Sorbo a household name.

But do we really need another Hercules movie?

The short answer is 'no', even if Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson looks like he was born (or possibly chiselled from the side of mountain) to play the Greek demi-god.

While there's an intriguing new spin on the tale - that Hercules is more man than myth and part of a band of mercenaries who work for the highest bidder - the execution of this re-invention is lacking and will leave many disappointed.

On the other hand, if you're looking for a Hercules film in which an oiled-up Johnson punches a rabid wolf in the face, then step right up, you strange, strange person.

Much of the familiar Hercules tale is back story this time around, which is refreshing. His 12 trials are slightly exaggerated past accomplishments, retold with regularity by his nephew Iolaus as Hercules and his band of merry mercenaries - the wonky oracle Amphiaraus (McShane), dagger-throwing sidekick Autolycus (Sewell), mute berserker Tydeus (Hennie), and Amazonian archer Atalanta (Berdal) - travel the land seeking gold and adventure.

Their exploits catch the ears of Thracian princess Ergenia (Ferguson), who hires the mercenaries to train her army and help defeat an evil sorcerer.

So far, so formulaic, but to its credit the film takes a detour for its final third that's intriguing enough to help you overlook some of the other nonsense that goes on, such as some very awkward pacing, weird flashbacks/hallucinations, terrible dialogue, and a performance from Johnson that's far from impressive.

This last point is a shame. As one of Hollywood's most likeable lugs, he's been a welcome presence even in bad films - Southland Tales, Race To Witch Mountain, and Journey 2: The Mysterious Island for example.

But here his weaknesses are laid as bare as his impossibly inflated pecs in the film's finale. Hercules' supposedly stirring speeches fall flat (this is also a script problem) and he lacks the acting range to effectively portray the many facets of this particular incarnation of the demi-god, especially the bits revolving around his tortured past and the metaphorical demons lurking in his metaphorical closet.

In the action stakes though, Johnson nails it, and so does director Ratner. The battles are reasonably cool, particularly an opening stoush between the unskilled Thracian army and a horde of tattooed dudes who look like they should all be in metal bands.

But in the grand scheme of things, that battle makes no sense at all and this is where the film falls down. On a dumb action level, sure it's okay, but the script can't live up to the potential of the ideas, especially those surrounding the Hercules myth-building and who he really is, and ends up being confounding and somewhat frustrating.

Hurt adds gravitas as he always does, Sewell and McShane get all the best lines and lighten the mood, and relative newcomer Ferguson is one to watch, while the whole 'Hercules and his merry men (and woman)' thing is fun and enjoyable.

It has its strengths and weaknesses but this isn't quite the legendary film this legendary figure deserves.

Sex Tape

(MA15+) ★

Director: Jake Kasdan.

Cast: Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, Rob Corddry, Ellie Kemper, Rob Lowe.

They couldn't believe how many "hot single women" were "in their area".

Chemistry is everything.

If the lead actors in a relationship-driven film can't make you believe in their relationship, then you've got nothing.

In those terms, Sex Tape is nothing.

Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel, despite both being competent actors who have ably demonstrated chemistry with other actors in the past, have absolutely no chemistry together.

This is a fairly significant problem for a film that opens with them having a lot of sex as boyfriend and girlfriend and then revolves around them as a married couple who make a sex tape in an attempt to revive their relationship.

So, perversely, for a brief moment in the film when their marriage isn't working, you actually believe it because it seems this couple has no chemistry. This is the only time Segel and Diaz are perfect together in this film. The rest of the time, they go together like spikes and a jumping castle.

With no emotional connection between the lead pair, it's difficult to care about their predicament. The fact the film plays out predictably on its one-line premise - couple accidentally share sex tape and then try to retrieve it - means there is little in the way of dramatic tension to elevate the care factor.

The only thing that could save this film would be if it was really funny. Unfortunately it's not really funny.

On the one hand, Sex Tape wants to be a Judd Apatow comedy like This Is 40, offering a frank and occasionally non-PC look at family and married life. On the other hand, it wants to be an absurdly over-the-top comedy along the lines of There's Something About Mary.

Neither of these elements gel. One minute, we're supposed to be laughing at the supposedly universal problems facing a once-randy couple (with no chemistry) whose sex life has dried up like a water balloon in the desert. The next minute, there is a fight between a man and a guard dog, jokes about diarrhoea and epilepsy, and an interlude with a man who loves cocaine, paintings of himself starring in Disney movies, and the metal band Slayer.

All of these things I just mentioned make up a prolonged 15-minute segment in the film that is as boring as it is unfunny, and which appears to be in the movie simply because nothing much else happens and it would have struggled to reach a running time worthy of the term "feature film".

There are a couple of laughs - but only a couple - and they mostly come from Corddry and Kemper as the best friends of Diaz and Segel's couple. This entire movie would likely have been better if Corddry and Kemper swapped roles with Diaz and Segel. They have more chemistry and probably could have sold the switches in comedic tone better.

A better script would have helped. There are some very obvious improvisation bits that don't fit in and seem to have been included because no one could come up with any better jokes, or maybe the screenwriters didn't get much further than the one-line premise.

There's not much to recommend about this film, other than it might have made a great sitcom episode that only ran for 24 minutes.

Instead you have to put up with it for 94 minutes.

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

(M) ★★★★

Director: Matt Reeves.

Cast:  Andy Serkis, Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell, Judy Greer.

"Grapes? That's not what I thought you sent me to the shops for."

ONE of the biggest cinematic surprises in recent years was Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes - another unwanted reboot/reimagining/prequel that turned out to be one of the best films of 2011.

So here's the sequel to that movie no one wanted and - surprise, surprise - it's also really good.

While not as tautly scripted as its predecessor, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes (known as DOTPOTA from here on in) is another great balance of emotional punch, great characters (all apes), and action thrills.

Eight years after chief chimp Caesar (Serkis) led his fellow chemically enhanced apes to freedom across the Golden Gate Bridge, the world is a very different place. A virus has wiped out much of humanity, with the survivors eking out an existence in small communities, such as one in San Francisco.

At the other end of the Golden Gate Bridge, Caesar's colony is thriving, unaware any humans remain alive.

However a run-in between Caesar's forces and a small group of human survivors led by Malcolm (Clarke) sets in motion a chain of events that will lead the two species to either mutually beneficial peace or bloody war.

DOTPOTA pulls a few of the same tricks as its predecessor (which we will call ROTPOTA), but it's a very different film. Its misty forest and dark broken city settings give a suitably ape-ocalyptic (sorry) vibe to proceedings that's a stark contrast to the warm homely tones and bright clinical labs of the first film.

This is also very much the apes' film. Whereas Caesar (a combination of Serkis' motion-captured performance and some CG wizardry) and his simian sidekicks stole the show last time, this time they own the show.

The interplay and relationships between Caesar, the tortured human-hating bonobo Koba (Kebbell), the wise Bornean orangutan Maurice (Konoval), and Caesar's son Blue Eyes (Thurston) are far more fascinating than those of the humans. While Clarke gets a lot to do as a sort-of go-between for the humans and the apes, Oldman does little but give vaguely rousing speeches and mourn for the past and Russell is a plot device disguised as a doctor.

This doesn't matter though because the apes are the reason to watch. They are wonderfully realised characters built from nuanced performances (particularly from Serkis and Kebbell) and some near flawless special effects.

The moral questions raised, the themes of trust and power, and the emotional moments are no less effective for being provided by a cast of CG primates.

As with ROTPOTA, DOTPOTA (yep, it's ridiculous but stick with me here) takes us to a destination we're expecting - a planet of, well, apes - but does so in an unexpected manner. It's this that helped make the first one so enjoyable and intriguing and the feat is impressive once again here.

While the humans are the weakest link, the apes more than make up for it, creating a sequel that's well worth watching.

Jersey Boys

(M) ★★★

Director: Clint Eastwood.

Cast: John Lloyd Young, Vincent Piazza, Erich Bergen, Michael Lomenda, Christopher Walken, Mike Doyle.

"Push th' li'l daisies an' make 'em come up...."

A musical is often only as good as its songs.

By this rationale, Jersey Boys should be outstanding - Sherry, Walk Like A Man, Big Girls Don't Cry, Can't Take My Eyes Off You, and December, 1963 (Oh What A Night) are all classic tracks.

Unfortunately the rest of the film can't quite live up to the quality of these hits. Jersey Boys is, at best, a great story poorly told, and at worst, a mildly disappointing disservice to the legacy of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons.

For those unfamiliar with the stage musical that inspired it or the back story beyond the Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame inductees, Jersey Boys tells the story of how Francesco Castelluccio aka Frankie Valli (Lloyd Young), Tommy DeVito (Piazza), and Nick Massi (Lomenda) hooked up with songwriter Bob Guadio (Bergen) and became The Four Seasons.

It's a typical rock 'n' roll story - the troubled upbringings, the initial rejections, the fortuitous break with the "wild new sound", the dizzying highs of hit records and parties and girls, the stresses of life on the road, the broken relationships, the in-fighting, the ultimate come-down, the break-up and the inevitable reunion.

It reads like a list of music biopic clichés or the plot of a film parodying the genre (such as Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind, or Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story), but it's a cliché for a reason because it's a common trajectory for bands.

In this case, a lot of these aspects have been re-arranged to better suit the familiar arc, but really that's neither here nor there - "based on a true story" is always only ever loosely "based", so don't take this movie as Four Seasons gospel.

What matters is that in laying out this familiar arc, director Eastwood and writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice have laid things out in a weird and frustrating manner.

After rolling along pleasantly and slightly undramatically for much of the film (during which apparently eight years elapses), the beginning of the downward spiral is sprung on the audience, only for the film to then rewind two years and give us all the drama that's been missing.

With much of the dramatic tension and heightened inter-relationships in the band squeezed into an enthralling half an hour, the rest of the film - before and after - feels flat. Plot threads arise seemingly out of nowhere and then disappear and the story's arrangement seems almost random.

The movie really comes to life during the songs, which are worked in unobtrusively via live gigs, TV performances, rehearsals or recording sessions. Jersey Boys is magical when the band plays - Eastwood stages the songs nicely, the actors impress with their vocal skills (yep, they're really singing), and you want to applaud each track when it finishes.

The songs are the saving grace of the film and helps you ignore the dull patches, the occasional flat performances, the strange layout of the plot, the disturbingly bad make-up used to make the band members look older towards the end, and the annoying technique of characters narrating straight to camera. This last matter is of particular frustration because it's utterly redundant (the characters don't tell us anything we don't already know or immediately find out) and it breaks the flow of the film.

Musically, the cast does well (most are veterans of the stage play), but there are some flat performances acting-wise. Lloyd Young struggles in the really dramatic scenes, particularly one where Valli confronts his wayward daughter (another out-of-nowhere plot thread), Lomenda is only just passable, while Walken is okay but seems to have wandered in from a different movie.

It's not all bad. The early scenes, which have a hint of Goodfellas about them, are good, as are the occasional comedic touches, and that brief half an hour where the drama kicks in is excellent. Piazza and Bergen are particularly good, as is Joey Russo as Joe Pesci (yes, that Joe Pesci).

But ultimately this is a two-star movie that gets an extra star for its excellent songs.

Transformers: Age Of Extinction

(M) ★

Director: Michael Bay.

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Kelsey Grammer, Li Bingbing, Sophia Myles, Titus Welliver, T. J. Miller.

"Nobody shoot! I wanna see him turn into something."

It's becoming increasingly difficult to figure out which Transformers movie sucks the most.

It's definitely not the first one, which was bafflingly awesome, but as the series continues the first one looks more and more like a fluke and that rarest of beasts - a truly good Michael Bay film.

Now the race for the title of Worst Transformers Movie has a new contender to rival Revenge Of The Fallen (#2) and the almost-as-bad Dark Of The Moon (#3): ladies and gentlemen, presenting Age Of Extinction.

Having dispensed with Shia LaBeouf and whoever the Megan Fox replacement was in Dark Of The Moon, Bay has taken a vaguely different tack in part four, which is set four years after the "Battle Of Chicago" that climaxed the previous film.

Since then, the CIA (led by Grammer's shifty black ops leader) has been hunting down Transformers - both good (Autobots) and bad (Decepticons) - and turning them over to tech company KSI (led by Tucci's Steve Jobs-like Joshua Joyce).

In the eyes of the CIA, all Transformers are alien terrorists, and in the eyes of KSI, Transformers are the key to the future of weaponry.

But Grammer and his stooges are having trouble finding the last few Transformers, particularly their leader Optimus Prime.

Meanwhile, near-destitute Texan inventor Cade Yeager (Wahlberg) buys a broken-down truck for $150 and, well, anyone who's seen any of the previous three movies or watched the TV show as a kid will know where this is heading.

Firstly, believing Wahlberg is a near-destitute Texan inventor is one of the toughest tasks inflicted by a casting director on an audience since John Travolta played a woman in Hairspray or Denise Richards played a nuclear physicist in The World Is Not Enough.

That's fine, we all like Wahlberg, and he's a great actor in the right film. Unfortunately, he's not the kind of lead who can elevate a bad film (like, for example, The Happening).

But that is the least of this film's worries.

There's a little thing called "the suspension of disbelief" which happens every time you walk into a cinema. For the duration of the film, you will believe the unbelievable, whether it be that men have cloned dinosaurs and put them in a theme park, or that there are secretly a bunch of wizards running around England, or even that a bunch of living robots have come to Earth in search of something called the Allspark. This allows you to buy into the film's world and enjoy it.

That's all well and good but it's when a film's own internal logic doesn't make sense that movies become truly unbelievable and this is what makes Age Of Extinction a ludicrous, mind-numbing waste of two and three-quarter hours.

So much of this film makes little sense, characters make infuriatingly dumb decisions, stupid coincidences pop up a lot, Bay wastes time with cut-able nonsense when the film is already way too damned long, and every time you think you can forgive him because something half-way intelligent or cool happens, he drags you kicking and screaming back to the stupidity basement with some kind of "what the?" moment.

By the time you get to the movie's supposed nerdgasm  - Optimus Prime unleashes the Dinobots - you will be long past bored, your mind vapourised in an endless wave of computer-generated carnage, pyrotechnics, pathetic attempts at characterisation, and a barrage of product placement.

There's one shining diamond in the manure here and it's Stanley Tucci. He is too good for this film, and what he does with his character is too good for this film, and the fact that his character is reasonably well rounded and actually has a proper arc is too good for this film. It makes you feel even sorrier for Wahlberg having to deliver line after line of "over-protective dad" schtick which stops being funny or necessary 10 minutes in.

It's a tough call as to whether this is worse than the terribly edited Revenge Of The Fallen. At least we can see the action taking place here, as repetitive and overly explosive as it is, but within a couple of hours of watching it you will be struggling to remember much of the film at all.

Which might be a good thing.

22 Jump Street

(MA15+) ★★★

Director: Phil Lord & Chris Miller.

Cast: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Ice Cube, Wyatt Russell, Amber Stevens, Peter Stormare, Jillian Bell.

"Oh yeah? Well at least I don't wear long sleeves."

THE unlikely box office success of TV show reboot 21 Jump Street meant a sequel was always likely, and ordinarily a sentence with the terms "TV show reboot" and "sequel" in it would have sensible people running for the hills.

Fortunately 22 Jump Street is as funny as its across-the-road predecessor, while still being smart enough not to take the whole thing seriously.

After a quick gag parodying the start of the old TV show and an introductory action sequence, the movie launches into a "meta" set-up explaining how second time around Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Tatum) will have "twice the money to do exactly the same thing", even pointing out the obligatory problems bound to upset the relationship between the pair.

It's disarming and also kind of charming that the film immediately points out its own shortcomings and turns them into gags - yes, the plot about two mismatched undercover cops trying to bust a college drug ring (it was high school last time) is the same as before but so what, here, have a joke or two at our own expense.

However, the plot is not why you're here. You're here (or should be here) for The Hill & Tatum Show, which worked so well first time around and is just as good this time, taking the bromance to hilarious new levels with an added "jealous lover" character arc for Schmidt, and a humourous side serve of closet homoeroticism between Jenko and his new football-playing soul mate Zook (Russell).

Tatum's knack for comedy and playing dumb is dangerously good and Hill has been doing these roles since his break-out in Superbad, but Cube goes perilously close to stealing the show in places as the Captain of the Jump Street division, as does Bell as the room-mate of Hill's love interest and Rob Riggle in a returning cameo.

22 Jump Street knows the strengths of the previous film and unashamedly rolls them out again - the meta sequel gags, action movie tropes as jokes, the odd-couple pairing of its stars. The college setting means we get the usual American college movie bits, like spring break, frat parties, and initiations, but there are some more unlikely laughs to be found here as well, such as in a slam poetry session, public art, and the walk of shame after a big night.

Lord & Miller (Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, The Lego Movie) aren't afraid to be a bit daring with their choices either, whether it be using on-screen graphics during a weird equipment checklist scene or a sight gag referencing Benny Hill or a crazy hallucination sequence or even a tiny 'ding' that can be heard just before Jenko finally catches up on what's going on just prior to the film's funniest sequence (which had the audience in stitches).

22 Jump Street isn't perfect or ground-breaking or even especially memorable, but it's fantastic dumb fun and actually kind of clever in its own post-modern way.

It's unlikely Lord & Miller and Hill & Tatum could sustain this three-star level for another film, but this is something they've already taken into consideration - the end credits are full of an entertaining list of sequels and spin-offs that not even they would be game enough to make.

But then again, Hollywood is not one to leave a cash cow alone for long, so who knows - 23 Jump Street, anyone?

Blended

(PG) ★★

Director: Frank Coraci.

Cast: Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Bella Thorne, Emma Fuhrmann, Braxton Beckham, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Kyle Red Silverstein.

The screening of Grown Ups was not going well.

DREW Barrymore tends to bring out the best in Adam Sandler - so much so that their re-teaming almost saves Blended, Sandler's latest effort.

Undoubtedly, this is Sandler's best movie since 2009's Funny People, but that's not saying much because he's starred in nothing but crap since then: Grown Ups 1 & 2, Just Go With It, Jack & Jill, That's My Boy ... that's a pretty craptacular list of movies right there.

Maybe Sandler knows he's overdue for something that's, if not a hit, at least watchable. Maybe that's why he called up Barrymore, his co-star in two of his best efforts, 1998's The Wedding Singer and 2004's 50 First Dates. Surely lightning can strike the same place three times, right?

Buried somewhere in this overlong and largely unfunny film is a sweet family comedy that only clocks in at 90 minutes instead of 117 minutes.

It features Barrymore as Lauren, who is left to raise her two sons by herself after she kicks her douchebag philandering husband to the kerb, and Sandler as Jim, who is left to raise his three daughters after his wife dies.

Having shared a disastrous first date, Jim and Lauren then coincidentally end up with their families at a resort in South Africa, where everyone learns, grows, and becomes better people.

Unfortunately, this is not that potentially innocuous but amiable "sweet family comedy". Instead its an innocuous but amiable "sweet family comedy" lost amid the usual Sandler crap - dozens of joke misfires, a couple of unfunny comedic relief cameos (Shaquille O'Neal and Terry Crews), dodgy running gags, cliché after cliché, a seemingly inevitable dance sequence, trained monkeys - which merely drags out the realisation that this is not really worth your time.

It's a shame. While this is an improvement on almost everything Sandler's made since 50 First Dates, it could have been better.

There are nice heart-filled themes at the core of the film - the travails of single parenting, the struggle to find love again, kids dealing with loss/inadequacy/change - and these lead to some genuinely touching moments.

But amid the bad jokes and some clunky pacing, they become tokenistic, leaving you with the feeling its only the star wattage of Barrymore and Sandler that saved this from being a Disney Channel straight-to-TV production.

As a result, it's almost surprising when the film finds the funny bone. There are a couple of good laughs, especially early on in the film, mainly courtesy of Barrymore or the youngest kid Alyvia Alyn Lind, and Sandler is refreshingly sympathetic and unannoying for once (having his character's wife die of cancer certainly helps elicit empathy and keeps him pleasantly subdued).

But Blended never reaches its potential. It was probably always destined to be the lesser of the Barrymore-Sandler trilogy with its generic-feeling Brady Bunch Goes To Africa plot, but there was hope that the re-pairing of the stars could elevate this above the usual dross Sandler has been dishing up lately.