Pan

(PG) ★½

Director: Joe Wright.

Cast: Levi Miller, Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Amanda Seyfried, Adeel Akhtar.

"I'm not talking to you until you stop dressing up like a vampire."

DOES Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit have a place in the Peter Pan story?

There’s a question you probably never thought you’d read, but it’s being asked thanks to this abysmal prequel to JM Barrie’s beloved children’s story about a boy who never wanted to grow up.

Believe it or not but Kurt Cobain’s abstract anthem of alienation features in this film. So does The Ramones’ Blitzkrieg Bop. But these songs haven’t just been lobbed on to the soundtrack for a bit of anachronistic fun, they’re sung by the cast as if they were sea shanties.

It’s weird and stops you dead in your tracks as you ask “why?”.

That’s a word that comes up a lot while watching this boring blockbuster, as in “why do the effects look so crappy?” or “why did Hugh Jackman (one of the few redeeming features of this film) and Rooney Mara sign up for this?” or “why don’t they just give Garrett Hedlund the 2015 Razzie Award for worst performance and be done with it?” or “why did they bother to make a Peter Pan origin story if this is the best story they could come up with?”.

The origin story (which apparently has nothing to do with Barrie’s work and is purely the creation of screenwriter Jason Fuchs) has the future Peter Pan (Miller) as an orphan who is whisked away from his London orphanage during the Blitz by a flying pirate ship.

He is then thrown into the servitude of Blackbeard (Jackman), who puts orphans and adult prisoners to work in the mines digging for pixum, which is the street name for a crystalline substance Blackbeard smokes in order to live forever (you might know it as fairy dust).

While in the mines, Peter meets James Hook (Hedlund) and the two escape, with Peter keen to find his mother and perhaps fulfil a prophecy that foretells he is the chosen one.

There is so much wrong with this film. First of all, the whole “prophecy/chosen one” rubbish smacks of laziness on the part of Fuchs. While such a trope can be used well (The Matrix) or subverted nicely (Buffy The Vampire Slayer), nine times out of 10 it's indolent screenwriting (The Phantom Menace). Here it's definitely the latter - a shorthand excuse to make a character do something and fight someone without having to come up with actual character motivations or goals.

Maybe Fuchs’ script has been diluted somewhere along the way – the whole “smoking pixie dust” thing plus a few almost-dark moments makes it plausible there was an edge or depth to this that has been lost. But if that’s not the case, then the blame for this mess surely lays at Fuchs’ feet. Tiger Lily (Mara) and Hook lack anything close to a personality, while the story bumbles from one poorly choreographed and badly animated CG-heavy action sequence to the next (which I guess is partly Wright's fault). The rest of the time, the plot makes no sense.

Hedlund’s performance is dire. He’s trying to channel Indiana Jones or Han Solo but ends up overacting and mugging for the camera like he’s The Cowardly Lion playing a cowboy. Only Jackman, who chews the scenery but at least does so with style, escapes unharmed from this fiasco and despite having one of the worst costumes to end up on the big screen, he’s actually quite watchable.

Maybe this is all being a bit harsh for what is a kids’ movie, but this would have been easier to swallow if it didn’t look so terrible. For a film with a budget of $150 million, this has some of the worst greenscreen effects seen in a long time and has the effect of making Neverland never feel like an actual place inhabited by actual people. Hell, the film can barely make war-time London feel like a real place.

Nothing feels real, none of the characters connect, the performances are bad, the script is worse, and if not for Jackman and a couple of good gags, this would be utterly irredeemable.

As it is, it’s a dud of a film that no one was asking for. Even if you were wondering how Captain Hook and Peter Pan came to blows or if you wanted to see Hook lose his hand, you’ll feel ripped off because those things are not in this movie. Which makes you wonder what the point of this dull off-key exercise was.

Oddball

(G) ★★★

Director: Stuart McDonald.

Cast: Shane Jacobson, Sarah Snook, Coco Jack Gillies, Alan Tudyk, Deborah Mailman.

Dog vs penguin - please your bets, ladies and gentlemen.

YOU’D have to be heartless to hate Oddball.

For all its schmaltz and occasionally clunkiness, the film achieves everything it sets out to do, which is to tell a unique story for all ages.

There are laughs, some nice moments, beautiful cinematography, and plenty of heart in this “fairy tale that really happened”.

The real-life program where Maremmas were used to protect penguins from killer foxes on Warrnambool’s Middle Island makes for an intriguing plot and it’s easy to see why this story grabbed the attention of producer Stephen Kearney almost a decade ago.

Around that central idea we have the family unit of chook farmer Swampy Marsh (Jacobson), his daughter Emily (Snook) and his grand-daughter (Gillies), who are using their dog Oddball to keep the penguins alive, not only out of the goodness of their heart, but also to keep alive the dream of Marsh’s late wife.

Hovering nearby are some eccentric whale enthusiasts and American tourism guru Bradley Slater (Tudyk), who are keen to build a whale-focused tourism centre on Middle Island should the penguin colony drop below a certain number.

Tudyk’s character threatens to be the token Yank dropped in to help sell the film in the US, but thankfully he makes Slater a compelling part of the story. Snook is also great, while Frank Woodley is criminally underused as a weird dog catcher.

Jacobson’s Marsh is as much of an oddball as the titular Maremma, eating raw eggs and having deep conversations with his chickens (possibly the film’s most accurate moment), and while it won’t win Jacobson any awards, he looks the part and handles the comedic and dramatic extremes well enough.

From a local perspective, Warrnambool looks amazing. It is one of the stars of the film, along with the scenic coastline near the Twelve Apostles, and there will never ever be a better promotional campaign for this city than the one snuck into Oddball.

Some locals will groan about the way the script plays hard and fast with the facts and locations – the most hilarious bit for locals will be the moment Marsh wanders from Middle Island to the Twelve Apostles looking for his dog – but that’s the magic of movies. Meanwhile the story flows nicely and the cheesier moments are kept to a minimum.

There is a Scooby Doo-esque ending where the film almost jumps the shark, but this is aimed at the young and the young at heart who probably won’t mind a bit.

Pixels

(PG) ★★

Director: Chris Columbus.

Cast: Adam Sandler, Michelle Monaghan, Josh Gad, Kevin James, Peter Dinklage, Brian Cox.

"Does anyone feel this is not only way too convenient but largely unnecessary?
I mean why the fuck do we have personalised number plates?"

PIXELS is based on a French short film and mimics one-third of a Futurama episode.

The short film was basically a two-minute special effects showreel that merged the old-school graphics of arcade games with the real world. The Futurama episode sees the slacker who has wasted his life playing computer games come to the rescue when computer games attack Earth.

In both cases, the ideas work well. As a short form display of computer-generated trickery, it’s two minutes of cleverness. In the animated world of Futurama where robots and aliens and pop culture irony are the norm, it makes perfect sense as a fun plot device.

Over close to two hours, with Adam Sandler and Kevin James leading the way, the ideas are not so fun or clever.

Sandler plays Sam Brenner, a former video game champion now in his mid-40s who sets up home entertainment equipment and whose best friend from childhood happens to be (I kid you not) the President of the United States of America (played by, and again I kid you not, Kevin James).

Brenner and fellow former game prodigy Ludlow Lamonsoff (Gad) are called upon by the President to help save the day when aliens attack Earth in the form of computer games, and along with gaming badboy Eddie “Fireblaster” Plant (Dinklage) they must face off against Pacman, Donkey Kong, and Centipede.

It’s an ‘80s geek dream come true – that hours of playing video games will prove not only useful, but useful in a save-the-world kind of way, making you the ultimate hero who also happens to get the girl. Ultimately that is one of the film’s few saving graces – it’s a very affectionate ode to the original titles of the computer game revolution and the skill it took to defeat them.

But largely, this is a clumsy big-budget mess that feels painfully forced. It’s continually stretching and straining to get all its Tetris blocks in a row. It doesn’t have a plot but instead has levels comprising different games. Except you don’t get to play the games. You get to sit there and watch Kevin James and Adam Sandler play them, which is even less fun. And they make lame jokes the whole time, and that just makes matters worse.

Such a level-based structure can work – Scott Pilgrim Vs The World pulls it off because it has style, heart, and deeper themes worked into it. Ditto for Harry Potter & The Goblet Of Fire. But Pixels has neither style, nor heart, nor anything vaguely resembling depth. Brennan’s relationship with Lieutenant Colonel Violet van Patten (Monaghan) is the film’s only attempt at anything resembling character development, but its flippant and ultimately redundant.

The lack of style falls at the feet of director Columbus – one of the blandest directors going around. Any kind of visual panache in the film has come directly from Patrick Jean's 2010 short film.

Aside from its obvious love of old school arcade games, there are few plusses to Pixels. The biggest is Gad, who gets all the best lines. Dinklage attempts to steal the show but falls short (no pun intended), while Monaghan and Cox are far better than this. Perversely, this is the best film James has been in since Hitch. But that’s not saying much.

There are a few laughs, but the one thing the movie has going for it is a broad appeal. There are tons of in-jokes and references that only people who lived through the ‘80s will understand and potentially get a kick out of (Max Headroom even makes an appearance, for Pete’s sake), and those people can probably take their kids, who will like the family-friendly bloodless pixelated violence, even if they don’t understand what a Frogger or a Pacman does.

But on the whole, Pixels is an idea that worked better in other formats – none of which are a movie connected to Adam Sandler and Kevin James.

Straight Outta Compton

(MA15+) ★★★★½

Director: F Gary Gray.

Cast: O'Shea Jackson Jr, Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Aldis Hodge, Neil Brown Jr, Paul Giamatti.

"Are you sure the band name fits?"

BACK in 1989, there was no piece of music more incendiary or volatile than NWA’s Fuck Tha Police.

These days, with music so freely available to everyone via the internet, and offence served up and taken on a daily basis everywhere, it’s kinda hard to fathom the impact one piece of music could have, and how it could serve as such a lightning rod for trouble or stir up so many people.

If Straight Outta Compton only dug into the context and repercussions of that song, it would still be a fascinating film. The fact that it gives so much more, stylishly exploring an important time in American music and American history through the eyes of five flawed but talented individuals, makes this a truly great music biopic to rival the best of the genre.

NWA barely lasted as a band for five years, but this film explores 10 years in the lives of Dr Dre (Hawkins), Eazy E (Mitchell), Ice Cube (Jackson Jr – Ice Cube’s real life son), MC Ren (Hodge), and DJ Yella (Brown Jr), with much of the focus on the first three (who were admittedly the three key members, but it’s worth noting Dre and Cube are producers on the film).

Straight Outta Compton shows the band’s humble beginnings, where Dre’s production talents, Cube’s rhymes, and Eazy E’s money and bravado help set them on their path, and follows them as they partner with manager Jerry Heller (Giamatti), who would prove to be the key to both the band’s success and downfall.

Along the way, NWA sell a few million copies of the album that gives the film its name, attract the unwanted attention of the FBI, and ultimately break up, inadvertantly kicking off the East Coast-West Coast rap war that would create some awesome music at the expense of too many lives.

It’s the perfect backdrop for a biopic. In a setting of drugs and police brutality that culminates in the Rodney King beating and the LA riots, we see how this kind of music came to be and why it struck a chord around the world, but we also get the drama of the interpersonal relationships, which escalate from money squabbles to diss tracks and full-blown feuds. There are the highs of the parties and success, and the lows of the violence and the tragedy of Eazy E.

None of this would work without a solid cast, and hats off to the casting department on this one. Not only does everyone look passably like the people they’re playing (Jackson Jr looks so much like his old man it’s unnerving) and even manage to rap like the people they’re playing, but there are some damned fine performances in here too, particularly from the key trio of Hawkins, Mitchell and Jackson Jr. Throw in Giamatti to balance it all out as the demonised (perhaps rightly so) Heller, and it’s an excellent cast that deftly keeps the situations from flying into melodramatic territory, while making everything feel legitimately “street”.

Much has been made of what the film leaves out, in particular Dr Dre’s disturbing assaults on a number of women. While Straight Outta Compton doesn’t shy away from many of the characters’ readiness for violence or their objectification of women, it leaves out the truly heinous stuff and gives everything a slightly cartoonish quality to ensure we keep barracking for these guys.

This softening of the subject matter and the slightly bloated running time are probably the only major flaws of the film, but at least it throws a little bit of a cautionary tale in among the glamourising.

But we can only really judge the film for what’s in it and not what was left out, and largely this is a superbly acted and neatly distilled look at an important band in the history of hip hop and music in general.

F Gary Gray’s direction is great, mixing some up-close handheld stuff with a couple of bravura long takes, and the soundtrack, as expected, is bangin’. There is a fidelity to the era that’s impressive too. The concert recreations are awesome and combined with the uncanny appearances of the lead actors it gives the whole thing a feeling of “being there”.

All “true stories” mess with the truth, and Straight Outta Compton can be forgiven for that because it captures the time, the music and the band at its heart in such engaging fashion.

Ricki & The Flash

(PG) ★★★

Director: Jonathan Demme.

Cast: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Mamie Gummer, Rick Springfield, Audra McDonald, Sebastian Stan.

"Push the little daisies and make them come up!"

MERYL Streep doesn’t give bad performances. She never even gives average performances.

Occasionally she stars in average films (perhaps increasingly so), but never is she anything less than great, even when everything around her is exceedingly average.

Such is the case in this strangely lifeless comedy-drama, which lacks the laughs to be a comedy and the bite it would need to be a strong drama.

Luckily Streep, perhaps the greatest actor who has ever lived, is present to elevate things, bringing all her charisma to bear as Ricki Rendazzo – a woman her walked out on her life as a married mother-of-three named Linda Brummel to follow her rock ‘n’ roll dreams.

A couple of decades on from her divorce, Ricki is doing it tough, playing in the house band of a Californian bar with her boyfriend Greg (Rick “Jessie’s Girl” Springfield) by night and working as a check-out chick by day.

A phone call from her ex-husband (Kline) drags her back into her past, forcing her to reconnect with her recently dumped daughter (played by Streep’s real life daughter Mamie Gummer), her estranged sons, and the damage done by her departure all those years ago.

Much has been made of Streep’s rock chick persona and the fact that she (in true Streep fashion) is really singing and really playing guitar. While her guitarwork looks shaky at times, she nails her vocals, using them as just one of facets of another excellent performance that is typically multi-facted. Ricki is intriguingly flawed – she’s comfortable with who she is, but she's increasingly uncomfortable with how she got there, and it makes for a compelling character, especially in Streep’s guitar-playing hands.

Her chemistry with Kline is excellent, but almost everyone else – particularly Gummer and Springfield – is struggling to keep up with her talents.

The script, written by Oscar-winner Diablo Cody (Juno, Young Adult) is oddly tame. Its set-up, characters and cast suggest this should have been funnier or tougher or both, but instead it is neither.

None of this is helped by Demme, whose perplexing directorial choices (too many awkward slow zooms) and his inability to nail the “dramedy” tone leave the film blowing in the wind with no direction home.

So why watch this? For Streep, of course. The extended musical interludes, which are at first slightly tiresome, end up being the most memorable bit. The perfect example is the unsurprising ending, which is cornier than a popcorn festival in a cornfield but sucks you in thanks to the fact Streep and her band look like they’re really giving it their all and having the time of their lives.

As a result, for all it flaws, Ricki & The Flash becomes watchable and almost enjoyable purely on the back of Streep and her Suzie Q attitude and Joan Jett moves.

Vacation

(MA15+) ★★

Director: Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley.

Cast: Ed Helms, Christina Applegate, Skyler Gisondo, Steele Stebbins, Chris Hemsworth, Leslie Mann, Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo.

Remake of Vacation or Duel?

AS discussed last week while reviewing the millionth reboot/remake/rehash of the year (the actually quite good The Man From U.N.C.L.E.), rebooting/remaking/rehashing is not necessarily an automatic fail.

If the idea at the heart of whatever is being rebooted/remade/rehashed remains valid after all these years, then, by all means, go for it. Mankind has repackaged and retold the same stories again and again for millenia.

The rehash in question this week is Vacation, a reboot and direct descendant of National Lampoon’s Vacation (and European Vacation, Christmas Vacation, Vegas Vacation, and the best-forgotten made-for-TV spin-off Christmas Vacation 2).

As with its predecessors, it centres on the Griswold family taking a holiday and everything going wrong. The patriarch here is Rusty, the son of Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold from the 1983 original. It’s a character that’s been played as a kid by Anthony Michael Hall, Jason Lively, Johnny Galecki and Ethan Embry but here he’s brought to life as a middle-aged loser dad by Ed Helms.

At the core of the story is Rusty trying to redo the mission of the ‘83 original – a family vacation to theme park Walley World – as a way of getting his family out of a rut and to reconnect with each other.

The bad holiday scenario is worth revisiting and many of the original Griswold adventures are fondly remembered as comedy classics from an era when Chevy Chase was a household name. But although this doesn’t totally disgrace the family name, it’s certainly not a comedy classic like some of its forefathers.

Its laughs – and there are a few mild chuckles here and there – aren’t that far removed from the tone of the original films, but it’s the three Ps of profanity, poop, and penises that tend to get the biggest giggles. Unfortunately there are no moments that will live long in the memory – no quotable quotes or bits you’ll be telling your friends about (except perhaps Christina Applegate projectile vomiting her way through a sorority dare and Chris Hemsworth’s showing off Thor’s hammer, if you know what I mean).

There are bigger throwbacks to the original, including a typically idiotic car in which to undertake the journey, while Lindsay Buckingham’s awesome theme song Holiday Road gets a good work out (as does Seal’s Kiss From A Rose for some reason). There’s also a slightly ham-fisted attempt to poke some self-reverential fun at the whole reboot concept, but it falls flat.

Part of the reason that doesn’t work, and indeed why the film doesn’t work as a whole, is Helms. He’s so good as the straight-laced Stu in The Hangover, but here he’s a weird mix of slapstick goofiness, oblivious idiot and decisive patron that never quite gels, and unfortunately his performance keeps the film off-balance.

Far better is Applegate as his wife Debbie, and showstealer Hemsworth as Rusty’s slightly inappropriate yet successful brother-in-law. Chase also turns up for a welcome cameo, and the film is dotted with drop-ins that range from the welcome (Charlie Day as a rafting instructor having a bad day) to the nonsensically stupid (Norman Reedus’ truck driver).

But largely, nothing feels fresh, none of the sequences really hit it out of the park, and nothing makes the film stand out. It’s not a total misfire, but it’s unlikely to be remembered down the track, except as that attempt to reboot a franchise that was perhaps best left alone.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

(M)  ★★★★

Director: Guy Ritchie.

Cast: Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Debicki, Hugh Grant.

Just when they thought they were alone.

EVERYTHING old is new again.

It’s an adage that’s been the unofficial motto of Hollywood since it began. People tend to forget that Alice In Wonderland was filmed six times before Walt Disney got his hands on it, and there had been at least four versions of The Wizard Of Oz before Judy Garland tried on the ruby (originally silver) slippers in 1939.

So while it’s easy to write off this update of an almost forgotten ‘60s TV show as part of a modern-day trend to reboot, remake and rehash everything, really it’s just Hollywood’s inbuilt predilection to re-use good ideas in the hopes they work from generation to generation.

Maybe no one has been clamouring for a new version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., but maybe people want to see a film about two Cold War spies from opposite sides of the Iron Curtain forced to work together to save the world. And that just happens to be the plot for The Man From U.N.C.L.E., so rather than re-invent the wheel, why not just remake it instead?

British actor Henry “Superman” Cavill plays debonair CIA agent Napoleon Solo, who was created by 007 mastermind Ian Fleming to be American TV’s answer to James Bond, while American actor Armie “Lone Ranger” Hammer plays KGB operative Illya Kuryakin, a by-the-book Russian with anger issues.

Despite having crossed paths as rivals in East Berlin, the pair is teamed up to hunt down a former German scientist who is believed to be making nuclear bombs for a criminal organisation.

With its cool ‘60s setting and its Cold War friction, it’s a compelling set-up, and it’s easy to see why it’s been kicking around Hollywood for 20 years, with everyone from Quentin Tarantino to Steven Soderbergh almost sitting in the director’s chair and Clooney and Cruise among the names that almost played Solo.

It’s Guy Ritchie, enjoying a career rebirth on the back of the recent Sherlock Holmes films and a divorce from Madonna, who has stepped up to the plate and he clearly relishes the opportunity to direct what is essentially an impossible dream – a ‘60s-era James Bond film with a ‘70s-era Bond, made with modern movie-making sensibilities.

The Bond-isms are hard to escape – after all, that franchise pretty much defined the spy genre in the era when The Man From U.N.C.L.E. takes place. Solo’s dapper style, the Roman locations, the femme fatales, the gadgets, and the set-pieces help make this the Bond film that never was.

But the great thing, believe it or not, is an ever-so-light Roger Moore-ish touch. While Bond has increasingly become something to be taken very, very seriously in the Daniel Craig era, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. fills a void we’d not realised was empty – it reminds us that spy films can be fun and give us a laugh, without being spoofs or resorting to Austin Powers (or latter era Roger Moore) levels of silliness. In that sense, it’s like a more refined, mature companion piece to Kingsman: The Secret Service ie. less blood-spurting and fewer inappropriate jokes about sex acts.

There are no enormous Mission: Impossible-style, edge-of-your-seat set pieces, nor is the plot overly complex. This is just good old-fashioned spy-vs-spy shenanigans with an odd-couple twist.

Cavill is ideal as Solo and Hammer is good as Kuryakin, but together they’re great, engaging in an almost endless game of one-upmanship against a backdrop of nuclear annihilation. Aussie Debicki makes for a decent but non-descript villain and Vikander is a handy offsider, however Hugh Grant is the most memorable bit-player, swooping in on occasion to steal a few scenes.

Ritchie does a great job, even if his attempts at some flashy ‘60s-inspired cuts and split-screens get in the way a little bit. Generally though he keeps the tone light and the plot moving along.

The look of the film is particularly superb. The costumes and set design are perfect, and some tasty CG helps recreate Cold War Berlin in the film’s excellent opening act.

Maybe this is a remake no one was asking for, but in that category it is more like Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films – stylishly successful – than Hammer’s noisy flop The Lone Ranger.