TV review: Disenchantment

(M) ★★★½

Creator: Matt Groening.

Cast: (voices of) Abbi Jacobson, Eric Andre, Nat Faxon, John DiMaggio, Tress MacNeille, Matt Berry, David Herman, Sharon Horgan, Maurice LaMarche, Lucy Montgomery, Billy West.

Service: Netflix.

If you drink and ride, you're a bloody idiot.

Comparing Matt Groening's latest creations to his two previous babies - The Simpsons and Futurama - is grossly unfair; one is the greatest TV show of all time, the other is a supremely under-rated gem that was so great it survived being cancelled twice (and here's hoping Futurama survives its third cancellation).

But compare we shall, because that's often the best shorthand for understanding quality and giving something a creative context. So the short version of this review is that Disenchantment isn't a patch on either of its older Groening siblings. It starts to hit its stride partway through the second episode but its humour only occasionally reaches the lofty heights of its predecessors. And despite its progressive outlook, it lacks the social commentary bite of The Simpsons and Futurama at their best.

But, like I said, such comparisons are grossly unfair. On its own, Disenchantment is fine fun, with some good characters and some solid storytelling that escalates dramatically as the first series progresses. There are also some nice points to be made about the weight of expectation, and the struggle of finding one's identity.

The star of the show is Bean (Jacobson), AKA Princess Tiabeanie AKA Princess Tiabeanie Mariabeanie De La Rochambeaux Drunkowitz. As the oldest child of King Zøg of Dreamland (DiMaggio), she is expected to be a respectable royal. However the first episode finds her ditching her diplomatically advantageous wedding, after which she regularly spends her time drinking and fighting.

Typically she's accompanied in her pursuits by exiled naive elf Elfo (Faxon) and Bean's personal demon Luci (Andre), with said pursuits often running her afoul of her kingly father.

As is the custom of modern TV, Disenchantment rewards binge-watching. Around episode eight, the pay-offs mount up and the story arc kicks in. Seeds you didn't even realise were seeds, planted way back in episode one, suddenly start to bear fruit, and the ability of the show to make the most of callbacks - something The Simpsons and Futurama have never done - works a treat.

Prior to that, the series' good-natured humour and engaging characters will keep you watching. By season's end, it moves into full cliffhanger mode, which is amplified by the fact Netflix has ordered 20 episodes yet this season is only the first 10. So some story strands bear fruit, others frustratingly don't. It's a ploy to get you coming back for series two, which helps make up for the lower strike rate of laughs when compared to The Simpsons and Futurama.

The best elements of Disenchantment overcome the worst. Side characters such as The Herald get the best lines, which makes up for the side characters among the king's court that aren't funny. A bachelor party visit to Mermaid Island is a funny plot, while Bean's search for a job is less so. Luci comes off like a boring version of Futurama's Bender, but Bean is a refreshing character, who's more like a cross between Bender and Leela.

Largely, it works. It's boldly different to Groening's other work, while still looking and feeling familiar. It's still short of greatness, but it's engaging enough to warrant returning for season two or even a re-watch to pick out the foreshadowing you missed first time around.

And to read all the great signs hidden in the background of the village.

The Happytime Murders

(MA15+) ★★★

Director: Brian Henson.

Cast: Bill Barretta, Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph, Leslie David Baker, Dorien Davies, Elizabeth Banks, Joel McHale, Kevin Clash.

Spot the puppet. The answer may surprise you (it's the guy with the beard).

Firstly, this is not the first time "Muppets" have gone hardcore. That honour goes to Peter Jackon's sickly twisted cult comedy Meet The Feebles. Of course, they weren't actual "Muppets" but it was the next best thing.

While The Happytime Murders is also destined for cult status, it has something Meet The Feebles didn't have - actual Muppet cred, courtesy of director Brian Henson.

Henson, son of the late great Jim, is a longtime Muppeteer, and has directed Kermit and co in such films as A Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island. Just what his old man would make of this sweary mess of sex-and-violence noir is a question for the ages.

The Happytime Murders focuses on Phil Phillips (Barretta, another Muppet stalwart), who was the first puppet cop in an alternate Los Angeles that imagines humans and puppets living side-by-side. Kicked off the force for an incident that still haunts him, Phil now works as a private investigator.

His latest case is trying to solve the murder of a puppet cast member from an old TV show called The Happytime Gang, which brings him into the firing line of his ex-cop partner Connie Edwards (McCarthy).

The Happytime Murders is fitfully funny, but nowhere near as funny as it should be. Too often it goes for the racy sex joke or a wacky puppet gag, when something actually hilarious would have been a better option. The humour is often yearning to point out that hey, this is a movie for adults starring puppets, as if we hadn't noticed already.

The comedic approach is at odds with what makes the film work, which is when it gets on with being a good movie telling a good story. Phil is a great character, whose flaws and traits make him seem more human than his blue felt would indicate. His relationship with Edwards, despite its histrionics, is interesting too. Unlike the humour, these elements aren't straining self-consciously.

The plot is a semi-decent noir story, and as well as dialling up the laughs, cranking up the noirish elements wouldn't have gone astray. The closest relative to this film is not Meet The Feebles or the marionette mayhem of Team America - it's Robert Zemeckis' toon-noir classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.

That film also used its non-human/human interactions to examine prejudice (it's far less subtle in The Happytime Murders) to tell a properly noirish story, while also employing plenty of that film genre's cinematic style. The Happytime Murders would surely have benefited from a touch more Touch Of Evil, or a flutter of The Maltese Falcon, instead of looking like a Sesame Street on the wrong side of the tracks.

The puppetry itself is top notch and innovative, making the most of green screen and CG erasure to make its people-and-puppets world a reality. The cast are trying hard, when the laughs land they are great, the story has its moments, and Phil is a cool character you would happily watch in another hardboiled mystery. It's a shame there isn't more hilarity or noirish style to this ambitious cult-classic-in-waiting.

The Meg

(M) ★★

Director: Jon Turteltaub.

Cast: Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Winston Chao, Cliff Curtis, Shuya Sophia Cai, Page Kennedy, Robert Taylor, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Jessica McNamee, Masi Oka.

Aquaman had a lot to answer for.

What's scarier than the shark in Jaws? A bigger shark! And that's why we got Deep Blue Sea in the '90s. And the terribly made Mega-Shark series between 2009 and 2015 (expect that to make a comeback shortly).

And here we are at The Meg AKA Jason Statham versus a giant shark. Believe it or not, but this film started life as a book (much like Jaws did) back in the '90s. It languished in development hell for two decades until it finally surfaced as this Chinese-American co-production (hence the setting off the coast of China and the large number of Chinese actors in the film) which bears little resemblance to its source material.

While I'm as much a fan of big-dumb-fun movies as the next man-child, The Meg is mostly just big-dumb. It takes itself laugh-out-loud serious at times rather than being laugh-out-loud funny, and its attempts to shoehorn emotion and character development into proceedings is average at best and painfully awkward at worst.

Statham stars as Jonas Taylor, a deep-dive rescue expert turned functioning alcoholic after a rescue attempt went somewhat wrong. Jonas claimed a giant underwater creature was responsible for the misfortune, and you can probably guess where this going.

When a billion-dollar research project inadvertently comes in contact with a similarly huge marine beastie, stranding a sub crew on the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the scientists turn to Jonas to come to the rescue. But what have they found lurking near the ocean floor (I'll give you one guess)?

The predictability of The Meg is not a major problem - in fact, it subverts expectations from time to time. It's the combination of a largely po-faced approach and inability to land a joke that sucks the air out of this underwater adventure. The likes of a Samuel L Jackson getting eaten mid-speech a la Deep Blue Sea wouldn't have gone astray. Or maybe casting someone a little more self-deprecating than Statham. Or casting two leads with more spark than Statham and Bingbing. Or editing and shooting the jokes that are in there better so they actually land.

The likes of Rose, Kennedy and Ólafsson attempt moments of comedy, each of which sink like broken sub. Only Curtis manages to land laughs, almost in spite of the film. Wilson also has a good crack at it, but again is undone by the tone, pacing and style of The Meg.

The film never celebrates its B-movie status or over-the-top qualities and as such, never gets the "fun" to go with its "big dumb". The only things separating it from the Mega-Sharks and Sharknadoes of the world is the general quality of the cast and effects, but those shlocky series at least realised it was all a big joke.

This is aiming to be more like Jaws or Jurassic Park, but it lacks that next level of style, finesse, talent, direction, character and a tone to suit its subject material. That's not to say big beast B-movies have to be hilarious - the recent Godzilla remake is a good example of an oh-so-serious one. But that got the tone right on that delivery. It didn't splash about in a pool of bad jokes while being weighed down by its own sense of gravity, like this does. It decided it was going to be a story about family, set against the backdrop of a disaster movie.

The Meg strives to be the next great shark movie - the Jaws for the CG generation. But it's sadly not, and the film sinks as a result.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout

(M) ★★★½

Director: Christopher McQuarrie.

Cast: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Michelle Monaghan, Alec Baldwin.

Anyone can fly a helicopter from inside the helicopter.

Read my full review of Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation here.

Read my full review of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol here.

The rarely disappointing M:I series has become notable for the increasingly crazy stunts Tom Cruise is willing to undertake. As such, those nutbag feats of daredevilry have become shorthand for the movies themselves.

So there's the one where he hangs from the ceiling, the one where he goes free climbing, the one where he jumps off a building in Shanghai, the one where he climbs the Burj Khalifa, and the one where he hangs onto a plane during takeoff.

This one will be "the one with the helicopter chase". Which is an insanely awesome sequence by the way, #oscarforstunts.

But this all exemplifies what's good and bad about the M:I films. They are exceptional action films, with gripping sequences that give us stunts we haven't seen often or ever before. However, that is often the only thing we remember about the movies, despite their usual solid plotting.

In Fallout, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF colleagues are hunting a terrorist named John Lark while trying to get to three stolen plutonium cores before he does. Adding to complications is the fact Hunt and his team have already let the cores slip through their fingers once before, leading the CIA to add their own moustachioed man mountain Walker (Cavill) to the IMF group to oversee proceedings.

Throw in Ilsa Faust (Ferguson) from the previous film, plus an array of cashed-up supervillains, and you've got yourself another impossible mission that Hunt will choose to accept.

As is typical of these films, the plot is a complicated but well constructed mix of double-crosses, last minute saves and seemingly zero-sum scenarios. This is both the blessing and the curse of the M:I movies - they're great in the moment, and will have you on the edge of your seat, but ultimately they're strangely forgettable. Hence we remember the films not for their plots, but rather their stunts and spectacles.

In some ways, this puts them in the ballpark of 007 films, but without the charismatic and increasingly complex character of James Bond (or the glory of being first). This raises the other dichotomy of M:I - Tom Cruise. He's both a reason to watch the films and a reason they kind of wash over you.

Ethan Hunt is basically Tom Cruise In Action Mode, interchangeable with any of his other Action Mode characters, such as Jack Reacher, The Mummy's Nick Morton, or Night & Day's Roy Miller. Hunt has no defining character traits beyond his stoicism and the fact he cares too damn much, goddammit. It obviously makes him the perfect cypher to be inserted into any espionage plot, but it goes some way today explaining the forgettable nature of the individual films, and why you rarely hear anyone proclaim the M:I series is their favourite franchise (feel free to tell me otherwise in the comments).

Thankfully this is all somewhat offset by the presence by Rhames' Luther and Pegg's Benji, who have personality in spades, and inject a bit of much-needed humour into proceedings (the worst bits of Fallout are when Cruise attempts to say something amusing)

As mentioned, M:I Part 6 is a really solid actioner, with a tight and surprising plot, and some killer stunts (including another rooftop run, this time in London). It feels slightly mean to pick at the film for its weirdly forgettable nature, because in the moment it's great.

But if, like me, you've ever wondered why you rarely hear anyone pick this excellent franchise as their favourite, here's your answer: see if you can remember what this film was about in a year's time.

REWIND REVIEW: City Of God (2002)

(R18+) ★★★★★

Director: Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund.

Cast: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino da Hora, Phellipe Haagensen, Alice Braga, Seu Jorge, Matheus Nachtergaele, Daniel Zettel, Graziella Moretto.

It was "discount guns for kids" day at the gun shop.

It's easy to forget the noise City Of God (Cidade de Deus in Portuguese) made back at the turn of the millennium. Here was a Brazilian film enjoying a worldwide cinema release (how many times has that happened in the past 20 years?) and being lapped up by the critics. It was one of the best reviewed films of the year, and received four Oscar nominations (although, bizarrely, not a best foreign language award nod).

At the time of writing, it still sits at #20 on the IDMb top 250 - that's right between Seven Samurai and Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. It's a regular on 'best of' lists. Empire called it the seventh best world cinema film of all time. Paste called it the greatest film of the '00s.

Seeing it a decade and a half on, removed from all its hype and critical goodwill, three things are striking: 1) it still stands up as a tour de force, 2) it hasn't aged at all and feels strangely timeless, and 3) despite all its accolades, it was, if anything, under-hyped and under-appreciated.

City Of God is a story of violence, and how violence begets violence. It follows the interconnected stories of two young men from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro; in particular a crime-soaked, poverty-stricken area known as the Cidade de Deus. The two youngsters are Rocket (played by Luis Otávio as a child and Alexandre Rodrigues as an adult) and L'il Dice, later L'il Ze (Douglas Silva as a child, Leandro Firmino da Hora as an adult). They represent, respectively, the desperate hope and pervasive nihilism of those in the favelas. 

Rocket is desperate to leave the slums and find a new existence beyond as a photographer. While those around him either get killed or become killers, he refuses to buy into the ever-growing mythology surrounding the crime lords or get involved in their machinations. It's a difficult thing to get away from though - just about everyone he knows is involved in crime in some way, plus he's partial to a bit of weed every now and then, which brings him into contact with the wrong elements of the favelas.

As for L'il Ze, he embarks on a life of crime from a disturbingly young age, his sociopathic and homicidal tendencies helping his meteoric rise through the underworld.

Unlike many other noughties and nineties crime dramas, the violence in City Of God is never glamourised. It's brutal, horrifying, and savage, and it leaves no one untouched. Kids are such a major part of this story, and one of the film's most horrifically intense scenes pulls no punches in showing what happens when you attempt to idolise the perpetrators of these bloody crimes, and fail to realise the reality of it all.

"Reality" is the key word here. Long before the term "gritty" became de rigeur, and handheld cinematography, improvised takes, and using amateur actors became gimmicky and annoying, City Of God utilised these techniques to bring Rio's slums to life in breath-taking fashion. The near-documentary style is used to perfection, not only to help realise the characters and their situations, but to help make the setting an important part of the film. The directors Meirelles and Lund never let the style dominate the many tales they're telling - it only ever works to serve the story.

This "docufiction" approaches helps you forget these are actors on screen. Although, really, they weren't even actors, which makes the stunning performances in this all the more remarkable. The bulk of the cast were young people recruited from the favelas themselves and placed into acting workshops for a couple of months to prepare them for the shoot. Among the cast were Alice Braga (Predators, I Am Legend, Elysium) and Seu Jorge (whose Portuguese covers of Bowie songs were a highlight of The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou). It's Jorge's character who is perhaps the peak of the film's thematic depth and ability to get under your skin. As Knockout Ned, he becomes a rebellious champion in the blood-soaked reality of the favelas, but becomes a character you pity as his own descent into violence takes hold.

But he's just one interesting thread in a tapestry of incredible colours. Even bit players, such as drug dealer Carrot (Nachtergaele), the junkie Tiago (Daniel Zettel), and the wannabe kid gangster Steak With Fries (Darlan Cunha) have fascinating mini-arcs amid the maelstrom of Rocket, L'il Ze and Benny (Haagensen).

Ferociously edited, beautifully shot, and stunningly told, City Of God regularly gut-punches you, lifts you up, and then gut-punches you again. It's a modern classic of crime cinema, far removed from American or British tales of violence. It tells a tale that could only have sprung from the favelas it inadvertently created a tourism buzz around.

Maybe that's why it's never been remade - this is perhaps that rare example of a film that could have only been made at that particular time, in that particular place, with that particular bunch of people. City Of God is the very definition of cinematic lightning in a bottle.

The Breaker Upperers

(M) ★★★½

Director: Madeleine Sami & Jackie van Beek.

Cast: Madeleine Sami, Jackie van Beek, James Rolleston, Celia Pacquola, Ana Scotney, Cohen Holloway, Rima Te Wiata.

"Alright, so we kick off first, and first team to 20 points wins."

The Kiwi sense of humour is truly something to treasure. From Fred Dagg and Footrot Flats, through to the early films of Peter Jackson, and beyond to Flight Of The Conchords and the work of Taika Waititi, there is something distinctly NZ - and wonderfully, hilariously droll - about the way filmmakers and writers in The Country Across The Ditch craft a comedy.

The Breaker Upperers is a worthy follower in the footsteps of its funny forebears. Writers/directors/stars Sami and van Beek stir up plenty of laughs in this deeply cynical tale about relationships, friendships, and womanhood. It's not perfect - in fact, it very nearly completely derails itself two-thirds of the way through - but for the most part, it's hilarious.

The pair play Mel (Sami) and Jen (van Beek), the titular "breaker upperers" - that is, they're professional uncouplers. Pay them, and they will help end your relation for you. Their techniques range from playing the other woman to pretending to be cops who deliver the sad news a person's partner has disappeared while bushwalking. Sure; it's nasty, but it's effective.

It all goes well until Mel takes a liking to 17-year-old client Jordan (Rolleston) and befriends another client Anna (Pacquola), all of which causes a schism in her relationship with Jen, who is struggling with her own anger and disappointment with the world.

For the most part, The Breaker Upperers is hilarious. Sami and van Beek are great and their chemistry is top notch. Sami's so good she even sells Mel's relationship with slightly dim teen Jordan and makes it believable. Rolleston and Scotney are also excellent, as is Te Wiata (who was previously wonderful in Hunt For The Wilderpeople) as Jen's mother, even though Te Wiata doesn't look old enough for the role.

Special mention goes to Pacquola, who is an under-rated comedic talent. Her performance as the lovelorn and lonely Anna is pitch perfect, although credit also goes to Sami and van Beek for such a wonderfully written role. Much like the leads, Anna is a well-rounded character who feels real in the scope of this black comedy, and who serves as a moral compass for the film.

Sami and van Beek have generally done a good job with the script and its characters, but there are some weak points. Weakest of all is a scene that tips this black comedy too far into the black. For the most part, the film rides that difficult line of cringe and comedy really well, but there is a moment that dips too bleak and really shakes the foundations of the film. From there it's a tough climb back, but it's to Sami and van Beek's credit that they claw their way up to find the laughs again. In fact any time the film goes in the wrong direction - an awkward, too-long stripper sequence and an unnecessary karaoke diversion stand out like the proverbial - the subsequent laughs come thick and fast, winning you back.

It's a shame the film digs itself into such a horrible hole about an hour in, because this is, by-and-large, an hilarious movie. The bad scenes are overwhelmed by the good, and the laughs far outweigh the mis-steps. The characters are great, and Sami and van Beek do an excellent job in all three of their job titles.

Those Kiwis sure know how to make a comedy, and this is the latest.

Skyscraper

(M) ★★★½

Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber.

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Chin Han, McKenna Roberts, Noah Cottrell, Roland Møller, Pablo Schreiber, Noah Taylor, Hannah Quinlivan, Byron Mann, Adrian Holmes.

Stairs were for wimps.

Let's get the obvious out of the way - yes, this is basically Die Hard, turned up to 11. The building is taller, the stakes are higher, the danger is greater, and even the hero is bigger. I mean, no one's bigger than Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, right? He's effectively a normal human turned up to 11.

If Die Hard is the benchmark we're measuring Skyscraper up against, then the latter comes up many storeys short. But that's to be expected. What's unexpected is that Skyscraper is more fun and more effective than it has any right to be as a very big and somewhat dumb blockbuster.

Johnson stars as Will Sawyer, an ex-FBI Hostage Rescue Team leader who lost his leg in a hostage situation that went wrong, resulting in a number of deaths. Ten years on, Sawyer is married to army nurse Sarah (Campbell), with whom he has twins Georgia and Henry (Roberts and Cottrell). He's also working as a private security expert and has been brought in by his old FBI buddy Ben (Schreiber) to assess the safety of the Pearl - the world's tallest building. Located in Hong Kong, the Pearl is an engineering marvel. It's also about to become a battleground, as a team of baddies set out to steal something located on the top floor.

Skyscraper is surprisingly efficient in its set-up, although the relationship between Ben and Will could have used some extra depth. Otherwise, it introduces its world and protagonists nicely. Yes, it's all painted in very broad simple strokes but this was always going to be more like painting a wall as opposed to a fine art masterpiece. Is the wall covered in paint and looks alright? Yep. Good - job done.

As far as big dumb fun goes, Skyscraper's got it going on. The biggest and dumbest moment is the film's now meme-worthy (and unrealistic) crane jump. This scene is the film in a nutshell - yeah, it's ridiculous, but it is edge-of-your-seat vertiginous stuff in the context of the movie. Somehow it works, if you're willing to go along for the ride.

The film is also to be applauded for having a hero who happens to be an amputee, as well as a heroine who is definitely not a damsel in distress. Campbell gets some heroic moments amid the fires, fights, and shoot-outs, in what could have been an otherwise thankless role. As for Johnson, well, he's not going to win an Oscar for this, but it again shows the commitment and depth he manages to bring to even the most potentially one-dimensional of roles. Speaking of which, I'm just going to leave this here:

Can't remember who I said this to while drunk (was it you @JonoHimself and @garethcolliton?) so let's air it on Twitter in case it comes true:

One day @TheRock will win an #AcademyAward.

(Start giving him some dramatic roles pronto.)

— Matt Neal (@DrMattNeal) July 1, 2018

(I probably should have just said "be nominated for" but oh well.)

In many ways, Skyscraper is reminiscent of White House Down, another piece of building-centric escapist silliness that hit its tropes well and had fun doing so. Maybe it's overly serious in places, and it plays some high stakes games with its ridiculous ending, but for the most part Skyscraper achieves its goals of being large-scale popcorn entertainment.

Add in Johnson's uncanny ability to elevate any movie he's in, and few films will be as the big, dumb, switch-off-you-brain guilty pleasures that this is.