Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates: DVD Review

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates: DVD Review

Loosely based on the antics of real-life brothers Dave and Mike Stangle, who placed an online ad in Craigslist, this raunchy comedy knows exactly what it wants to do - and manages to achieve it without any level of class or originality.

Wedding Crashers for the next generation it may aspire to be - but be assured, it ain't.

Efron (straight-laced) and Devine (hyperactive, bordering on severely irritating) are Dave and Mike respectively, who have a habit of boorish behaviour and going too far damaging family celebrations. With their younger sister's marriage on the horizon, Mike and Dave are ordered to get respectable dates to the big day, to ensure everything goes to plan.

So placing an online ad, the duo meets plenty of prospective plus ones. But striking out, they come across Alice and Tatiana (Kendrick playing ditzy and Plaza playing trademark deadpan with an edge of sassiness) who appear on the surface to be nice safe girls.

However, it turns out the girls are even worse than the boys....will the big day go ahead?

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is the kind of raunchy, crass, brain-dead frat boy party antics flick that is the very definition of leaving your brain at the door and ensuring you have a skinful before you sit down to watch it.

It also comes with the caveat that you have to be puerile in your acceptance and outlook as well to fully appreciate and get on board with the humour.

While Efron and Kendrick downplay their respective roles after initially ratcheting up the goofy unlikeable factor early on, Devine threatens to derail the whole thing with an OTT turn that borders on severely irritating thanks to gurning, screeching and generally being as dumb as is humanly possible.

It's great to see Kendrick playing off type, and Plaza clearly has a deadpan blast, but none of these are unforgettable characters and while the bro-ing of all of them (is the female equivalent a bra-mance?) is a nice touch in terms of ladies can do it too, the whole thing feels dumber than a bag of spanners.

There's a kernel of a nice story waiting in the wings (one laments late on in the piece as the inevitable schmaltz sets in that they thought they were destined for great things but have never achieved anything) but it's sacrificed in favour of some relatively forgettable set pieces that linger as long as the lights are down in the cinema, before disappearing in the haze of reality.

Vulgarity is the order of the day and Szymanski never sets his sights above that, but what would you expect from the writers of the Bad Neighbours series? However, there are arguments that it doesn't go far enough.

There's an over-riding sense of repetition to get the point across, and while Kumail Nanjiani of Silicon Valley delivers some of the best moments of the film in a brief cameo, the obligatory out-takes show more fun was being had than what was being recorded.

All in all, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates does exactly what you'd expect.

But if you're looking for something that will be added to the pantheon of R-rated films like Bridesmaids and The Hangover for the millennials, this is totally forgettable, utterly disposable and ultimately a dimwit escapade that goes nowhere fast but will sadly satiate a portion of the box office audience.

(Oh, and is it now obligatory in any Zac Efron film that he needs to remove his shirt?) 

David Brent: Life On The Road: DVD Review

David Brent: Life On The Road: DVD Review

Over a decade after the conclusion of the UK version of The Office, David Brent remains a comic icon.

Mining both tragedy and pathos in equal measure, as well as rolling in the awkwardness plied on with a trowel at times, Ricky Gervais' hapless and hopeless office manager returns in another road movie mockumentary outing.

Now, Brent's still a rep, selling cleaning wares as well as tampons, and still harbouring a dream of making it in the rock'n'roll world. So, cashing in both his holiday and a selection of pensions, Brent pours his heart, soul and money into a tour with his band Foregone Conclusion, taking along with him some session musicians and a rapper Dom Johnson, his token black friend.

Following a patented formula of sideways awkward glances at the camera and walking the line between non-PC and a few moments too late self-censoring, Gervais' Brent has not changed much. And as such the film feels like another extended episode of the sitcom that goes on a little too long and has some of the cringe factor stretched a little too thin throughout, despite the obvious pathos lurking in the wings.

But mining deeper into Gervais' aspirations with Life On The Road (banal song lyrics aside, the toe tapping MOR tunes blasted out by Foregone Conclusion are annoyingly ear-worm worthy), it appears to be a portrait of mental illness and delusion writ large, with a few scenes painting a painful honesty and portrait of a sad and lonely man who just wants to be loved above all. With therapy and admissions of Profzac use, there are elements of the second series of Steve Coogan's I Am Alan Partridge here again to add the required level of tragedy to the character.

It has to be said though that Gervais proves winningly adept at slipping back into the role as the very English version of This Is Spinal Tap rolls out. By turning the spotlight solely on himself and eschewing the rest of the Office cronies, how you feel about David Brent will largely rest on whether you can take the cringe and awkwardness of the character and humiliations visited upon him. Gervais knows what he's doing and while another director may have reined in some of the indulgences and tightened things up, fans of The Office won't be disappointed.

Of the supporting characters, only Doc Brown's deadpan and would-rather-be-somewhere-else Dom Johnson is given any more depth to combat the incessant squirming but the rest get short shrift - without doubt this is Gervais' show and he's determined, like Brent, to get the most out of the spotlight.

In the final act, the sentiment's piled on as the veneer cracks and David Brent: Life On The Road ramshackles disappointingly into bittersweet sentiment, a frank admission and tacit nod to the British sitcoms that at the end of the day, we all just love the losers, that we don't want to see them unhappy and that if there's hope for them, then there's sure as hell hope for us.

Perhaps this at times scrappy affair is Gervais' final swansong as Brent, and while the meanness of a society that welcomes and then scorns its reality stars is occasionally touched upon, David Brent: Life On The Road is not perhaps the incisive laugh riot you'd want from such a beloved comedy character.

Less one louder and more muted comic fanfare of the commonly annoying man, this attempt at Brentertainment meanders where it could have been tighter and frustrates where it could have been sharper. 

dec 14th

Merry Christmas to you all!

Merry Christmas to you all!

Just a brief note to wish all my followers a very Merry Christmas!

May your Christmas be filled with family, fun and comforts - and if you know of others who are not in a similar situation, please take a moment to think of them, or if they happen to be nearby, pop in and say hello!

Merry Christmas to you all - and thanks for your support of my website this year - and in case you don't recognise the Raymond Briggs Snowman above, below you'll find a more well recognised movie snowman!

See you in 2017 for even more film, games, DVD and other reviews!

Passengers: Film Review

Passengers: Film Review

Cast: Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Sheen, Laurence Fishburne
Director: Morten Tyldum

They say in space, no-one can hear you scream.

And that's perhaps a good thing, given that Morten Tyldum's space romance has a major twist in its tail, that was unshown in trailers and leaves a nasty taste in your mouth.

Guardians of the Galaxy star Chris Pratt plays engineer Jim Preston, who's in deep sleep on board the SS Aurora along with 5,000 other passengers. When his suspended animation pod malfunctions, he wakes up in the middle of the journey with no clue why. The real kicker is that the ship won't arrive at its destination, the newer version of Earth aka Homestead II, for another 90 years, effectively condemning him to death.

Stuck alone on the ship with no human interaction - the sole character Preston has to deal with is Michael Sheen's android bartender, Preston starts to go slowly mad as the reality of the situation kicks in - and he faces a moral dilemma - wake another passenger and condemn them to the same fate or spend a lifetime alone...

With production values that really reflect the space age look to a tee, and the loneliness of space is certainly evident early on in the piece as the ship hurtles to its destination and begins to malfunction.

Tyldum uses Pratt's charisma to great effect and showcases it well, with montages of the humdrum nature of his ship bound life setting the scenes excellently. But Pratt's charisma can only go so far - and while his interactions with Sheen are brilliantly dry, smarmy and deadpan, it takes the appearance of Jennifer Lawrence to really fire the dramatic spark that's needed.

Unfortunately, that spark is somewhat dimmed by the glossing over of the moral dilemma and the creepy state of affairs as this space-set ode to Stockholm Syndrome progresses. Tyldum and the script's desire to gloss over the implications of the decision that's made by the idealistic and desperate Preston prove to be slightly fatal in the ultimate wash.

There's something here about class divides as Lawrence's Aurora is clearly a step above Preston's engineer; from the quality of breakfasts she's doled out by the automated vending machines (standing in contrast to Pratt's faceless weetbix style lumps) to the quality of life, the writers could have made more of the divide between the two, rather than playing on the easy chemistry between the pair which isn't enough to weight the story.

Complete with narrative conveniences, such as malfunctions for no real reason and a sci-fi setting that's primarily doused in soapy romance rather than sci-fact, Passengers is only just a trip worth taking because of Pratt and Lawrence. It's their interaction in the coldness of space that just about will convince the romantic dreamers of the audience.

But for a high concept film, it fails to deliver on its premise unfortunately and relies on one moment that will polarise any rational member of the audience. Not exactly a disaster, but nowhere near a success, it remains a frustrating experience.

Assassin's Creed: Film Review

Assassin's Creed: Film Review

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling
Director: Justin Kurzel

Re-teaming with MacBeth director Justin Kurzel for their second outing together, not even the star power of Fassbender and Cotillard can save the Assassin's Creed movie from being a muddled mess that's slavish to the phenomenally popular Ubisoft computer game series.

Fassbender is criminal Cal Lynch, who's summarily executed via lethal injection as the movie begins.

When he awakes, he finds himself in a room inside a shadowy cabal who are hunting for the Apple of Eden as they desperately try to wipe out violence in the world. The Abstergo group of Templars believes that holds the secret to unlocking the DNA of all life and could change the face of the Earth for the better.

Leading Cal into a machine to regress him is scientist Sofia (Cotillard in severe wig and saddled with obligatory exposition) and soon Cal finds himself back in 15th Century Spain in the body of his own ancestor, a trained Assassin.

But the further Cal goes into this world, the more the truth appears out of the shadows - is Abstergo doing the right thing?

Assassin's Creed does little to break the chain of unsuccessful video games committed to the big screen.

While the game's trademark aesthetics and nods are wrapped up in a swathe of moments that fans of the games will recognise with ease (the Leap of Faith, the building top scrabbling, the parkour and the posing post fights), non-fans may feel the cursory solid action sequences are muddied and unspectacular.

Both Fassbender and Cotillard deliver video game dialogue and explanation with little to no emotion, and Rampling, Irons and Gleeson are completely wasted in their supporting roles.

With a bombastic OST, an eagle soaring high above used repeatedly to segue between scenes, there are plenty of nods to the video game series and the centuries old fight between the Assassins and the Templars, but there's never any scope or depth delivered to the weight of the fight, other than through rote explanatory dialogue.

If anything's successful in Assassin's Creed, it's the action sequences which stop the surge of sci-fi mumbo jumbo being clinically delivered, but the more they are rolled out, the more it's a diminishing return.

Ultimately, Assassin's Creed is a C-movie with A-listers - it fails to deliver on anything in terms of spectacle and a muddied plot doesn't help things. While the Spanish setting may have delivered more depth if it had been built up more, the chop and change aesthetics and flat denouement mark it out as the first major flop of 2017. Despite its insistence on using the Leap of Faith from the games, it seems unlikely many in the audience will take the Leap of Faith needed.

Final Fantasy XV: PS4 Review

Final Fantasy XV: PS4 Review

Released by Square Enix
Platform: PS4

The most anticipated game of the year is also one of the most sprawling and open world ever unleashed onto the console generation.

Delayed and hyped beyond belief, Final Fantasy XV is definitely an experience, and despite being a game that's in its 15th iteration, it also flashes up a title card that says it's a game for Final Fantasy fans and newcomers alike.

That's one hell of a thing to claim given the breadth and depth of the fanbase, but it has to be said, that Final Fantasy XV delivers.

It's essentially a road trip, as Prince Noctis heads across Eos to catch up and marry his fiancee Lunafreya Nox Fleuret and unite the kingdoms.

Gathering his chums together, Gladiolus, Ignis and Prompto, it soon becomes a bro-fest as they all hit the road. They all have personalities and it makes the time with them a real pleasure - it's the distinct personalities which have the edge and add to the game.

The rapport is central to proceedings and also to your gaming as well with Final Fantasy as the threats begin to grow. During the night, Daemons attack the gang and the fighting comes to the fore.

It's here that you feel the initial investment in the characters beginning to pay off. And with photo-realistic interpretations of the leads, it's graphically mightily impressive.

As the threats grow, and the Daemons rise, the bond between the quartet starts to strengthen and the fights become more emotionally affecting. With the ability to chain attacks together and to help your buddies when the rest of the group goes down, there's a real sense of camaraderie that plays off and plays into the strengths of the game.

From magic attacks that draw on elements to simple smash and fight, there's a need for strategy to ensure survival and you can't simply go in all guns blazing.

From driving automatic cars to dealing with the NPCs and their world, there's a lot to explore in Final Fantasy XV and while occasionally, some of the game's elements falter a little under the pretensions of it all, it helps massively that the emotional investment into the core group comes early on.

Blessed with a beautiful OST as well as teleporting in fights and using your mates, Final Fantasy XV is at its heart, an experience and one that will engage for a long time as you head to the final credits.

 

The best films of 2016

The best films of 2016

In no particular order, here are my favourite films from 2016

Arrival

La La Land


Hunt For the Wilderpeople


Hell or High Water



10 Cloverfield Lane


Tickled


Kubo and the Two Strings


I, Daniel Blake

Suburra


Zootopia

The Witch

Swiss Army Man

Under The Shadow

Moana

Sing Street

Train To Busan

Personal Shopper

Paterson

Poi E

Weiner