You're never too old to play with toys

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
My rating:




As a toy/cartoon franchise, G.I. Joe is actually very similar to Transformers; both are all about a glut of characters with funky names that didn't so much have personalities as they did gimmicks - all the better to turn them into toys. But the Joes were never as popular here in Malaysia. That whole American jingoism thing was a bit of a turnoff, and on the scale of what's cool to 9-year-olds, robots beat human soldiers easily.

Well, as far as I'm concerned, this year the Joes win.

When terrorists attempt to steal four warheads containing deadly metal-eating nanites, the elite multinational anti-terrorist task force G.I. Joe swings into action. They are joined by Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) when Duke offers information about the Baroness (Sienna Miller), one of the terrorists - she used to be his fiancee. And so the battle lines are drawn - the Joes who comprise Duke, Ripcord, Scarlett (Rachel Nichols), Heavy Duty (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), Breaker (Said Taghmaoui), and Snake Eyes (Ray Park), versus Cobra - Baroness, Storm Shadow (Lee Byung-Hun), Zartan (Arnold Vosloo), and the Doctor (Joseph Gorden-Levitt), all led by James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston).

As you can see, I got bored halfway through writing that plot summary and just decided to list down the characters on both opposing sides. That's really all you need to know; the plot is damn near inconsequential. This isn't to say it isn't fun - it is, more so than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. This being the other big dumb summer blockbuster based on a toy from the '80s, one can't help but compare the two. And although I gave them both the same 3-star rating, I enjoyed this one more. The humour is less annoying, the plot moves faster, and the action scenes never get boring.

The reason why I enjoyed Transformers 2 is because I was able to do precisely what people often say about movies like it - turn off my brain. I'm happy to report that with G.I. Joe... well, you still need to turn off your brain, but not by as much. It's still a pretty dumb plot, but director Stephen Sommers at least does a workmanlike job of hitting all its beats, and he keeps the pace fast enough to make you overlook the dumbness. With Michael Bay, you often got the impression that he's really not as interested in telling a story as he is at blowing things up. And at a good half-hour shorter than Transformers 2, it's a lot less self-indulgent too.

Still, you wish the movie would spend a bit more attention on other things besides the action - like acting and characterization and dialogue. Tatum was virtually a block of wood; without the benefit of a strong script like in Fighting, he's an utterly boring actor. I suppose I should be thankful that Wayans isn't annoying; he's a comic relief who gets to kick some ass instead of falling down all the time. However, his little romance with Scarlett doesn't work, and their flirtation scene in the gym is an eye-roller. The Snake Eyes-Storm Shadow flashback scenes are pure padding, but Park and Lee give us a few good fights. Miller and Nichols are both easy on the eyes, and Miller in particular looks like she's having a ball. Eccleston adds some class, but Gordon-Levitt is sorely wasted.

All in all, it's a rollercoaster ride that never lets up, never lets you get bored, and doesn't make you queasy while trying to keep you thrilled. In fact, I'd say this is pretty much the best big dumb summer blockbuster based on a toy/cartoon franchise from the '80s so far. If I may be permitted one last comparison between this and Transformers 2: both movies are like 9-year-old boys excitedly showing you their toys. The difference is, where Bay gets too caught up playing with them by himself, Sommers invites you to join in the fun.

Update: Rating revised to reflect my new five-star rating scale.

NEXT REVIEW: damned if I know. Just waiting for District 9 and Up.

"Oi. Get married. Wan onnot?"

The Proposal

My rating:

I'm as much a Guy Movie kinda guy as the next guy. But I'm also man enough to admit I can enjoy a good romantic comedy. Give me some laughs, give me a likable guy and a lovable girl, give me some decent chemistry between the two, give me two people believably falling in love over whatever plot contrivances you can throw at them, and I'll have a good time.

Give me a movie that fails at that last criterion, and you get The Proposal.

Margaret Tate (Sandra Bullock) is the hard-ass chief editor of a publishing house who makes life a living hell for her personal assistant Andrew Paxton (Ryan Reynolds). Turns out she's Canadian and has been neglecting her citizenship application, so she's about to get deported - which is when she blackmails Andrew into getting engaged to her for the green card. To maintain the charade, they have to spend a weekend in Alaska with Andrew's family - his parents (Craig T. Nelson, Mary Steenburgen) and his 90-year-old grandmother Annie (Betty White).

What happened to Sandra Bullock? She had terrific breakthrough roles in Demolition Man, Speed and While You Were Sleeping, and since then she's struggled to find a decent vehicle for her considerable talent. She's still great fun to watch, but she really needs to pick better scripts - as well as recognize when a movie she's in is in fact a blatant ripoff of one of her earlier good movies. Rom-com? Check. Plot based on an elaborate deception her character is running? Check. Being charmed by the male lead character's family members? Check. Guilt at deceiving aforementioned charming family members? Check. Dramatic admittance of deception at wedding altar? Check.

Aiyoo, movie, if you're gonna imitate While You Were Sleeping so closely, you can't avoid comparisons to it. And that movie was easily better than this one. It was more charming, more real, and did not have any painfully forced humour - like the scene where Margaret dances with Annie in the woods. I know a lot of people think actors dancing like morons is truly ROFL-worthy, but I'm not one of them. The jokes were hit and miss for me, although some of it may have been our Penapis Filem yang Terhormat again - two major comic setpieces, the male striptease scene and the nude collision between Margaret and Andrew, were pretty much gutted. Thanks, FINAS!

Another reason why While You Were Sleeping pwns this movie is because it focused on Bullock's character, instead of trying to develop both halves of the romantic pairing and coming up short on one of them. I can believe Margaret falling for Andrew, and being won over by his sweet and feisty grandmother. I can't, however, believe Andrew falling for Margaret, the bane of his existence and someone whom he refers to as "the witch on her broom". This is more the screenplay's failing than that of Reynolds' performance. There's a subplot regarding the strained relationship between him and his father, and it's not only lame, it's also an egregious waste of Craig T. Nelson.

This is the second movie in a row I've watched that had epilogue scenes over the end credits, and frankly, Setem did it better. (Malaysia Boleh!) I said before that this kind of thing only works if we really, really like the characters - and here, we don't. Mr. and Mrs. Paxton are dull. Grandma Annie is fun, but there's also this exaggerated comic relief character Ramone (Oscar Nunez) who just isn't as funny as the movie keeps telling us he is. He's another example of the movie's forced humour - like a guy who can't help laughing at his own jokes, and laughing a little too hard.

What ultimately saves this movie is Bullock's performance, and to a lesser degree, Reynolds' as well. They're fun to watch in the first half, when they're still bickering and one-upping each other. Reynolds' expressions when he first learns of his "engagement" to Margaret is probably the funniest bit in the whole film. And there's one genuinely sweet scene where they open up to each other and begin their first tentative steps towards falling in love. Problem is, there's only one such scene. Honestly, I can forgive a not-very-funny romantic comedy if it only delivers some decent romance.

I haven't watched a lot of Hollywood rom-coms lately (and wouldn't have caught this one were it not for this blog), mainly because few of them have gotten any decent reviews. Most of them have been criticised for being formulaic and cookie-cutter, emphasizing plot contrivances over genuine chemistry and romance. This is yet another one of them. Go watch While You Were Sleeping instead. It's not only the better version of this movie, it's a better movie period.

NEXT REVIEW: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Anticipation level: just hope it's not too stupid

My firm setem of approval

Setem
My rating:




People often ask me why I bother watching local Malay movies. I have a number of reasons; but one that I've not told anyone is that, well, to put it succinctly, I'm Malaysian, yo. The fact that I was born, bred and raised in this country means there's something in me that's programmed to appreciate Malaysian films. A joke is funnier if it's told in good ol' Bahasa Malaysia; a scene is more enjoyable if it's set in a location you recognize; a story is more heartfelt if it's about people whom you see around you, who walk past you on the street, who live in the houses you pass by every day. And all we need is a solid, well-made film, with no WTFery to spoil it, for that inherent appeal to be realized.

This is it. Sweet Alhamdulillah, this is it!

Sid (Rashidi Ishak) and Joe (Afdlin Shauki) are small-time con men who plot to steal a rare stamp worth US$4 million. But they aren't the only ones - ex-con Mani (Indi Nadarajah), newly released from prison, and Vellu (Sathia), the security guard in charge of transporting the stamp, are eyeing it too. Gangland boss Piranha Lim (Chew Kin Wah) also wants in, and sends his psychopathic henchman Burn (Bront Palarae) to oversee Sid and Joe. And when hijinks ensue, three innocent people get sucked in - blind street musician Iskandar (Que Haidar), his sister Alia (Vanidah Imran), and hapless Indonesian illegal immigrant Aryanto (Isma Yusoof).

If I were to watch Snatch or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels again and discover that screenwriter and director Kabir Bhatia basically ripped off both films, I will be only slightly disappointed. Every creative person steals from their peers, and so have far better-known film directors. What Bhatia has crafted here is an ensemble heist comedy, and it's as respectable as either of the Guy Ritchie vehicles. It moves fast, and it has a smart and tight plot (except for the ending, but more on that in a bit) with a canny sense of setup and payoff.

It's also freaking funny. Afdlin is a natural comedian, and he effortlessly makes Joe a character that gets laughs with his every scene. But the film doesn't rely solely on him; the dialogue is consistently funny, whether it's Joe's one-liners, or the (subtitled) Tamil banter between Mani and Vellu, or the rapid-fire Indonesian from Haron Salim Bachok playing the doyen of a group of illiegal immigrants. Yes, it's quite a multi-lingual film, which is a pleasant surprise. The wacky hijinks are also deftly directed by Bhatia, who handles comic suspense and timing with a sure-handed touch - and seriously, there's nothing like a good farce to get you ROFLing. The only unfunny bit is Sathia's mugging, which fortunately doesn't go on for too long before the plot gives him something to do.

Besides Afdlin and Sathia, there isn't a bad performance in the bunch - which is a goddamn miracle for a local movie, lemme tell ya. Rashidi is a little wooden, but he isn't challenged beyond the limits of his range. It's a pleasure to see veteran Datuk Aziz Sattar on screen again, in a small but impressive role. I don't know if it was Chew's idea to give Piranha Lim a Kelantanese Malay accent, but it was an inspired touch. Palarae is fine, but Adam Corrie Lee, who plays another minor minion of Lim, should've played Burn - Lee is much scarier-looking. Indi plays an effective badass, Que Haidar a likable innocent, and Vanidah needn't do anything more than look sweet. Similarly, Isma Yusoof's "gelabah" face is all he needs to endear him to the audience. These are all characters you can care about, and you'll want happy endings for all of them.

There are a few missteps though. Bhatia's competent direction doesn't extend to action scenes, of which there are three; a car crash, a gunbattle and a hand-to-hand fight. The first employs some effective stunt work, but the other two aren't convincing, and the last is actually kinda shoddy. And the aforementioned ending goes on too long, way past the point of the story's logical conclusion. But then we get epilogues of every surviving character over the end credits, which only works when we like them enough to want to see how they end up. The fact that the film is confident enough to show us this earns it another kudos - it knows what it's done best.

I want to mention the illegal Indonesian immigrant subplot; this is an example of what I said earlier about how the Malaysian setting makes local films more meaningful to Malaysian viewers. Through Aryanto, we are given a sympathetic glimpse of the lives of these immigrants, and it strikes a chord. It's not heavy-handed - I doubt it's even intended to make a point - but that's as it should be. A dash of realism in a fluffy but entertaining movie like this is far more effective than an entire film that hammers its message down our throats.

I can't be the only one, can I? I can't be the only one who believes a good, solidly entertaining Malay movie can appeal to all Malaysians. Well, here's one, and here's my strong recommendation for it. It's funny. It's fun. It's good. It's 100% made in Malaysia (okay, Bhatia began his career in India, but nobody's perfect), and that's what makes it good. Go watch it, and tell all your friends. Tell the rest of the Malaysian film industry that this is how it's done.

NEXT REVIEW: The Proposal
Anticipation level: ho-hum

The critics (except Roger Ebert) can suck it

Land of the Lost
My rating:




This movie has been getting some of the worst reviews of Will Ferrell's career. Not only did it earn 28% on RottenTomatoes and 32 on Metacritic - and most likely a spot on many critics' worst-of-the-year lists - it was one of the first major flops of the summer. But amidst all the hate, the lone voice of Roger Ebert emerged to give it a 3-star review. I read that review and, reminded of my ability to find the vibe that allowed me to enjoy Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, went into this movie somewhat encouraged.

Roger Ebert is a smart man.

Dr. Rick Marshall's (Will Ferrell) career has been in the pits since his theory of time warps got him laughed out of the scientific community. However, a visit by English physicist Holly Cantrell (Anna Friel), the only person who believes in him, motivates him to finish building his tachyon amplifier device. When they take it on a field test to a tacky roadside attraction run by Will (Danny McBride), all three end up travelling through a time warp to a parallel dimension - the Land of the Lost. There they befriend an ape-boy named Chaka (Jorma Taccone), run afoul of a grumpy T-Rex named Grumpy, encounter the reptilian Sleestaks, and must recover the thingamadoodad that will allow them to return home.

I am not a fan of Will Ferrell. He basically plays the same blowhard moron character in every movie, and he's no different here. How much you'll enjoy the movie will depend a great deal on how much you like him - or, like me, how much you enjoy sci-fi/fantasy adventure. Because this movie works as an adventure story - albeit a purely goofy one - as much as it does a comedy. It reminds me a lot of Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs actually, and not just because of the T-Rex and the "lost world" milieu.

For one thing, the comedy isn't always funny. The dialogue feels like Ferrell and McBride improvised a lot of it, and they don't always come up with zingers - the scene where they get drunk on funky fruit juice is not a gutbuster, despite the movie thinking it is. For another, there's no attempt to create deeper characters besides blowhard moron Marshall and blowhard moron Will - you can have character development in a goofy comedy without detracting from the laughs, and this movie is kinda lazy for not even trying.

But every time you're about to get bored with Ferrell's mugging, the plot moves on to the next complication. It's really quite a well-executed story; it's not fresh or even smart, but it moves at a good pace that never loses our attention. And just like Ice Age 3, it earns our goodwill with a rousing ending in which our heroes perform some effectively awesome heroics. The T-Rex is pretty well done, although the Sleestaks look pretty fake - but they're supposed to look fake. The whole movie is meant to be one big goof, with logic and common sense and finger-quote "realism" checked at the door. And judging from the reaction of the audience I was in, I'm sure most Malaysians will have no problem seeing it for what it is.

Ferrell and McBride do their usual things; although the only other movie I've seen with McBride is Tropic Thunder, he seems to be following Ferrell's footsteps as a one-note comic actor. At least he avoids being annoying. Taccone's avoidance of being not-annoying is more impressive, considering the fact that there's a running joke of him groping Holly's breasts. Anna Friel is cute, but she has the doubly thankless role of straight woman to two funny men, as well as designated T&A in a movie with the sexual maturity of a 15-year-old boy. A more experienced comedienne would've done something more with the role - but at least she's cute.

There's a scene in which someone gets eaten alive by dinosaurs; although it doesn't show any blood and gore, it's still an unnecessarily jarring bit in such a good-natured comedy. But that's its only real major misstep. It's really no worse than the average Will Ferrell comedy, and I don't see why it deserves being teared into by critics. I had fun, and I had a few good belly-laughs, especially at a poop joke toward the end that I saw coming a good 5 seconds before the rest of the audience. A movie that makes me feel superior to everyone around me - how could I not like it?

NEXT REVIEW: Setem
Anticipation level: perversely looking forward to it. Yeah, I'm a pervert

The taking of the road very often taken

The Taking of Pelham 123
My rating:




I am not a fan of Tony Scott. He strikes me as not much different from Michael Bay - both have a needlessly overwrought directing style that pretends to be skillful when it's really just being show-offy. He has nothing on his far more talented brother Ridley. His two saving graces are that he picks smart scripts - well, smarter than Bay's - and that he's a friend of Denzel Washington, who's made four movies with him so far.

But those graces can't always save him.

Walter Garber (Washington) is the New York subway dispatcher on duty when the Pelham 123 train is hijacked and its passengers held for ransom. The leader of the hijackers, who calls himself Ryder (John Travolta), insists on communicating only with Garber, and a rapport develops between the two; Ryder even forces Garber to admit to a shameful secret that he is hiding. Garber is aided by hostage negotiator Lt. Camonetti (John Turturro), while the Mayor (James Gandolfini) arranges for the $10 million ransom to be delivered before Ryder's threat to start killing hostages is realized.

This is the second high-profile Hollywood film I've seen this week that serves up a tired old story we've seen dozens of times. There's a charismatic villain with an ingenious plan. There's an everyman hero who is the only person who can stop the villain. There are glimpses of the hostages, some of whom add complications to the plot. There are higher authorities involved, and the hero is alternately aided by those who trust him and hindered by those who are just plain assholes. And finally, the hero and the villain will meet face-to-face in an action-packed climax. It's predictable, because it's all been done before.

It's also been done a lot better before. Ryder's plan isn't particularly intricate, which means little cat-and-mouse maneuvering between the cops and the crooks. The action is mostly limited to the subway transit office and the verbal byplay between Ryder and Garber - which isn't really as tense as it should be, despite a scene in which the criminal forces the civil servant to admit to taking a bribe. Ryder isn't a very interesting villain, and Travolta plays him with a lot of manic shouty intensity, but fails to give him the depth that the screenplay should have supplied. And this is one of Washington's rare poor performances. Walter Garber has the responsibility of 18 innocent lives thrust upon him, and he only seems mildly perturbed by this. Again, it's the screenplay that doesn't give him any truly meaty scenes.

John Turturro is a curious choice for the wise and experienced cop character; it's not that he doesn't do a good job, but we just saw him as the goofy Agent Simmons in that other movie directed by a guy who's all style and no substance. (And yes, that's Ramon Rodriguez in there too.) Scott's direction is not effective, it's distracting. The camera can never stay still; it's either shaking all over the place, or dollying, or panning so fast everything becomes a blur. There's a slow-motion shot every five goddamn minutes. I recommend sitting far back from the screen if you don't want a splitting headache. (And speaking of distracting - the profanity-laden dialogue is pretty badly chopped up. Big middle finger to you, Lembaga Penapisan Filem.)

And then there's the climax, in which... no. Sorry. Not buying it. Everyman civil servant, former subway train driver and current desk jockey, schlubby old Walter Garber, grabs a gun and goes after the bad guys? Even gets into a car chase? Not buying it for a New York minute. Whose idea was this??

I've been pretty harsh on this movie so far, so let me just say that it's decent laa. It's effective. You might get a few thrills out of it, if you haven't watched any hostage action-thriller film from the past 25 years. But it really makes you wonder, why? Why remake a 1974 minor classic into a movie that's so stale and cliched? Do they really expect audiences to keep lapping up the same old same old? Doesn't anyone in Hollywood have any new ideas anymore? If they do, better hope Tony Scott doesn't get his hands on it.

NEXT REVIEW: sigh. Guess it's gonna have to be Land of the Lost
Anticipation level: siiiiiggghhh

Thing most frequently said during the making of this movie: "Ala, bantai jelah"

Skrip 7707
My rating:




I've watched three Malay movies (not including Gadoh, which is an indie) in as many months now, and I've noticed one thing: there hasn't been a single character worth rooting for in any of them. Nobody has a decent dramatic conflict, nobody ever does anything courageous or clever or heroic. Everyone is either a cardboard cutout moving to the strings of the plot, or an annoying moron who deserves to die before they breed. More often than not, they're both. For all that Malay filmmakers have this weird hangup about "filem yang memberi pengajaran", they can't seem to portray a single admirable quality in their films.

Such as, for instance, basic competence.

Abu Bakar "Burn" Osman (Norman Abdul Halim) is a film produc- um, screenwri- um, "orang filem" who wants to make a horror movie, but is frustrated by the lack of good scripts. (Unintentional irony!) So he organizes a midnight ghost-story-telling session in the middle of a cemetery with a bunch of strangers. (No, really, he doesn't even know their names. And neither do we.) So we hear several short ghost stories that Burn types up into a screenplay, and they get paid in packets of Yeo's Chrysanthemum Tea.

I have a friend who's a sound engineer for local film and TV productions, and I bet he'd get a kick out of this movie. My very first impression of it is that I've never heard such terrible audio mixing in my life. The (badly dubbed) dialogue is weirdly muffled, and the sound quality often dips in mid-sentence. The foleyed sound effects are hilariously incompetent - you'll hear the sound of a car door closing, but apparently it makes no sound when it opens. It's emblematic of the entire film; the people who made it just couldn't be arsed.

So this Burn guy somehow manages to conjure up nine random people to sit with him in a cemetery at midnight and tell ghost stories. In other words, it's an anthology horror film. There's nine of them, so they're all pretty short. The "jump" scares are lame, the direction is unimaginative, but the music does do a decent job of creating atmosphere; it's really the only thing in the movie that's close to scary. The first two segments are the kind of stories you've probably heard from friends who swear that it really happened to a friend of a friend of theirs. The third is a gruesome little tale that's notable only for being gruesome.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Malay movie without some good old-fashioned misogyny, so the next story is told by a guy who dumped his girlfriend after getting her pregnant, forcing her to perform an abortion on herself. And he is rightfully chastised for his sheer scumbaggery with a scathing "Tak patut awak buat begitu". Naturally, it's the girl who gets blamed for killing her unborn child, right down to being haunted by her dead baby and committing suicide. But the dead ghost baby effect is so bad, the movie wouldn't even show us a shot of it longer than half a second. And Fasha Sandha's performance as the luckless girl was horrendous. I can't even find a credit for the actor who played the douchebag boyfriend, but he was equally awful.

Next is a dull tale about more people getting freaked out by not-very-freaky dead people. After that is a story set in a morgue, in which a doctor accompanies a grieving mother in identifying the body of her son. Which instantly becomes burnt and blackened upon being uncovered. So while the mum talks about how the son hated to pray (yay! Tick off the "ajaran agama" box!), I'm thinking - dude, you're a pathologist. You're not in the least bit curious as to how something like that can happen to a human body?? Oh, and there's the one told by the girl who's ex-boyfriend is a thug and a murderer, and he gets revenged upon by the ghost of the guy he murdered - only, she wasn't there at the time, so how the hell could she tell the story??

Then there's the one about a teenage boy who was killed in a motorbike accident, but his little sister can see his ghost. And his parents express their grief at the tragic loss of their child by pouting a little. M. Rajoli and Maimon Mutalib are veteran actors - are they really that bad? I'll be kind to them and blame the director, Prof. Madya A. Razak Mohaideen, who either can't direct actors to save his life, or doesn't bother to do more than a single take for every shot, or can't be bothered period. Probably all three. 'Cos the last story features another eye-gougingly annoying performance by Shahrul Nizam, featuring a ghost who's a blatant ripoff of the Thai film Shutter, and is set in an abandoned hospital whose lights are still on.

That makes nine stories, one of which is told by Burn himself - and if there's nine people plus Burn at this midnight campfire confab, where's the tenth story? There isn't one. There's a female character who's there, who gets lines, but has no story. I think they just forgot to film it. The movie has one, and only one, saving grace - there's a CGI-assisted ghost effect in there that's reasonably cool. I'm guessing the portion of the budget that went into it was originally meant to be the sound engineer's salary.

Oh by the way, if you're wondering what's the significance of the "7707" in the title - the night where all these stories are told is supposed to be the 7th of July. And apparently this movie took three years to make, which explains the "07" part. It doesn't explain how in the world a thoroughly incompetent movie like this could take three years to make. The final nail in the coffin? There's an over-the-shoulder shot of Burn writing his screenplay towards the end, and there's a glaringly obvious typo in it. Everyone in the audience noticed. C'mon, Prof. Madya - you still think Malay moviegoers are dumb enough to swallow this shit you're passing off as a movie? You couldn't be more wrong.

NEXT REVIEW: The Taking of Pelham 123
Anticipation level: kinda meh

Me, the confirmed Potter-fan - and Weasley-fan, and Snape-fan

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
My rating:




My review of the 6th Harry Potter film can be summed up in 4 words: I love these characters. It was a joy to watch Harry, Ron and Hermione again on the big screen; Harry is of course in almost every scene, being the main character, but it's when he is together with his two best friends that I found myself having the most fun. And while their actors may not be the most polished, they nevertheless make their characters immensely likable.

So much so that I wonder if I can no longer be objective with this movie.

The wizarding world is now well aware of Lord Voldemort's return, and that Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is the Chosen One destined to defeat him. But first, Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) enlists Harry's aid in getting close to new teacher Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent), who has a dark secret involving Tom Riddle, the younger Voldemort who was once also a Hogwarts student. Meanwhile, teenage romance blossoms between Ron and Hermione, and Harry and Ron's sister Ginny. And two people will begin their first steps down dark paths - Draco Malfoy, and Professor Severus Snape.

In Order of the Phoenix, Harry was constantly beleaguered by the fact that nobody believed his account of Voldemort's return. Here, it's the exact opposite - the wizarding world is now well aware of the growing threat, yet ironically there is less of an ominous and menacing atmosphere than in the previous film.There's the opening scene of Death Eaters destroying a bridge in the Muggle world, but after that the main plot consists mostly of scenes of Dumbledore's and Harry's hushed conversations in his study.

In fact, that's the biggest problem with this movie - it's slow. There's little urgency or suspense, and the action scenes are few and far apart. And frankly, the main plot makes no sense. It revolves around Harry attempting to uncover Slughorn's memories of Tom Riddle, memories that Slughorn is unwilling to revisit for some reason. But once we learn what those memories are, we simply find more exposition - not, as you would have expected, the key to a means of defeating Voldemort. No, Dumbledore found that all by himself. Aiyoo, movie, what laa??

But then there's Harry, Ron and Hermione. And they are loads of fun. Their easy camaraderie and good-natured ribbing never fails to liven up the story, largely due to the terrific chemistry that all three actors share. The subplot of Ron's girlfriend Lavender Brown, and Hermione's subsequent heartbreak, earns both laughs and pathos. And although it weaves back and forth between the main plot and the romantic hijinks, the storyline never feels disjointed or episodic like previous instalments. Daniel Radcliffe is now a more confident actor than ever, and his performance under the effects of the luck potion is delightful. But for LOLworthy comic acting, he's outshone by Rupert Grint - there's a boy who I'm willing to bet will have a bright future as a comic actor once the movie series is completed. Emma Watson is the weakest of the three, but she handles her scenes competently.

As for the rest of the cast; Jim Broadbent is the most prominent newcomer to the world of Harry Potter, and does a nice balancing job between being comical and sympathetic. Draco Malfoy gets more character development here than he's ever had, and Tom Felton is impressively up to the task. Unfortunately, the same can't be said of Bonnie Wright, who plays Ginny Weasley. She's really quite wooden, and her romance with Harry is flat. But one of the most consistent and reliably enjoyable performances of the entire series is Alan Rickman as Severus Snape. Boy, can he sneer - he does delicious things with every one of his lines, and he's been doing it since the first movie. After staying in the background all this time, he finally takes on a pivotal role here, and I can't wait to see what he's really up to. (It's a Harry Potter movie - surely you ought to know by now that there's more to what you saw?)

So how can I possibly justify giving a lethargically-paced movie with a weak plot a 3-star rating? I'm a fan, that's how. Through 5 films in the series, there've been hints and promises of some serious awesome that's yet to come, and even if it didn't come in the 6th, I'm still willing to forgive this movie and wait patiently. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt. 1 is scheduled for November 2010, and Pt. 2 for July 2011. That's two looooong years from now - but I can wait. And this movie still gives me faith that the wait will be worth it.

Update: Rating revised to reflect my new five-star rating scale.

NEXT REVIEW: Skrip 7707
Anticipation level: *cringe*