A life less allegorical

Life of Pi
My rating:




I am afraid I have never read Life of Pi, the novel by Yann Martel. For a while there it was one of those literary sensations that everyone had either read, or were being pressed to read by those who had. One of my friends loved it, even though he'd come to it somewhat late - a couple of years after its 2001 release. But as much as he raved about how good it was, I never got much of an idea what was so good about it exactly. Its fanciful premise of a boy sharing a lifeboat with a menagerie of animals didn't pique my interest. And I guess I was a little snobbish, but I tend to be skeptical of these "you have to read this!" literary sensations du jour. Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code was one of those, which, yeah, blechh.

Good thing for movie adaptations then, so that I only need spend 2 hours watching it rather than a few days reading it.

A Canadian author (Rafe Spall) visits an Indian man named Pi (Irrfan Khan) in Montreal, having heard that he has an amazing story to tell. Born Piscine Molitor Patel in Pondicherry, India, the young Pi (played by Ayush Tandon) grows up in the zoo owned by his family - father (Adil Hussain), mother (Tabu), and elder brother Ravi (Mohamad Abas Khaleeli). He is a spiritually curious child, exploring and adopting aspects of the Hindu, Christian and Muslim faiths. At age 16 (played by Suraj Sharma), his father is forced to sell the zoo and migrate to Canada, travelling on the same cargo ship that is transporting the animals. In a violent storm, the ship capsizes and sinks. Pi is the only survivor, sharing a lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan - and an adult Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, who quickly devours the other animals. Boy and beast, stranded at sea together, must come to an uneasy understanding if they are to survive - in a story that, as Pi claims, will make you believe in God.

...aaand it didn't, not for me.TMBF's religious persuasion, if at all I have one, can best be described as agnostic bordering on atheist. Life of Pi did little to change that, even if I am generally open to films with a spiritual viewpoint. This one works best as an adventure story, and a visual-spectacle-heavy one at that. Director Ang Lee is no stranger to special effects, having helmed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hulk, and the eye-popping sights here are enough to make me wish I'd watched this in 3D. The sinking of the ship is spectacularly terrifying, and Pi's encounters with bioluminescent algae are breathtakingly beautiful. The largely-CGI tiger Richard Parker is flawlessly lifelike, and only when you know that PETA never protested this movie would you realise that the tiger - who gets soaked and tossed about the lifeboat and almost drowned - isn't real.

When Life of Pi is an adventure about survival at sea, it's quite enjoyable. Pi's efforts to survive in a 20-foot lifeboat alongside a flesh-eating tiger are fascinating; first he builds himself a makeshift raft on which he can keep away from the tiger's reach, then he has to keep feeding it so that it doesn't just swim over and devour him. Richard Parker starts out as threat, then enemy, then a burden, and finally earns Pi's friendship and affection - but it is always incontrovertibly a wild animal, never a Disneyesque cute anthropomorphic sidekick. Also enjoyable are the early portrayals of Pi's life in India, that include amusing vignettes of how both boy and tiger got their names. Pi's spiritual curiosity as a child lends him the faith he needs to survive his ordeal (and informs one poignant scene in which he kills a living thing, a fish, for the first time), and a lesson his father teaches him about the tiger's animal nature gives him the knowledge he needs to keep them both alive.

It's when Life of Pi tries to be a religious allegory that it gets shaky. The "make you believe in God" part comes at almost the very end, after a late plot twist of the sort that's meant to call into question everything you've seen. And I'm not in the least bit convinced; I'm not even piqued. I can't imagine it persuading anyone to believe in God who isn't already a card-carrying member of a theist faith. (Which probably accounts for the novel's popularity; religious people love it because it affirms what they already believe.) Again, I have no problems with overtly spiritual films or stories per se; if I can accept a reality in which, say, superheroes exist, I can accept a reality in which God exists and is an ineffable omnipresent force in that story's world. But this whole movie builds up towards a six-word line of dialogue that is almost smug in its conviction that it will make a believer out of you - you, the audience. But it just... doesn't... work. 

And it puts into sharp relief all of the film's other weaknesses. The most immediately noticeable is that it's often kinda slow; I rarely felt truly immersed in the story, rather I was always conscious that I was watching a movie and waiting for what happens next. (Although this is usually not a problem of the film's pacing per se, but more its inability to fully capture my interest from early on.) Once that ending comes around however, I also realized how aimless its plot was. At one point during the ocean voyage, they land on an island that turns out to be literally carnivorous - a man-eating island. This is what earns this review the Fantasy label, and not only is it a strange and tonally incongruous plot development, it also adds no support to the proof-of-God allegory. Nor does the childhood sweetheart Pi leaves behind in Pondicherry, or the quirky interludes about Pi's and Richard Parker's names, or even the entire relationship between the boy and the tiger. And for all of Pi's interest in three major religions, there's nothing Hindu, Christian or Islamic about those final six words.

So what we're left with is a gentle, warm-hearted, quirky lost-at-sea adventure story that's heavy on CGI spectacle, but also a little too slowly-paced. It's worth viewing on the big screen in Digital 2D simply for the gorgeous visuals - and yes, again, this is one I wish I'd watched in 3D. But as an allegory that proves the existence of God? Or even as a story that convincingly presents a reality in which God exists? Nope. In fact, its allegory is so unconvincing that I can only ascribe the novel's popularity to the fact that religious people still make up a far greater majority throughout the world than agnostics or atheists. I think most people who loved this book, loved it because it merely affirms what they already believe.

NEXT REVIEW: Wreck-It Ralph
Expectations: man, sure took me long enough

Twilight falls on Twilight

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part 2
My rating:




I said in my review of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part 1 that I would defend the entire film series as being not as bad as everyone thinks they are. And believe me, I have heard some very bad things about them. Well, TMBF always (has a tendency to, on occasion, be known to) keeps his promises, so here it is: seriously, they're not all that bad. They're not all that good either, but they're a lot better than the books. Now, granted, I have not actually read Stephenie Meyer's books, but I read plenty of online commentary on them - which also means I had the entire storyline spoiled for me - long before I started watching the movies. And on my objectivity as an amateur film critic, I will attest that the Twilight movies - the movies, not the books - have been muchly unfairly maligned.

And it's certainly easier to attest as such when the last movie happens to be as not bad as it is.

Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) has become what she has always wanted to be - a vampire. She is also mother to the newborn Renesmee (Mackenzie Foy), her child with Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and a vampire/human hybrid who matures at an accelerated rate. And Renesmee has a guardian in Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), who has "imprinted" on the child and is bound to her for life. Even as Bella adjusts to her new existence - learning the ropes of being a vampire, raising her daughter, easing the worries of her long-suffering father Charlie (Billy Burke) - trouble brews. The Volturi, led by Aro (Michael Sheen), believe that Renesmee's existence is a violation of vampire law, and are coming to Forks to exact deadly retribution. The Cullens seek help from other vampire covens from around the world, but even though their band is joined by the Quileute werewolves, the Volturi will not be deterred - threatening a bloody battle that many may not survive.

The sole and only reason I am giving this movie a 3-½-star rating is that climactic battle scene. Wouldn't you know, turns out Twilight is at its best when it gives us proper action scenes that acknowledge the awesomeness of vampires vs. werewolves vs. vampires. (I say "acknowledge", because the rest of the time, they sparkle.) That is one big, long and epic battle scene, bigger and longer and epic-er than the last time the Cullens and the Quileutes joined forces against Victoria's army of newborns. That is also a battle scene that does not happen in the original book - and the fact that the plot built up to it only to chicken out at the last minute is one of the biggest complaints against the book. Director Bill Condon and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg find a way to show us the battle and yet stay true to Meyer's ending. Some may think it a cheat, but I thought it was pretty clever and cool.

Which is exactly what Condon and Rosenberg should have done in adapting the book; and which is exactly what Rosenberg has been doing for five movies now. And these five movies, while never really very good, have been leaps and bounds better than their source material. There's none of Meyer's widely reviled prose; Bella Swan is much more tolerable, even sympathetic, when she's played by a human actor than when she's a first-person narrative stream of incessant self-pity and self-absorption. Kristen Stewart is even quite good in this, displaying more life and energy in her performance than ever before; perhaps Bella is right about the fact that she was born to be a vampire. As a matter of fact, I've never had any problems with Stewart's acting in these movies, and I think there's something sexist and ugly in all the hate she's been getting. Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner sure don't get as much vitriol (and I personally think Lautner is the weakest actor among the three).

And I am certain that Rosenberg and every director on the franchise is fully aware of all the WTFery in Meyer's storyline, and has been doing their best to mitigate it. As much as Meyer's Bella is a spineless, feckless wet rag of a heroine, movie-Bella actually has moments of strength and courage. In Breaking Dawn part 1, Bella insists on keeping the baby that is slowly and gruesomely killing her - and Americans in particular went nuts arguing this is a metaphor for the pro-life side of the abortion debate, because America goes insane over the abortion issue like few other countries do. But Stewart and Rosenberg made it the choice of a young girl that is understandable and consistent with her character, even emphasising her strength of will in holding to that choice despite overwhelming objection from Edward and the Cullens. And then there's the part when Jacob imprinted on the newborn Renesmee - an astonishingly tone-deaf plot development that is unavoidably paedophiliac. But Condon stages the scene as a moment of divine grace, in which Jacob falls to his knees, humbled by the higher power that has transformed his murderous hate into love.

Okay, there's only so much a good screenwriter and director can mitigate that, since they're still hobbled by the need to stay faithful to the books. (If they weren't, I'm sure they'd cut out the whole grown-man-falls-in-love-with-a-baby-and-waits-till-she-conveniently-grows-to-adulthood-super-fast-to-marry-her thing.) In fact, their efforts to make palatable this, the single most insanely stupid thing Meyer has ever written, don't entirely succeed this time. Bella rages at Jacob once she learns of the imprinting, but the scene is played for laughs - and includes the line "You nicknamed my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster?!" that I don't know whether to laugh at or not. It's also very cagy about showing the relationship between Jacob and Renesmee - which, on one hand, is a relief - but on the other, it also means this hybrid human-vampire child, on which the entire plot revolves, is never more than a blank. She has no personality whatsoever; we're only told that everyone loves her, but we're never given any reason why we should.

It doesn't help that when she's a baby, she's this hideous inhuman CGI creation that is the movie's single biggest misstep. Was it too hard to find a real baby?? Whose idea was it to overlay an unnaturally wide-eyed, creepily smiling, computer-generated thing onto a goddamn baby?? Yes, there are things about this movie that that climactic fight scene can't make up for. The small army of sympathetic vampires that join the Cullens include several characters that look interesting, but don't get nearly enough screentime. (Maybe if Rosenberg had cut out that useless fan-pandering scene of Bella and Edward exploring their oh-so-pretty new house...) For all that Stewart tries to play Bella as a stronger-willed person this time round, she still isn't; when Edward credits her for bringing their small army together, it rings hollow. And truth be told, as cool as that fight scene is - made even cooler with the deaths of many long-time characters, and some of those deaths are pretty damn satisfying - there's a distinct sense that it was filmed by a director with little experience making action films.

Still, I pronounce Breaking Dawn part 2 an actually not-bad movie, and I feel no shame in doing so. I still feel the best of the series is Eclipse (no uncanny-valley-plunging CGI baby there, for one thing), but this one's a close second. And I feel no shame in saying the whole series is far from the trainwreck the books are. The first two are definitely the weakest, but the rest does offer some satisfaction for fans of supernatural thrillers, especially of the vampires 'n werewolves variety. (Maybe if you liked the Underworld franchise, but you wanted more Selene/Michael and Sonja/Lucian romance.) In any case, the saga is over; it ends with a credit sequence showing every actor who played every character throughout all five movies, which is pretty cool and a nice ode to fans. I'm not one, and you may never be one either - but give it a try, and you may just find yourself not hating them any more.

NEXT REVIEW: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Expectations: can't miss a movie like this when it makes it to our screens

Budi the leap year idiot baby

29 Februari
My rating:




It isn't too often that I review a Malay film in English. This is because - and here's a glimpse behind the scenes here at TMBF - I get my highest number of hits whenever I do a local film review in BM. (Which really behooves me to do them more often, but with shit like Salam Cinta and Halim Munan in cinemas, I just can't be arsed.) But when I do write an English review of a Malay movie, it's for a variety of reasons; one of which is because I need the language I am most fluent in to express my extremely strong opinions of that movie. Or maybe I'm just feeling a little too lazy to take the extra effort to write in BM.

And in this case, it's because I have no idea how to say "twee" and "precious" in BM.

Budi (Remy Ishak) was born on the 29th of February in 1896, which gives him the magical ability to age only one year for every four years. In 1941, he is orphaned when the Japanese invade Malaya, and becomes a resident of an orphanage where he becomes best friends with Razak (Izzue Islam), who is blind. In 1957, just after the Merdeka declaration, he meets and falls for a Chinese girl named Lily (Jojo Goh) - but her father's (Chew Kin Wah) objections to their interracial relationship forces them apart. Though he spends the next decades searching for her, Budi will not see her again - until 2012, when he is living in Penang and runs a florist shop with two employees, Johan (Fizz Fairuz) and Arif (Muniff Isa).

It's right there on the poster - the first 3D Malaysian-made movie. Which... why? There's nothing about this film that seems to need 3D. It's not an action movie, nor does it have spectacular visuals or special effects. It doesn't even have shots of things flying at the screen, which is far from the best use of 3D but would at least justify having it. I saw it in good ol' 2D and didn't think it ever needed any 3D at all. (Which, to be fair, is how I feel about almost every 3D film anyway.) And I think this is symptomatic of what's wrong with 29 Februari - namely, it doesn't know what kind of movie it wants to be.

It's clearly reminiscent of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Forrest Gump (there's even a scene where Remy Ishak is digitally inserted into footage of Tun Dr. Mahathir from 1985), although the premise is different enough to stand on its own. The thing is, both those films were made for adults. Both were rated PG-13, both dealt with adult subject matter, and both had an adult sensibility. 29 Februari is not and does not, on all counts. The characters, the dialogue, the humour, are all juvenile and shallow and one-dimensional. Characters like Razak and Lily's sister (whose actress' name I can't find) are positively annoying; the former does nothing but whine and complain about his blindness, the latter is downright evil in how she keeps sabotaging her sister's and Budi's relationship. Even that central romance does nothing to make us root for them. This is a couple whose conversations involve such deeply insightful topics as, "Kalau Budi jadi kelip-kelip, ke mana Budi nak terbang?"

And for a film that traverses 116 years, there's nothing epic about it; it hardly ever truly examines this grand sweep of Malaysian history. We see Budi's parents killed when the Japanese invade, but we don't know how he actually lived during the occupation; we see him at Stadium Merdeka during Tunku Abdul Rahman's declaration, but after that he never seems to care that he is now a citizen of an independent nation. There's also a scene that takes place during the May 13 riots in 1969, but again, it's more interested in talking about his lost love Lily than in what's happening to the country at the time. But what really sinks this story is the fact that Budi can live over a hundred years, yet still be so dumb.

Seriously, does he mentally age 4 times as slow as other people too? In 1941, physically he is 11 and he looks as such. But he's also been alive for 45 years, and he sure doesn't act like a 45-year-old. And in 1957 when he meets Lily, he is 61 years old but he should look 15 (which makes it a boo-boo that Remy plays him at this point), and yet he behaves just like a lovesick teenage boy. Worst of all is when he encounters Lily again in 2012, yet appears shocked that she is now an old woman. Dude! You did not know that you age slower than everyone else?? It took you 116 years to find that out?? This is a guy who should have accumulated over a century's worth of experience, maturity and wisdom - qualities that, incidentally, this very movie lacks utterly.

Oh, and it's also a musical. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but is 6 song sequences - and only 4 songs, since one is repeated twice - a little, well, little for a musical film? I'm not too fond of musicals, and this movie is just the reason why: because musicals always have this artificiality about it, hence why people tend to break out into song and dance. 29 Februari has that artificial, contrived feel in spades; it tries so hard to be sweet and romantic and epic but just turns out far too twee and precious. Like it thinks a pretty tune set to some grand orchestral arrangement is all it takes to evoke soaring emotion. Oh, did I say song and dance? No - there are song sequences but no song-and-dance sequences. There is no dancing in this musical film. See what I mean about not knowing what kind of movie it wants to be?

I'll give it credit for being ambitious. I'll give KRU Studios credit just for attempting a magical-realist-fantasy-historical-drama-musical-romance. I'll give Remy props for an effective, impressively nuanced performance, and Jojo Goh for a charming presence; I'll even admit they both had some nice chemistry despite their dumb-as-rocks dialogue. (Although I'm sick of seeing Chew Kin Wah as the Designated Chinese Villain in Malay Movies.) But I don't think Edry Abdul Halim, who directed Magika, is a good director yet - nor Amir Hafizi, who wrote Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa, a good writer. Aside from Remy and Goh, everything good about this movie is in what it tried to be. Maybe Edry's and Amir's problem isn't that they don't know what kind of movie they're trying to make. Maybe their problem is that they're just not good enough to make it.

NEXT REVIEW: Kepong Gangster
Expectations: ohhh boy - no idea how this one's gonna turn out

Namewee needs to work on his impulse control

Hantu Gangster
My rating:




My respect for Namewee took a plunge after his anti-Lynas music video. I have no wish for a potentially hazardous industrial plant with dodgy safety standards on our shores, but I thought that video was hateful. It was full of nothing but virulently racist invective against Australians, for no other reason than that Lynas is an Australian corporation. It clearly did not occur to Namewee that many Malaysians may have Australian friends, and his video would have utterly embarrassed both of them. Which is why I was eager to watch his latest movie. I liked his last, and I wanted to see what he does next. I've gone to bat for him before and defended him against those who think he's a vulgar and shameless opportunist. I would like to think he's more than that.

I think he is. But he is also, in many ways, his own worst enemy.

Te Sai (Namewee) is a petty criminal, ne'er-do-well and single father to his perpetually disappointed 12-year-old son Chee Meng (Tee Jing Chen). But he's the one whom the ghosts of three recently-murdered gangland bosses, Pak Nasir (Dato' Jalaluddin Hassan), Uncle Arulmugam (Dato' David Arumugam) and Uncle Ah Hua (Charlie Loke), seek out to avenge their murders. Their sons and new leaders of the gangs - weak-willed Parut (Taiyuddin Bakar), thuggish loan shark Seelan (Abu Bakar Siddiq) and debauched drug dealer Ah Bao (Fa Chai Bao) - have forgotten the bonds of brotherhood that their fathers forged decades ago, and are on the verge of a race war. Unbeknownst to all three is the fact that the devious Ewan (Farid Kamil), who ordered the hit on their fathers, is deliberately stoking racial tensions in his bid to take control of all three gangs. To stop Ewan and restore harmony, there could not be an unlikelier hero than Te Sai - although if he succeeds, he might win the heart of the lovely Jameela (Diana Danielle), his son's schoolteacher and also the daughter of Pak Nasir.

Dear Namewee. Here is a list of things in your movie that are not funny:

- Te Sai's expletive of choice, "Kuihkochi".
- Attempting Japanese dialogue when the extent of your knowledge of Japanese comes from JAV.
- The fact that Arulmugam is never without a bottle in his hand. Dude. Beh hao ar.
- The musical number that the three gangs suddenly launch into to hoodwink the police.
- "Guaaaaang Zhou." (Unless this is a reference to something I'm unfamiliar with.)
- Te Sai getting hamsap with Jameela.
- "Christopher".
- Anything to do with Ah Bao's four perpetually-shirtless henchmen.
- Especially the one with the killer penis. Yes.
- And the one who seems to really really enjoy anal stimulation.
- Seriously, any time you think of doing a dirty joke... don't. Just don't.

The majority of these are unfunny because they are, quite frankly, distasteful. Those that aren't are silly and lazy - which isn't to say that the distasteful jokes aren't also lazy attempts at getting laughs just by putting something stupid up on screen. Broad humour - which seems to be the only kind of humour that local films know how to employ - doesn't have to insult the audience's intelligence. One only has to look at the films of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker heyday (Airplane!, Top Secret!, The Naked Gun) for examples of jokes that are silly on the surface, but in fact rely a great deal on the audience being smart enough to get them. I mention this because I am greatly hoping that Namewee does a little homework and learns from his betters before making his next movie.

Because the fact is, he's got a lot going for him. Despite Certain Quarters trying to paint him as a Chinese chauvinist, he managed to rope several popular Malay actors into his film, aside from many of the same non-Malay celebrities who previously appeared in Nasi Lemak 2.0. He discovered a bona fide child prodigy in Tee Jing Chen; he even managed to score a cameo from Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir no less. He's done a canny job of getting investors for his films, which he repaid with quite shameless product placement shots. He's daring enough to poke fun at the Polis DiRaja Malaysia, in a joke that I couldn't believe he got past the censors. And of course, he has his fanbase in the Chinese-speaking segment of the population, who supported him through his last movie and will certainly make up the bulk of the box-office for this one. But there is also his deep, abiding - and thoroughly sincere - love of the multi-cultural mix that is unique to Malaysia and only Malaysia.

Oh, it's in this movie alright, and in spades. There are few tributes to 1Malaysia as effective as the flashback sequence chronicling how the three gang bosses (played in their youths by Noh Hujan, Reshmonu and Dennis Lau) met, became fast friends, and went on to become the most honourable, most fashionably-dressed, and overall awesomest gang leaders in Klang. (Well, except for how the Indian is always drinking.) We even see how they weather the events of May 1969, in a scene that has a lot to teach a certain other local production about how to depict that particular historical event. Beyond the annoyingly tasteless comedy, Namewee is a true patriot; the one message he wants to convey, above all else, is that Malaysia is only Malaysia if it's made up of Malays, Chinese and Indians. Love him or hate him, you can't deny him this - and you'd be ignorant and judgemental if you did.

So it's a shame that his most noble instincts are always brought low by his basest. I once called him less than circumspect, but I think I was far too kind; he's bloody reckless. Dude just doesn't think before he executes his ideas, whether it's in a viral video or a feature film. Hantu Gangster's screenplay bears the mark of having been hashed out in about a day, then never once being rewritten or revised or looked over to see if maybe this scene or that joke could be better played another way. (He's banking a lot on the audience's suspension of disbelief with his ridiculously romanticised portrayal of gangsters. And by movie's end, when everyone is one big happy family again, he seems to have forgotten that Seelan is still a violent criminal and Ah Bao is still a drug dealer.) Everything in here feels like a first thought, just as everything Namewee does seems like pure unguarded impulse without the benefit of a voice of discretion.

Which, again, is a shame, because his talents are also undeniable. As dumb as the jokes can be, there is at least one bit where I laughed out loud: a perfectly-timed rendition of "Negaraku." Contrast the hilarity of that moment to a later one, when our same national anthem is used as ironic counterpoint to a tense, ominous scene. Hantu Gangster is not a bad movie; there's some pretty good filmmaking in here, and it loses out to Nasi Lemak 2.0 only for being less of a purely feel-good experience. But if Namewee is gonna keep making films, he really really needs to work harder at it. Study other comedy filmmakers. (Hence, Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker.) Learn how to build something more than a paper-thin plot. Spend more time on effective storytelling rather than comic setpieces. And most of all, start asking yourself, "Does this work? Is this good? Or is there a better way?" In fact, as I mentioned earlier - when it comes to anything that could be gross or risqué, ignore your instincts. When it comes to your sense of social satire, or your vision of what Malaysia is and should be... those instincts, you can trust.

NEXT REVIEW: The Bourne Legacy
Expectations: no Paul Greengrass or Matt Damon - but hey, Tony Gilroy?...

Bravely facing disappointment

Brave
My rating:




The past couple of years haven't been the best of times to be a Pixar fanboy. Or at least, compared to the few years before then, when they had Ratatouille, Wall-E, Up and Toy Story 3 coming out one after the other. And even before then - before Cars, widely regarded as their first misstep - they had a string of massive successes stretching from The Incredibles all the way to the first Toy Story. It all started when they announced that their next film after Toy Story 3 would be Cars 2, a sequel to their least-liked movie and a not-inconsiderable critical disappointment - and although I still liked it, it was still a clear step down from their usual standard. So as any fanboy would, I placed high hopes on Brave, their 13th animated feature, to mark a return to their form.

And it pains me - despite the movie being pretty good, and one that I enjoyed quite a bit - to say that it isn't.

Merida (Kelly Macdonald), princess of the clan DunBroch, is a spunky and free-spirited teenage girl who loves shooting her bow and arrow, riding through the Scottish highlands, and generally seeking adventure. But although her father King Fergus (Billy Connolly) indulges her and her three younger triplet brothers, her mother Elinor (Emma Thompson) is a lot more strict. Elinor is trying to bring Merida up to be a proper princess, and has arranged to marry her off to a son of one of three allied clans. Rebelling against her mother's plans for her future, Merida comes across a witch (Julie Walters) and asks her for a spell that will change her mother, and thus change Merida's fate. She only realises what a grave mistake she has made when the spell changes Elinor into a huge black bear - one that her father mistakes for Mor'du, the bear that he once fought years ago and intends to seek revenge upon.

This isn't the first time a Pixar film's originator was taken off his or her own project and replaced with another director. It happened to Jan Pinkava and Ratatouille, amid disturbing rumours of a falling out - but the final product, under the new helm of Brad Bird, turned out just fine. It happened again with Brenda Chapman, to whom Brave was a highly personal story and Pixar's first to feature a female protagonist. This time, the results aren't as good, and it does not achieve the thematic and emotional depths of a truly female-centric film. (Yes, yes, I know, I am a man saying this. Wait. I can prove my point.) And though we may never know what went on behind the scenes, Pixar cannot escape the charge that firing Chapman is the cause of it all. They're not sexist; they couldn't be, if they could create female characters like Jessie the cowgirl, EVE, Helen Parr, even Dory. But Brave proves they can be as blinkered about the female perspective as, well, any all-male group can be.

See, it claims to be a story that's uniquely about mothers and daughters - specifically, the way the former hovers over the latter and the latter chafes under this treatment. I gotta ask: exactly how is this different from Hiccup and Stoick in How to Train Your Dragon? Or Flint and his dad in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs? Or any one of dozens of films featuring protagonists with daddy issues? You have your parental figure with expectations of a child that differs from the child's own ambitions, with all that juicy dramatic mix of love, disappointment, resentment and guilt that comes with it. That's exactly what happens with Merida and Elinor, and their story goes through exactly the same paces all those other movies do. (And makes poor use of Fergus, who is reduced to a bystander in the climax and should really have been given more to do considering that's his wife that's been turned into a bear.) In fact, Rapunzel and Mother Gothel in Rapunzel: A Tangled Tale were more interesting, and that film has a greater claim to being a uniquely female story.

That seen-it-before feeling pervades more than just the central mother-daughter relationship. There are echoes of How to Train Your Dragon (the Scottish accents), Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke (the will-o'-the-wisps) - and most strangely, Disney's own Brother Bear (a human being gets turned into a bear), Rapunzel (the heroine's horse that's almost, but not quite, a cute animal sidekick), and Beauty and the Beast during its climax. I'm not faulting it for not being 100% original - which is an impossible standard anyway, and besides, taking inspiration from such a disparate variety of sources could just as well produce something original. But the other films Brave is reminiscent of are all in the animated genre, which gives the impression not so much that it took inspiration from them, but that it simply didn't know - or care - that it's all been done before.

But as I said, I still enjoyed it quite a bit, as I knew I was going to. The gags are all terrific, in particular one hilarious one involving the witch's automated message system. Beautifully-rendered visuals are practically obligatory for Pixar films, but Merida's unruly shock of bright red hair is a particularly remarkable bit of animation and character design. As derivative as its final moments are, they are still well-crafted enough to stir the necessary emotion, and put a little sting into TMBF's eyes. I also liked how subtly the plot weaved together the witch's spell on Elinor, the demon bear Mor'du, and the legend of a rogue prince that Elinor tells Merida about in the beginning without spelling out the connections. And finally, the soundtrack is gorgeous and stirring; you simply can't go wrong with Gaelic hymns and traditional Scottish sounds. This is a movie worth sitting through the entire end credits - both for the music, and the funny post-credits scene.

Still, this is a disappointment. I hadn't expected much from Cars 2, and I was willing to allow Pixar their one revisit to their biggest cash cow - but this one I was hoping to be the one that got them back into their groove. It isn't. It had all the potential to be, but the magic simply wasn't happening. Which is a bitter pill to swallow for a Pixar fanboy like myself, so I'm thinking maybe it's time I cooled my enthusiasm. Maybe their winning streak has finally come to an end; maybe it's finally become too much to expect greatness from every single Pixar film. Their next, Monsters University - a prequel to Monsters, Inc. - certainly doesn't look like it'll be anything more than an entertaining trifle - which, ultimately, also describes Brave. So I think I'll do just that: expect every new Pixar movie to be merely good, instead of yet another of the finest animated films ever made. That's not something to be ashamed of... is it?

NEXT REVIEW: The Amazing Spider-Man
Expectations: so, what's new?

A vampire hunter by any other name

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
My rating:




So this movie has its genesis in the novel of the same name written by Seth Grahame-Smith, who kicked off the whole literary mash-up craze with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies; a craze that hinges a lot on giggle-inducing titles such as the above. I may not be American but I have a decent grasp of world history, and I know well enough that to take a revered figure like Abraham Lincoln and turn him into a badass superhero of the vampire-hunting variety is to take a pretty huge liberty with it. But not being American means it's not my place to opine on whether or not this movie - independent of the novel on which it is based - does respect to the real-life person, or the historical events of which he played a pivotal part.

But I'm kinda suspecting that it doesn't.

Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) was a young boy when his mother was murdered by Jack Barts (Marton Csokas). Nine years later, his attempt at revenge fails when he discovers that Barts is in fact a vampire - from whom he is rescued by a man named Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper). Sturgess tells him that vampires exist in every corner of American society, and trains him in the arts and skills of vampire-hunting - in particular, with Abe's trusty silver-bladed axe. Upon completion of his training, Abe travels to Springfield, Illinois, where he befriends storekeeper Joshua Speed (Jimmi Simpson), reunites with his childhood friend Will Johnson (Anthony Mackie), and meets Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), with whom he falls in love despite Sturgess' admonishments against emotional attachments. And when he learns that the vampires - led by a wealthy plantation owner named Adam (Rufus Sewell) - maintain the Southern slave trade as a means to keep them supplied with human victims, Abe decides to seek more effective means of fighting them than killing them one at a time: a career in public office, that will lead him to becoming President of the United States.

When I reviewed Cowboys and Aliens last year, I noted that its biggest failing was to take a goofy premise - and title - completely seriously. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is another mash-up with an even sillier title, and also takes itself with 100% seriousness. But the devil is in the details; whereas it didn't work at all in the 2011 Jon Favreau-directed would-be blockbuster, this is a different animal altogether. If one of the elements of your genre mash-up is history, and as weighty an historical event as the American Civil War at that, then the straight-faced approach to blending it with a supernatural action movie is probably best. The movie isn't ill-served by not being tongue-slightly-in-cheek fun as Cowboys and Aliens should have been. It is ill-served by being cheesy.

Oh my goodness, it is soooo cheesy. Its trailers already highlight Abe's axe-fu skills, twirling that farming implement around like he's Bruce Lee with a nunchaku. And it never gives an explanation for how Abe's strength and agility can achieve superhuman levels, such that he can go toe-to-toe with vampires (and even survive having a horse thrown at him). The entire first half-hour is ridiculously overheated, with scenes like Abe's and Mary's courtship filmed with the same hyperactive energy as his vampire-hunting fight scenes. And cinematographer Caleb Deschanel is a five-time Oscar nominee, but here his work is colour-treated with that conspicuously old-timey sepia tone often seen in the finest music videos. You know what's another of last year's summer blockbuster-wannabes that this movie reminds me of? Scott Stewart's non-masterpiece, Priest.

Which this one is a fair bit better than, owing to not being as aggressively stupid. But it's no intellectual luminary either. Just from its Wikipedia entry alone, it appears that Grahame-Smith's novel is reasonably intelligent and circumspect in its fidelity to Abraham Lincoln's recorded life - which makes it hard to believe that he adapted his own novel for this movie's screenplay. There is hardly a line of dialogue in here that isn't on-the-nose, beginning from Abe's mother's slogan-worthy proclamation that "until all men are free, we are all slaves" a good 45 years before the Emancipation Proclamation. There's no mention in the novel of such movie-friendly sidekick characters as Joshua Speed or Will Johnson (who gets bonus sidekick points for being black). The entire first half is just your run-of-the-mill supernatural action flick with a slight period twist - a 19th-century Blade, as it were.

And the second half, when Abe starts pursuing politics in earnest, should have been when it starts getting interesting. After all, we're not here to watch any old vampire hunter movie, we're here to watch a U.S.-President-as-a-vampire-hunter movie. But instead, here is where the movie slows down interminably; the overheated CGI-heavy fight scenes are replaced with a series of dull montages that sum up Lincoln's entire political career up to the beginning of the Civil War. Which is not only dull in that Lincoln does precisely no vampire-hunting during that entire period, it also ignores practically everything about the period that makes it such a watershed moment in American (and yes, world) history. I said that I wouldn't comment on how respectful the movie is towards history that has no real national significance for me. But the impression I'm left with, from a film titled Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, is that there isn't much about this particular vampire hunter that makes him Abraham Lincoln.

About the only things I enjoyed were the action scenes, directed with as much over-the-top verve as Timur Bekmambetov's last, Wanted - although I enjoyed that 2008 James McAvoy-Angelina Jolie starrer much more than this one. This one, I can't help but pronounce it a failure to fully exploit its premise. It disregards practically everything about Lincoln's life and times in favour of putting an axe-slinging superhero in his place, and ignores the entire social, political and economic realities of the Civil War in favour of a generic supernatural action movie. (It also wastes some pretty good performances from Benjamin Walker and Mary Elizabeth Winstead - the latter in particular, who deserves far more than a generic flower vase role like this one.) I'll leave it to others to comment on how this movie treats issues and themes that deserve a lot more respect than being glossed over, even in a goofy genre mash-up like this. What I do know is, a movie called Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter really ought to be more than just a 19th-century Blade.

NEXT REVIEW: Brave
Expectations: oh, I already know it's gonna be good

My kingdom for K-Stew

Snow White and the Huntsman
My rating:




I gotta say, I had an interesting reaction to the trailer of this a few weeks ago while I was watching another movie - and by "interesting", I meant I thought it was all so ridiculous. Taking a children's fairy tale that is best remembered as a syrupy-sweet Walt Disney animated film, and turning it into this dark and angsty fantasy flick with CGI sorcery and shouty overacting? It was practically every bad joke ever written about the Hollywood "gritty reboot" in 2-½ minutes. In hindsight, that reaction was largely sparked by Kristen Stewart's character's poofy-sleeved dress, that seemed a direct callback to the Disney Snow White - which is itself an extremely sanitised version of a folk tale that had plenty of darkness and gruesomeness, as most fairy tales do in their original form. Nor is this the first time a dark fantasy version of Snow White has been filmed (and I saw that one and quite liked it). It is, however, the second time a Snow White movie is being released this year alone, and since I reviewed the first one with a promise to also catch the second, I made sure the inner voice that kept saying "but it's all so ridiculous!" was shushed as I went in to the cinema.

Turns out this one is definitely the winner of the Duelling Snow White Movies of 2012.

The evil sorceress Ravenna (Charlize Theron) has murdered the king on their wedding night and taken over the kingdom, and imprisoned the princess Snow White (Kristen Stewart). After years of Ravenna's despotic rule, Snow White manages to escape captivity, prompting Ravenna to send her brother and henchman Finn (Sam Spruell) after her - and when Snow White flees to the Dark Forest, they hire a huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) to guide them and help hunt her down. But the huntsman turns against them and decides to help Snow White instead, escorting her to the castle of Duke Hammond, the one safe haven from Ravenna's grasp. Along the way, they will encounter and be aided by a band of dwarves (Ian McShane, Ray Winstone, Bob Hoskins, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan, Nick Frost, Brian Gleeson and Johnny Harris) as well as William (Sam Claflin), the Duke's son and Snow White's childhood playmate.

I am often quite annoyed by the online vitriol against Kristen Stewart, stemming largely from the hate directed against the Twilight series. Regardless of how bad that series is - and as I've mentioned before, they're not all bad, at least in movie form - Stewart does not deserve being slammed as a terrible actor. Not when she's done pretty good work before, especially in the indie dramas she used to do before she became the lead in a billion-dollar franchise. As usual, she took plenty of flack for starring in this movie, a lot of which took issue with how, as the titular character, she was meant to be "fairer" than Charlize Theron. Look, even I think Theron is drop-dead gorgeous whereas Stewart is merely pretty, but are we going to place objective standards of beauty onto two women and blame one for being "lesser" than the other?

Not here at Casa TMBF. Here, we judge movies by their merits and actors by their performances, and I'm glad to report that both Stewart and Snow White and the Huntsman are pretty good. What looked like laughably overblown emo-ness in a 2-½-minute trailer translates to a commitment to taking its dark-fantasy trappings seriously, in the vein of '80s fantasy flicks like Dragonslayer, Legend and Ladyhawke - and that's a complimentary comparison in my book. There's a conviction in everything from the acting, to Rupert Sanders' direction, to the occasionally cheesy dialogue, and while not all of it works (e.g. the dialogue), enough of it does. After all, one thing it has over its '80s forebears is the SFX technology to realise its fantasy visions; the nightmarish Dark Forest, and the conversely wondrous fairy wood, are two standout sequences. The dwarves even sing a song or two in the vein of Lord of the Rings. When a film like this aims for gravity, the pitfall it risks is silliness, and this one succeeds at avoiding it on the whole.

Where it doesn't succeed is at plot and characterisation - despite its aspirations towards gravitas extending to giving backstories to its principal characters. The huntsman (who is never named) is a broken-hearted widower, and Ravenna is traumatised by past wrongs done to her by other kings, but only the latter succeeds at fleshing out its character - largely through Theron's sheer conviction to her scenery-chewing performance. Snow White herself is largely a blank slate with little personality or motivation; she is another in a long line of Chosen Ones, foreordained as the saviour of the land through her mystical affinity with nature. (Which seems like another grittily-reimagined callback to the Disney version - but by then, it didn't seem silly to me anymore.) Its plot is also none too well-structured; the entire second act is a somewhat aimless series of unrelated setpieces, and we don't even encounter the dwarves or William till close to the midway point of the movie.

Which also renders the character relationships inert; there's supposed to be a love triangle between Snow White, the huntsman and William, but I didn't even really care that it ends unresolved. Whatever goodwill I felt towards the characters stems primarily from the performances, which are all quite good. As mentioned, Theron is the most over-the-top, and while she yells a little too much sometimes, her commitment to portraying the depths of Ravenna's psychosis is commendable and compelling. Hemsworth is rather dull, largely because his purpose as Snow White's protector gets diluted after the dwarves and William show up. Even duller is Sam Claflin - although he does have a few nifty archery movies - but Sam Spruell as Finn, who seems to have a borderline-incesty thing going on with Ravenna, wasn't bad. And the cadre of British character actors playing the dwarves (whose heads were attached to dwarf body doubles via the wonders of CGI) are effortlessly fun, even if there's too many of them and not enough screentime to go around.

And then there's Stewart - who, again, I think did a fine job. It's not her fault that her role is underwritten, or that she doesn't really do anything heroic. I found her performance convincing, even - nay, especially - during her big Rousing Speech. I'm a big fan of the trope, and I say this one deserves inclusion into the pantheon of greats. And I haven't said enough about Sanders, the commercials director making his feature-length debut, who has a great eye for fantastical scenes of stunning beauty. I'm quite pleased that Snow White and the Huntsman made enough money for the studio to greenlight a sequel, although I'm not sure what that sequel would be about. Before I watched this, I thought the huntsman would be the franchise character, doing his thing in dark and gritty adaptations of other fairy tales. (Doesn't Red Riding Hood have a huntsman? Or was it woodsman? What's the diff anyway?) But now, I'd be perfectly satisfied to see more of Snow White.

NEXT REVIEW: Prometheus
Expectations: oh dear, mixed reviews, Ridley Scott what has thou wrought?

A cartoon turned live-action, but still pretty flat

Mirror Mirror
My rating:




Due to my inexcusably long delay in writing my last review, I almost skipped this one; nowadays it seems like all I ever do is scramble to catch up with the newest releases. But seeing as there's another Snow White movie opening later this summer, I suppose it behooves me to catch the first of 2012's two competing modern takes on the classic fairytale, so I can compare them. (Hollywood parallel development always seems to happen in twos, e.g. two volcano movies, two big-space-rock disaster movies, two animated insect movies, etc.) Also because I'd missed out on Tarsem Singh's previous movie from earlier this year, The Immortals - and only because, again, I take so damn long to write these reviews. It was pretty damn tempting to just forego Mirror Mirror and pick Battleship, however.

But it would've been nice if the movie gave me a better reward for my choice.

Snow White (Lily Collins), the princess of her kingdom, lives with her stepmother the Queen (Julia Roberts), a cruel, petty and vain tyrant who has ruled the land since Snow White's father the King disappeared years ago. On Snow White's 18th birthday, she ventures for the first time in years outside the palace walls, and witnesses the suffering of her people - but this transgression turns the Queen's barely-tolerated irritation with her into outright enmity. The Queen orders her manservant Brighton (Nathan Lane) to take her into the forest and kill her, but she is found by a group of seven dwarf bandits - Grimm (Danny Woodburn), Butcher (Martin Klebba), Wolf (Sebastian Saraceno), Napoleon (Jordan Prentice), Half Pint (Mark Povinelli), Grub (Joe Gnoffo) and Chuckles (Ronald Lee Clark). Meanwhile, the visiting Prince Alcott (Armie Hammer) from a neighbouring kingdom has already met and fallen for Snow White - and has also met the bandits, under much less genial circumstances - but the Queen has her sights set on marrying him as the solution to her financial problems.

The only Tarsem film I've seen to date is The Cell, of which I remember little other than some spectacularly fantastical visual imagery that also has a pretty big streak of macabre. Mirror Mirror is also very pretty to look at, but Tarsem has also made a much more light-hearted and kid-friendly movie this time round. In fact, the shortest and sweetest description of it would be that it's a live-action cartoon - specifically, a DreamWorks-ish animated film in the vein of the Shrek series. The broad comic sensibility is there, as is the willful disregard of realism (this kingdom apparently consists of a palace and one village) and the snarky modern sensibility to a classic fairy tale. But frankly, to compare it to a DreamWorks production is both damning it with faint praise as well as overrating it.

Let's get into the specifics. The movie is almost entirely driven by its performances (certainly not by its plot, which is kinda messy), and there are two standouts. Julia Roberts always struck me as a curious choice to play fairy tale villain; the closest she came was arguably Charlie Wilson's War, which I enjoyed, but thought Roberts was terrible in it. She fares somewhat better here, in that she's clearly having fun in the role, a prerequisite for any actor playing a broadly comic scenery-chewing villain. Still, chewing scenery has never been her forte (and if I were to be honest in what I think of her, I'd say acting isn't her forte). I'd say pretty much any other female actor of her generation could've had just as much fun playing it and done a better job to boot. (When I said "standout", I didn't necessarily mean they were good; just that they made the biggest impression in the movie.)

The other is Armie Hammer, playing Prince Charming Alcott. There are hints of a role-reversal here, with Snow White coming to his rescue a couple of times and him being somewhat beleaguered throughout the movie (the bandits get the jump on him twice, leading to him showing up at the Queen's palace sans shirt - twice), but it never really commits to a girl-power interpretation of the tale; it doesn't help that in their one swordfight scene together, Alcott toys with the clearly ineffectual Snow White like a big bully. And then there's the part where he succumbs to a Love Puppy potion, which has him panting and licking other people and boo-hoo-hooing when he's away from his "master" like a literal puppy. What marks these two standout performances is that both performers really commit to them; Hammer certainly does in his puppy scenes. He's clearly enjoying himself, but turning him into a laughingstock is a curious - and dubious - choice.

And then there's Lily Collins, who was apparently chosen just because she looks the part. Snow White is dull, both due to Collins' performance as well as the writing. She has zero chemistry with Hammer, and their romance never stirs the heart. The seven dwarfs are fun to watch, but they're still a collection of caricatures rather than characters in their own right. There's also a late-third-act cameo by Sean Bean, and it'd be a spoiler to reveal who he plays (although it's also pretty predictable) - but the man looks positively embarrassed, tasked with injecting some gravitas into a movie that just spent 90 minutes having none. After all, this is a movie in which Nathan Lane is turned into a cockroach, then laments the fact that he had his modesty outraged by a grasshopper.

Okay, yes, it's entertaining. Yes, it's charming. Yes, its good-naturedly frothy fun is hard to resist. But it's all quite shallow; it's only funny enough to raise a chuckle but not hearty laughs, and only sweet enough to raise a genial smile but not genuine emotions. I couldn't shake the feeling that if this had been an animated film, it would've been better. It would've had more gags, prettier visuals, even better acting; it always seems as if it's being held back by the limitations of live-action productions. But even if it were animated, it would only prove that Shrek (at least the first one) did it better, and also had enough imagination to take on more than just one fairy tale. And even the Shrek series has been overshadowed recently by Disney, the grand master of modern animated fairy tale adaptations - with an assist from the Pixar brain trust. That's what I meant by damning with faint praise; it's reminiscent of DreamWorks, but not Pixar.

NEXT REVIEW: The Flowers of War
Expectations: White Hero saves Poor Pitiful Asians!

Ray Harryhausen would be disappointed (perhaps, even wrathful?)

Wrath of the Titans
My rating:




I do believe this is a rarity; a sequel to a remake of an older film that never had a sequel. Which is somewhat trickier to pull off than rebooting an older series of movies, e.g. horror franchise reboots such as 2003's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the Hollywood version of The Grudge. Of course, every major studio release these days hopes to be a franchise-starter, including remakes, but the only successful one in recent memory is Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven. (Is anyone still waiting for a sequel to the 2003 version of The Italian Job that's supposed to be titled The Brazilian Job?) So Wrath of the Titans joins that rarefied company, and in so doing presents an intriguing prospect - it's as if it were a sequel to the original 1981 Clash of the Titans, as well as its own 2010 predecessor.

Too bad it's not one that could do justice to either.

Ten years after defeating the Kraken, Perseus (Sam Worthington) is now a simple fisherman and widowed father to his son Helius (John Bell). The Greek gods, ruled by his father Zeus (Liam Neeson), have grown weaker due to fewer mortals worshiping them - and this in turn has weakened the walls of Tartarus, the underground prison where the Titan Kronos has been held for centuries. When Zeus' brother Hades (Ralph Fiennes), god of the underworld, and his son Ares (Édgar Ramírez), god of war, betray him to drain his power and free Kronos, Perseus is compelled to undertake the quest to save his father and prevent Kronos from destroying the world. He is aided by Andromeda (Rosamund Pike) the princess-turned-queen whom he once rescued, as well as Agenor (Toby Kebbell), another half-god-half-mortal son of Poseidon (Danny Huston). And he must seek the help of the "Fallen One" - Hephaestus (Bill Nighy), a former god himself and the divine craftsman who forged the weapons of the gods.

My 3-½ star review of Clash of the Titans 2010 is probably not one of my more popular opinions; the movie scored 29% on RottenTomatoes, and even the usual gang of idiots on Lowyat.net were disappointed. I know I liked it because I wrote so, and what I wrote was that it satisfied my sword-and-sorcery jones like no other movie in recent years. But two years later, I find that I can barely remember a thing about it. (Which should be just about right for a 3-½ star rating, i.e. good but not particularly memorably so.) Wrath of the Titans is disappointing enough that it reflects badly on its predecessor. Now I know there's a completely new director and team of screenwriters behind it, and if Louis Leterrier had come back for the sequel, we might've gotten a better movie. Still, after coming out of this one, I can't help thinking I had overrated the previous one.

I am unfamiliar with the works of screenwriters Dan Mazeau and David Leslie Johnson, but the screenplay that's credited to them here features some of the most howlingly on-the-nose dialogue I'll probably hear all year. F'rinstance, Zeus, Hades and Ares pay a visit to Tartarus, the prison for Titans that they built to house Kronos, and when they arrive one of them says something like, "Tartarus, the great prison where the Titan Kronos is imprisoned." Wow, wasn't that helpful? I say this on a blog, short for "web log", which is published on the internet, the great information superhighway that everyone can access. The movie is full of dialogue like this, and it's never not funny each time. And by "funny" I mean embarrassingly bad.

In my review of Clash, I said I liked it because it was fun. I believe the lack of fun is the main flaw of this one; there's an all-too-sombre tone throughout that's just impossible to take seriously given the terrible dialogue. But frankly, it's not just the dialogue. Jonathan Liebesman's direction is terrible. Nothing that's not an action scene works in this movie - not the characters, not the plot, not the human emotions, not the pacing, and not even the acting. Sam Worthington is no better than before, Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes look honestly embarrassed to be here, Toby Kebbell continues his streak of forgettable supporting roles in mediocre fantasy movies, Édgar Ramírez is downright terrible, and even Rosamund Pike - one of the hotter recent Bond girls - is bad in exactly the way a committed actor working under poor direction is bad. There are attempts at a subtext of family drama, what with Zeus and Hades being brothers, Kronos being their father, Ares and Perseus being half-brothers, and the former being jealous of the latter while betraying their father, all of which come across as muddled and laughably convoluted. Almost everything in this movie simply does not work.

The sole exception being the special effects, which earns it its half-star. It won't spoil anything to say that Kronos, when freed, turns out to be a thousand-foot-tall giant lava monster (because that's him in the poster, after all), and he's a pretty damn good-looking thousand-foot-tall giant lava monster. The climactic battle against him is the movie's biggest saving grace; he looks gloriously, spectacularly real, insomuch as a thousand-foot-tall giant lava monster can look "real". Oh, and the underground labyrinth leading to Tartarus, a maze of constantly-shifting giant stone block and walls that our heroes have to traverse, is also a neat bit of production design. On the whole, the SFX team are the only guys on the crew that earn their paychecks; the various CGI creatures look great. It's a pity that, with the exception of the thousand-foot-ta Kronos scene, every other monster fight is lackluster and unthrilling - and yes, unfun.

But what's perhaps most galling is that the original 1981 Clash was a labour of love for Ray Harryhausen, the special-effects pioneer who invented the stop-motion process. It was the last film he worked on, and each of the creatures in that film - from Calibos to the Kraken - bore the mark of a man who truly loved weird critters, designing them and bringing them to life onscreen. And now, this sequel to its remake treats them as obligatory CGI effects with none of the personality and charm of Harryhausen's creations; even if Wrath's visual effects team channeled some of Harryhausen's passion into their work, Liebesman's asinine direction undoes all of it. James Berardinelli had it right; this is what Lord of the Rings would look like if it were directed by Michael Bay. Which probably makes my 2-½-star rating consistent with what I think of Bay, but to be honest, I'm already wondering if I'm giving it too much credit.

NEXT REVIEW: Mirror Mirror
Expectations: round one in the Battle of the Snow Whites