Perfectly planned to the tiniest detail. (Well, almost.)

Accident
My rating:




Accident, directed by Soi Cheang and produced by the venerable Johnnie To's Milkyway Image studio, looks set to be the latest Hong Kong film to enjoy international success. It was featured in the recent Toronto International Film Festival and has been snapped up for distribution in the US, France, Australia and New Zealand. I wouldn't be surprised if you start hearing a lot about it in the Western entertainment media pretty soon.

I just wish I liked it as much as they did.

Brain (Louis Koo) is the leader of a team of professional hitmen, comprised of Uncle (Stanley Fung), Fatty (Lam Suet), and the Woman (Michelle Ye), who specialise in meticulously-planned murders that look like accidents. When what seems to be a freak accident kills one of the team, Brain begins to suspect that he himself was the target of an equally elaborate disguised murder attempt. And his prime suspect is an insurance agent (Richie Jen) linked to their last hit, whom Brain starts to spy on - and perhaps arrange another "accident" for.

It's been a long time since I watched a Cantonese film in cinemas, and I'd forgotten how good they can be. Although the gonzo, balls-to-the-wall style of Hong Kong films during its '80s-to-early-'90s heyday brought us some terrifically entertaining movies, it also gave them a deserved reputation for cheap, silly and exploitative filmmaking. It wouldn't be entirely accurate to say they've matured - since Wong Jing is still cranking 'em out - but there have been plenty of serious, intelligent films in the past decade-and-a-half, most of them from the Milkyway stable.

This is definitely one of them. There's an almost European arthouse feel to this film, with its long stretches without background music or dialogue and its portrait of Brain's slow descent into paranoia. The early scenes of him and his team after a routine hit, and in the midst of planning their next, do a terrific job of painting his character; this is a man so guarded and controlled that he eavesdrops on his own team. (It's telling that they're all known to each other only as nicknames.) And true to the character, Cheang's direction is equally meticulous and deliberate.

In fact, it was almost a little too deliberate. I found myself getting restless at times; this is not a typically eager-to-entertain Hong Kong movie, it's one that demands a fair bit of patience. And that patience is often rewarded with some effective suspense, especially in the murder scenes. Their ingenious setups recall the Final Destination flicks, but far less exploitative - their purpose is white-knuckle tension, not a cheap gory thrill. There's even a terrifically menacing moment when Brain confronts Uncle for botching a hit, which feels like it could turn explosively violent in a second.

And frankly, I wished it had. I walked out of the film feeling not entirely satisfied, especially once the full story was revealed. I almost wished it had been more exploitative - more suspense, more violence, more thrills. I definitely got the same vibe from the audience I saw it with; they seemed to have had a "that's it?" reaction when the credits rolled. Yet I'm not sure that that's being fair. They walked in expecting a different movie, and perhaps so did I; what we got was such a smart and self-assured film that it would be gauche not to recognise it as such. I've been thinking about it a lot long after I left the cinema, and I can't really find any fault with it.

Well, except for the most obvious one. The last murder that Brain plans is just a little too far-fetched, as is its unexpected conclusion; the whole scene is a confluence of just too many coincidences. Still, it's not impossible to forgive the movie this one conceit, especially if you've been successfully drawn into it up to this point.

Brain is a virtuoso performance by Louis Koo, who hasn't exactly distinguished himself as the next Tony Leung Chiu-wai - but this ought to get him a step closer. He does great things with just a wordless look, alternately conveying detached calm, suspicion, anxiety, and volcanic anger. I've seen better performances of this kind - Ulrich Muhe in The Lives of Others comes to mind - but Koo acquits himself just fine. It's a pleasure to see veteran Stanley Fung in action again (although he's been back for a while now, after a brief mid-'90s hiatus). Richie Jen has little chance to shine till the end, where he sells his final scene effectively.

This really was a tough movie to review. It's so expertly crafted that I can't reconcile that with my own lukewarm response to it. And I can't in good conscience give it any less than three stars. I suspect that if I were to watch it again on DVD, without the distraction of a puzzled and unappreciative audience around me, I might enjoy it a lot more. So yes, I'll recommend it, with one caveat: don't expect a typical Hong Kong film. Forget Tsui Hark or John Woo, think European arthouse. And don't watch it in a cinema in Kepong.

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

NEXT REVIEW: (500) Days of Summer
Anticipation level: yes!

Didn't quite get away with it

A Perfect Getaway
My rating:




Holy frijole, it's been a lousy September at the movies. Bad enough I had to watch two crappy Malay films, every other film I watched this month has been pretty blah as well. There hasn't been a genuinely good watch at the cinemas since Up, and I was really hoping A Perfect Getaway would be it. It's at least a competently-put-together production, which is sheer relief after Jin Notti, lemme tell ya.

But genuinely good? Nnnnnnot quite.

Cliff (Steve Zahn) and Cydney (Milla Jovovich) are newlyweds on honeymoon in Hawaii. As they embark on the remote hiking trail to a secluded beach, they come across two other couples - Kale (Chris Hemsworth) and Cleo (Marley Shelton), and Nick (Timothy Olyphant) and Gina (Kiele Sanchez). Kale is frighteningly foul-tempered, and Nick's Special Forces background intimidates the less macho Cliff. Suspicions begin to run high when they hear news of the murder of another newlywed couple - and the suspects are a man and woman.

I like David Twohy. After making his name as screenwriter of The Fugitive, Waterworld and GI Jane, he went into directing small, smart genre films like The Arrival, Below, and Pitch Black. He had a shot at creating a big-budget sci-fi franchise in The Chronicles of Riddick, which sadly wasn't a huge hit; now it's one of those movies in which the sequel is forever rumoured to be in development. (I enjoyed it.) I'm all for writers who ventured into directing so as to retain greater creative control over their own scripts, so I really wanted to like this movie. And I generally did, but... well, that "but" is what forces me to knock that half-star off my rating.

Let's talk about what the movie did right first. Great suspense. Solid acting. Terrific writing craft. For the most part, it's a movie that grabs you and never lets your attention slip. Gorgeous Hawaiian scenery too. And since the plot is that of a whodunit - or rather, "whodoinit" - misdirection is key. Films like these work like a 90-minute magic trick; it fools us into believing one thing, then reveals that the truth was something else all along. And it works quite well. I certainly didn't see the twist coming, because the misdirection was done so well that I bought into it hook, line and sinker. (Although my first reaction to the reveal was that it cheated, but I don't think it did. Twohy is too sharp a writer not to have verrrry carefully covered his bases in the early scenes, as I'm sure a second viewing would make clear.)

Where it went wrong? Was a 10-minute flashback that labouriously reveals everything that the film carefully hid from us, and there's just too much of it. It doesn't just tell us who the killers are and what they were up to all along, it also attempts some major heavy lifting in terms of exposition and character development - and it comes waaaay too late in the movie for that. This is structurally unsound. Clearly, what happened is Twohy fell prey to the typically writerly conceit of getting too enamoured of his own cleverness. This becomes more apparent given the fact that Cliff is a Hollywood screenwriter, and there are several wink-wink mentions in the dialogue of red herrings and act 2 twists.

What happens next is standard action-thriller stuff - well-executed, still suspenseful, but not quite as effective as it should have been (because we're still scratching our heads trying to work out the reveal). And then there's a climactic fight scene that's pretty much made of WTF. It involves a character who suddenly became stupid enough to almost fall for a trick that would've gotten him killed. I could forgive Twohy breaking the rules of structure, but - to paraphrase a movie quote that gets a shoutout in this film - what we've got here is a failure to think.

I mentioned solid acting, and there really is lots of it here. Zahn gets to take a break from his usual goofy sidekick roles, and plays a character you can root for. Jovovich also plays a character that's more real and likable than all the Action Girls she's done, and shows hitherto untapped range. The other performances are all impeccably effective, including newcomer Sanchez. They're all invaluable in making the first half of the movie work.

But ultimately, even if everything about it had worked, all you'd have is a formulaic, run-of-the-mill guess-the-killer thriller that's been done countless times before. I can respect Twohy for wanting to make something small and effective, but I thought he'd have more ambition than that. A movie like this couldn't get more than three stars from me even if it had been perfect. And it's not. Sorry, Mr. Twohy; I'll be back for your next one.

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

NEXT REVIEW: Accident
Anticipation level: looking forward to it

(There are spoilers in the comments thread. Beware!)

Buang jin ni jauh-jauh

Jin Notti
My rating:




I really gotta pace myself when it comes to local films. Since there's two of them released simultaneously for Raya this year, I need to make sure there are some half-decent movies to watch before, between, and after them - since I fully expect them to be less than half-decent. And can you blame me? It's bad enough having to sit through one of them; watching two in a row can put me off movies for good. So here's the year's second big holiday release - and judging from the audience count, it looks like this one's beating Momok the Movie at the box-office.

Tapi dua-dua sama macam sampah.

Notti (Fara Fauzana) is a jin, and a pretty lousy one; whereas all her kind are devoted to mischief and evil, she's blessed with empathy and a good heart. Thus a court of her jin peers send her to Earth on a mission to perform as many heinous deeds as possible. Aided by her "lawyer" Jinbara (Cat Farish), she takes over the bodies of three people, one after the other - a teenage girl, a gangster's moll, and a defense attorney. In the process, she meets Zulu (Sazzy Falak) the rebellious goth punk girl, Bobby (Adam Corrie Lee) the gangland boss, Hisham (Aziz M. Osman) the rich sleazebag, and dashing Ajiz (Mawi) with whom she falls in love.

It's hard to write reviews for shitty Malay movies. Not just because there's only so many synonyms for "shitty", but also because it's so tempting to just tar them all with the same brush. Which is unfair, even to an appallingly bad movie like Jin Notti. What sucks about it aren't the same things that suck about Momok the Movie, which aren't the same reasons why Skrip 7707 or Syurga Cinta or Bohsia suck. So I actually need to think hard about what I watched, and highlight exactly where the movie went wrong; in other words, I need to do my job as a film critic. Even though I'd much, much rather forget about this cinematic abomination as much as possible without controlled substances.

Right then. Jin Notti is a shitty movie because director Azhari Mohd. Zain is a total incompetent. Guy isn't only hopelessly unimaginative with his shots, he has no goddamn clue how to direct actors. Almost everyone in this film acts like a moron, especially the jins. The actors are not acting - they're just doing schticks. They mug shamelessly for the camera, behave like retards, annoy the living hell out of the audience, and Azhari is right there yelling "Lagi! Lagi! Buat perangai bodoh lagi!" This is what passes for comedy in this film. There is no wit, or cleverness, or even any actual jokes. All you're given to laugh about is Cat Farish smelling a woman's underarm and fainting.

Three actors emerge with their dignity intact. One is Sazzy Falak, who has horrible dialogue - and later in the film, seems pretty unperturbed about the fact that she was raped - but at least appears to be taking the role seriously. Aziz M. Osman also plays a convincing sleazebag. And then there's the one-man marketing machine known as Mawi, who actually has some decent screen presence. Even when Azhari puts him in a godawful fight scene and tells him to do a bad kungfu impression ("Buat muka 'fierce!'"), you get the impression that he could do well with a good script and a director with a brain. As for the rest - halfway through I wanted to strangle Cat Farish. And Fara Fauzana should stick to her radio announcer day job.

The plot had potential, actually. It could've been a morality play in which the innocent Notti is tempted by greed and lust and the desire to be accepted by her own kind, but redeems herself out of her love for Ajiz and her friendship with Zulu. But Notti is just an idiot from start to finish; she hasn't a clue how to act evil, her motivations are murky, none of her relationships are developed, and whatever good deeds she does are only because the script says so. And it's an utterly moronic script. The courtroom scenes in which lawyer-Notti defends Hisham are just head-hurtingly stupid.

I rarely mention the cinematography, but here I just can't overlook how bad it is. In so many shots, the picture is noticeably fuzzy; I don't know if it's bad lighting or bad cine transfer, but it is seriously bad. It's bad enough to even make Bohsia and Syurga Cinta look good - at least those two had the initiative to shoot on 35mm film. Setem looked fine on digital video, but directors like Azhari use it as an excuse to half-ass their shoots. And the music was so frickin' intrusive, it was virtually yelling at us how funny every scene was supposed to be. Considering how little humour the movie actually had, Azhari probably thought it necessary. ("I rasa, scene ni, Fara tak cukup buat bodoh lah. Bubuh muzik kelakar, bagi kuat sikit.")

If Momok the Movie was an insult to Islam, both these movies being released for Raya is a goddamn desecration. What is it with the Malaysian film industry?? Why is almost every movie so dreadful? It's not that we don't have the resources; it's not even that we don't have the onscreen talent. It's that the folks behind the cameras are such talentless, lazy, mouth-breathing hacks. Malaysian audiences deserve better. Malay audiences deserve better than this trash.

NEXT REVIEW: A Perfect Getaway
Anticipation level: please be good

Ebbs, rises, then sinks again

Tsunami at Haeundae
My rating:




I have a pretty high opinion of Korean films. I've seen some really good ones, like Shiri, A Tale of Two Sisters, JSA, Oldboy, and The Host. South Korea has perhaps the most exciting movie scene in Asia right now; they constantly make films that are unique yet accessible, they're doing some amazing things with genre, and they can even adopt the Hollywood blockbuster formula and outdo Hollywood while they're at it. All the movies mentioned above have been highly acclaimed in both East and West; all are prime examples of the cream of Korean film.

And then there are the non-prime, non-cream, unacclaimed Korean films.

Man-shik (Sol Kyung-gu) is in love with Yeon-hee (Ha Ji-won), but is wracked with guilt over his involvement in her father's death in a fishing boat accident. His brother Hyong-shik (Lee Min-ki) is a junior lifeguard who clumsily rescues Hi-mi (Kang Ye-won), a spoiled rich (and somewhat psycho) girl, and she starts stalking him for it. Dong-choon (Kim In-kwon) is a good-for-nothing friend of Man-shik's who lives with his long-suffering mother. And Kim Hwi (Park Joong-hoon) is a geologist who learns of disturbing seismic activity in the nearby ocean floor - but must also deal with his estranged wife Yoo-jin (Uhm Jung-hwa) and their daughter. All these people must struggle for their lives when a massive tsunami hits their seaside resort city of Haeundae.

Yes, it's an ensemble disaster movie in the grand tradition that includes The Day After Tomorrow, Deep Impact, Titanic, and goes all the way back to The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Airport (1970). I guess being in Korean gives it points for originality. There's a very rigid structure for movies of this genre: first you introduce a bunch of characters and their various interpersonal conflicts. Then the disaster strikes, and the aforementioned characters are thrown into death-defying action scenes. How well this formula works depends on how well-drawn the characters are, which makes their subsequent life-and-death struggles all the more thrilling.

And frankly, during much of the first hour it wasn't working well at all. There's a lot of dumb slapstick and ill-defined drama, and it was all pretty tiresome. Man-shik's mother hates Yeon-hee for some unknown reason, there's an old guy who wants to develop the seaside district and is trying to evict all the residents (or something), Hi-mi goes all My Sassy Girl on Hyong-shik, Kim Hwi delivers some inane geological technobabble, and Yoo-jin is a royal bitch. The somewhat suspect subtitles didn't help either; for all I know, all of Kim Hwi's scenes may have had rigorously accurate scientific terminology in its original Korean. But I still don't know who the old guy is and why everyone hates him.

(As a matter of fact, according to this Wikipedia summary, there's an entire subplot that was excised from the movie. I have no idea why or what gives.)

Then a curious thing happened. The tsunami hit, and I found myself actually caring about these folks. (Actually it happened a little sooner, during a fireworks display the night before that everyone watches entranced. It neatly brings together all these disparate characters into a common narrative thread.) Sure, the CGI is bad - or at least, not so good that you can't see the seams - but the massive destruction still delivers a visceral thrill. And these characters' goofy charm had actually grown on me enough that their struggles through storm-tossed oceans, trapped and flooding elevators, and flooded streets with fallen electrical cables kept me engaged.

But then the real waterworks started. See, the one defining characteristic that sets Asian commercial cinema apart from the West is that it always goes for broad; broad melodrama and broad comedy. They're not afraid to put slapstick pratfalls and heartrending tragedy in the same movie, and the best ones can make it all of a consistent tone. This one goes way overboard. A rescue helicopter's winch malfunctions for no other reason than to allow the rescuer to heroically sacrifice himself, which he only does so after a long and tearful goodbye to his love interest. Two parents hoist their daughter to safety on another helicopter just before a second tsunami hits, and there is much weeping and bawling and slow-mo. Both scenes are shamelessly, artlessly manipulative. Just because you're painting with a broad brush doesn't mean you don't need skill to wield it.

For some reason, the female actors all consistently fare much worse than their male counterparts. Ha Ji-won is wooden as hell; Kang Ye-won attempts to channel Jeon Ji-hyun and fails; and Uhm Jung-hwa is, as mentioned, little more than a royal bitch. The male characters all have a sadsack charm that works, although Park Joong-hoon never gets to do anything more than look worried a lot. The standout is Kim In-kwon, who plays an effective lovable loser; he gets to be in the movie's best scene, involving falling shipping containers.

I guess your enjoyment of this movie will depend on how cynical you are. Do you laugh at goofy slapstick, or do you roll your eyes? Do you weep at tear-jerking melodrama, or do you check your watch? Me, I'm pretty goshdarn cynical, and I can call out mawkishness and schmaltz when I see it. And even I almost liked this movie. So I guess this counts as a tentative recommendation - but you'd really be better off watching something like The Host instead.

NEXT REVIEW: Jin Notti
Anticipation level: ...for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me

Taik Kucing: The Movie

Momok The Movie
My rating:




Hot on the heels of Skrip 7707 comes another locally-made horror anthology film. One wonders if one ripped off the other, or if there was any rivalry (friendly or otherwise) going on between writer/director M. Jamil and Prof. Madya Razak Mohaideen. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a bit of a competition going on between both productions.

Said competition would be akin to the Special Olympics - win or lose, you're still retarded.

Adlin (Faizal AF4) has just returned to his kampung in Temerloh, and runs into Pak Ajis (Dato' Aziz Sattar) who invites him to his warung for an evening meal of mee calong. Upon hearing from his mother that Pak Ajis has become mentally disturbed since the death of his wife - whom he speaks of as if she were still alive - Adlin drags his friend Kadir (Abon) along. The three of them then completely forget the mee calong and start trading ghost stories, nearly all of which involve virtually identical long-haired white-robed female spirits with faces covered in bedak sejuk (and in one case, what looks like sweetened condensed milk and raspberry jam).

First of all, may I just say how annoying I find Malay celebrities with names like Faizal AF4, Nabil Raja Lawak 2 and Mama Rina AF6. Korang takde nama sebenar ke? Is your fame so ephemeral that you need to constantly remind people where you got your first break? Does the Malay entertainment scene treat its personalities as so disposable? (Sadly, the answers are most likely yes and yes.) Second of all, one other thing the movie has in common with Skrip 7707 is that both are the only Malay movies I've watched this year that had English subtitles. (Strangely enough, the one good Malay movie I watched this year had none.) Not that it helps, because the subtitles are about as facepalmingly inept as the rest of the movie.

This film has more padding than a Bintang RTM contestant's bra. Time and again, scenes take forever to get to the point, even after we can see the point coming and know that it's not frickin' worth the wait. M. Jamil has no clue how to create suspense, which you'd think might be somewhat necessary in a goddamn horror film. There's a bit in which a guy runs right smack into a ghost. He doesn't run away screaming. Oh no. He gives us a good 10 seconds of gelabah-ing before he runs away screaming. The movie runs 1 hour and 42 minutes, feels like 3 hours, and was likely made from a script of about 30 pages. This is a remarkable feat of space/time manipulation, but it makes for a shitty movie.

As for the stories themselves? Well, Adlin and Kadir take so goddamn long just to get to Pak Ajis' warung that I almost forgot this is supposed to be a horror anthology. In any case, each story is really bodoh sampai nak mampus. One tale is of a lorry driver who gets lost, apparently because a bird that flew into his windshield caused his entire truck to teleport from the highway to a trunk road. In another, a dead girl turns into a ghost at her wake and scares away the mourners. And that's it. I don't think M. Jamil knows the difference between a story and a scene. I'm not sure if he even knows the difference between scary and funny, because as the movie progresses it seems to give up all effort at being the former and just goes for the latter - with roughly equal success.

What's there to say about the acting, given that the dialogue and characters are about on par with a sekolah kebangsaan drama production? Whatever glimmers of talent that the Akademi Fantasia and Raja Lawak-spawned cast possess are drowned by the flood of crappy filmmaking. On the other hand, I may be clutching at straws here, but I found Dato' Aziz Sattar to be the man. Guy's been in movies for over 50 years, and was no less than one of the original Bujang Lapok. He has enough gravitas and presence to make even the dumbass dialogue in this movie sound believable, and there's a scene in which he mourns his late wife that effectively brought the pathos. I want to say that this steaming turd of a movie is an indignity to him, but frankly he emerged unsoiled by it. Dato', you are win and awesome personified.

I cannot fathom why it's called Momok The Movie. Was there previously a Momok the TV series/comic strip/album/brand of kitchen condiment? I think they called it that just to remind people that this is, in fact, a movie. This likely points to its true reason for being - it is a stupid movie, made by stupid people, who think audiences are equally stupid. The fact that it was released for Raya is an insult to Islam. M. Jamil should have his hands chopped off if he ever touches a film camera again.

NEXT REVIEW: Tsunami at Haeundae
Anticipation level: still meh

G for gag-worthy

G-Force
My rating:




(I don't know why I still do the "Next Review" thing. It's getting harder to plan my movie-watching schedule. Rest assured, I will watch and review Tsunami at Haeundae eventually.)

Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott are screenwriting partners who have worked on some of the most successful big-budget Hollywood blockbusters of the past 15 years, including Disney's Aladdin, The Mask of Zorro, Shrek, and the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. They also run the Wordplayer website, a compendium of screenwriting advice articles and a lively forum frequented by both aspiring and pro Hollywood screenwriters (and which my ISP can no longer access, drat). So when I heard that they were involved in this movie, it was all I needed to make me want to watch it - despite my misgivings.

Should've listened to my misgivings.

The G-Force are a team of super-intelligent tiny animal spies, comprising guinea pigs Darwin (Sam Rockwell), Juarez (Penelope Cruz), Blaster (Tracy Morgan), a mole named Speckles (Nicolas Cage) and a fly called Mooch. When nasty FBI agent Killian (Will Arnett) threatens to shut down their program, their handler Ben (Zach Galifianakis), plus another guinea pig they pick up along the way named Hurley (Jon Favreau), must help them complete their first mission - to uncover and foil the nefarious plans of Leonard Saber (Bill Nighy), evil household appliances magnate.

Some movies just aren't worth writing plot synopses for. There are talking guinea pigs, and they're like, secret agents, okay? There's also a talking hamster, a talking mole, some talking mice, a fly (who fortunately doesn't talk) and some cockroaches (who unfortunately dance). And just as there are audiences who see cute talking rodents performing action hero antics and go "uaaahh, must watch must watch", there's also a sizable segment who are like "gaaahh, stay away stay away". And then there's the tiny percentage, comprised mostly of myself, who think "yes, it's an incredibly stupid idea and shamelessly calculated to appeal to the kiddies, but hey, it all depends on the execution, y'know?"

The execution sucks. The jokes aren't funny. The characterization is non-existent. The emotional themes are lame. Only the action scenes are somewhat competent, and the plot moves fast enough to keep you just above the threshold of boredom. I can't imagine why anyone looking for family-oriented entertainment would go for this when Up is still playing in cinemas. The Pixar film has cute, has thrills, has laughs, has heartwarming, and makes it all work. Ted and Terry, I am disappointed in the both of you.

Incidentally, G-Force might've worked better as an animated film rather than a live-action one. The world in which it is set is an utterly preposterous one, in which all animals - not just our "genetically-engineered" superspy heroes - are sentient and intelligent, and merely need some gadget to be able to communicate with humans. Put that in a cartoon, and we can buy it. Put it in a live-action world, and it just becomes silly. Babe pulled it off, but it takes just the right touch of whimsy and fantasy - something that has eluded every other cute-talking-animal movie since.

I feel sorry for the cast. The actors who voice the rodents are given some truly painful dialogue. Rockwell and Cruz are bland, and only Morgan seems to deliver his lines with relish. Favreau plays yet another goofy sidekick. There's a hamster character played by Steve Buscemi, whose voice is instantly recognizable; however, Nicolas Cage's isn't. I had no idea he voiced Speckles the mole till the end credits, which may make this one of his better performances in recent years. Galifianakis seems downright embarrassed to be in this movie, Arnett glowers a lot, and Nighy seemed ready to do a good fun scenery-chewing over-the-top villain role - but strangely enough, the film doesn't give him much opportunities.

And now I gotta mention the 3D. Yes, this is my first 3D film, and I find myself spectacularly unimpressed. The picture was blurry and out-of-focus, and the colours were dimmed and murky; I can't imagine watching a film as bright and colourful as Up like this. The 3D effect itself wasn't much to shout about; it's only effective when things are flying towards the screen, so all it can do is throw things at the screen. The glasses sat rather precariously over my own spectacles; it wasn't entirely uncomfortable, but I was still glad that it was a pretty short movie. All this for almost twice the price of a normal ticket? Feh.

I am loath to say only kids will enjoy this movie, because I think that's an insult to kids. They may like the cute guinea pigs and they may enjoy the action scenes, but I can't imagine they'll find the dialogue-based jokes any funnier than I did. And I'm pretty certain they'll get bored by Darwin's disillusionment over his bogus genetic superiority, or by Hurley's need for love and acceptance. As for the adults... well, the final scene is of all the CGI animals boogieing to the musical stylings of Flo Rida. If you've passed puberty and didn't find that scene embarrassingly bad, you'd have to have the mind of an infant - and maybe that's who G-Force is really aimed at.

NEXT REVIEW: Momok The Movie
Anticipation level: yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil

Ugly? Somewhat. Truthful? Kinda-sorta. Funny? No.

The Ugly Truth
My rating:




The romantic comedy is one of the most critic-proof genres in film. Say you don't like any one of them, and you'll be instantly labeled a typical oafish male who disdains "chick flicks" just because things don't blow up. Never mind your protests that you do like rom-coms, you've seen some really good ones, that's why you're so disappointed when you see a bad one. And so very, very few people can tell the good ones from the bad. So many, many people actually think that The Wedding Planner is on par with Four Weddings and a Funeral, or that The Proposal is just as good as While You Were Sleeping...

...or that The Ugly Truth is actually funny.

Abby Richter (Katherine Heigl) is the producer of a morning TV news show. In an effort to recover from failing ratings, her boss hires Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler) as a new host. It's hate at first sight between uptight control freak Abby and gleefully crass and chauvinistic Mike, so the latter offers to coach the former in how to capture the attention of Abby's hunky neighbour Colin (Eric Winter). But it isn't long before opposites start to attract.

I usually watch movies alone (I am quite comfortable with my own company, thankyouverymuch), but this one I saw with three friends. And I owe them an apology, since I was pretty much stony-faced throughout it while the whole cinema was laughing uproariously. Sorry guys, but what can I say? I didn't find it funny. When Abby goes on a date with Colin and has Mike feeding her instructions via earphone, I checked my watch to see what year it was - I could've sworn I went back to 1986 and I'm watching The Facts of Life or Who's the Boss? Sitcom clichés aside, everything about this movie just felt artificial.

F'rinstance, there's the big comic setpiece of the movie, in which Abby ends up wearing vibrating panties to a dinner with her bosses. First of all, this scene tries to be the new Meg-Ryan-fakes-an-orgasm-in-When-Harry-Met-Sally, and it doesn't hold a candle to that one. Because secondly, it's so much more contrived. It only works if super-anal-retentive Abby somehow forgot her big important corporate dinner, and conveniently has Mike and her boss pick her up at her door to remind her. And lastly, I'm not a fan of humiliation comedy - especially if it's the entire goddamn female gender being humiliated.

Why yes, I do have feminist leanings, and they make for sparkling conversation fodder at parties, I assure you. The fact is, the successful career woman who is ironically a failure at relationships and needs a good man to set her straight isn't just a character in this one movie, it's practically an archetype. The traditional rom-com formula is of two people who become each other's catalyst for becoming better people, thus proving that they're meant for each other - but it's so very often, and in so very many films, the female side that has the more to learn and whose lesson is the more painful. No, it's not just the orgasm scene - throughout the movie, Abby is far more often made the laughingstock than Mike. This, in a genre that caters to women. This, in a movie written by three women.

Sigh... once again, I end up writing a deeply split-personality review. Two-and-a-half stars doesn't mean I hated it. I can still believe that Mike and Abby could fall for each other; while everything they go through is contrived and unbelievable, their connection feels genuine. Heigl and Butler do have solid chemistry, and Heigl especially is a lot of fun - she totally deserves the title of reigning rom-com queen, and even makes the inherent sexism of the script easier to swallow. Butler is fine as a romantic male lead, but I don't think he cuts it at comedy quite yet.

My ambivalent feelings about this film are best represented by the big romantic climax at the end. Yes, it's very very artificial - a professional TV producer suddenly takes it upon herself to appear in front of the camera, just because the script says so. But when Mike and Abby finally drop their defenses and reveal their true feelings to each other, I'm forced to nod and concede that, hey, they got that right at least. There's a germ of a good romantic comedy in here, a solid insight into how falling in love can expose superficial gender views for what they are. But it settles for showing us a dorky hot chick and a smirky hunky guy - and sadly, most people are happy to have just that.

NEXT REVIEW: Tsunami at Haeundae
Anticipation level: meh