R.I.P.D.

Mini Review

http://www.universalstudiosentertainment.com/ripd/

I'm gonna cut right to the chase here because R.I.P.D. is one of those movies that is so bad, it made me want to put off writing the review for as long as possible. The two people I saw it with both fell asleep (several times) during the film, the entire cinema was deathly quiet throughout, despite this being a 'comedy' and one of my friends accurately described the movie as an 'unfunny Men In Black with dead people instead of aliens'. All true.

For those who are still interested in seeing this film, for whatever reason you have, I will give you a brief synopsis. Nick (Reynolds) is a Boston cop who is killed in action. His soul is sent to the 'Rest In Peace Department', a division of heaven where good cops go to capture bad souls who remain on earth. Nick is partnered with Roy (Bridges) while he learns the ropes of his new assignment and comes to terms with being dead.

The problem I have with writing a review for the movie is that I am having a hard time putting my finger on what it was that made the film so bad, because it certainly wasn't the leads. Reynolds and Bridges had good chemistry and were both good (with what little they had to work with). 

I can only think that it was a case of too many cooks spoil the broth, with that many writers being attributed to both screenplay and story I suspect that there were too many hands trying to make light work. The script just wasn't funny. And when you have someone like Reynolds on board, who initially endeared me to him by tickling my funny bone, that seems a great shame to me. The story is easy to follow but you never really root for the characters or feel that it is any great loss when one of them dies (which seems to happen a lot). 

I was also disappointed by the CGI. Considering this is a film that's heavy on effects, they should have been a lot better. 

To sum up, I genuinely feel it's a shame that R.I.P.D was not better, as I thought it had a lot of potential and all the filmmakers did was squander that on a poorly executed idea. 4.5 out of 10.

Viewing Date - 28th September 2013

UK Release Date - 20th September 2013

Cast Overview:

Roy ~ Jeff Bridges

Nick ~ Ryan Reynolds

Hayes ~ Kevin Bacon

Proctor ~ Mary-Louise Parker

Julia ~ Stephanie Szostak

Director ~ Robert Schwentke

Writer ~ Phil Hay (Screenplay and Story), Matt Manfredi (Screenplay and Story), David Dobkin (Story) and Peter M Lenkov (Dark Horse Comic) 

Safe House

Mini Review 

http://www.nooneissafe.com/

A frustrated CIA Agent, Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) receives a new charge into his safe house in Cape Town - former CIA Agent gone rogue, Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington). It soon transpires that the reason Frost is there is because he handed himself in to the US consulate in South Africa to escape some rather unsavory people who were after him. They soon find him though which forces Weston and Frost to team up and go on the run together. 

It's been a while since I saw Safe House (slowly catching up on reviews - apologies to my regular readers) and to be honest I think there was a subconscious reason I didn't get round to this review. Not because of the film, just some unresolved issues I have that this film reminds me of. I digress as usual. What I was trying to say is that I don't really remember it all that well. 

All I can really recall is that there were a LOT of twists and turns in this movie. Probably more than were necessary. By the end I wasn't sure if up was down or if left was right. It seems that the producers wanted to keep their audience on the edge of their seats, but instead they just lost their audience about half way through.

The performances were okay. I personally don't subscribe to the notion that Denzel Washington is a great actor. I think he can be. But I think the majority of his performances are just a little OTT. And this is one of them. Reynolds is good but overshadowed by Washington's hammy performance, a script that is somewhat lacking and a confusing plot. Farmiga, Gleeson and Patrick all provide decent support but then they pretty much always do. 

I wasn't intending to bad-mouth Safe House when I started out so let me finish by saying that this is a perfectly acceptable Saturday night popcorn movie. It just won't leave a lasting impression. 6 out of 10.

Viewing Date - 25th February 2012

UK Release Date - 24th February 2012

Cast Overview: 

Denzel Washington ~ Tobin Frost

Ryan Reynolds ~ Matt Weston

Vera Farmiga ~ Catherine Linklater

Brendan Gleeson ~ David Barlow

Sam Shepard ~ Harlan Whitford

Robert Patrick ~ Daniel Kiefer

Liam Cunningham ~ Alec Wade

Director ~ Daniel Espinosa

Writer ~ David Guggenheim

The Change-Up

http://www.thechangeupmovie.com/

I'm sure I've mentioned before that I'm quite fond of Ryan Reynolds. As such, it was a bit of a no-brainer that I would go and see The Change-Up. Though if I'm honest, it was a similar situation to the previous film I reviewed, I Don't Know How She Does It, as I thought the trailer looked awful.

In the film, Reynolds plays Mitch, an 'actor' who spends the majority of his days smoking weed and playing video games. His dad, Mitch Snr (the underrated Alan Arkin), thinks it's about time he grew up. Mitch's best friend is Dave (Jason Bateman), who by comparison is very grown up. He's about to make partner at his law firm and has a wife and three kids. That is until fate steps in and switches Mitch and Dave into each other's bodies. Dave becomes Mitch and Mitch becomes Dave. Following this unwanted transformation, they must not only find a way to rectify the situation, and fast, but they must also learn how to live each other's lives without raising suspicion of those closest to them.

We've all seen films like this before, Big and Freaky Friday are just two that spring to mind, and as such, this is not a new idea. It's also not a particularly fresh take on the story of body swaps, uptight guy with responsibilities gets to do as he pleases while slacker boy has to knuckle down and prove his worth.

The two leads here are what make a tired situation enjoyable. Both are believable as men with responsibilities and men who'd rather not have grown up at all. It helps that both Reynolds and Bateman have good comic timing, and make for convincing buddies. Fine support is also given by Olivia Wilde and Leslie Mann as Dave's law firm associate and Dave's wife respectively. Leslie Mann in particular kind of overshadows everyone else by putting in a rather moving performance at times.

There are nice little touches in this film which do set it apart from similar films of old, Leslie Mann's performance is one of them. The others are more subtle things like Dave's (and in turn Mitch as Dave) relationship with his daughter, which is a nice side story. As is Mitch's (and in turn Dave as Mitch) relationship with his father. Having said that, there are also things which set this film apart in a bad way. Like the amount of breasts you see in this film. I'm no prude but it honestly felt like all of the women in this film were only allowed in it if they were naked at least once. It was a little more flesh than I personally thought was necessary but I'm sure any men reading this will disagree. There were also slightly too many poo jokes or poo references for my liking. We're not 5 and that's when poo jokes stopped being funny.

So to sum up, the film doesn't really shed any new light on an old story but it's entertaining nonetheless. 6.5 out of 10.

Viewing Date ~ 18th September 2011

UK Release Date ~ 16th September 2011

Cast Overview:

Ryan Reynolds ~ Mitch Planko

Jason Bateman ~ Dave Lockwood

Leslie Mann ~ Jamie Lockwood

Olivia Wilde ~ Sabrina McArdle

Alan Arkin ~ Mitch Planko Snr

Director ~ David Dobkin

Writer(s) ~ Jon Lucas and Scott Moore

Green Lantern

http://greenlanternmovie.warnerbros.com/

I can barely believe that it's been two weeks since my last review. I'd love to say it's all my fault because my other writing is taking precedence over my blogging, but in truth it's because there has been NOTHING new out at Cineworld in two whole weeks (unless you count Kung Fu Panda 2). After the disaster that was Kung Fu Panda (I won't go into it unless you want me to) plus the reverse recommendations from people who'd seen Kung Fu Panda 2, I decided it was probably best to avoid it.

Which meant a very long wait for this weekend when Green Lantern and Bad Teacher came out. I have now seen both films and will start with Green Lantern which I saw yesterday.

Green Lantern is based on a DC comic of the same name. Now, my comic book aficionado friends will no doubt want to bludgeon me with their comic books for this, but I will never-the-less confess that until the film was in production I'd never actually heard of Green Lantern. If you suffer the same lack of comic knowledge allow me to give you a brief run down of the plot.

Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) is an irresponsible and reckless pilot who crashes his very expensive new plane when some daddy issues cause him to lose control during a test flight. Simultaneously we see an alien (who we later learn is one of the 'Green Lanterns' of the title) facing off against another alien who absorbs peoples fear and grows larger from it. Following the fight - well it's not really a fight, the Green Lantern just sort of runs away - the Green Lantern, Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison - aka Jango Fett from Star Wars!), is fatally wounded and crash lands on earth. He tells his ring to go and seek out the next Lantern to take his place. The ring finds Hal and et voila Hal becomes the next Green Lantern.

Allow me if you will, to compare one comic book movie to another very different comic book movie. Earlier this year saw the release of Thor, a comic book film which again, I knew nothing about. Whereas Thor brilliantly set up the background of all the characters, giving them all space to shine, it also managed to fit in an exciting plot and a whole story set on three different planets.

I know Green Lantern is a whole different kettle of fish, for one, it's DC rather than Marvel, but essentially it's trying to do the same thing. Teach us about a comic book character that hasn't been brought to the big screen before, show us some flashy special effects, create an emotional tie to the characters and make us want to see more of them.

Where Thor succeeded spectacularly Green Lantern fails. In every possible way. Don't get me wrong, Ryan Reynolds tries, he really does, to make Hal likable. He uses his usual mix of comedy and being ridiculously buff to get us on side. But the film is so incredibly dull that he just can't save it. The special effects are some of the worst I've seen since 2012's plane tried to take off in a dodgy CG dust cloud. At points it looks as if Ryan's head is just floating in mid air on top of his CGI body. It's just so painfully obvious CGI that it's kind of insulting. Isn't CGI supposed to have reached a point where everything looks real? 

I really do hate to compare, but for example, the Bifrost bridge in Thor was gorgeous. And looked like it was there. Whereas the aliens in this, did not look real for one moment. Should I even mention the laughable villain with the enlarged brain? One of my friends commented on the similarity between him and the wheelchair bound inbred of 'The Hills Have Eyes' and I have to say the likeness is uncanny!

My final thought would be that if you want to see Ryan Reynolds looking buff go and rent Blade Trinity. And if you want to watch a good comic book movie, well you'll just have to wait for Thor to come out on DVD. The disappointment of June continues - 6 out of 10.

Viewing Date - 19th June 2011

UK Release Date - 17th June 2011

Cast Overview:

Ryan Reynolds ~ Hal Jordan / Green Lantern

Blake Lively ~ Carol Ferris

Peter Sarsgaard ~ Hector Hammond

Mark Strong ~ Sinestro

Temuera Morrison ~ Abin Sur 

Director ~ Martin Campbell

Writer(s) ~ Greg Berlanti (Screenplay and Screen Story), Michael Green (Screenplay and Screen Story), Marc Guggenheim (Screenplay and Screen Story) and Michael Goldenberg (Screenplay)