Film Review: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. Rated G. 95 minutes. Directed by Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn. Written John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, Erica Rivinoja.

Verdict: A sensational explosion of food, colour, character and laughs for the entire family.

Picking up where the fantastic Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) left off, this delightful sequel finds our obsessive young inventor Flint Lockwood (superbly voiced by Bill Hader) faced with the task of finding and destroying his food-making machine, which has not only survived the earlier attempt to destroy it, but is over-populating Swallow Falls (Flint’s island home) with foodimals.

Flint’s idol, celebrity inventor Chester V (Will Forte), warns him that these dangerous foodimals are learning how to swim, which will see them invade every nation around the world and destroy all the iconic landmarks – with Sydney’s Opera House and New York’s Statue of Liberty in line for destruction.

With delightful nods to Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park and Peter Jackson’s King Kong, the bravura island sequences are fantastic, with every food pun imaginable planted liberally throughout the action-packed script. Cameron and Pearn keep the story moving at a perfectly agreeable pace, and as one brilliantly characterised foodimal after another comes to life, the sinister intentions of Flint’s hero gradually begin to become clearer.

The dazzling creativity and inventiveness of the animation, combined with the infectious energy of the voice cast, ensures that the pace rarely sags – and when it does, it is so we can spend some quiet, contemplative time with Flint’s dad Tim (the excellent James Caan) and his new-found friends, a group of endearing pickles who learn to appreciate Tim’s passion for sardine fishing.

The sequel, as is often the case, benefits enormously from the return of creatives who brought their magic to the first film. This is most certainly the case with Mark Mothersbaugh’s perfectly spirited score and Justin Thompson’s lavish, colourful and absurdly characterful production design. And while you might never be able to look at the contents of a bag of marshmallows in quite the same way again, it is the zany Steve (Flint’s pet monkey, voiced by Neil Patrick Harris) who eventually wears his hero status to perfection.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa

Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa. Rated MA 15+ (strong sexual references and crude humour). 92 minutes. Directed by Jeff Tremaine. Written by Johnny Knoxville and Jeff Tremaine.

Verdict: An audacious and hilarious road trip with the Jackass clowns.

Anyone familiar with the Jackass team’s shenanigans will have the time of their lives watching Johnny Knoxville (made up to become the 86-year-old Irving Zisman) wreak havoc across America as he takes his 8-year-old grandson Billy (Jackson Nicoll) to the boy’s father Chuck (Greg Harris). Billy has to go and live with his dad because his mum, Irving’s daughter Kimmie (Georgina Gates), is about to go to jail. Complicating matters even further, is that Irving has decided to put the body of his recently departed wife Ellie (Catherine Keener) in the boot of his car while he decides where to finally lay her to rest.

So are those irascible, tear-away Jackass boys and girls finally growing up? Hardly, but there is a subtle line about the value of meaningful familial relationships beneath the surface of this hilarious, hidden camera caper that lends their latest outing an additional layer of irresistible charm.

It’s impossible to write in too much detail about the plot, because to give too much away would be to deny you the opportunity to witness it all unfurl with occasionally jaw-dropping amazement. The hidden camera footage is simply fantastic, as one, poor unsuspecting soul after another becomes a participant in Knoxville’s daring side steps into the lives of everyone he comes across. While some are certainly more successful than others, nothing will have prepared you for the funeral parlour and beauty pageant sequences – the most spectacular examples of just how audacious and hilarious the Jackass creative team can be.

The essence of the hidden camera is that the unpredictable happens, and the resulting level of anxiety as each new sequence begins ensures that the film remains absolutely riveting. Knoxville is in complete command of the proceedings, and he receives stunning support from young Jackson Nicoll (The Fighter, What's Your Number? Fun Size), who matches the expert Knoxville every step of the way.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: The Butler

The Butler. Rated M (mature themes, violence and coarse language). 132 minutes. Directed by Lee Daniels. Written by Danny Strong.

Verdict: A finely wrought drama about realising why and when to make a stand.

With Precious (2009), his blistering tale of privilege, abuse, poverty and ambition, Daniels delivered a compelling drama about difference. With The Butler, (loosely based Will Haywood’s Washington Post article about 89-year-old Eugene Allen who worked as a butler to eight American Presidents in the White House for 30 years), the drama is considerably less compelling, but certainly as profound.

Strong’s screenplay takes too many liberties with the origins of the story, and bundles every fictionalised dramatic highpoint up into a neat little package. The result is that the epic sweep of the story becomes more like a montage of conflict-driven snapshots – a series of hastily scribbled postcards from inside the American capital rather than a deeper engagement with one man’s unique perspective on the advancement of civil rights.

Forest Whittaker (The Last King of Scotland) is excellent as (the re-named) Cecil Gaines, delivering a performance of exceptional power, grace and humility. As the family and political conflict swirls around him, Whittaker’s Gaines wages an invisible war with his own conscience. When his conscience finally defeats his sense of duty, it is as fine a scene as we have witnessed in the cinema this year.

If you can get past the familiarity of Oprah Winfrey’s television talk show host persona, hers is an equally fine performance as Gloria Gaines, Cecil’s loyal (to a point) wife, who wages her own internalised struggle with her husband’s perceived position of immense privilege with which he appears to do nothing. As she watches her eldest son Louis (an excellent David Oyelowo) risk his life as a political activist, Winfrey absolutely nails Gloria’s constant (and equally duty bound) battle to hold to the love and respect she feels for her husband.

Daniels certainly takes his time telling this fascinating story. And what it lacks in the passion and brilliance of Daniels’s own Precious or Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning (1988), it makes up for with its quiet contemplation about how people with different points of view can find common ground and change the world.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Thor: The Dark World

Thor: The Dark World. Rated M (action violence). 112 minutes. Directed by Alan Taylor. Screenplay by Christopher Yost, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.

Verdict: A severe case of thunder-less sequelitis.

If there is a constant dilemma in our wonderful world of cinema, it’s the catalogue of problems associated with ‘making the sequel’. In the case of this follow-up to the terrific Thor (2011), those problems are many and obvious – resulting in an unsatisfying outing in the company of Chris Hemsworth’s love-struck God of Thunder.

Equal parts romantic comedy and Star Wars/Lord of the Rings wannabe, The Dark World begins with Thor’s bitter nemesis Loki (Tom Hiddleston) disinherited and locked away for the rest of his life by the stroppy Odin (Anthony Hopkins). Meanwhile, on Earth, Thor’s clever girlfriend Jane (Natalie Portman) stumbles upon a mysterious portal where she becomes consumed by the powerful substance ‘Aether’, which the evil Dark Elf Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) wants so that he and his Dark Elf warriors can destroy everyone and everything.

Markus (Captain America: The First Avenger, The Chronicles of Narnia films) and his collaborators have fashioned a superhero-by-the-numbers screenplay that, while boasting some welcome comedic banter, remains steadfastly ordinary.

Taylor (episodes of Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Game of Thrones) follows suit, and with the exception of a brilliant slap-down sequence involving Thor, Malkeith and some inter-planetary trickery, The Dark World never manages to feel as though it’s holding together. It is helped by some flashy visual effects (particularly a powerful funeral sequence), and Thor’s home planet of Asgard is superbly realised by production designer Charles Wood (Wrath of the Titans).

Hemsworth, once again, looks every inch the part but suffers as a result of the script’s many inane moments and sloppy pacing, while Hiddleston clearly relishes his return as the entertaining Loki. The sequences on Earth play out with an almost moribund sense of familiarity that it becomes impossible to take any of it seriously.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group

Film Review: Captain Phillips

Captain Phillips. Rated M (mature themes and violence). 134 minutes. Directed by Paul Greengrass. Screenplay by Billy Ray, based on A Captain's Duty by Richard Phillips.

Verdict: It might have been wiser to sail with the pack.

If it’s light and breezy distraction you’re after, then bypass this uptight and intense thriller about cargo ship Captain Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks) and his unfortunate crew as they battle for survival against a band of marauding Somalian pirates, led by the rather optimistically named Muse (Barkhad Abdi).

Phillips’s autobiographical account is embroiled in controversy, with many of the crew involved in legal action against the ship’s owner – the Maersk Line – for what they claim was dereliction of duty. The only nod to Phillips’ alleged lapse of judgment is the pirates discovering his ship is charting a course closer to the Somalian coastline than the rest of the vessels all sailing the same route – a fact that apparently informed their decision to attack it.

Anyone involved in primary industry knows the most direct trade route is the most desirable, and with faith in the water cannons onboard used to sink rickety old pirate boats, some token security drills and rusty old padlocks, Phillips takes his chances. Whether you blame him will depend on how much you end up admiring the tenacity of the opportunistic Somalians, for who Ray’s (The Hunger Games, Flightplan) screenplay provides millions of dollars worth of motivation.

Greengrass’s (Green Zone, The Bourne Ultimatum, United 93, The Bourne Supremacy) and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd’s (Green Zone, The Hurt Locker, United 93) hand-held camera in confined spaces technique comes to the fore early and never lets up. The result is a powerful, if relentless, study of motivation, brilliantly edited by Christopher Rouse (Green Zone, The Bourne Ultimatum, United 93, The Bourne Supremacy).

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.