Film Review: Mr. Peabody & Sherman

Mr. Peabody & Sherman. Rated PG (mild themes and animated violence). 97 minutes. Directed by Rob Minkoff. Screenplay by Craig Wright.

Verdict: Whatever you do, hold off on the red cordial.

As ‘The End’ appeared on the screen, a little girl sitting down the front of the cinema yelled ‘Yay!’ with all the enthusiasm it was possible for her to muster. Such a spontaneous display of joy from members of the audience for whom films like this are primarily made are, like Mr. Peabody & Sherman itself, fantastic to witness.

Wright’s action-packed screenplay finds our genius inventor canine Mr. Peabody threatened with having his adopted human son Sherman removed from his care by a tyrannical social services bureaucrat, Mrs Grunion (voiced by The West Wing’s Allison Janney).

Sherman (superbly voiced by 10-year-old Max Charles) has bitten the school bully Penny (Ariel Winter), so Mr. Peabody (Ty Burrell) sets up a reconciliation dinner party with Penny’s parents and Mrs Grunion. But when Sherman takes Penny for a spin in the WBAC, Mr. Peabody’s state-of-the-art time-travelling machine, the past, present and future collide in spectacular fashion.

Minkoff’s (co-director of The Lion King) command of the story-telling is astonishing, even if the frenetic pace of the action occasionally threatens to become overwhelming. Under-pinned by the absurdist premise that a dog should be legally entitled to adopt a human, Wright’s screenplay and Minkoff’s account of it, doesn’t hang around in any one part of the world – past, present or future – long enough for the ridiculousness of it all to deflate the action.

Veteran composer Danny Elfman (who is best known as the composer of The Simpsons), delivers a marvellous score that powers the visual flights of inventive science fiction-based fantasy to perfection. Apart from the brilliant animation on display, the star of the show is Burrell (Modern Family), who finds an emotional range in his voice work for Mr. Peabody that is outstanding.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspapers Group.

Film Review: Cuban Fury

Cuban Fury. Rated M (sexual references and coarse language). 98 minutes. Directed by James Griffiths. Screenplay by Jon Brown.

Verdict: Strictly Ballroom lite.

Just like last year’s The Silver Linings Playbook, in which Bradley Cooper shimmied his way into Jennifer Lawrence’s heart by learning to dance, Cuban Fury’s plot focuses on the liberation of our heart and soul, which is only possible when we are doing that thing we love the most.

Nick Frost is most well-known for his performance as Ed, the slovenly flatmate of Simon Pegg’s Shaun in Shaun of the Dead (2004), and he and Pegg worked together again in Hot Fuzz (2007) and Paul (2011).

In Cuban Fury (in which Pegg has a drive-by cameo), it is Frost’s turn to star as Bruce Garrett, a one-time Salsa champion who was bullied into giving up his passion at a young age. Twenty-five years later, Bruce is still bullied by Drew (Chris O’Dowd), his cruel and over-bearing colleague at work. But when Salsa-loving Julia (Rashida Jones) arrives from the USA to lead the sales team, Bruce decides to win her over through their shared love of dance.

Frost is charming in the leading role, but it is the wonderfully idiosyncratic supporting characters that bring real interest to Brown’s stock standard story. Ian McShane (Snow White and the Huntsman, Pirates of the Caribbean) and Kayvan Novak (Syriana) make meals out of their roles as dance teacher Ron Parfait and dance school buddy Bejan respectively, while O’Dowd plays against type too, and delivers a smarmy workplace bully.

As predictable as it all might be, Cuban Fury is an undemanding piece of escapism, and it will certainly bring a smile to your face and a tap or two to your toes, courtesy of the marvellous soundtrack from artists including Tito Puente, Sunlightsquare and Oscar D’Leon.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspapers Group.

Film Review: The Monuments Men

The Monuments Men. Rated M (violence). 118 minutes. Directed by George Clooney. Screenplay by George Clooney and Grant Heslov. Based on the book by Robert M. Edsel.

Verdict: Self-indulgence on a monumental scale.

Based on the real-life exploits of the officers and civilians who made up the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program (established to locate and return the millions of valuable artworks and artefacts that had been stolen by the Nazis), Clooney and Heslov’s screenplay barely skims the surface of what must have been at stake for these people during dangerous and difficult times.

Despite James Bissell’s (ET the Extra-Terrestrial, Good Night, and Good Luck) meticulous production design (or perhaps because of it), The Monuments Men resembles an over-produced episode of Hogan’s Heroes, as Clooney and Matt Damon, with support from John Goodman, Bill Murray and The Artist’s Jean Dujardin, stroll through the action, barely managing to alter their facial expressions or register a single degree of difficulty.

The result is also often quite funny, as though Clooney and Co have chosen to play it mostly for laughs, which is not only incredibly disconcerting given the subject matter, but also somewhat disrespectful to the honour and the memory of the men and women whose stories they borrow.

Even if Clooney and Heslov do not appear to have been terribly concerned about the fact that there were also women involved in the program, the film boasts a fine performance from Cate Blanchett as French art curator Claire Simone, a witness to the massive art theft the group are charged with retrieving.

Hugh Bonneville (Downtown Abbey) is also excellent as Donald Jeffries, whose passion and dedication to protect Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges from the thieving Nazis, provides the film with its only moments of genuine and deeply-moving drama. And yes, the elderly man in the final scene is George Clooney’s Dad. How nice.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Non-stop

Non-stop. Rated M (violence and infrequent coarse language). 106 minutes. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Screenplay by John W. Richardson, Christopher Roach and Ryan Engle.

Verdict: Guns on a plane.

In the grand tradition of Agatha Christie, comes this tense thriller about a murderer on board a flight bound for London from New York. Also on board is troubled Federal Air Marshall Bill Marks (Liam Neeson), our sad and sorry antihero for whom anything and everything that can go wrong, does. Precisely every 20 minutes.

Bill has made himself very unpopular with one or more of his fellow passengers who insist on sending him text messages on a highly secure inflight communication network. As Bill ramps up his efforts to work out who it might be by stomping around, bashing, harassing and intimidating everyone, he succeeds in making everyone else on the flight hate him too.

Collet-Serra and his trio of writers take more than a leaf out of Paul Greengrass’s vastly superior United 93 book, with the only difference being that by the time Non-stop collapses under the weight of its silly contrivances, you’ll more than likely have found yourself checking your own text messages.

Jim May’s (The A-Team) editing ensures that Non-stop is a good deal more effective than it might have been, while Julianne Moore (The Hours) brings real class to the supporting role of Jen Summers – a battle-scarred frequent flyer who remains loyal to Neeson’s increasingly hysterical Bill, even when he lays the blame for everything that is happening at her feet. Her dismissal of his accusations is the highlight of the film, and it’s at that point when it becomes impossible to not start thinking of all the marvellous films Julianne Moore has been in. This, I’m afraid, isn’t one of them.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Tracks

Tracks. Rated M (coarse language). 113 minutes. Directed by John Curran. Screenplay by Marion Nelson. Based on the memoir by Robyn Davidson.

Verdict: A masterpiece of quintessentially Australian storytelling.

It is rare that filmmakers completely master the language of cinema – the perfect combination of the spoken word and visual vocabulary, when words no longer become necessary. When it happens, as it does in this masterpiece of Australian storytelling, it becomes an experience to which you quietly surrender and reap countless rewards.

It is 1977, and Robyn Davidson (Mia Wasikowska) ‘wants to be alone’. It’s hardly surprising. Her mother has committed suicide, and the world she inhabits fails to help her cope with her grief and sense of displacement. It is as though she needs to create a physical experience of aloneness across large tracts of time and place in order to comprehend her loss. And her decision to walk the 2,700 kilometres from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean, with only her dog Diggity and four camels as companions, is born.

Nelson’s screenplay is perfect – a lean, muscular blueprint completely lacking in affectation or hyperbole. There is not a word or scene out of place. Curran responds with a master’s touch, while cinematographer Mandy Walker (Australia, Lantana, Love Serenade) is so entirely at one with the work, that it is as though we are experiencing the outback in this context for the very first time.

Wasikowska’s performance is mesmerising, somehow managing to create not only the frail, internalised struggle of this grieving young woman, but also the feisty, single-minded adventurer who will make this trek regardless of how dangerous everyone around her believes it to be.

Head cameleer, Andrew Harper, contributes a fantastic supporting cast, who effectively manage to out-class and out-act some of the big name Hollywood stars we’ve had to suffer through lately.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.