Film Review: Daddy's Home

Daddy’s Home. Rated PG (mild crude humour, sexual references and coarse language). 96 minutes. Directed by Sean Anders. Screenplay by Brian Burns, Sean Anders and John Morris.
 
Just in time for what remains of the holiday season comes this occasionally hilarious film about Brad (Will Ferrell), an earnest, well-meaning guy who is desperate to be accepted as stepfather to his new wife Sara’s (Linda Cardellini) two children – Megan (Scarlett Estevez) and Dylan (Owen Vaccaro) – from her previous marriage to Dusty (Mark Wahlberg).

Just as the children appear to be coming around to accepting the devoted and hyper-emotional Brad into their lives, the athletic, super cool, motorbike-riding Dusty decides to make an impromptu visit to meet his ex-wife’s new husband and spend some time with his children. With the battlelines well and truly drawn, courtesy of a spectacular sequence when Brad pretends he can ride Dusty’s motorbike, the two dads go head-to-head to prove who is the best man for the job.

The writers, who collaborated on Dumb and Dumber (2014), Mr Popper’s Penguins (2011), She’s Out of My League (2010) and Hot Tub Time Machine (2010), hit their marks early, and with the exception of a couple of slides into what might be considered well above PG-rated terrain, the script bubbles along under Anders’ solid direction.

Ferrell and Wahlberg first teamed up as a couple of hapless New York City cops in The Other Guys (2010), and on this occasion, their easy-going camaraderie underpins the comedy beautifully, which results in it never becoming too dark or hostile. Even though there is much at stake for each of their characters, the sense that they admire and respect the importance of the other’s role in the children’s lives provides Daddy’s Home with unexpected heart and soul.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Ted 2

Ted 2. Rated MA15+ (strong drug use, crude humour, sexual references and coarse language). 116 minutes. Directed by Seth MacFarlane. Screenplay by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild.

No doubt as a result of the sensational box office success enjoyed by the original Ted (2012), MacFarlane’s perverted, talking teddy bear with a toxic drug habit is back for a good deal more of exactly the same, mostly crass and tasteless, shenanigans.

Ted 2 begins with Ted (voiced by MacFarlane) marrying his sweetheart Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth). When the couple decide to start a family, his best mate John (Mark Wahlberg) offers to be the sperm donor. Unfortunately, Tami-Lyn is unable to conceive, so the couple decide to adopt a child instead. But when Ted discovers he is unable to adopt because he is legally classified as ‘property’ not human, lawyer Samantha (Amanda Seyfried) takes on the fight to have Ted’s civil rights recognised by the courts.

Just like the first film, the CGI Ted is a marvellous creation, and the extent to which you might manage to forget that he is a computer generated character says a lot about how successful Ted (and MacFarlane’s brilliant voicing of him) actually is.

But as it is with every project MacFarlane (Family Guy, A Million Ways to Die in the West) is involved with, your perception of the quality of the entertainment will depend on how you feel about his particular style of humour. At its best, Ted 2 boasts some momentary flashes of MacFarlane’s typically razor-sharp wit, mixed up with some potent and timely observations about the essence of equality.

Unfortunately, it also takes a deadly serious amount of time (just shy of two hours) to lazily and sluggishly insult, ridicule and humiliate everyone and everything in its path.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Entourage

Entourage. Rated MA15+ (strong sex scenes and coarse language). 104 minutes. Written and directed by Doug Ellin.

Verdict: The politically incorrect Entourage boys are back in town.

Loosely based on the life and times of Mark Wahlberg on his journey to movie stardom, Entourage (2004–2011) was a hit television series, created and written by Ellin, and produced for HBO by Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson.
 
The series focussed on the escapades of movie star Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier), his manager Eric (Kevin Connolly), his half-brother and wannabe actor, Johnny (Kevin Dillon), his loyal friend Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) and his indefatigable agent, Ari (Jeremy Piven).

The series was helped enormously by the presence of Wahlberg (and a vertiable catalogue of Hollywood stars making cameo appearances), and a good deal of its effectiveness was due to the fact that we never knew if the often outrageous storylines were based on actual events in Wahlberg’s life.

For the big screen version, Ellin has steadfastly refused to depart from his hugely successful formula, and he and his original cast members run with it at a hundred miles an hour. Vincent’s next project, a film called Hyde he is directing and starring in, has already cost Ari’s investor Larsen (Billy Bob Thornton) millions of dollars. But when Vincent tells him that he needs more money to finish it, Ari learns that the extra funds will only be forthcoming if Larsen’s troubled, spoilt son Travis (Haley Joel Osment) is allowed to personally oversee the film’s completion.

What worked for the series transfers onto the big screen in all its tasteless and politically incorrect glory. Of the cast who are mostly going through their overly familiar paces, Piven is the stand-out as the stressed-out Ari. The scene where he loses his temper during a relationship counselling session and furiously punches a framed picture of a kitten is both as wrong and as hilarious as it gets.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Transformers: Age of Extinction

Transformers: Age of Extinction. Rated M (action violence and coarse language). 165 minutes. Directed by Michael Bay. Screenplay by Ehren Kruger.

Verdict: A long, bloated script lets down a visual triumph.

Deep in the heart of this fourth film in the Transformers series is a great little story about the importance and value of loyal allies. Sadly, after two and three quarters hours, it becomes almost impossible to care, and metal fatigue takes on an entirely new meaning.

It has been five years since Chicago was destroyed in Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is an inventor who is struggling to make ends meet and to be able to afford to send his teenage daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz) to college.

When he discovers an old truck in a run-down picture theatre, Cade takes it home to restore it to hopefully make some money. Instead, the old truck transforms into the now fugitive Optimus Prime, and attracts the attention of rogue CIA agent Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) who is working with a megalomaniacal Transformer, Lockdown, to find and destroy all of the remaining Autobots.

The battle for supremacy between the humans, the Transformers, and Stanley Tucci’s inventor Joshua Joyce, who has isolated ‘Transformium’ (the morphing process that enables the Transformers to change their form), is never less than a visual triumph. Even after four movies, the transformations are still a thrilling experience, and the marauding Lockdown’s spaceship is a masterpiece of design and functionality from production designer Jeffrey Beecroft (making his debut with the series).

Instead of Chicago, this time it is Hong Kong’s turn to be decimated. In one astonishing sequence, Lockdown’s magnetic spaceship moves across the city, vacuuming up everything in its path, only to release it all back down on the terrified population. Had we not had to wait so long for the final slap-down, it might have been even more spectacular.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: 2 Guns

2 Guns. Rated MA 15+ (strong violence). 109 minutes. Directed by Baltasar Kormákur. Screenplay by Blake Masters, based on the graphic novels by Steven Grant.

Verdict: Denzel and Mark are the new Oscar and Felix.

It should probably be illegal to have this much fun in the face of such reckless slaughter, but Masters’ (Law & Order: LA) excellent screenplay boasts an almost obscene amount of comedy – delivered with absolute relish and megawatts of star power by Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg.

When undercover Drug Enforcement Administration officer Robert Trench (Washington) and his co-conspirator Michael Stigman (Wahlberg) are easily able to carry off a daring bank robbery that was supposed to end very differently, they find themselves on the run and caught up in an endless web of double-crossing and intrigue. As the motives of everyone involved become increasingly murky, Trench and Stigman have little choice but to match wits and try to stay one step ahead of the people who want them dead.

It’s not surprising that Wahlberg has teamed up with the Icelandic-born Kormákur again after their collaboration on Contraband (2012). Kormákur, like very few directors, manages to elicit a fantastic performance from Wahlberg, who responds with an engaging, often hilarious star turn that is brimming with confidence. Washington, too, fresh from his magnificent performance in Flight (2012), romps through as the police officer who inadvertently finds himself on the wrong side of the law.

The outstanding ensemble, including Paula Patton (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Precious), Bill Paxton (Titanic) and Edward James Olmos (Dexter), all provide excellent support to the two leads. Paxton (as ruthless CIA operative Earl) and Olmos (drug lord Papi Greco), who are both equally determined to recover their money at any cost, succeed in ramping up the stakes every time they are onscreen.

Like Quentin Tarantino, Kormákur and Masters refuse to take any prisoners, and it’s a credit to them and their two stars, that we hope these rascals live to see another day. They certainly deserve to.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Ted

Ted. Rated MA 15+ (strong sexual references, coarse language and drug use). 106 minutes. Directed by Seth MacFarlane. Screenplay by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild.

Verdict: This surprisingly witless affair never reaches the heights to which it constantly aspires.

You’d think that with three writers (who all work together on Family Guy – the successful TV series created by MacFarlane), they would have been able to come up with something less repetitive and less lavatory humour focussed. What we get, frustratingly, are torrents of the kind of base humour that is not only on the nose, but that gets in the way of this film taking the flight of fantasy it constantly threatens to.

Film Review: The Fighter

The Fighter. Rated MA 15+ (strong coarse language, violence and drug use). 116 minutes. Directed by David O. Russell. Screenplay by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson.

While it never quite reaches the dizzying heights of siblings Rocky (1976) and Raging Bull (1980), The Fighter is escorted most of the way there by an ensemble of outstanding performances, Tamasy, Johnson and Silver’s (8 Mile) ‘based-on-a-true-story’, multi-faceted script that is determined to keep it real, and Russell’s (Three Kings) rock-solid and unpretentious direction.

Mickey Ward (Mark Wahlberg) is a young boxer who lives in the shadow of his crack cocaine addicted older brother Dicky (Christian Bale) – whose own boxing career claim to fame was that he once knocked down Light Welterweight Champion Sugar Ray Leonard. As Dicky prepares for his comeback fight, Mickey gradually realises that the only way he can find peace and independence in his life, is to step out of the shadows and match up with the world’s best on his own terms.

While Wahlberg’s (The Lovely Bones, The Perfect Storm, Three Kings) under-stated performance serves chiefly as a dramatic anchor, it is the brilliant Bale (Batman Begins, The Machinist) and Melissa Leo (Frozen River, 21 Grams) as the boys’ mother ‘Alice’, who storm off with the acting honours.

Amy Adams (Doubt) as Mickey’s girlfriend ‘Charlene’ and Jack McGee as the long-suffering, side-lined husband and father ‘George’, both deliver fine performances – balancing out the cast of fascinating (and somewhat unexpectedly hilarious) characters who ensure that The Fighter is an engrossing, rites of passage experience.

Beautifully shot by Let the Right One In cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema and brilliantly edited by Pamela Martin (Little Miss Sunshine), this is one occasion where it is not difficult to understand how a film came to be nominated for seven of this year’s Academy Awards (including nods for Bale, Leo, Adams and Best Picture). If only there was an Oscar for Best Hairdressing.

Pictured, left to right: Mark Wahlberg, Jack McGee, Melissa Leo and Christian Bale in The Fighter.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.