Leap Year

In 1930, a screening of Smiling Irish Eyes in The Savoy cinema was interrupted when a group of students voiced their protest against this romantic comedy populated by stereotypes, which in their mind surmounted to ‘a travesty of the Irish life and an insult to Irish people’. The film received its fair share of criticism and coupled with the demonstration saw the swift cancellation of its run. In 2010, we get Leap Year. If only history were to repeat itself.

Now, we all know how common it is in keeping with Irish tradition that a woman can take the opportunity once every four years and propose to a man on the 29th of February. Leap Year presents the tale of one of the millions of lucky women who have this once-every-four-year opportunity. Amy Adams is Anna Brady, whose snobbish, blackberry-addicted materialistic posturing life is meaningless without a ring on her finger. When her lizard-looking boyfriend fails to pop the question and heads off to Dublin, ‘Ayerland’, for a convention, Anna decides to take matters into her own hands and follow him to the emerald isle so that she can demand his hand in marriage on that magical day that is the 29th of February. Sadly, on this moronic premise a film was made – a romantic comedy that is neither.


Leap Year ineptly contrives hubby-hungry, Dublin-bound Amy to leave the US and land in Wales (what?!), take a boat to Dingle (what?!) and secure the escort services of local barman with alien accent Declan (Matthew Goode) to get her to Dublin in 3 days (what?!). The gruff loutish rogue and the stuck-up prissy damsel take an instant dislike to each other - what could possibly happen? From here on in, we’re presented with ludicrous stereotypes of a retrograde Ireland as the pair set off from Dingle to Dublin and get into cockamamie scrapes that see our Declan win the heart of Amy and show her what real life and true love is (if only the poptabulous music combo Foreigner had had Declan when they sang that poignant song of longing in the ’80s).

The entire film seems to be the product of a random generator of Irish stereotypes thrown on top of a trite romcom story cobbled together by witless dullards. Stand forward writers Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont (begetters of The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas). On top of the crude representation of Ireland, there is also the feebleminded portrayal of a the foolish posturings of a modern woman. Is there really a need in 2010 for a film that tells the story of an uptight, stuck-up narcissist who is shown the error of her ways by a brutish rogue by undergoing a series of ritual humiliations that are more offensive than funny?

There are some mind numbing scenes of bewildering incredulity; not least the squirmingly contrived first kiss scene, and a script that beggars belief. At the stage when Anna drunkenly tells Declan that he’s a big lion with a thorn in his paw, you know it’s time to hunt down every copy of this film and destroy it – future generations will thank us.

The sloppy script and narrative set-ups assimilate any talent Amy Adams attempts to bring to proceedings. What can Adams do? A likeable actress at the best of times. She has screen presence but cannot breathe life into this corpse of a movie. She tries. Imagine the Monty Python ‘Dead Parrot’ sketch. Amy Adams is Michael Palin, the shopkeeper, trying his best to convince that there’s some sort of life in the parrot. And the audience is John Cleese protesting the shopkeeper’s claims that there are signs of life. Now, imagine that the film is the parrot: ‘This film is dead. This film is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker This is a late film. It's a stiff. Bereft of life. It rests in peace. Its metabolical processes are of interest only to historians. It's kicked the bucket. It's shuffled off this mortal coil. It's run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-film.’

I feel better now.

Betty Boop as Snow White

Max & Dave Fleischer (1933)

Ponyo

Hayao Miyazaki began his career with the 1971 anime series Lupin III, based on Kazuhiko Kato’s manga series. Since then, Miyazaki has been the creative force behind more than 20 animated works. Princess Mononoke finally brought him to the attention of the West in 1997 after years of success in his native Japan. He is probably best known for the enchanting Spirited Away, which became the first anime film to win an Oscar® in 2002.

While he has flirted with computer-generated imagery in the past, Miyazaki’s latest film, Ponyo, marks a full-blooded return to hand-drawn animation. While not his best film, Ponyo still is a visually lush work of simple beauty.

Ponyo tells the tale of the titular fish creature who gets herself trapped in a jam jar and is washed up and discovered by 5-year-old Sosuke. After Sosuke cares for her, Ponyo discovers she has magic powers (and a sudden urge to eat ham). When Ponyo is returned to the fish kingdom, she decides to use her magic to escape and become human so that she may be with Sosuke. But with this shift in the balance of nature comes consequences.

The story allows for some gorgeously animated scenes of visual imagination, particularly the underwater scenes crafted as bizarre seascapes populated with magical creatures and the scenes featuring the swirling storms that put our heroes in peril. The pixelless worlds that Miyazaki creates are lush and hypnotic visions of beauty and extend beyond any narrative shortcomings that may exist to raise the experience of the film towards a purer aesthetic pleasure.

Ponyo is a delightful and thoroughly engaging film embracing the joy of imagination and the energy of delight. The imagination works best at its simplest – hence its richness in children – uncluttered and honest, seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Such fantasy remains the strength behind Miyazaki’s work.

Green Thumb

Hong Kong Phooey (1974)

The Lovely Bones

There is coldness at the heart of Peter Jackson’s new film as he presents his unappealing, vacuous, schmaltzy interpretation of a teenage girl’s afterlife alongside her abduction, rape and murder. It is a stomach-churning conflation of emotions that send out far too many mixed signals throughout the film.

Saoirse Ronan plays Susie Salmon, a teenage girl in 1970’s white, picket-fence, suburban America, who is the victim of a heinous crime. After her murder, she finds herself in an after-life limbo where she staggers between her fantasies of lollipops, fashion, make-up and pop music with her other serial-killer-victim friends and her need to find closure for her and her family and expose her killer. Ok. New dress and a boogie? Find closure and expose killer? Oh, what to do?…

And so with the murder dealt with early on, The Lovely Bones proceeds to present the audience with the spectacle of Peter Jackson’s interpretation of an adolescent’s afterlife, as Salmon looks down on her mourning family from above. The film jars between both worlds. The special effects deployed to showcase Salmon’s afterlife fantasy world where everything is fine (all thanks to being brutally murdered) sees Jackson lose the plot and mishandle an embarrassing display of tacky hogwash. The scenes are crassly manufactured and rather than the visual feast Jackson laid on for us in his Lord of the Rings trilogy, we are instead served crude slop.

The film does nothing to justify its 135-minute running time. It’s all a bit of a mess - on earth as it is limbo - with its awkward pacing, inconsequential supporting characters, unexplained and illogical actions, and an amazing ability to ignore the bleedin’ obvious. The story stumbles around the place crying out for the support of a better editor. The ending of the film is stretched out over a number of half-baked resolutions and descends into farce. And I have to mention that at one point Jackson steals David Lynch’s use of This Mortal Coil’s beautiful ‘Song to the Siren’. What for Lynch was a paean to unfulfilled desire becomes for Jackson a maudlin dirge for group hugs.

On the one plus side, Saoirse Ronan puts in a staggeringly emotive performance and consistently demonstrates the strengths of her acting talents. She elevates the material above the crass schlock it operates as. Apart from her performance, this film has Stanley Tucci playing the bespectacled, balding, neighbourhood weirdo with a performance straight from ‘Pervs R Us’ that Hollywood has produced so many times in its usual unsubtle way (God knows why he was nominated for an Oscar®). Mark Wahlberg has mastered the art of forehead acting and his cracking-up, vengeful father never rises beyond his limitations as an actor. Rachel Weisz gives nothing and seems to want nothing from the film; indeed she disappears from the family home at some stage. Susan Sarandon camps it up as the boozy jive-talking mother in her grating comic cameo role that merely adds to the whole distasteful tone of the film.

Hard to believe The Lovely Bones comes from the same director behind Heavenly Creatures. Whereas one is a fiendishly enchanting and imaginative exploration of adolescence; the other is nothing short of tasteless drivel. Perhaps David St. Hubbins was right in This is Spinal Tap when he said, ‘It's such a fine line between stupid and clever’.

Lumière et compagnie

David Lynch (1995)

The Wolfman

The chequered history of the making of The Wolfman has gone through a similar transformation as the full-mooned, hirsute beast himself. The film’s original director Mark Romanek headed for the moors just before shooting began and was never seen again. Scripts were slashed and rewritten, and Jumanji’s Joe Johnston appeared and took over the picture. Reshoots followed and the release date was rescheduled to allow for a last-minute re-edit. All of this shows on the screen as The Wolfman comes across as a pieced-together film of disjointed scenes with glaring tonal shifts that makes for unsatisfactory viewing. All sewn together like Frankenstein’s monster.

The film stays close to George Waggner’s 1941 The Wolfman, inspired by Curt Siodmak’s innovative writing and Lon Chaney Jnr.’s lead performance, but never comes near its suspense or charm.

Benicio Del Toro is surprisingly poor in the lead role of Lawrence, an American who returns to England to his father’s grand estate in 19th century Blackmoor, after his brother has been mysteriously clawed to death by a mysterious beast. There’s mystery afoot (or rather apaw). Lawrence promises his brother’s widow (Emily Blunt) that he’ll do everything in his power to get to the bottom of his death. Unfortunately this entails getting mangled by the mysterious beast; and so begins Lawrence’s moonlit walks on the wild side. Cue angry mob of villagers and ensuing carnage. All of this is presided over by Lawrence’ s father (Anthony Hopkins) – astronomer of the stars and wearer of luxurious bathrobes.

Del Toro abandons his usual mannerisms and plays it all as if his corset is too tight. His stiff delivery does the film no favours and the turgid dialogue doesn’t help matters. There’s no sense of the tragic hero in his performance. He never demonstrates the torment that comes with the knowledge of what is about to transpire. His anguish is more that of a kitten trying to catch running water, rather than that of a man riddled with werewolfitis. Anthony Hopkins does nothing more than make faces at the camera and reads through his lines with all the relish of a fast-food burger. Emily Blunt doesn’t do herself any favours and seems to traipse through the whole mess auditioning for the next Jane Austen adaptation.

The transformation scenes are uninvolving and serve no purpose other than to make you pine for the special effects of John Landis’ 1981 classic, An American Werewolf in London. The sequences are actually designed by the same make up effects wizard Rick Baker; but in this case rather than the fruits of physical labour being brought to the screen, it is all a bit of a CG unimpressive mess of cracking bones and sprouting hairs. The film resorts to loud sudden scares in an effort to fulfil its horror billing and lacks any subtlety or dramatic tension. When the wolfman is on the rampage, disembodied limbs fly about the screen and the camera stumbles around the place as if the director himself had been caught in the crossfire of slashing claws. The cross cut editing tries too hard to impress.

It’s all a bit too serious. The film labours under its pretentious airs and graces and takes itself far too seriously. Granted, the film has a high production value and certainly looks great. The moors that you should always ‘stay away from’, but never do, are a sumptuous feast and lit skilfully to heighten its eerie elegance. But it’s all let down by the sense of disappointment at what could have been.

If this film has any positive effects, its that it will encourage people to revisit Lon Chaney Jr. camping it up as the hapless victim of lycanthropy in the 1941 classic The Wolf Man

As for this 2010 version – more turkey than wolf. Howl? I nearly slashed the seats with my false fingernails.

Anémic Cinéma

Marcel Duchamp (1926)