Friday’s Film Reviews

This week, we review computer-animated romp Penguins Of Madagascar, Bill Murray stars in bittersweet comedy St Vincent, Jude Law plays a submarine captain in thriller Black Sea, dysfunctional families in Men, Women & Children, a father vows to save Christmas in Get Santa and subterranean horror The Pyramid.

Friday’s Film Reviews

St Vincent

A modern-day Scrooge is moved by the plight of a young boy in Theodore Melfi’s touching and frequently uproarious comedy.

There are neither jingling bells nor ghostly visitations in St Vincent – the only spirits are swigged from a bottle – but Dickens’ underlying theme of the redemption of the human spirit rings true in this valentine to Bill Murray.

The Oscar-nominated star of Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day and Lost In Translation is in riotous form in Melfi’s delightful film, deploying split-second comic timing to devastating effect as he reveals a beating heart of gold beneath the shambolic appearance of his penny-pinching curmudgeon.

His irascible old coot might gamble, smoke and drink to excess, and seek physical pleasure in the company of a heavily pregnant Russian prostitute, but we fall head over heels for Murray’s virtuoso portrayal and it’s a love affair that endures the film’s occasional lull or sloppy characterisation.

Newcomer Jaeden Lieberher is magnificent as the spirited tyke, whose innocence and unwavering faith provide a beacon of hope for the self-destructive codger to stumble back into the land of the living.

Writer-director Melfi wrings us dry of laughter and tears in the process.

St Vincent is anchored by Murray’s award-worthy performance, but supporting cast is equally impressive, often in underwritten roles.

Melissa McCarthy abandons her usual schtick to embody a mother in crisis and Naomi Watts plies a thick cod-eastern European accent as the working girl looking for a break.

Chris O’Dowd scene-steals with aplomb as a holy man with heavenly quips: “I’m a Catholic, which is the best religion because we have the most rules.”

Aided by a leading man in rude health, writer-director Melfi doesn’t slather on the sentimentality too thick as he exposes glimmers of hope for each dysfunctional character and encourages them to walk towards the light comedy.

Star Rating: 4/5

RottenTomatoes.com Rating: 76%

Penguins Of Madagascar

Birds of a feather somersault, karate kick and bicker together in Eric Darnell and Simon J Smith’s misfiring computer-animated spin-off from the Madagascar films.

Frenetic and fast-paced, Penguins Of Madagascar initially sketches the back story of the four plucky Antarctic critters with a beak for adventure through the lens of a documentary film crew, who are keen to observe the flightless birds in their treacherous natural habitat.

The script soon fast-forwards to the conclusion of Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted and literally blasts the penguins into an outlandish spy caper replete with a menagerie of animal co-stars that should be a merchandiser’s dream this Christmas.

The colour-saturated animation is a feast for the eyes and there are a few neat visual gags such as the penguins’ novel approach to navigating a zebra crossing undetected.

However, the four lead characters, who are boundlessly charming in small doses as sidekicks, grate slightly as heroes of their own half-baked story.

Hopefully the adorable Minions from the Despicable Me series will dodge a similar fate when they graduate to the limelight in a self-titled feature next summer.

Penguins Of Madagascar exhibits a similar lack of invention as the films which gave birth to Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private.

Brine’s master plan for global domination bears an uncanny resemblance to events in Despicable Me 2 and the underlying message of tolerance and acceptance has been preached countless times before.

“If we’ve learned anything on this delightful adventure, it’s that looks don’t matter. It’s what you do that counts,” declares Skipper.

A running joke involving celebrity names in one character’s dialogue is a cute flourish but certainly not enough for these penguins to defy evolution and effortlessly take flight.

Star Rating:

RottenTomatoes.com Rating: 72%

Get Santa

After the nightmare before Christmas of Nativity 3: Dude, Where’s My Donkey?!, it seemed like we were in for tidings of discomfort and joylessness.

Thankfully, Christopher Smith’s festive fable lifts the gloom with a predictable yet magical tale of a fractured family, which is reunited by the power of the season.

The writer-director is evidently a huge fan of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, crafting an uplifting resolution that is strongly reminiscent of Spielberg’s classic, including a swollen orchestral crescendo that should perhaps be entitled An Unabashed Ode To John Williams.

Get Santa might not scale the dizzy heights of the 1982 film it hopes to emulate, but what Smith’s script lacks in subtlety and sophistication, it makes up for in heart-warming sentiment and an abundance of wholesome cheer, plus a herd of flatulent reindeer guaranteed to have tykes giggling with glee.

Admittedly, there are moments when the tone becomes sickly sweet and threatens to send the audience into sugar shock but what is Christmas without garish excess?

Get Santa rests largely on the shoulders of newcomer Kit Connor and he’s a natural, sparking lovely on-screen rapport with Rafe Spall.

Jim Broadbent, who previously voiced Santa in the computer-animated jaunt Arthur Christmas, brings warmth and gravitas to his role.

Jodie Whittaker is shamefully underused, but Joanna Scanlan savours her limited screen time, channelling the villainous spirit of Pam Ferris in Roald Dahl’s Matilda.

Lapland sequences, which were shot in Yorkshire, benefit from splendid production design and some nifty digital effects to bring to life a glittering wonderland populated by Santa’s little helpers, who apparently cannot take flight because, “If we fly over 1,000 feet, we explode.”

An act of elf-destruction – you learn something new every day.

Star Rating: 3/5

RottenTomatoes.com Rating: 79%

Men, Women & Children

OMG, msg me m8, srsly!

Online social networking may have bridged cultural, racial and class divides at the swipe of a touch screen, but it has killed the art of conversation.

Complex, fragile thoughts are condensed into 140 characters and vicious rumours are circulated as undeniable fact behind the mask of an anonymous avatar.

The days when trolls were merely shaggy-haired creatures from Norse and Scandinavian mythology are, alas, long gone.

Men, Women & Children is a timely drama about a disparate community of parents and offspring, who are coming to terms with the grip that technology has on their ability to interact and communicate effectively.

No amount of smiley-faced emoticons or Like buttons can disguise the melancholy that lingers beneath every keystroke of writer-director Jason Reitman’s sixth feature, based on the book of the same name by Chad Kultgen.

There are few reasons to LOL in Reitman’s script, co-written by Erin Cressida Wilson: infidelity, angst, exploitation, pornography addiction, loneliness and self-harm abound.

This is a portrait of modern society: blemishes, warts, stretch marks and all.

IMHO, Men, Women & Children is an uneven drama about a world that has been enslaved rather than liberated by the technology at its grubby fingerprints.

Adult characters are malnourished and largely unsympathetic.

Their indiscretions only pique our interest when they impact directly on younger cast, who deliver GR8 performances.

Ansel Elgort, who made teenage girls swoon in The Fault In Our Stars, is particularly moving as a prodigal son struggling with abandonment and his on-screen romance with Kaitlyn Dever follows a credible and unexpected trajectory.

Fates of these sons and daughters stop us from saying TTFN to Reitman’s film before the two hours are up.

Star Rating: 3/5

RottenTomatoes.com Rating: 33%

Black Sea

In Disney’s 1989 animated film The Little Mermaid, Sebastian the crab performs a Calypso-style song to extol the simple pleasures of life beneath the waves.

“We in luck here, down in the muck here, under the sea,” croons the chirpy crustacean.

Alas, his underwater love doesn’t extend to the submarine crew of Kevin Macdonald’s thriller, who find themselves at each other’s throats during a potentially lucrative salvage operation in international waters.

From the moment one of the salty seadogs is described by comrades as a psychopath, there’s little doubt in our minds that copious blood will be spilt in the claustrophobic confines of a vintage Russian diesel tin can.

It’s hard to muster sympathy for the crew mates when they have knowingly invited an unhinged killing machine into a confined space with nowhere to hide.

Similarly, when another man starts wheezing and spluttering with a death rattle cough before the expedition has even begun, we start counting the minutes until the first burial at sea.

Black Sea stacks the odds against the characters, most of whom are little more than broadly sketched archetypes.

Jude Law’s thick Scottish accent is more ship-shape than the script.

Screenwriter Dennis Kelly, creator of the hit Channel 4 series Utopia, jettisons plausibility from the torpedo tubes early on.

He ties himself in sailing knots trying to work out if he is making a scabrous attack on corporate greed and globalisation, a redemption story of fathers and sons, or a simple nerve-frayed thriller.

Thankfully, he knows how to engineer taut set-pieces inside and out of the stricken submarine and director Macdonald effectively ratchets up tension with sparing use of digital special effects.

Star Rating:

RottenTomatoes.com Rating: 88%

The Pyramid

More than 100 pyramids have been unearthed in Egypt, many constructed as burial chambers for the pharaohs.

The size and architectural precision of these monuments is mind-boggling, not least the Pyramid Of Khufu at Giza, which rises majestically for more than 450 feet.

The legends of the pyramids and ancient Egyptian gods, immortalised vibrantly in hieroglyphs, are plundered for cheap shocks in Gregory Levasseur’s found-footage horror.

Shot predominantly through the lens of a documentary film crew, The Pyramid uses 2013 protests in Egypt as a queasy backdrop to the usual hoary array of screams in the dark and eviscerations.

Screenwriters Daniel Meersand and Nick Simon adopt a lax approach to credibility for the sake of nudging along the plot.

Thus, the leader of the expedition pointedly warns everyone, “Don’t touch anything,” then proceeds to caress every surface inside the pyramid and set off booby traps.

When the only escape route turns out to be a cylindrical shaft in the roof, one of the characters unexpectedly pipes up, “I’ve been rock climbing my entire life” to hastily explain why they can shimmy 30 feet upwards at the drop of a torch.

The Pyramid is a subterranean horror-by-numbers, which is woefully light on shocks, sympathetic characters or emotion.

O’Hare and Hinshaw essay bland heroes while Inbetweeners star Buckley provides fleeting comic relief.

His wisecracks are an irritation but Fitzie manages one flash of common sense when Miles leads the team into the bowels of the pyramid and the cameraman sarcastically grumbles, “Let’s go deeper into this hell hole, make it completely impossible for them to find our bodies!”

The gloomy setting allows workmanlike digital special effects to pass under the cover of darkness, where our interest is quickly dead and buried.

Star Rating: 2/5

RottenTomatoes.com Rating: 13%

In selected Cinemas…

The Grandmaster

Celebrated Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai (In The Mood For Love) becomes the latest filmmaker to document the life and times of martial arts grandmaster Ip Man, who famously mentored Bruce Lee.

This film traces the journey of Ip Man (Tony Leung) from his childhood in 1930s Foshan, where he began his training under master Chan Wah-Shun (Yuen Woo-ping), to his marriage to beautiful wife Zhang Yongcheng (Song Hye-kyo).

Peace is shattered when Gong Yutian (Wang Qingxiang), the martial arts grandmaster of northern China, anoints Ma San (Zhang Jin) as his heir and invites the south to choose an heir in response.

The southern masters elect Ip Man as their representative and prepare him for his showdown with the north.

RottenTomatoes.com Rating: 77%

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