Would you like a waffle, Mr. Harris?

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

(2011)

Frequently hilarious second sequel, and superior to Guantanamo Bay (which hit a “high” early on with the aeroplane/terrorist scene and a definite low with the unfunny stoned George W Bush impersonator). Harold is working in the city (protestors hold placards reading “Wall Street Sucks” and “Wall Street 2 Sucks Harder”) while Kumar is an out of work stoner (he was briefly employed by the White House, one of a number of witty in-jokes). Although estranged from each other, the quest for a Christmas tree forces them back together. It’s awash with the usual bad taste humour (including a baby getting higher and higher on progressively stronger drugs), really stupid 3D, and of course the return of Neil Patrick Harris (Gracie: Get off me! I thought you were gay! NPH: I am gay. Gay for that…)

Most inspired of all are Wafflebot (of whom more in a moment) and the casting of Danny Trejo as Harold’s father-in-law (Koreans killed his mother). Trejo is sublime as a Christmas obsessive who is repelled by faux-trees and wears a horrendous-yet-fantastically-unTrejo seasonal motif sweater. There’s even a montage sequence in which Trejo acts out Kumar’s comment “When he sees this beautiful tree he’s going to jizz all over it”. Also having fun in a hard man role is Elias Koteas as Russian gangster Sergei Katsov. The movie missteps on a few occasions; the Claymation sequence simply isn’t very good, and NPH in heaven is trying a little too hard to be inflammatory. However, the splendor of Wafflebot more than makes up for the odd shortcoming elsewhere. He’s utterly adorable. He loves waffles. And he fucking hates pancakes.

***1/2

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

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The Premise
Jerry employs a cleaner, the boyfriend of an author whose book Elaine is editing. He leaves the apartment spotless, but Jerry is convinced he has made off with a statue.

That living fossil ate my best friend!

The Meg (2018)
(SPOILERS) There’s a good chance that, unless you go in armed with ludicrously high expectations for the degree to which it's going to take the piss out of its premise, you'll have a good time with The Meg. This is unabashedly B-moviemaking, and if a finger of fault can be pointed, it's that director Jon Turteltaub, besides being a strictly functional filmmaker, does nothing to give it any personality beyond employing the services of the Stath. Obviously, though, the mere presence of the gravelly-larynxed one goes a long way to plugging the holes in any leaky vessel.

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Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
(SPOILERS) The cliffhanger sequel, as a phenomenon, is a relatively recent thing. Sure, we kind of saw it with The Empire Strikes Back – one of those "old" movies Peter Parker is so fond of – a consequence of George Lucas deliberately borrowing from the Republic serials of old, but he had no guarantee of being able to complete his trilogy; it was really Back to the Future that began the trend, and promptly drew a line under it for another decade. In more recent years, really starting with The Matrix – The Lord of the Rings stands apart as, post-Weinstein's involvement, fashioned that way from the ground up – shooting the second and third instalments back-to-back has become a thing, both more cost effective and ensuring audiences don’t have to endure an interminable wait for their anticipation to be sated. The flipside of not taking this path is an Allegiant, where greed gets the better of a studio (split a novel into two movie parts assuming a…

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Continuing a strong mid-season run, Brian Clemens rejigs one of the dissenting (and departing) Roger Marshall's scripts (hence "Brian Sheriff") and follows in the steps of the previous season's The Girl from Auntie by adding a topical-twist title (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum came out a year earlier). If this is one of those stories where you know from the first who's doing what to whom, the actual mechanism for the doing is a strong and engaging one, and it's pepped considerably by a supporting cast including one John Laurie (2.11: Death of a Great Dane, 3.2: Brief for Murder).

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Ghostbusters (2016)
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Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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