I’m not a kangaroo, mate.

Rise of the Guardians

(2012)

I held a slim hope that this DreamWorks effort, a relative misfire at the box office, might diverge from their cookie cutter animation formula. I suppose it is less “laugh-a-minute” than usual, which is no bad thing when audiences are expected to lap up a Kung Fu Panda 2 that is impossible to differentiate from the original. But first time helmer Peter Ramsey has nothing to fill that hole; the hook of Rise of the Guardians is all there is to it. Once you’ve seen the poster’s character line-up you don’t actually need to see the movie. Most likely a much better version will have already played out in your head.

Guillermo Del Toro is on-board as DreamWorks animation’s executive producer these days, presumably in charge of making it a-little-bit-but-not-too scary and injecting a-little-bit-but-not-too-much atmosphere. You’d certainly be hard-pressed to divine his sensibility at work (God knows what he claims his contribution to Turbo was). This is the blandest version of “dark and moody and poetic” conceivable (to use his proclamation for the picture). Yes, some of the design elements are quite neat. Well, Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Sandman are (the latter looks like a more docile Toby Jones). There’s a conscious decision to ground some of the aesthetics with a foot in the past, a Nordic 19^th century children’s story by way of CGI gimmickry. Unfortunately, the main human characters are as generic as they come.

Jack Frost is the lead; he’s the hero in search of his past, and his purpose. None of the kids he brings joy to can see him, and it makes him sad Shrek. Inevitably, self discovery and the little scamps noticing him go hand in hand.

David Lindsay-Abaire (who also worked on the less than remarkable Robots and Oz the Great and Powerful) is adapting a story by William Joyce (who was a producer on Robots, and also wrote the book Epic was based on) and ensures every character and plot beat has the distinctive flavour of processed cheese. The one source of inspiration, admittedly an okay one, is the idea of making a super team of familiar fairy tale characters (Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Sandman, the Tooth Fairy, Jack Frost). Inspired in a not dissimilar manner to Alan Moore and his super team of Victorian freaks in the Extraordinary League of Gentlemen. Like the film version of that comic book, Guardians is rendered as a series of deeply generic set pieces and stand-offs against a deeply uninteresting villain.

The bad guy is Pitch Black (Jude Law), the Boogeyman, who isn’t remotely scary (scary isn’t really DreamWorks’ forte, and I doubt that Del Toro will be able to make much headway there) and comes across like a bargain basement Odin. Law gives a miscast vocal performance and is unable to provoke any interest in Pitch’s pedestrian goal of divesting the world of children’s belief in the Guardians (that’s the five mentioned, with Jack a recent addition). You can see where it’s heading; sugary-yet-cynical messages about the power of belief culminating in Jack discovering his place in the world and the bairns seeing off Pitch (cos everyone’s a hero, even the cowardly kids!) Far too much attention is paid to showing off the moppet characters, a frequent mistake of animators who cluelessly assume kids want to see kids acting like kids in movies.

DreamWorks would get points for trying if only they hadn’t got hold of something a bit different and tried to shove it through their studio blender. Weird failures are at least interesting (Disney’s early ‘80s “dark” period, for example). But this has nothing. It’s diluted through and through. Chris Pine, who is generally quite decent, barely registers as Frost, so his limp lead is an appropriate match for Law’s weak villain. Isla Fisher does better as the Tooth Fairy, and her character has a slightly pixieish Jane Wiedlin quality. But only Alec Baldwin, as an unrecognisably Russkie Santa (called North) given to using famous composers as expletives, and Hugh Jackman, as a great goofy Easter Bunnymund, offer a taste of what this might have been. Alexandre Desplat’s limp score follows the general course, hitting all the predictable notes.

There was probably something truly weird and interesting to be made from this concept, rather than a movie where four super mythic characters team up to deliver Easter eggs or exchange money for teeth. Every punch is pulled; there’s a moment where all the faithless kids, who now experience nightmares, have become fearful and haggard, but this isn’t a picture to actually show such terrors as anything other than tangible anthropomorphic (safe) creatures. I know, it’s a kids’ movie. You can’t go too far. But that doesn’t mean running nervously from anything imaginative. Rise of the Guardians is mostly witless and uninventive. Ideally this would have been some kind of twisted CGI toon, making capital from its embrace of pagan mythology; Terry Gilliam by way of Jan Svankmejer. Instead, it is utterly safe and generic.

And so I come back to the lack of laughs; there isn’t nearly enough of Jackman’s comedy bunny to distract from everything else that isn’t going on (predictable comedy characters are often the saving grace of even the weakest Disney or DW animations). Still, there’s nothing quite like a movie made to a soulless formula asking kids to believe in magic.

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

Quiz Show (1994) (SPOILERS) Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets ), but it lacks that something extra that pushes it into truly memorable territory.

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

Other monks will meet their deaths here. And they too will have blackened fingers. And blackened tongues.

The Name of the Rose (1986) (SPOILERS) Umberto Eco wasn’t awfully impressed by Jean Jacques-Annaud’s adaptation of his novel – or “ palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s novel ” as the opening titles announce – to the extent that he nixed further movie versions of his work. Later, he amended that view, calling it “ a nice movie ”. He also, for balance, labelled The Name of the Rose his worst novel – “ I hate this book and I hope you hate it too ”. Essentially, he was begrudging its renown at the expense of his later “ superior ” novels. I didn’t hate the novel, although I do prefer the movie, probably because I saw it first and it was everything I wanted from a medieval Sherlock Holmes movie set in a monastery and devoted to forbidden books, knowledge and opinions.

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Watership Down (1978) (SPOILERS) I only read Watership Down recently, despite having loved the film from the first, and I was immediately impressed with how faithful, albeit inevitably compacted, Martin Rosen’s adaptation is. It manages to translate the lyrical, mythic and metaphysical qualities of Richard Adams’ novel without succumbing to dumbing down or the urge to cater for a broader or younger audience. It may be true that parents are the ones who get most concerned over the more disturbing elements of the picture but, given the maturity of the content, it remains a surprise that, as with 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may on the face of it seem like an odd bedfellow), this doesn’t garner a PG certificate. As the makers noted, Watership Down is at least in part an Exodus story, but the biblical implications extend beyond Hazel merely leading his fluffle to the titular promised land. There is a prevalent spiritual dimension to this rabbit universe, one very much

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983) (SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm ’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. T

You ever heard the saying, “Don’t rob the bank across from the diner that has the best donuts in three counties”?

2 Guns (2013) (SPOILERS) Denzel Washington is such a reliable performer, that it can get a bit boring. You end up knowing every gesture or inflection in advance, whether he’s playing a good guy or a bad guy. And his films are generally at least half decent, so you end up seeing them. Even in Flight (or perhaps especially in Flight ; just watch him chugging down that vodka) where he’s giving it his Oscar-nominatable best, he seems too familiar. I think it may be because he’s an actor who is more effective the less he does. In 2 Guns he’s not doing less, but sometimes it seems like it. That’s because the last person I’d ever expect blows him off the screen; Mark Wahlberg.

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

Maybe the dingo ate your baby.

Seinfeld 2.9: The Stranded The Premise George and Elaine are stranded at a party in Long Island, with a disgruntled hostess.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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