That bunch of bananostriches nearly split us!

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2

(2013)

(SPOILERS) Phil Lord and Chris Miller elected not to return as directors for this sequel (unlike with their other franchise, 20-something Jump Street), although they did contribute the storyline. Nothing about Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 suggests they spent more than 10 minutes brainstorming; if the first film saw them going for a disaster movie, here they take the lost continent/ unexplored island route. The result is visually much more inventive than its predecessor, but manages to be simultaneously both narratively formulaic and thematically confused.

Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn make their theatrical debut as directors, while the finished screenplay is credited to Erica Rivinoja (a staff writer on South Park, but more importantly on Lord and Miller’s Clone High), Jonathan Francis Daley and Jonathan M Goldstein (partners on Horrible Bosses and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, so a formidably average pair). Seven individuals contributing to the writing and directing is more than enough to come up with a complete mess, and to get to the point where they in desperation they decide to approve two “There’s a leak in the boat!” gags (it is funny the first time, but it’s the desperate comedian who repeats himself during an encore).

Cloudy 2 picks up directly after the original, unusual in itself for an animation, but any ground-breaking qualities end soon after. Flint Lockwood’s hero, master-inventor Chester V (Will Forte voicing a highly unsubtle riff on Steve Jobs), sends Flint and his chums to California. Chester, the CEO of Live Corp (Apple; Chester even unveils new improved versions of his famous food bar and has built “the coolest, hippest company in the world”) has been charged with cleaning up their island of Swallow Falls. This in itself has potential, running with the notion that science and business combined lead to untold pollution; Sallow Falls is treated like an oil spill of enormous food. Really, though, Chester just wants to get his mitts on Flint’s FLDSMDFR. Hampered by mutant food creatures (monster cheeseburgers in particular) Chester calls on Flint to find and destroy the FLDSMDFR (so Flint thinks). So it’s the big mean corporation up to no good, which is fine but the delivery is entirely half-hearted. There’s no relish to go with the rampant foodimals.

The transformed Swallow Falls is the best feature of the feature. Arriving in mysterious, overgrown land, the inspiration is clearly the mist-shrouded Skull Island and the Lost World (the Jurassic Park one, that is) complete with a technicolour explosion of assorted oddments of animal food hybrids. They probably needed the five writers to come up with the different medleys; shrimpanzees, cantelopes (okay, that’s good), water melonphants, bananostriches and guacodiles (there are also spring onion diplodocuses and hipotatoes); an entire ecosystem of living food. Which provides a solid series of sight gags, but there’s little else here. Flint’s enrapture with Chester (they were even both bullied at school) leads to him shunning his friends, leading to an awkward churning of sentimental drivel concerning the power of friendship; as with the first picture, none of this feels remotely genuine. It’s there because that’s what’s required of a family animation.

And yet, there are some very peculiar implications in all this. The vegetation gone sentient can only be seen as an allusion to GMOs (which Chester plans to put in his food bars because they’re extra tasty). Which makes Flint, as before, a really highly destructive force. One might suggest there’s a subversive streak, as the picture ends up at a point of protecting these foodimals from being skewered; “They are living creatures!” Perhaps the makers want kids to avoid GM food for sentimental reasons, since telling them it’s bad will do little to dissuade them. That’s clutching at straws, though. The very strange thing is that one moment anthropomorphised vegetables are a no-go area but the next Flint and his dad are killing fish in a father-son bonding session.

Accompanying wit and commentary are in short supply, aside from the lazy Apple material. This time, alternative fuel sources go no further than “a zero-emissions car that runs on cute”. There are a number of vulgar gags, the best of which is “Stand back – I’m going to cut the cheese” and the worst involve a baby strawberry shitting jam out of fright and Brent soiling his diaper. I appreciated the use of the Six Million Dollar Man sound effect. It can only be a matter of time before Lord and Miller remake it.

Given the four-year gap, one might expect more than a “churn it out” sequel but the original wasn’t really all that special in the first place. Cloudy 3 will no doubt be along in a couple of years. Hopefully there will be a bit more thought behind it, lest we get another movie where the subtext is that Monsanto are the good guys and Apple are the bad ones (the pendulum may be swinging against the latter, but such a take on the former beggars belief).

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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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Aladdin (2019)
(SPOILERS) I was never overly enamoured by the early ‘90s renaissance of Disney animation, so the raves over Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin left me fairly unphased. On the plus side, that means I came to this live action version fairly fresh (prince); not quite a whole new world but sufficiently unversed in the legend to appreciate it as its own thing. And for the most part, Aladdin can be considered a moderate success. There may not be a whole lot of competition for that crown (I’d give the prize to Pete’s Dragon, except that it was always part-live action), but this one sits fairly comfortably in the lead.

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Moonstruck (1987)
(SPOILERS) Moonstruck has the dubious honour of making it to the ninth spot in Premiere magazine’s 2006 list of the 20 Most Overrated Movies of all Time. There are certainly some valid entries (number one is, however, absurd), but I’m not sure that, despite its box office success and Oscar recognition, the picture has a sufficient profile to be labelled with that adjective. It’s a likeable, lightweight romantic comedy that can boast idiosyncratic casting in a key role, but it simply doesn’t endure quotably or as a classic couple matchup the way the titans of the genre (Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally) do. Even its magical motif is rather feeble.

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Captain Marvel (2019)
(SPOILERS) All superhero movies are formulaic to a greater or lesser degree. Mostly greater. The key to an actually great one – or just a pretty good one – is making that a virtue, rather than something you’re conscious of limiting the whole exercise. The irony of the last two stand-alone MCU pictures is that, while attempting to bring somewhat down-the-line progressive cachet to the series, they’ve delivered rather pedestrian results. Of course, that didn’t dim Black Panther’s cultural cachet (and what do I know, swathes of people also profess to loving it), and Captain Marvel has hit half a billion in its first few days – it seems that, unless you’re poor unloved Ant-Man, an easy $1bn is the new $700m for the MCU – but neither’s protagonist really made that all-important iconic impact.

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Million Dollar Baby (2004)
(SPOILERS) I’d like to be able to say it was beyond me how Clint’s misery-porn fest hoodwinked critics and the Academy alike, leading to his second Best Picture and Director double Oscar win. Such feting would naturally lead you to assume Million Dollar Baby was in the same league as Unforgiven, when it really has more in common with The Mule, only the latter is likeably lightweight and nonchalant in its aspirations. This picture has buckled beneath the burden of self-appointed weighty themes and profound musings, which only serve to highlight how crass and manipulative it is.

You're reading a comic book? What are you, retarded?

Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut (2009)
(SPOILERS) It’s a decade since the holy grail of comic books finally fought through decades of development hell to land on the big screen, via Zach Snyder’s faithful but not faithful enough for the devoted adaptation. Many then held the director’s skills with a much more open mind than they do now – following the ravages he has inflicted on the DCEU – coming as he was off the back of the well-received 300. Many subsequently held that his Watchmen, while visually impressive, had entirely missed the point (not least in some of its stylistic and aesthetic choices). I wouldn’t go that far – indeed, for a director whose bombastic approach is often only a few notches down from Michael Bay (who was, alarmingly, also considered to direct at one point), there are sequences in Watchmen that show tremendous sensitivity – but it’s certainly the case that, even or especially in its Ultimate Cut form and for all the furore the change to the end of the story provoked,…

I’d kill you too, Keanu. I’d kill you just for fun, even if I didn’t have to.

Always Be My Maybe (2019)
(SPOILERS) The pun-tastic title of this Netflix romcom is a fair indication of its affably undemanding attributes. An unapologetic riff on When Harry Met Sally, wherein childhood friends rather than college attendees finally agree the best thing to be is together, it’s resolutely determined to cover no new ground, all the way through to its positive compromise finale. That’s never a barrier to a good romcom, though – at their best, their charm is down to ploughing familiar furrows. Always Be My Maybe’s problem is that, decent comedy performers though the two leads may be – and co-writers with Michael Golamco – you don’t really care whether they get together or not. Which isn’t like When Harry Met Sally at all.

You're always sorry, Charles, and there's always a speech, but nobody cares anymore.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)
(SPOILERS) To credit its Rotten Tomatoes score (22%), you’d think X-Men: Dark Phoenix was a travesty that besmirched the name of all good and decent (read: MCU proper) superhero movies, or even last week’s underwhelming creature feature (Godzilla: King of Monsters has somehow reached 40%, despite being a lesser beast in every respect). Is the movie’s fate a self-fulfilling prophecy, what with delayed release dates and extensively reported reshoots? Were critics castigating a fait accompli turkey without giving it a chance? That would be presupposing they’re all sheep, though, and in fairness, other supposed write-offs havecome back from such a brink in the past (World War Z). Whatever the feelings of the majority, Dark Phoenix is actually a mostly okay (twelfth) instalment in the X-franchise – it’s exactly what you’d expect from an X-Men movie at this point, one without any real mojo left and a variable cast struggling to pull its weight. The third act is a bi…

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School for Scoundrels (1960)
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I should have mailed it to the Marx Brothers.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
When your hero(es) ride off into the sunset at the end of a film, it’s usually a pretty clear indication that a line is being drawn under their adventures. Sure, rumours surfaced during the ‘90s of various prospective screenplays for a fourth outing for the whip-cracking archeologist. But I’m dubious anyone really expected it to happen. There seemed to be a natural finality to Last Crusade that made the announcement of his 2007 return nostalgically welcome but otherwise unwarranted. That it turned out so tepid merely seemed like confirmation of what we already knew; Indy’s time was past.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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