I just want to be a man who’s been to a concert with a girl in a red dress.

Me Before You

(2016)

(SPOILERS) Me Before You makes for a surprisingly not insufferable tragi-romance, although that’s largely down to the winning performances of Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin. An adaption of Jojo Moyles novel of the same name, by Moyles herself and directed by Thea Sharrock, this tale of a quadriplegic bent on going through with assisted suicide suffers from the combination of tackling difficult subject matter but making it accessible, with the result that it ends up being just another tearjerker.

Part of the problem is that debut feature director Sharrock has diligently thumbed through the romcom 101 rule book for every single choice or decision. Enormous signs hang over each ringingly obvious heartbroken or affirmative musical cue that can be timed to turn up on the soundtrack every five minutes, most brazenly in requisite by-the-numbers montage sequences. Of the latter, the most insufferable finds Clarke’s Lou Clark, in a bid to produce a “reconsider your options” bucket list showing how liveable life is – look how well that worked out for Freeman and Nicholson – thumbing through brochures, books and the Internet for activities to distract Claflin’s Will Traynor from his suicide fixation.

Obviously, grouchy Will (“I don’t do anything, Miss Clarke. I sit, and just about exist”) is going to be slowly warmed up by life-loving Lou, and before long he’s showing her subtitled films, trundling around and about, going to the races, to orchestral recitals, her birthday (much to the annoyance of her boyfriend, Matthew Lewis) and even the wedding of his ex, where the two admit their feelings for each other and promptly take a holiday in Mauritius.

But alas, poor Lou discovers Will’s intentions have not changed, and he still wants to head for Switzerland. There’s been criticism that Me Before You romanticises and condones Will’s third act decision and is consequently irresponsible and insulting to all those who live with disabilities, don’t opt to “take the easy way out” and don’t see life as a terrible burden that can only be alleviated by ending it all. That’s a fair position to take if you see movies as morally obliged to advocate the correct and most positive viewpoint in every scenario. Otherwise, it’s ridiculous, and you should tell the story you’re inspired to tell, and trust your audience is mature enough to recognise that one character making the "wrong" decision is not necessarily an endorsement or recommendation to everyone in that situation. Really, it shouldn’t need saying, but it’s the common problem whenever something in the arts is tarred with the brush of responsibility to society as a whole, leapt upon by a media keen to blur the lines between fact and fiction.

For my part, I didn’t take away that Will’s decision as noble or honourable (“I can’t be the kind of man who just accepts this, I don’t want you to miss all the things I can’t give you”), although more emotionally fragile audience members might see it that way. The problem with the movie is that, by its final reel, it has become so sodden with didactic, emotionally bowel-moving dirges, it eschews much resonance at all. Another sugar-coated Hollywood weepie, shamelessly manipulative and heartstring pulling, which eventually becomes a bit wearing.

As noted, however, Claflin and Clarke who make this work as well as it does, and at times they’re so good you nearly forget that you’re being played like a violin. Particularly Clarke, who can come across as a bit wooden elsewhere (Game of Thrones, anyone? Mentioning Terminator: Genisys would be plain unfair) Also on hand are Charles Dance in a surprise nice guy dad role, Janet McTeer, who finds much more in Will’s mum than there is on the page, Jenna “Clara” Coleman as Lou’s sister and Joanna Lumley as a wise soul at a wedding. Steve Peacocke’s also hugely sympathetic as Nathan’s carer.

Watching beautiful people die tragically but gorgeously (Love Story, Dying Young) is a Hollywood staple, and they rarely make particularly good movies, feeding on their intended audience’s most self-indulgent, sentimental impulses, so Me Before You’s kind of lucky that it’s as unobjectionable as it is.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

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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…

You’re never the same man twice.

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)
(SPOILERS) Roger Moore playing dual roles? It sounds like an unintentionally amusing prospect for audiences accustomed to the actor’s “Raise an eyebrow” method of acting. Consequently, this post-Saint pre-Bond role (in which he does offer some notable eyebrow acting) is more of a curiosity for the quality of Sir Rog’s performance than the out-there premise that can’t quite sustain the picture’s running time. It is telling that the same story was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents 15 years earlier, since the uncanny idea at its core feels like a much better fit for a trim 50 minute anthology series.

Basil Dearden directs, and co-adapted the screenplay from Anthony Armstrong’s novel The Strange Case of Mr Pelham. Dearden started out with Ealing, helming several Will Hay pictures and a segment of Dead of Night (one might imagine a shortened version of this tale ending up there, or in any of the portmanteau horrors that arrived in the year…

Romulan ale should be illegal.

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
(SPOILERS) Out of the ST:NG movies, Star Trek: Nemesis seems to provoke the most outrage among fans, the reasons mostly appearing to boil down to continuity and character work. In the case of the former, while I can appreciate the beef, I’m not enough of an aficionado to get too worked up. In the case of the latter, well, the less of the strained inter-relationships between this bunch that make it to the screen, the better (director Stuart Baird reportedly cut more than fifty minutes from the picture, most of it relating to underscoring the crew, leading to a quip by Stewart that while an Actor’s Cut would include the excised footage, a Director’s one would probably be even shorter). Even being largely unswayed by such concerns, though, Nemesis isn’t very good. It wants to hit the same kind of dramatic high notes as The Wrath of Khan (naturally, it’s always bloody Khan) but repeatedly drifts into an out-of-tune dirge.

‘Cos I’m the gringo who always delivers.

American Made (2017)
(SPOILERS) This is definitely more the sort of thing Tom Cruise should be doing, a movie that relies both on his boyish™ charm and at least has pretensions of ever so slightly pushing the envelope of standard multiplex fare, rather than desperately attaching himself to an impersonal franchise (The Mummy) or flailingly attempting to kick start one (Jack Reacher: Never Go Back); remember when Cruise wouldn’t even go near sequels (for about 20 years, The Color of Money aside, and then only the one series)? American Made is still victim to the tendency of his movies to feel superstar-fitted rather than remaining as punchy as they might be on paper (Made’s never quite as satirically sharp as it wants to be), but it at least doesn’t lead its audience by the nose.

Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved. Rejoice.

Split (2016)
(SPOILERS) M Night Shyamalan went from the toast of twist-based filmmaking to a one-trick pony to the object of abject ridicule in the space of only a couple of pictures: quite a feat. Along the way, I’ve managed to miss several of his pictures, including his last, The Visit, regarded as something of a re-locating of his footing in the low budget horror arena. Split continues that genre readjustment, another Blumhouse production, one that also manages to bridge the gap with the fare that made him famous. But it’s a thematically uneasy film, marrying shlock and serious subject matter in ways that don’t always quite gel.

Shyamalan has seized on a horror staple – nubile teenage girls in peril, prey to a psychotic antagonist – and, no doubt with the best intentions, attempted to warp it. But, in so doing, he has dragged in themes and threads from other, more meritable fare, with the consequence that, in the end, the conflicting positions rather subvert his attempts at subversion…

By Jove, the natives are restless tonight.

The Avengers 4.17: Small Game for Big Hunters
I wonder if Death at Bargain Prices’ camping scene, suggestive of an exotic clime but based in a department store, was an inspiration for Small Game For Big Hunters’ more protracted excursion to the African country of Kalaya… in Hertfordshire. Gerry O’Hara, in his second of two episodes for the show again delivers on the atmosphere, making the most of Philip Levene’s teleplay.

Old Boggy walks on Lammas Eve.

Jeeves and Wooster 2.5: Kidnapped (aka The Mysterious Stranger)
Kidnapped continues the saga of Chuffnell Hall. Having said of 2.4 that the best Wodehouse adaptations tend to stick closely to the text, this one is an exception that proves the rule, diverging significantly yet still scoring with its highly preposterous additions.

Jeeves: Tis old boggy. He be abroad tonight. He be heading for the railway station.
Gone are many of the imbroglios involving Stoker and Glossop (the estimable Roger Brierley), including the contesting of the former’s uncle’s will. Also gone, sadly, is the inebriated Brinkley throwing potatoes at Stoker, which surely would have been enormous fun. Instead, we concentrate on Bertie being locked aboard Stoker’s yacht in order to secure his marriage to Pauline (as per the novel), Chuffy tailing Pauline in disguise (so there’s a different/additional reason for Stoker to believe Bertie and she spent the night together, this time at a pub en route to Chufnell Hall) and …

I think we’ve returned to Eden. Surely this is how the World once was in the beginning of time.

1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)
Ridley Scott’s first historical epic (The Duellists was his first historical, and his first feature, but hardly an epic) is also one of his least remembered films. It bombed at the box office (as did the year’s other attempted cash-ins on the discovery of America, including Superman: The Movie producers the Salkinds’ Christopher Columbus: The Discovery) and met with a less than rapturous response from critics. Such shunning is undeserved, as 1492: Conquest of Paradise is a richer and more thought-provoking experience than both the avowedly lowbrow Gladiator and the re-evaluated-but-still-so-so director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven. It may stand guilty of presenting an overly sympathetic portrait of Columbus, but it isn’t shy about pressing a critical stance on his legacy.

Sanchez: The truth is, that he now presides over a state of chaos, of degradation, and of madness. From the beginning, Columbus proved himself completely incapable of ruling these islands…

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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