I don’t quite know what to add to the last review (below)... I was amazed to find that I loved it as much the second time as the first – really only Kathy Bates’ last minute cameo is a little crappy to me, the rest is just mindbogglingly brilliant. What’s so amazing about this movie is the sheer number of styles and moods that cross the screen in rollercoaster succession. Frank Coraci deserves major praise for pulling this thing together. The use of virtual scenery and location shooting is beautiful. Steve Coogan is both funny and moving – the tiniest expression from him can so often be enough to make me burst into uncontrollable laughter – “This is what happens when you leave the house – you meet people!” The whole combination of action, comedy, drama, adventure, romance, just wows me.

29th June 2004:

I’ve got a whole heap of reviews before this to complete but this one is truly begging my brain to spill the beans. I simply can’t get over how much I enjoyed it. At one stage in the film I almost wanted to make it my favourite/best film of the year so far, and though I changed my mind on this point eventually (Vol. 2, Eternal Sunshine and Azkaban are all just too finely crafted for this), it’s still the most enjoyable and surprising movie experience I’ve had in 2004 – surprising in that I truly expected this movie to suck, despite loving Steve Coogan since The Parole Officer.

There are a plethora of British actor cameos (some surprising, some admittedly annoying, some, I’ve got to say, hysterical), line after quotable line and some beautifully animated interstitial sequences … and when I say that, I mean beautiful: I cannot wait to see this on the biggest screen possible.

Cecile De France is an amazing addition to the cast. She has the same energy as Audrey Hepburn did early on in her career. Her thrill at the sticky situations the threesome find themselves in is fascinating.

Even Arnold Schwartzenegger’s scene isn’t too hard to watch – “No! Anything but the statue of me!” – Sure, his accent’s the usual and he still unfortunately looks like Arnie which totally detracts from the movie’s extraordinary production design, but he still managed to make me laugh. That’s this movie in a nutshell really. No matter how far it lost me, it always managed to pull me back with great moment after great moment, be it a line, an animation, a great score moment by Trevor Jones, or, and I leave this till the last, Steve Coogan.

Steve Coogan plays Phileas Fogg, it must be said, the same as he plays anything. He makes Fogg his own and Fogg here is definitively Coogan. But can that not be said for any of the great leading men of cinema? For me, it seemed he played Fogg most like he played his character in The Parole Officer (I honestly half expected something like the, “No … that’s my … penis …” line towards the end here, such is the similarity in places – compare the arm on Arnie’s statue falling off in Coogan’s hand to The Parole Officer’s scene in the art museum …) Coogan is just a great comedy actor, and that’s all there is to it. The producers of the new Pink Panther have really missed a trick in not casting him as the new Clouseau, because he would’ve done a fantastic job. I originally thought Steve Martin would be great, and I still hold hope, but now I’ve realised how brilliant Coogan would’ve been, it’s going to be hard to get out of my head. Coogan is just a genius, and he makes this film what it is – something for crazy dreamers (like me, I’ll admit my bias) everywhere.

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