Again (sorry, I’m gonna have to say this on all 5 of these, some people might be coming to the individual review page …), it’s about a week since I saw this now so it won’t be the best of reviews, though most of it I wrote at the time.

I don’t know quite what to say of this because, yes, I won’t deny it made me laugh out loud a number of times. I think it’s more the unquestioning acceptance it seems to have gotten across the board (Total Film apparently called it a “labour of love” ... huh?) which made me feel somewhat cheated in the end. I probably love Jennifer Ellison more than anybody on the planet and hers are some of the lines that really gave me a kick; I’ll watch anything with one of the League of Gentlemen in and Reece Sheersmith doesn’t disappoint either; Andy Serkis is the icing on the cake and Doug Bradley’s name in the credits should really have me on the verge of climax.

But this is really about the most convoluted, unoriginal production I’ve seen in years, made even worse by the fact it feels at all turns as though the director really thought he had something unique, and somehow managed to convey that excitement to the cast to get them involved. I’ve been putting off watching the director’s debut London to Brighton for too long. I’m inclined after this to put it off even longer but I think actually I might have to watch it ASAP in the hope it’s as good as “they” say and might take the bad taste of this one out of my head. If it is that good, then truly, this is as bad a waste of British talent as the industry has seen these past 2 decades …

I’m not about to spoil this movie for you. The tagline for this movie is “What Makes Us Different Makes Us Beautiful”. It’s about Christina Ricci born with a snout instead of a nose. By the end of the movie, she has a normal nose. I really think that’s all I need to say but bear with me ‘cos I feel a rant coming on. Now, maybe with The Hottie and the Nottie going around those cinemas that can afford to show it, my nitpicks over movies like this and Enchanted having fairly depressing implications about society seem beyond nitpicky. But hey, if nobody else is gonna say it then I will; if I didn’t just say what came to mind while watching a movie then I wouldn’t write anything at all.

“I know this face repulses you,” Penelope (Christina Ricci) tells Max (James McAvoy complete with pointless US accent) ”... And I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t dream of asking you to accept it. But this isn’t me, the real me is inside here somewhere just waiting to get out and you can make that happen and once the curse is broken I’ll be just like anybody else.”

“What if the curse doesn’t get broken? What if the curse can never be broken?” Max replies.

“Then I’ll kill myself. I promise, I promise I will. Marry me, Max. Marry me.”

And there’s the rub. If you happened to like Enchanted, honestly, I couldn’t recommend a better double bill companion than Penelope more whole-heartedly. Personally, my luck amazes me that I resisted seeing both on my birthday in February because either one of them would, to be blunt, have put a damper on my day. Though this movie didn’t upset me quite as much as Enchanted did – duh, it’s Christina Ricci with a snout, frankly that alone is worth my 90 minutes – I spent all those 90 minutes, as I did in Enchanted, dreading how it all would end, hoping the film makers would explain why every man who looked upon The Nose had to jump through glass or cause a scene, why not one of them would even hesitate a moment and consider the rest of her. Is she supposed to look as grotesque as what these guys seem to be reacting to? In which case it’s bad casting and makeup, and I hope that’s the case. Otherwise, it really upsets me that apparently little girls across the land have gone cuckoo for this movie that is telling them this is what they should expect if they don’t look like Reese Witherspoon.

I’m sure I’m not just being my strange and kinky self … seriously, Christina Ricci with a snout is almost even cuter than just plain Christina Ricci. I know it’s a story and the movie would end pretty quick if someone just walked in the room and said, “Hey! Cute nose!” ... what I’m saying isn’t as simple as that at all and you maybe need to see the whole movie to get the full sweep of how badly I feel it’s handled, I don’t know … it just basically sat badly with me. Maybe it’s as dumb as I’ve a feeling my response to everyone so rapidly believing Briony in Atonement was … but when something doesn’t sit with me, it doesn’t sit with me: all I can do is share the response.

I don’t have as many problems with it as I do with Enchanted – that movie had its wonderful moments and this one has even more on top of the simple fact of the Ricciness who can really do little wrong in my book. Joby Talbot’s music is gorgeous, one of those scores that, if I still bought soundtrack CDs, I’d snap up in a flash. Peter Dinklage is always worth the watch – he has one of the more interesting lines in the movie, perhaps moreso coming from him, when he says, “She’s out there on her own. Declaring her independence.” It even makes me happy enough that Christina Ricci even chose to do a project like this, it’s the kind of thing that made me go psychocrazy over her all those years ago. It’s quirky, it’s silly, it’s particularly indie-spirited even while being particularly appealing to the mainstream by its sheer freakshow nature.

But I’m loathe to sound too enthusiastic about the whole thing, because the overall message of it really makes my tummy squirm – from Grease to She’s All That I’ve always been sick of movies that basically tell people, especially girls and women, “Hey! You don’t have to be beautiful on the outside! But it helps ...” and again, even though it comes from character and is a perfectly logical part of the movie, I have to say, the moment at the end here where Catherine O’Hara (being even more loathsome than she was in For Your Consideration) starts suggesting even more “work” on Penelope’s nose even when it’s back to human form, it actually almost made me feel physically sick. Given I’ll take any opportunity to tell people my own insane dreams of magical transformation, I know how this sentiment probably makes me a big hypocrit. I don’t know what to say to that. Maybe we’re all a little hypocritical sometimes, but with me these days honesty overrides everything, and like I said, this just did not sit with me.

As I’ve said on many an occasion: any movie that can get me in such a twist as this has gotta be worth the time somehow … it just depresses me if this is what it takes nowadays. It depresses me almost profoundly. Gimme Elphaba proudly getting in people’s faces with her green skin any day over this kind of thing. She had the good sense to leave the world entirely when it turned its back on her. Nobody should have to change to fit in. That Penelope’s transformation here comes right after and as a result of her own admission that she’s “happy the way she is” just adds insult to injury in my opinion.

“Oui! Oui! Bean! Sabine! Russ! Cannes!”

LOL

I don’t think there’s much to add to the first review of this but to say that the whole spectrum between the bad and the good parts of this widened exponentially for me on a second viewing. When it’s unfunny, it’s really pretty excruciating – the restaurant scene at the start, the “amuse the boy” scene on the train shortly thereafter, and the “falling asleep at the wheel” scene towards the end being amongst the most painful; but when it soars, like pretty much from the scene where Bean wakes in the middle of the movie set, the yellow mini approaching, and thereon to the end with him walking down to the beach – yes, even the sing-a-long – I found it even more joyful and beautiful than I did before.

I think the one disappointment most people will have over the movie is that, like the first movie in fact, it’s not just straight-up laughs like the TV show, and because of how bold they’ve been in doing it the same way (it only just struck me this time how many subtitles there are given this was a total Easter holidays movie last year for kids), there are unavoidably moments where it feels awkward (there are even moments like this in Mel Smith’s only slightly better first movie). If you come to it just wanting to smile at France, though, you really can’t go wrong. The boy’s tooo cute when he dresses as a girl too (sorry but I have to say these things sometimes – ok, all the time – lol)

May 16th, 2007:

I was sort of desperate to like this not only because I loved, really loved, Mel Smith’s Bean, but also ‘cos I’ve been informed my favourite cousin Fiona laughed her way all the way through this new installment over the Easter holidays. The reviews weren’t too promising, though …

The movie couldn’t begin better, it’s almost like it’s trying to win me over – Bean stops over and gets led astray in Paris and we get quite a nice video tour of the place – but after an excruciating restaurant scene (in which at least two old gags from the TV series threaten to resurface, and some business with mussels ends up just being plain unpleasant), I honestly thought I was going to go the way of Mark Kermode and wind up really being let down by the rest. But then Bean meets the boy, and there’s a scene on a train platform where he starts to mimic Bean, and what can I say, it just won me over in about 30 seconds.

Sure, you can look at the set-up and in this horrible world we live etc and say, ooh, creepy. Alternatively, you can see a simple-minded, foolish but harmless man and a young boy who ultimately thinks the world of him running around France getting in hijinks. I think there’s something really almost classical here, and if it doesn’t fit in with your dark view of the world, it’s a real shame I think. Rowan Atkinson and the kid work beyond adorably together, Howard Goodall’s music and Steve Bendelack’s direction really lift the whole thing and you can’t help coming out in the end feeling warm and fuzzy inside. Keep watching after the credits, too, btw, there’s a little bit of added cuteness.

Yes, the humour tires towards the end, but as with Bean, there is really more to this than the laughs. There’s this real sense of the camera trying to find the humanity in Bean, and when it finds it, it’s always kind of startling how easy it was. He’s a beautiful character when dealt with correctly, and this movie really didn’t let me down like I thought it would. The more I think about it, the more I want to see it again.

“Saaaay … would you like a chocolate covered pretzel? They’re a little melty, but boy are they exquisite.”

Another I thought I’d reviewed more recently than ‘04 The main thing I’d forgotten about this movie is Claire Forlani and Shannon Doherty. Throw in the short Joey Lauren Adams appearance and I think you’ve got at least the sexiest Kevin Smith movie if not the funniest. I didn’t exactly bring the house down on this viewing like the one below but there are tons of moments that still make me laugh out loud more than a lot of Smith’s output, which more often than not I like more for the emotional content than the humour. This one on the contrary is pretty much all about the funny – the ending is stirring in that cheesy Eighties way that it’s going for, but it’s not the deeper territory that Smith has, I don’t care what anyone else says, touched in his other movies. I still haven’t seen Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back since the review below – I seem to be avoiding it – I really don’t think it’s as consistently on the nose as this one, though. The Jay and Bob storyline here alone is worth seeing the movie for, Kevin Smith doing the cartoon acting, playing to the camera completely, arguably better than he’s done anywhere else. It’s often spoken of as a somehow lesser work of Smith’s but I think it might just be the most essential companion to any given one of the others.

June 10th, 2004:

I must’ve been numb the last time I saw this movie which is why I’m filing this under “Virgin Viewing,” because I damn near died laughing the night I watched it this time.

I’ll probably eat these words the next time I see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back because I’ll likely love that one on a second viewing just as much – but Mallrats is as funny as J&SB should have been.

Does it have a point, a story even? I could hardly tell you. But you have Silent Bob continuously busting in on Joey Lauren Adams trying to change, the poor fat guy trying to see the stereo image, “Oooh, a sailboat!” (“There is no Easter bunny!!”), Jay and Silent Bob beating up the Easter bunny, and plenty more.

Put it this way – if movies like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Exorcist can be described as, “an assault of horrors,” then Mallrats is an assault of comedy.

“The Dude abides …”

Just how cool can a movie be? The Big Lebowski after 10 years still never fails to make me laugh, nearly make me cry, and generally leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling and a resting heartbeat to slowdance to. I seem to have kept the gaps between viewings each time just about long enough that there are still surprises, scenes I adore but always forget about; it feels so fresh like only last week I was watching it for the first time, not nearly a decade.

I’m sure I must’ve written about it before in all that time, and maybe I wrote this too, but though it’s been squeezed through a hash-smoke filled funnel, the story is very “Big Sleep” and the like, the title of course reflecting that. Roger Deakins’ photography is so shiny, I don’t even know if you hear a single bowling shoe squeak on the alley floor but somehow you hear it anyway. The slo-mo, the music, the dream sequence and porno, there’s just so much here to enjoy for at least another 10 years and beyond. Absolutely one of my favourite Coen movies, and the perfect post-Oscar chillout movie, particularly of course this year.

“Oh! You have no idea what it’s like to be inside a body so much healthier than your own!”
“I know ... that’s what I was trying to find out last night ...”

You can rarely go wrong with a Steve Martin movie and this proves to be no exception, with the added element of a kinda-sorta gender swap (short summary: Lily Tomlin’s a rich woman at death’s door planning to leap into a younger woman’s body when the hour comes; something goes wrong and she ends up in Steve Martin) to appeal to someone like me. There’s little to say of it except it does what it says on the tin. I really loved the wrapping up of the younger woman’s story too

This is a whole lot more fun than expected. I mean, it’s fun enough for around the first half hour with Heath Ledger – I think between this and Brokeback Mountain in 2005 we have another acting masterclass to match Russell Crowe’s turns in 2000 in The Insider and Gladiator, I mean you couldn’t ask an actor to play more different roles more differently. But here Ledger is practically just icing on the cake once Jeremy Irons and “is that really?!?” Oliver Platt arrive. I’ve always thought Platt a brilliant actor, Simon Birch and Pieces of April most immediately come to mind … but I’ve never seen nor did I ever expect to see him as he is here, practically doing Timothy Spall better than Timothy Spall. It’s very funny, very fast-paced, and with a lot of interesting things to say about religion, censorship, and gender: in the latter’s case, importantly to me, never in ways that annoy. Definitely one I’ll watch again – and there aren’t many recent period movies I can say that of.

I really should hate this with all my heart. It’s yet another 2-hour comedy, like we needed more of those (to those who say negative reviews of movies like this are “missing the point” – one question: since when did points like this need 2 hours to make?!), and even though it’s Adam Sandler and I’ve fully warmed to him by now, the set-up just sounds as horrendous as it is. This movie sets about the entirely paradoxical task of making it okay to laugh about not only homosexuals but firemen again while still revering their heroism in the face of … blah.

I should be going into my whole gender stereotypes spiel/rant again here, but I’m not, and not just because I can’t be bothered anymore. I will repeat that it disturbs me massively that there are clearly vast numbers of people who think these movies portray some kind of status quo to aspire to – like, when Adam Sandler wakes to a “hot” nurse, and then is swarmed by Hooters girls outside the hospital, that this is like the height of fantasy for most men watching. And isn’t it hilarious that a little boy does the splits and plays with his sister’s easybake oven? “It’s so wrong!” ... but, no, really, it’s okay! Sigh. Make up your mind, guys.

But in the end, kind of like Good Luck Chuck, it has fleeting glimpses of a conscience, and ultimately left me just a little warm and fuzzy inside. It’s Dan Aykroyd’s speech in the end, which pretty much puts to bed all my whinings above and nails just about exactly something I’ve been trying to tell people for years – that gay, straight, bi, tran, or yes even that thing where she tinkles on a balloon, anything, it has nothing to do with who we are as people. People have different aspects and they don’t have to intersect. They’re totally separate things. Likewise it’s possible to have habits and urges and wants and needs, but just because they happen to coincide with some stereotype, doesn’t mean we are that stereotype. You can like Barbra Streisand and women. You can enjoy a bloody slasher movie and actually be a doctor! And so on. Like I said, it saddens me that there are clearly still people out there who require this Mrs Doubtfire ish “Sandler’s gay, but he’s not, but he punches people who diss him anyway!” hammer on the head to realise all this … but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t as pleased to hear that Aykroyd speech at the end here as I was by the whole “Lady! Gentleman! Lentleman!” thing in Anger Management, lol – it’s just a shame I guess that the rest of the movie didn’t make his point better. The kids are really cute, though, so more tiny positives. Would I watch it again? Only if they released a 90 minute cut.