I think I may have half-seen this before ‘cos some parts of it I recognised (and not from the original). What can I say … the guy’s wishes suck, the gender divide is too broad (though there really should always be a sex change wish in these things, whether intended by the wisher or not, I have to say LOL), and it makes the terrible, tired, terrible, tired gay musical-lover gag … but I can’t help it. Maybe it’s that you give me a movie like this and it doesn’t matter whether it’s good or bad because I’m happy enough for 90 minutes thinking up my own wishes and how I’d phrase them lol; maybe it’s that Brendan Fraser’s surprisingly good, reminding me at times of Trevor Fehrman in Clerks II when he’s the “real” Elliot; but I found this a surprisingly decent remake of the surprisingly fun Peter Cook/Dudley Moore version – I felt as much right from the “Big Mac and a Coke” version of the “sixpence iced lolly” scene. I really can’t think of a truly bad thing to say of it outside of those personal nitpicks above.

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.

I don’t know what to say about this one – it’s a horror movie I’ve certainly been meaning to watch for a while, being as its one of Clive Barker’s few post-Hellraiser works as director. But your heart really sinks even as the opening credits roll – Scott Bakula, Famke Jannsen, who? and who?

The magic stuff is good, I guess; though frankly I’d sooner see something entirely unrelated like The Prestige or, a little closer, one of the F/X movies; there’s a noiry Blade Runneriness about the opening, and it winds up a little Temple of Doom like. More than anything, I noticed how easily could’ve simply been another Hellraiser sequel like, say Deader, being as the way that series went. That might have made it, if only slightly, memorable. As it is, it’s just a forgettable disappointment all round, really.

Even more lavish in the visual department than the first, at first I worried this would be at the expense of continuing what looked like a really nice story in the first movie. The second part in a trilogy is like the worst kind of second act in a regular movie – you’ve really gotta have something to pass the time. What better surprise, then, could I ask for here than a very well done gender-based body-swapping subplot, lol. Sometimes the humour in this part gets in the way of more poignant matters; sometimes, in fact, I fear it’s lost in translation entirely. But this is still a rip-roaring ride, if only for the visuals, and since there’s 2 years to wait for Twilight Watch, it’s mercifully wrapped up neatly in the end, so neatly in fact that I wonder how the story will continue. Can’t wait to find out, though.

Spoilers below … but not for this movie … if you’re seeing “Wicked” any time soon, best not read the last paragraph.

Though I was really looking forward to seeing this movie, I have to admit I didn’t really know exactly what it’d be. After a year or so of doing so, I still find myself calling myself a Neil Gaiman fan even though I’ve never read a word of his writing outside his blog, lol. This following MirrorMask, Beowulf later this month, and Coraline next year, will surely get me to the books eventually.

When it comes to this type of movie the quality range is vast from The Princess Bride via Shrek through to the abominable Ella Enchanted. I think it was Mark Kermode who preferred to compare this to Time Bandits and I can see that too. But this is really more its own creature. Ultimately it kind of defied everything I expected from what initially appeared to me to be quite a messy opening. There are a lot of different stories here that come together in the end, and though it takes its time, it’s ultimately quite amazing how the screenplay juggles them (could Jonathan Ross be gracing the Oscars next year not as a host and critic but as a nominee’s guest, perhaps?)

The magic and enchantment stuff is … well, magical. It gave me that kind of feeling like when you’re a child and you actually believe in witches and things and when you think about being turned into a toad or whatever, you actually get that sinking feeling in your stomach like it might actually happen. Now, I actually do happen to still believe in a lot of weird impossible things you’re supposed to stop believing in when you’re no longer a child … but not a lot of things give me that stomach feeling – the last thing to do so was the musical “Wicked” when Boq becomes the tin man. I got it tons here, and I was completely absorbed and unquestioning for the whole 2 hours. It’s actually the second movie this week (Once being the other) which I really could happily have watched all over again straight after the end credits.

Not a lot to add to my old review except to say, of course, I still love it. I get all the flaws people point out about this movie – most of all, having watched this time with two non-readers, how badly it caters to even those who have kept up on the movie side … I mean some stuff won’t make sense to you if you haven’t at least skim-read the novel – but you know what, I’m kind of blind to them. There’s an atmosphere and pace here that just takes my breath away. I was actually willing to believe on the first viewing that I’d just been blindsided by the wondrousness of Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood but it’s actually incredible how little screentime she has so it’s not just her. There’s the If… like departure of the Weasleys, surely the most gloriously anti-establishment moment seen in movies in years; the gloriously creepy performance of Imelda Staunton, the “I must not tell lies” scene I swear, up there and comparable to the appearance of Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs; and the one criticism of others that I have to disagree with … the death of S****s … couldn’t have been done more clearly or perfectly in my opinion.

The DVD extras are disappointing – a 45 minute doc of people asking “what does it all meeeeeeannnnn,” a patronising guide to editing and a sort of awkward “sorry we cut your part so much” thing by Nat Tena (really fun in itself, but worth a whole second disc?) – but the movie is more than worth the buy. It’s easily one of the best of the year, though I’m sure I’ll be juggling it, Azkaban, and/or movies 6 and 7 as “best in series” for as long as I live.

13th July, 2007:

Whoosh. Where to begin. As usual this is going to come out in a gush because I want what I write to be as fresh as possible and I don’t want to miss a single thing that’s buzzing around in my head. The biggest book squished into the shortest movie … and quelle movie. I have to begin by grudgingly, nay, beamingly exclaiming, this isn’t just the best in the series so far, not just as good or better than Azkaban, but I actually think maybe a freakin’ masterpiece. It hit the “as good as Azkaban, definitely, but it’ll take a second viewing to be really sure if it’s more,” point by around 30 minutes … and soon after I was simply riveted.

Again, as always, I had intended to and probably should have read the book again beforehand; I found myself realising only a few minutes in how little detail I remembered from the mammoth novel. The Sirius thing and Umbridge, of course, were cemented. But even outside of those, and boy are those lovingly (if that’s the right word for Umbridge) recreated, I felt this managed to bridge the gap insanely well between the loyalty of the Columbus movies to the novels and the joyous cinematicness of Cuaron’s marvel.

But it’s not the adaptation and general technical perfection of this one that finds me comparing it to the Cuaron movie the most … the thing that really makes this one stomp the rest of the series into the ground is the fact that the kids finally match up to the giants of the British acting world they share a screen with. Even in Azkaban I found the performances of Radcliffe and co. a little niggling. Here, even the kid playing Neville Longbottom has clearly been honing his thesp skills. Heck, even the random eyes moving around in the background of the Dumbledore’s Army scenes demand a second viewing to peruse. And the casting of Luna Lovegood? I’m sure it won’t surprise some who know me if I say, I think I have a new movie crush, lol. Evanna Lynch is absolutely wonderful, and I don’t recall that character ever really grabbing me in the books.

Add the mindblowing visual effects, the usual perfect editing and production design (the wallpaper in Sirius’ house deserves an Oscar on its lonesome), the most original score in the series since John Williams penned the till-now slightly-overly-repeated themes, a wonderful new, entirely Potterish way of doing that old cinematic cliché of the spinning news headlines, and, I don’t know … generally wonderful Potter-ness? And I’m not joking, I feel this is the series’ masterpiece. But at the same time I feel like rather than Cuaron’s outsider-ish way of stumbling upon genius in Azkaban, I feel this one is more the result of a process and this is now a perfect system that can only make the remaining two installments as good, if not better. The only thing I’d change is I’d make Tonks’ hair a little pinker, lol. Oh, and though I initially wanted Helena Bonham-Carter to play Tonks here, her performance as Bellatrix LeStrange has certainly put to bed my worries about her as Mrs Lovett later this year in Sweeney Todd.

Addendum On a sidenote … as there has been since the second movie, there will come with this movie so many reviews wasting more than a few words on how “dark” the series is getting and how it’s not for little kids anymore etc. I just wanna say, get it into your heads, people, it’s Harry Potter. It’s dark. This is a series that in the books and their adaptations has grown with its audience. If you think the fifth installment where they’re well blossomed and having first kisses and all is a great movie to take your six-year-old to and you come home incensed by what they’ve been “exposed” to … you simply don’t deserve to have that six-year-old, you idiot. It’s a PG-13 in the US, a 12A in the UK. Read the effin’ guidelines, and critics, stop making these people think they need to be told by you of all people how “dark” a movie is when it’s practically written on the frickin’ tin. It’s dark. But there’s as much love and magic in each frame of this movie (gosh, just beginning with the way the distance between Harry and everyone else is portrayed, I well up just thinking about it) as there was in part one, if not more … if you’re ready.

Something in me still has massive issues with the stilted delivery of the dialogue in these movies (yes – I know – in this case it’s meant to be overly theatrical, but still it rings awkwardly untrue – Vincent Price did it better in the Phibes and Theatre of Blood type movies) ... but ultimately, this one is just glorious grande guignol in the extreme. Of course, in the days now where you can tune in to “Autopsy” and watch Gunther von Hagens doing a lot of this stuff for real (on dead corpses, of course, but hey, tit for tat), a lot of the impact is lost – but I found it marginally more interesting than Blood Feast, and like I said, if you imagine the bad acting is just “theatrical”, it almost works.

Life-Size is one of those movies that turns out way, way better than its premise. A girl (Lindsay Lohan) badly longing to see her recently-deceased mother finds a rare and unusual spell-book in a weird bookshop and casts a spell to resurrect her: unfortunately, the spell is disrupted by her dad’s new girlfriend who’s trying to win his daughter over with a present, a doll… hey presto, the next morning, the doll is Tyra Banks.

Sounds awful, right? Even to a Lindsay Lohan fan it sounded pretty effing terrible. But aside from the few long scenes that don’t benefit from her presence, I really, really loved this movie, and could even see myself watching it again sometime (a good thing, I guess, since I bought the DVD instead of renting). I thought that, being a TV movie, it would somehow be a lesser performance from Lohan, but there are moments here where she’s better than ever. She plays the lonely young girl dealing with loss perfectly. Tyra Banks is a little annoying at times as the doll come to life but I really loved the character – she’s a little like Buddy in Elf, a product of fantasy harshly confronted with the real world. There are some big laughs and plenty of tears. The ending really got me, and even the corny cast dance-together didn’t bug me as much as such things usually do.

Maybe not one for most people’s DVD collections, but if you want a simple, happy feelgood movie that also lets you have a good cry, plus a great performance by Lindsay Lohan, this is definitely recommended.