Review: The Little Mermaid

It's no secret that the Disney version of The Little Mermaid doesn't have a whole lot in common with Hans Christian Andersen's original. It's a shame they didn't take as many liberties when they decided to remake their own version. This live-action do-over is often painfully faithful to the original, and as the original featured singing crabs and an undersea creature jazz band, "live-action" is probably not the best term to describe what's been put on screen.

Mermaid Ariel (Halle Berry) is the youngest daughter of the king of the sea Triton (Javier Bardem, doing his best). He's forbidden his daughters to have anything to do with the surface world after humans killed his wife / their mother. But Ariel sees good in them, especially hot prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) which opens the door for her evil Sea-Witch aunt Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) to do a deal.

She'll give Ariel legs for three days in exchange for her voice - but she'll only give the voice back if Ariel gets a kiss from the prince, and also she magically can't remember this part of the bargain even when told it over and over by crab Sebastian (Daveed Diggs) and sea bird Scuttle (Awkwafina). Fortunately the prince seems as into her as she is into him. So the course of true love runs smoothly? Not quite.

The frustrating thing about Disney's live-action remakes of their animated films isn't that they're tinkering with classics - that's been the basis of the movie business for almost a century - but that they're not tinkering enough. There's a timidness that runs throughout them, a feeling that the original was so good that any major changes could only ruin things. Bad news Disney: that ship has sailed. And then sunk, going by the number of shipwrecks featured here.

This version of The Little Mermaid has its strengths, mostly early on with a dramatic sinking ship sequence where the live action really shines. And the casting is never less than decent, with Berry a clear stand-out - a better film would make her a star, and hopefully even this can't slow her rise. She's almost enough to keep this afloat, even when the plot renders her mute for a hefty stretch (singing in her mind turns out to be a useful loophole).

But in taking a script and story (and songs) designed for old-fashioned animation and transferring it to live-action (which here is about 30% CGI "realistic" animation), much of the charm of the original has been lost. A two-hour run time (the original was a snappy 83 minutes) doesn't help, especially when the new elements - notably a quasi-rap track sung by Awkwafina - are often jarringly out of place.

When you're left thinking "well, I guess Sebastian could have looked a lot worse", the bar has been set pretty low - and in some scenes (including a supposedly emotional gathering towards the end which had the audience openly laughing at my screening) it can't even clear that.

There's an argument to be made that classics should be regularly updated for a new generation. Hand drawn animation is out of style, greater diversity in casting is what people now want, and so on. But by often sticking so closely to the original, this version of The Little Mermaid fails to make that case. 

An all-new take on this story might have equaled the original; this one is left floundering.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Plane

 

Briefly the butt of internet snickering for its somewhat blunt title - and yet Air escaped unscathed - Plane is not a film of subtlety. Nor would anyone want it to be: a fancier title would just be wasting everyone's time, and this is an all-action thriller that knows that wasting time is the worst crime this kind of film can commit.

Gerard Butler is Brodie Torrance, the kind of two-fisted pilot who is too good for the shabby airline he's flying for but it's the best he can do after (heroically) punching out an unruly passenger. Unfortunately, that means he's now working for the kind of bosses who think having him fly through a storm to save on fuel costs is a good idea. It is not.

A big part of the fun of Plane - and Plane is a lot of fun - is the way it rapidly cycles through genres fast enough to touch on all the good stuff without ever making it too obvious that we've seen it all before. So of course the storm messes up the flight and we get a condensed version of a disaster movie before Butler manages to safely crash-land (but in a way that leaves the plane intact, which will become important later) on a seemingly deserted island in the Philippines.

Okay, so clearly the next genre up is the "we're trapped on an island and one of the passengers is a killer", because I forgot to mention earlier that one of the few passengers on this New Years Eve flight - yes, Torrance is trying to get home to his family - is a killer (Mike Colter, who already has a spin-off set up) who's been on the run for decades and is being taken back to the US. His guard died in the pre-crash turbulence; can Butler handle a hardened criminal with nothing to lose?

Forget that, because it's time for the next twist. Turns out that the island isn't deserted - well, it has been deserted by any kind of government or law enforcement, because it's the home base for a bunch of terrorists who like holding tourists for ransom then making them star in snuff movies. Can Torrance get the passengers off the island without being detected? Of course not. Time for plan B, where the B stands for "blowing stuff up".

There's a few entertaining diversions along the way - the airline puts together a crisis team and hires mercs for a rescue mission, only when Butler manages to make a call to the airline after the crash the operator thinks it's a prank - but for the most part this is solid meat & potatoes genre fodder with just enough going on to keep things fresh. 

Butler's gruff charm carries this a long way, and French director Francois Richet's non-nonsense approach to this occasionally nonsensical story does the rest. Butler's character is noticeably appalled by killing; he's much more of a "I've got to save these people" than "time to take out the trash" type, which stops this from completely losing touch with reality, at least as far as the on-ground carnage is concerned. 

Once they get in the air, all bets are off.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3

More than most Marvel movies, The Guardians of the Galaxy have been all about the vibe. Well, maybe 20% about the vibe: the rest has been the usual mix of making quips then running around shouting and kicking bad guys in the face while things explode high above a planet's surface. But that's still a lot of vibe for the MCU, where movies like The Eternals made it to cinemas despite a vibe level verging on the negative.

So it's a surprise to discover that this movie not only is actually About Something - it's not like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania had any connection to any real world concerns at all, and fair enough - but the real-world issue it's tackling is experiments on animals, which is about as far as you can get from the fun-loving classic rock vibe the Guardians usually specialise in.

The topic comes up in the form of the never before mentioned backstory of Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), who it turns out was the product of a lot of nasty experiments by the colourful yet sinister High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji). Now he wants Rocket back, and has sent the super-powered but dim-witted Adam Warlock (Will Poulter), one of his more humanoid creations, to collect what he sees as his property. 

Warlock trashes the Guardian's cyperpunk-esque space skull base, fails to collect his target, and leaves Rocket dying with no way for the Guardians to heal him thanks to a bunch of fail safes built into the tech that's part of his body. Looks like they're going to have to steal the codes to bypass the fail safes, and that heist is only the beginning (mostly because the movie goes for two and a half hours).

Rocket's plight is no barrel of laughs, and having Peter Quinn, AKA Star Lord (Chris Pratt) a heartbroken drunken mess thanks to the death, then revival from an earlier point in time when she didn't love him, of Gamora (Zoe Saldana) also cuts down on the quips - for a while at least. 

So this is the grim and gritty Guardians pretty much nobody was asking for? Hardly, but the tonal whiplash is sometimes pretty severe as the story goes from Rocket and his tortured animal chums dreaming of freedom (good luck there) to the more traditional sitcom-style banter between Drax the Destroyer (David Bautista), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Groot (Vin Diesel, getting to enunciate a bit more this time) and Gamora's perpetually angry sister Nebula (Karen Gillen).

Throw in the usual big action scenes, a bunch of cameos, a few too many characters (if Warlock feels shoehorned in, the return of his mother is definitely surplus to requirements) a lot of needle drops (Beastie Boys fans get the extra thrill of finding out which lines Disney won't allow from 'No Sleep Till Brooklyn'), and an adorable subplot where Cosmo the space dog spends the entire film worrying that Kraglin (Sean Gunn) has called her a bad dog, and you have an overstuffed, often frantic film that's all over the place (and space).

Which is not unusual for the Guardians of the Galaxy. Writer / director James Gunn was briefly fired from Marvel in 2018 (dodgy tweets, obviously), leading to an odd MCU speedbump where Thor joined the Guardians, didn't fit in, and then almost immediately left and never looked back. There was also the recent Guardians Christmas Special for Disney+, which explains a few Kevin Bacon references in the end credits but is otherwise best left unmentioned.

This third and seemingly final installment is the kind of film with too much going on for everyone to like all the moving parts equally, but the high notes are high enough that the flat patches don't linger. It's not afraid to go directly for the tear ducts in all manner of ways; one death is a tragedy, the destruction of an entire inhabited planet is just something that happens as part of a day's work, and experimenting on animals is really, really bad.

Lately the more comedic Marvel movies seem to have embraced a kind of sloppiness in their storytelling as a way to amp up the energy. It doesn't always work (try to keep track of where people are standing in almost any big villain confrontation), but at least here there's a sense that Gunn is throwing in everything on his way out the door. You'll never doubt this one's coming from the heart - 20% of the time at least.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Polite Society

 

Polite Society has a very obvious and very fun hook: what if Bollywood, but with fights instead of musical numbers? The fact there's more  - and only slightly less - going on here than that shouldn't put you off, but be warned: if you've seen the (excellent) trailer it might not hurt to dial your expectations down from "flamboyant fist-and-feet-flinging frenzy" to "fiercely funny YA fight flick".

Ria Khan (Priya Kansara) wants to be a stunt woman when she leaves high school. Her big sister Lena (Rita Arya) used to want to be an artist, but now she just mopes around a lot. Ria is not impressed; she's even less impressed when the very single, very eligible Dr. Salim (Akshay Khanna) decides Ria is the one for him.

The fact they met at a party for suitable suitors arranged by his imposing mother Raheela (Nimra Bucha) is just part of the reason why Ria is appalled. Why is her sister throwing away her dreams to be the bride of some - okay, attractive, caring, intelligent doctor who runs a medical clinic in Asia. But for Ria it still doesn't add up. Will her detective work uncover a sinister mystery, or just trash her reputation and leave her an isolated friendless loser?

The (brutal yet acrobatic) fights in Polite Society work like musical numbers: when the characters have feelings that can't be contained, they let them out by belting each other. Writer-director Nida Manzoor pushes each one enjoyably over the top, but keeps them for big moments between main characters: this is not a film where Ria is mowing down bad guys John Wick style.

Where this really packs a punch is with the two sisters. Lena is deftly sketched early on, and then everything we thought we knew about her gets turned on its head as marriage looms. Is she changing herself for a man, or just revealing who she really is? Much of the tension here comes from not being sure  - after all, love does make people do crazy things, and sometimes they work out just fine.

Then again, Ria is such a whirlwind of a character it's difficult to imagine anything standing in her way. She (and Kansara) are the star of the show here by a very wide margin, and considering how perfectly cast everyone else is (a special thumbs up to Shobu Kapoor and Jeff Mirza as the sisters' parents), that's saying a lot.

Kicking arse in every possible way, she's a lead who deserves (and could easily carry) a dozen spin-offs. In a story about the perils of marrying into a family where mother knows best, she's the one sinking her often airborne boots into the idea of settling down - and everything else that gets in her way.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Air

It’s the 80s - boy, is it the 80s - and in the sneaker business third place is last place. This is bad news for Nike, as their basketball shoe division is currently staring at a bronze medal. Basketball “guru” Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) has been brought in by his friend and Nike CEO Phil Knight (Ben Affleck, who also directs) to turn it around, but all his big ideas involve the one thing he can’t have: more money.

 

As far as sponsoring players goes, 18 year-old Michael Jordan is clearly promising in this year's line-up, but when Sonny decides to bet everything on a big gamble to win over the Adidas-loving Jordan and his business manager mother (Viola Davis), first he has to win over Nike before he can take his shot.

 

There’s more small pleasures than big dramas in this true story of sports marketing. The main players are all slightly shabby middle-aged men (admittedly, this may very well be the fanbase for a Michael Jordan story in 2023), who each get one character quirk each: one likes to gamble, one is a sad divorced dad (Jason Bateman), one is a rapid-fire motor-mouth (that'd be Chris Tucker) and so on.

 

As the ending is never in doubt the fun comes from seeing them slowly put the pieces together, and the teamwork angle is the strongest part of the film. Everyone proves to be an integral part of the effort to win over Jordan, and everyone gets a big speech to prove it. Well, everyone but Knight, who Affleck plays as the closest thing here to comedy relief.

 

This is a subdued return to directing for Affleck, and while the small scale helps with the story - these guys really do feel like underdogs - the lack of flash or flair does occasionally dampen the mood a little. This isn't a tale of sports excellence: these are marketing guys putting together a deal, and the winner is money.

 

Jordan himself is kept off camera, but Davis comes on strong as the mother who knows driving a hard bargain is in everyone’s interests – as Sonny says, this is the rare deal where everyone comes out on top.

 

- Anthony Morris

 

 

 

Review: Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

The reason why a lot of sword & sorcery-style fantasy films fail is that they have to do a lot before they can even get going. They have to establish a whole world, plus the characters, plus a bunch of other stuff (how does magic work? What's the deal with weird creatures?), and they have to do so in such a way that the plot isn't going to seem silly. Most of these movies are built around quests, but unless you really establish the stakes behind that quest, you're just looking at people wandering around some made-up place trying to find some made up thing.

All of this is difficult but hardly impossible. What is impossible - or would seem to be if you still remember fantasy stoner comedy Your Highness - is doing all that in such a way to make comedy possible. Which is a problem: comedy is essential to a Dungeons & Dragons movie, because if you've ever played a session of D&D you know that people mess around and make jokes.

The central plot in Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves is basically to reunite a family, which adds a bit more heart to what is otherwise a series of quests to get magic objects and loot treasure (classic D&D). There's also fights, with magic and without, plus some classic monsters (an Owlbear! A Gelatinous Cube!) and a pretty bulky dragon. D&D (the game) isn't really about defeating evil schemes so much but there's one here and it's satisfyingly sinister - in short, the story ticks all the boxes without feeling like an exercise in ticking boxes.

More important is the tone, which Honour Among Thieves gets exactly right. The opening scene, which involves a bunch of (serious) backstory at a parole hearing while constantly undercutting the seriousness - it's also going to be an escape attempt of sorts - sets the level, and it doesn't put a foot wrong from there. They even get a good joke out of a bunch of brain eating creatures passing them by because they're not tasty enough to bother with.

The characters bicker and banter but not to excess, the adventure is more rollicking than nail-biting, and the performances are spot on. Everyone has good chemistry, and fortunately the fantasy genre is so jam packed with cliches this manages to avoid some of the more obvious ones (no weathered wizards here) while still feeling like it's firmly part of the genre. 

The fighter (Michelle Rodriguez) is gruff (and has a thing for halflings, who are not named and yes that is Bradley Cooper), the magic user (Justice Smith) is battling confidence issues, the shape-shifter (Sophia Lillis) is slightly more serious and mistrustful, and the Paladin (Rene-Jean Page) is extremely Good (at everything, including avoiding becoming the straight man for a bunch of jokes). You've even got Hugh Grant as a dodgy con man turned ruler who is a bad guy but the kind of bad guy who's up front that he's bad so you can't really hold it against him. He's a fun character, and he's not even central to the story.

Someone who is central is Chris Pine, despite playing a character - he used to be a kind of undercover ranger, then he became a thief, now he's mostly playing the lute - who is so superfluous other characters actually ask "why do we need you?" As he's shown in everything else he's done, he can be charming and lightweight while still delivering the goods dramatically when needed, and though his character really doesn't map onto Dungeons & Dragons (the game) at all, he brings that kind of "I'm the leader but I'm kind of crap but I'm still going to get the job done" energy that these kind of movies (*cough Guardians of the Galaxy cough*) love

For a movie that's over two hours it doesn't feel drawn out or excessive, and for a movie that leaves the door wide open to sequels the ending is satisfyingly conclusive. The real takeaway is that it's funnier than you might expect; would that all Hollywood adventures could get this many laughs out of resurrecting the dead.

- Anthony Morris

Review: John Wick: Chapter 4

The best parts of John Wick: Chapter 4 are the parts where the franchise starts to fray. It's not news that John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is a killing machine of such lethal intensity that his fight scenes largely function as dance numbers in a musical: they're more about expressing and exploring a mood than driving forward the story. And the story here is thin even for a John Wick movie, with the moments between fights largely about moving characters from stand-off to stand-off. People will occasionally ruminate on death and endings, the way Wick can't escape himself no matter how many people he kills. It's all standard action movie stuff, dialogue that barely means anything - until it all clicks into place.

The virtues here remain the same, only more so. The locations (mostly neon-tinged, mostly at night) are impressive and well used; the escalation from the first film's fancy but plausible homes and abandoned warehouses to cavernous eurotrash nightclubs and Parisian landmarks has been well orchestrated. In the cast old favourites (Ian McShane, Lawrence Fishburne) provide old pleasures, while the newcomers - most notably Bill Skarsgard as new representative of the High Table / chief baddie Marchese Vincent de Gramont and the amoral tracker "Mr Nobody" (Shamier Anderson) - fulfill their roles with aplomb.

Previous installments have been happy to gesture towards the spaghetti western (most notably in the previous film where Wick puts together a revolver out of various substandard guns a la a similar scene in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) but this fully embraces the genre. Enter Caine (Donnie Yen), a blind killer and old friend of Wick's who is forced to once again pick up the gun (if he doesn't, the High Table will kill his violin playing daughter) and could possibly be the only gunslinger who can take our hero down.

In earlier films care was taken to give Wick a savage beating or bad wound early on to explain why the world's deadliest killer had to work hard to take out dozens of disposable chumps (in the real world, being played by a man in his mid-50s was explanation enough, especially as Reeves is clearly doing many of his own moves and stunts). But here the film begins with Wick fully rested and recovered; his weariness now comes from someplace deeper, a realisation that maybe the blood on his hands won't wash off.

What makes the best spaghetti westerns work - and this is the best spaghetti western in a long time - is their willingness to go too far, to be epic in the service of material that lesser films would discard in a line or a scene. This film is intentionally too much of a good thing, everything dialed up to eleven in a way that reflects Wick's own exhaustion even as he beats down a dozen goons using nunchucks. You're meant to feel like this could have been a smaller film: the excess is the point.

(why else have a radio DJ providing a soundtrack and running commentary for Paris' hitman community as they try to take Wick down? It might seem like a reference to Vanishing Point's similar in-movie DJ Super Soul or the radio updates in The Warriors, but I like to think this version's choice of 'Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide' comes direct from NWA's '100 Miles and Runnin')

Towards the end there's a visual joke about how Wick just won't stop even when all his progress is taken from him. It's a great joke: it's also a joke the series could only make with the end in sight. There's plenty of humour in the John Wick films if you know where to look (and you don't always have to look hard, as with Scott Adkins' Killa, a chunky bad guy who's yet another stand out in a film packed with them). But the films only work because they take Wick and his struggles seriously.

Reeve's performance is largely restricted to intensely impressive physical action and the occasional grimly determined line reading, but there's one moment - also, not coincidentally, towards the end - where he briefly shows another side to the remorseless killing machine with a body count in the high triple figures. Reeves sells it perfectly; Hollywood's best action franchise this century is complete.

- Anthony Morris