Author: Alton Williams

Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son *



It’s official – 2011 has a major case of sequelitis, this year boasting the highest number of sequels ever to ever be released in a single year – 27 of them in fact – with 9 second movies (Sherlock Holmes 2, The Hangover Part II, Cars 2, Kung Fu Panda 2, Happy Feet 2, Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil, Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2: Rodrick Rules, Johnny English Reborn and Piranha 3DD), 5 third movies (Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Paranormal Activity 3, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, Madea’s Big Happy Family –
okay, that one won’t mean much to anyone outside of America – and Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son), 5 fourth movies (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One, Scream 4, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World), 5 fifth movies (Fast Five – which is actually both a sequel and a prequel at the same time – X-Men: First Class – although this is a prequel – Final Destination 5, Puss in Boots – technically more of a spin-off – and Winnie the Pooh), 2 films that can technically be classed as seventh movies (The Muppets and Rise of the Apes – also technically a prequel) and one eighth entry (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two) – and this isn’t even counting New Year’s Eve which may or may not be a sequel to last year’s Valentine’s Day and The Thing which may be either a prequel or a remake – being unleashed upon cinema screens over the course of the year. Among this extensive list are numerous hotly anticipated movies but there are also some sequels that no one ever asked for and you just know that things have been taken way too far when one of the sequels being released is a follow up to 2000’s Big Momma’s House and 2006’s Big Homma’s House 2. While Big Momma’s House 2 did prove to be surprisingly successful upon its cinema release (although in the UK this was largely due to the fact that it carried a PG rating compared to the original film’s 15, thus allowing a whole lot more people to actually see it) there has certainly never been any indication that anyone actually wants Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, the franchise’s tired and predictable formula now having nothing left to offer viewers and there being plenty of indication from the performance of recent movies released in cinemas that moviegoers may be getting tired or paying to see rubbish (maybe but I somehow doubt it), instead opting for films of higher quality, a category that this film most definitely doesn’t fall into. I guess this film has probably really only emerged out of desperation from its star Martin Lawrence, whose career hasn’t exactly been on a high lately, films such as College Road Trip and Death at a Funeral hardly having much clout at the box office, and director John Whitesell, whose only film since directing the second Big Momma’s House film was the mediocre 2006 Christmas comedy Deck the Halls. You don’t need me to tell you that Big Momma’s: Like Father, Like Son is a bad film. But at least we can be thankful that they didn’t decide to do it in 3D – I doubt Big Momma’s suit is something that anyone would ever want to see in the extra dimension.

With his wife away on a retreat, the FBI’s top agent, Malcolm Turner (Martin Lawrence), is facing some major issues with his wayward 17 year old son Trent (Brandon T. Jackson). Trent, an aspiring musician, has been offered a contract with a record company for his rap group Prodi-G but Malcolm would much rather his son spend the next four years at Duke University where he has just been accepted, something that Trent is not at all keen on. And things only get worse between Malcolm and his son when Trent gatecrashes his dad’s operation to snare well connected criminal Chirkoff (Tony Curran), resulting in Trent inadvertently witnessing the violent murder of an informant and, as a result, he and Malcolm having to go into hiding. With the information that the informant possessed apparently hidden in a safe location, Malcolm and Trent go undercover to locate the flash drive on which it is contained but it is hidden within a girls’ school for the arts and they must go into disguise if they have any hope of finding the vital evidence. Reprising his role as Big Momma, Malcolm disguises Trent as Charmaine, Big Momma’s troubled niece and together they infiltrate the school where they both immediately undertake very different methods of investigation. Believing that the flash drive is located in a music box which has recently been stolen from the school library, Malcolm suspects that a group of students – Haley (Jessica Lucas), Jasmine (Portia Doubleday) and Mia (Michelle Ang) – may be responsible for the theft. As Malcolm goes about his investigation, however, Trent finds himself falling for Haley, putting the entire operation and their very lives at risk in the process. Can Malcolm and Trent find the evidence needed to stop the murderer before they themselves become his next victims?

I must confess that, while I didn’t consider either Big Momma’s House or Big Momma’s House 2 to be good films, I did actually find both rather amusing, both films proving to be quite funny despite not exactly being well made. Somewhat ironically perhaps given that the subtitle for this third chapter in the series is Like Father, Like Son, Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son is anything but “like father, like son”, where its predecessors actually managed to be funny this one failing almost completely, aside from an odd giggle raised here and there. And if you need any better indication as to how unfunny this film is you only need to look at the cameo appearance by Ken Jeong in the film’s opening sequence as a mailman who gets on the wrong side of Malcolm. When Jeong, who appeared in three of the worst movies of last year, appears in a film nowadays it really should come as no surprise that that film is completely abysmal. Abysmal is a word that applies to much that is on offer here, the writing being absolutely atrocious, the writers seemingly forgetting the two most important things – a plot and jokes, the story here being paper thin, the characters weak and the gags just lame. The humour here is more likely to make you cringe than laugh and, while, just like the second film, this film carries a PG rating, the studio clearly hoping to attract the family audience that came out for the second one, I definitely would not recommend this film for family viewing, some of the humour coming close to the grotesque, albeit only suggestively – as far as they can go with a PG rating. Also, with the film played entirely for laughs – of which there are few – any action sequences that feature are just lacklustre, failing to generate any thrills and generating even fewer giggles. The acting here does little to engage us any more than the bad writing, lame jokes and lousy action with Martin Lawrence being exactly the same as he is in everything else, only a lot less funny, Brandon T. Jackson being no better (although they do at least make for a fairly convincing father-son double act and their fat suits do render them sufficiently unrecognisable) and Scottish actor Tony Curran – who was so excellent as Vincent Van Gogh in Doctor Who last year – making for an extremely mediocre and by the numbers bad guy while the delightful and talented likes of Jessica Lucas, Portia Doubleday and Michelle Ang – are completely wasted outside of a few scenes that see their characters showcase their artistic talents, scenes that make for the film’s few saving graces, their dancing, singing and piano performing abilities really being pretty good – it’s just a shame they didn’t have a better showcase for them. Aside from these scenes showing the characters performing their arts, an impromptu musical number and a tender moment between Trent and Hailey, there really isn’t much positive that can be said about this film. Starting to drag long before it reaches its closing act, the film long outstays its welcome, this critic having become bored before the conclusion finally arrived. The first two Big Momma’s House films may not have been good films but they at least managed to be watchable; the needless third instalment, Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, on the other hand is just plain bad and should be avoided at all costs during this half term holiday.

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Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)

Yogi Bear 3D ***
Yogi Bear 2D **½

It’s the February half term holiday again (has it really been a year already?) and, as usual, Hollywood has a barrage of family films lined up to try and cash in on the inevitable onslaught of families looking for something to do while the kids are off from school. This year’s offerings, however, are somewhat less inspiring than those of recent years, as evidenced by the first of this year’s half term releases, a live action movie based on the classic animated TV series The Yogi Bear Show created by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna which ran from 1961 –
1988. With the original show having been a part of the childhood of many parents – and, dare I say it, grandparents – around today, Warner Bros Pictures are clearly hoping to cash in on the nostalgia factor to rein in the accompanying adults as well as enticing the children themselves, no doubt attempting to score a success in the vein of the insanely popular Alvin and the Chipmunks movies. Such success, however, will – and in the states, where the film will likely end up grossing less than $100 million, less than half of what both Chipmunks movies managed, already has – elude Yogi Bear. Alvin and the Chipmunks utilised the appeal of talking chipmunks combined with popular music to draw in its viewers but, compared to that, Yogi Bear‘s picnic basket stealing antics are considerably less appealing to viewers, old or young, and really belong to another, shall I say more innocent, age of film entertainment. With the addition of 3D – proper 3D, not post production conversion nonsense – effort clearly has been taken to try and entice the kids who might not be won over by the weak central premise of the film but will this be enough to attract viewers to this decent but unremarkable family movie?

Yogi (voiced by Dan Aykroyd) and Boo Boo (voiced by Justin Timberlake) are not your average bears. Not only does Yogi wear a hat and tie and Boo Boo a bow tie but they both talk and are, as Yogi says, “smarter than the average bear”. Together, they spend their days in the magnificent Jellystone Park embarking on increasingly crazy plans to steal the picnic baskets from unsuspecting visitors to the park, much to the frustration of Ranger Smith (Tom Cavanagh) who does his best to keep the park going despite fewer and fewer people actually visiting. Things are about to change, however, when pretty documentary filmmaker Rachel (Anna Faris) shows up hoping to film a documentary about Yogi and Boo Boo. The Ranger automatically takes a liking to Rachel but is clueless when it comes to talking to girls and soon he is finding himself distracted at a time when the very future of Jellystone Park is in jeopardy. The corrupt Mayor Brown (Andrew Daly) wants to close the park and sell off the land, leaving the bears homeless, the Ranger out of a job and the nearby city without its most wonderful natural resource, and unfortunately he has help from the eager and impatient Ranger Jones (T.J. Miller), Smith’s deputy who wants his job. Together, with the help of Rachel, Ranger Smith sets out to try and save the park but when Yogi’s showmanship nearly ruins everything, he and Boo Boo must put aside their haphazard plans to steal visitors’ lunches to save their home before it is gone for good. Let’s hope that, this time, Yogi really is smarter than the average bear!

Let’s be honest, if you’re going to see Yogi Bear, you probably already know exactly what to expect. The film is essentially just a series of sketches linked together by a very thin plot and one that is extremely obvious, entirely predictable and, if you’ve seen last year’s Furry Vengeance or any of countless other similar movies, you will feel like you have seen it all before many times over. The writing is weak and the nostalgia factor is largely missing and at times it seems like a bit too much attention is paid to the human characters over the true stars of the film, the human cast members largely being wasted in non roles that require practically nothing of them in return for their paycheques. Yet, the target audience – kids, obviously – won’t care less about any of this. To them, the story may well seem new and original and they are hardly likely to care about any failings on part of the human actors as it isn’t them they have come to see. While not appearing as much as you might expect considering that they are the true stars, Yogi and Boo Boo are well realised characters, both being perfectly voiced and the effects used to bring them to life being pretty decent, their interactions with the real world environments and their human co-stars being every bit as much so. The humour here is very simplistic and rather old fashioned in its style, so much so that it won’t appeal so much to older children but, while the film isn’t laugh out loud funny, there are certainly enough funny moments to amuse the young ones and not bore the older viewers. In general, the film is pretty good fun for its target audience and, while the 3D doesn’t add a lot to the overall film, there are plenty of pretty cool 3D sequences, this film utilising 3D in a very gimmicky way at times, and also some beautiful sprawling landscape shots, the beautiful wilderness of Jellystone Park is wonderfully captured in the third dimension, so much so that it looks like the park is right before your eyes. So, there you have it, Yogi Bear, a film that is hardly spectacular but that proves perfectly watchable, being entirely harmless and something that the kids will love, which is what really counts with films like this after all. Not only that but it just might impart some good and honest values onto the kids who see it. Yogi’s claim that “it’s got a little of everything: music, stunts, magic…” might be a bit of a stretch but there are far worse films to take your kids to over this half term holiday.

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Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)

The Red Room ****

Last year I reviewed the excellent short film Henry John and the Little Bug written and directed by J.T. Mollner and starring Mikos Zavros. That film, which received much attention following its premiere at the Hollyshorts Festival in Hollywood on August 8th 2010, was Mollner’s third short feature following horror Sunday Evening and thriller The Red Room. Now, thanks to star Zavros, I have been awarded the opportunity to view The Red Room which premiered at the SoCal Independent Film Festival in September 2008 and was the first of the three films to be shot on 35mm film.


In the middle of an uncharacteristically chilly Los Angeles night, 2 men meet for the first time on a rooftop, somewhere downtown. One of the men, Dr. Hadley Prince (Nathan Russell), is calm and in control. The other man, Mr. Nicholas Rowen (Mikos Zavros), has come with an envelope full of cash. He is shaky, sweaty, and visibly nervous. As the evening progresses, Hadley leads Nick to an upscale top floor apartment, a quiet balcony, and ultimately into the strange revealing confines of The Red Room: where right and wrong, love and hate, even life and death….are all relative.

The opening pre credits sequence at the start of The Red Room helps to establish a very unsettling tone that is present for pretty much the entire duration of the film. Utilising little more than a slow zoom in, emphasised ambient noise and some tense musical accompaniment that builds up to almost unbearable levels, this scene is a masterpiece in tension, making us feels completely unsettled before we even know what is actually going on. Following this scene we go to the rooftop then onto the balcony of the apartment which provides the main setting for the film, these scenes boasting sensational cinematography which, courtesy of some brilliant work by director of photography Kevin Atkinson, manages to be vibrant without losing the dark edge that he is clearly going for and dark without it ever being hard to make out what is going on, all the shots boasting rich and well balanced composition. The cinematography is very effective and the way that often seen clichés are taken and made to seem fresh is particularly noteworthy, the sight of shadows being cast on walls being visually chilling, slow motion being used to build the suspense and lingering extreme close-up shots of the characters taking sips from glasses, inhaling smoke and starting with an unsettling gaze creating a distinct feel that all is not quite right. And, of course, all is not quite right, although the gentlemanly way that the two men have a conversation, share a drink or two and have a smoke does create a slight sense of an almost innocent conversation between two decent and honourable men, albeit one that we can just tell is harbouring a more sinister side, the impression being created through their mannerisms that these ‘gentlemen’ have a dark, twisted and perhaps even sadistic side. The brilliant acting from both actors makes this whole thing work superbly, Mikos Zavros making his character seem genuinely on edge, almost broken and emotionally scarred – the reason for which becomes clear at the end of the film – making us believe that his character is about to do something very unsavoury, something that part of him really does not want to do, while Nathan Russell’s calmer more relaxed stance creates an equal sense of a character about to do something unpleasant, albeit one who clearly has fewer reservations. The choice of musical accompaniment in these scenes is perfect, superbly enhancing the tones being portrayed on screen while the conversation works well because of strong writing by writer and director J.T. Mollner, whose work here is every bit as exceptional as it was in Henry John and the Little Bug and whose revelation as to exactly what awaits in The Red Room is rather shocking and somewhat disturbing, being something that you would almost certainly won’t see coming. While I can’t say much without giving the game away, I will state that this very well done twist in the tale helps to cast new light on both of the characters and make us rethink the behaviours and motives of both during the whole film up to this point. Proving to be surprisingly moving as well as sinister, The Red Room is an extremely well made short film that slowly builds up the tension in masterful fashion and truly does surprise with its ending revelation. In an email to myself, Zavros described the film as being “dark and in the vein of Twilight Zone. With a shocker ending” – it would be hard to summise The Red Room much better than this but I will add that is in the vein of The Twilight Zone at its very best.

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Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)

Paul ***½

Following the breakout success of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, British comedy legends Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have teamed up once again to storm onto cinema screens for a third time, this time embracing Hollywood’s current obsession with all things extraterrestrial, their new film, Paul, being just one of many alien themed films being released this year. Not only that but, with them heading stateside –
this being the latest in what is becoming to be a trend of British-American co-productions, the new series of Torchwood being another example of such collaboration between the two culturally contrasting nations – for their latest film, they’ve assembled a who’s who of both rising and established American comedy talents to fill up the supporting cast and, with Pegg and Frost having written the screenplay themselves, they have made a film that is targeted at the inner geek in every one of us. So far, so what’s not to love, but, alas, there is a fly in the ointment. You see, while Pegg and Frost are returning from their two previous hits, there is one person missing from the equation this time – Edgar Wright. Wright, who directed both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz as well as co-writing both with Pegg, has himself headed stateside, where he made last year’s brilliant Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, something that is good news for American cinema but less so for everyone here in the UK where he is no longer available to work on films due to his commitments on American film projects. Stepping into Wright’s extremely hard to fill shoes is Greg Mottola, the director of vulgar American comedies Superbad and Adventureland. As someone who hated both of those films, Mottola’s presence at the helm of ‘Paul’ is not very welcome but you can’t always judge a person’s fitness to direct a particular film based on their previous directorial efforts and thus I went into this film prepared to give him the benefit of a doubt. So, as the first film to star both Simon Pegg and Nick Frost but have no involvement from Edgar Wright, how does Paul fare?

Graeme Willy (Simon Pegg) and Clive Gollings (Nick Frost) are two best pals who are fulfilling their long held dream of travelling to America to make the ultimate pilgrimage – to the world’s premiere sci-fi convention, San Diego Comic Con, and then onto a road trip across America visiting all of the country’s most famous UFO hotspots. While casually driving through America’s famed Area 51 in their rented RV, a freak accident leads to an encounter with Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen) – a visiting extra-terrestrial who is AWOL from the secret military base, after having been held there as a ‘guest’ since 1947 when his spaceship crashed – not in Roswell, New Mexico as the government would have us believe but rather in Wyoming – and having recently discovered that now he has told the authorities everything he knows, they are planning to remove his brain for further study. In the spirit of all things alien, Paul is desperate to go home and begs Graeme and Clive to help him get there. With Federal Agents – including the dogged Special Agent Lorenzo Zoil (Jason Bateman) and the incompetent duo Haggard (Bill Hader) and O’Reilly (Joe Lo Truglio) – working for “the big man” (Sigourney Weaver) hot on their trail and the inadvertently kidnapped Ruth Buggs (Kristen Wiig), a creationist who finds her whole belief system challenged by Paul’s very existence and whose father Moses (John Carroll Lynch) is also soon on their tail, by their side, will our two accidental heroes manage to get Paul to the spaceship that has been sent to rescue him. And can they do so without getting themselves shot in the process?

The best way of describing Paul is that it is a sort of more adult version of Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi classic E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial. And in terms of the central story there really isn’t a whole lot to distinguish the two films. Aside from a genuinely surprising plot twist towards the end that you definitely won’t see coming, the story is one that offers few surprises, being rather generic and predictable for the most part – essentially if you’ve seen E.T. you will know pretty much where the story is headed. Of course, beyond the core plot, there are few similarities between the two films, the humour here setting this way apart from the film from which it so clearly draws inspiration. A fair amount of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s recognisable brand of humour is present here, their screenplay – for which they went on their own road trip across America to get inspiration – featuring some smart touches such as the idea that the government has been drip-feeding Paul’s image into mainstream culture so as to prepare the human race in the event that they ever encounter aliens first hand, hence the fact that Paul looks just like so many descriptions of aliens from real encounters over the years and exactly like so many features in films and TV shows. The idea that Paul has had such a big influence on popular culture allows for many references to films and TV shows including The X-Files, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark and, of course, E.T.. With lots of sci-fi movies and TV shows referenced in gags and lines of dialogue that are aimed directly at the funny bones of geeks everywhere – there are even lines of dialogue in Klingon – this is a film that undoubtedly offers many funny moments for its target audience. Additionally, scenes set at the world’s biggest and most famous comic convention San Diego Comic Con – although not filmed there, all the scenes being filmed at a virtually flawless recreation of the event staged at the Albuquerque Convention Centre in New Mexico with extras playing the costumed fanboys and geeks – perfectly highlight the film’s serious geek credentials and a reference to smaller but similar British event, Collectormania London, also bring the characters home to us. What’s more, the fact that they travel to famous UFO hotspots that really do exist in real life makes for something that will appeal heavily to UFO fanatics everywhere. Back to the humour and if you are not in the target audience you may not get quite as much out of the film. Some jokes are rather obscure, so much so that very few might actually get them and while there is some witty humour and dialogue there isn’t really enough of it. With Paul being a very crude, rude and lewd little alien, the humour frequently heads towards gross out, although staying on the side of suggestion rather than explicitness, and there is a significant amount of crudely suggestive humour that some will really appreciate but me less so. As a whole, the comedy here is a bit of a mixed bag, the distinctly British and geek targeted comedy stylings of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost really not going well with the more crude and lewd style of Greg Mottola and the resulting clash making for a film that does provide laughs but never achieves the laugh out loud factor that was achieved by Pegg and Frost’s other films.

It’s certainly not the fault of the performances here that the film fails to achieve the really big laughs though, even though the absence of stronger material does mean that few cast members are truly great here. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are on good form as the protagonists and make for perfectly convincing geeks. Seth Rogen, who apparently actually played Paul (rather than just voicing him) using the same motion capture technology that Andy Serkis used to play Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, fares reasonably as Paul even though he is less than stellar in the role. Kristen Wiig fares decently as Ruth but doesn’t get many laugh out loud moments. More or less playing the straight man, Jason Bateman delivers a very dry performance, something that is quite appropriate for the character he is playing. This is contrasted by more outright silly performances by Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio. For most of the film Sigourney Weaver is only heard not seen, her character largely just being a disembodied voice speaking over a telephone and the actress only appearing in person near the end but when she does appear in person she is a welcome presence. As for everyone else, Blythe Danner plays against type as a woman who Paul encountered back in 1947 when his ship crashed, Jeffrey Tambor turns in an excellent cameo appearance as belligerent sci-fi author Adam Shadowchild, Jane Lynch (best known as Glee’s Sue Sylvester) makes an appearance as a waitress at UFO themed diner Little Little A’Le’Inn – which really does exist in real life – and there is a vocal cameo by none other than Steven Spielberg. Unfortunately, the efforts of the cast really highlight the fact this film is just decent rather than great, something that is present in other aspects of the film as well with the visual effects on Paul and the spaceship that appears at the end being decent but not great and the same being true of the action sequences and, while there are a few instances of quite beautiful cinematography, largely there isn’t much to really speak of in this regard. The truth is that Edgar Wright was an essential part of the dynamic that made Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz work and, without him to complete the ensemble, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost just aren’t as good, this being far from their best film, and something that they may have made good but that Wright would have made great. Greg Mottola is no Edgar Wright, that’s for sure, and with the film lacking Wright’s magic touch, there is also a sense that it is perhaps a bit too American, lacking the British charms that made Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz so memorable. So, while Paul offers plenty of funny moments, it lacks the sharp touch of either of those films, being entertaining but with it being hard not to feel that it could have been so much better. During an interview and in a somewhat obscure comparison, director Mottola stated “I don’t have any illusions that we’ve made the next Battleship Potemkin”. He was right on the money with this statement – who ever expected this film to be the next Battleship Potemkin (a film which is in no way similar to this one anyway? Sadly, however, he hasn’t made the next Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz either.

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Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)