comedy drama

THE ORANGES

Stars 2

Hugh Laurie returns to the big screen as a straying suburban dad in this weak and flavourless comedy drama.

His comfortable middle class routines are destroyed when the turbulent daughter of his best friend  returns home for Christmas, with alcohol and a shoulder to cry on conspiring to make David’s rocky marriage a little crowded.

The cast work hard to make the film work but the script has them swimming in marmalade. Nina is at least a spirited presence but poor Laurie is reduced to desperate gurning as he chases laughs.

There is some mildly creative profanity but the central romance is a montage of cinematic cliches. If a plucking guitar isn’t pouring syrup over a scene then uplifting festive songs are blasted out to warn the audience that something ‘amusing’ is happening.

This fruitless lemon squeezes the last drop of goodwill long before the end, and really takes the pith out of the audience as it does so.

THE SAPPHIRES

Cert 12A  Stars 3

Irish comic Chris O’Dowd steams into the cinema aboard the soul train in this retro feel-good slice of fun of musical comedy-drama.

In the Australian Outback of 1968 O’Dowd’s drunkard keyboard player, Dave, recognises the potential of four wannabe soul singers and appoints himself their manager.

Whisking the girls off to the Vietnam war to entertain the troops, Dave proves less than reliable when romance, rivalry, and the war itself threaten the band’s chances of success.

Deborah Mailman, Jessica Mauboy, Shari Sebbens, Miranda Tapsell as the singers are attractive and nicely argumentative personalities, and if they’re not brilliant actors then at least they’re great singers. O’Dowd gives his all but is occasionally embarrassing in a thinly written part.

Budget constraints mean that the combat scenes aren’t hugely convincing but the film is surprisingly robustly effective when addressing the racism the band encounter.

The Sapphires bursts with humour and soul classics that drive the movie along. There’s not much that’s original but it’s warm-hearted and though it won’t win awards, it will win hearts.

GREEN BOOK

Cert 12A 129mins Stars 3

This US road trip comedy-drama about a classical concert tour is an amiable and sentimental journey with plenty of pretty scenery, but painfully straightforward and devoid of surprises.

Astonishingly it’s scored for five Oscar nominations including nods for its stars, Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen, with the former also winning a prestigious Screen Actors Guild gong.

They play an African-American pianist and his Italian-American driver, on a tour of the racially divided US deep south during the early 1960s.

One is snobby and the other slobby and I didn’t really warm to either of the disharmonious pair, and directed by Peter Farrelly, of Dumb and Dumber fame, it feels very much a cover version of Steve Martin’s classic, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, but not as funny or as moving.

There’s no real sense of danger, and the scenes where the white guy explains African-American music to the black guy, is every bit as tin-eared and cringe-worthy as it sounds.

SWIMMING WITH MEN

Cert 12A 97mins Stars 3

Dip a big toe into the feel good waters of this very British comedy.

Rob Brydon plays an accountant whose midlife crisis sees him leave his wife and teenage son, and seek refuge in the arms of a synchronised swimming team comprised of middle aged men.

Brought together by the pointlessness of existence, they find themselves unexpectedly competing in the unofficial World championship in Milan.

It’s kept afloat on bubbles of charm by the likeable and familiar cast, which includes Jane Horrocks, Downton’s garrulous Jim Carter, and This Is England’s Thomas Turgoose.

Best in show is Charlotte Riley as the team’s instructor, whose drill sergeant manner is all the more ferocious for using her native Teesside accent.

Oliver Parker’s direction keeps everything fluid, and it’s played in the same tone as his previous work such Dad’s Army and Johnny English Reborn.

So it’s heart is always in the right place, even if the chaps’ arms and legs frequently aren’t.

 

TULLY

Cert 15 96mins Stars 5

Charlize Theron changes gear from the Fast and Furious franchise to give a first class performance in this wryly funny and gaspingly honest comedy drama.

Only last year the Oscar winner was an impressively ripped action star, now she’s believably hefty, wrinkled and worn.

She brings warmth and humour to the married forty-something, Marlo, who’s suffering soul-sapping sleep deprivation and barely coping with the her newborn, third child.

Marlo watches TV reality shows and scoffs pizza in exhausted surrender to the pressure of conforming to the impossible standards of other, seemingly perfect parents. Her husband returns from work each night and collapses each night in front of the telly.

Marlo’s wealthy older brother has hires them a night nanny, to help with the midnight feeds.

Played by Mackenzie Davis, Tully is an eager-to-please 26 year old, with a toned physique and model looks. And slowly the boundaries between employee, family and friend are blurred.

It’s directed with  sympathy by Jason Reitman and written with commendable insight by Diablo Cody. They previously teamed up for 2007’s teen pregnancy drama, Juno, and 2011’s Young adult, which also starred Theron. This is equally polished and my favourite of the three.

Cody’s script is astonishingly good at portraying the noise, frustration and physical indignities of child rearing, while people tell you how precious and fleeting those early moments are.

Painfully accurate in its depiction of domestic distress, I was suffering Vietnam War-like flashbacks to the terrible times of my son’s first years.

And then Cody delivers a perfectly flighted narrative curve ball which bowls us over with its emotional power.

But this isn’t a depressing experience, more a therapeutic hymn to virtues of sacrifice, compromise and steadfastness.

If a newborn has made you feel afraid, desperate and broken, this film will help put you back together. By the end I was crying like a baby. 

 

THE SQUARE

Cert 15 151mins Stars 3

Dominic West takes time out from Tomb Raider to appear as a famous artist in this satirical Swedish drama.

Alongside him is Elisabeth Moss, fresh from her Emmy awarding winning turn in TV’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

As a journalist she has an affair with the smooth curator of a museum of modern art in Stockholm.

Played by Claes Bang, he finds life spiralling out of control as he tries to drum up media interest in his latest exhibition.

Winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, this is a lengthy exploration of contemporary Sweden society and the gap between its ideals and citizens’ behaviour.

Immaculately photographed, the script expresses its ideas through visual metaphor, but at the expense of drama. 

Mocking the moneyed metropolitan middle class, the most powerful moment comes during a fundraiser where wealthy patrons are assaulted by a semi-naked neanderthal performance artist.

I could have done with more of the monkeying about.

 

 

WONDER WHEEL

Cert 12A Stars 4

Kate Winslet has been grievously overlooked during awards season for her magnificent turn in Woody Allen’s dark period drama, his 48th film as director.

When even your leading lady distances herself from your movie for personal reasons, one suspects time’s up for Allen’s big screen career.

Allen’s work exists within its own little bubble, and it’s the small differences which separate his films from each other. For the most urban of directors, it’s almost alarming to find this one is set on the beach and filled with bold saturated colour.

In a welcome gender inversion, she plays the ‘Woody Allen’ character, a neurotic and romantically minded waitress having an affair with a younger lover.

Justin Timberlake is the hunky lifeguard on whom she projects a fantasy future together.

As ever in Allen’s films, when someone chooses to pursue a fantasy existence over harsh reality, tragic events occur. This is not one of Allen’s funny ones.

 

LADY BIRD

Cert 15 94mins Stars 4

A high school student yearns to spread her wings in this compelling coming-of-age drama.

In director Greta Gerwig’s typical semi-biographical style, she’s fashioned an honest and droll account of high school, which could almost be an unofficial prequel to her 2013 arthouse hit, Frances Ha.

Only 23 years old and convincingly playing five years younger, Irish-American actress Saoirse Ronan has deservedly secured her third Oscar nomination as Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson. 

With wit and quiet economy, the script also acts as a critique of other teenage films by turning traditional Hollywood narratives on their head. 

So driving tests, prom night, and losing ones virginity aren’t the grandstanding life changing experiences they’re frequently presented as being. Instead Lady Bird slowly begins to appreciate her mother is also a person.

Nominated for five Oscars, apart from Ronan I doubt this will win on the big night. But any film which tells teens they’re not the centre of the universe has got to be worth watching.

 

THE PROFESSOR

Cert 15 Stars 2

Johnny Depp stars in this comedy-drama as a married father diagnosed with cancer whose given six months to live, and begins a drink, drug and sex-fuelled campaign against the staid university authorities.

Possibly inspired by the material which allows Depp to dress and behave as a doomed yet righteous and narcissistic romantic 18th century poet, the star seems at least semi-motivated and involved, which is good to see after so the disappointments of his recent output.

Even so this exploration of the hypocrisy of middle-class morality is sadly sluggish, dull and indulgent, and teaches us nothing.

 

SUPPORT THE GIRLS

Cert 15 86mins Stars 3

This bittersweet day-in-the-life-drama is a far more appetising and nourishing experience than the food served in the US ‘breastaurant’ where Regina Hall’s middle-aged manager works.

After her winning performance in 2017’s raucous comedy Girls’ Trip, the actress gives a wonderfully natural turn as the busily maternal Lisa.

While valiantly attempting to uphold standards of service, dress and decorum in her young staff, Lisa finds herself at a crossroads in life among the motorised sprawl of Texas.

Double Whammies is euphemistically called a sports bar, and while the male owner insists it’s a mainstream family environment, he provides a diet of ‘boobs, brews and big screens’ to a mostly male clientele.

Loyally assisting Lisa in negotiating a daily menu of customers, cooks, cops and criminals, are the drily no-nonsense Shayna McHayle, and Haley Lu Richardson’s ray of sunshine.

And the trio provide a welcome scream of defiance in the face of limited life choices and the myth of the American dream.