The 2014 Partial Education Christmas Splurge

The 2014 Partial Education Christmas Splurge

Featuring Partially Educated Reviews of

The Grinch

Elf

The Polar Express

Fred Claus

A Christmas Carol

and Arthur Christmas

In case Tesco's insistence of starting Christmas sometime in September has managed to blur all conscious acceptance of when it actually does start, allow me to clarify. It's in two days and with that comes my annual quest to find a Christmas film that doesn't make me sit there feeling as though my time would be better spent watching The Muppet Christmas Carol again. This year, I actually went for films which have been recommended, either through friends, family, complete strangers or a popular critical response. I've stuck to films released released within the 21st century, because surely the 15 years we have had should have been enough time to produce a great Christmas film. Not sure how confident I am in that last statement.

I remember seeing about 10 minutes of The Grinch not long after it first came out and found it to be intensely annoying. The natural response to this was to just never bother watching it all the way through, but 14 years have passed since that time and I've become bored of everyone telling me I had to watch it. So I did. Happily, I can say that it's not quite as irritating as I remember it being. A lot of it hinges on your tolerance levels for Jim Carrey, playing the titular character whose inbuilt hatred of Christmas leads him to steal the festive season from the town of Whoville. Carrey embraces the role with all the madness and gurning that has come to be expected from him, but the character does show itself as a good fit for him. The flip side of this means that if you haven't liked him in other films, nothing will change your mind here. On a personal level, I'm fine with Carrey at his best, but hate him at his worst and he's treading the line between here, creating some genuinely funny moments, but sometimes interspersing these with some slight glimpses of over-confidence in his own madcap genius. The one thing that he often manages to do though is overshadow everyone else. This is particularly applicable here. Not a lot of time is given to the other characters, with Jeffrey Tambor getting the best deal of the stick as the film's truest villain. A young Taylor Momsen also gets time as the young girl that wants to bring the Grinch back into society, but that's not really a good thing as they're far too focussed on going for the cute factor. The film's one major song also dies on it's arse, as Momsen's hideously whiny voice breaks through. If you hate her new job in The Pretty Reckless, this film will make you realise that that band could be a whole lot worse. On a visual side, the film works much better, still impressing 14 years later and thus proving that it's three Oscars for Makeup, Art Direction and Costume were very well-earned. It's still a shame though that director Ron Howard appears far too enamoured with Carrey to fine-tune the other areas where the film is greatly lacking. Each year, a number of Christmas films make their way into cinemas and I guarantee that every year will hold one worse that The Grinch, but I do feel that the 14 years of recommendations have oversold it a bit.

THREE out of five

Jon Favreau's career as a director kept going from strength to strength until he hit the unfortunate stumbling block of Cowboys And Aliens. Along the way though, the man hasn't half made some gambles. Casting a still untrusted Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man was one those, but I'd say that Elf was a bigger one. It's not just that his second film would enter the festive market that's so hard to break through, but casting Will Ferrell in the lead was nowhere near as confident a decision as it is today. At this point, Ferrell's only lead roles had been as a co-star and one of those had been the awful A Night At The Roxbury. Old School had made him popular, but there was absolutely nothing that could hint that this man would be capable of selling a film on his star and his star alone. Elf changed that and, if nothing else, the makers deserve some respect for taking the gamble that paid off. Ferrell plays Buddy the Elf, who has been raised by one of Santa's elves after accidentally ending up there as a child. Not the brightest spark in the bunch, Buddy is well into his 30's before he realises he's actually a human. Upon learning this, he goes off in search of his birth father (James Caan). The bad news is that his Dad is a publisher whose every action pushes him further up the naughty list. The best moments lie in the interplay between Caan and Ferrell. Caan, in particular, seems game for a laugh, holding both a respect for the material and the work, instead of just seeming like he's cashing in a cheque. This may be a Ferrell vehicle, but it at least feels as though it's trying to create some decent supporting characters. It doesn't always work, as the love interest story with Zooey Deschanel feels hackneyed and unnecessary. It also needs to be said that Elf is fairly hit and miss when it comes to laugh out loud moments. It holds enough though to make it an enjoyable watch and I was perfectly amenable when it came to me having to indulge in a second viewing.

THREE out of five

Particularly in the family market, whether or not you enjoy a Christmas film or not hinges on how you feel about the occasion in general. If you hate it, you're going to be far less open to what you're about to see. This is none more true than it is with The Polar Express, a film which loves Christmas every bit as much as the children that it is primarily aiming to please. Fortunately for me, I've always managed to retain some of that childhood love of this time of year and so I'm more than happy to go with it when it comes to this film. A young boy has seen the facts and he's voting no. Adamant that a period of his childhood has come to an end, our nameless hero no longer believes in the existence of Santa Claus. Then Christmas Eve arrives and with it the Polar Express stops at his doorway, ready to take him and various other children to the North Pole. Yes, apparently Santa has begun a b-line career in kidnapping. The journey that follows is festive fun of the highest order with plenty of adventure, but also plenty of lessons that will naturally feel heavy-handed to an adult audience, but are going to work brilliantly with children. With Hans Zimmer's beautiful score and excellent voice acting from Tom Hanks, taking on most of the roles in the film, Robert Zemeckis has crafted a brilliant film that perfectly captures the appropriate mood. Unfortunately, he made it with motion capture. This is the first of three films that Zemeckis made using the technique and though the technical prowess is impressive, it doesn't make up for the fact that this film would be so much better in live action. This shows up most in the look of the characters, particularly their faces which look distractingly vacant unless breaking out into a beaming smile or an extreme frown. The technology has progressed since, but there were already films with better animation out there, begging the question why we needed to regress in quality. Yes, you can throw out the technological development argument, but that development has to be necessary and I question whether it ever was. From a film fan perspective, it's too irksome to give this a perfect score. If you're able to ignore issues such as these, then feel free to add an extra point to that score and also accept my jealousy. This goes for kid's too. Let's be honest. They're not going to care about the technical side, particularly if they get as swept up in the journey as the film wants them to.

FOUR out of five

If you're releasing a Christmas film, you have to be prepared for revulsion from critics and be ready to not care about it. That's not a dig in any particular direction, as most Christmas films deserve that hatred, but every so often one of those films receives the fury and wrath of every critic out there, but still seems to resonate with the money-paying filmgoers. From where I'm standing, Fred Claus appears to be one of those films. Vince Vaughn plays the older brother of his much more famous sibling, cursed to immortality as a result of his brother's sainthood, but forever having to live in the shadow of the global adoration that Santa (Paul Giamatti) receives. The solution is simple: he has absolutely nothing to do with his brother and works as a repo man. Through an entirely convenient series of events, Fred winds up in need of money and his brother gives it to him, on the condition that he comes work for him. Yes, apparently Santa is stupid enough to employ his Christmas hating younger brother, despite the fact that he's currently being audited by Kevin Spacey in a funereal suit. Where I stand on Fred Claus is pretty simple: I'm with the general public, but a little less enthusiastically. I simply don't get where the lashings of hatred have come from when the film is simple, harmless fun. The story is sweet enough and the spirit of Christmas stands strong, as it should do in a film of this nature. It may be a bit of a mess narratively and Vince Vaughn judders from horrible one minute to likeable the next with no real development in between, but does it honestly matter? The only thing that is a real problem is the film's seeming pre-occupation with presents as the meaning of Christmas. It tries to mask it with a noble "there's no such thing as bad kids" argument, but this still leads to the commercially inclined idea that the one thing kids need is presents. That's it for a sticking point that holds though and Fred Claus exists in perfectly acceptable form. That's not damning with faint praise, that's positivity without a need to cite revolution.

THREE out of five

The Polar Express was the start of Zemeckis' dabblings in motion capture and A Christmas Carol is, to date, the last (though I doubt it's the last we'll see of it). The major difference is that The Polar Express is a great film that I wanted to see in live action form rather than the existing one. A Christmas Carol is a film that I didn't enjoy in motion capture, but also wouldn't really care to see in live action. You know you're off to a bad start when you're managing to make the words of Charles Dickens sound boring and maybe my love of that film with Muppets in it means my expectations were unreasonably high, but this version of the classic story is flat-out dull. Much like Tom Hanks in The Polar Express, Jim Carrey dominates proceedings in the roles of Scrooge and all three ghosts, while the rest of the cast is fleshed out with the reliable likes of Colin Firth, Gary Oldman and Bob Hoskins. Carrey goes for the cartoonish side of things (shocking, I know), but lights up the film as much as he can while the rest of the cast run through the motions like they're delivering a half-asleep Jackanory reading. The 3D is as gimmicky as it usually is, but almost insultingly so, as I don't remember reading the original story and thinking "this would be even better if it looked like a snowball was headed towards my face". Worse still, it's not done a way which translates over to 2D. The Ghost of Christmas Present sequences particularly feel unwatchable as the effect created by 3D just looks weird and ineffective when returning to a 2D viewing. If you're making a 3D film, you have to accept that many people don't have access to that in the home viewing market and make sure they aren't penalised for that. So there, the impossible has been achieved in rendering Dickens ineffective. It's not that there's no glimmers of hope: the score is at times uplifting, the realisation of Dickensian London impressive on the visual front and, you know what, there's always going to be something about this story that manages to engage. That's not really good enough though.

TWO out of five

It feels as though Aardman must have been responsible for a plethora of films that could rival Pixar, but in reality, they haven't; Arthur Christmas only being their fourth one. Amongst that, they've had disappointment in the pretty dull Flushed Away, so their reputation is not enough to guarantee greatness. Arthur Christmas demonstrates this to be the case by taking a great idea, but making it a little bland. The focus is on showing how Santa manages to deliver presents to every child in the world over the course of one night. Here, Santa is a title passed down from generation to generation, with the position currently held by the ageing Malcolm (Jim Broadbent). His eldest son, Steve (Hugh Laurie) is what holds the operation together, with his ultra-tight management feeling deeply corporate. Meanwhile, the younger son Arthur (James McAvoy) is seen as scatty, clumsy and slightly annoying, but at least holds "the magic of Christmas within his heart". I don't know if that line is in there, but it might as well be with how bluntly this film reinforces it's point. This Christmas though, all is not well, as a present is missed and a child is set to wake up to an empty stocking. Viewed by Steve and Malcolm as collateral damage, this is not acceptable to Arthur and he and his grandfather steal a sleigh in order to get that present to the child. I said Arthur Christmas was bland and I meant it, but that's not to say it's bad. It's got enough laughs to pull you through and the great concept also helps. The animation is also solid, but not up there with the absolute apex we have become accustomed to. It flows along nicely enough and comes to a predictable, but solid conclusion. Additionally, the voice acting is brilliantly casted, with each actor bringing exactly what you should expect from them in their roles. Everything feels reliable enough, but nothing goes beyond that. If, on Christmas Eve, your kids are getting restless and excitable and all you want is something that'll keep them entertained, I'm moderately confident that this will do the job. On that basis, I'd say it's good enough.

THREE out of five

So, that's it for the 2014 splurge. My conclusion is a simple one: you really can't beat The Muppet Christmas Carol.

Next Time (5th January)

The Mandatory Review

Rise And Fall: Colin Farrell

Partial Education Presents
Rise And Fall: Colin Farrell

Featuring Partially Educated Reviews of

Minority Report

Phone Booth

Alexander

In Bruges

Total Recall

and Winter's Tale

There are many stories of careers that hit a peak, only to come crashing back down to Earth, and with In Bruges requiring a review, I've decided to start my own little series on them with. There's bigger falls than Colin Farrell for sure (Mr Gibson will make an appearance eventually) and his career is certainly not beyond repair, but, in recent years, it's stalled quite dramatically. We start though with a certain Spielberg film which may have been a Tom Cruise vehicle, but made the world aware of Farrell, whilst I sat there thinking: "isn't that the bloke from Ballykissangel?"

As far as adaptations go, Philip K. Dick has had it moderately lucky. Yes, there's been the odd dud, but most of those get forgotten and pushed aside in favour of the likes of Blade Runner and Total Recall. Though those are the two most respected, Minority Report is up there with the strongest. The word adaptation is used in a very loose sense when it comes to this film, as bar the concept and the lead character's name, there's little else to compare it to the original story. The highly polished nature of the film (this is Spielberg after all) runs at odds with the very rough around the edges feel of the original short story, but this doesn't serve to detract from what is a deeply thrilling blockbuster. Tom Cruise takes the lead role as Pre-Crime cop John Anderton, the lead enforcer in a trial run of a programme that enables murders to be seen before they actually happen. Wouldn't you know it though? Anderton's name arrives as a future offender and he goes on the run. Spielberg makes the most of the fact that the original story didn't focus much on the look of the world it took place in and goes relishes in creating his own. It's an odd vision, as you may sit there thinking "there's no way 2054 is going to look like that", but when you sit back and think about it, every gadget thrown in there could be entirely possible. He also succeeds where he has sometimes failed before, as the film's lack of real humour doesn't serve as much of a detriment, keeping the tone darker, but avoiding the pomposity that could have been there. Performances range from decent to strong, with Cruise sometimes stumbling into melodramatic territory, but pulling it off for the most part. Farrell's very strong performance is the one that pushed him into the a-list and Samantha Morton also plays her role as the main Pre-Cog (future predictor) with the style and panache that we've come to expect of her. Maybe her intensity is a little ramped up at times, but it's a non-issue in the long run. Then there's the ever reliable hands of Max Von Sydow being, well, reliable in a predictable, but nonetheless fun role. If people came to list the Top 10 most important films of Spielberg's career, I'd question whether or not Minority Report would make that list, but as popcorn entertainment it definitely works and it even does it without completely dumbing things down. Bridging that oft forgotten gap between blowing things up and giving the audience something to ponder is often lacking in Hollywood's output, but here lies proof that it sometimes occurs..

FOUR out of five

Coming out of a 2002 in which his star was made, Farrell went on to star in as many high-profile Hollywood projects as he could. When I say that Phone Booth is the best of them, that's less a validation of Phone Booth's quality and more an example of how bad the rest of it was. Phone Booth is one of those films that's just about good enough, qualifying as entertaining, but doing little to justify that entertainment as much more than throwaway. Farrell plays egotistical (is there another kind?) publicist, Stu, who finds himself in the sights of a sniper who wants him to see the error of his ways. Who is this mysterious sniper and which of the many windows is he looking through? The second question is a genuine mystery, but they seem to think that the first one is, even though that's blatantly Jack Bauer's voice. To be fair, Kiefer Sutherland is the best thing about this film, his voiceover holding an unhinged menace that benefits the film's general lack of subtlety. Unfortunately, the recording of his voiceover is painfully distracting, with no effort being made to make it even sound like it's coming from down a phone line. No, instead, you can feel the comforting warmth of the studio booth in which he sits. Farrell is also solid in the role, though hardly revelatory and his scenes are frequently helped along by Forest Whitaker as the chief police negotiator. It's not Whitaker's best role by any stretch, but he's a strong enough actor to rise above the bog-standard troubled police offer character and actually make something of his role. Length-wise, the film is also near enough bang on, with little dragging time as director Joel Schumacher swiftly wraps things up. Phone Booth's fine, good, solid and there's nothing that needs ranting about. That's it though.

THREE out of five

Quick Note: This review is of the Director's Cut. I intended to watch the Theatrical cut, but couldn't get hold of it. On the strength of the Director's Cut, I won't be rushing to watch any other versions.

Have you seen The Recruit? Have you seen S.W.A.T.? Have you seen Daredevil? They're all films starring Farrell. They're all films which received moderately hostile responses. When compared to the epic turd that is Oliver Stone's Alexander, they may as well be masterpieces. The problem isn't just that everyone has proven they can do better than this. It's that even people with a careers worth of bad films would sit back and think "Yeah, that's just not acceptable". The script stinks worse than Geordie Shore dipped in pig shit and the acting is heinous. Every performance in here is as wooden as it gets, with the exception of Angelina Jolie who's attempting to pass off her over-acting as intensity. She fails. Farrell really is the worst thing though. It doesn't help that the script leaves him feeling as though he's about to burst forth with a cry of "FREEEEEEDOM!" every five minutes, but the everlasting look of confusion on his face leaves you wondering whether or not his performance is just the result on an overextended hangover. Hell, if it is, at least he's got an excuse, which is more than can be said of Oliver Stone. In the space of one film, Stone manages to take pretty much all of his integrity and dash it's brains across the pavement. His artistic choices are banal (he emphasises the brutality of a battle scene by saturating the screen with a red tint) and, despite the fact that I watched the Director's Cut, he still makes the film feel as though it's been mangled in a director-producer dispute. Stone attributed the film's box office failure to "raging fundamentalism in morality", linked to the American audience's reaction to the exploration of Alexander's homosexuality. Maybe this is true, but he failed to mention where the film fails as a film: by being ignominious tosh.

ONE out of five

This is the part where Farrell's career begins it's decline, but amongst the ever-decreasing successes comes this week's mandatory review.

There's just something about In Bruges which seems to strike a chord with everyone who watches it. Some of the biggest prudes I know of have made their way through the multitude of f's and jeff's (honestly, if a swear word isn't said in this film multiple times, it's probably because it's not worth saying), the oft graphic violence and the fact that this is a film that pretty much insults anyone it can get it's hands on. Then, at the end, they still have to admit that it's pretty bloody great. Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play two hitmen who have been sent to Bruges following a job gone wrong. While Gleeson instantly settles into the way of sightseeing and history perusing, Farrell has the slightly less welcoming opinion of 'if I grew up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me. But I didn't, so it doesn't.' Where this would often set up for an overused dose of foreigner bashing, In Bruges slowly reveals itself to have a solid and engaging plot… amongst the foreigner bashing. Much of the story hinges on why they've been forced to go into hiding and this provides us with the film's main emotional thread. Though In Bruges' prime directive is to make you laugh, it's also quite touching at times, even though it's main heart and soul comes from the plight a professional killer. The presence of one of the finest British actors of all time doesn't hurt, with Ralph Fiennes managing to be hilarious, menacing and completely deranged all at the same time. If anything, it's a shame that his face is all over the poster and trailer because it spoils the surprise of his inclusion a little bit. With writer-director Martin McDonagh's outstanding script providing a deeply theatrical sense to the dialogue that plays well against the cinematic view of the Belgian town, In Bruges deserves to be viewed as a future classic of British comedy.

FIVE out of five

This is the part where I'd love to say that Farrell decided to continue on in the smaller projects and leave his blockbuster days behind him...

He didn't.

This may be starting on the wrong foot first, but I'm not the biggest fan of the original Total Recall. I'll save my reasons for when I review it, but it did leave me slightly concerned that I may enjoy the remake and then have to justify why. Turns out my worries were unfounded. Director Len Wiseman has a real concern with his film appearing cool and sexy. This results in Farrell, Jessica Biel and Kate Beckinsale all arriving to up the attractive stakes and Bryan Cranston taking on villain duties because "OH MY GOD! IT'S WALTER!!!". His more modern twist on the story attempts to bring out political statement: instead of going to Mars, we're now transferring from the poor end of Earth to the rich end and he throws as many fast-paced action sequences at us as he can. What does this all serve to achieve? Bugger all. All the high-priced visuals and stunning looking stars (really, they couldn't look more desirable) fail in masking just how hollow and dull this film really is. The "factory worker who turns out to be something else" storyline seems even more ridiculous this time around, as Farrell somehow manages to look even more out of place than Arnie did in the original. When he does enter his hero mode, he's decidedly moribund, lacking any charisma and not even delivering some Alexander-like bad acting to compensate for the boredom. This can all be said again for Biel, so let's not waste those words. Then, on the villain side, Cranston demonstrates the difference between chewing up the scenery and pissing on it, leaving, of all people, Beckinsale to be the film's strongest asset. That's not me saying she's good, it's me saying that in a row of music festival Porta-Loos, she's that's only overflowing a little bit. As for those cool visuals, Wiseman appears to have developed an affinity for lens flare not all that dissimilar to Homer Simpson's affinity for star wipes. They're fairly equal when it comes to their levels of panache too. Despite Wiseman's directorial career containing two Underworld films, Total Recall still manages to somehow be his worst, by quite some distance.

ONE out of five

In the end, Total Recall disappointed at the box office, perhaps breaking even, but only just. If Farrell wanted to re-establish himself, he needed a hit. Unfortunately, a 30 million gross on a 60 million budget is anything but a hit and that's exactly what we got with...

Winter's Tale begins in 1895 when two parents with consumption put their baby in a small boat and let him go under the assumption that he'll get to Manhattan. I mean, they can see Manhattan from where they drop the boat, but it's still hardly a model of great parenting. Fast forward and this boy has become Farrell, a thief under the employ of Russell Crowe. His treachery of Crowe means he's a hunted man (did I mention Crowe's a demon? Probably not, I'm trying to expel that bit from my mind) and his attempted robbery of a mansion leads him to cross paths with Jessica Brown Findlay's Beverly, who also has consumption. That's where the synopsis ends, partly because of spoilers and also because trying to explain it would induce a headache upon myself. Suffice to say, our characters embark on a journey of pretension, ineptitude and narrative flaws galore. The truest blame for the films failures lie in the writing, directing and producing team, with Akiva Goldsman conveniently working in all three roles. It has to be noted that Goldsman's wife passed away not long before he started to make this film, so it is more than fair to see where his inspiration lies, but it doesn't prevent the film from feeling like an overbearing vanity project. It also feels smugly confident and damningly unaware of how weirdly stupid it gets (time travelling arrives and it's unnecessary, a flying horse keeps appearing and it's worse). Now, for the most part, the acting is fine, sometimes even great, rising above the shoddy script to bring us some moments that genuinely move (particularly in Farrell and Findlay's relationship). The one exception is Russell Crowe, doing to the Irish accent what Dick Van Dyke did to the Cockney accent and delivering a performance that Danny Dyer would be proud of. Winter's Tale has left me slightly conflicted though. It's absolute crap, but I can't bring myself to give it a ONE out of five, entirely because of how astoundingly beautiful it looks. Cinematography and lighting combine in perfect harmony to provide a fairytale view of a real-life city and it really is exceptional work. That ordinarily wouldn't be enough for me, but the work is so great that I feel guilty not crediting that in the score. It still doesn't mean I'd ever recommend it though.

TWO out of five

Next Time

There is a mandatory review coming up, but I'm holding it. On Monday...