Review: Grown-Ups

Every so often films are said to have a dream line-up for example The Expendables comibation of Stallone, Willis, Schwarzenegger, Lundgren, Jet Li and others will have action fans foaming at the mouth. Simiarly fans of juvenille comedy may see the line-up of Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, David Spade and Kevin James as their dream. However after those people actually sit down and watch Grown-Ups they may, in fact they will, change their minds. The film's set-up is that the coach of a school basketball team dies and the five key members of the team are reunited at his funeral. They are an over-worked Hollywood agent with spoilt children and a workaholic wife (Sandler), a hen-pecked house husband (Rock), a much-married over dramatic health nut (Schneider), a boastful underachiever (James) and David Spade essentially playing the character he always plays an aging womaniser. The five go to live in a beach house with their wives, children and Chris Rock's mother-in-law, a role that was tailor-made for Martin Lawrence's Big Momma character to return but sadly this didn't happen. This is so the five men can scatter the coach's ashes in the way he requested and while they are there they are all meant to be learning life lessons. However not a lot does get learnt and instead there are a lot of scenes with the five sitting around perving over teenager girls, injuring themselves or each othre and generally having a laugh. A small plot is tagged onto the film's final third in which the team they played in their original game want a rematch but that's about it.

There are a lot of things wrong with Grown-Ups but the toilet humor, non-PC Jokes and the 'physical comedy' were all a given. The main problem is that the emotional journey that we're meant to go on doesn't happen or is completely rushed. All men have problems Sandler's kids are spoilt and have lost touch with the real world, Rock's wife doesn't appreciate him, James' four year old son is being breast-fed and James is also out-of-work, Schneider needs to reconnect with his daughter and Spade is growing up without a family or anyone to truly love. Some of these issues are completely unresolved and apart from Sandler's story the others are all rushed. In addition to this, Salma Hayek, Maria Bello and Maya Rudolph are collectively wasted as 'the wives' while Steve Buscemi also pops up in a thankless cameo. There's no doubt that the five friends had fun while filming but I also think that a non-scripted film of them just going on holiday together would be much funnier than this shambles.

Review: Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

It seems that you wait for two uber-nerdy comic book adaptation movies to arrive then two come along at once. Earlier in the year, Kick-Ass wowed audiences with its fairly original style and subject matter and now we have Scott Pilgrim Vs The World a comic book adaptation which sees a normal Canadian lad having to defeat the seven evil exes of the girl of his dreams. The film sees Scott meet the mysteirous Ramona Flowers while still dating Asian schoolgirl Knives, he tries to woo Ramona which eventually happens but then he struggles to let Knives down gently. Scott soon discovers that he will have to defeat Ramona's various exes if he wants to be with them. They include an egotistic movie star, a vegan guitarist, a pair of Chinese twins and a rather agressive girl that Ramona went out with during an 'experimental stage'. Scott also has to concentrate on the band in which he plays bass who have a battle of the bands contest to think about as well as being sound. The end of the film sees Scott trying to figure out what and who he should be fighting for and re-evaluating his life.

Visually Scott Pilgrim Vs The World is an amazing film using computer game graphics as its main inspiration. Each character is introduced with their own caption featuring their age and occupation while there is a lot of cartoonish moments. The script is extremly well written and very funny indeed with some very quotable lines and hilarious segments. Although the formulaic nature of Scott Vs The Exes, should seem repetitive but instead each fight is distinctive with each ex given their own style of fight and special power. The film features a lot of stand-out support performances including Chris Evans and Brandon Routh as two of the exes, Kieran Culkin as Scott's gay roomate, Anna Kendrick as his sister and Alison Pill as the band's drummer and Scott's former flame. As Ramona, Mary Elizabeth Winstead manages to pull of the air of mystery quite well but it is 17 year old Ellen Wong who is the film's stand-out female making us really empathise with Knives and willing Scott to realise that she's a much more suitable choice. Michael Cera's performance perfectly anchors all the more zany aspects of the film and gives it the realistic edge that it needs. I did feel the film did start to flag towards the very end and when Scott started to 'learn about himself' the pace started to slow and some of the unique style left the film. But overall this was a fun, well written, well directed piece of cinema that will appeal to any dorks who have ever had to fight for that unattainable girl or guy.

Review: Salt

The only real thing I knew about Salt going into watch it was that the part was originally written for Tom Cruise who obviously chose to do Knight and Day over this. Angelina Jolie took over from Cruise in what may be the first ever case of gender swap re-casting, this is made even stranger by the fact that Ange has to cross-dress at one point which made me wonder if we would have had a Some Like it Hot moment had Cruise taken the part. Jolie has played action before in both Mr and Mrs Smith and Wanted but here Evelyn Salt is much of a more professional sort to the point of almost being cold. Salt is a CIA agent who had been kidnapped at the start of the film and only freed thanks to husband Mark. Soonafter the film's start Salt is accused of being a Russian agent who is tasked with killing the Russian President at the funeral of the U.S. Vice President. Salt denies this but is soon rushing off, dying her hair, jumping around a lot and shooting a lot of people.

Salt is an interesting film, in one way it is a lot more accomplished than a lot of this year's summer blockbusters in having a fairly simple but effective story drive along the action rather than some nonsense about ever-lasting lightbulbs or fake bank notes. In the lead Jolie tries to keep the audience guessing till the final reel it is a very measured performance which never slips into the ridiculous, apart from maybe the cross-dressing, and always engages. The two main support performances are also well done as the producers decided to cast some proper actors in Liev Schrieber and Chiewetel Ejiofor as her long-time friend and colleague and a suspiciouis agent respetively. The main problem I had with Salt is that it takes itself a little too seriously at times and thinks its a little more clever than it actually is. The two supposed plot twists were figured out by myself and my friend way before they were revealed and there were also some unexplainable moments throughout the film. Overall a fairly enjoyable actioner which is professionally executed but not as cleverly-plotted as it likes to think.