FILM REVIEW: THE HOBBIT (AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY)

THE HOBBIT (12) 
Starring: Martin Freeman, Sir Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, Richard Armitage, James Nesbitt, Cate Blanchett, Aidan Turner, Sylvester McCoy.

Director: Peter Jackson

Running Time: 169 minutes

Released by Wrner Bros.

OUT NOW

Ten years ago, The Lord of the Rings adaptations revolutionised cinema. The literary epic became a cinematic one – a trilogy of movies from J R R Tolkien’s source material that firmly put the director Peter Jackson, New Zealand and cutting-edge technology on the map.  It was somewhat inevitable that there would be talks about some of the other Tolkien stories heading to the big screen – but it still took a decade for that to happen - mainly due to rights issues and the fact that the MGM studio was hovering on the edge of bankruptcy.

But The Hobbit is here and in its first week of release alone, it’s on target to be one of 2012’s big success stories.

The premise is remarkably simple and familiar:  Young(ish) Bilbo Baggins (Freeman) is a hobbit content with his lot: for him his home in the Shire and the gentle comings and goings of Bag End are as about exciting as he wishes things to ever be. However when cantankerous wizard Gandalf the Grey comes knocking, it isn't long before Bilbo's home is ceiling-deep in hungry house-guests and talks of adventures. Gandalf wants Bilbo to accompany the dwarves in an attempt to reclaim their ancestral mountain home. Bilbo wants nothing to do with the perilous quest, but Gandalf can be quite persuasive, so despite his inner doubts, the hobbit finds himself racing to keep up with the group as they head out to parts unknown and dangerous…

There’s no doubting that there are elements here that excel – in many ways it’s a critic-proof venture and will be rightly applauded for its visual-effects, epic ambition and sense of scale.  It’s not perfect, though. There are moments in The Hobbit that look like they come from a video game. The decision to shoot the adventure at 48fps (frames-per-second) gives the images on screen a new, clearly different texture that moves between cutting-edge console-game pixels and an almost documentary-appearance in certain scenes. The dwarf palace in the Lonely Mountain, the Goblin underground city, the ethereal nature of Rivendell... are all rendered majestically and magically, utterly believable but perhaps to the point of distraction. But we're often noting the background’s panoramic qualities when we should be concentrating on the foreground. The set-piece battles (Orcs and trolls and dragons, oh my) do seem freshly set up for multi-platform gaming adaptation and too often veer into a love affair with impossibly kinetic shots rather than a clarity of who is actually doing what to whom.  The stories of motion-sickness are most likely exaggerated, but it's not unlikely that your eyes may ache from trying to keep up.

"Fans of the RINGS trilogy may feel they have travelled this route before - in more ways than one - and there's some reasonable suspicion that stretching the HOBBIT material to three films is a commercial exercise rather than a creative one. However there's no denying the film is a crowd-peasing on most levels..."

How was it for the people in front of the camera – knowing that the process would capture even more detail than ever before? Sir Ian McKellen (Gandalf) says there are benefits and drawbacks… but he enjoys being able to see the hi-tech footage moments after it’s been shot.

“I think it was Michael Caine who said the trick of working with a film-camera is that you don't arrange your face, you just think and the face will magically do as little or as much as is required. But, seriously, it is wonderful to be able to do a scene and then, at Peter's invitation, to go and put on the 3D glasses and watch what you've just done. Then you can see if you've done too much or too little.  In the theatre, you're entirely reliant on OTHER people's reactions to it. You can edit yourself…” he explains.

So how was it to be back in New Zealand after the best part of a decade?

“I found it very similar. Behind the camera they all seemed to be old friends. Peter and his team... the camera-men, the person who did my make-up, Rick, was the same guy who did it last time... Emma who looked after my costume... yes, there were new people in front of the camera as well, but the whole tone of the film was exactly as it had been before. It was like a very expensive home-movie. There was that sense of having fun, knowing why we were all there and wanting to have fun with each other …” McKellen notes.

But the veteran actor admits that there were some changes and improvements to the process behind the scenes – especially now that Jackson and his team have established a bonafide cutting-edge studio facility in New Zealand.

“The big improvements were with the actual buildings . Most of the interiors for Lord of the Rings were filmed in an old paint factory which wasn't heated and wasn't air-conditioned. It wasn't sound-proofed and you had to do the takes in between planes taking on and off. Every single word in Lord of the Rings, as far as I'm concerned was added later (in ADR),” he explains. “This time we were in the state-of-the-art King Kong Studios where James Cameron and Steven Spielberg queue up to use. As for lunch... that's an important thing when you're filming (laughs)... nit in a flapping tent threatening to blow over, but in an actual building. And I agree about the sandwiches... the best food I've had on ANY job. That's another reason to go to New Zealand. ..”

The main problem that continues to be one of the ‘it’s –the-nature-of-the-job’ category is the fact that though Gandalf spends most of his time with the assortment of dwarves on the quest,  the actor barely sees them. That’s because there’s only so many ways that the wizard and his tall form can be seen alongside much shorter dwarves…. when the actors are in reality the same size.

“I adore all the dwarves and they know that! There is a special dwarf and he knows who he is... but enough of that (laughs),” McKellen winks. “The problem with the dwarves is that despite what they are in real life, they have to look smaller than me on the screen. There are a number of devices to accomplish that. None of them are congenial to acting, which is about spontaneity, and looking the other actor in the eye and working out it with them. Often, in these films, you don't have that necessity. Sometimes, cruelly, you are not in the same space when you're filing the same scene. ..”

“The first day, I shamed myself  by grumbling to myself that this sort of filming wasn't why I'd become and actor... and I'd forgotten I was wearing a microphone!” he continues. “Everybody, including Peter, heard. But I was rewarded the next day with love. The tent inside where I got made-up had been decorated overnight. There were remnants of old Rivendell, there was fresh fruit and flowers and carpets and cushions, dancing boys and girls (laughs). I was made to feel it would be alright and it was. We found other ways of doing it…”

Fans of the Rings trilogy may feel they have travelled this route before – in more ways than one - and there’s some reasonable suspicion that stretching the ‘Hobbit’ material to three films is a commercial exercise rather than a creative one.  However there’s no denying the film is crowd-pleasing on most levels, not least the return of Serkis and Gollum - worth the price of admission alone. As a showpiece of technology it’s excellent. As a creative endeavour it has its failings, including the padding already on show, but though it doesn’t excite quite as much as the truly ground-breaking trilogy that spawned it, it’s still an example of cinema at its most ambitious.

4/5

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FILM REVIEW: TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE

TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE (12) 
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake, John Goodman, Matthew Lillard

Director: Robert Lorenz

Running Time: 111 minutes

Released Out Now

Gus (Eastwood) is a baseball scout reaching the twilight of his career.  His eye-sight is failing and he’s being out-paced by younger go-getters such as Philip (Matthew Lillard) who feel there’s more sense looking at statistics than actually venturing out and watching the game being played.  His middle-management boss  Pete (John Goodman) is supporting him the best he can and sends him out on the road to evaluate a young player that seems to be the target of a lot of rival clubs.  Meanwhile Gus’s daughter  Mickey (Amy Adams) is on the cusp of a move up the corporate ladder and a partnership at her law firm, so it would hardly be the best time to join her father on the road. However Pete asks her for the favour, to perhaps keep Gus from sabotaging his own ‘last chance’… and so estranged father and daughter hit the highways and the ballparks. But will player-turned-scout  Johnny (Justin Timberlake) help them solve the family-dynamic or merely complicate it further?

Trouble with the Curve is the sort of film unlikely to actually cause any real trouble at all. A perfectly acceptable and diverting -enough movie, it stays well within the safe, old, familiar places and meanders  a tried-and-tested route with all the requisite archetypes and characters you’d expect. The conflicts are clearly set-out, the solutions and outcome fairly obvious and  audiences will clearly be able who to cheer for and for whom to hiss-and-boo when the time comes.

Essentially this is an Eastwood who is now a dab hand at the rise-and-repeat  ‘irascible old-timer’, scowling like a curmudgeonly cul-de-sac’d  Judge Dredd  and cursing under his breath as much as a 12A certificate will allow. That’s not to say he doesn’t do it well, but there’s a certain feeling that the screen veteran has made the deliberate decision to play it safe and ( to use an appropriate sporting metaphor) avoid the fastballs, merely getting to first base rather than looking for a  home-run.

Amy Adams is another solid performer, able to handle anything that is thrown her way, but there are no curveballs here and she charms her way through a role of a tomboy-made-success-story, but without surrendering an engaging femininity. Justin Timberlake is getting well-deserved notices for his recent cinematic outings and his young-and-cocky scout is imbued with enough equal charm to hold his own within the star line-up.

No real surprises here then and a distinct feeling that the film will probably do better on a DVD release, but  there’s nothing wrong with a formulaic feel-good outing and Trouble with the Curve should appeal to more than the average sports-fan and the American pass-time that stays firmly at its heart…

3/5

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FILM REVIEW: LOOPER

LOOPER (15) 
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Piper Perabo, Han Soto, Jeff Daniels

Director: Rian Johnson

Running Time: 118 minutes

Released Out Now

It's 2042 and Joe (Joseph Gordon Levitt) makes his shady career as a Looper. Thirty years down the line (in 2072), time-travel has been discovered but immediately outlawed. That hasn't stopped the futuristic hoodlums taking advantage. Now when they kill someone, they can sidestep the DNA, tracking and ID problems by whoooshing their victim back in time and having him killed there by said 'Looper' agents. Thus, their enemies are disposed of with nary a trace in their own time-frame.

Loopers are rewarded handsomely for their services, living a life of luxury and privilege from the employer (represented by sent-back middle-management bad guy Abe - played by The Newsroom's Jeff Daniels) but knowing that one day their 'loop' will be closed when the future catches up with them and they become a victim of the process themselves).  However the loyal Joe is compromised when his next target escapes the immediate kill-zone... a bigger problem that said target is his older self (Willis).  At first Young Joe is more than happy to kill his older self  (figuring he can change his destiny) and win back the trust of Abe and his gang, but as time progresses and he learns more about the future that Old Joe has escaped and why he's come back, it becomes clear that the choices he'll have to make could impact not just his own destiny but that of the wider world...

There's the old saying that that there are but a handful of stories in Hollywood and each movie is merely a variation on one of those themes. That's possibly even more true for the science-fiction genre which all too often falls back upon ideas and plot-lines that we've seen many times before. As for the sub-section labelled 'time-travel'... well don't even have got me started (so to speak).

Intelligent time-travel stories are even rarer still. Most entries, while happy to throw a few special-effects and a dystopian future into their tales, wouldn't know an actual 'paradox' if it came up and kicked them in their event horizon.  So seeing the trailers for Looper over the last few months, one could be forgiven for thinking  that a film starring Bruce Willis and a lot of shooting wouldn't necessarily be the poster-boy for complex temporal manoeuvring.

Levitt, with subtle make-up to make him look like a young Willis, is excellent in the main role, playing the conflicted agent who was reasonably happy with his flawed by comfortable immoral life but now finds himself shoved into a genuine crisis of faith and moral quandry. It's a role that requires some physicality and some internalising and he does both well.  Yes, Willis as the more weathered, older Joe, does provide the main muscle of the piece. While Levitt handles a number of action-scenes very well, it's Willis who, not unexpectedly, juggernauts through the more familiar ground of taking on the bad guys with his fists and bullets. But one does need to remember that Willis, action icon that he still is, isn't above taking some steps off the beaten path. He's gone timey-whimey on us before with the likes of Twelve Monkeys and in many ways this feels like a more commerical, less abstract variant on that, rather than the more obvious touchstones of  Back to the Future, Terminator and even The Time-Traveller's Wife.

While Looper has some familiar questions to ask about the nature of time-travel and the nature of cause and effect, it admirably doesn't play out all of its cards in too obvious a way. It challenges its audience to second-guess where it's heading and offers some nice red-herrings along the way, but it will be hard for the average cinema-goer to claim they knew what was coming around every such corner.  Yes, as with any time-travel story, there are what could be constituted as plot-holes or conveniences and Looper does have some flaws and required leaps-of-faith, but if you take the basic premise and set-up as a given, the ambitious and challenging story that plays out on that canvas works pretty well, while not ignoring the very questions the audience are bound to have asked.

It might be tempting fate, rather than destiny, to place Looper in the higher eschilons of sci-fi that hold the likes of  the timeless Blade Runner, Terminator  and Aliens, but this latest film does punch well above its weight and expectations... and the result is a film that arguably packs too many ideas into its running-time rather than too few.  Director Rian Johnson, who also wrote the screenplay, has provided a story worthy of a Philip K Dick project and that's karmaic kudos in itself.

In short, as the summer blockbusters make way for the more cerebral movies of the autumn, this is a film that strides both camps with an air of confidence. A time-travelling thriller that doesn't leave you with a sense of too much deja-vu. Who will have thunk it?

5/5

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FILM REVIEW: THE EXPENDABLES 2

THE EXPENDABLES 2 (15)

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Scott Adkins  Chuck Norris

Director: Simon West

Running Time: 103 minutes

Released Out Now

Released by: Lionsgate UK

Many, many years ago it was every action fan's dream to have all his heroes in one cinematic basket. Sure, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Jean Claude-Van Damme all had successful parallel careers, but the closest you could get to seeing them together was to hang out vainly at Planet Hollywood and hope for a premiere or special event to spontaneous occur.

An actual film in which they all appeared together... it might have been cat-nip for studio executives, but whether it was ego, money or sheer time-tabling it never happened. As each of their careers began to dip into DVD territory (or in Arnie's case... a different black hole politics) it seemed even less likely that we'd see a big-screen team-up that was anything more than a cheeky cameo or reference. Bruce Willis continued to have an A-List career, but there were a new generation of pretenders-to-the-thrown and a growing market for a more eastern-style of action with trained martial-artists.

So, in many ways The Expendables (2010) franchise achieved the impossible, combining some of these irresistible forces and immovable objects and creating a gung-ho romp built on testosterone and nostalgia. Sure, the director and star, Sylvester Stallone only shared one real scene with his fellow resteraunters, but the likes of Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke and Jet Li were there to bring in the audience.

"Bluntly, the script is appallingly vacant, the dialogue strained and creaking and the banter painfully tilted, loaded with more signposted movie in-jokes and references than an automatic rifle has bullets... and yet in many ways it doesn't matter because the film never takes itself seriously..."

There may have been mixed reactions and reviews, but The Expendables created enough impact to generate the idea of a follow-up... but they'd have to go bigger, wider, longer and louder.  So they did.

It would be utterly pointless to tell you the sequel's plot other than Barney Stone (Stallone) vows vengeance for the death of a colleague and issues his surviving team members with the key instruction about the enemy: "track 'em, find 'em kill 'em". There in a nutshell is the whole ninety-minutes and within that time-frame all you will see are explosions, bullets, tanks and a team who love the smell of testosterone in the morning.

Bluntly... the script is appallingly vacant, the dialogue strained and creaking and the banter painfully tilted, loaded with more signposted movie in-jokes and references than an automatic rifle has bullets and delivered with a rat-a-tat repetition until you feel knocked senseless by an unsubtle subtext. Every cliche, every formulaic plot development struts into the spotlight and unloads in unforgiving fashion. And yet...

... in many ways it doesn't matter because the film, directed by Simon West of Con-Air fame)  never takes itself seriously. Though it sometimes falters along the line it tries to walk between in-your-face standard action and overt parody of the genre to which it owes its lineage, it finally plumps to throw any credibility out the window and just toss everyone and everything into the frame.  Casting Jean Claude Van Damme as the bad guy (and calling him Jean Vilian), having Chuck Norris turn up as a 'Lone Wolf' mercenary, having Schwarzenegger say "I'll be back..." so many times that even Bruce Willis calls him out on the catchphrase are all masterstrokes in meta-textual mock-machismo... literally doing everything except look into the lens and physically wink at the punters.

Though they make light of their senior age themselves, there is the genuine constant shadow hanging over the whole production that they've missed their REAL opportunity for an superb action-outing by a good decade. Though as tough as old boots, Schwarzenegger and Stallone look like walking, talking weathered, leathered, botox'd punchbags rather than real action men and the only way this can work is to make themselves the punchline of the punch-fest. On one hand this is terrible in every regard, in another it's a romp so absurdly silly that you are brought along with the madness until it becomes more like a steroid-enhanced guilty pleasure. The cast are clearly having a ball and with the exception of Jet Li who disappears a third of the way in, everyone gets a good amount of screen time, including the likes of current action-man Jason Statham and another British actor Scott Adkins who scores well as Vilain's chief henchmen. 

Expendables 2 does nothing more than it says on the tin, but there's really no excuse for not knowing what you'll get before you buy your ticket. If the action genre is the one for you, you'll be pleasantly concussed by this wide-load juggernaut. 

3/5

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FILM REVIEW: THE BOURNE LEGACY

THE BOURNE LEGACY (12A)

Starring: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Stacy Keach

Director: Tony Gilroy

Running Time: 135 minutes

Released Out Now

Released by: Universal Pictures

When Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass called time on the Bourne franchise, it could well have been the end of the films that were loosely adapted from the best-selling novels by the late Robert Ludlum. But this, after all, is Hollywood and the success of the film series featuring an amnesiac agent trying to discover how he came to be disavowed had proved a strong box-office contender and you don't just forget that.

So the question was not IF the franchise would continue, but how. Batman and Bond recast on a frequency that suggests it's going out of fashion, so the most obvious route was simply reassigning the part. However, in this case, a more complex solution was suggested. Why not run a different story, inspired by the original but running parallel to the events of the previous outings.  In short, farewell Jason Bourne, hello Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) and director Tony Gilroy...

With some of the bad-guys nefarious programming and espionage dark arts exposed by the events of the previous chapters, it is decided to burn similar projects to the ground, leaving no real evidence and no trail to the guilty. This involves not merely the shredding of paper but the termination of some top agents in the field. They are top assets - their response-times and brain patterns enhanced by a formula delivered in regular pill form. Either by poisoning that supply or the old-fashioned gun to the head, those assets are disposed of... but some are less easy to reach than others.

"For its first half, this new Legacy is something of a 'talky' rather than a 'walky' - suggesting that this might be a change of pace...the film continues with something of a split-personality, never quite deciding what pace and momentum it wants to settle upon..."

Aaron Cross is halfway across an extreme mountain-range, facing sheer cliffs, deep chasms and hungry wolves. Despite that, he's making record time and arrives at the isolated cabin safe-house a day early. There he finds another agent like himself, but despite their shared heritage, many of Cross' convivial questions are met by silence. While outside, getting ready to move on, Cross witnesses the cabin blown to bits by a drone aircraft. He quickly realises it is his own side who are trying to eliminating him, so making them think they've succeeded, he heads to the only place he can... back to the institute where he was supplied with the special pills that keep him sane.  However, back at the laboratory, doctor Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz) is having her own problems. She's aware of the shadowy nature of the treatments she's provided, but not the bigger picture. When her own department becomes 'expendable' she survives the massacre, but can Bourne get to her in time to get them both answers?

For its first half, this new Legacy is something of a 'talky', rather than a 'walky' - suggesting that this might be a change of pace. The previous entries were always clever, detailed and intricate looks at the world of counter-espionage and dubious morality, but one wonders if the more 'action' elements have largely been dispensed with altogether in favour of a good, but slower-moving thriller.

However, the film has an epiphany when Cross gets back to civilisation and kicks up a gear, with Cross/Renner demonstrating some killer instincts and fine hand-to-hand combat moves as he and Marta go on the run. Has the slow-burn paid off?  

Well, not so much... the film still continues with something of a split-personality, never quite deciding what pace and momentum it wants to settle upon.  The problem - though it isn't Renner's - is that Cross is supposed to be a killer agent, not without emotion of conscience but definitely putting such on a back-burner to do a pragmatically amoral occupation. His new status is initially driven by the need for a new supply of pills, but in a blink of an eye he essentially becomes a good-guy saviour and protector of Weisz's doctor. True, she's his link to more medication, but short of the fighting sequences and Cross developing the occasional cold-sweat there's never any real sense of urgency or hint of the ruthless agent beneath. He's not using her, he's protecting her and while that's good for our idea of a hero, that's not what Cross's character is supposed to be.

Also missing is the dynamic camera-work seen in the previous Bourne movies. In such cases, we followed our characters out of windows as if we were jumping through them ourselves... it was a visual style that was so impressive that it ultimately caused the Bond franchise to reassess its priorities. For Gilroy's  Legacy, we're back to what amounts to fairly generic cinematography with long-shots and framing devices we've seen in literally hundreds of flicks before - it's almost as if, ironically, the director is now taking cues from the classic Bond.  The hand-to-hand combat moments prove more successful. After a grounding in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and The Avengers, Renner knows how to work a martial-arts move and please the camera and his face reflects the tension we saw in his breakthrough The Hurt Locker.  But while he excels in the up-close-and-personal, the script he's been given slowly descends into a formula that isn't bad but merely unsurprising and less challenging than expected. The main bad-guys (Edward Norton, Stacy Keach etc) are merely desk-jockeys barking suspect orders and frowning as their plans unravel... never a front-line threat or in danger of a physical comeuppance.  It's all perfectly adequate but feels like it could have been more.

A sprinkling of familiar faces (Albert Finney, Joan Allen) from the first films act as distracting punctuation, but by the time the credits roll, there's a feeling that this was an expensive opening salvo, all set-up but no real pay-off...  a big-budgeted television premiere rather than a standalone movie.

There's a lot of potential here, but once again we have a film that seems to be trading on the expectant principle that more will be revealed in a sequel, but one that , in reality, is far from a foregone certainty...and so the gaps and lack of conclusion are less forgivable.  There really should be a compulsory notice when film-makers intend to deliver half a story...

That being said, as action-thrillers go it has all the components needed and a cast that delivers what they are required. It should do decent business at the multiplex and even moreso on DVD. It's nowhere near the highlight of the summer, but the Bourne Legacy is  just about alive and kicking... though its pulse could do with a little quickening...

3/5

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FILM REVIEW: TED

TED (15)

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis and Seth MacFarlane 

Director: Seth MacFarlane

Running time: 106 minutes

Released 2nd August

Released by: Universal Pictures.

Many years ago, little Johnny Bennett, a social outcast in search of a friend, wished that his toy teddy bear was real. Lo and behold - and with a little help from a magical shooting star and a sardonic voice-over from narrator Patrick Stewart - his wish is granted. Johnny and his new pal Ted promise to be thunder-buddies forever and ever and ever.

Seen as either a miracle or something demonic, Ted becomes an overnight celebrity, courted by the media and appearing on chat-shows, but although the new lifestyle takes its toll on the innocent bruin, John and Ted's friendship endures. Two decades later and we find that the media has lost interest. John (now played by Mark Wahlberg) is a slacker who is just getting by on getting by. He's in a long-term relationship with the patient but upwardly-mobile Lori (Mila Kunis) but he sees no reason to formalise their relationship with a ring. Ted still has his fuzzy butt parked on the sofa and now likes to indulge in beer, bong and fart jokes like Teddy Ruxpin on crack.

When Lori encourages John to start taking more adult responsibilities, Ted feels somewhat threatened. He likes Lori well enough, but will he and his buddy's carefree lifestyle be stymied? As John  genuinely attempts to get his life in order, he'll have to decide where his real loyalties lie... though Flash Gordon (Sam Jones reprising his cult film role) and a menacing fan (Giovanni Ribisi) may have something to say about that!

"MacFarlane is an equal opportunist: beastiality, drugs, slapstick pratfalls and workplace sexual harassment all act like explicit script punctuation, but though he'd probably deny it, there's a Disney heart beating under the pimp-master exterior. He'll make you wince and cringe, but by the end he achieves the art of also making you care..."

Director and writer Seth MacFarlane, also voicing the profane plushie, continues not so much walking a fine line as strutting it and flicking the finger to both sides. Those who liked Team America, Family Guy and American Dad will know exactly what to expect in the humour department.... often deliberately crude and rude, but not without some stylish pitching, genuinely sharp irony and a distinctly sweet scent of sentimentality that lingers on through the fart gags. There IS a genuine story of love and bromance here and one that MacFarlane pitches rather well when he decides to pull the reins in a little. Like most of his outings - and similar to contemporary Kevin Smith - he sometimes goes too far, acting like a school-kid who has just found a rude word in the dictionary and intends to say it as often as possible unless it go out of fashion, but there are enough self-deprecating and knowing pop culture laughs to balance out the deliberate cringes.  MacFarlane is an equal opportunist:  beastiality, drugs, slapstick pratfalls and workplace sexual harassment all act like explicit script punctuation, but though he'd probably deny it there's a Disney heart beating under the pimp-master exterior. He'll make you wince and cringe, but by the end he achieves the art of also making you care.

Like the character of Ted himself, this is a film that never means to truly offend, but is more concerned with tweaking your nose, embracing self-indulgence and to heck with the consequences. Like a teenager it rebels at anything you have, striving to push boundaries and find its identity, sometimes stumbling in the process, sometimes being refreshingly unfettered by the pressures of political correctness.  Ted's description of his post-fame life being "...like the cast of Diffrent Strokes, well... the ones that lived..." pitches the obtuse attitude perfectly as it seeks to move to the beat of its own drum.

Ted himself is an undeniable, technological marvel. This is a pitch-perfect blending of completely believable CGI and carefully placed animatronics and it would take a hard soul not to find the foul-mouthed miscreant convincing as a standalone creature, whatever your view of the movie vehicle itself.

An adult fairy-tale about not wanting to grow up, TED is one of those films which will fall into the love-it-or-loathe-it category. Know the creator's pedigree and you'll probably find this to be a superior entry in MacFarlane's catalogue of nose-tweaking, ego-puncturing fun (Sam Jones, Tom Skerritt and Ryan Reynolds happy to send themselves up for a good cause). Wahlberg  - one of the industry's most versatile actors - has great fun in a role that could have been less sympathetic in lesser hands and Kunis makes sure she's more than just a foil for the punchlines.

Grin and bear it. This is a distinctly dirty and pleasurable dirty pleasure....

4/5

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FILM REVIEW: THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (12A)

Starring: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman

Director: Christopher Nolan

Running time: 164 minutes

Released 20th July

Released by: Warner Bros.


"There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you're all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large - and leave so little for the rest of us." 

There’s little doubt that Christopher Nolan has been one of the key cinematic players that helped usher in a new century for comic-book heroes on the big-screen. With the eye of a cinematic architect he took a firm hold of the Batman mythology and painstakingly reconstructed the notion of super-heroics from the ground up, concentrating on the body and spirit behind the costume.  Though given undeniable extra momentum and coverage by Heath Ledger’s untimely death, The Dark Knight was truly great and justifiably successful film-making and one of the few sequels that actively improved on the original chapter.

Now The Dark Knight Rises and while Nolan demonstrates the same commendable degree of ambition and technical skill, his blue-print for this final chapter of his Batman trilogy seems off-kilter, trying to pack far too much into a running-time already over-stretched beyond two and a half hours.

This latest film sees a Gotham that supposedly no longer needs a Batman. Eight years after the battle that saw Batman take the fall for Harvey Dent’s rampage (to ensure Gotham’s spiritual heart survived) crime-rates are down and Bruce Wayne lives a hermit-like existence, walks with a cane and isdevoid of any real purpose except regret.  However, a mysterious bad-guy, with a rep that would make Keyser Soze look positively timid, is heading to Gotham. Bane (Tom Hardy), who wears a claw-like mouth-piece to control his pain, has an agenda that initially seems like the anarchy of the Joker’s outing. But Bane has a bigger plan… for himself, for Bruce Wayne and for the citizens of Gotham. Will Bruce be able to get himself back in shape to face this new threat, or will he be knocked off his game by the notorious cat-burglar Selina Kyle (Hathaway)?  Unfortunately, the various agendas at work here are about to collide and cause misery and heartache for all… especially with a nuclear bomb at their heart.

"The problem with RISES is that the audience is here for the final game of the season and not what amounts to a feature-film of a half-time sports psychology pep-talk... After a while it feels like you're watching The Man with the Gotham Tattoo rather than the promised reBourne Identity Batman..."
 

Though famously loathe to depend on CGI, Nolan still manages to pull some kinectic set-pieces from his bag of tricks. A plane stunt that wouldn’t look out of place in a Brosnan-era Bond outing kicks off the proceedings and before we’re done we have the 21^st century equivalent of a Bat-Copter soaring through the sky-scrapers yet somehow not seeming out of place in the heightened urban world the director has created.  Nolan wants to make Gotham a character in its own right, but he concentrates too much on the blueprint and not enough on the heart

Flaws begin to show in the moments where Nolan’s reach exceeds even his considerable grasp.  He loses much essential sense of pacing by populating his Gotham with far too many players – often causing major characters Gary Oldman's James Gordon, Michael Caine's Alfred etc) to disappear for long periods yet somehow finding time to have cameos at the expense of more essential scenes.  Juno Temple – outstanding in the recent Killer Joe is given two pointless scenes and then disappears without us even learning the character’s name (though comic fans may know she’s Holly Robinson). She’s one of several talented performers who are criminally wasted. Then again, for a film about a superhero, the cowled crusader has remarkably little face-time himself.  

There’s some truth to the fact that you cast a Bruce Wayne and let the suit play the alter-ego and as a character-study of the billionaire orphan, Bale does well throughout the trilogy. But the problem with ‘Rises’ is that the audience is here for the final game of the season not just what largely amounts to a feature-film of a half-time sports psychology pep-talk. The action is often undeniably good when it comes, but it feels like Nolan is reluctant to bring it centre-stage until he really has to. He had to... more.  You're watching The Man with the Gotham Tattoo, rather than the promised reBourne Identity Batman.

Bale, Hathaway, Caine, Freeman, Oldman and Levitt are perfectly okay - they're just not asked to do much except furrow their brows and emote as if their lives depended on it, often acting in ways that the script demands rather than seems likely.  Tom Hardy does the best he can behind his face-mask, but has to rely totally on his physicality, rather than the ADR'd voice which makes him sounds like Darth Vader's petulant little brother.

After a while, it all feels like pre-amble, rather than... amble.

Rises is the memorable Tiny Lister/bomb choice segment from the previous outing written large and with greater stakes, but somehow loses some of its very power because of that. Nolan wants us to think about the nature of spirit, hope and morality, but he sometimes forgets this is also a superhero movie as well. It all feels worthy, it doesn’t always feel entertaining. Too much angst, not enough anarchy.

There’s also been talk of the political element of this outing and it’s certainly there front and centre in Selina's speech to Wayne and then the way that the militant bad-guy Bane begins to take down the institutions that hold supposedly-civilised society together – the stock-exchange, the police and… you bastard… a football field (albeit the American kind). He says he’s giving the isolated populace of Gotham the chance to take back from the opportunistic rich, but there’s an ambiguity to the moral stance that seems very broad-stroked for a film that’s otherwise obsessed with details. The rich are complacent opportunists, the poor are brow-beaten sheep that embrace anarchy…. nobody comes out looking that good or moral and thus it’s hard to feel any passion for the conflict, however well staged. It's like Occupy vs Tea-Party as muzak and Batman being grabbed as a totem for both when neither earn it.

Die-hard fan-boys will like some of the mythology and may easily spot sign-posts for the twists and turns that the casual cinema-goer will not expect. Despite some noticeable plot-holes and contrivances, Nolan clearly did his homework on the source material minutiae and there are moments when the script works well, yet somehow the movie feels less than the sum of those parts, always just missing what its aiming for and resulting in some editing and pacing choices that don't seem consistent for a man of Nolan's reputation...

Ultimately well-intentioned but off-target, The Dark Knight Rises varies between too-detailed and too broad-stroked, never quite on-message because it doesn't really have one. But this will likely be seen as a missed opportunity rather than a wholly bad Batman. It's better than a lot of stuff out there but nowhere near  as good as it could -and should -  have been with a tighter running time, better prioritising and more solid pacing. This is a long, dark knight of the soul that just like the hermitted Bruce Wayne, is missing essential passion and humour to make it live up to its potential...

3/5

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FILM REVIEW: THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (12A)

Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary

Director: Marc Webb

Running time: 136 minutes

Released 3rd July

Released by: Sony Pictures

Several years ago Marvel Comics decided to give their figurehead character, Spider-man, what amounted to no less than a complete overhaul. Suddenly his marriage to Mary Jane had magically never happened, his secret identity - exposed in the publisher's epic Civil War saga - was once again secret. It was a Brand New Day and to this day there are some who felt this was a reboot too far, but it seems to have stuck. So it's understandable that when Sony announced they were taking the highly-profitable cinematic version of the character and completely going back to basics, some fans were mystified at the reasoning and skeptical of the outcome. Would this be a new day or just an old brand?

Recast, re-imagined and somewhat respun, The Amazing Spider-man's first task was always going to be about re-establishing its credentials.  Most of the mainstays of Marvel's mythology remain intact, but director Webb and screenwriter James Vanderbilt have sought to view them from a slightly different viewpoint, taking the familiar and restructuring some of the elements, aligning them in different ways - even if the destination is the same.


Peter Parker is  entrusted to his Aunt May (Field) and Uncle Ben (Sheen) when his parents fear for their own and his safety. After their apparent deaths in a car-accident, Peter is raised by Ben and May, inheriting his father's thirst for knowledge and gift for invention, but suffering in the social-skills department. He finds his father's briefcase and opening a hidden compartment, he also finds the remnants of his father's paperwork and genetic formulas. He searches out his father's scientific colleague Curt Connors (Ifans) now a renown geneticist himself, without realising that Connors is being unreasonably pressured by unseen billionnaire Norman Osborne to find a cure for the billionaire's illness at all costs. The meeting sets a series of events in perilous motion. Richard Parker's formula leads to breakthrough for Connors, but he is forced to experiment on himself with reptillian consequences. Peter too finds part of his life transformed after being bitten by a spider in Connors' lab... and realises he's picked up some interesting new abilities.  However they will come at a great personal cost when he fails to use them wisely. A confrontation between spider and lizard is inevitable...

Garfield is very good in the roles of Peter Parker and his alter-ego, the thirty-year-old perfectly capturing those awkward teenage years where the character goes from zero to hero but stumbles along the way. This is an actor comfortable in the skin of a character who isn't comfortable in their own. Peter is a child deserted and a young man underestimated, loved by his aunt and uncle but who feels on the fringes of his own life. Garfield measures that mix perfectly.  Equally Emma Stone gives some real depth to a role utterly ignored in previous cinema outings. Within the original comics,  Gwen Stacy would play a gigantic, fateful role in the direction of the title character and here we get to see why Peter would fall for her (and she him) in the first place.


The film's strong casting is also reflected in the supporting players. The ever-reliable Sheen and Field are instantly at home in their guardian roles, their reputations giving a shorthand that helps cut down on exposition. Leary has great fun as Police Captain Stacy and Ifans gives some needed humanity to the conflicted Connors.  

Those expecting a complete self-contained story may be surprised by just how many threads are left dangling. While there's a beginning, middle and end to some extent, Webb clearly sees this as a renewed and potentially ongoing franchise that doesn't have to rush to play all its cards in its 'origin' story. Though the secrets kept by Peter's parents somewhat bookend and inform the plot of the feature, the concentration is on the consequences of such decisions rather than answers as to why they were initially made. This is a first chapter we're seeing , but one that isn't afraid to hint that it's only part of a bigger story that will stretch backwards and forwards as it progresses. Well, hopefully.


The special effects are effective, the 3D elements being used well, if somewhat predictably. The technique of letting the camera provide a POV as we swing through the skyscrapers is a nice stylistic choice, though it is somewhat overplayed as the film goes on and may simply end up making the audience dizzy. The film's only problems are in the fact that this origin story, despite its tweaks, is still possibly too familiar to audience-goers who saw it play out with Tobey Maguire under the mask only a decade ago.  Equally, while Gwen's character is fine, it's just mightily convenient that she's Peter's classmate, Connors' intern and the Police Captain's daughter... all aspects that steer the character's journey.

There will be those who prefer the Raimi-directed trilogy and wonder what would have happened if that partnership continued, but quibbles aside, this is a solid enough romp for fans and the summer marketplace. Its slightly darker and more complex story elements play well  (though it ultimately ends up as more of a love story punctuated by smackdowns) and though they may not threaten the MUCH darker remit of the Dark Knight saga - concluding this month - they do give the webbing some extra tensile strength and backbone within a 12A certificate. Already doing well in Asian markets - where it was released last week - and early US screenings, this should be one of the bigger international hits of the already impressive summer. It won't quite do Avengers numbers, but should be able to spin itself to highly impressive, if not ultimately amazing box-office.

(One thing to note - as with the films produced by Marvel Studios (though Spider-man is a separate Sony release) - it's wise to stick around until mid-credits for another brief extra scene that suggests more questions and further developments, though it will likely mystify rather than inform...) 

4/5

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FILM REVIEW: KILLER JOE

KILLER JOE (18)

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Juno Temple, Gina Gershon, Emile Hirsch, Thomas Haden Church

Director: Wiiliam Friedkin

Running time: 102 minutes

Released 29th July

Released by: Worldview Entertainment


Chris (Emile Hirsch) is an inadequate at life, destined to be forever in debt to one person or another and blaming anyone but himself for what he considers bad fortune. Kicked out by the wife that he's beaten once too often, he finds himself back at the cheap, messy, beer-can spilled Texas trailer home slovenly occupied by his father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) and stepmother Sharla (Gina Gershon). Chris needs to find $6,000 quickly or the best he can hope for is every bone in his body being broken slowly by a local loan-shark. Ansel doesn't have too dimes to rub together, so Chris suggests a plan.


Chris has overheard from his mother's new husband, Rex, that she's just taken out a life-insurance policy of $100,000 -with her teenage daughter Dottie (Juno Temple)  named as the sole beneficiary. Chris has always been unhealthily protective of his sister, recognising her fragility and otherness, perhaps caused by her mother trying to kill her as an infant. But now he sees an opportunity. If he can have their mother killed ('who would miss her?', he argues) then he can pay off his debts and give the rest of the family more security.

To this end he finds a police detective, Joe Cooper (McConaughey) who has a nice sideline in contract killing but zero tolerance for idiots or double-crosses. Joe says he'll do the job, but when Chris and Ansel explain they won't have the money until after the deed is done and the insurance paid out, he's about to walk... until he spies Dottie. Perhaps, he'll take the job after all. But with a leer in his eye, he'll want a 'down payment'...


"There's a casual air to the sex and violence that follows...punctuating the film like a prisoner's emotionless, guilt-free shank... but it's an explicit, film-noir study of grotesques rather than pure titillating torture-porn... " 

William Friedkin, a legendary director famous for the likes of The Exorcist, The French Connection and Rules of Engagement, but with less notable entries in recent years, is clearly wanting to re-establish his credentials with controversy and it should be said immediately that, from its opening moments, Killer Joe pulls none of its explicit punches. A Gina Gershon entrance has never been more in your face than here and there's a casual air to the sex and violence that follows it, punctuating the film like a prisoner's emotionless, guilt-free shank. With films that quite deliberately aim to shock, the results are always going to divide. I've found films like The Devil's Rejects to be wholly unpleasant, reveling in a sordid nastiness that makes one wonders why anyone would want to create it to begin with, never mind watch it. Killer Joe has more merits than that - it's an explicit, film noir study of grotesques rather than pure titillating torture-porn, but it is still a raw-nerve, scab-picking experience that often leaves you shifting uncomfortably, whatever the other technical merits it can offer.

A colder analysis confirms that this is, without doubt, McConaughey's picture. He's always been a good actor, first cited as a young Paul Newman-a-like, though too often side-lined into mediocre rom-coms that service his innate real-life Texas charm but little else. Here he gets to flex a muscle that shifts between taught stillness and spasms of brutality. Joe is the kind of character that owns a room merely by entering it, a man for whom the most mangy and aggressive neighbourhood mutt falls suddenly silent. It's a tribute to McConaughey that in some of the movie's key scenes he draws the eye and makes you want to look away simultaneously. You'll hate Joe and then hate yourself for watching. You aren't an audience, you're a voyeur to a sociopath with a badge, but still arguably the sanest man in the room.


Juno Temple is also impressive in a very difficult role, one that exposes her character and performance  to both physical and mental challenges. Though not a newcomer, this is the kind of brave role and bravura casting which should catapult the young British actress - barely in her 20s - ahead of those taking the much safer, if higher-profile route to Hollywood. She imbues Dottie with both strength and frailty and walks the line with her character as impressively and subtly as McConaughey does in other ways with his title role.


It's not big or clever to spoil a movie's ending, but it seems only fair to say that anyone expecting things to be tied up with a nice bow at the end may have to live with disappointment. Perhaps reflecting its origins as an equally controversial stage play by Tracy Letts, the ending feels more random and unfinished than most movies and may frustrate the audience more than anything that has come in the previous ninety minutes.

As a showcase for performances this is certainly impressive, but in all other ways, Killer Joe is a difficult film to recommend, populated by damaged or damaging people who are authors of their own misfortune - and for whom it is hard to generate any real or lasting sympathy for the loss to the gene-pool. I respect the workings and the movable parts within its cinematic frame but I can't say I actually liked the bigger, dirtier, whole and, frankly,  I may never look at KFC the same way again.

3/5

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FILM REVIEW: GOD BLESS AMERICA

GOD BLESS AMERICA (15)

Starring: Joel Murray, Tara Lynne Barr

Director: Bobcat Goldthwait

Running time: 105 minutes

Released 4th July  (Cinemas) 9th July (DVD)

Released by:StudioCanal

"Do you remember when eating rats and maggots on Survivor was shocking? It all seems so quaint now..."

Middle-aged Frank Murdoch (Joel Murray) is having a bad day. After falling asleep in front of a television spewing hate-speech and brain-free commercials, it starts by simply having to listen to the uncool chatter around the water-cooler, as fellow-workers chortle at the previous night's talent-free TV talent show... and gets progressively worse as the secretary has him fired for looking at her, he hears his ex-wife is getting re-married and his bratty daughter won't come to stay with him unless he buys her a new phone. Coming home to yet more vapid television he dreams aimlessly of killing his obnoxious neighbours and anyone who makes his day even harder. The next day... his doctor informs him he has an inoperable brain-tumour.  Frank is tempted to end his own life, but first... he needs to make a statement.

God Bless America ramps up a gear with the arrival of teenager Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr in an engaging, provocative, star-making performance)  who positively encourages Frank to be mad as hell and not take it any more. Witnessing Frank's ultimately effective, but fumbling, shooting of spoilt-rich-girl-reality-star 'Chloe', Roxy believes she's found a kindred spirit/devil in Frank and encourages him to begin a crusade against cultural apathy and irritants rather than just being remembered as a poor loner who probably killed a TV star out of sexual frustation. Against his better judgement - and feeling he has nothing to lose - he lets Roxy travel with him and before long the bullets and blood start flying as the duo get dynamic with their enemies, domestic and iconic.

"Despite some  early promise, the film feels like a wasted opportunity, a vanity project to venting rather than a rallying call to anger. Its grand-gignol isn't grand enough and its reach exceeds its wrath... " 

The film, directed by Bobcat Goldthwait - a million miles from his Police Academy acting days - feels like a mash-up combination of Falling Down and Natural Born Killers by way of Mark Millar's Hit Girl (with perhaps a touch of Leon) - skewering modern culture by having two unlikely individuals team up and taking it to violent extremes... not so much lampooning the borders of modern life as driving a monster-truck through them at high speed while chewing gum and flicking the middle finger. It's part guilty pleasure, part messy bucket-list and therefore comes with the obvious accusation of having its cake-and-eating-it.  

And that's the film's problem. Satire has to be precise, slicing with the precision of an ironic scalpel and here the director positively swings wide with a heavy club, hoping to hit a home-run but often sending the ball flying in disparate directions. From scene to scene it's not always clear when Goldthwait is having satirical fun or merely venting his spleen and creating the cinematic equivalent of putting a :) or LOL at the end of each tirade to give it the weaker parody-as-punctuation defence. (A scene where Roxy rants about Diablo Cody's film Juno - the writer being "...the only ex-stripper with too MUCH self-esteem" - is a nicely scripted-line, but it's hard to tell whether Goldthwait is using the reference with love, irony or  pure venom - and that echoes through the entire production). Yes, there's some nicely-pitched pitch-black humour to be applauded here, but there are also scenes where we have to wade through what amounts to a rant to get to it. As much as Frank and Roxy have a list of most-deserving targets, so does Goldthwait but the film doesn't have the precision gun-sight it so desperately needs. Unlike the far superior and less manic Falling Down, where Michael Douglas' outrage grows organically and somewhat understandably over a single day, God Bless America goes for more lazy, obvious victims. Thinly-veiled Kardashian and American Idol characters are already parodies of themselves and here just feel TOO disposable for us to care as much as we should.


On the positive side, the central performances from Murray and Barr themselves are notable, each hinting at more beneath the service than the script itself demands and the film is bound to give them the greater attention they deserve. Barr captures the damaged teenager ingenue vibe perfectly and Murray maintains sympathy for his character by being able to articulate the anger and frustration to which the rest of the film plays lip-service.

Though not without its merits and despite some early promise God Bless America is a only an adequate enough time for its hundred minutes and feels like a wasted opportunity - a vanity project to venting rather than a rallying call to anger. It's grand-guignol isn't grand enough and its reach exceeds its wrath, stroppily sauntering to a climax that looks like the budget ran out. One could argue that it's deliberately skewering itself in its stylistic-choices, but that feels more like a get-out clause than an intended metatextual sleight of hand. Ultimately, the film turns out to have less to say than it first appears. What is it rebelling against... what have you got?

Just before reviewing God Bless America, a glance at the television revealed a real-life news network running a feature on 'Horoscopes and your Health' in which one of the perky presenters and the great unwashed were informed that 'Your digestive system is very influenced by the sign of Cancer...'  followed by pundits sending their entire staff to claim they'd second-guessed the outcome of the US Healthcare Bill.

In an age that drives Frank to distraction, it all brought a whole new meaning to Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

3/5

God Bless America will be in UK cinemas for a limited run from 4th July  and available on DVD and download from 9th July. A special showing with Bobcat Goldthwait in attendance takes place at the Prince Charles Cinema in London on 4th July. Tickets are available through: www.princecharlescinema.com

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TV REVIEW: THE NEWSROOM

Let's be honest. We live in an era where it seems a majority of hour-long drama is actually adverts / commercials telling you what they think you need, surrounded by moments of melodrama that ask you not to think at all. Laugh as this guy falls over (again), cry as this woman finds out she's being cheated upon (again), wince as a reality star murderises the language in a single sound-byte (again)... then buy something. Buy two somethings. Postage included if you purchase now. If television was ever meant to be a tool of education, it's now more of an infommercial for brain-pacifiers. The fact that the word 'infommercial' even exists proves it.  


What is scarier is that such apathy and opportunism has also infected the news services, or more accurately  the attention-spans of their viewers. The explosion of 'Breaking News' (tm) has become a comma not an exclamation mark, a hum not a fanfare, available in any hue you prefer and played on a repeat cycle of  it's-not-important and we're-all-going-to-die. 

So in many ways, a contemporary drama about the presentation of news was inevitable. It was also somewhat inevitable that the man behind it would be Aaron Sorkin.

Despite the fact that we've seen variations on the theme  before, in projects  from Network, Drop the Dead Donkey, Broadcast News to period dramas like The Hour etc, there's been much anticipation of The Newsroom, if mostly because it's the latest ensemble drama to come from the creator of The West Wing. You didn't have to align yourself with the Bartlett administration's politics to recognise that Sorkin's walky-talky award-winner was the way that politics should be practiced, even though they rarely are. The same mentality now comes to the realm of news-presentation.

Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) is a news-anchor who has become the broadcast equivalent of a comfortable pair of shoes. He deflects personal questions, avoids partisan comments and deliberately walks a line that offends nobody but excites no-one. Back in the day he was respected as cutting-edge, but now he's merely treading water. However, during a university panel session he loses his cool. In front of an audience equipped with smart-phones and access to YouTube he points out to the other smug panelists and complacent audience that America isn't the 'best country in the world' it's just one of them - and goes on to list the things that people have let slide over a generation of neglect and apathy. It could be the greatest, he argues, but currently it's failing.  The comments go viral.


When he returns to his offices after a three-week enforced break, he finds his job on the line, his staff poached and old flame Mackenzie MacHale (Emily Mortimer) as his new Executive Producer. Mackenzie thinks Will just needs to be as regularly engaged and in-your-face as he was at the panel. He needs to care again. Will just wants to keep his job and - when he can remember their names - yell at his staff.  In the midst of an argument about both their imminent futures and an under-staffed news-room, a report comes in that an oil-rig in the gulf  has blown up... they are about to have a re-baptism of ire.

"After the empowering speech at the start, the climax is not quite as big an achievement and moral victory as it's made out to be... however it's a start..." 


The Newsroom isn't (yet) on a par with The West Wing, a show that came storming out of the gate and changed the US national zeitgeist overnight. Instead, it's got more in common with another of Sorkin's outings, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip which managed only one season in 2006. That show was set behind the scenes of a comedy show akin to Saturday Night Live and though great fun, always felt like something of an awkward fit, rarely straying into what went on in front of that fictional show's cameras. In the ratings it got pounded by the all-out comedy of 30-Rock. Ultimately, The Newsroom is the love-child of Sorkin's previous forays. It's the politics of The West Wing and the showbiz side of Studio 60. It's fertile ground and Sorkin should be the guy best suited to farm it.

The pilot highlights Sorkin's strengths and weaknesses. There's no doubt the dialogue is snappy and quick-fire, the earnest, essentially decent characters coming out with the retorts and responses of the kind that we mere mortals only think of too late - and then kick ourselves for missing.  But, yes, The Newsroom pilot perhaps feels just that  little TOO polished, to the degree that the characters and their foibles seem like archetypes in a drama about journalists rather than actual journalists. Daniels does tired and irritable well, making McAvoy a grump that we want to like more than we do, but that's something to build on. We may admire her spunk as much as Will hates it, but Mortimer's Mackenzie is just TOO much vintage His Girl Friday, more Lois Lane than C J Cregg. In fact, all the women on show seem to get lip-service empowerment rather than the real thing. Equally that eponymous news-room is way too clean and quiet - even on a quiet day it should be buzzing like its life depended on it, which it often does.  In a drama that centrally complains (quite rightly and topically) that we've become a world where we demand the news reinforces our existing beliefs and prejudices rather than informs and educates us, the show initially seems more about the characters' interplay than the situation they have to handle. The West Wingers were confident, even when annoying, the Newsroomers are somewhat smug, even when interesting.


Sorkin's whole point - in a pilot that's even neatly entitled 'We Just Decided To...'  - is that ALL that journalists and news services need to do to provide a better service is to actively WANT their service to be important rather than self-serving and spoon-feeding. Perhaps Sorkin is right, but the pilot doesn't really make it difficult for our new ensemble to rise to that occasion. A big news story breaks, two high-placed sources leak information, the cast get on the internet and voila, Mackenize goads Will  into pummeling a couple of insipid PR guys rather than letting them off-the-hook. After the empowering speech at the start, the climax is not quite as big an achievement and moral victory as it's made out to be. However, it's a start. 


This IS a pilot, tasked with introducing us to our new media heroes and so one has to cut it some slack. And, truth be told, even less-than-perfect, slightly coasting Sorkin is still miles ahead of most of the other dramas out there. The West Wing  was a pace-setter, demanding (and believing) its audience could keep up. Until its last act, The Newsroom's pilot lacks some of that innate raw urgency, especially on a show that's on a US network (HBO) that isn't afraid to take risks and cater for adults. This time, audiences will walk through it rather than need to run.  But they'll enjoy the experience.


The Newsroom is no Network, but it has pedigree, potential and purpose.  With a US debut of a healthy 2.1 million viewers but mixed reviews, Sorkin must cut down some of the obvious testifying and meet us halfway with the manic urgency the room requires. If so,  he should have another hit on his hands. 


4/5


The series is now showing on HBO in the US and begins its UK broadcast on Sky Atlantic on July 10th

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