Rio review

Rio (U, 96 mins)
Director: Carlos Saldanha

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Parrot Blu (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg) is taken from his home in the rainforest and ends up by accident in snowy Minnesota where he’s raised domesticated and flightless. But he’s the last blue macaw of his type, and so an ornithologist takes him to Brazil to mate with the last remaining female, Jewel (Anne Hathaway), only for the pair to be kidnapped by poachers. The only reason Rio would appear to exist (aside from the obvious financial incentives) is to showcase its bright and colourful, samba-infused exoticism. Did its makers just see Up and think South America looked like a good place to stage a cartoon? Because underneath its surface polish, it’s thematically empty, with nothing to distinguish it from every other run-of-the-mill animated effort that’s more about noise and spectacle than a story worth telling. The search round Rio de Janeiro to get Blu and Jewel back comes complete with stale one-liners and frantic action, but is light on laughs and excitement. Voicing Blu, Eisenberg is good value, nicely parlaying his Zombieland nebbishness, and Jemaine Clement shines as the cockatoo baddie, even getting to do a Conchords-style number, sadly the only highlight among a small collection of forgettable and superfluous songs.

Sucker Punch review

Sucker Punch (12A/PG-13, 109 mins)
Director: Zack Snyder
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Director Zack Snyder has gained himself quite a reputation in the last few as a fine visual stylist, thanks mostly to his work on 300 and Watchmen. Digging deep for faint praise, he once again brings that hyper-stylised sensibility to Sucker Punch to create a gorgeous world of rich pastel and grey, filled with all manner of amazing creatures and effects.

But that’s where the positives must end, because everything else about this nasty little film is tawdry and empty and badly written to the point of disbelief. It’s the ultimate realisation of movie as video game, and there has possibly never been one more beholden to the power of the X-Box. The problem is, most video games these days are better written than this.

Our heroine is Baby Doll (Emily Browning), who accidentally kills her sister and is sent by her evil stepfather to a home for the insane. There she befriends four other girls and they hatch a plan to escape after Baby Doll learns she’s going to be lobotomised.

But here’s the thing: in her mind the asylum is re-imagined as a burlesque club. But within that, she escapes into another world through dance (no, really). Her dancing transfixes those watching and allows Baby Doll to enter a fantasy realm where Scott Glenn turns up to impersonate David Carradine and tell her she must find five objects they need in order to escape.

As she dances, the other girls steal the items, while we see them participating in elaborate action sequences where they fight dragons and giant ninjas and Nazi zombies. If that doesn’t make any sense, well then that’s because it doesn’t make any sense.

It would nice to think Snyder is aiming for Inception-style layers of reality to create an intricate puzzle, but in truth it’s just incomprehensible. It’s a screenwriting cacophony, garbled hooey without anything resembling a cohesive structure, one game level after another, beautifully designed but nonsensical and ultimately lavishly boring.

Don’t look for an explanation of the rules of the fantasy world either, like how the other girls can be in Baby Doll’s mind, or what happens if they get hurt. Not a moment is spent considering character or consequence, each shiny thing existing only to get us onto the next cool and awesome shiny thing.

There’s a bit of Kill Bill, some Sin City, a dash of Total Recall and even Chicago without the songs, all aimed squarely at undiscerning 14 years old boys without any thought for anyone else. It’s grimy and prurient and rather unpleasant, as one pouting thigh-and-midriff-revealing jailbait waif after another gets put on display for our masturbatory delectation.

If there's one thing that can be said in Snyder's defence, it’s that he knows how to coordinate an action sequence. But even these consist mostly of the same tricks we’ve been seeing since directors learned to utilise computer generated props, and if we see one shot of someone somersaulting in slow motion over a flashing sword-blade, we see a hundred.

More to the point though, all the whizzy action scenes in the world count for nothing if they don’t exist in the service of a working narrative, and that is something glaringly absent from Sucker Punch.

Hop review

Hop (U, 95 mins)
Director: Tim Hill
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Blending live action with computer generated wildlife, this clunky but undeniably harmless family comedy sees the Easter Bunny (voiced by Hugh Laurie) running a Willy Wonka-style operation on Easter Island (naturally) where they make chocolate and candy for the whole world. His son E.B. (Russell Brand) is due to take over the family business, but wants to be a musician instead and so runs away to the US where he meets James Marsden’s unemployed loser, with underwritten adventure ensuing. Though loosely plotted to the extent that it’s coming apart at the seams (which extends to the visible join in the ropey special effects), Hop is somehow surprisingly agreeable, occasionally even amusing, mainly thanks to the vocal affability of Brand. You couldn't quite make the leap and call the film good or even memorable, but when you consider how skull-piercing the likes of Alvin and his chipmunk pals were, Brand's ability to render E.B. palatable is nothing short of a miracle.

A Turtle’s Tale: Sammy’s Adventures review

A Turtle’s Tale: Sammy’s Adventures (U, 85 mins)
Director: Ben Stassen
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Made in Belgium, this third rate Finding Nemo knock-off comes to our shores re-dubbed with atrocious British voices to complement the tatty animation. Calling it an adventure is a tad optimistic, as young turtle Sammy tries to make his way in the big bad world, floating around the Pacific in search of anything resembling a story. Labouring under the sorely mistaken belief that simply anthropomorphising any old critter is a solid foundation for an animated film, this is low on fun and thrills and high on dodgy internal logic, while the sledgehammer eco-message and insipid songs are unlikely to impress kids weaned on more sophisticated fare.

Anuvahood review

Anuvahood (15, 89 mins)
Directors: Adam Deacon, Daniel Toland
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
One of the stars of Noel Clarke’s Kidulthood and Adulthood movies, Adam Deacon, co-writes, co-directs and stars in this abysmal British comedy as Kay, an unemployed layabout who fancies himself as an up-and-coming gangster after getting mixed up with some local drug dealers. If there is a plot, it’s well hidden within what amounts to little more than a series of YouTube sketches, with all the wit and sophistication that suggests. If it’s a parody of Clarke’s films, it fails to find anything in them to actually make fun of. When the dialogue isn’t unintelligible, which it mostly is, it’s juvenile and smeared in racism and homophobia, and with every performance amped up to absurd levels, the resultant screeching mess quickly becomes intolerable.

The Resident review

The Resident (15, 91 mins)
Director: Antii Jokinen
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Possibly the most interesting aspect of The Resident is the first appearance in 35 years of Christopher Lee in a Hammer production. But, typical of the film’s flaws, his role as the grandfather of a creepy landlord (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) who has rented his spacious apartment to Hilary Swank’s doctor is largely irrelevant. By so readily invoking Psycho, this prurient chiller makes a rod for its own back, and though it does some interesting work in the shadows, it’s choppy and clumsily scripted and really rather listless. It plays most of its cards early, which adds some intrigue to certain characters, but leaves others out to dry, and it’s sometimes hard to tell whether its sheer grubbiness is an asset or a curse.

The Adjustment Bureau (12A, 106 mins) review

The Adjustment Bureau (12A, 106 mins)
Director: George Nolfi
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The work of late sci-fi author Philip K. Dick has been very well treated by Hollywood over the years (Blade Runner, Total Recall) and just as frequently badly mishandled (Paycheck, Next). The Adjustment Bureau falls somewhere in the middle, offering some modest fantasy fun that’s most notable for its terrific star pairing of Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. Damon plays a popular politician who meets and falls for Blunt’s dancer, but is then warned he must never see her again by a group of shady guys in hats. They seem able to predict the future and go to great lengths to keep them apart, with Damon determined to exercise free will and be with her. More romance than action-fest and light on any actual danger, The Adjustment Bureau is full of goofy rules that keep getting re-written, while chase scenes are slick without exactly fizzing with energy. It’s monumental hooey that only gets sillier the longer it goes, but Damon and Blunt share great chemistry and with stars on this form, it’s fairly compulsive stuff.

Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son review

Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (PG, 107 mins)
Director: John Whitesell
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The third in the inexplicably popular series in which Martin Lawrence’s FBI agent dresses up a large, elderly woman to solve a crime plumbs new depths of atrociousness, even by the generally desperate standards of family comedies these days. This time out he’s after some Russian villain, and needs to get his hands on an evidence-filled flash drive that has inexplicably been hidden inside a girls’ school. This gives him the opportunity to don his Big Momma costume and turn up at the school with his teenage son (also dressed as a woman because the baddies have him made) whereupon he’s immediately entrusted to be a house mother. The results are jaw-droppingly unfunny, plotted with nothing but laziness and contempt. Entire scenes are constructed solely around Big Momma shaking her can or falling over, and there’s not a single moment that drives the story forward or feels remotely uncontrived. Everyone involved should hang their heads in shame at creating something so unspeakably bad it’s on a level that’s actually quite difficult to comprehend.

Paul review

Paul (15, 104 mins)
Director: Greg Mottola
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are Graeme and Clive, a pair of geeks on holiday in the States on a sci-fi tour of the southwest, where they plan to take in Area 51, Roswell and the rest.

But driving through the desert one night, they come across a runaway alien who goes by the name of Paul (computer generated and voiced by Seth Rogen). They go on the run with him, picking up Ruth (Kristen Wiig) on the way, with the government giving chase as well as Ruth’s father and a pair of rednecks.

Beyond that setup, there’s no real plot to speak of, simply a collection of daft set pieces. So it’s just as well that most of what we do get is so entertaining, with some very funny individual lines and moments.

With the vibe of Pegg and Frost’s Spaced, it’s a nicely British take on what’s usually a very American genre, though is it possible the pair are getting just a little long in the tooth to still be playing these guys? It’s their first movie together without Edgar Wright at the helm, and Frost and Pegg also collaborate on a screenplay for the first time.

It’s possible that Wright could have brought a little more pizzazz to proceedings, just as he did with his own recent Anglo-American effort, Scott Pilgrim. He may also have brought a little more polish to a script that’s funny but ultimately rather aimless, one that’s maybe a bit too quick to go for a swear instead of something clever.

Elsewhere, it’s positively bursting with movie references, with practically everything Steven Spielberg has made getting a nod. Apparently Paul has spent much of his time on earth giving sci-fi writers ideas, and one of the best gags sees him on the phone to Spielberg giving him the plot to ET.

There can be no getting away from the fact that Paul is pretty much a one joke movie, the joke being that there’s a smoking, swearing alien with the voice of Seth Rogen. The incongruity of Rogen’s booming tones coming from an archetypal little green man, and his way with words, generates frequent big laughs. If that’s not quite sufficient to hang an entire film on, it’s still enough to provide two hours of undemanding fun. Great title too.

Sanctum review

Sanctum (15, 109 mins)
Director: Alister Grierson
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
A cave diving expedition in Papua New Guinea goes badly wrong when a sudden storm floods the system and the only way out for the small group remaining, chief among them a mutually antagonistic Australian father and son, is to venture downwards to try and reach the ocean. If you ignore the wooden characters, exposition-heavy script and ropey acting, Sanctum just about passes muster even if it is frequently tame and plodding. With James Cameron on board as executive producer, his name seems to be its main selling point, alongside the sometimes effective, often pointless use of 3D. Caves may be the ideal environment to fully exploit the technology, and the depth of field and immersion here means Sanctum comes off better than most. And yet it never gets close to setting the pulse racing, though it’s also far from a disaster. If it was doing its job properly, you should feel like you haven’t drawn breath for two hours, but any thrills to be had are moderate at best and ultimately it’s nothing we haven’t seen a hundred times before.