That Awkward Moment review

That Awkward Moment (15/R, 94 mins)
Director: Tom Gormican
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

High School Musical star Zac Efron goes potty-mouthed in this thoroughly charmless rom-com. He’s one of three pals (along with Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan) who form a pact to enjoy their single lives and not get involved in a relationship. This is complicated when Efron starts to fall for Imogen Poots, who he seems able to make laugh, but not the audience. Everything about this dismal effort is crude and manufactured and comedy-free, improvised by actors not really skilled enough to get away with it. It’s unpleasant characters indulging in moronic behaviour and lies, with clear signs from the start where they're all going to end up, but giving us nothing to care about while we get there.

The Paperboy review

The Paperboy (15/R, 107 mins)
Director: Lee Daniels
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Lee Daniels’ first film since his Oscar-winning Precious certainly serves up a combustible hodgepodge of flavourful ingredients, even if the finished dish lacks a certain something. We’re in sweltering 1960s Florida, where a murdered sheriff leads to John Cusack’s convicted killer on death row, and Nicole Kidman’s white trash Charlotte who claims to be in love with him. Enter Zac Efron as a young writer assisting his journalist brother (Matthew McConaughey) on an investigation into Cusack’s possible innocence, with his relationship with Charlotte getting him into bother he never dreamed of. Though unapologetically lurid, The Paperboy is never quite fun or demented enough to overcome the thinness of a story that has to be garnished with sleaze to disguise it shortcomings and the complete lack of a third act. One particular scene, which we’ll call the “jellyfish” scene in the interests of good taste, will live on in infamy far beyond the film itself, which should tell you everything you need to know. Filthy and sweaty it certainly is, and fans of Efron in his pants will be over the moon. But engaging, or dramatically satisfying? Not even close.

New Year’s Eve review

New Year’s Eve (12A/PG-13, 118 mins)
Director: Garry Marshall

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

An in-concept only follow up to Valentine’s Day, this hideous romantic comedy tracks what appears to be several thousand different characters on a New York New Year’s Eve, taking in births, deaths and marriages, with many of them orbiting Jon Bon Jovi’s rock star, due to play a gig at Times Square where most of them end up gathering. Returning players such as Jessica Biel and Ashton Kutcher take on entirely different characters from those in Valentine’s Day, while the likes of Robert De Niro, Halle Berry and Sarah Jessica Parker get roped into feeble situations constructed with the most flat and uninspired direction and acting imaginable. With an alarming dearth of laughs when it’s not being cloying and obvious, it soon progresses from just being bad to active incompetence, made with a complete lack of care and attention. The only remotely tolerable thread involves Zac Efron helping out Michelle Pfeiffer’s dowdy office worker, but they're forced too frequently to make way for the rest of a catastrophe that makes Valentine’s Day look like His Girl Friday.