The Cheap-Arse Film Review #31- "JUNEBUG."

NAME: JUNEBUG

RATED: 15

RELEASED: 2005

WRITTEN BY: ANGUS MACLACHLAN

DIRECTED BY: PHIL MORRISON

STARRING: EMBETH DAVIDTZ, AMAY ADAMS, ALESSANDRO NIVOLA, BEN MCKENZIE

GENRE: DRAMA

BOUGHT FROM: POUNDLAND

PRICE: AN AMOUNT I DOUBT YOU BELIEVE

Okay, I'm expecting alot of people to call bullshit on me covering this movie. I could see people maybe, maybe buying that I managed to find this second-hand somewhere, like at CEX or a market or somewhere like that. But brand new? From a shop? and the two-disc Special Edition, no less? Again, maybe they'd be willing to except that I picked it up at a discounted price, as part of one of those deals where you buy a certain number of DVDs for £20. I mean, it wasn't a massive hit, more of a critical darling really, so getting it for less than the suggested retail price isn't totally out of the question. But £1.00? I can almost hear what some people are saying to themselves right now- "Okay, now he's just buying movies he wants to talk about and lying to us about how much he's paying for them. Infact, how do we know he bought this recently? It could easily have been sitting in his collection for years and he just feels like talking about it. This is a crock, and I feel disappointed and used."

And I wouldn't blame anybody for feeling that way. I'd be suspicious too.

Which is why I kept the receipt.


If I'm honest, I wasn't completely surprised when I eventually found this, as I'd already been told it was out there. For those that don't know, I'm a member of quite a few pop culture message boards and communities, and I'm not afraid to say I pimp this place like a motherfucker on pretty much all of them. Sometimes this doesn't go down too well (I'm very proud of the fact that I've been banned from the Total Film Magazine boards for spamming. I only joined there so I could post the link there, I've not read an issue of their magazine since the gave "The Blair Witch Project 2" three stars. THREE STARS!), but some of the places have been cool with me doing this, and in some cases the people there have gone so far as to pass information onto me regarding deals and films I might be surprised to find. One of the main people I want to thank is Film Brain, who contributes Bad Movie Beatdown and has also created a few 5 Second Movies for thatguywiththeglasses.com. He'll often send me things through their forum, and I'm always thankful, but... there's a hint of sadness that goes along with my thanks, as the movies he'll draw my attention to are awesome and I'd love to write about them, but they very rarely make it to my branch of Poundland. Yes, I've written before about how you can sometimes find real hidden gems at Poundland, and that's true, but we seem to get only a fraction of what's on offer in most other places.

Even this one I didn't find easily- I picked it up not at my local branch in Romford, but rather from a branch in Cambridge whilst I was there visiting a friend for her Birthday. I can't believe Cambridge even has a Poundland. I was told it hadn't been open long. Proof if proof is still needed at this point that the recession is biting hard everywhere. I'm not sure, but I think they may have stuck it where a Zavvi used to be. A true sign of the times.

The beginning of this movie was... strange. Very strange. And I don't mean in a wacky, zany, frantic way, I mean... it's dudes yodelling. And from the looks of it, it's not cast members or anybody they brought in especially to do this, it's just old stock footage of dudes yodelling. Then they fade away, and we're left with a static shot of some forestation. A long static shot. Held to absolute silence. Then up on the screen in big red letters comes the word, "Junebug." And that's our opening. They may as well of had a a shirtless man walk out of the undergrowth with the word, "Idiosyncratic Indie Movie" written on his chest in squirrel's blood. Then suddenly we're in an urban setting, that being an art auction. It's been put together Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz, a woman I can only think to describe as looking like a beautiful cartoon Deer), who we later find out specializes is "Outsider Art," that being pieces created by eccentric, self-taught artists. As the auction is going on, she spots a ruggedly handsome man (Alessandro Nivola) across the room, and I swear you can visibly see her knees go weak at the sight of him. Were this a movie from the fifties, she may very well have fainted. She approaches him, they make small talk, and when the auction's over, they go back to her place (actually I'm just assuming that, it's not established where they went. They could still be in the auction building for all I know), and start snogging each other's faces off. It's not a typical love scene though, as they're both really awkward, especially Madeleine, who you get the impression doesn't do this sort of thing very often. They're both also smiling and laughing through the entire thing, which I found to be quite sexy. Maybe it's just a personal thing, but I think laughing during sex or any intimate moment can be quite erotic. This is not to be confused with being laughed at during sex or an intimate moment, which can be soul-destroying.

Then, suddenly, they're married. We don't see the wedding, it happens off-screen. It seems like a quick jump for the movie to make, but we later find out that it was a quick jump for the characters as well, as they tied the knot after knowing each other all of a week. We rejoin them six months into their lives together, as Madeleine's scouts are checking out an artist they've discovered in North Carolina, George's home state. The artist in question is a man named David Wark, who specialises in painting depicting the American Civil War and slavery. His interpretations of those events are... unique. For example, there are computers and snakes with human heads and nudity. Lots of nudity. When he's showing his art to the scouts that have come to see it, he say something I didn't quite catch, as his accent is so deeply southern and speaks in this lilting, sing-song drawl. I thought he said he couldn't fit General Custer's cock on the front of the painting, so he had to paint it on the back of the canvas (which all look to be torn-off pieces of cardboard), but dismissed that as being, well, insane. But then he turns the painting over, and sure enough there's General Custer's penis, which if this paining were to scale would stretch at least a good two feet. It's killing a man too, shooting him with a combination of bullets and sperm. Well then.

Madeleine is informed that visiting him may be enough for him to sign with her and have his art shown in Chicago, so she and George travel down to see him, and also to stop off and visit his family. The meeting goes well, and Madeleine leaves assuming he's decided to do business with her, calling her business associates in the car on the way to George's parent's house, as... Jesus Christ, is he fingering her? I think he is, he's driving along the road with his hand so far up his wife's skirt that it's bunching up around his wrist as she speaks on the phone. I was actually surprised by how much sex there was in this thing. Okay, the hook-up at the beginning is positively PG, but after that there's painting of shrapnel-spitting wangs and handjobs (is it still called a handjob when a guy's doing it to a woman?), and when George and Madeleine get to his parent's house, they're first caught by his Father getting to second base with each other in their car whilst it's parked in the family garage, then they spend literally every night rutting in a shamelessly noisy fashion. I think the fact that their relationship is so heavily sexual means something- maybe it's meant to imply that their relationship is based more on physicality than it is anything deeper. Or maybe it's due to the fact that George comes from a heavily religious family that, as we find out, are very good at keeping things from one another, so it's supposed to represent that he's pretty repressed, especially sexually. Of course there's every chance I'm completely off-base, and they just love each other so much that they can't be in the same room alone together for any amount of time without wanting to rip each other's clothes off with their teeth.

Oh, and there's also a scene where a heavily-pregnant woman pleasures herself whilst looking at a picture of herself and her boyfriend when they were in High School. You don't get to see that in many sensitive independent dramas.

I've been trying to come up with the right words to describe his family, or rather, I've been trying to decide how stereotypical I think they are. I've seen more offensive portrayals of southern folk. It's not like they're all wearing overalls and chewing so straw or anything like that. They're all broadly drawn, and on the surface they're pretty stock, with the mother, Peg (Celia Weston), being the worst offender, being judgemental to the extreme, taking something of a dislike to Madeleine even before she's met her, and liking her even less when she does, proclaiming her "too smart and too pretty." But they're all allowed a little depth, and given moments that surprise us. The two most interesting characters in this group are George's brother, Johnny (Ben McKenzie) and his wife, Ashley. Ben McKenzie's portrayal of Johnny is actually really brave, because it's not very often in a film that an actor it willing to play a role in as completely an unlikable way as he does here. There's no other way of putting it, Johnny is a absolute prick for virtually this whole flick. I can't be 100% sure, but I think there's only one scene in this entire film where he smiles, and that's when he's at work with his buddies. For the rest of the movie he abrasive, teenager-level sullen, flying into a rage at the silliest things, like to being able to record a show about Meerkats because the VCR keeps spitting out the video he's trying to put in (to be fair, I fucking hated it when that happened, too). He's repugnant, and you almost don't want to think about why he could be that way, because doing that would mean trying to understand him, and trying to understand him's just took close to trying to like him for comfort. It's one thing he says that gives you some insight into why he's this way, and it's tossed out their so casually that it could be easily missed- Madeleine is trying to help him write a paper on a book he's supposed to have read, and he ends up getting so frustrated that he flies off the handle and starts randomly stewing things that piss him off, including the fact that he could have moved to Washington for whatever reason had it not been for his relationship with Ashley. That when I understood that he's just so fucking angry, all the time, about the fact that he feels so trapped (except when he's at work, which is why he's happy there), that he can't stop himself from lashing out at everybody. And I don't think he has any control over it. The two times he massively blows up, at Madeleine who he accuses of leading him on and thinking she's better than him, and George where he actually throws a wrench at his face and makes him bleed, he looks contrite the second he's alone, as if he's thinking, "Why did I just do that? What's wrong with me?"

And then there's Ashley, played by Amy Adams. In alot of ways she's the main event of this movie, as her performance took home the Special Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, and she also netted the movie it's lone Oscar nomination. She's one of those curious actresses the critics are always going to love, and cinema journalists are always going to predict is going to be the Next Big Thing, but whilst I think she'll probably have a great career, and star in alot of fantastic movies, I don't think she'll ever really rise above the level she's achieved now. I find it hilarious that virtually every one of her films is touted as her Big Breakthrough Moment. This was supposed to be her Big Breakthrough Moment. then "Enchanted" was supposed to be her Big Breakthrough Moment. Then "Doubt" was supposed to be her Big Breakthrough Moment. I can't help but be reminded of a quote by the actress Kelly McDonald, where she made note of the fact that she'd been considered an "up-and-coming" actress for so long, sometimes she thought to herself, "When am I going to come?"

But none of that takes away from her performance here, which really is of a superior quality, and deserving of all the awards she picked up for it. On paper, anybody could have looked at this role and thought there was very little to it, as she goes through most of the movie literally barefoot and pregnant (and God bless her, but she's not got very pretty feet)(not that I'm, y'know... into women's feet or anything like that)(... leave me alone), and the character could easily come across as highly annoying. And she does, in all honesty, but Adams manages to undercut that with a layer of vulnerability and sweet-natured charm. Her relationship with Madeleine is particularly cute, as she adores her pretty much on sight and instantly wants to know everything about her, where she was born, whether or not she went to college, what she does for a living. this constant barrage of questions should become annoying, both for Madeleine and for us, but it never does, because Adams makes it so it's almost impossible to look at this character and not want to give her a great big cuddle. If I have to criticize any aspect of her performance though, it's be how she works the bump. She's playing a woman pretty much ready to drop at any second, and yet other then the occasional twinge, she's not acting like it at all. I've been around more than a few pregnant women in my life, and from what I've seen, when they're at that stage of the game, they're not moving around that free and easy.

The meet-up seems to be going well, at least on the surface of things. Madeleine in particular tries very hard to get in with her husband's kin, and in my eyes doesn't once come across as somebody who thinks she's better than these people. She does a few things that could be read that way though, such as kissing Johnny on both his cheeks, which is a touch too continental for these folks, and also the reason he thinks she has the hots for him, and calling Peg "Pat" until Ashley corrects her. They take part in a few family occasions, such as Ashley's Baby Shower, which is the where Johnny's Meerkat-induced meltdown occurs, and a church gathering, where George actually performs a hymn. I'm not a particularly religious fellow, if I were asked to give a definite answer either way I suppose I'd say I'm just your bog-standard, boring, confused Agnostic, but even I found this sequence to be quite affecting. It helps that is would at least appear that Alessandro is using his own voice, so the emotion that's coming across feels more real in a strange way. It has an impact on his family as well- Peg starts to cry, Johnny actually straightens his spine enough to look over his shoulder, but it's Madeleine's reaction that I found most interesting, she has a look on her fact that not many of us are ever lucky enough to see, the look you can only get from somebody that loves you, where they obviously already hold you in a high level of self-esteem, yet you've still managed to find a way to surprise and impress them. I'm still waiting on the look myself.

Things kick into high gear (well, as high a gear as movies like this ever go up to) when Ashley goes into labour. The event itself isn't treated as anything really all that special, they just get er things together, put her in the car and the entire family, sans Madeleine, drive off to the hospital. Where things become complicated is when them movie throws up what's actually is's most conventional moment- the good old-fashioned moral dilemma. You see, throughout the movie, Madeleine has been having issues with David Wark and his sister, who are being courted by another gallery in New York, and when Ashley's rushed to hospital, she's informed that Wark has agreed to go with the other Gallery. Believing she can talk him back around, she has George drop her off at Wark's place before he goes onto the hospital, believing everything will be fine and that she's not needed there, even though George very clearly believes she should come with him. She meets up with Wark, and discovers all she needed to do to get him to sign with her was to get him a fruit basket.

Mission accomplished.

She then recieves a phone call telling her Ashley's son was stillborn.

This twist didn't come as a total surprise to me, because the filmmakers had been hinting all the way through that Ashley really wasn't taking very good care of herself- she was obsessed with looking like she was fat, bragging at the start of the movie that she'd managed to lose two pounds even in her condition, and that one day she's got by on a bun-less hot do with a bit of Mustard on it. She was also shown doing the kind of exercizes a pregnant woman really shouldn't be doing, involving alot of thrusting and stretching, but even beyond that, she was always bending down and carrying things that looked too heavy for her, and everytime she did something like that I winced and thought to myself, "Sweetheart, please don't do that. It's really not a good idea."

Basic human decency is a difficult thing to capture on-screen, because it can easily come across as mawkish. I have to tip my hat to Alessandro Nivola in the scene he shares with Amy Adams in the hospital then, because he manages to come across as a decent, loving human being without inciting a single cynical feeling in me. I've not really written much about his character in this movie, because other than the hymn and all the shagging, he doesn't really do much throughout most of it, he's more the driving force of the whole thing. This then is both the actor and that character's moment to shine, and it's also the moment that I believed that Madeleine could easily fall so in love with this guy that she'd marrying him in a week. Amy Adams is also astonishing, how she goes from being so strong, to falling to pieces and questioning everything in her life from her relationship to her belief in God, do then pulling everything back together again, all in the space of about five minutes. I've made fun of people who do things like this in the past, saying emotions don't work that way, and only the unhinged can switch gears that quickly. Well, I can't make fun of her reaction, because I really can believe the grief of an event like this could momentarily send a person insane.

The film's pretty much over after this, as Madeleine and George leave to return to Chicago. Is it a happy ending? Well, not really. Johnny calls Ashley at the hospital and says he'd be willing to try for another baby, which of course makes her deliriously happy. He still doesn't look too thrilled about the whole thing though, as if he's just doing it to make her happy and has resigned himself to the fact that he never will be. You come out of the flick still worrying about their relationship. George and Madeleine also don't appear as strong as they once were. They're still together as the film fades to black, but you get the sense that they now realise how little they actually knew each other (in one of the last scenes, Madeleine has to ask Peg if George likes mayo on his sandwiches, to which she responds, "He eats it with a spoon!"). I'm more hopeful for them though, which gives the ending a bittersweet tang.

As you can probably tell by now, this is a deceptively complex movie, and depending on how you watch it, I suspect you'd take home two completely different takes on it. This is not, as I've described some movies in the past, a Sunday Night Movie. You can't really have it playing in the background, as you'd end up missing alot of important things without even realising it. No, this is a movie you need to pay attention to and study. It demands quite a bit of you, more than even most other movies of its sort. But it's worth it, though. If you're willing to put the effort in, this film is a very rich, rewarding experience, and it bares repeat viewing, because I'm sure there are little things I missed or maybe even read the wrong way, and I find this story and the people in it so captivating, that I want to know both it and them as well as humanly possible.

FINAL VERDICT

KEPT!

Just look at that picture. I've now kept so many films, I'm having difficulty getting Marv in. I don't know how I feel about that.

Until next week,I'm The Cheap-Arse Film Critic, and I wouldn't live with you if the world were flooded with piss and you lived in a tree.

The Cheap-Arse Film Review #30- "I'M STILL WAITING FOR YOU."

NAME: I'M STILL WAITING FOR YOU, AKA LOVER'S LANE

RATED: 18

RELEASED: 1999

WRITTEN BY: GEOF MILLER & RORY VEAL

DIRECTED BY: JON STEVEN WARD

STARRING: ANNA FARIS AND A BUNCH OF PEOPLE I DON'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT

GENRE: TEEN SLASHER

BOUGHT FROM: CEX

PRICE: 50p

(See, this is what happens the second I try to apply some order and professionalism to what I do. For those that don't know, I have a Facebook Fanpage, where I post links to new reviews, send out messages to members, get feedback, all that good stuff. It's a laugh, and on my more arrogant days I like to think it's helping me reach a few new people. About a week ago, I decided that, as well as using it the way I was, I could also make it informative and maybe build up some more interest by putting a list of upcoming reviews on there, rather than have each new installment be a surprise. So that's what I did, along with the dates people could expect to see them.

And as soon as I did that, everything went tits up. The first, as you can clearly see, is that this review is going up late. This is totally my fault for being bloody-minded and stubborn- I've had my busiest and most fun week in a very long time, travelling around, seeing friends, hearing great music, all that good stuff. I knew it was coming up, and I also knew I wouldn't have alot of free time on my hands, but I somehow convinced myself that I'd be able to do everything I planned and still squeeze this in. Well, suffice to say, I was wrong, and I should have just realised this was going to happen and made mention of the possibility at the end of the last review. Then, after I blew the deadline, it turned out I couldn't even cover the movie I planned to! This is one of the most overused phrases on The Internet, but I can't think of any other way to describe this as than an Epic Failure. In my defence though, the movie wasn't my fault- I was going to review a flick called "El Chupacabra," but that went out the window because, to put it bluntly, the bastard thing wouldn't play. I tried it in my 360, I tried it in me PS3, I tried playing it through my laptop, I even had a go with this little portable DVD player I own that only plays American DVDs to see if it was a Region 1 disc in disguise, and each time I got Sweet Fanny Adams. No obvious reason why either, the disc has practically no scratches on it. I can only assume it came out of the factory defective, and is probably the reason the guy I bought it from was selling it for a quid in the first place. So for the first time since I started this, a movie ended up being binned without me watching so much as a frame of it.

And to top everything else, thanks to a shelf deciding to spontaneously fall off the wall whilst I was away, my entertainment set-up currently looks like this...


I like how the Wii looks all scared and confused, the 360 looks like it's protecting it, and the PS3 is off to the side as if it doesn't give a fuck about either of them.

Anyway, enjoy)

I think it's time for a Useless Top 5.

Do you think it's time for a Useless Top 5?

It's Time for a Useless Top 5.

INTRODUCING THE CHEAP-ARSE FILM REVIEW'S DEBUT USELESS TOP 5!
IN THIS INSTALLMENT- THE TOP 5 ACTRESSES I LOVE SO MUCH, I'D WATCH THEM IN ANY OLD SHIT!
(WITH EXAMPLES OF ANY OLD SHIT)
1. DREW BARRYMORE
("NEVER BEEN KISSED," "OUR HOUSE" AKA "DUPLEX" FOR MY AMERICAN BROTHERS & SISTERS, "RIDING IN CARS WITH BOYS")
2. ALYSON HANNIGAN
("BOYS & GIRLS," "BEYOND CITY LIMITS," "DATE MOVIE")
3. ANGELINA JOLIE
(BOTH "TOMB RAIDERS," "ORIGINAL SIN," "LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT")
4. MENA SUVARI
("TRAUMA," "BEAUTY SHOP," RUMOUR HAS IT...")
5. ANNA FARIS
("SCARY MOVIE 2," SCARY MOVIE 4," "MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND," "THE HOUSE BUNNY")

Of all the movie-related lists I have (and I have alot, believe me) this one lives more-or-less in a constant state of flux. The only two constants are Drew and Alyson, the other three spots change on a monthly, or sometimes even weekly, basis. For instance, Isla Fisher was in there recently, until I realised not even she could could ever get me to sit through "Confessions of a Shopaholic." This list also deals with solo performances only, there are various combinations that could probably get me to sit down in front of anything. I'm convinced that one day the devastating one-two punch of Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson will be enough to make me give "Bride Wars" a go. God help me.

The newest edition to the above list is Anna Faris, and I think she'll probably be around for a while, maybe even becoming another mainstay. I think she's wonderful, and my appreciation of her grows with each movie I see her in. There are very few women who could get me to willingly sit through a movie called "The House Bunny," for example (although, to be fair, this was during my nightmarish trip to Scotland that I've detailed elsewhere, so by that point I guess I could just chalk it up to a desperate need to be entertained by something, anything...), and whilst I wouldn't quite say I liked it... actually, I didn't like it even slightly, I can't even pretend I'm going down that road. It's a terrible and, in many ways, terrifying movie. Utterly horrendous. But I still enjoyed Faris' work on it. She's very likable (actually, I'm almost tempted to say she's too likable, because there's a very good chance any young girls watching this would think she's cool, and if I had a daughter who though that, I honestly don't know what I'd do) and she's a hard worker, to the point that you could almost see her trying to wring some humour out of the awful script they had her reading from.

And, yes, she's pretty. Very pretty. Oh fuck it, she's drop-dead gorgeous. I wanted to hold off on talking about her looks as long as possible, because it seems to be the first thing everybody else instantly latches onto. Not just with her either, but with any funny woman who looks halfway decent and knows her way around a one-liner. At first I thought it was just a slightly sexist reaction, but the more I think about it, I suspect it might be a bit more complex than that. I have a theory (again with the theories!), that people like myself, who believe themselves to be... not that physically-pleasing to other people, we've convinced ourselves that all we have to offer is our personalities. However, in an interesting side-effect of this, I think we also believe (sometime so subconsciously that we don't even know we're doing it) that anybody even slightly better looking than us cannot possibly have anything going for them beyond that. I mean, what I'm suggesting here is nothing new. Jesus, "The House Bunny" is built around this concept, and very little else. But I honestly think it's time we put this idea to bed for a while and embraced the fact that human beings are more complex on both a physical, intellectual and spiritual level than we can possibly comprehend. Failing that, can we at least admit that it's possible that good-looking people can be funny and interesting, and not-so-attractive people also have it in them to be horrible human beings?

Wow, as tangents go, that was a doozy. Let's lighten the mood with a very brief BOX REVIEW! Well, the front cover art is a bit of a rip-off of the style of one-sheet "Scream" made popular, but at least here the people featured appear to have been taken directly from the movie, and not that photoshoot-style thing where everybody's standing against a black background staring into the camera all serious. Also, I find it interesting that Faris' image is used, but her name isn't given top billing. That doesn't bode well for her chances of surviving to the end, nor does it bode well for my hopes for how much she'll be in this. Finally, and I think this the funniest aspect of the whole thing, we're told that this movie is, "IN THE TRADITION OF "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER."" Isn't that cute? The people who made this thought we might not know what they were shamelessly ripping off.

The movie begins, and we're told that it's Valentine's Day thirteen year ago (wow, an occasion usually associated with happiness and an unlucky number! they're really not holding back). We're at one of those Lover's Lane places where couples drive to in order to hook-up, which is what the first two people we meet are indeed doing. They're both in the driver's seat, she's straddling him, her bra comes off (first breast sighting: 0:54, beating out "Cheerleader Massacre" by a whopping five seconds), and they're about to take things further (after the guy romantically asks the woman if she wants to "do it"), when a car pulls up behind them. The woman is initially startled and wants to stop, but the guy talks her back around, saying whoever it is in the other car, they're there's for the same reason. Sound logic, and really, if you're going to be getting up to this sort of thing in public, you shouldn't be a jittery as she's being. It's enough to make her recommence with the face-sucking, but then the guy gets out of the other car, and that's the final straw. They're getting ready to leave, when we see a hook scratch against one of the windows, and then seconds later, boom, it's burst through the car's roof.

I was going to rant about this, about how hard it would be to essentially punch your way inside a car, but then I noticed it was a soft-top, so I'll let it slide. However, that doesn't excuse the fact that I think a hook is one of the stupidest weapons regularly used in these types of movies. It looks cool, I'll grant you that, but that's the only thing it has going for it. Let's compare it to, say, a Dagger. A nice long Dagger. With that, you have the pointy end you can stab things with, plus the sharp edges you can slash people with. Now let's look at a hook- yes, it's got a pointy end, but other than that, it's pretty much just a blunt instrument. And the pointy end is all curled around, so the only way you can stab anybody is to slash forwards. There's no variety to what you can do. And the real kicker is the fact that your victims can easily grab hold of the thing! As I was watching this attack scene, watching the hook flail around and the two teens scream and fail at being able to open a car door, I kept thinking, "GRAB THE HOOK! GRAB THE HOOK AND HOLD HIM IN PLACE! BOTH OF YOU GRAB THE HOOK AND PULL DOWN WITH ALL YOUR WEIGHT! GET IT AWAY FROM HIM! HELL, YOU'LL AT LEAST SEPARATE HIS SHOULDER OR SOMETHING!" But of course they don't, and somehow the hook manages to cut the dude's face a little bit before the get out of the car and start doing that thing where they're crying and falling over as they're running, which makes sense at the end of a horror movie, but at this point in the proceedings it just feels like a gross overreaction (I've only just realised what a total arse that last sentence makes me sound like. "HOW DARE THESE PEOPLE BE DISTRAUGHT AT SOMEBODY TRYING TO KILL THEM!"). In their desperation, they go up to another car, intending to ask the people inside for help, only to find them dead already. Okay, so, when did the killer do them in? As far as we can tell, he showed up in his car and started attacking the first two almost instantly. Is he The Flash?

The place is now swarming with ambulances and police, with one of the officers turning up with his young daughter, her reading him what she's written in a Valentine's Day card she intended to give her mother. Do kids give their parent's Valentine's Day cards traditionally? I never did. My Mum used to send me a card. She tried to hide the fact that it was from her by signing it with question marks, but it was obvious who it was from, and when I was 12 I asked her to stop, my logic even at that age being I'd rather receive none than one from my Mother. So... where was I? Oh yeah, the killings. The officer gets out and, after being told to leave by a guy who turns out to be a therapist, inspects one of the bodies to discover it's (DUN DUN DUUUUUN) is wife. He has a breakdown, which is understandable when you take into account the fact that not only is she now dead, but she was also cheating on him. Surprisingly, they then seemingly find the person responsible for the killings in the surrounding vegetation, a guy with an eyepatch named Ray, who apparently the shrink was trying to help, saying he's built up an "extreme non-parafilic sexual attachment" for the officer's wife, who he worked with. And whilst all this is going on, we see the little girl get out of the care and put the card on her mother's body. Aw.

So, with the plot established, we jump forward a thirteen years to the "present day," where we once again met up with the girl from the previous scene, now in her late teens, along with the rest of the cast. As usual with these kinds of films, I'm not really going to try and remember any names, due to the stockness of all the characters involved. I will however be giving them all little nicknames, if for no other reason than it'll help me keep track of who's been bumped off. For instance, the first time we see the girl again, she's sitting on some steps reading a book, wearing glasses with her hair in this weird, cornrows-looking style. I think I'll just call her The Nerd and keep things simple. The school bell rings, and kids start entering the building around her. She only pays attention to two of them though- that being a blond jock with an absolutely amazing haircut that doesn't seem to move naturally even once during this entire thing (I shall call him "Haircut"), and his friend, who you just know is going to be a twat, partly because he's slightly hostile to The Nerd, but also because the clothes he's wearing just make him out as a jerk. Sometimes you can tell things just by looking at people, right? Anyway, he's "Jacket," due to the black suit jacket he's wearing over a V-Neck T-Shirt (see?). During a brief exchange between them, we find out that Haircut's mother works at the school (we later find out she's the principle), and will be giving a lecture in Health Class later that day. It's going to be one long condom joke, isn't it?

The rest of the meat gets introduced fairly quickly- we have a horny couple furiously making out ("PDA Boy" and "PDA Girl," respectively), a slightly dorky teen boy in a Hawaiian shirt and one of those bead necklaces ("The Weird One") a cheerleader, played by Faris ("The Cheerleader")(seriously, I'm not trying to win any awards for originality with any of these), and Haircut's girlfriend, who everybody seems to either hate or be a little bit afraid of. I think I'll call her "She-Hulk." They talk about meeting up later for a party... or maybe an orgy, somebody says something about clothes coming off and nobody seems to find this at all strange. I'm lucky I could hear him say that that at all really, because I noticed in this scene how shitty the sound recording and editing is- sometimes characters just sound mumbly, and then there are times when I can see lips moving and, I swear, no sound is coming out. And I'm watching this on my laptop with headphones on and the sound turned all the way up. Anyway, Haircut realises he has to dump She-Hulk, telling this to Jacket, who's exactly the wrong person he should e revealing these things too, as he obviously quite likes She-Hulk (I have to say, these little nicknames make writing about this movie alot more fun), and she also at least has a passing interest in him. So what does he do? He does what any respecting dick would do, he tells the girl the second he gets the chance, and she Hulks up and practically Rugby tackles Haircut into a swimming pool.

They both end up in The Principle's office after this incident, which allows the movie to make a few revelations about their parentage, and also tie things a bit more to the set-up of the movie. We discover, for instance, that She-Hulk's father is the Shrink from the beginning of the film, and also that the officer from the beginning is now the town's Sheriff. There's something a little bit off about The Shrink, as he seems quite distant confrontational and just a bit... creepy. He also meets The Nerd (who's become instant BFF with The Cheerleader) and tells her how much she looks like her mother, which you don't need a degree in psychology to realise might be the absolute worst thing you could say to somebody whose mother was brutally murdered. At this point, I was confused (and little did I know it'd get worse from here...), because all of this behaviour is classic of a character it's later revealed is the killer himself, but in a previous scene, we're shown The Shrink working with Ray, who he has chained up to a chair, trying to get him to admit to killing the Sheriff's wife and the other guy. And then when Ray later escapes, he kills an orderly (I'm not really sure how, but his foot appears to have been ripped off), and writes something on the wall in the dead man's blood, which are not the actions of a reasonable man who's been stitched up. Oh, and what is it he writes on the wall? What could this evil, insane killer want to communicate with the rest of the world? Perhaps "I'M STILL WAITING," as an ominous, cryptic warning about what his intentions are now that he's free? No, he writes "PRISON FOOD SUCKS." PRISON FOOD SUCKS. There's also a newspaper clipping with She-Hulk in it on one of is walls which The Shrink is only just now noticing, even though it must have been there for a while.

From this point on, we get one main plot and one sub-plot. The main plot involves the kids (even The Nerd, who's going with The Weird One so he can win some kind of bet) attempting to go to the party they were talking about earlier, but then seemingly having their lives put in jeopardy by a cruel prank- She-Hulk wants to get revenge on Haircut for dumping her, so she tells The Weird One to make sure he brings him to Lover's Lane that night, so he could catch her getting it on with Jacket. Strangely, Jacket picks the moment they're in the car together to suddenly think hooking up with his best friend's ex might not be the best thing in the world to do, and she literally has to remove her top and violently question his sexuality before he'll continue. And in the already-discussed-to-death tradition of these kinds of movies, sex and lust is quickly followed by murder and pain, as when the rest of the kids show up, they discover their mutilated bodies dumped outside the car, and are then themselves attacked, with PDA Guy getting a good slashing and being left for dead as his friends peel away in the car, crashing the thing and ending up taking refuge in a abandoned house (don't you just love how there's always one house around that nobody appears to live in that's easy to break into?).

The Subplot involves The Nerd and Haircut's parents, The Principle and The Sheriff, searching the town for both them and the killer. I think I like this plot a little bit better than the main one, partly because the actor that plays The Sheriff seems to be having fun with his role and not taking things to seriously, but also because we get to see more fun stuff during their scenes- The Principle punches out a drunk teen aged girl who has the balls to insinuate her son might be getting his rock's off at Lover's Lane, and when they reach The Shrink's house, it's all fun and games, as we see glimpses of the killer in mirrors before he seemingly disappears into thin air (so he is magic?), and they find a wonderfully-fake looking Dog's head in the fridge. See? This is fun. Good, trashy fun. It's not hard to do. But sadly we have to return to the kids regularly, where everything's all super-serious and everybody's always shouting or crying. There is one nice little bit, though, where they're about to put The Weird One's leg in a splint. The Nerd tells The Cheerleader to distract him, and when all her verbal attempts to do so fail on account of the fact that she doesn't know him very well, she just lifts up her top. It's funny, and the reaction of the two guys is priceless, but then they go and spoil it when, after The Weird One passes out from the pain of having is bone reset, Haircut drops the line, "Your body's a knockout." Because he passed out, you see?

Following this, DRAMA! The Nerd and Haircut, who've had issues with each other the entire movie, finally shout out their problems, with the revelation that his dead father was the person The Nerd's mother was caught cheating with. Actually, it's not a revelation to the viewer, we've been aware of this for quite some time, but it is a revelation to Haircut, which, I'm sorry, I don't buy for a second- they live in what's been presented to us as a very small community, full of people who are constantly gossiping about each other and in each other's business. There's no way, no way, you could have kept something this big from him for this long. Not without either locking him in the cellar or investing in a constant stream of hypnotic mindwipes. The off-shot of all this is the fact that what is supposed to be an emotional scene ends up making one of the main characters look like a bit of an idiot. Plus, there's further nonsense from The Nerd's side of things- she's the one who's been the most hostile of the pair throughout, but during this exchange she reveals that she doesn't and never has believed her mother was having an affair. So, if you don't believe that, why are you giving this poor kid a hard time? YOU HATE HIM FOR SOMETHING HE PLAYED NO PART IN THAT YOU DON'T THINK HAPPENED ANYWAY! Am I the only person who sees the insanity in that?

Thankfully they stop talking for a while so we can get a bit more of the distracting action in- The Nerd and Haircut go outside to find a car, leaving the still out-cold Weird one and the reasonably scared-to-death Cheerleader alone in the house, where they're sacrificed. It's during these sequences that it becomes very obvious that there's more going on here than we first thought, as The Cheerleader runs away from the killer to a small upstairs bedroom, only to be killed by somebody under the bed. So, unless he really is magic like I joked about earlier, this makes it clear that there are two killers, the logical explaination being that Ray is working with somebody else. Remember, that's the logical explaination. There's also the film's lone memorable and fairly uncomfortable kill during this bit, as The Weird One finally comes around to find one of the killers looming over him. Unable to move, he's reduced to begging for his life, uttering such pathetic pleas as, "I only wanted to get laid," as the killer runs his hook all over his body, before violently stabbing through both his legs (we're ever shown the knife going through the wood under the table), before being left to bleed out.

After a surprisingly tense sequence where The Nerd and Haircut hotwire a car with one of the killers in the barn with them, they return to the house to pick up their friends, only to discover they're too late. It's here that we get the first and last truly awesome moment in this movie- one of the killers returns, and Haircut, now seeking revenge for the death of his father, decides he's going to kill him. Not with a knife or a gun or anything like that. No, completely on the fly, he's come up with the design for a DEATHTRAP! And it's ingenius- it involves filling the house with gas and taping a match to the bottom of a door, so that when that door's open, it's lit and the whole house goes ka-blooey, which is exactly what happens. Of course, the movie's not over yet, because there was about fifteen minutes of screentime left on the disc, so I thought this would be the moment where they let their guard down, and we found out who the second killer was. And I was half-right, because as they're driving along, they find the body of She-Hulk laid out in the road, who's not as dead as she was before. It was obvious at this point that she was one of the killers, and sure enough, as soon as they arrive back at Lover's Lane and The Nerd gets out of the car, she starts attacking Haircut with a hook (and yes, I have wondered where she could have possibly been keeping that thing).

And then the movie starts taking the piss.

No sooner does this happen, then The Nerd is accousted by aother figure in a hood and forced into a car, where we find out it... The Shrink. Again, this wasn't really a surprise, as we'd cut back to The Sheriff and The Principle as they investigate The Shrink's ouse to find that he has a shrine of sorts to the Sheriff's dead wife (have I mentioned that the Sheriff and the Shrink are half-brothers yet during this? Well, they are. Not that it has any real baring on the script in any way), so at that point it wasn't as great a jump to assume that he's also obsessed with his daughter. And they also explain away what I thought was a masive lapse in logic at the beginning by saying he killed both the other two and then had them planted on the scene. But other than that, everything just becomes so confusing. For a start, why are he and his daughter even going on this killing spree now? She mentions something about him promising to help her get revenge on Haircut and allhis friends for him dumping her. Is that it? Teenage jealousy and fear of abandonment? Was the fact that Ray escaped just a coincidence? And whilst we're on that subject, what about Ray? Was he actually a killer? Was it him that attacked the other couple at the start? Or was it the Shrink in a convolted attempt to cover his tracks? And if so, what was Ray doing at the scene? Did the Shrink just bring him there and tell him, "Stay?" And then, just as I come to terms with he fact that he's got really nothing to do with anything that's been happening, HERE COMES RAY! And he kills She-Hulk, seemingly for revenge! And then I remember there was a random killing in a gas station earlier, which also resulted in a cop being butchered and his squad car being stolen, which would have made no sense if it had been done by either the Shrink or She-Hulk. Then there was the craziness at the Shrink's house, and the dog's head in the fridge. So... there've been three killers running around this whole time, one of them just off doing his own thing, completely disconnected to the plot? What was the point of that? Somebody, please, WAT IS HAPPENING!?

Things don't go on too much longer from here, as the Sheriff shows up and shoots his half-brother, who then rises from the grave for one last scare, before being killed by one of his own hook (and where are they getting these from, anyway? I can just about buy one, but three?). The sun comes up, all the lies have been revealed, and it looks like everything's going to be alright. And then we se the kids get into a squad car thats door is closed by a hooked hand, and they pull away, presumably to be slaughtered. I'd rathe than then a sequel. On the plus side, Ray drives very well for a hopelessly insane lunatic with one hand. Props for that.

This movie is total mess almost from beginning to end, that finally caved in on itself towards the end. Yes, it had a plot twist that caught me off-guard, but it wasn't playing fair. With a good twist, it surprises you, but then when you look back, you see all the signs leading up to it and you're like, "OF COURSE!" With the twist at the end of this one, you're just desperately looking back to try and see where it came from. Yes, there were hints, some of them no very subtle at all, but it just doesn't make any sense. I know I over-analize things alot of the time whilst doing this, but I don't think that's the case here, I truly believe nobody could watch the last fifteen minutes of this movie and really have a clue what is going on. I don't know how anybody could write a script with this many holes in it and consider it a finished piece of work.

There were a few other mild complains, such as a couple of continuity errors- for one, only a few minutes after being thrown into the pool, Haircut is shown sitting in his mother's car completely dry. Even his hair has magically gone back into place. Then there's the fact that the movie can' decide how old it's main protagonists are- a very big deal is made of the fact that both The Nerd and Haircut were four years old when the first tragidy occured, which, since that happened 13 years ago, wold make them both 17, right? Well, during the scenes where the Principle and Sheriff are looking for the pair of them, she tells one of the people they stop to question that he son is 16. It's a little thing compared to some of the other problems here, but it's something somebody really should have caught. And finally there's the fact that the Shrink somehow manages to survive being at the very point of a house explosion and end up with little more than some burns on his face. Surprisingly though, for a film that seemed to trumpet a very specific lack of originality on the front of the box, this isn't really a rip-off of "I Know What You Did Last Summer" beyond both those movies having killers with hooks. It's just another example of a slasher with absolutely no ideas of its own to bring to the table. Infact, I can think of only one good thing to come out of this- in one of the most recent issues of Arena Magazine here in the UK, there's a feature on Anna Faris, where they talk about this movie. It's not mentioned by name, but it's discribed as a slasher movie so terrible, it put her off playing it straight from that point forward.

Thank the Lord for small mercies.

FINAL VERDICT

BINNED!

Two movies, some train tickets, a really shit homemade Hip-Hop CD and a broken Wiimote. I guess it's true, you can tell alot about a person by going through what they throw out.

Until Wednesday, I'm The Cheap-Arse Film Critic, and death is the only adventure you have left!

The Cheap-Arse Film Review #29- "HELP! I'M A FISH."

NAME: HELP! I'M A FISH

RATED: U

RELEASED: 2000

WRITTEN BY: STEFAN FJELDMARK, KARSTEN KIILERICH & JOHN STEFAN OLSEN, WITH ADDITIONAL DIALOGUE AND SCENARIO BY TRACY BROWN, FROM A STORY BY STEFAN FJELDMARK & KARSTEN KIILERICH

DIRECTED BY: STEFAN FJELDMARK, MICHAEL HEGNER & GREG MANWARING (UNCREDITED)

FEATURING THE VOICES OF: TERRY JONES, ALAN RICKMAN

GENRE: ANIMATED ACTION/COMEDY

BOUGHT FROM: A RECORD FAIR

PRICE: £1.00

I. LOVE. THIS. TITLE!

I mean, seriously, it's great isn't it? I think titles are often overlooked by filmmakers with regards to getting bums in seats. Sometimes all I have to do is hear what something's called, and I'm there. I was like that with "Lesbian Vampire Killer," I knew nothing about it other than the title, but I couldn't wait to see it. Then I saw the trailer and all that desire went away, but that's beyond the point. With this one, the title was all it really had going for it, what with the box art looking so generic and uninspired. It's fun to read, it's even more fun to say (I can't help but yell the "HELP!"), and it tells you pretty much all you need to know about the flick before you've even put the disc in your player. A bit like Ben Affleck's directorial debut, "I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three Picture Deal at Disney" (I assume it's not autobiographical).

I didn't realise this until it was pointed out to me, but this has the honourable distinction of being the first animated film I've written about since I started this. I don't actually know why that is, because I love animated movie, and have been known to be the only adult in a cinema not accompanied by an adult to enjoy one on the big screen (and yes, I do get funny looks. Once a woman point-blank told her children not to sit next to me and eyed me in a manner that makes my blood run cold to this day thinking about it. She was ready and more then willing to kill me at a moment's notice). I just hadn't really found anything that looked interesting to me until I stumbled across this. Considering it's the first example of it's medium that will get my usual once-over, I think it's appropriate that it's a little bit different than the usual fair. For a start, it's animated mostly in the traditional, hand-drawn style, which was quickly dying out even back when this was first released (late 2000). It's also not an American production, but rather a Danish one, put together by Denmark's respected "A. Studios" and originally released as "Hjaelp, jeg er en fisk" (that's as close to the original title as I can type. The "a" and "e" in "hjaelp" are supposed to be joined up, but I don't know how to do that, so sod it), which got a release over here with a new English voice track almost a year after it's debut in it's home country, and didn't get a North American release on DVD until 2006.

Okay, with that useless trivia out of the way, onto the film.

Following some white text on a black background and the logo appearing in all its shiny (and even that's cool- it's shaped like a fish, and it's been designed in such a way that the dot of the exclamation point also doubles up as an eye and the "H" looks a bit like a mouth), we get to see some fish swimming around in the ocean, presented in the customary CGI that all hand-animated films felt they needed to employ the second the technology became available, that always looks out-of-place and never ages well (hello, the ballroom dancing sequence in "Beauty and The Beast"). This doesn't look great either, but I still quite like it, as it's got this quirky, stylised, almost cell-shaded look to it, and I think it's fared better than a film that's nearly a decade old really should (wow, I just realised I wasn't quite 17 when this first came out. That's sobering). Then suddenly we're in the bedroom of a young boy named Fly who's about to go fishing (geddit? Fly? Fishing? Fly fishing?), until he finds out his parents are going out for the night, meaning his aunt and cousin Chuck (fat, genius, you know the drill) have come over to babysit his little sister Stella, and that he's expected to stay at home and keep Chuck company. Of course this doesn't last, as the second his Aunt is asleep, Fly bribes Chuck into going fishing with him and Stella. So far everybody fits into their stereotypes nicely- Fly is impulsive and brash, Chuck is intellectual and cowardly, and Stella is, well, pretty much just a toddler. There's very little depth to the characters, but then there's not supposed to be, there's only supposed to be enough to make it obvious they've Learnt A Valuable Lesson by the end.

The fishing trip starts fairly uneventfully, with Fly (and God is that an unnatural name for a character. You wouldn't believe how many time I've put "Fry" down instead and had to go back and edit it once I noticed. And all for a joke that's not even that funny) accidentally catching a Sea Horse that Stella instantly falls in love with and names Sasha, before tearfully returning to the ocean. Deciding the traumatic event is a sign they should call it a day, they go to leave. ONLY THE TIDE'S COME IN! AND THERE'S NO WAY OFF THE LEDGE THEY'RE ON! NOTHING CAN SAVE THEM NOW, EXCEPT... A HIDDEN DOOR IN THE ROCKS!!!!! And of course, this door leads then to the workplace of Professor Mac Krill (geddit? Mac? Krill? Mac Krill?)(at least he's voiced in this version by Terry Jones, so they get bonus points for a Python). His reveal is actually fairly well done- as they wander around looking at all his experiments and artifacts, including a half-fish, half-mouse happily munching on some cheese and a toy Californian Fly Fish hanging from the ceiling that Fly proclaims to be "great looking" (thank you, Troy McClure), he comes lurching at them from the shadows, only to have the light turned on and be shown as a kindly-looking and eccentric (read: completely insane) scientist, who for some reason instantly starts telling these children he's only just met that he's created a potion that turns people into fish, in order to save humanity when the Polar Ice Caps melt and The World becomes flooded (hello, Al Gore). Actually, he doesn't tell them this so much as he does sing them this. Now, I've mentioned before that I love musicals, and I do, but the songs in this film (and mercifully there are only two of them sung by the cast, the rest are just bland upbeat pop played over the top of whatever's going on) are not very good. This one in particular is awful, with Jones trying to save it by being all wacky, but it's no good. At least it's mercifully short. The best part of it is when he says the name of the potion that turns people into fishes is (wait for it...) Fish Potion. That's it. They weren't even trying to be clever or creative. It's Fish Potion. FISH POTION. And it's kept in a bottle with a big fish on it, so there's absolutely no mistaking it for any other kind of potion he'd have lying around.

Following this, The Professor is about to use the potion on himself, before he remembers he needs the Antidote (which comes in a square bottle and also has a picture of a fish on the side, only this one has a red cross over the top of it). Whilst this is going on Stella takes a sip of the potion and seemingly starts tripping off her balls- everything starts distorting, there's a smashing glass effect for seemingly no good reason, and she staggers around for a second, disorientated and seemingly in more than a little bit of discomfort, before collapsing (and it's worth mentioning that seeing this happening to a small child, even a cartoon one, is more than a little bit disturbing). The others reenter the room and see that she's disappeared. They start to look for her, with Fly instead finding what he describes as a "strange looking fish." Strange-looking? It's a Starfish with pig-tails wearing a pink skirt! He shows it to Chuck, who says he need to get it into salt water before it dries out (he also misses the unusual traits of hair and clothing this sea creature exhibits). Fly then throws it out the window just as Chuck checks the video camera to see footage of Stella turning into it. Cue them all now sailing around in a tiny boat during a ferocious storm, seemingly sifting through the entire ocean in attempt to find her. Realising this is pointless, Fly and Chuck take the potion themselves, turning into (surprise surprise) a Californian Fly Fish (still wearing his baseball cap) and a Jelly Fish (still wearing glasses) respectively. They now have two days to find Stella, before they're trapped as fish forever.

The action now mostly takes place under water, and again the film's a little bit clever with this section of the film. Instead of just having all the creatures be able to talk, they actually make them acquiring this ability into a plot point- the boat Fly and the others were sailing on ends up sinking, and the Antidote goes down with it, opening as it does so and ending up being drank by a Clown Fish and a Shark (who has an Australian accent, which at first lead me to assume they were ripping off "Finding Nemo," until I realised the English-speaking version of this film came out a good two years before that movie did, which is... interesting), causing them to evolve and develop the ability to speak. You see, since the Fish Potion turns humans into fish, that Antidote would have the reverse effect. The Clown Fish is named Joe, the main villain of this film, and he's voiced by Alan Rickman. I love Rickman's voice, I don't know how he does it, but he somehow manages to sound dignified and sleazy all at the same time. He's like a Victorian gentleman who's secretly wearing lady's stockings under his britches. And he's in full swing here, livening up what is a fairly bland script with a his marvelously lecherous delivery. Most of the voice acting in this movie is utterly forgettable (whoever does the voice for Chuck is especially guilty of this), but Rickman has nothing to be ashamed of.

After Chuck and Fly find Stella (which seems to happen in about five minutes) and the Sea Horse Sasha (ditto), they begin to worry about what they're going to do now, since as far as they know The Professor went down with the boat and the Antidote is lost. They then stumble across some more talking fish, and after the initial shock, they get on the bus with them (the bus is actually a whale with the number 88 pained on it's face) and are taken to the place where Joe is creating his new society of intelligent fish, which is housed inside a massive sunken tanker. Visually this bit of the film is easily the best- it's surprisingly dark and dystopian, and maybe it's just me, but I thought there was something a bit Third Reich about it all. The crossed-out fish symbol on the bottle has now been appropriated by Joe as a symbol of what he's preaching, and once the three of them get inside the hall, they see him selling addressing row-after-row of fish at what looks, well, very much like a rally. Christ, even the fact that he's trying to make these creatures genetically superior to others of their kind fits in with what I think I'm seeing.

Of course this is a children's film, so he's not going to be in front of them ranting and raving. Instead, he starts singing another song about how he can improve their lives. This one is better than the one from earlier, I'll say that much, but I can barely remember anything about it without first watching that scene back, so it's not what you'd call memorable. There also flaws in the presentation, because Joe is telling the crowd that he can make them more human, whereas they already look more human than any other fish I've ever seen, with large expressive eyes and mouths bent into adoring smiles. An annoying moment of inconsistency. Fly tries to make a grab for the bottle, but Chuck screams at him not to drink it, as they're at the bottom of the ocean and would drown. Realising these three know what the stuff he's using is, Joe has them captured and attempts to get them to make more for him, as he's running low, only to become displeased when they say they have no idea how it's made and have them locked up in a cage until they remember. I'd have no problem with this little development, were in not for one small thing- ONE OF THE CHARACTERS IS A JELLY FISH! HE'S AN INVERTEBRATE! HE'S GOT NO SPINE! HE SHOULD JUST BE ABLE TO SQUEEZE THROUGH THE BARS NO PROBLEM! But he doesn't do this, leading me to believe he must be the first Jelly Fish in existence to have achieved something close to solidity. Instead, they escape with the help of Sasha, who tricks the crab guarding them (all the crabs that drink the potion become soldiers and somehow grow helmets, which I thought was wacky but fun), before making a break for it.

So now the kids are in trouble, as they don't have the Antidote and they apparently only had twelve hours left before they have to spend the rest of their lives as fish. This film's strength is also up their with it's biggest weaknesses- it's really short (the box says 76 minutes, but really not including credits it's just under 70), so it moves at a brisk pace and doesn't outstay it's welcome, but at the same time it's sense on time and pacing is completely thrown out of whack. I mean, how have these events taken a day-and-a-half? How long were they looking for Stella? How long were they in that cage, for that matter? It doesn't help that we occasionally return to the surface world to see their parents looking for them, and up there all this seems like it's happening in a single night. But I guess the only reason they threw that in was to add a ticking clock to their mission and try to get a bit of dramatic tension going, and in the end decided drama was more important than logic. Fly says they can make their own potion, seeing as all the ingredients are under the sea, and when Chuck says they don't know what was in it, Fly reveals he does, as he remembers the words from the song The Professor sung earlier. Wow, they managed to tie that terrible song into the plot. That almost makes it worthwhile. They collect the ingredients, which mostly consists of them mutilating underwater wild life, with the last one being the ink of an octopus. Sadly, the only reason the octopus was scared in the first place was due to the arrival of Joe, he shark friend and an army of crabs.

It's around this time that a mini civil war breaks out amongst the ranks of the supposedly intelligent fish, as both the shark and and of the crabs start to make cases for why they should be in charge. The crab tries to improve his standing by drinking more of the potion and becoming more evolved. Not wanting to give up the potion they've just created without a fight, Fly refuses to let go, only to be struck hard by the crab and... OH MY GOD HE'S BLEEDING! And not from a cut either, like you sometimes see in these films, blood is actually oozing out of one of his gills, implying horrible internal injuries. That's... really rather shocking! They're saved by what at first looks like a tornado (and even the movie is aware enough to have one of it's characters ask if it's possible for tornadoes to exist under water), sucking up and/or scattering all the other fish around them, which is quickly revealed to be The Professor and Fly's Dad (who've now met up) pretty much hoovering the ocean in an attempt to find them. This seems like a brief reprieve however, as Fly is now seemingly at Death's door, and they have approximately 12 minutes before they're out of time. Even Fly, who has been portrayed throughout this movie as a hopeless optimist, has given up hope.

And so it's Chuck's turn to prove he's worth a damn and save his friends from eternal damnation (sorry about that, I think I turned into Frank Miller for a second there). He remembers that The Professor had a spare bottle of Antidote in his lab, and comes up with a plan that involves them getting there through one of the many metal pipes he has tapered out into the ocean, flooding the place and opening the bottle, all in six minutes. It's all going well, and many aspects of the plan itself are fairly ingenious, including a balloon to cushion them from hitting anything and using the evil piranhas to block one of the filters and flood the joint. Sadly, Joe had been in hot pursuit the whole time and fowls things up for them, seemingly making off with the Antidote. As Chuck is dealing with the piranhas, knocking them all out one-by-one with a single punch (see? SOLIDITY!), Fly decides to, and I quote, "Use my brain for once," and heads off after Joe. He uses his fatal flaw, that being his need to be more intelligent, against him by asking him questions he doesn't know the answers to, leading to him drinking more and more of the Antidote and continue mutation until he's this grotesque parody of a human. Fly's final question? "Can a human breathe under water?" The answer in no (obviously), and Joe's lifeless body floats silently back down the pipe.

So they've got the Antidote, they're about to drink it, when suddenly their parents burst into the room and all the water starts rushing out. Chuck and Stella manage to drink some and become human again (they're also somehow wearing clothes), but we don't see Fly do so, and when the smoke (or rather water) clears, he's nowhere to be found. Chuck starts frantically looking for him, finding the lifeless body of a fish that looks to be him. This scene is actually quite emotive, with Chuck trying to create a new potion on the fly (no pun intended), as his parents and The Professor tell him it's hopeless, and somewhere amongst all this Chuck's mother somehow steps on the fish. There's a squishing sound-effect and everything. Literally one second after this happens, Fly is revealed to be human and pretty much fine, his battered insides somehow translating into only being a broken leg. I found it unintentionally humourous how quickly they went from ultimate despair to Happy Happy Fun Times. It's like they were saying, "Okay, I think we may have gone too far with the Aunt stepping on him, show he's alright before the kids start crying." And what was the other fish, you ask? It was the toy from the beginning of the movie. Continuity! So now everything's alright, the kids have a new found respect and love for each other, The Professor has turned his research equipment into a collection of water slides, and perhaps most bizarrely of all, Stella is reunited with Sasha again (after tearfully saying goodbye to her again), then Chuck and The Professor perform an experiment on her to make her half a real Horse, that Stella rides around on as everybody laughs. Yay playing God! Yay horribly-mutated abominations! YAAAAAAAAY!

Once again, I find myself torn over what to do with a movie I've just watched. There were some good things about it. The animation started off looking a little bit ropey, but by the end it looked really good. There are some clever ideas scattered around too. But overall, I didn't really enjoy it all that much. It wasn't for me. And that's just it- it wasn't for me. This movie clearly wasn't made with the intention of entertaining 26-year-old men. It was made to be a fun romp for children. And this isn't like some of the family films I've watched where I've struggled to see how anybody could enjoy them, I could definitely see young kids, from say six-to-ten years old, liking this. And I'm not sure I have it in me to punish a film simply because I'm old. It's like...

... forgive me if I lose it, this has been building up for a while...

... I love Pixar. I love Pixar. But in many ways, they have alot to answer for, mostly the fact that they've almost single-handedly created a generation of young parents that now think it's their God-given right to enjoy everything their children do. It's like with that film about the talking Chihuahuas that was released last year. I can't remember the title, and I can't be bothered to look it up. Whatever it was called, that film looked awful, I'm not going to say otherwise. And of course The Internet was giddily tearing it a new one in the sarcasting manner that it's known for. However, amongst all the fun, there was a post made by somebody that really got to me. There was a guy on there saying that his son really, really wanted to see this movie. He was asking him literally everyday if he'd take him to see it. And the guy kept saying no, because he thought the film didn't look like something he'd enjoy.

BULLSHIT!!!!!

Bullshit. So he wants to see a bad movie. Big deal. Does this guy think his parents enjoyed all the movies he was taken to see as a child? Of course they didn't. I know mine didn't. I mean, yeah, some of them were good- "An American Tale," "Honey I Shrunk The Kids," "All Dogs Go to Heaven," these are movies my parents remember fondly. But those were not the only movies I watched growing up. Sometimes I went to see boring movies about secret agent frogs with French accents. There was one film I watched on video, I think it was called "Pound Puppies & The Legend of Big Paw," that I watched so many times that I can still vividly remember certain scenes, and even lyrics to some of the songs. And that movie was dreadful. It was pure shit. And yet, every time I was at the video shop, and I came to my parents with that in hand, that's what we went home with that night. Because they loved me and they were willing to sit through that just to make me happy. That's what you do with you're a parent. You take your child to the fucking movie about the fucking talking Chihuahuas and you sit there with a fucking grin on your face pretending to have a good time as the small person sitting next to you laughs their head off. And if you're not willing to do that, well I'm sorry, but you're not a good parent.

FINAL VERDICT

GIVEN TO A CHARITY SHOP!

My disproportionate rage and desire to not be one of those people has seen to it that I show this film more mercy than I have most. This is not going to be the norm, so don't get used to it.

Until next week, I'm The Cheap-Arse Film Critic, and sometimes it's better down where it's wetter, take it from me.

The Cheap-Arse Film Review #28- "BOTTLE ROCKET."

NAME: BOTTLE ROCKED

RATING: 15

RELEASED: 1996

WRITTEN BY: OWNE WISON AND WES ANDERSON

DIRECTED BY: WES ANDERSON

STARRING: LUKE WILSON, OWEN WILSON, ROBERT MUSGRAVE, LUMI CAVAZOS, JAMES CAAN

GENRE: COMEDY/DRAMA

BOUGHT FROM: CEX

PRICE: £1.00

I think Wes Anderson, or more specifically his movies, or even more specifically one of hi movies in particular, may have saved me from turning into a total prick.

I goes something like this- a few years ago, I was... angry. I won't go into details as to why, because they're boring and embarrassingly Emo. But I was angry, for quite a while, and because I'm not really the type to jump up-and-down and shout about things, the anger manifested itself in other ways, one of them being to develop a cartoonish sense of my own masculinity (I'd seen "Fight Club" one too many times, basically), and create a whole bunce of rules I had to abide by in order to be a man, one of which was to show as little emotion as humanly possible, because being overly-emotional was a sign of weakness (Christ...). And my big rule was I would no longer allow myself to be emotionally affected by fiction of any kind, because only a fool cared about the fate of people that weren't real.

Enter Wes Anderson. We'll, he'd already entered, I suppose. I'd been a huge fan of his movies ever since I'd seen "Rushmore," which I became interested in when I found out it'd been co-written by Owen Wilson, and was fascinated to find out what kind of movie the laid-back southern stoner dude from "Armageddon" would have a hand in creating. Suffice to say, it wasn't quite the movie I was expecting it to be. But I loved it anyway, and Anderson quickly joined the ranks of my favourite filmmakers, alongside Cameron Crowe and Kevin Smith (wow, that's a shocker isn't it, that a pop culture-obsessed nerd who doesn't know when to stop talking should love Kevin Smith's movies?). I've put this down before, but I saw "The Royal Tenenbaums" in cinemas five times, which is my own personal record (although, if I'm totally honest, three of those time happened when I was stuck on a cruise ship celebrating my sister's Birthday)(I also saw "Monster's Inc." twice whilst I was there). It was neither of those films that brought me out of the wanker hole I was slowly digging for myself, though. The honour belonged to "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou."

Some people really don't like this movie, but I think it's wonderful, for the exact reason most of them don't- the overwhelming fakeness of the whole thing, symbolising the fact that Zissou is a man with nothing real in his life he can be proud of, that is punctured right at the very end by a wave of pure, unadulterated emotion, brought on by both the man himself's sudden epithany, and the compassion of those around him, some of whom he's treated like absolute shit for the entire film. It was this moment, and the key line of the scene, "I wonder if it remembers me," that got to me. I hadn't cried at a movie for about five years at this point. And I didn't cry here, either. I think it'd be more accurate to say that I burst. I started howling, just bawling like a hungry baby screaming for its mother's tit. Infact, I cried so much, afterwards I was so exhausted I needed a nap! It was hysterical, and I can now look back on it and laugh. But at the time I was more than a little bit confused, because I couldn't figure out what about that scene set me off. I still can't really, and now that I've had a bit of time to think about it, I don't think I want to, because whether it's the entire scene or just that one line, whatever it was... I think it might be Pandora's Box. Best left closed, for the time being at least. Anyway, it's not important, because I came out the other side feeling... better. I distinctly remember thinking to myself, "What a silly sod you've been." It's a cliche, but I guess it's true- better out than in. So I had another reason to love Anderson and his films after that.

(Humourously, because I'm not a man to do anything by halves, since that day I think the pendulum may have swung a little bit too far the other way, because now I find myself getting emotional at the silliest things. I watched the "Garfield Christmas Special" over the Holiday Season, for example, and when it got to the bit where Garfield was sitting on Granny's lap listening to her talk about her dead husband... oh God. And most recently the trailer, the bloody trailer, for Spike Jonze's adaptation of "Where The Wild Things Are" made me go a bit misty, which I blame on their use of emotive music and my own feelings of warm nostalgia whenever I think of that book. Bastards)

Considering the utter gangbang of love the above paragraphs are for the man and his work, you have every right to be surprised by the fact that I've never seen this, his first full-length feature, until now. Well, I always told myself tha I was holding out until a version with decent extras had been released (which apparently is now happening in the US as part of the absolutely fantastic Criterion Collections new Blu-Ray line), but the truth is, I was always a bit scared to watch it, because I'd been told by people who had seen it that there's a very good chance I would't like it, because alot of the things I liked about his other movies aren't present. And I didn't like the thought of not liking a Wes Anderson movie. Not at all. But at some point you've just got to suck it up and be, well, a man, haven't you?

Normally I would make a brief mention of the credits sequence here, but there isn't one in this movie. Seriously. We get "Columbia Pictures Presents," then we get "BOTTLE ROCKET" in black text on a red background, and then we're straight into the story, picking things up with Anthony (Luke Wilson), who it would seem is about to escape from a psychiatric hospital with the help of his best friend, Dignan (Owen Wlison)(incidently, I find it humourous how, in all the movies they've done with each other at this point, I don't think they've ever played brothers), mirror used as a signal, bed sheets tied together to make a rope, the whole deal. However, as it turns out, Anthony signed himself in at the hospital willingly, and has already discharged himself, but didn't have the eart to tell Dignan any of that, as he was so excited about the plan he'd come up with. So out the window Anthony goes, pausing only to say goodbye to his doctor and some of the other patients. It's never really explained in detail why he was there, but he later mentions questioning his own life to such an extent that he ran away and lived in the desert for a period of time. A bit like Jesus. Hey, managed to find a way of tying this into Easter!

It is the next few scenes that the differences people were telling me about become obvious, mostly concerning the dialogue and the way the movie is shot. One of the things I'll accept about Anderson's movies is that they're often not that exciting to look at, most of the time shot in a static, almost storybook way, with the few movements the camera makes being very smooth and controlled. Here, there's a some of that, and it becomes more the norm as the movie goes on, almost as if whilst shooting you could see him decide, "This is how I like doing things," but to me it feels like the camera moves more in this one than it does in any of his other films put together, and it also feels a little ragged in places. Not that that's a bad thing, and it's not a constant distraction (hello, "Bloodrayne 2: Deliverance"), but it felt really odd seeing it in a Wes Anderson movie. Then there's the dialogue. It's not how it's written really, its almost the same as it is in all his movies, that being quirky but not totally out-there and zany, but rather how it's spoken- it's often delievered at a break-neck pace, and alot of the time, especially here at the beginning, there's alot of people talking over each other, which I think is done to better get across both the familiarity the characters have with each other, especially Anthony and Dignan, and also to convey their excitement at what they're planning. Again, it's not a bad thing, it's just different is all.

And speaking of their plan, all is laid out to us over the course of a bus journey- they plan to become criminals, thieves more specifically, putting into use all the things Dignan has learnt from Mr. Henry (James Caan), who he claims is a master thief. He has everything planned out for he and Anthony in the most fine detail (it's later claimed that he planning stretches a good 75 years), in a little notebook. He's even colour-coded the thing using different felt-tip pens, which frankly is something I would do. The first major part of this plan involves then performing a practice burglary, and I was amused to find out that the house the do this with belongs to Anthony's mother. It goes well, all things considered, until afterwards when they's discussing what they've just done and where they can improve, Dignan reveals that he stole Anthony's Mother's diamond earrings, the one thing he had promised he wouldn't, apparently.

This of course means Anthony has to return the earrings, which he does by giving them to is little sister, Grace (Shea Fowler). They then proceed to have a conversation based around a joke that's as old as the hills, that being the substancially-younger sibling that talks like she's 35. I still find it amusing, though. It doesn't crack me up, but it makes me smile, especially when she sighs at the mention of Dignan's name and explains, "I do like Dignan... but he's a liar." He's also a thief, kid. Speaking of Dignan, as this is going on he's interviewing a guy by the name of Bob Mapplethorpe (Robert Musgrave, who was also like Luke and Owen in the original short this is based on, and looks weirdly like what I suspect you'd get if Justin Long and Jimmy Fallon had a son), about the possibility of him being their getaway driver. I feel for Musgrave, because he's got what is really the least fun role to play, that of the slightly whiney wimp who goes through most of the movie being mocked and/or beaten up by his brother. He does a terrible job of selling himself during his interview, claiming they should use him because he's a risktaker, using the fact that he's growing Marijuana in his parent's backyard as proof of this, and when that doesn't seem to be doing it, he offers, "I really want to be a part of this team... and I'm the only one with a car." That somehow proves to be enough.

After Anthony has a small breakdown over his sister's cynical attitude and his belief that she thinks he's a failure (which causes Dignan to hilariously ask what she's done with her life that's so great), a quick stop of at Bob's family's place, some shooting practice out in a field somewhere which proves to be funny just by virtue of watching these three guys who clearly have never held a gun before fire off a few rounds (Bob is especially hilarious with his tiny firearm)(that's what she said), and a final going over of the plan that almost ends in disaster when Dignan and Bob get into a fight over Bob's insistance in touching the gun because he bought it, they perform their first really robbery, knocking over a book store. Their plan is to get Anthony in there first by saying he forgot his sweater, then having him overpower the guy on the door and get Dignan in, too. Amazingly, this all goes off without so much as a hitch. Okay, not totally- the money has to be stuffed into little bags due to the fact that they don't have any big ones, and despite the fact that he's got a gun pretty much in his face, the clerk has no problems calling Dignan a punk in retaliation for being called an idiot, which causes Dignan to go all meek and and refer to him as "sir" from that point forward. But even with those small details, it's a roaring success, and now all tey have to do is get out of town for a little while and wait for things to cool off.

It's when they leave town and set up home in a dingy-looking motel that things start to fall apart. For a start, Bob recieves word from his brother that he's been arrested for drug dealing and needs him to come home and bail him out, leaving them without a driver, or even a car for that matter. But before that, Anthony finds himself distracted by (what else?) a woman- Inez (Lumi Cavazos, also returning from the short), their sweetly-pretty housekeeper that speaks virtually no English. Their courtship is fast but rather sweet. Anthony first lays eyes on her when he's taking a dip in the pool and she's attending to her duties, and later that day he just starts following her around like a puppy, helping her out as she cleans the rooms. At first she seems to be bewildered by this attention, but eventually she seems to become amused by it, even letting Anthony keep a picture of her sister she had inside her locket (which he asks to keep even after he finds out it wasn't her, as he first thought, which struck me as a very strange thing to ask, even for a character in a Wes Anderson movie), and then seemingly throwing a party for he co-workers in the guy's room.

Over the next couple of days, things really end up in the shitter. Bob's gone, and Dignan ends up getting beaten up when he goes to a bar with Anthony and Inez (who have already kissed and had sex at this point), by a guy who was being friendly to him only a second earlier (sample dialogue- OTHER GUY: "You in the army, yes?" DIGNAN: "No, I just have short hair." Then they both chuckle). At his wits end and desperate to get out of there, Dignan proposes a new plan to Anthony- they use Inez's master key to break into one of the rooms, so they can find car keys and make off with a car. Anthony flat-out refuses to do that, in what I thought was going to be a version of that old sitcom gag where, say, the guy goes, "There's no way I'm ever wearing that chicken suit!" and then in the very next scene you see him in the chicken suit. But no, Anthony put his foot down, and it was never mentioned again.

Realising he's totally in love with her, Anthony decides to try and convince Inez to come with them. Realising there's no way he can communicate this to her alone, he recruits one of her co-workers, Rocky (Donny Caicedo), to translate for him. This is a set-up almost guaranteed to have a couple of funny instances, and I wasn't disapponted, getting two moments that made me laugh out loud- firstly, when Anthony is trying to get across how special she makes him feel, he mentions how much he enjoyed the sex they'd recently had, which causes Rocky to stand there looking all embarrassed, not wanting to repeat what he's just heard, only for Inez to insist and then pull a face that's the perfect representation of, "Oh Christ, I can't believe he just said that to somebody I work with." Then later, when she's refused to go with him, Rocky again translates her rejection. It's obvious what she's trying to say is that he's just passing through, but when Rocky tranlates literally, it comes out as, "You're like paper... trash... like paper floating by, y'know?" Then, when seeing the way Anthony takes being told this, he mutters apologetically, "It sounds better in Spanish."

The next day Inez is given an envelope by Dignan and suddenly has a semi-change of heart, sending Rocky after Dignan to tell him that she loves Anthony. Of course, upon hearing the guy say, "Tell Anthony I love him," he assumes... oh fuck it, you don't need me to tell you what he assumes, it's obvious what he assumes. But there's not even enough time for him to share this piece of information with Anthony, as no sooner are they one the road in a sweet-but-beaten-up convertable of some kind, than the thing breaks down (well, Dignan did just find it abandoned in some alley...), and they get into a fight, partially over whether or not this great sceme of theirs is worth continuing, but mostly due to the fact that Anthony had just given Inez pratically all them money they had left in the world, around $500, in that envelope. He then gets angry when Dignan shouts, "YOU DO NOT GIVE THE HOUSEKEEPER A $500 TIP!" This is the first time their relationship in any way angers Dignan, as the movie had done a good job of not portraying him as, to quote the man himself, "the jealous best friend," so it's not like this is one of many blow-ups. I can also see his point. I mean, yes, you love the girl, but giving someone you love everything you have, everything you may need just to survive, is stupid, there's no other way of putting it. Plus (and oh Christ, how do I put this...), giving a woman you've just had sex with money is not really treating her like you love her. That's treating her like... something else. It gets physical, with Dignan popping Anthony one on the nose and making him bleed (at first I thought he's slashed him across the face with the screwdriver he was holding, which shocked me a little bit because that would have easily been the most extreme example of violence I'd ever seen in a Wes Anderson movie), and they literally go their seperate ways, both of them walking off in different directions.

Seeing as he's the main character, it's Anthony that we follow during this split, as it's shown to us in a montage meant to be the visual representation of a letter he's writing to his sister what's going on in his life right now- he's reunited with Bob, and togehter they're working several jobs and have become productive members of society, even if Bob's dickhead brother takes almost all his money to pay for his legal fees. Anthony seems happy with the way things are going, even if he's still pining for Inez. Which is of course the cue for Dignan to show up again with another plan. However, this time he's bringing his own crew, having reunited with Mr. Henry (it was revealed earlier that Dignan only knew him through his front-business, working as a landscaper, which meant he mowed people's lawns, really). He wants Anthony to come on-board for a job they're planning, and he's initially reluctant. Really reluctant actually, both Dignan and Mr. Henry try to talk him into signing up, and it's only when he sees Bob's brother treat Dignan like scum that he finally agrees. And even then he puts up the stipulation that Bob has to be brought in too, which Dignan agrees to only so his friend will come with him (and the scene where Dignan and Bob make up is hilarious, starting with Dignan offering Bob outside so they can handle their problems like men, saying men don't settle their disputes by hugging, then throwing the towel in when Bob lands one punch and deciding to hug it out with him).

I think I should talk a little about James Caan here. He's so fucking cool, without even trying really. And he's probably the best thing in this movie, even with what is basically a glorified cameo. In his brief time on-screen, they manage to work in a few memorable character traits, the main one being his interest in Oriental culture. He's shown training something they try to pass off as a Martial Art that's really just one man pushing another (that happens to be wearing Tighty Whities and not much else), he puts Bob's brother in a submission hold that looks like something we'd put each other in when we were in Junior School (before proclaiming him a "cocksucker")(as in Mr. Henry calls Bob's brother a cocksucker, not that we called each other cocksuckers in Junior School), and then at the party just before the heist, he's wearing... well, it's supposed to be traditional Asian garb, but the way it looks when he's sitting down, it's just a skirt. He's wearing a floaty patterned skirt with sandles and socks. Amazing.

Of course, with things going so well, Dignan finally tells Anthony what Rocky said to him, and him being slightly quicker on the uptake than his friend puts two-and-two together and realises Inez loves him. I expected him to run off and abandon the job, but instead they reconcile over the phone, andthe robbery of the warehouse goes off as planned.

Well, not quite as planned. Actually, it's a total fucking disaster. Neither Anthony nor the cowardly Bob's hearts are really in it, the safecracker (Kumar Pallana, who caused me to go "YAAAAAAAAAY!" the second I saw him. I mean, I knew he was in this, because Anderson is very proud of the fact that he's been in all his feature-length productions. But still, YAAAAAAAAAY! Also his son Dipak played a book store clerk earlier), can't crack the safe, saying he's lost his touch ("Did you ever have a touch?" Dignan asks), they get discovered by some worker who they sort-of take hostage, and then Bob accidently fires off his gun, causing one of the crew to have a heart attack. Oh, and whilst all this is going on, Mr. Henry is robbing Bob's house, stripping it of practically everything. They make a break for it, but realise they dude who had the heart attack has the keys on him, so somebody will have to go back and get them. Dignan says he will and tells Anthony to run for it, and I can't decide if he was willingly sacrificing himself for his friend, or if he's just an idiot. I could be either. It could be both, in all honesty. So he gets arrested (and beaten up by the cops in quite an excessive manner, I thought), and sent to jail for two years. He doesn't seem to bothered about this to be honest, as when Bob and Anthony come to visit him there's not a hint of bitterness. It's almost as if going to prison may have been part of his plan, as if it makes him a real criminal. That probably is the case, thinking about it. The last scene of the movie involves him punking out (is this still a cool thing to say?) his friends by pretending he has an escape plan all worked out, before walking into the prison in Anderson's trademake slow-motion finish, as his friends look on.

I don't really know what the people who kept telling me I might not like this were on about. Yes, if I'm honest, as it stands right now after a couple of viewings, this is probably my least favourite Wes Anderson film. And it has flaws, the biggest being the fact that there's literally no story whatsoever. I won't pretend otherwise, I know this review doesn't feature the most detailed plot breakdown I've ever done, but believe me when I say I didn't really have much to work with. It's just a bunch of stuff happening, then a bunch more stuff happening. But I still enjoyed it, it was fun and quirky, there was wit and charm, and some, if not all, of the trademake Anderson storytelling techniques. Where I had the most fun though was watching one of my favourite directors slowly become the fimmaker he is today, as he discovered seemingly on the fly what he was and wasn't good at, and discovering his style as he went. It's beautiful, really.

FINAL VERDICT

KEPT!

Almost beautiful enough to bring a tear to the eye.

Until next week, I'm The Cheap-Arse Film Critic, and I just wanted to say I'm sorry I threw rocks at you that day.