TV of 2011

So today it's time to look at the tv of 2011 and see what we liked and disliked.

CHRIS

BEST: Doctor Who
I think you all know what I’ll put here. If you know me or read this blog at all, then you’ll realise that it’s Doctor Who. I love that show. But hey, this is the best of 2011, not just what I like all the time, so I can’t just give the best to Who because I always like it. No, instead it’s getting it because it’s been possibly the best year of the revived series so far. There were only two episodes I didn’t like and even one of them had its moments. People have said this year was too complex, well I like my Doctor Who complex, it’s a family show, not a kids’ show, so it should have stuff in it that makes you use your brain. Oh and some people are still moaning about the lack of David Tennant. Well, he’s gone, there were better Doctors before him and there’s been a better one since, so I really don’t see what people are complaining about. So, interesting storyline, great individual episodes, great cast and scripts, I hope this streak of great Who continues.

After writing this we had the Christmas special. I am disappointed in the sudden drop in quality, but it doesn’t ruin the fun I had watching the earlier episodes.

RUNNERS-UP: Futurama/Chuck
I have two. One is Futurama. After a troubled return, it’s back on form and is generally a great show again. It’s not best show material though, except for one episode. The last episode of the current series was called “Re-incarnation”. Now, maybe it’s just my film geeky side talking, but this is one of the best half hours of TV I’ve seen this year. I won’t say much, but definitely check it out if you haven’t already.
And the other one is a show no-one watches, Chuck. It’s a show about a man who works in an electrical store that gets a supercomputer downloaded into his brain and he has to use it to help the government as a spy. The first series was on Virgin 1, but I’ve not seen it on British TV since. The show went downhill for a bit, but this series has really picked up, and I’d advise you to check it out, it’s a very entertaining and well-made show, and it’s a shame it never really got much attention.

 After writing this I found Season 1 in Grouchos. Very pleased.

WORST: Family Guy
Family Guy. Right let’s move on. Oh, I suppose I should say a few words. The show hasn’t been funny for years, but this year it’s decided to tackle series issues and it’s just offensive for no reason. It’s a sick show that deserves to get cancelled. If you want to hear more, listen to episode II of the Damn Dirty Apes podcast, I get mad.
A special mention here should go to Misfits. I can’t give it the worst TV show of the year award, because technically it’s not, but it’s really disappointed me this year. It used to be a story about people with superpowers with the twist being they’re ‘ASBO kids’. But now it’s a story about ASBO kids with the twist being they have superpowers. Now that doesn’t sound like much has changed, but it now has a fundamentally different base on which the stories are built. The stories now centre around the relationships of the characters with the superpowers taking a back seat. I don’t know whether that makes it a worse show, but it makes it far less interesting to me. I watched the first four episodes this series and except for the Nazi episode which was brilliant, the show just doesn’t seem entertaining anymore. So that’s it lost one viewer.
Oh, and Desperate Scousewives looks like the worst thing ever. I haven’t seen it so I can’t give a proper opinion, but I saw the advert for it and I’ve lost all faith in humanity.

WISH I’D SEEN: The Walking Dead… I suppose.

The Walking Dead. People keep telling me to watch this and telling me how good it is. I mean, I don’t doubt it, but I find it kind of difficult to start watching new TV shows. Especially the ones with over-arching stories, I just don’t have time. I mean I still haven’t watched season three of The Wire, so maybe I will see this in seven years time. But I doubt it. Sounds good, but sounding isn’t enough. To be honest I don’t watch much TV nowadays except my old favourites, the only new show I watched was Black Mirror and I really didn’t see what the fuss was about it. So, while I say I wish I’d seen things, I really don’t mind. I watch the things I like and the other things don’t bother me.

LEWIS

As a heads-up, I don’t actually watch TV. Ever. I very rarely make an effort to watch anything, so these reviews are far less based than the games one. So apologies for how shit they are, this is more like a little round-up thing.

BEST: Limmy’s Show Series 2

I’m a big fan of Limmy from back when his stuff was online, so when his sketch show was aired on the BBC, I was clearly excited. The first series was excellent, and the second even better, a really good laugh, and one to watch again, and again, and again.

RUNNER UP: Doctor Who Series 6

Doctor Who had to be here somewhere. This series was superb, improving on the formula of the previous one, with a lot of emphasis on consequences, rather than just adventure.

WORST: Doctor Who Christmas Special 2011

What even was this? I mean, the overall quality of this episode was a huge drop from the series earlier this year. The plot was some nonsense loosely based on The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, with undercurrents of save the planet, thrown in without much thought. Now, I know that last year it was based on A Christmas Carol, and that was excellent. But this year’s was only based in the setting of the Narnia novel, rather than actually being in the story.

Another issue I have with this episode is the visual effects. i don’t know if it’s down to lack of funds or time or whatever, all I know is I was really not impressed, from even before the title, they seemed nowhere near as good as those of the series.

WISH I’D SEEN: Black Mirror
Charlie Brooker’s new program sounded really quite good, and I’ve only heard good things about since it’s been on, but I just forgot to watch it. I’d heard interviews with Brooker on the radio and read about it and been really quite excited, but when it was actually on I didn’t even think to watch it. My loss, I guess.


Come back tomorrow for third and final part, our look at the films of 2011.

Games of 2011

Myself and Lewis have taken a bit out of our busy schedules to write about the games we liked and disliked this year. So, without further ado, here it is.

CHRIS
BEST: Portal 2
I don’t really play a lot of games to be honest I’ve probably only played about five that came out this year. But I’ll try my best with this. My favourite game of the year was probably Portal 2. For three reasons. First, it’s a fun game to play, I liked the puzzles in the first Portal and this one is more of that with a couple of nice new things. Second, it’s really funny. I was laughing out loud at some of the comments in it, especially the part with the original owner of the Aperture facility, Cave Johnston (COMBUSTABLE LEMON!). And third, it really got me into the other valve games. I’d never played Half-Life until this year, which might make me sound behind the times, but I don’t care. Portal 2 got me interested enough to check them out and I’m glad I did. So yeh, very well made, very enjoyable, I’d advise you go out and play it.

RUNNER UP: Saints Row The Third
I wanted to put this at number one. I really did, but that’s because I’ve only just got it a couple of weeks ago. Saints Row The Third. This game is just so fun. It’s the ultimate sandbox game. You can do anything and get away with it. Want to skydive in a tank? Want to beat up mascots with a giant sex toy? Want to fly a jet and then hover and blast people with lasers? Etc, etc, etc. There are only two complaints I have. One, you can’t replay story missions. I don’t know why, they had it in the last game, but in this one you have to start a whole new campaign. It’s annoying. And also, the story is total shite. It leads you to fun missions and has hilarious cut scenes, but it’s just not very good. One of your crew gets killed by a man in a suit and you think he’ll be the main villain, but then he dies a few missions later and you get a whole load of different gang leaders, but it just doesn’t feel like it matters. I mean the story isn’t the main focus and it’s a really fun game to play, just, it wasn’t as good as it could have been.

WORST: Duke Nukem Forever
There’s only really one game I can put in here. A game that was 12 years in the making. A game we all knew wouldn’t be good. But really, did it need to be this bad? It’s Duke Nukem Forever. It’s offensively bad. It starts off with Duke starting a war and we’re suppose to think he’s the hero, then it goes to an alien spaceship where there are girls stuck in the spaceship as hosts for aliens. Now that would be good in a horror game, but this is Duke Nukem, and it’s just sick and unnecessary. The controls are shit, the load times are loooong, and when I got to the second boss, the Quick Time Event got stuck and I can’t finish the game. Basically, it’s awful. If you want to read more, here’s Daniel Taylor’s review and I agree with every word he says.

http://www.ltww.co.uk/reviews-dukenukemforever.html

WISH I PLAYED: Skyrim
Skyrim. I don’t really like games like that, but I’ve heard so much good about it. I think I might pick it up at some point, but by then everyone’ll moved on, and I’ll be running along trying to catch up. It was either that or SR3 for me, so I think I chose wisely for myself, even if other people wouldn’t agree. My main reason for not getting it was Oblivion. I got told that was a great game and I bought it. Then it was shit. I really just couldn’t get into it and it was a total waste of my money, so I’m not doing that again. So if anyone feels like buying it for it, I'd be quite willing to play it. Please? Oh fine then.

LEWIS
BEST: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii)

This was inevitable, how could I ever pick a game that wasn’t this? I mean, a mainline Zelda game? It honestly doesn’t get any better in my head, and this one really is brilliant.

When Skyward Sword was first really shown off I wasn’t entirely convinced. I was hoping for a more realistic, and dark Zelda game like the last main story one; Twilight Princess, but no, these screenshots were a colourful, arty, impressionist world far more similair to Wind Waker. I wasn’t impressed. But, as time went on I was more and more interested, and eventually really excited once it was dated for release here. And so it came out, and was released in a special edition bundle with a gold Wii remote+ which is gorgeous, and a CD of a recorded show from the Zelda 25th anniversary orchestra, which is excellent, but lets talk about the actual game itself.

I instantly took back every bad thing I’d said about the graphical style, it’s wonderful. The colours and design are so perfect even down to a distance effect which I didn’t know about before, where as things blur into the distance, they become like swirled painted versions of themselves. The gameplay is brilliant, improved upon perfection with adding more modern RPG elements to the already existing Zelda style, with a Stamina gauge, levelling-up equipment, and several choice based parts of the plot. The sword controls are also particularly good, being controlled with motion+ it feels far superior to those of Twilight Princess.

Overall, best game in my opinion, of 2011, and I’m so glad.

RUNNER UP: Sonic Generations (Xbox 360/PS3)

I love Sonic the Hedgehog games, I always have, and I always will. Almost. Since Shadow the Hedgehog was released last generation, things haven’t really been the same, games being churned out with weak, sometimes god-awful plots, based on fairytales or sometimes just bizarre creations of the writers. I still loved the series though, and I persevered. Something had to get better. And then, to celebrate 20 years of the series, Sonic Generations was announced, as if rewarding my faith and my struggle and giving me what I’ve always wanted.

A bit far, but you can tell I was excited for this game, and rightly so. The premise of Sonic Generations is basically a time warp, where Sonic from modern games meets his younger, chubbier self from the original Mega Drive games and together, they have to find out why their timelines have been so disrupted. The levels are all taken from Sonic’s past, with boss fights and stages separated into three categories; Mega Drive(Genesis), Dreamcast and Modern Sonic (Modern Sonic actually being everything after Sonic Heroes, rather than everything after Dreamcast). The re-imagined stages are beautiful, the music is second to none, and it’s clear that an awful lot of effort has gone into making this perfect, a true game for the fans.

WORST: Pilotwings Resort (3DS)

I’m not someone who buys games on a whim, that’d be ridiculous, and I just don’t have the money, so I can’t really say what was a bad game this year. I mean, it’d be unfair to say this is the worst game of 2011, it’s just the one was personally disappointed me, and was certainly not worth it’s price.

Pilotwings Resort is a flight simulator in the Pilotwings game series which lets the player fly planes, gliders, and jetpacks around the Wii Sports Resort island of Wuhu. In it players can either play challenges or free flight, which is basically about collecting different items in different craft. The visuals for the game are genuinely pleasing, being a very good example of the graphical quality and depth that the 3DS can put out, meaning it was one of the more visually impressive of the console’s frankly...shit launch line-up. Now, this all sounds great, but this is a game with no plot, no obligation to advance, nothing to gain from progress and no characters. The overall gameplay is horrendously short, I mean you could get all collectibles and gold trophies in a very, very short period of time. This is my problem, the game doesn’t feel like a game, or at least one you can buy full price in a shop. It seems like it would have come preloaded, or offered as a download, or, maybe like the original NDS’s bundled demo of Metroid Prime: Hunters before it, packaged on a cartridge just to show what the console can do. So yeah, as fun and pretty as this game may be, it’s definitely not worth the price of a full game, because it isn’t one.

WISH I PLAYED: Conduit 2 (Wii)

The sequel to the amazing The Conduit, possibly the best first person shooter on Wii was released in April, after being pushed back by about half a year, and since has been one of the hardest games to find in-store. I loved The Conduit, it’s gameplay and visuals were absolutely superb, it was good to see a company really pushing the console rather than churning out the same on-par-with-PS2 or if you’re lucky, Gamecube trash that’s weighed the console down since the start, and destroyed the console’s credibility. But those games aren’t important. We’re talking about Conduit 2. Now this, promised to improve on the original, graphically and in amply, with the addition of support for Wii Motion+, as well as the Wi’‘s Classic Controller and Classic Controller Pro. The multiplayer also seems to be amazing, as it’s an extreme improvement on the original, which was great already, but maybe felt slightly lacking compared to the other current-generation consoles. I’m sure you could tell by now that I want this game, but I’ve only ever seen it for sale once. Ever. In London. The game was for sale preowned in second-hand electronics store CEX, but I only got here after spending an enormous chunk of money, so I couldn’t afford it. It broke my heart. Now, I’m sure you’re thinking ‘why don’t you just buy it online?’ and you’re right, I should. But I don’t want to. I’m weird with buying stuff online like games and DVDs, I far prefer buying from shops so I might hold out and hope that I find a copy of it in a high street game store...maybe.

So there you have it. Lewis and I's best and worst games of the year. Check back in tomorrow to see what we thought of the TV of 2011.

Doctor Who Review: The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe

First off, Merry Christmas, I hope you all had a great time. Now though is time to be a little more depressing as we talk about this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special. Normally it’s one of my favourite parts of Christmas, but not this year. So settle down after your leftover sandwiches and a half-drunk bottle of wine and I’ll try and explain why it didn’t work for me.

First nitpicky things that annoyed me. The name. I can barely be bothered saying The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe every time I want to talk about it, never mind writing it down, and it sounds kind of lumpy, like The Curse of the Black Spot. And the name’s a bit misleading anyhow considering the story has very little to do with the Narnia story. Except the kids being moved to a big country house in the war and the portal to a snow kingdom, there’s no connection, so it seems a bit of a cheat calling it that, especially the year after The Christmas Carol which stuck quite close to the story while giving it a new twist. Oh and the harvesters being from Androzani. That’s a planet from the old series. And while I like a good shout-out to the classics, this really didn’t work. They said it too much and it was too obvious. It was like Moffat was shouting at us “Look at me, I’m making a reference! Look, Look, look!”. Just didn’t work for me.

So that’s enough of the stupid wee things that annoy me personally, now on to the actual major problems with the story.
1. Characters.
Bill Bailey is good, but he and the other harvesters are barely in it. If you’re going to get a great guest star like that, actually use them.
The children are dull. As in, they aren’t interesting characters. The boy is generic smart kid and the girl is generic fairytale girl.
The mother isn’t anything special. Now, complaining that someone just does an ok job seems a bit pedantic, but remember last year we had Michael Gambon, and the year before John Simm and Bernard Cribbins and so on, every year has a great central character. Now, while there’s nothing wrong with the mother here, she’s just not up to the standard set by previous years.
2. Cliché.
All of the story is clichéd. The saving of the father, the Doctor as the caretaker, the mother being the strongest, etc, they were all coming obviously, and you could see the story twists about a mile off. But the main example of this was the harvester machine. As soon as the mother says “this looks a bit like a plane”, I knew she would drive it. And I hate when things like that happen, if it takes years of training, then it takes years of training, not just strong emotions.
3. Ridiculousness.
Doctor Who is hardly a sensible show, but this episode went too far. Because it was just a fairytale. However stupid the show gets it’s always about science. But this episode about the tree’s souls just didn’t sit right. It would be like if there had been actual ghosts last year. I don’t know what it was exactly but the whole forest with living Christmas trees, tree souls and just happening to light the way for the father, just seemed to childish and silly for Doctor Who.

Don’t get me wrong, there were things I enjoyed about the special. The start however over the top was brilliant and it was all a good bit of fun until the forest. The Doctor fixing the house was mad, but the right kind of mad. And the ending with Amy and Rory was just brilliant. So basically, it had a few moments, but it just came off as a story trying to be cleverer than it was and then it losing the charm of the Christmas special because of it.

2/5

Oh Mariah. Just stop.

So annual Mariah slamming time. Not in that way, you dirty boy. Almost brings the blog full circle. I recently heard the new version of “All I Want For Christmas”. Featuring Justin Bieber. Now while this wasn’t as personally as offensive as Auld Lang Syne, it was just generally offensive by the lack of quality.

Now, the video has two major flaws, one it’s huge lack of originality, really, a chick dressed as Santa in a store, even Destiny’s Child did that. And it’s disconnect with the song. The song says all she wants is her baby and while that’s happening we see Justin looking at some Nintendo 3DS’s. Nice way to stick to the meaning there. Oh and there’s the problem with both the video and the song, that Justin Bieber and Mariah Carey are singing a love song to each other, that’s just creepy, she’s old enough to be his mother.

And of course the main flaw. Justin Bieber. Now, I don’t like to admit it, because I really dislike Mariah’s music in general, but I quite like “All I Want For Christmas”. So her bits in this version are roughly the same. But then we get Bieber coming in. He sounds autotuned, but he still is out of tune, I don’t even know how that’s possible. He gets the whole rhythm of the song wrong and doesn’t have nearly enough talent to match Mariah’s singing. He just ruins a good song. So yeah. It’s shit, try to avoid, but it’s not as bad as Auld Lang Syne. I ain’t over that.


And no-one leave a comment about Bieber’s Christmas album, I know about it, I’m trying to ignore it.

Puss in Boots/Chipwrecked

The first video review of the year. Not as good as I would've hoped, but I hope it's still good.

The Plan for the Year. Going to see every movie.

For my christmas I've just got the unlimited pass from Cineworld. It means I can go and see as many films from there as i want. Which is good. But then it's me and I love to ruin good things, so I'm going to see EVERY film that comes out in the next year, starting now. I'm not gonna see the one which are already out, but anything that comes out from now on, I will go and see. I'll try and see them as soon as they come out as possible, and then after I do, then I'll do a nice wee video for you all to see, telling you about the film and giving a bit of a review. And maybe I'll have a few guests in these videos, aka, the people I went to see the film with. I hope you enjoy it, and hey, if there's ever a film you can't find anyone to go see with you, I'm your man.




So, what's coming out this weekend? Puss in Boots and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. Oh shit, I regret it already.

Review: The Thing (2011)

Think John Carpenter’s The Thing but made by idiots. The end.

Ok, no. I can’t just say this film is awful don’t watch it, because much as that is true, I kind of need to justify myself. Basically it’s a prequel to the 80s Thing. And I really like that film, so I was a bit worried before I even saw anything about this film. I thought it was too long since the original, I thought it couldn’t work without John Carpenter and mainly I thought about how unnecessary it was. Yeah, at the start of the original we see the Norwegian base, but basically we just see how exactly the same thing happened to them as happens to the characters in the film. So basically we already know the story and we don’t need it laid out. But obvious that sounded like a ripe money plant to be picking and a prequel was born. I already hated the idea, then I heard reviews from America where they hated it, so I went into the cinema knowing it was going to be bad, and I wasn’t wrong.

There is a huge pile of issues with this film but six major problems.

Problem number one: The characters
The characters are bland. The original film didn’t have a great level of character depth, but we could at least tell them apart, in this film, except for the two women, the black guy, the boss and the guy who looks like Ewan McGregor, the rest are just lots of the same bearded Norwegian. I couldn’t keep track of who was who, or how many were left or when they could’ve been infected, which somewhat ruined the suspense. And even the characters I just described, that was their whole personally. Take the boss, all we ever find out about him is… he’s the boss? That’s it. No-one is developed at all which means we neither understand nor care what’s happening to them. Oh and it misses the point because the original was all men so they could all try and take charge and be paranoid of each other, but the woman’s presence seems to have removed all the tension.

Problem number two: The effects
Ok, I’d better get this out of the way. This film doesn’t use practical effects, it uses CGI. This immediately makes it inferior to the original, which has some of the best practical effects ever. But hey, just because it’s not as good as the original doesn’t mean it’s rubbish. But the fact the effects are worse than The Phantom Menace really does. Seriously, the CGI is some of the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s bad enough that we have bad CG, but the human face seems to HAVE to been on all the things, which leads to some of the most unintentional funny moments in this year’s movies.  Seeing the boss guy’s face complete with beard on this huge video-game looking monster literally made me laugh out loud. This is not good for a horror movie.

Problem number three: Its connections with the original
This film really doesn’t know what it’s doing in this sense. At times it goes out of its way to show things we see in the first place, for example the two headed thing we see in the deserted base in John Carpenter’s film, is shown in this film, but there’s not really any reason for it to be there, except it ties into the original. Other times there’s stuff that just doesn’t appear, like the guy we see in the original who’s cut his wrists, he’s here at the end, but we never see him do it, or get any impression he was going to, he just does it off camera and we see the result. Even little things like the shit not being dug up in this film when it was in the original, it’s like the makers of this version saw the original, but it was a couple of years ago so it’s like they’re doing the script from fuzzy memories. And of course there’s the fact that half the stuff from the original happens here, the attack on the dog, the unfreezing, the locking people up, the testing scene, the small things in the rec room, etc, tec. This film started off as a remake and it’s pretty obvious from the amount of similarities between the two Things, but this isn’t good for this new movie, because it begins in even more comparison between it and the original, which it loses horribly.

Problem number four: The plot doesn’t make any sense
The entire plot revolves about the thing killing and replacing people so it can survive and spread. So they need to stop the thing escaping so they disable all the snowmobiles. But then later they fix them in about a second, so how did it do any good if they could be fixed so quickly? The thing at the end goes back to the spaceship (we’ll go back to that), and tries to escape in that. But if the ship worked in the first place why did it leave it instead of using it to travel somewhere more populated? And how did Lars survive when he was attacked? And why did they get Americans involved? And why did no-one get surprised when he gets the flamethrower? And…

Problem number five: The plot doesn’t make any fucking sense
Ok, there are a million tiny plot holes, but out of any other reviews I’ve read of this no-one seems to have picked up on the one that annoyed me the most. The way they find out who is the thing is by checking their fillings, because the thing can’t recreate inorganic material. But wait. If the thing can’t recreate inorganic material, what’s up with the clothes. We’ve seen the thing wearing plastic jackets and watches, so explain. If they get attacked and the clothes are ripped off then they shouldn’t have them. Or if they are infected subtlety and their cells are changed from the inside then why would the fillings fall out? So that makes no sense. And why does no-one check the main girl’s fillings, hey we know she’s not the thing but they don’t. And why does the thing change into the monster at the exact moments it’s at its weakest? And… You get the point. It makes no sense.

Problem number six:  The ending
So we reach the ending. And  yes, they go in the spaceship. That doesn’t make any sense for one thing, and for another it barely looks like a spaceship except for some weird CGI 16-bit tower thing, which is never explained. This scene could’ve just as well happened in a cave than a spaceship. It jumps the shark too, as in the original we know it’s an alien, but the rest of the world is pretty normal, which makes it scarier. This just jumps directly into straight sci-fi. So they kill the thing, the woman could still be the thing but just drives off to a Russian base. Wait. A Russian base? But the point of the film is they’re isolated, and now there are three bases within driving distance? And really the only reason there is a Russian base is so there’s somewhere to send the woman, because we couldn’t possibly have a sad ending, oh wait, the original has them both about to freeze to death. And then they have the ending that links into the first where conveniently only the two Norwegians who don’t speak English survive and chase the dog thing with a gun, which doesn’t make any sense. Oh and the pilot hasn’t been around for the whole film so he just believes Lars about the alien instead of maybe thinking Lars killed them all. Oh I give up trying to make sense of it.

In conclusion, this was a film that no-one was asking for and should never have been made. The plot almost exactly mirrors the original until the insane spaceship bit at the end, the characters are bland and forgettable and the effects are laughable.  Oh and it makes no sense. The main problem is it’s dull. It’s the same film we saw in 1982, but just made by a bunch of hacks. There is no reason to watch this film over John Carpenter’s The Thing so just watch that again and you’ll have a far better time.

1/5

The Olympic Advert and the sorry state of this december's trailers.

I've just come back from seeing the 2011 remake/prequel thing version of The Thing. See what I did there? Anyway, I'll talk about that on it's own later, because it was already pretty shit without the pain I endured beforehand. So, I went to the Odeon, and I was, well not late, but not early enough to catch the shitty tv adverts. So far, so good. I fucking hate them. It came up with a notice "the following adverts are suitable for the feature presentation" or something like that, and so you'd think, ah here come the trailers. And they did. Eventually. First though we had... this.

Well, we didn't just have that. It had a really children's story voiceover by Stephen Fry and after the part we see above there was a really shitty montage of the people shown helping bring a bus to the school to replace the library.

Now. Here's the part I start to complain. First, problems with the advert itself. It's terribly animated, the story is stupid (like, the school library get destroyed? who is gonna care about that?), the mascots do nothing except call the athletes so why even have them, although it has athletes we don't know who they are and they don't really do anything that makes the olympics seem more appealing and just, the mascots are shit. Like really shit. So basically it would be a good advert if it was for a shop or a bank or something, but for the olympics that the government's putting all this money into to advertise, well I'm not impressed.

My main problem however isn't the advert in itself. Yeah it's shitty, but I don't care about the olympics. The problem... why is there a fucking stupid olympics advert at the cinema? I see enough shitty tv adverts I don't need this one as well. One, it's not suitable. I'm going to see a horror movie, I don't want to have the mood ruined by a cheesy colourful patronising advert for the olympics. I don't care about them, what is it even advertising? That they're happening? I don't live under a rock, I fucking know already. That I can get tickets? No, because they've already all been sold. That I can watch it on tv? No, cause it's not for 6/7 months so it's too early for that. I don't get what the point is. All it seems to be is an advert to be like "look at us, we've got the olympics!" but everyone at the odeon already knows, and would rather the government spent their money on something useful than adverts telling us stuff we already know. This really annoyed me, because bad adverts are bad enough, but this one didn't even have a point to it, so it was just wasting my time for no reason.

I was put into a great mood by that piece of shit, then I got even more to love by the trailers I got. First, one for an exorcism film. I can't be bothered going into detail, but it's the same shit we've seen a million times before, it looked unbelievably unoriginal and quite poorly made, there was nothing about the trailer that made me want to see the film. Second was about invisible aliens invading Russia. Invisible aliens? Come on, that's such a cheap trick. The trailer ironically only showed the aliens, and it gave no idea what the story'll be and whether there's anything worth seeing in it, something that gives me the impression that there really won't be. And the third and final trailer was one for the new Alvin and the Chipmunks film. It was really shit. I don't even need to explain why, you understand. It just upset me that we got so few trailers and none of them looked good.



Oh and there was a muppets orange advert. I liked that.

Robocop’s stup-wait no… Cyborg Cop, no... oh for fuck sake. It's Cyborg Cop II.

The last time I did one of these it was almost what you could call a review. I can’t do that for this one. Because… erm… I fell asleep during it. Yep. That happened. Don’t blame me. I was tired and it wasn’t very interesting.

From what I remember they commit the Robocop 2 sin of making the cyborg out of an evil criminal. That goes about as well as you’d expect. Well actually, it went well to begin with, because they had a control device to override the cyborg. Oh dear, Rob 2, you’ve been outdone by your rip-off. Not good. But basically everything’s going hunky dory, then the main scientist who has a control device, takes it off to have sex. Now that’s fine. BUT, he does it right in front of the evil cyborg, who has a mind of his own and that mind is of an evil killer. So obviously he takes the remote and now he’s free and can control the other cyborgs. Like seriously, how did the scientist not see that coming? He deserved what he got for being wildly irresponsible. And then, even though all the other scientists seem to have the same control device, which has a kill switch in it, they are all overpowered and surrender their remotes. Why did they use them to kill the evil cyborg? I don’t know. That’s how he gets beaten at the end.

David Bradley is back, big woop. I mean, he’s good enough in this, but it’s nothing to get excited by. The kid’s around, but I don’t remember him doing anything and the girlfriend from the last film is gone, but we have a new one, so it’s all good. Really though, except for a dull proper cop bit at the start (WOW! There’s a real cop in Cyborg Cop! Pity he’s not a cyborg though), I don’t remember anything else. Now, you might think I’d being lazy not watching it again. You’d be right. But I don’t want to and you can’t make me, so tough. It’s stupid and it’s kind of dull, not as good as the first one.

Talking of not as good as the first one… that’s like the actual Robocop films. Now, it would be too much of a coincidence for there to be a third Cyborg Cop film without the main lead actor of the first two and a major drop in quality, wait, you know where I’m going with this. Yes, there is. I’ll watch it, but if the Cyborg Cop gets in a pimp mobile or fights robot ninjas then, I’m out. I’ll turn it off. You’ve been warned CC3.

It also has a really misleading cover, because the Cyborg from the first one is dead.
So the tagline's wrong and he shouldn't be on the cover.

Michael Kane? No. That joke's too easy.

So, just looked at the back of the box of Halloween 4: Return of Michael Myers. A certain shot stood out to me, a certain shot that I couldn't find in the movie, but I took a really bad quality photo of with my laptop. Somewhat familiar in fact...

Just saying. Someone might have seen Citizen Kane.

WSIFITS: Seven Samurai 20XX

Well this is a weird one. Seven Samurai was a film made in 1954 by Akira Kurosawa and widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. So, 50 years after the film’s release Sammy Studios decided it was high time to make… a video game of it. For the ps2. And set it in the future. I don’t know why either.

Yeh, I’m not going to do a review of it. It’s not very good, it looks like Final Fantasy, but plays like a cross between God of War and Street Fighter, except with only about one attack button I can find. And it’s just really weird, you’re a samurai but then you have to go and fight some alien mutant thing. I played about 20 minutes and it was all dull and repetitive with a slow boring story. I just thought that people needed to know about this really weird game, that no-one asked for, and no-one really appreciated.

Anonymous Review

http://www.thenationalstudent.com/Film/2011-11-17/anonymous_review.html

I did a review and it's now on this student website. It's not my finest work, as I feel it's a bit short, but still check it out.

WSIFITS: Evil Dead 4 and wrong dvds.

Earlier this year I bought a set of four DVDs for a pound, which I assumed would all be awful except one of them was The Shawshank Redemption aka the highest voted film on imdb, read more here. However, at the time I didn’t realise what else was in the set. But I’ve just found out something about one of the other films.

Witchcraft is a horror movie starring a grown up little girl from The Exorcist and a sex crazed David Hasselhoff. Now that might already sound weird enough, but the original title of the film was La Casa 4. That’s because it was originally released in Italy. Now, when released in UK and the US it was called Witchcraft and wasn’t credited as any kind of sequel, it doesn’t have any connection with the previous La Casa films. And do you know how I know that? It’s not that I went out looking for an obscure Italian horror series, oh no. It’s that the first two La Casas were actually just retitled Evil Dead movies. Not changed in any way, well dubbed into Italian, but the exact same movies as we had. And due to the popularity of those films, the Italians just decided to name any old movie La Casa 3, 4 and 5 to make more money because people thought it was a sequel to Evil Dead. So basically I have an unofficial sequel to Evil Dead starring David Hasselhoff. What the actual fuck.

Ok. Last thing. I promise, and I’ll try to keep it brief. Well, basically the DVDs on the cover aren’t the DVDs in the case. It does have Shawshank and Evil Dead 4. However the other disc doesn’t have Shivers and Final Scream. No, instead of two horror movies we instead have a romance drama with a you Russell Crowe and a romantic comedy. I’m not going to watch these. It doesn’t hugely upset me, because watching the two it said wasn’t going to be my greatest moment, but it is a bit weird. Was it the publisher, the guy who handed the DVDs to Cash Generator or the guy in Cash Generator got confused and gave me the wrong discs? I don’t know, or very much care. All I know is I don’t watch romance, so this DVD set is over. I’m annoyed, I spend £1 on this. I deserve 50p back for false advertising.

I discussed this on the podcast, but this was already written, so here's it again.

DOCTOR WHO MOVIE

I read today that there’s plans to make a movie of my favourite TV show Doctor Who. Now you’d think I’d be loving this news but I’m not. In fact, I think it’s a terrible idea. I would’ve just posted why on Facebook or something similar, but no, I have more to say on it, than I could fit in one status. But before I explain why I think this particular film shouldn’t be made, let’s have a quick look back at the other Doctor Who movies there’s been and see how well they worked.

There have been three of them to this date; the first two were made in 1965/1966. These starred Peter Cushing as ‘Dr Who’ a human inventor who builds a time machine out of a police box and then he and his family and friends travel in time and encounter the Daleks. The two films take their plots note for note from the first two Dalek stories of the television series. They are basically just big screen versions of the stories. They’re bigger budget; they have huge sets, famous faces and are bright and colourful. There are a few differences, due to time constraints some parts of the stories are left out, and because they were made two years after Doctor Who debuted on television, the characters are simplified so audiences who hadn’t heard of the show to understand, the Doctor changing from a mysterious grumpy old man who seems a bit alien, to a kindly human grandfather for instance. These films couldn’t be made now, as the concepts of the show are too well know and have proper rules, but at the time they were made, the show hadn’t even explicitly stated that the Doctor wasn’t from Earth, so for all audiences knew, the origins shown in the films could’ve been the real ones. This doesn’t completely excuse the films; they are pretty ridiculous, haven’t really aged very well and are definitely directed towards kids who at the time were in the middle of Dalekmania (yes that was a real thing. Look it up.) and just wanted to see more of their favourite villains in colour and on the big screen. They’re all spectacle, not substance, but they’re fun and have Peter Cushing, who’s brilliant. It was the 60s; lots of weird things happen then, just accept the films as part of the era they were from and move on.

A proper big screen return has never really happened. There were plans for one during the Tom Baker era and after the cancellation of the series in 1989, but these never really arrived. The closest we have is a television movie made in 1996. Made by a partnership of Fox and BBC, this is a very odd film. Unlike the previous films it is in continuity with the TV series and although it introduces a new Doctor, Paul McGann, for most of the action, the start does contain the regeneration of the last televised Doctor, Sylvester McCoy into our new hero. Now I won’t say too much, because I might do a review of this film one day, but it didn’t really work. The influence of Fox is obvious, as it’s too americanized, it’s set in San Francisco, as the characters except the Doctor are American and it just misses the British charm of the original series. To counter-act how obvious it is that the makers of film didn’t get what made the show great, it’s also filled with continuity references to make them look like they do, but it doesn’t work, and just makes it confusing for new viewers. It also has many other flaws, like the claim the Doctor is half-human, the casting of Eric Roberts as the Master, the plot doesn’t make any sense, etc. However, there are a couple of good moments and Paul McGann is amazing as the Eighth Doctor, so it’s not a complete failure. It probably shouldn’t have been made, and if it had been made at a time the series had been running regularly it would have been despised, because it is pretty awful in comparison, but there hadn’t been any new Doctor Who in 7 years and there wouldn’t be again for another 9 years, so at least they did something, even if it didn’t work.

Now how can I defend an awful TV movie and then complain about one coming out now? The reason is timing. The TV movie was made when people were asking for more Doctor Who. Some had to be made, and even though it didn’t work, the 1996 movie did fill a gap. The thing is though now, is that we have a series on TV. And it’s good. So, we can just watch that, was anyone really saying, no I can’t handle just a TV show that’s been running for 48 years, I really need a film as well. So that’s the first reason it’s a bad idea, there isn’t a demand for it. But hey, that alone doesn’t mean it won’t work, so let’s look at the other things. The man who’s planning this is David Yates, director the last few Harry Potter films and he’s expressed interest in making it into a franchise. A franchise? Well that brings up a problem. The films will obviously have a bigger budget, so they can do things the TV show can’t. Great you say? Well… no. If this was just one film, then yeh maybe, but if it was a franchise this would overshadow anything the show tried to do. If they did an episode with 100 Daleks then, people would say, who cares we’ve seen a film with a million of them. Although I might not agree with the need to have a big world ending finale every series, it would mean that if they did try and do one, it wouldn’t be a big deal, because we would have seen better in the films. It means that although the films might be good and spectacular, it would cheapen the TV series, which is what Doctor Who is all about.

Also if it was a franchise then you would have the sequel problem. I doubt they would have a big storyline planned out over a series of films, in case the films didn’t do well. So each sequel would a separate story. However, as we all know, sequels don’t really work. Maybe the first film would be good. Maybe even the second. But it would just be a matter of time for the films to deteriorate. They’d get shit. And that’s not something that happens with the show now, but if people had just come out of the cinema after seeing an awful Doctor Who movie, would they really want to watch the TV show? In fact, even if it was good, some people would stop caring about the show if it was overshadowed by a movie franchise. And maybe it’s just me but, is David Yates just looking for a new franchise to do now he’s run out of Harry Potters. That’s just speculation, and I hope it’s not true, because if it was his heart wouldn’t be in it, and if it wasn’t we would end up with a very lacklustre set of films.

And finally the biggest problem. The films if made wouldn’t be in the continuity of the series. They wouldn’t have the TV Doctor and they wouldn’t have any connection to the BBC show except for the concept. It would be like a reboot. Now you might say, why does it bother you then? Three things.
1. If I was a fan, why would I want to see a film with no connection to the show I love. It’s not like a comic book, when although it’s not linked to the comics, it’s a big deal to see, say your favourite superhero, in live action. We’ve seen the Doctor in live action, ever week. Just seeing it on a bigger screen with better effects doesn’t make up for it having no connection to the show. So why would I want to see it?
2. There might be too much Who. Let me explain. If there was a movie franchise and a TV show, general audiences might go for the movies as they would be bigger budget, require less time and less explanation. Now, you might say what if it brings new fans to the show? Well they’ll be confused as to who this other man playing the Doctor is and what’s going on with all this background continuity and might well give up and only care about the films. It wouldn’t be like they would understand regeneration or anything, because that wouldn’t happen in the films, or if it did, it would really cheapen the whole thing. Say a different man was the Doctor after two films, why would we care about regeneration? It wouldn’t be a big deal. But it should be. The films may just ruin the mythology of the show by dumbing it down, or overusing it.
3. It would a big budget movie. Why’s that a problem? Well, maybe they’ll market it to Americans and have say, Justin Timberlake as the Doctor. Or maybe they’ll not be idiots and actually have a Brit as the main character, but it would probably make him more of an action hero. But really can you see Gerard Butler as the Timelord? Or maybe they’d do the casting right, and even have a good companion. But I would put money down on the companion being a love interest, which is just not how the show should work. There are just so many things that if it was made into a film, would be changed and it would just not be Doctor Who any more.

So hopefully you now see my problems with the idea and I really hope they don’t make the film, because I just can’t see any way this would work. Maybe you disagree and maybe I’ll be proved wrong, but right now, just no. Unless, maybe David Mitchell as the Doctor and Michael Caine as Davros, but that’s just in my head, and will never be made. Unfortunately.


Story this article is based on can be found: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118046098

PODCAST NOW ON ITUNES

The Lewis and Chris Podcast now has a new name and a new place to listen.

Damn Dirty Apes is now on itunes. In fact, here's the link...

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/damn-dirty-apes/id478603015

Basically it's the same ramblings as before, but with a bit more slickness to make it less amateur and more itunes material. So it's as insane as ever, but just slightly more polished. Have a listen, give a rating... preferably a good one, subscribe, tell your friends and most of all... enjoy.

Imdb Top 10: 10-6

And now we’re finally here. The top ten films of imdb. Obviously these aren’t the official top 10 films ever, it’s your own choice for that. But these are the films the most people voted high, so it’s a very good guide. I’ve split the list into 10-6 and the top 5, so I can give a little more detail to these films than I’ve done to the others we’ve already looked at. So without further ado, the top 10 of imdb, part 1.

10. Inception
Everyone knows what this is. It was the big craze of last year when Inception came out and everyone would talk about how good it was, or how confusing it was, or just go on about it in general. I missed out a bit because at the time it came out I was poor, so I couldn’t go and see it and I didn’t get the DVD for a while either because it was pretty expensive. So by the time I saw it I’d heard pretty much everything there was to say about the film. But even with all the high expectations I had for this film, it surpassed them. I love this film. The first time I saw it, my mind was blown, I thought it was amazing, best film ever. Over time I realised it was just sort of shock value, and the movie itself wasn’t quite as good as it first appears. It’s still a brilliant, well made film with plenty of interesting and well done ideas; it just misses the emotional heart that most other films on this list have. I would still rank it as one of the best films ever made, but maybe not quite top ten material. Give it a few more years and I have a feeling this’ll be one that goes down the list with time.  Oh and it’s not as confusing as people say. Yes it’s hard to explain in a short paragraph, but if you watch it, you won’t be confused, well as long as you pay attention and aren’t an idiot.

9. The Dark Knight
Now this is one of my favourite films. I readily admit that the 8 films above it are better, but if you gave me the choice of which to watch, I’d choose The Dark Knight. The Batman films are a bit patchy to say the least, starting very camp in the 60s, going dark and really weird with Tim Burton, then family friendly, then  Batman and Robin, the worst superhero movie this side of Green Lantern, however the funniest superhero comedy ever. Except for the fact it’s not meant to be a comedy. So Bats went away for a few years and then came back in 2005 with Batman Begins. It was a good film, but as an origins story it got bogged down in setting everything up and didn’t really get going properly. However it set everything up right for the sequel. We knew who everyone was, and how they got on, so there wasn’t any wasting time. It brought back all the old favourites, learnt from the mistakes of the last film and brought in two of the greatest Batman villains, Harvey Dent/Two-Face and the one and only, the Joker. Everyone is at the top of their game, especially the late Heath Ledger, giving the performance of his career, the stakes are raised, and everything is just bigger and better than any Batman film had been before. This is the film that showed that comic book movies didn’t have to be stupid or looked down on, and could in fact be masterpieces. My only problem with it is that it’s set the bar so high for the last in Nolan’s Batman trilogy and that The Dark Knight Rises will become this generation’s Return of the Jedi, still good, but not the conclusion we were hoping for.

8. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
We’ve got a slower, more psychological film here at number 8. This film is really disturbing. I can really think of what genre it belongs to. It’s the story of a man in jail who pretends to be insane to get into a mental asylum because he thinks he’ll get out quicker. But instead he’s trapped with a group of crazy people all presided over by the callous Nurse Ratchet. Sometimes it’s a happy film, with the inmates escaping and having fun on a boat, but other times, well let’s just say that this has some of the darkest moments ever put on film. This is Jack Nicholson at his finest. There’s not much more to say than this is one of the smartest, darkest and thought provoking films ever made and you should definitely give it a watch if you haven’t already seen it.

7. Schindler’s List
This is just wow. I really have nothing to say about this film. At the time it might seem like a strange choice to give a serious film about the Holocaust to a man who’d previously only directed action and scary movies. Well made action and scary movies, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, Jaws, but still nothing quite like this. But really Steven Spielberg must have been really passionate about this film and it shows, it is a masterpiece. I like to make jokes about films or tell my stories about them, but really Schindler’s List stands on its own. I don’t really have any good stories about it, there’s no time to go into an in-depth analysis of why it works and it would be in poor taste to make jokes. So yeh, it’s breathtaking and unbelievably moving and that’s all I have to say about it.

6. 12 Angry Men
This is probably the least generally watched of the top ten. Now whether it’s because the film’s old or obscure, or that not a lot actually happens, I don’t know. What I do know is that considering how well known the others are compared to it, it’s a surprise this is so high up. Until that is, you watch it. To be honest if as many people had seen this as had seen Shawshank then I think it could’ve been the top film. It really is that good. The film shows a set of jurors who are all sure of the guilt of the accused man, except for one who isn’t sure. He keeps questioning the reasons behind why they believe the man is guilty and disproves them one by one and begins to persuade the other jurors who were so sure, that maybe they were wrong. It’s a very psychological film, which the entirety of the action set in one room while we see the workings of the men’s minds. It’s very intriguing and far more interesting than you would expect after hearing the plot. Well made, well acted, and just great all round, this film should be far more popular than it is, but when you say black and courtroom psychological drama from 1957 all set in one room with 12 characters without names just numbers, it puts a lot of people off. It shouldn’t though, give it a watch.

Smurfs 2? Fuck off.

Fuck you Sony. Seriously. Fuck you.

Making a fucking sequel to The Smurfs?! Seriously. Just no. Stop. I can't allow it. The first Smurfs was so bad that it wasn't funny, it was wasn't just forgettable, it just made me really mad. And guess what? Every critic I've seen said the same thing. I mean most of them didn't hate it as much as I did, but I haven't heard of one who said it was good, or even just ok, they all said it sucked. But hey, you made some money because people are stupid and actually went to see this piece of shit, so obviously there has to be a sequel. I don't know whether to be angry, disappointed or just plain tired, but just... it's gonna be awful. I'm telling you right now, it will be the worst film of that year. And if it's worse than the first one, which I know it will be, I don't think it qualifies as a movie and it just shouldn't be shown anywhere, ever.

So yeh, can't fuckin wait.

Robocop’s stup-wait no… Cyborg Cop?! (Review-ish)

Erm. Well. Cyborg Cop. It’s sort of a Robocop rip-off. And kind of not. And sort of a Terminator rip-off. But kind of not that either. Let me explain. It’s practically got nothing to do with Rob. The only connection is the name, but the reason I need to bring it up is the fact that the Cyborg of the title isn’t really a cop. He’s some kind of secret agent. NOT a cop. So the only reason this film is called Cyborg Cop is so that some idiots might buy it, thinking it was Robocop. So, in that sense I feel it’s connected enough to talk about in my Robocop section.
And the Terminator rip-off part? Well that’s one of the villains. In fact it’s the guy on the cover who is not, I repeat, not the cyborg cop. Just another cyborg, who’s better for the cover because he’s missing half his face so it looks more hardcore.
So now we’ve got all the misleading advertising out of the way, how is the film itself? Well… it’s not, good. It’s fun, definitely. But not for the right reasons. Basically an ex-cop’s agent brother goes missing after a dangerous mission to a Caribbean island. The ex-cop, Jack Ryan, not Alec Baldwin from Hunt for Red October, goes to the island against the agency’s wishes to find out what happened to his brother.
So, basic plot. And don’t think it gets any more engaging, everything plays out exactly as you would imagine. Bad guys try to get Jack deported then killed then he goes to their base and stops them. The Agency turn out to be evil and that’s why they didn’t want Jack to go looking into it and the main villain, lets call him, Gimli, because that’s who plays him, tries to sell his cyborg as a weapon but it doesn’t work and that whole point strand is pointless. So the point is predictable and also shit.
Are the effects good? No, of course not you idiot. At least the direction makes sense though, although it is pretty bland.
Right so characters:
Jack Ryan: He has no character except he wants to know what happened to his brother. That is his whole character.
Gimli: He is a mad power hungry scientist. John Rhys-Davies is obviously having a lot of fun but that doesn’t really excuse him from not being any good.
Jack’s brother: He didn’t have a character at the start except he adopted a son. At the end he’s turned into a cyborg, and has even less personality before turning back into himself after a 20 second chat with his brother, even though he should be completely brainwashed. Oh and he dies. But we never see his kid’s reaction, he just seems to be cool with it, because it’s happy music over the credits.
Jack’s love interest: She is… a journalist? I think that’s it. All that happens is she gets into trouble, then her and Jack quarrel, then they’re together, then she gets kidnapped, he saves her, the end. She does, nothing.
Gimli’s accomplice: He’s a posh guy who seems to be comedy relief. He is not funny.
Jack’s Caribbean friend: He’s another comedy character. He’s not funny and either the guy is a terrible actor or he just has the most racism accent ever. Or both.
The Evil Agent: He’s an evil traitor agent. That’s it, you’ve seen him like a million times before.
The People Who Want To Buy The Cyborg: They do nothing. They turn up so we can get shown the cyborg’s moves then they get killed at the end. That is all.
AND FINALLY.

THE CYBORG ON THE COVER: He is a robot. He has no personality. He walks around like a robot, so he’s not fun to watch. His skin keeps coming off but it’s clearly just rubber underneath so it looks terrible. He carries a gun about but never uses it. And he’s supposed to be indestructible but he gets defeated in every fight he has with a main character, I think three times in total. So just awful.

Really this film is terrible. Even aspect of it fails. It’s fun though. Like it’s awful film, but it’s a laugh for 90 minutes.  I think if I might hate it if it’d gone on for longer though. Or if there was a sequel…

(spoiler. There is.)

2/5

The DVD also inexplicably says "Cyborg Cop 1" on it. As if we'd be
confused without it blatantly telling us it's the first one.

Review: Johnny English Reborn

When I left the cinema after seeing the sequel to Johnny English I had a very odd feeling, and in fact I still have it. I felt as though I’d enjoyed the film. Now that’s not that unusual, enjoying a film, but it is when it’s a comedy and I didn’t laugh at it, in fact I think it only made me smirk about twice. But still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d had a lot of fun, and I really can’t work out why. It’s a film that although not awful is fundamentally flawed at almost every level, but still manages to escape with a strange likeability. So, although it’s not a film many people will care about the review, I feel it must be tackled, even if just to give me peace of mind. Let’s split it up into three categories which a comedy film must excel in at least one to be good: plot, characters, jokes.

PLOT

The plot is nuts. Like it’s just ridiculous. Basically it involves Johnny travelling to different places to be involved in different comedy set pieces and ignores the fact that it should also make some kind of sense. Every time he goes somewhere we meet new characters with new revelations and then they go away again either dead or never seen again. First guy, there’s a key used for an evil group, then he dies, second guy, there’s a mole in MI7, then he dies, then we meet the most obvious mole in history who persuades Johnny he’s innocent by, being trustworthy? I think it’s supposed to be a joke, but it goes on for so long and gets so strained it’s just not funny anymore. Also, Johnny saw him and has a memory that’s hidden just long enough that the plot manages to make it useless. And half of the action happens off-screen and why are they meeting the Chiense ambassador in snowy mountains and why does the wheelchair guy not realize something’s off when Johnny tells him that he thinks he’s the mole when he thinks Johnny is, and how can Johnny survive getting poisoned, he fights the mind control, but surely it should still kill him and not just bring him back with the power of love? Basically, the plot’s confusing and so full of holes that it’s more holes than plot at this stage.

CHARACTERS

There are only really five characters who are on screen for any kind of time. Johnny English, his sidekick, his boss, his love interest and the obvious mole.
Johnny English is Rowan Atkinson doing a cross between Mr Bean and Blackadder, but with kung-fu and it doesn’t work at all. He is supposedly now a master of martial arts and self control and is also a lot more mature with more put downs and sarcasm. But then he’s also an idiot who can’t see the truth in front of him, can’t remember what any of the gadgets are and doesn’t even put his trousers on the right way round and one point. Basically there seems to be two Johnny’s a smart one and a stupid one and it makes him the most inconsistent man ever. One second he’s fighting off three men at once with a chain and the next he can’t even work a chain. At least he isn’t quite as irritating as he was in the first film.
The sidekick is a naïve but keen student of Johnny’s and basically that plays out the way you’d think. He has ideas but Johnny shoots him down, but it turns out he was right and Johnny’s sorry him and he helps to save the day. The end.
His boss is an angry woman who doesn’t approve of Johnny. That’s about it.
His love interest is a scientist who’s a bit cold and initially doesn’t like Johnny but she’s charmed by him and they get together. That’s it.
The obvious mole is obviously the bad guy. It’s McNulty from The Wire hamming it up as a villain and it’s very entertaining. But he’s still just a cardboard villain.
So the characters are all just stereotypes and not even very interesting ones at that.

JOKES

Is it funny? No. The set pieces are barely jokes at all, it just seems to be Johnny English doing cool stuff. It’s fun to watch but it’s not funny. There’s a running joke of Johnny getting attacked by an old Asian woman and getting confused with her and other women, such as his boss’s mother and the Queen in the most cringe worthy ending put to film. Most of the jokes you can tell from a mile away, like the scene where Johnny looks at his gadgets and gets confused between them and you know he’ll get confused later on in a stupid circumstance. And even the other jokes are very funny, Johnny can’t work a chair in a meeting and goes up and down while they discuss serious things, it’s old, it’s predictable and it’s dull.


So in conclusion, this film has a nonsensical plot, stock characters and unfunny jokes. This makes it a complete failure as a comedy film. Therefore I should hate it. I don’t though and I think I know realise why. It’s fun. It’s not inventive or funny or doing anything interesting, but it’s got a very likeable atmosphere. It doesn’t mean to offend and it just goes along doing it’s thing and then ends. You didn’t get anything out of it, but it’s relaxing. That isn’t the aim of the film and it’s still an awful film, but just not in a way that smacks you in the face with how bad it is. Therefore, terrible film, don’t pay for it, but if it was on TV one day and there’s nothing better on, maybe give it one viewing before forgetting about it forever.

2/5

Perfect analogy for the film. Fun for a second, and then just awful.

The Contraversial Podcast

New podcast. It features the debut of my section Trick Lewis and Lewis's section sit eating ribs. It also involves me saying things no-one argees with me on and does not have either of us on the computer or the phone because we are so professional. Or maybe I just cut those parts. The link below SHOULD take you to the podcast which is arranged in a lovely little playlist. Or it might not work. Let me know

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYUNCDPB8MA&list=PL762B6159D9AB6745&index=1



This is the second photo of me and Lewis ever. Enjoy. Well I say enjoy, i mean more, laugh your face off.