No.252 : The Animal (2001)

 

The Animal at the IMDb

Reviewing a Rob Schnieder film is pretty much an object lesson in futility – you know it’s going to be rubbish with a few cheap laughs, but let’s do it anyway.

This one dates from his golden period where he crapped out a couple of Deuce Bigalow films along with ‘The Hot Chick’ and ‘Stan Helsing’. Rob isn’t much of an actor so he relies on mugging a lot and crowbarring in as many fart jokes as possible. At least he can’t be touched under the Trades Descriptions Act, as you are served up pretty much what you’d expect with each outing.

Here Rob plays Marvin Mange a police evidence clerk who dreams of emulating his late father and becoming a fully-fledged police officer. He has failed the vital obstacle course the previous four years and pissed his pants during his last attempt. To add to his troubles, he gets grief off John C Reilly’s Officer Sisk who is a pumped-up alpha male, and no respect from his field trip school children.

He does have a couple of friends in a thinly drawn (the irony!) character ‘Fatty’ and in Miles, a black man who thinks everyone is being nice to him to atone for 400 years of slavery. He probably had the best lines in the film and I’m not saying that because he was black!

The action, as it is, starts when Marvin has to answer a 911 call having been left alone at the station. He gets distracted by a seal on the road and endures an endless car crash as his vehicle tumbles down an never-ending mountain before being crushed by a boulder. Hopes that he’s dead and we can stop the film after 25 minutes are dashed when he is rescued by a mysterious stranger. Through his fevered dreams Marvin has visions of various animals in medical gear before waking up at the crash site a week later. He isn’t very curious about his situation, but soon we see changes in his character and abilities.

It turns out he has been fitted with various animal parts, as you do, and can now run fast, swim like a dolphin and smell things up peoples’ butts. After a successful drugs bust and a water based rescue Marvin becomes a full police officer and starts dating local tree hugger Rhianna, who also runs an animal sanctuary.

The only fly in the ointment is an unknown predator referred to as ‘The Beast’ which is attacking people and eating cows – could these nocturnal events be down to Marvin or is he not the first to have endured animal part transplants? Soon an angry mob of townsfolk are hunting for The Beast and we have to wonder who is the culprit and can Marvin enjoy a happy ending?

I’d seen this film 20 years ago and thought it was quite funny. Time hasn’t been kind however and apart from a couple of scenes it was really poor. I’d did like Ed Asner telling Marvin that ‘We’ve all eaten from the garbage’ and the black characters outrage at people being nice to him still translated to today’s easily offended world. It was also fun to see the late Norm MacDonald as an inquisitive mob member and, as is usually the case in Rob’s films, Adam Sandler, this time as a baying rabble rouser. 

The wafter thin plot was padded with too many overlong scenes such as those with the orangutan and the goat, but I guess if you’ve booked the animals you better use them! There were a few plot holes which was some going seeing at it was pretty much transparent to start with- I mean, who ate the cows? 

As a mindless distraction this squeezes a pass but the laughs were too far apart and there was no plot or intrigue to speak of.

 

THE Tag Line : Animal Lacks Bite 51%

No.213 : The Goob (2014)

The Goob at the IMDb

Oh a teenage coming of age film? That’ll be nice. Oh wait, British? Miserable it is then.

‘The Goob’ of the title is a 16 year old lad who has just finished school in rural Norfolk. He leaves the school bus for the last time and enters a world of, well not very much really.

Goob rides his moped to meet a bloke who I think was his Dad. He has a laugh and borrows some clothes having left the school bus in his pants - must be an English thing. He heads to the grim transport café where his mother works and then out to the banger racing with his brother and Mum’s new man Gene. Gene wins the race and goes home for some special attention from Goob’s mother. Goob and his brother sneak in and steal the keys for the stock car and head out for a joyride. Gene soon catches up and, following a crash, Goob’s brother is left in comedy traction.

Reasonably enough, Gene isn’t happy and has Goob work in his fields where the pumpkin harvest is due. Gene buses in a load of Eastern European field workers and, as the days of toil in the field goes by, Goob’s attention is drawn to a pretty young girl. Meanwhile a new camp employee has joined also and Gene ‘s wandering eye moves on to waitress Hannah Spearitt and to Goob’s object of desire.

Will anything happen or is this just a long hot summer slice of life?

I had concerns about this film from the off having noticed it was funded by the BBC and the BFI - worthiness was quickly confirmed and we were treated to 84 minutes of country living in the company of a bunch of chavs. Sadly it was more ‘bubonic’ than ‘bucolic’. Fair enough it was probably true and realistic, but not all stories need to be told.

The standout was Sean Harris, who graduated from this to be the baddie in the last two ‘Mission Impossible’ films. Maybe less worthy, but far more enjoyable. He exudes a quite menace and to be honest I was a bit disappointed that his character wasn’t as mental as his malevolent presence suggested.

I felt Liam Walpole in the title role was a bit limited and engaging. Quietness was his thing, but he failed to instill any sense of character with me. I preferred his campy friend, who looked lucky to get out alive after doing a dance number in Gene’s wife’s dress. It was a shame we didn’t see more of Hannah Spearritt as the downtrodden waitress Mary, but she was decent in her limited screen time.

Overall not much happened. I was awaiting a big revelation, a murder or some crazy twist but instead all I got was some people picking stuff in a field and lots of shouting at low rent barbecues. I’m sure these films are seen as important historical documents but for me, you need to add a wee bit of entertainment or narrative into the mix to make a viewing more than just a worthy pursuit.

It looked nice and the long hot summer was well realised, I just needed more to happen and for there to be a third act. Or a second.

THE Tag Line : North Norfolk’s Best Pumpkin Mix 51%

No.210 : The Victim (2011)

The Victim at the IMDb

Michael Biehn, who you’ll know as Hicks from ‘Aliens’, wrote directed and starred in this offering, which I thought was terrible, but on reading up on it that may have been the intention.

Filmed in 15 days the film is Biehn’s attempt at a grind house film and although it doesn’t hit all the marks, it was good fun as a piece of disposable trash. At the start a ‘Based on True Events’ caption came up. Having seen the film that seemed an outrageous claim, especially as you’d ask who’s telling the story?, but a rewind showed that the word ‘Not’ flashed briefly in front of the caption. I was glad to have watched it thinking it to be a true story as every unlikely twist made it seem even more outrageous.

The film opens with a nice POV walk in the woods…what’s this we find? A cute kitten? Some pixies? No it’s a man doing a hooker doggy style over a tree stump. She’s not being raped but not particularly enjoying it either. Her committed lover doesn’t like her lack of engagement in his dirty talk so he breaks her neck.

We then cut to Biehn getting his shopping and his trip home. This drive takes forever and it is either to demonstrate how far out into the woods he lives or to pad the run time which only amounts to 82 minutes in total. He barely gets his coat off when a woman in hooker gear appears at his door, begging for his help. He’s a bit of a hermit, but a gullible one too, so he lets her in and lets her tell her tale in flashback.

She tells him that she and her friend went to party with two policemen friends in the woods. The friend is the one from the opening scene, so we know it doesn’t end well. Anyway the murderous policeman calls his friend to help with the body whilst he gets it on with the door knocking lady, and amazingly he goes! The lady then overhears their plans for her and flees, ending up at Biehn’s cabin.

Back in the present and the two renegade cops are at the door and Biehn manages to shoo them away. The lady, Annie, who is a stripper, refuses to call the cops as this goes way to the top - the murderer is in line to be Chief of Police so she suggest they go and look for her friend’s body. Amazing Biehn agrees and after not finding it, the stripper and the aged hermit have gratuitous sex in many positions. Annie was played by Biehn’s real life wife so fair play to him for sharing. The murderer cop breaks in to the love shack, but is subdued and tortured into a confession. The happy couple then go to the promised location of the body but Biehn and Annie get captured by the cop‘s accomplice. 

Who will escape next and who will survive? - and what relevance are those serial killer reports we keep hearing?

This was a cheaply made effort that had some risible acting and dialogue but to be honest I quite enjoyed its honest rubbishness. Biehn shouts a lot, presumably because he has been watching the daily rushes. His wife was a terrible actress and I can only assume she got the job because of two things - that she was his wife and was punctual.

The ‘happier times’ flashbacks were pointless but good fun as the two stripper friends tried on a variety of skimpy costumes and watched seemingly irrelevant news reports.

The two cops lacked any menace or personality but to be fair they were given all of the worst lines of dialogue and the most ridiculous situations to try and make believable.

The violence was quite graphic with one head smashing particularly gruesome - at least his face healed up in time for the burial! Lot’s of clichés were in attendance such as the dirt thrown in the face during a fight. Old and hackneyed or a grindhouse tribute? You decide! 

I did like that the ‘victim’ of the title wasn’t the dead stripper but the idea that “you take life by the balls; don’t be the victim”. Fair enough, but coming from the murderer it can hardly be seen as sage advice.

It was clearly not a film to be taken too seriously which was just as well as it made no logical sense whatsoever. It was competently made for the most part, so it’s not on a par with ‘The Room’ but you will have to go far to see a more trashy and ridiculous offering than ‘The Victim’

The Tag Line : If You Go Down to the Woods Today…   51%

No.157 : The Unborn (2009)

The Unborn at the IMDb

This 2009 shocker stars Gary Oldman and Odette Annable, whom we recently saw in ‘The Double’(the Richard Gere one). This film garners  her best ever marks in a Definitive Article Movie review but that’s damning her with the faintest of faint praise.

Before we start a word about that poster - fair enough she does appear in her pants but to make out that that’s a fair representation of the film is poor form. You’d get more titillation in an episode of ‘Last of the Summer Wine’.

We open with our heroine, Casey, out for a jog. She finds a glove in the street and when she looks back she sees a zombie child. When she double takes she sees a bulldog with a mask on. She then finds a buried baby whose eyes open before she wakes up - it was all a dream! So far, so dreadful.

Casey starts to experience issues in her real life, with her babysitting job ending up with a mirror being smashed in her face by a four year old and her omelette’s eggs being full of bugs. Is she possessed or is she just babysitting at Ferguslie Park and buying her eggs from the bargain counter?

She confides in her waste of space friend who tells her it’s bad luck to see your reflection before you are one year old. This comes true as the mirror smashing child had shone a mirror in a baby’s face and the infant died the next day. Is this a coincidence or is there more happening than we can accept? Obviously it’s the latter or it would be a short film.

Casey soon learns that she was one of a pair of twins with her sibling dying in the womb after strangling on her umbilical chord. She also dreams of her dead mother and meets a slightly loopy grandparent who tells her the family is cursed owing to events that took place in Auschwitz. After some suitably quick research she accepts that she is possessed by the ‘dibook’ and enlists the help of Gary Oldman’s Rabbi Sendack to sort out the issue. Oldman clearly hasn’t been booked for enough scenes so he subcontracts some of the work to Idris Elba’s priest and the scene is set for the exorcism.

Will the evil spirit be purged? Will Gary blowing his horn do the trick? and how many of the cast will get the milky eye treatment before the spirit can be extinguished?

I hadn’t heard of this film before and was surprised to see that it returned $75 million on a $15 million budget - it looked a lot cheaper than that! It looked like a TV movie that had some star names transplanted in, late in the day, to secure a bigger box office take.

It was OK and competently made but there are only so many jump scares you can take. Basically every time someone looked in a mirror or opened a door you expected to see a creepy kid and you were rarely disappointed. The possession aspect was covered in our recent offering ‘The Prophecy’ and it was the same here with the malevolent spirit jumping between hosts at will. There was some spiritual gubbins with Oldman shouting from some ancient script, but it was nothing you haven’t seen before.

The lead was poor and ran from one scene to the next blubbering and begging for help. Oldman and Elba had about ten minutes screen time between them with neither shining whatsoever. Oldman’s casual rabbi offered no gravitas at all and he looked like he was phoning it in . With the script he had, it’s hard to criticise him.

The effects were alright but basically amounted to a few bugs and a kid with white make up and zombie eyes. I wasn’t scared in the slightest and the concentration camp aspect made no sense at all.

The ending suggested a sequel may be in the offing but I have no interest in tracking one down. The film focused on twins and the idea of duality - for me this is a one and done, thanks very much.

THE Tag Line : Kill it at birth! 51%

No.149 : The Monster (2016)

The Monster at the IMDb

When I read the synopsis of this film I wondered if the monster in the title was gong to be an actual monster or if it was going to be a metaphor for the monster that lives within us all. It was no surprise to learn that it was both.

We open with a young girl clearing up her mother’s empty beer bottles and struggling to get her out of bed. Mum wears her bra to bed and wonders where last night’s lover has gone. She has a hangover and tattoos - I’m only surprised they didn’t stick her in a trailer to get the scummy mummy full house!

The girl, Lizzy, is keen to get Mum active as they have somewhere to go. It’s soon revealed that Mum is giving the girl up and she’s going to live with Daddy. It doesn’t explain why daddy can’t come over and get her himself, but if he did that we wouldn’t have a film.

The pair head off in their beat up car - well it has a bit of gaffer tape on one of the seats. We enjoy a couple of flashbacks illustrating the pair’s past relationship, including a delightful game of verbal tennis where ‘I hate you’ and ‘Fuck you’ and bounced back and forth several times.

Their late start means that they are soon driving in darkness across the most desolate road in history. They literally don’t see another car all night apart from emergency vehicles which show up five minutes after being called.

During one of their many screaming exchanges something appears on the road. Slutty Mum Kathy manages to spin the car but still hit’s the object which turns out to be a wolf. Their own car is wrecked and they call a pick up truck, but meanwhile a slobbering P.O.V. shot is coming from the woods.

The mechanic soon arrives and as a betting men I told myself he had five minutes tops. Within about two he’s pulled under the truck and despite a spirited move to get more screen time he’s soon finished off.

The monster is slowly revealed as it terrorises our hapless heroes, who manage to call in reinforcements in the shape of an ambulance crew - sadly they are as much use as a cock flavoured lolly pop and it’s all down to wounded Mum and scared daughter to save the day.

This was a decent effort but ultimately it was too familiar to be regarded as anything special. They did avoid some monster movie tropes with cell phones working fine and the monster not being that camera shy. The film did however fall into the trap of being predictable with each ‘twist’ being signalled from many star systems away.

The opening narration of the little girl saying ‘Mummy says monsters aren’t real, but they are’ basically signalled the outcome from the off. I thought there might be an angle of the little girl having psychic abilities and was summoning the monster but it turned out it was just a big fragging monster that lived in the woods and liked attacking things.

The monster itself was decent but familiar if you have seen ‘Spawn’ or any of the alien films - basically wet leather and a lot of dribble.

The idea that monsters aren’t always the things you see was hammered home with flashbacks revealing that Dad was a dick too and Mum had her good moments. The lesson maybe that the monsters of your mind are the worst kind but frankly I’d be more weary of the big black thing that has ambulance crews for its supper.

The film was essentially a two hander between mother and daughter and there was too much screaming and wailing from both to have me give a toss for their fates.

It was decent fun to see a monster eat a variety of people but the weighty subtext lessened the effect for me. Be a monster pic or a problem people film - not both!

THE Tag Line - A Monster Hash 51%

No.96 : The Diplomat (2009)

The Diplomat at the IMDb

The title of this made for TV but repackaged as a movie thriller is a bit misleading - there is no diplomacy going on at all just some running about and some solid work for the Australian tourist board.

Dougray Scott stars as the titular official who on returning home from his posting in Turkmenistan is arrested for having a stash of souvenir guitars stuffed with heroin in his diplomatic bag. He was undone when his scam was uncovered by a police raid that had some minor gunplay and a broken window.

Scott’s arrest causes a bit of upset in the higher echelons of Government as Richard Roxburgh tries to minimise the fall out. We aren’t sure if Roxburgh is bent and he and Scott are working a scam - or is this a secret mission to entrap those darn Russkies? We think it’s probably the latter as Scott is so damn hunky but he’s such an arrogant prick that it’s hard to decide.

Back in Turkmenistan the bad guys plan to free Scott and his mysterious key. They obviously think he’s working with them but is it a trap or is Scott playing one side off the other? Soon a deal with the Aussie tourist board kicks in and Scott and his lovely ex-wife are transported to Australia to stay in a variety of fancy houses that are no doubt available to rent. The English police woman who is pursuing the case, who is in fact an Australian, heads East to confront the bad guys. After this turns out to be a waste of time she too heads to Oz and stays in a hotel overlooking the Sydney Harbour Bridge - if they put up holiday prices it wouldn’t be more blatant!

We learn that Scott and his ex-wife broke up when their son drowned but slowly they start to heal the wounds and get back in bed as a bunch of henchmen get shot in some poorly planned rescue/assassination/hostage taking raids. As the bad guys start to load a bunch of ‘suitcase bombs’ onto an Australia bound plain and the Government gets nervous - can Scott save the day and clear his name?

This was an OK film but it’s TV origins were plain to see with it’s ‘Co-Production with Australian TV’ credentials obvious from the off. The three sites for the action watered down any tension there could have been and it does seem that plenty was lost in the edit when it became a movie from a TV mini series

Scott can shout and swear and drink all he likes but he doesn’t convince as a leading man. He tries to play it cool and enigmatic from the off but just comes across as a complete tool. He lacked any empathy whatsoever and the character development of the dead son did nothing to soften our approach towards him. Scott’s real life partner Claire Forlani played his ex-wife and although she did oblige by running about in her skimpies her duck face expression but her limited range did nothing to add to the couple’s appeal. I’m sure they are lovely in real life!

The background activities of the scheming Government officials and the police doing a hapless investigation were intended to add some layers of sophistication but the film only really worked when the bad guys and the coppers had one of their numerous shootouts.

I think if you caught this over three nights on ITV you’d feel it a decent offering, but if you chanced upon the Blu-Ray you’ll feel as swizzled as someone who bought a souvenir guitar from a Turkmenistan gift shop.

THE Tag Line - Plead Diplomatic Immunity From This One  51%