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Reviews
Underworld: Evolution (2006)
Underworld? Underwhelmed!
Not having seen the original, but persuaded by a friend to take a peak because he'd enjoyed it, I have to say I haven't spent such a balls-achingly tedious time in the cinema for many a year. This from a man who has sat through three Pokemon movies with his children! Now, I realise that many will say that not having seen the original I clearly didn't understand the sequel. Please, grant me some intelligence. I caught up with Lost's first season just by watching the last two episodes. Given there was so much exposition from Tanis (Steven Mackintosh: the only performer on show to do more than phone in a performance), alongside the plethora of flashback, playing catchup wasn't difficult.
The biggest problem was: why? Why, when vampires and werewolves are at war, does the king of the vamps want to release his lycanthropic twin? Why is Corvinus - portrayed by the slumbering Derek Jacobi - so easy to kill? The geezer's an immortal! More importantly, why - when Selene sucks from Corvinus' blood (told that she will become something more - clearly this is the "evolution" of the title) do we get a girlish licking at his slit wrist and no clear effect?
Every time any other character has sucked on another's blood they received the memories of their victim (it's a great notion, blood as inheritance as memory - but it's not thought through). But here - where she's taking the last drops from the grand-daddy of all the warring monsters what do we get? Nothing! This from a film that throws in the kitchen sink (or a helicopter) to mask the gaping plot holes.
Stilted dialogue, charmless characters, appalling editing, and sexless sex scenes all mark this out as a sequel too far (one!) God help us if there's an Underworld 3! Ignore the adolescent fan-boys gurgling over Ms Beckinsale on this site - this vampire flick is more "drek" than "Dracula".
Not Only But Always (2004)
Accomplished but with something missing
The problem with biopics, particularly of those in living memory, is that they rely so heavily upon impression (rather than interpretation) that you can end up spending most of your two hours or so asking: "Who's that supposed to be?" No such problem with Rhys Ifans and Aidan McArdle's Peter Cook and Dudley Moore respectively - particularly when playing them on the point of disintegration in the 70s. Ifans has Pete's cold, almost trance-like, stare and fey way with a cigarette to perfection while McArdle (like Moore) grows in stature throughout the proceedings: which is quite a feat given his size.
As a re-imaginer of popular culture and the relationships within it, writer/director Terry Johnson is a past master. His central conceit of having the monochrome Dagenham philosophers Pete 'n' Dud watch a colour film about Cook and Moore's lives is inspired, particularly as Pete points out the post-modern methods being used to his chip-gobbling midget mate.
(By the way, if you think I'm hung up about Dud/McArdle's height, you wait 'til you hear what Pete/Ifans has to say about it.)
All the essential moments, particularly of the 60s, are highlighted here - Beyond The Fringe, David Frost, Eleanor Bron, Not Only But Also, etc. - and checked off. Yet still there's a sense of something missing, and it's not just the fact that the script highlights Cook over Moore.
At heart, rather like the middle of a doughnut, there is nothing of substance here. Certainly nothing that you couldn't have learnt from the brilliant documentary "At A Slight Angle To The Universe". Instead, what you have is Cook as a reptilian philanderer blessed with genius and Moore as a hectoring fishwife (the old "comedy duo as marriage" cliché is well and truly overplayed here) who also happens to be a trouper.
Where is the joie de vivre and charm that Cook and Moore both possessed as well as the self-pity and alcoholism that this film would have us wallow in? Despite some clever lines (and curiously rewritten classic sketches), Johnson seems to be more interested in what tore the two men apart rather than what brought, and kept, them together in the first place.
That said, the church choir singing "Goodbye-ee" will live with me forever.