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Reviews
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019)
Disappointing and repetitive
I wasn't holding out much hope after the trailer revealed the plot would be about - again - someone wanting to hunt down the dragons...
It's nicely shot but has lost the originality and drive that marked the first two. There is nothing new to say about any of the characters, so it falls back on repeating shots and scenes that were popular in the other two films. Toothless's backward, underneath glance - again; the scene with Astrid and Hiccup talking and the dragons in the background - again; flying through the mist, dragons captured on ships - again; villain who wants to destroy all dragons - again. Dragons captured and used by the villain, attacks on the village - seen them all before!
Characterisation is disappointing too - Hiccup is constantly talked about as daft in order to boost Astrid as the 'clever' one. Shame they couldn't stick to the characters they had in the first film where they were much more interesting. Toothless is a pale shadow of himself - the first two films made us laugh out loud quite often but here he just flies around a lot and pulls a few faces.
A disappointing end to the series, but not so bad it detracts from the absolutely brilliant first two. Have still not forgiven the Oscars for failing to give HTTYD1 an Oscar - it should have had best film let alone best animated! If the poor, messy Toy Story 3 can get an Oscar on the back of the first two, then maybe it's time for this one....
The Woman in White (2018)
satisfactory but plodding adaptation without the menace of the original
As usual, costumes etc are generally good (though why do they so rarely get hair right?) but characters have been messed around to the point where most of them are indistinguishable.
Why do modern adaptors think they know better than authors like Wilkie Collins when it comes to characterisation? Or do they just not care? Half the point of the book is that Laura really genuinely needs Marion as she is too gentle and retiring to cope, and Marion knows this, hence her desperation. But as usual these days, all female characters have to be assertive and managing so in this adaptation she seems perfectly capable of running her own affairs. All the book's emphasis on the iniquities of laws that put not only their money but the women themselves into the hands of the husband is therefore lost - this Laura lays down her expectations and opinions to Glyde and never seems remotely overawed or in his power.
Fosco and Glyde are completely indistinguishable in character as well as appearance. Fosco in the book is a truly menacing character - highly intelligent, cunning, game-playing, a worthy opponent of Marion. Even his admiration of her sets our teeth on edge. His physical appearance with the very delicate habits and pet mice contrast really creepily with what we know he is really like. That's the whole point. But here we get bland villain no. 2.
Glyde is completely wrong in every way, just a paler version of Fosco. Mr Fairlie and Marion are done well, though, which is what kept me watching.
Jurassic World (2015)
So bad we were shouting at the screen
Where to start?
Nobody, just nobody, could actually be as bad as these characters are at their jobs and actually keep them, no matter how useless some people actually are. So any believability has gone by five minutes in.
Cardboard characterisation and a dreadful script - seriously, the 'We've got to keep the park open no matter how many people get eaten' and 'We can't kill the expensive dinosaur that is eating everyone' lines are not only infuriatingly fatuous but out of date since Jaws. The main female character is patronising, stupid, screechy, argumentative, arrogant and incompetent, but I have a horrible feeling we are supposed to admire her. Most of the male leads are either brash idiots or speak in cliches. The only likeable one gets killed in a helicopter crash. The children contribute nothing to the film and the parent divorce theme is clearly there to try and make us care about them, which it doesn't.
It tries to make up for this by shoving dinosaur attacks in every few minutes - but they're all the same so after a while we were just laughing. It was soooo predictable. My son started keeping a body count.
Apparently raptors are now trainable. When the plot requires it, of course, they're not. But then they are again. Just like that. So there goes that bit of tension from the first film.
The end fight has no suspense but by then we didn't care - making dinosaurs bigger does not make them more interesting.
'Well, where do we go now?' says the female lead at the end, whose deliberate and wilful stupidity as the person in charge of the park led to 37 people being eaten, hundreds injured, and millions of pounds of damage. You long to hear the male lead tell her 'Well, prosecution and a long jail sentence for you,' but he doesn't. They walk off into the light.
It was embarrassing to see what the fantastic vision of the first film has been reduced to. This one gives the impression of being made by numbers and from a cynical concern for focus groups rather than any desire to tell a story.
La La Land (2016)
Really disappointing
After the fuss about this I was expecting a well-paced, heart-warming, mesmerising film, but frankly I was bored rigid, as were the rest of the family. The dances are passable for your average amateur production (and I've seen amateur productions with much better) but a homage to Astaire and Rogers (or even a second rate 50s musical) they're not. A bit of hopping about and swinging her round and that's your lot. The music is pleasant enough but instantly forgettable.
Plot? Well, you follow two pleasant enough but essentially bland characters for a while. She swears she will always love him then finds someone else without a backward glance. He gets to play his jazz. That's about it. But because it drifts through with all the dynamism of a spaced-out sloth it takes AGES!
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Enjoyable but needed better direction
The performances are good, although tamer than the BBC version, and I was pleasantly surprised by Keira Knightley, who managed not to leave her mouth hanging open too often. Matthew Macfadyen is a good combination of reserved hauteur and feeling, and Donald Sutherland does his best with poor direction - Mr Bennett should not spend his days roaming the farm and chasing round the garden after his family! Either the director did not understand the character or just ignored it, which is a shame. Mrs Bennett is a much more believable age and silly rather than monstrous.
The direction in places is so random you wonder whether the director actually had any real plan before he started! Several scenes start off in one direction then change tack half way. When Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle visit Pemberley the scene begins with them being taken round by the housekeeper - then Elizabeth wanders off so the focus can change to her spying on Darcy and his sister; aunt, uncle and housekeeper are forgotten and presumably have forgotten her.The director was obviously determined to get in a reminder that she loves walking, so off she goes back to the inn - are we seriously supposed to believe the housekeeper forgot about a visitor and her aunt and uncle abandoned her to make her own way back?
Other changes in the film jar - Mr Collins interrupts breakfast to ask for a meeting with Elizabeth; not only highly unlikely, but unnecessary - the book says he finds them alone 'soon after breakfast'; Elizabeth would never be out in public with her hair falling over her shoulders as though she has just got up, Caroline Bingley wears a sleeveless 1799 style dress to the ball when every other character is dressed c 1805- 10. These are disappointing because they suggest a lack of interest in the details of the society the film is trying to portray. Other changes undermine the characters' development: Elizabeth's vital line 'had you behaved in a more gentleman like manner' is left out completely, and the letter scene which is a crucial turning point for Elizabeth is so rushed the significance is lost. Lady Catherine turns up during the night for no good reason, which makes her line 'I see you have a small kind of garden' completely random and meaningless - the next scene has to be done inside instead of the shrubbery!
It was nice to see scenes and characters that were left out of the BBC version, but again too often time is wasted on lingering shots of unimportant details while important characters and events are skated over, giving the impression the director didn't really have a grip on the overall arc of the story and hoped that long shots of characters staring into the distance would give meaning.
Criticisms aside, this is enjoyable to watch and the script is true enough to the book to convey the characters well. I was just left feeling that with a bit more care and forethought this could have been brilliant.
Mission: Impossible: Trial by Fury (1968)
Dull!
While I find the fun of Mission: impossible is the convoluted disguises and schemes the group devise, and the 'oh no, has it gone wrong?' moments, this episode has none of those. Pretty much everything just falls into place with little effort from the team. Cinnamon gives out some boxes, a few of them stand around making contrived remarks, but not much else. The commandant walks around a group of supposedly highly dangerous high security prisoners and no one takes him hostage, they capture the supposed informant and ... Make him walk up and down while they say slightly nasty comments at him, and everything the team need to find out is conveniently handed to them. The real informant is revealed by a pretty substandard speech along the lines of; ' My goodness, what do I have here? I found it when I picked the guard's pocket. Why, it's a secret message on a piece of foil'. And the inmates all know who that points to.
Very disappointing and lacking in the ingenuity and complexity of the best episodes.
The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising (2007)
Unforgivably bad
The book is wonderfully atmospheric, from the opening paragraph. Part of the atmosphere and strength of the book is the comparison between the warmth of the family and Will's ordinary life as an 11 year old boy, and the strangeness and threat of the new life he has to come to terms with. Nothing of this is allowed in to the film, which is a dull, clichéd mess full of meaningless CGI. Everything about the carefully detailed mythology and characterisation is dropped in favour of exaggerated 'drama' - jagged swords, over the top posturing, falling icicles, 'I believe in you' fake emotion etc. If you love the book stay clear. If you haven't read the book, please, please don't bother with this but read the original!
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
a pleasant surprise
I was expecting either a dull, Bourne - style spy thriller, with pointless noise and racing around, or a smug, 'aren't we cleverly spoofing the 60s' superficiality but actually this is quite an enjoyable, stylish piece. My 13 year old complained for the first few minutes then was hooked! The characters are pretty simplistic, yes, but great to watch, and the chemistry between all the three leads works well. You do find yourself caring what happens to them which is a good sign. The plot is no dafter than most Bond films, and a couple of nice twists kept it interesting. The chases are low key which made them more involving to watch than the overdone exploits of recent Bond films, for example, and its definitely worth a look.