Film Reviews www.list.co.uk/film
ROMANCE/COMEDY THE UGLY TRUTH (15) 92min ●●●●● ALSO RELEASED
This by-the-numbers romantic comedy from director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde, Monster in Law) pairs Katherine Heigl (Knocked Up, 27 Dresses) with alpha male Gerard Butler (300, PS I Love You) for a mindless run through of familiar genre clichés. Heigl plays Abby, a lovelorn TV
producer whose status is usurped when her bosses hire Mike (Butler), a public-access agony-uncle with a misogynist streak that hides a vulnerable, equally lovelorn man. Abby’s trying to make sparks with Colin (Eric Winter), a hunky surgeon, and Mike’s so confident that he can make her relationship fly, he bets his job that following his advice can lead to love for Abby.
It’s never hard to see where The Ugly Truth is heading, but like this summer’s comparable The Proposal, the weakness and unoriginality of the idea is just about saved by the wattage of the stars, with Heigl and Butler fitting their roles like gloves. While the romance gets by, the problem here is the cringe-worthy quality of the gags, with one routine about remote control vibrating knickers scraping the bottom of the barrel. Heigl seems comfortable enough with the mixture of sweetness and raunch which has served her well in the past, and Butler’s boorish Mike at least gives him more to play with than the dull PS I Love You. The Ugly Truth never gets particularly ugly or truthful, but it’s a disposable time waster for incurable romantics. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Fri 7 Aug.
Orphan (15) 122min ●●●●● Diverting evil child horror from House of Wax director Jaume Collet-Serra. Grieving parents Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John (Peter Sarsgaard) decide to adopt a child from a local orphanage and soon wish they hadn’t bothered. General release from Fri 7 Aug. Adam (12A) 98min ●●●●● Quirky romantic drama about the relationship between a neurologically different young man and a beautiful young cosmopolitan. Great performances by Rose Byrne and Hugh Dancy are undone by fairly uninspired execution by director Max Mayer. Benny & Joon for a new generation. General release from Fri 7 Aug. GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra (12A) 107min ●●●●● Hasbro action toy in big budget feature. Could be the beginning of a franchise? Decent enough for what it is, but this kind of thing really shouldn’t be encouraged. See feature, page 23. General release from Fri 7 Aug. Aliens in the Attic (PG) 85min ●●●●● The writers of Madagascar and Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit collaborate for first time for this likeably frenetic animated adventure about a family’s attempt to fight off knee-high alien invaders. General release from Wed 12 Aug.
DOCUMENTARY THE MEERKATS (U) 83min ●●●●●
There’s something about meerkats. Maybe it’s their little beady eyes, or their curiously stiff, upright posture that makes them appear to be striving to be human. Whatever that quality is, the camera clearly loves them, making the humble meerkat an obvious choice for a March of the Penguins-style documentary feature from the BBC’s Natural History department.
With a narration written by Alexander McCall Smith and delivered, in a voice that sounds older than Methuselah, by the late, great Paul Newman, Meerkats follows the formative years of Kolo, a young meerkat getting to grips with the realities of life in the Kalahari desert. With threats to Kolo’s family including a deadly snake, an eagle with a grudge and a weather-system that turns up the heat to unbearable degrees, it’s clearly tough out there for a meerkat, and Kolo’s fight for survival is rendered intensely and sympathetically under the direction of James Honeybourne, a former Wildlife on One producer. There’s clearly a bit of trickery involved in creating the drama here, and as with most nature documentaries, a regrettable tendency to force human values onto the animals involved. But if you’re vulnerable to the charms of little critters, The Meerkats come up as cute as a button. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Fri 7 Aug.
BIOPIC/CRIME/THRILLER MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT (L’INSTINCT DE MORT) (15) 113min ●●●●●
The early career and criminal gestation of France’s most notorious bank robber and gangster Jacques Mesrine is circumscribed in the first part of two films telling his remarkable story. Tracing a line from Mesrine’s disillusioning military service during the
Algerian war to the beginning of his notoriety in 1972 (when he graduated to murder), the first instalment of this epic crime tale is derivative, energetic and hugely enjoyable. Propelled by Vincent Cassel’s cheeky, psychotic, scenery-chewing turn
as Mesrine and Assault on Precinct 13 director Jean-Francois Richet’s enterprising handle on the material Killer Instinct is a work of veneration and compulsion comparable to the better films of Brian De Palma (Scarface, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Carlito’s Way). Like a French Tarantino, Richet is clearly a filmmaker who loves movies and moviemakers. Over the course of these two films, he pays considerable respect to, among others, William Friedkin, Peter Yates, Michael Mann, Luc Besson and Michael Bay. Supported by some of the cream of French stage and screen (Gérard Depardieu, Cécile De France, Ludivine Sagnier, Roy Dupuis and veteran French character actor Michel Duchaussoy all strut their stuff) and the commendably assured and incisive cinematography of Richet regular Robert Gantz, this is a prestige production that arrives with possibly overstated comparisons to The Godfather and Goodfellas. Such comparisons actually do the film a bit of a disservice, though driven by a euphoric narrative that undeniably belongs to mainstream English language cinema, Killer Instinct and to a lesser extent its sequel is actually awash with homegrown influences. The sequences set in late-50s Paris could have been lifted from Henri Georges-Clouzot’s brilliant 1947 dockside thriller Quai des Oefevres and the spirit of Jean Gabin, most notably in Michael Carné’s moody 1938 deserter-on-the-loose drama Le Quai des Brumes which shadows every frame and crooked turn of Cassel’s ratty mouth. Roll on part two. (Paul Dale) ■ Selected release from Fri 7 Aug.
24 THE LIST 6–13 Aug 2009