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DRAMA/THRILLER THE LOVELY BONES (12A) 135min ●●●●●
The problems with Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s popular novel run much deeper than the usual stumbling block of having a macabre subject matter. The casting of Mark Wahlberg as the grieving dad is seriously misjudged, especially as he seems to have started where he left off with 2008’s natural disaster thriller The Happening. Susan Sarandon isn’t much cop either as she overacts her way through the role of no- nonsense grandma called in to help after the death of 14-year-old Susie (Saoirse Ronan). Even the usually bankable Rachel Weisz struggles with a script from Jackson and his regular co-writer Fran Walsh that treats subtlety like it’s a foreign word. It starts off promisingly as we watch Susie being lured in and murdered
by her neighbour (Stanley Tucci), a comic version of the evil loner. The rape that is a feature of the novel is merely hinted at here, the first sign that this adaptation will shirk away from the darkest elements of the novel and instead concentrate on the efforts to find the murderer by police detective Len Fenerman (Michael Imperioli) and the girl’s unhinged father. Jackson henceforth gets the tone and aesthetic completely wrong. While in the book Susie resides in a 14-year-old’s idea of heaven, Jackson seems to have designed the movie equivalent in a Salvador Dali museum. It looks sumptuous but the visuals seem to have only added to the budget as they are totally out of place in the story as it stands. As with Jackson’s King Kong the desire for showmanship gets in the way of characterisation and plot. It’s a shame as Sofia Coppola and Nanni Moretti proved with The Virgin Suicides and The Son’s Room that the subject of grief following the death of youth can be made euphoric, addictive and deeply affecting. (Kaleem Aftab) ■ General release from Fri 19 Feb.
Reviews Film
Allegedly shot quickly when Jeunet pulled out of adapting Yann Martel’s Life of Pi for cinema (following a tortuous and long shoot for 2004’s A Very Long Engagement), Micmacs is what it is – a work of transition from a gifted filmmaker, and it will certainly do for now. More cheese please Gromit. (Paul Dale) ■ Selected release from Fri 26 Feb. COMEDY/ROMANCE LEAP YEAR (PG) 100min ●●●●●
Imagine the classic 1934 Clark Gable/Claudette Colbert road movie romance It Happened One Night with all the wit, spontaneity and charm sucked out of it. That’s Leap Year. Director Anand Tucker (Red Riding: 1983, And When Did You Last See Your Father?) should be weeping into his Guinness over this joyless, laugh- free embarrassment of a movie. Leap Year smacks of Hollywood
desperation from the outset, hanging on the purportedly well-known Irish tradition that a woman is allowed to propose to her man on the 29th February. After Anna’s (Amy Adams) boyfriend misses a tailor-made opportunity to propose then heads off to the Emerald Isle on business, she decides to follow him there and do the deed herself. But bad weather foils Anna’s carefully-laid travel plans, leaving her stranded at the wrong end of the country with no choice but to accept a lift from a grumpy yet ruggedly handsome local (Matthew Goode). There are comparably bad recent
rom-coms – the execrable 27 Dresses springs to mind – but the thing that particularly grates about Leap Year (after Devon-born Goode’s horrific Irish accent) is the soulless, machine-like construction of it all. (Paul Gallagher) ■ General release from Fri 26 Feb.
COMEDY/ADVENTURE MICMACS (MICMACS A TIRE-LARIGNOT) (12A) 104min ●●●●●
The re-evaluation of the golden age of slapstick cinema (cue Paul Merton and sparse piano riff) comes full circle with this slight but enjoyably manic satire from Amélie and Delicatessen director Jean Pierre Jeunet.
Left with a bullet in his cerebellum from a freak accident, eccentric loner Bazil (Danny Boon) is homeless in Paris. Taken in by a bunch of insane refuseniks who live deep inside one of the city’s dumps, Bazil plots his revenge on the men who made and sold the weapon that put the lethal fragment in his head. Utilising the fairly deranged set of skills of his new family (a contortionist, an ex-human cannonball, a poet performer, a junk collector etc) Bazil sets about pitting the city’s two most powerful armaments companies against each another.
In evoking the ghosts of Buster
Keaton and Jacques Tati (although in terms of pure ingenuity and finesse in execution Harold Lloyd is a better comparison) and displacing them in an anarchic underground world peopled by the forgotten and abused (both men and machines), Jeunet is clearly on familiar ground. Jeunet takes Tati’s slapstick deconstructions of modern technology (most noticeably Traffic and Playtime) and funnels them into a traditional heist thriller format. It’s all fun, innovative stuff, which plays out like a live action Wallace and Gromit cartoon.
DRAMA CRAZY HEART (15) 111min ●●●●●
It’s another day in another shit hick town for country and western singer- songwriter Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges). The music business isn’t what it used to be; his schedule now consists of bowling halls and the back rooms of bars. Between the waiting in drab motel rooms and rehearsing with interchangeable backing bands, Bad drinks. Barely able to afford the bourbon he views as his lifeblood he relies on the kindnesses of old fans and ageing groupies.
Things begin to look up when he hooks up with a young music journalist and
single mother (Maggie Gyllenhaal) but Bad can’t help living up to his name. Despite interventions from a former protégé turned country star Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell) and bartender Wayne (Robert Duvall), Bad is on a one-way ticket to rehab.
Based on Thomas Cobb’s novel of the same name, Crazy Heart is the kind of leisurely southern fried character study that went out of fashion with the Republican hijack of the C&W music scene in the Reagan years (Hal Ashby’s Bound for Glory and Michael Apted’s Coal Miner’s Daughter are clearly benchmarks). Crucially Crazy Heart is directed and adapted by an actor turned director Scott Cooper. It’s an acting masterclass: Bridges is remarkable, he is the film’s very doomed essence – breaking hearts with his ballads as he breaks himself. (Paul Dale) ■ General release from Fri 19 Feb. See feature, page 46.
18 Feb–4 Mar 2010 THE LIST 47