Sex Tape - Review

Director: Jake Kasdan Writers: Kate Angelo, Jason Segel, Nicholas Stoller Studios: Sony Pictures Releasing, Media Rights Capital, Lstar Capital, Escape Artists Cast: Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, Rob Corddry, Ellie Kemper, Rob Lowe Release Date (UK): 3 September, 2014 Certificate: 15 Runtime: 94 min

Well, this is timely. So timely, in fact, that one wonders if all the nude celebrity pictures currently leaking online are actually part of some crazy marketing tactic for “Sex Tape”’s UK release this week. I mean, I'm sure Sony would never do such a heinous thing, but the film does need all the help it can get: for starters, it flopped in the US, failing to make back its reported $40 million budget. And though this doesn’t tend to have much of an effect on box office figures, it is, it must be said, absolute rubbish. Not unlike the ongoing hacking scandal, director Jake Kasdan’s comedy sees a couple who shoot a sex tape falling victim to the perils of the iCloud. Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz star as husband and wife Jay and Annie, who, in an attempt to reignite their fizzling sexual passion, decide to film themselves doing the dirty using their brand new iPad. Unfortunately, the video ends up synced to several other devices owned by friends, family, Annie’s new boss and the mailman. In a desperate scramble to save their dignity, Jay and Annie run all over town to get the iPads back before it’s too late and everyone sees their three-hour love session.

This should be comedy gold: here we have a smutty, screwball premise with the potential for all sorts of hilarious hijinks, and a talented cast of comedy stars, among them Rob Corddry, Ellie Kemper and Rob Lowe. Sadly, with only two or three gags worthy of a chuckle, “Sex Tape” is almost completely unfunny, and its mawkish sincerity in regards to Jay and Annie's dwindling sex life clashes awkwardly with its outrageous plot and goofy slapstick, i.e. Segel fighting off a guard dog with an 11-inch, double-ended dildo and a treadmill (a set-piece which is more sad than funny), and Lowe’s ostensibly conservative boss snorting lines of cocaine and rocking out to Slayer (the highlight). It’s a clash it might’ve gotten away with if it had any kind of charm. But like Kasdan’s “Bad Teacher,” it’s cripplingly bland. It’s a faceless studio product, with no vision, no style, no charm, and pretty much nothing going for it outside of its game cast.

It doesn’t even have the courtesy of being sexy. For a supposedly raunchy, R-rated sex farce, its sex scenes are firmly of the PG-13 variety, with its swearwords naughtier than its nudity: every unclothed private part is hidden behind an intricate arrangement of elbows, bed sheets and coffee tables a la “Austin Powers,” but not played for laughs. And both the opening sequence, where we witness Jay and Annie's early bedroom (and park and library) antics, and the closing sequence, where we finally see the contents of the sex tape, are nothing but cartoonish. Segel and Diaz are at least somewhat likable, but what chemistry they have can’t quite overcome the film’s palpable blandness. The film just kind of sits there, and as its plot becomes more and more unbelievable -- the scene at the YouPorn headquarters is all kinds of stupid -- the only logical response is to let out a long, frustrated sigh. And I haven’t even mentioned the film’s gravest error: Rob Lowe’s in a film called “Sex Tape” and the film doesn’t even make a joke about it. How do you mess that up?

Rating: 3/10

The Fault in Our Stars - Review

Director: Josh Boone Writers: Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber Studios: 20th Century Fox, Temple Hill Entertainment Cast: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff, Laura Dern, Sam Trammell, Willem Dafoe Release Date (UK): 19 June, 2014 Certificate: 12A Runtime: 125 min

Lotsa snifflin’. “The Fault in Our Stars,” the new teen-oriented cancer weepy, is, like most teen-oriented cancer weepies, mawkish and manipulative. The difference with this, however, is that unlike most teen-oriented cancer weepies, it earns the right to be mawkish and manipulative. It earns this through the relationship between its central pair of sick (and getting sicker) lovebirds: Hazel (Shailene Woodley) and Gus (Ansel Elgort), two sharp-witted teenagers who meet at a cancer support group in Indianapolis. Hazel has terminal thyroid cancer and walks everywhere with a tube up her nose and an oxygen tank at her side. Gus has osteosarcoma, which is in remission, but it has taken his right leg. Bonding over their sicknesses, they become good friends, then more than friends, even as death approaches their doorsteps.

Like “Marley and Me” (but good), “The Fault in Our Stars” is a film you go into bracing yourself for the emotional sledgehammer. A love story between two cancer patients can end only in tear-soaked tragedy. We know this, so when introduced to Hazel and Gus, some may attempt to resist getting swept away in their doomed romance as a means of self-defense. But resistance is futile: Woodley and Elgort are so good together, and their conversations so enjoyable, and their blossoming romance so engaging and believable, that getting swept away is the only option. Before you know it you’re warming to them, you’re going on an emotional journey with them and you’re falling in love with them. Then the sledgehammer hits, and you’re a blubbering wreck crying on the floor.

Me, I got teary eyed and I was sniffling away, and may have had to blow my nose a couple times. And while yes, the film achieves this partly through the saddest of piano riffs playing in the background, I didn’t feel cheated: the film had allowed me to grow to care about the characters and laugh with them and care about what happened to them in a way that felt natural rather than forced. As far as I’m concerned, the film absolutely earns the right to turn all weepy and sappy towards the end: if you're gonna try and make me cry, first make me care, and “The Fault in Our Stars” did make me care. It’s manipulative, to be sure, almost cruelly so, but it allows us to fall in love with Hazel and Gus in a way that’s anything but.

Rating: 8/10

Blended - Review

Director: Frank Coraci Writers: Clare Sera, Ivan Menchell Studios: Warner Bros. Pictures, Happy Madison, Gulfstream Pictures, Karz Entertainment Cast: Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Bella Thorne, Emma Fuhrmann, Braxton Beckham, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Kyle Red Silverstein Release Date (UK): 23 May, 2014 Certificate: 12A Runtime: 117 min

Another summer, another all-expenses-paid vacation for Mr. Adam Sandler. The paradisian locale this time round: the sun-soaked planes of South Africa, where ostriches can be ridden, where the animals roam free on safari, and where a paragliding Drew Barrymore can almost have her lady parts impaled by the horn of a passing rhinoceros. Yep, Sandler’s dragged Barrymore along with him, presumably in some desperate attempt to recall fond memories of their easy, funny chemistry in 1998’s “The Wedding Singer” -- y’know, back in that long, forgotten time when his films were still serviceable. Unfortunately, although some of that “Wedding Singer” spark still burns bright, new rom-com “Blended” falls straight in line with Sandler’s more recent crimes against cinema, and despite the title, I’m sorry to report that at no point does it feature Sandler being chucked into an oversized electric mixing machine.

Fittingly, the film opens with the image of a toilet: in the bathroom of a Hooters restaurant (ka-ching!), single mum Barrymore calls her babysitter to help pull the plug on her disastrous blind date by using the old emergency call trick; only, when she returns to single dad Sandler, he pulls the same trick first. Then, for reasons that are not at all contrived and completely convincing, Sandler and Barrymore -- get this, right -- end up going on the exact same trip to the exact same South African family resort at the exact same time -- awkward! For much of the rest of the film we’re treated with a lengthy tourist board advertisement for an African holiday, as both families gasp at the amazing wildlife, gaze at the gorgeous vistas and gawk at the mating CGI rhinos. All the while the bickering Sandler and Barrymore begin to romantically bond. Note: romantic bonding may or may not include them realising to their shock that they take their coffee the same way.

As usual, Sandler can’t resist giving his acting buddies some pointless cameos: Kevin Nealon plays a creepy dad with a boob-jiggling girlfriend, Jonathan Loughran pops up as a googly-eyed Little League umpire, and Allen Covert returns as 10-Second Tom from “50 First Dates” -- that classic character. Oh, and Shaq’s in it too, playing Sandler’s temperamental co-worker -- I swear, it’s his finest performance since “Kazaam.” Also as usual, there's a discomforting stench of racism and sexism hanging in the air, with gross stereotypes on frequent display: Terry Crews, for example, plays a happy, singing African entertainer who’s worryingly close to something out of a minstrel show. Even worse is Sandler’s *hilariously* menstruating teenage daughter Espn, named after the sports channel (ka-ching!), whose emotional arc essentially amounts to “get a smokin’ hot makeover so you’ll look socially acceptable and then you’ll be happy!” (conformism, yay!)

And the schmaltz -- my god, the schmaltz. It’s sickening: the film is covered in this treacly goo of icky sentimentality, which jars with its overwhelmingly juvenile, slapstick-heavy sense of humour. What this means is that when Sandler reveals to Barrymore that his wife sadly passed away from cancer (FEEL SORRY FOR HIM!), it’s almost immediately followed up by the grim sight of Barrymore puking up spicy food. Which, like the vast majority of the jokes on display, isn’t the slightest bit funny; the fact that said unfunny jokes are repeated ad nauseam throughout the film certainly doesn't help matters. That “Blended” isn’t as ball-achingly dreadful as “Jack and Jill” or “Grown Ups 2” is purely down to what survives of Sandler and Barrymore’s chemistry -- though more tolerable than both films, it’s just as plotless and just as perfunctory. I have no doubt it was a ton of fun to make for the cast and crew -- halfway through watching it, I wanted to stick my head in a blender.

Rating: 3/10

Pompeii - Review

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson Writers: Janet Scott Batchler, Lee Batchler, Michael Robert Johnson Studios: Summit Entertainment, Lionsgate Films Cast: Kit Harington, Emily Browning, Carrie-Anne Moss, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Jessica Lucas, Jared Harris, Kiefer Sutherland Release Date (UK): 30 April, 2014 Certificate: 12A Runtime: 104 min

“Pompeii” is like Paul W.S. Anderson decided to remake “Titanic,” but with the iceberg replaced with a volcano, and Jack and Rose replaced with those floating pieces of furniture they used to cling to safety. Though its setting is ancient Rome, the story is more or less the same as James Cameron’s historical disaster romance: in the famously doomed city of Pompeii, a ruggedly handsome slave-turned-gladiator (Kit Harrington, much better as Jon Snow in “Game of Thrones”) and the beautiful daughter of a rich businessman (Emily Browning) fall in love; this, in spite of their scandalous class difference and the latter’s forced engagement to the wicked and corrupt Senator Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland), who sniffs out their romance and is determined to put an end to it. But little do they know that a dire fate awaits them and the rest of Pompeii, as foretold by the towering Mount Vesuvius grumbling ominously in the background, a warning the citizens laugh off as nothing. The fools!

There’s lots of that kind of nudge-nudge, wink-wink foreshadowing throughout “Pompeii,” as if the film is teasing us that more exciting events are to come. And indeed, once Vesuvius finally blows its fiery load, there’s plenty of apocalyptic destruction on display, with raging fireballs descending onto the city and a thick fog of ash and smoke rampaging through the streets. But the journey to that grand, Emmerichian spectacle is quite the slog, with the story playing out like a boringly typical — albeit drably romantic — swords and sandals flick, and Harrington and Browning sharing all the passion and chemistry of two mating chairs. At least we can be thankful that the good Mr. Anderson opted out of making his film the same epic, three-hour length of Cameron’s blockbuster: if he hadn’t, we surely would’ve all crumbled into a pile of ashes before the volcano had even erupted.

Rating: 4/10