Tag: Comedy

Walk Like A Panther (2018)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

In the review of Finding Your Feet a few days ago, I mentioned how it was incredibly BBC, I felt something similar during this. This film is so ITV I’m surprised it didn’t come with advert breaks and a thirty-minute stoppage where they show local news and weather. I think I enjoyed this film more than I liked it. I found it funny and heartwarming in just the right parts. But I had to ignore two things to enjoy it, one which I don’t think many people would have noticed, and one you can’t help but notice.

First, the one that not many noticed. The entire premise of the film is that British wrestling is a thing of the past and is a dead industry. This would have worked 5 years ago, but the industry is going through a massive resurgence at the moment, to the point that it’s one of the most highly regarded in the world (only behind America, Japan, and Mexico). I know to most people that wouldn’t bother them, but it just seemed like it meant they didn’t do much research. It would be like if someone made a film about someone attempting to bring football to Manchester, or cricket to India. It’s such an easy fix too: set the film in a different time. Set it in the early 2000’s. This would mean having to change the inciting incident (someone filming an attack on their smartphone and uploading it to youtube) but otherwise, you could keep it exactly the same.

The other thing; the performances. They’re slightly panto at times. Occasionally this helps the story, not every film needs to be gritty and realistic. But there are times when it doesn’t mesh with the story they’re telling. It’s a simple story really: a son who idolises his estranged father enlists his help (and the help of the local community) to save a local building that’s central to the ethos of the working class area. A story that’s been told many times (and seemed to be the plot for most British films in the 90’s). You can go slightly cartoonish, but you also need a certain level of seriousness and down to earth-ness to it for it to really work as well as it should.

I realise this must seem really negative and like I disliked it. I didn’t, I dislike that it could have been so much better than it was. There are hints of brilliance in it, Guz Khan and Scroobius Pip make a great double act with unbelievable chemistry, which is weird as they apparently hadn’t met until filming started. It is INCREDIBLY funny in parts, and in more than one way. You have slapstick elements, you have class-based humour, you have absurdists comedy, basically, the comedy draws from such a wide variety of sources that even if you don’t like some of the jokes, more will be along soon that you will like. The relationships between the characters are also great to see, and the stories between them are very compelling. It’s also surprisingly progressive in a lot of ways.

So in summary: a good film, but I wanted a great one.

The Edge Of Seventeen

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Director: Kelly Fremon Craig

Budget: $9million

Let’s get the obvious out of the way here; I’m fairly certain I’m not the target audience for this film (a feeling which was confirmed by the cinema being almost entirely teenage girls), so this had an uphill battle to impress me, an uphill battle which was evened out by the release of the trailer, which was funny, slightly heartwarming, and cynical as hell, I’m glad to say the only difference between the film and the trailer is the film itself is a lot more heartwarming. It’s just as funny and cynical as you’d hope, although part of my opinion on that might be because I have a weakness for any film which has “I’m going to kill myself” as the first line.

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Unlike this film, where “I want to kill myself” is the first thing said by the audience

It’s not just the cynical nature of the film that’s done well, the characters themselves are really well defined. Even when the characters do and say terrible things, you understand their motivations, even though you don’t agree with them. They are all fully fleshed out, and they all get good lines. Unpopular opinion, I tend to dislike “comedy characters” in films and sitcoms, mainly because it means the writers tend to give them all the best lines, leaving the other characters somewhat underdeveloped. That’s a problem which this film avoids, most of the characters could comfortably lead their own movie, that’s a masterful piece of scripting and the writer should be commended for that. Which is why I’m glad the writer also directed it, it’s easier to follow directors careers than writers as more emphasis is put on directors. I was surprised this was directed by the writer, although it kind of makes sense, this seems like a very personal story and they’d be nobody better to get that across than the person who wrote it. It’s more surprising that this is her first film as a director, whilst it’s not exactly full of “wow shots”, or inspiring cinematography, it’s a lot more accomplished than a first time director should be, here’s hoping she gets a chance to do more work in the future with someone elses script, will be interesting to see what she can do. I feel her best work is as a writer though, the script has some amazing pieces of dialogue that really hit home. My personal favourite being (and i’m paraphrasing here) “I just don’t want to have to live with myself for the rest of my life”.

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Probably not going to get a good lead in to say this but these two worked really well together.

This film is not perfect however, a major problem is that you will feel you’ve seen it before. Within five minutes of meeting certain characters you can guess their entire story arc, you know what they’ll end up doing for the rest of the film. Despite that it’s still a very enjoyable film, it’s a bit like listening to a REALLY good cover song, whilst it’s not completely original, and you won’t be surprised by it, you still have to be impressed with how they’ve done it, and you still love it. Put it this way; I also watched Arrival this week. Probably one of the  best films I’ve seen all year, yet i still felt like THIS was the film I should write about.

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Actually I take back what I said earlier; this shot is kind of beautiful it terms of colour and angles

I will admit, this is not the greatest film of the year, it’s not even in the top five if I’m honest, yet I’ll sum up my feelings about this film on this; I have a belief that everyone should have a self-care box. A box which contains dvds, books, chocolate, tea etc, basically stuff which will cheer you up when you’re at your worst. And whilst this film won’t make it into my top 10 of the year, or my favourite 100 of all time, it definitely deserves to go in the box, and that’s the best thing you can say about it.

Edge Of Glory

  • Strong performances from the cast (Special mention must go to Hailee Steinfeld, Hayden Szeto, Haley Lu Richardson and Blake Jenner. Actually all of them were really good)
  • Fantastic script.
  • Believable characters.
  • Very very funny and heartwarming.
  • Possibly one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard all year.

Edge Of A Cliff, Staring Into The Abyss

  • Formulaic plot.
  • Not many memorable shots.

Gene Wilder

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This week continues to show more evidence that 2016 is actually being written by George R.R Martin. It was announced on the 29th August that Gene Wilder had passed away due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease. The general reaction to this from people on social media seemed to be simply;

“fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck”

Almost everybody has a film he’s in in one of their favourites. He was truly a comedy icon, being nominated for an Academy Award in 1968 for his role in The Producers. Which is amazing for two reasons:

  1. 1) it’s very hard for comedies and comedic roles to be nominated for Academy Awards, in the history of the awards only six have won Best Picture (Annie Hall, It Happened One Night, Tom Jones, You Can’t Take It With You, Going My Way, The Sting).
  2. Because it just made me realise that that film is nearly 50 years old.

He actually had a remarkably high success rate; six of the films he was in are bonafide classics, which considering he was only in 22 films is remarkable to think about. But that’s not the only way that people loved him as much as they did, it wasn’t just the roles he was in, it was the way he approached those roles.

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Everyone remembers the scene in Willy Wonka where we’re introduced to him, frail, walking with the aid of a stick, before tumbling forward and springing to his feet. That was his idea, his reasoning for it “because then the audience will never know what I’m telling the truth about”, in that one decision he completely set up that character. That decision is representative of why people love him; he took comedy seriously. He saw it as an artform that you needed to work hard at, something you needed to put a lot of work into. That “it’s just a comedy” isn’t an excuse for complacency and laziness. Just look at the boat scene in Willy Wonka, he was so convincing there that the adult actors were convinced he’d genuinely lost his mind. Later on, in the scene where he yelled at Charlie the director didn’t tell the child actor what was going to happen as he wanted his reaction to be real. Gene Wilder stated this this scene almost broke him, he and the actor who played Charlie had become quite close on set and it made him feel really guilty about yelling at him, all he wanted to do was take him aside before the scene and warn him that he was just acting and he still loved him.

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Despite what this post may indicate so far, it’s not just that film that he was brilliant in. There’s also the aforementioned Producers, Young Frankenstein and his movies with Richard Pryor. One film which he was almost in was Trading Places, which was set to reunite him with Richard Pryor. But when Pryor was replaced with Eddie Murphy, Murphy requested that Wilder be removed from the film. His reasoning for this was so that he didn’t come off as a poor mans Richard Pryor. It makes sense I guess but I still wish that Wilder was in, purely out of intrigue to see what it would have been like. But I guess I can’t be annoyed, he gave us enough and to ask for more would just be selfish. But a part of me still wishes we were still given a little bit more of him. Rest In Peace, you sure as hell earned it.

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