Get Ready Folks, We Have Another Stinker!
3/5 - 3/5 - 1/5
Spoilers
You may or may not be aware that it is presently the Easter Holidays for schools, which means I have found myself with a much needed break from the mania of life. The wisest course of action, in such a situation, is to head to cinema and stay in it all day. And that is precisely what I did yesterday, focusing on a little catch-up session of the popcorn features that had been released end-of-March / start-of-April. The first two listed above lived up to their promise. The third, though... oh boy!
The Bad Guys
3/5
First up for my day at the Odeon New Street was an animated film released to match up with the holidays, The Bad Guys. Although never likely to match Sonic 2 for popularity, it was DreamWorks latest offering so worth a watch.
Previously I have detailed my criteria for a successful animation film: creativity in animation and/or creativity in story and world. To the first point, The Bad Guys picks up on a welcome recent trend. Computer designed animation films have reached a point of near perfect realism. If they wanted to, we all know that Pixar could probably fool you into thinking you were watching a live action movie when, in fact, they had created it on their very fancy Macs. As quality has improved, animation studios have now started to apply more traditional looking touches to their work to keep the fun of animation.
With The Bad Guys, DreamWorks have started with a simple 'model' basis for the characters. Mr. Snake, for instance, has a rounded quality to his features that looks almost clay-like. The inside of his mouth is flat, like the mouth of the Cookie Monster. He has been designed to look 'animated'. The best touches come with sketch markings used around eyes and noses, or in Batman-esque moments of exclaim, which look as if someone has gone over the footage with a trusty HB pencil. Yet realism still plays a part, bringing the animation of movement and expression to a level unimaginable with more traditionally drawn sources. DreamWorks do well with this style, but it never quite reaches the sheer artistic freedom and joy that Sony Animation's The Mitchells vs. The Machines or Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse manage.
Plot wise, we find ourselves with a slightly less adventurous tale. It's a heist film and follows the typical beats of that genre (set-up con, big mark, revealed rival conman, seeming betrayal, revelation of an even larger sting) but rarely adding or parodying with much effect. It was amusing enough but notable that few of the children in the screening were giggling. The profusion of fart jokes and rather simply assembled slap stick made me wonder "If not for the kids, who was the aimed at?"
The biggest question I did have related to the world. Despite the main characters being animals (so called 'bad guys' from popular culture, like the Big Bad Wolf) the world was otherwise populated by humans. This almost worked as a setting until you met the Governor, who was a fox, or the good guy revealed as the "secret" bad guy, who was a guinea pig. But that was it. There were even normal, non-anthropomorphic animals (a cat, more guinea pigs) thrown in for good measure. The muddied waters left me feeling that the animators ultimately couldn't be bothered to animate an animal world so they just used simpler human models. Which was a shame. Full commitment to the bit may have bumped this above average.
The Bad Guys, 2022
Director: Pierre Perifel
Writer: Etan Cohen, based on The Bad Guys by Aaron Blabey
Composer: Daniel Pemberton
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Anthony Ramos, Craig Robinson, Awkwafina, Richard Ayoade, Zazie Beetz, Lilly Singh, & Alex Borstein
The Lost City
3/5
The Lost City was actually my final film of the day. Obviously, I want to end this review with the other one, but this was the actual last viewing. The first thought I had as I stepped back onto New Street was "I'm glad that wasn't bad!" The trailer had set the film up as a comedy / adventure parody that may have used all of its jokes up in the trailer. I mean, the trailer concluded with the revelation of a surprise cameo by Brad Pitt. Surely that was everything?
Fortunately not. The final product was an amusing evening's entertainment. It's most certainly not a film to echo down the ages or plumb the depths of entertainment. But it is a good film to go and enjoy for two hours.
At its core are two great performances. Sandra Bullock plays a sardonic romance writer who has lost her love for life. Directly against her is Channing Tatum portraying a clueless cover model for her books. Through ridiculous reasons, including a wonderfully over-the-top Daniel Radcliffe, they end up lost in a jungle on a central American island. Tatum seems incredibly at ease in leaning into the self ridicule. After making a name as leading man in a series of action films, him tottering into the jungle with his air pods in, a neck pillow still around his neck, and tugging a compact orange wheelie suitcase, was quite amusing. Their chemistry holds the film together.
Around them you have solid performances from a well put together supporting cast. Pitt, appearing as part of a deal with Bullock to cameo in each others' films, plays a fairly humorous parody of himself as an actual action hero. Da'Vine Joy Randolph, as Bullock's agent, provides some good breaks to the story as she tries to track Bullock down herself. But Daniel Radcliffe's mad, ruthless billionaire is excellent. There is a sense of continuing to reject the typecasting of having been Harry Potter. He shows here a good sense of comic timing and a willingness to be a just a bit ridiculous.
The story itself falls into the typical action-adventure traps. At times it is a bit slow, especially with the full romantic dance at the start of the third act. Tatum and Bullock's characters obviously have a falling out over a piece of parchment completely inconsequential to Tatum's character's understanding which is a cliché I always find tiresome (especially having just seen it in The Bad Guys). Ultimately, I felt they too often edged away from the comedy which was a shame. Upping the gag ratio would have been welcome. Yet, it is still an enjoyable film and worth a watch if you want cheering up on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
The Lost City, 2022
Director: Aaron Nee & Adam Nee
Writer: Dana Fox, Aaron Nee, Adam Nee, & Oren Uziel
Composer: Pinar Toprak
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Brad Pitt, Patti Harrison, Oscar Nuñez, & Clavel the Goat
Morbius
1/5
Terrible.
I was sorely tempted to leave the review there, content with the most accurate description I could give, but that would cheat my loyal readers from a full 1/5 breakdown. So, let's have a look, why is Morbius so terrible?
The first area to address is the plot. Frankly, it makes very little sense. Dr. Michael Morbius, blandly portrayed by Jared Leto, and his surrogate brother, Matt Smith's embarrassing Milo, have rare blood conditions which require thrice daily blood transfusions. Well, Milo is actually called Lucien, but Michael was so blasé about human life as a child he called all the boys who lived next to him in the hospital Milo, and Lucien, and their surrogate father, stuck with it. As a genius adult, Morbius thinks to combine vampire bat DNA with his own to cure him. Obviously, the makings of a pretty standard Spider-Man villain.
He does this, at sea, and then literally turns into a vampire for 10 minutes. After killing the bizarre troupe of ruthless mercenaries he has hired to go on his science boat, he phones the coast guard and jumps overboard. Why doesn't he take the boat in? Why doesn't he make up a story for the coast guard? Who knows! Instead, he swims back several miles to shore. Back in the lab, now temporarily cured but not a real vampire, he discovers he wants to drink blood and very quickly realises that it can't be synthetic blood (which he invented) for much longer. Then Milo turns up and wants to be cured to. At some point, completely unseen, Milo steals the serum and turns himself into a vampire too.
Here we reach the next big "What?!" moment. Milo has a character shift from merely wanting to live normally to wanting to live as some sort of vampire god and kill everyone he meets. No in-between step, no development, just straight to vampire king. Morbius, tracking the reducing times between drinking fake blood (a number that keeps changing opposite to what he says) decides to take down his friend by killing him. The plot continues in a predictably stupid way past this point. Although, it would be remiss of me not to mention the point where Morbius chases some fraudsters out of their counterfeit money making lair so he can turn it into a secret lab to work on a poison for Milo. Using the money making equipment. To make chemicals and work on DNA. Counterfeiting equipment. Like printers. Twenty minutes later he is back in his old lab again.
There is a dearth of character, development, motivation, or common sense that makes the whole two hour experience mind-numbingly awful. Characters are thrown in to the mix for absolutely no reason other than the writers thought they probably should. There are two F.B.I. agents, for instance. One is Tyrese Gibson looking surly. The other is played by Al Madrigal and is aggressively unlikable. Both turn up at crime scenes, pout, pass an inappropriate comment, and then don't do anything. Jared Harris plays the surrogate father, who's sole purpose is to turn up three times, barely say anything, and then get killed so you fully appreciated how bad Milo has gone. Although, the killing spree may have already been evidence enough.
Morbius' powers also make no sense. Accepting the genre logic that if you cross crazy drugs with a spider, for instance, you can have exaggerated spider powers, here they don't seem to know what the difference between a very real vampire bat and a mythical vampire are. Michael discovers he needs to drink blood, like a vampire bat, but the blood makes him stronger, like a vampire. He gets echo location, sort of, and razor sharp claws, like a bat I guess, but also becomes super strong, like a vampire. He can fly. Not with wings, like a bat, but by jumping, like a vampire. And he can move really fast, almost turning to smoke as he does. Bat? No. Vampire? Yes. If you're going to go scientific, keep it believably plausible. If you want a vampire, just do vampires.
If plotting isn't an important part of the action genre for you, then let me address the action sequences. Due to the 'smoke movement' nature of the vampires, Morbius' fights are pretty unwatchable. He mostly fights Milo, so you end up with weird animation which has the background moving too fast to see and two vampires that have turned to colourful smoke possible decking one another. One of the final sequences, where Michael controls bats but for some reason Milo can't, sees them topple from the top of a building, through lots of exploding rubble and things, until they land deep within New York's sewerage system. At no point during this fight did I know what was going on except that they were at at the top of the building to start with and then somehow in the sewers minutes later.
To cap it all off, they concluded the film with a reminder of the real villains behind this travesty: Sony. Since the dawning of the MCU, and the surprising success of 2012's The Avengers, Sony have desperately been trying to create their own shared universe based on their ownership of the movie rights to Spider-Man. After Amazing Spider-Man 2 bombed, it looked dead in the water, and Kevin Feige managed to wrangle Tom Holland's Spider-Man into the MCU. Somehow, this wasn't enough to kill off these plans. The sweet smell of Spider-success has drawn Amy Pascal and her wicked necromancers at Sony to try again.
At present, the biggest flaw in their plan, and the most baffling part of this whole enterprise, is that they don't have a Spider-Man. Spider-Man: No Way Home has made it clear that Venom, the protagonist of the first two entries in the Sony franchise, comes from a different universe, one seemingly with no Spider-Man. So, instead, Sony are just making a series of films based on villains. What sort of madness is it that sees Sony think you can centre a universe around a character without that central character. Each of these films are slotting poorly into a lazily constructed Jenga tower liable to fall at any moment.
As a very unwanted post credits scene, Michael Keaton suddenly appears in this universe as Adrian Toombs, the Vulture from Spider-Man: Homecoming, completely against the logic of Doctor Strange's spell in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Then, in a second scene, he appears dressed as the Vulture and asks to team up with Morbius. Not only is Morbius not a villain but an anti-hero, so not up for general criminal mischief, but why does Toombs have his Vulture gear in this universe? His gear was a combination of Chitauri and Stark tech, neither of which exist here! Again, lazily constructed. Despite the signs pointing to a shared universe more catastrophic than DC's, Sony seem to be ploughing on regardless.
Morbius, 2022
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Writer: Matt Sazama & Burk Sharpless
Composer: John Ekstrand
Starring: Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal, & Tyrese Gibson
All are currently showing in cinemas across the U.K.
Comments