Episode 8 : Things We Wish We'd Lost In The Fire
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Yup, it's us lot again. Today we speak of The Golden Compass, Balls of Fury, Bee Movie, Enchanted and I Am Legend
The Golden Compass rounded off 2007 with it's penultimate crushing big budget disappointment. A tale of a young girls quest to rescue a friend from horrible experiments carried out by the Magesterium aided only by a gizmo that answers any question thrown at it in weird symbols, an armoured polar bear and Sam Elliot in a balloon. Interesting production design and reasonable performances don't raise this film much above mediocre, and it's nothing like as good as the source material deserves.
Balls of Fury. Well, you can read my full review for the gory details, but let's just say that this Enter The Dragon 'inspired' tale of Chris Walken's underground ping pong tournament simply doesn't provide enough laughs per minute to be worthy of your attention.
Bee Movie sees Jerry Seinfeld writing and voicing Barry the Bee's tale of life, love and legal action against Ray Liotta, the ruthless honey farming magnate. Who is this aimed at? We don't know. There's little in here that kids would traditionally enjoy, and there's not a great deal of anything more sophisticated for the adults. In the end, there's not a lot of anything, which given the basis of the telly show that brought Seinfeld to the dance is perhaps understandable, but not laudable.
Enchanted provides that rarest of things for anyone over twelve, a genuinely enjoyable family film. And from Disney! Must be time for the Rapture, I guess. A great lead performance and a strong ending ought to keep any family entertained as Disney proves it's not too stuffy to take a few jabs at itself.
I Am Legend. Already reviewed on the site, this briefly looks likes it's going to be an awesome film before some extraordinarily rotten CG makes it look completely laughable. Will Smith act far better than the materials deserve, and it's capable of being emotionally engauging however whoever decided pony CG zombies was the way forward to build tension neems to be launched out of a cannon.
Not a strong bunch then, but join us next time where we've got a few films lined up that we can talk more favourably about.