ROB STOAKES REVIEWS - Shrek The Halls

Sponge Culture Reviews
Rob Stoakes Reviews

Shrek the Halls
2007
Gary Trousdale
DreamWorks

Prologue

Shrek the Halls, a televised movie involving Shrek trying to get the perfect Christmas. Running time? 27 minutes. Rating? PG, contains farting humour and one mild scary scene. Half the content? Trailers, including Madagascar 2 and Kung Fu Panda.

It’s not as if I have any great expectations, but by Yorbos this is bad! For the uninitiated, Shrek is a movie franchise which, for the first two films, focused on two things; reversing the tropes of fantasy fiction and fairy tales, making villains out of supposed heroes and vice versa, and mocking the over-commercialised state of children’s films such as Disney films of the time. While I personally didn’t enjoy Shrek or the sequel, I at least saw why they had become popular; it had a lot of farting, it constantly referenced pop culture that has since made the films incredibly dated, and that arsing great tit of a man Eddie Murphy was in it, who might be a perfectly nice man in real life but he isn’t making a very good case for himself, what with constantly trying to annoy me to death every time his dumb look lurches onto the screen as he warbles in that unbearable bizarre voice he has, kind of like Chris Tucker except that Tucker’s so fast talking and so high pitched it’s ironically likable whereas Murphy just makes me want to give him a vivisection with a nine iron...

Ok, I’m being very critical, but that’s what I am, a hateful, unimpressed king of misery, and I find it odd that Shrek started out mocking the overly commercial fantasy kids fiction and now is the most overly commercial of all of them, and it is RAMPAGING around the screen here. No need for more introductions. Let’s get jiggy with it.

Plot

So our plot begins, where else, in Shrek’s home swamp, where we see the answer to the question “What does the illegitimate offspring of Flubber and Alexei Sayle resemble?” himself as he sunbathes in his front yard. It’s a lovely sunny day, which is interrupted with the appearance of Donkey, the ultimate king of making-shit-pop-culture-references-to-things-that-wouldn’t-exist-in-this-fantasy-world. However, he doesn’t exercise his right to do so, instead opting to remind Shrek that it is exactly 159 days until Christmas. Cue the obligatory scene of the main character (in this case, Shrek) saying that he doesn’t care about Christmas, with sad music suggesting that this is the source of all his problems. Waa, waa, waa.

Quick detour – why is every damn modern Christmas film about somebody not liking Christmas and having to learn the true meaning of Christmas? What’s so fucking great about Christmas, a holiday in which we celebrate the plummet of civilised culture, the rise of commercialist selfishness and the birth of a stage magician who was only considered important because he claimed to be the son of an imaginary man in the sky ROFLMAO SATIRE LOL! This is why my favourite Christmas films of all time are Black Christmas and Gremlins. There’s no bullshit with them, just the true Christmas Spirit.

Cut to Autumn. Shrek is about to chop up some wood when Donkey gets in the way of the axe before Shrek chops down, shouting about Christmas. Shrek, startled, brings the axe down on Donkey’s head, killing him instantly. Although the charge was murder, Shrek managed to argue the case that it was an accident, and brings the charges down to Involuntary Manslaughter, and is released from prison ten years later. The End.

Ok, wishful thinking. No, DreamWorks wouldn’t dare kill off Donkey, that’d be an improvement to the series. Instead, Shrek throws the axe backwards despite already having the axe in the air before he was startled. In fact, his hands don’t actually move, it just flies backwards out of his hand as if he’s a fucking Jedi or something.

I’m not sure which is worse – Shrek looks as if he’s just been lobotomised, Donkey looks as if he wants to bum me and Puss looks as if he just HAS bummed me.

Donkey then suggests that Shrek gets some marshmallows for Christmas, because, and I quote ‘… because everybody knows that without marshmallows, sweet potatoes are nothing!’

To respond would be to qualify that retarded statement.

Cut to the day before Christmas Eve, and Donkey is still bothering Shrek, who hasn’t prepared for Christmas because he doesn’t know anything about it, and he doesn’t think his wife Fiona cares. Of course, immediately Fiona bursts out of the house for no reason to exclaim how excited she is for Christmas. Here’s another question; why didn’t she bring this up before now? It’s the 23rd, surely you would’ve asked Shrek is he’s decorated the house. Actually, you wouldn’t need to, just look around, but I digress. Also, Donkey refers to Fiona as Princess. In Shrek’s position, I’d fucking pile-drive Donkey into the ground. Flirting with married women in front of the husband is rude.

Anyway, Shrek rushes to a library to buy a book on how to make the perfect Christmas. Of course, he’s referred ‘Christmas for Idiots, a reference for the rest of us’ because nobody has ever made that joke before. Anyway, the world’s most annoying shop assistant gives him some advice, with her nasally voice and her talking speed as fast as a kangaroo on amphetamines that makes me want to KILL THAT BITCH ARGH!!! The advice mostly consists of ‘get a tree, decorate the house’ but most importantly ‘TELL A STORY’ because I remember being told a

Anyway, Shrek starts to decorate the house, using chunks of metal and bike wheels and all sorts of junk, to Donkey’s horror… ok, what the fuck is Donkey doing here? Does he just live in the house, he doesn’t seem to spend any time anywhere else. Fiona tells Donkey that Shrek and her just want a family Christmas, essentially politely telling him to go away and never come back, which of course means he will. Meanwhile, Shrek and Fiona have a montage of them getting everything ready for Christmas, with some shameful pop song over the top that makes me want to claw out my own eardrums.

That night, Shrek begins to tell his kids a story, but Donkey (ARRRGGGHHH!!!) comes in with every other fucking character in the entire series cramming into Shrek’s house, gate-crashing, replacing every one of Shrek’s possessions with Christmas iconography, kicking him out and making a mini disco. Shrek is unsurprisingly belligerent, and hides out in the toilet. Fiona goes to tell him to go back the house, and displays her complete lack of consideration of privacy by simply opening the door while Shrek’s taking a shit. JESUS CHRIST, WOMAN, WHERE ARE YOUR MANNERS?! A MAN’S TOILET IS HIS CASTLE, DON’T JUST BURST IN, YOU SKANK!

So, Shrek goes back to tell his children ‘The Night before Christmas’, so Donkey interrupts so he can boast about his display, and Puss decides to tell a story about a Spanish Santa Claws BECAUSE HE’S A CAT HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAA! And then every other character gets in on the act, including Gingerbread Man giving us that “mild scary scene” we were told about…

… ok, so it’s Gingerbread Man, now called Gingy to prove that there is a name stupider than Billy-Bob in the world, and some gingerbread woman called Susie in a car making out, classic monster movie set-up, replete with ‘Did you hear something?’ and big shadows. In fact, I’m getting flashbacks to the Thanksgiving trailer in Grindhouse. Then the monster is a giant Santa, oh what a shocker. He reaches down to the car, Gingy leaps out of the way of the hand, leaving Susie to die when… HOLY SHIT! SANTA JUST DECAPITATES HER WITH A SINGLE BITE, CRUNCH SOUND EFFECT AND EVERYTHING!

By the end of this, we could end up watching Black Christmas.

Finally, a film we can all enjoy.

By the way, can you believe that there is this much padding in a 27 minute feature? I can’t! This is padded relentlessly and unendingly, which is odd considering that the first three scenes where fitted into the space of a minute, and that spans over half a year, while now what should take about one minute has taken ten minutes! Please, somebody stab me to death!

So, suddenly, due to various objects being kicked around the room, Shrek ends up having his house set on fire, his trousers set on fire, getting soaked in cold water, blinded by various objects ramming into his eyes and having his dinner smashed up. He flips his shit, sending everyone out of the house, and suddenly everybody thinks he’s the bad guy for being a Scrooge! Even Fiona shouts at him! In fact, she leaves him! And rightfully so! Damn you, Shrek! They were your guests! All they did was to break into your house, wreck all your stuff, set everything in the house including you on fire, ruin dinner, nick some stuff and not say please or thank you! HUMBUG TO YOU, SHREK! HUMBUG!

So Shrek mopes about as we get that fucking annoying Halleluiah montage we get in every movie, except this time it’s done with a Christmas carol. We cut to see Fiona, Puss, Donkey and all the others walking through the snow asking themselves whether or not Shrek overreacted or not. Then Shrek comes along. Doubtless, he’s here to berate them once again and ask for his stuff back, demanding that they apologise for ruining his Christmas with his family and indeed destroying his house, right?

No, of course not, that’d make sense. In fact, Shrek, the Scottish dimwit he is, has convinced himself that he’s in the wrong and is here to apologise! Of course, it’s only halfway through the film, so we have to make him fuck up saying sorry by calling them annoying, moronic, accusing them of taking being kicked out of the house the wrong way… and yet, I still think he’s too soft on them. THEY BURNT HIS HOUSE TO THE GROUND! HE’S AN OGRE, HE SHOULD RIP OUT THEIR SPINAL COLUMNS FOR THIS INSOLENCE!!! And of course, Shrek reveals his dark secret – he’s never had a Christmas before!

GASP! WHAT HORRORS! NO WONDER HE’S SO MISERABLE!

Well, what a good job you did of introducing him to the holiday, Donkey, you vandalising moronic annoying bastard!

So, Shrek invites everyone back into his home like the cowering bitch he is. They actually have a fucking sleepover, and demand that Shrek tell them all a bedtime story. Logic dictates that Shrek would simply tell them to go fuck themselves, but we’ll go by the movie’s logic…

So, Shrek tells a special version of ‘The Night Before Christmas’ but with him as Santa, as he goes into a house, makes the decorations better (for ogres, at any rate, because the biggest joke in the Shrek universe is that Shrek uses disgusting things for household appliances, a joke that’s been around since The mother-effing Flintstones) and promptly leaves. The entire sequence takes exactly one minute, and then the short’s over...

WAIT, THAT’S IT?!

All this time, we’ve been building up Shrek’s version of ‘The Night Before Christmas’ being the apex on which this story has been leading to… and it’s lasts less than a minute? Donkey’s version was longer! What was the point of all that build up to something that I could fit into the footnotes of a page on ‘Where The Wild Things Are’?!

Pass the bucket. I need to puke.

Animation

So, the animation… well, it’s DreamWorks so it’s at least competent, often quite good. It certainly looks professional, though DreamWorks have a real problem bothering to innovate with their animation. However, it’s wrought with inconsistency and odd out-of-nowhere moments. I’ve already mentioned the axe flying backwards, but there’s a lot of other stuff. For example, nobody’s quite sure how lighting works in the world, with a tiny candle easily making up for a searchlight, but a roaring flame only managing to give out a tiny splutter of light. The three little pigs also occasionally swap hats for no reason, though you could put that down to them swapping places seeing as they’re so underdeveloped it doesn’t matter.

Can’t say much else, and I can’t think of anything funny to say about the animation… so onto the acting and characters.

Acting/Characters

So, as we previously established, all the characters are colossal morons, whether it’s consistent with the rest of the series or not. Shrek’s being quite out of character to be so nice to people in my opinion, and Donkey is still an absolute raging arsehole, a hot poker to my ring piece every time the fucking prick comes on screen with Eddie Murphy’s braying irritating gibe a whole new level of hell for me… but we already know this, so let’s get to the acting. Well, Mike Myers plays Shrek with a skill anybody would master after ten years of this, so at least he’s good, and Eddie Murphy is every bit the aching nutsack we’ve come to expect, so at least it’s mostly consistent. I forgot that Fiona was voiced by Cameron Diaz, however, seeing as in this she sounds like a two year girl, but that’s the only real complaint. A bland mix all around.

Final Word

Why does this exist?

Seriously, why does this exist? It’s not as if DreamWorks profited from it. Despite it being a Christmas special based off one of the biggest family-film-phenomena of all time, on the BBC, for family viewing, and it barely got six million views. The barely remembered surreal cartoon Willow the Wisp got ten million views a week without trying back in the 70’s, when viewing figures weren’t quite so high. And it’s not like it sold well on DVD, despite the frankly absurd price tag. It’s the same price as Metropolis, a film that is one million hours long, and Shrek the Halls isn’t even half an hour long, and this film doesn’t carry the Christmas message, or indeed any message. It just shamelessly promotes and celebrates both the idea that kids will buy anything and that mediocrity is easier to create than greatness, and both points are proven wrong. This feature isn’t just bad, it’s fucking boring too. Say what you like about the puss-ball that was Shrek 3, at least I could sit up watching it, and considering the TV figures this got, even children weren’t impressed.

Shrek the Halls? Suck my balls, more like.

Oh, come on, like anything in this was funnier! See you next year for more information on the agonising death of culture.

The Films of 2010 - Part 4

VAMPIRES SUCK

When you make a parody of Twilight, a good idea would be for it to be better than Twilight. That’s right, Twilight, I’ll repeat, TWILIGHT, the single worst smash culture phenomenon in decades, is better than this film. HOW DO YOU DO THAT?! WHAT KIND OF MORON ARE YOU?! Oh, wait, it’s Seltzerburg, the same chimps who made Scary Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie, now I see why. However, they are showing signs of improvement, believe it or not. There’s less reference to celebrities than in Epic Movie, Scary Movie and Disaster Movie, and they also manage to stick to what they’re parodying, as opposed to Epic Movie, which just parodied what came out eighteen months prior including Nacho fucking Libre of all things. That and the guy who plays as Robert Patterson is really funny, a deadpan brilliance that really understands what parody means, unlike the rest of the film which is a twitching gibbering mess that drools blood and is an experience akin to having your teeth removed with a sledgehammer.

Rating: **

LET ME IN

I think something’s wrong with the actress who played Hit-Girl. She can’t stop playing bonkers murdering machines. If you went back in time and told Hitchcock about Twilight, then asked him to make it, it would look something like Let Me In, except not nearly as funny. Let Me In, a remake of the Swedish 2008 film Let the Right One In, is a film that really gives you a loop, because it’s a romance film of all things, and is genuinely sweet… then the vampire girl leaps up and brains somebody against a wall. This is one bloody movie, with people getting burnt and butchered left right and centre. And it’s a Hammer film, meaning that despite the horrific imagery, you will be giggling the entire way through despite the fact that it’s desperate to scare you. Though the ending, if you get it, is truly horrifying. It’s also one of the most enjoyable films of the year; original, strikingly beautiful and a much better romance than Sex in the City 2 or Eat Pray Love could ever hope to be.

Rating: ********

RED

I think Red was the film The Expendables should’ve been more like and indeed wanted to be more like. Decent action all round, and the underrated Bruce Willis does a brilliant job as always, showing us that he’s just as good a comedy actor as he is an action star. However, he isn’t the funniest thing in this film. No, that would be Adam Malkovich as an insanely paranoid ex-CIA agent. Ok, so this film is on the clichéd side and the plot is rock stupid, but it doesn’t matter too much. This isn’t Bladerunner we’re talking about. If you just want a film you can sit down and put on at any time, you could do a lot worse than Red.

Rating: ******

WILD TARGET

An odd ordering, seeing as this came out a lot earlier in Britain, but I couldn’t remember when, so American release date it is. So, it’s a romantic comedic action film; is it as good as Scott Pilgrim? Pfffffft BAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA no, but again, like Red, it doesn’t have to be. It stars Bill Nighy as Bill Nighy, Ron Weasley as Ron Weasley and that woman on the poster as whatever she did in the film. The action’s pretty piss poor, but the focus is on the comedy which is at least good. In fact, two highlights are Martin Freeman who plays a smug and ruthless assassin with ridiculous teeth that nobody ever brings up, and Rupert Grint, who’s played Ron Weasley for so long it seems he’s turning into Ron Weasley and it’s working really well for him. In fact, this isn’t the only film he’s the highlight of…

Rating: *****

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1

Yes, Ron Weasley is the best thing in a Harry Potter film, I didn’t see that coming. Actually, something is new; he’s the only good thing about this film at all. I kid you not, this film is absolutely dreadful, and it doesn’t make sense. Ok, I’m not the world’s biggest Harry Potter fan, but I really liked last year’s Half Blood Prince, which is odd considering that it’s the worst book of the series by a mile. Deathly Hallows (the book) bored me, but not quite as much as this film, which couldn’t be more boring if it tried to be. In fact, watch the film. All the main cast are teenagers, two dudes and one chick, in a world of supernatural creatures, walking endlessly and talking about nothing for two and a half hours, often in the woods, and is adapted from an incredibly boring, grossly overrated and poorly written book. Where have I seen this before?

OH SNAP!

Yeah, bet you didn’t call that! Twilight, the series that always envied Harry Potter, is now being ripped off by the very series it ripped off in the first place! Harry Potter is taking inspiration from Twilight! WHY? WHY WOULD YOU DO ANYTHING AS STUPID AS THAT?! WHAT THE HELL’S WRONG WITH YOU?! HALF BLOOD PRINCE WAS A GREAT FILM, I KNOW YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU STUPID, INCOMPETANT BUFFOONS!!!

Oh, and it has one of the single most disgusting images of the year – Daniel Radcliff and Emma Watson, naked, slobbering all over each other, tongues and all, and they for some reason resemble fish people. Even fan-fiction writers would be appalled, and not just because it’s not Cedric Diggory that Harry goes to town on. Pass me the vomit bag.

Rating: **

So, that’s it. Here’s to another year of idiocy and incompetence on part of the entertainment industry. Dive for cover.

The Films of 2010 - Part 3

SORCEROR'S APPRENTICE

… which is more than I can say for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a film I’ve already given an in-depth analysis on this site. A standard plot with gaping plot-holes, acting ranging from the very good Alfred Molina to the dreadful Jay Baruchel to the boring Nicolas Cage, who has actually given a performance worse than his performance in The Wicker Man remake. You know, the one were he gets in a bear suit and runs around an island punching lesbians and is killed by bees? Unbelievable, right? The Sorcerer’s Apprentice sorely reminded me of Percy Jackson, though there actually are redeeming qualities, such as the aforementioned Alfred Molina and the action’s very good. Harmless enough to watch, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

Rating: *****

INCEPTION

Every single critic from St. Petersburg to Sydney lined up to give this film a massive blowjob, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s a mainstream action film, as mainstream as you can get, but still original. Leonardo Di Caprio actually gives one of his best performances ever, a long way from his perpetual whining in Titanic and Romeo + Juliet, and he’s not the only good actor in the film. The plot is as complex and winding as a series of grapevines stuck in a washing machine and demands your constant attention to keep up, but the ticking time-bomb urgency this film gives off ensures that. And I will admit it, it’s a really good film, but I kept getting the feeling that we’ve been here before, and I’ll tell you why; The Matrix. Love it or hate it, you have to admit that what The Matrix brought to the table was new and exciting, whereas Inception hints at originality and does really clever things nobody has thought of before with what The Matrix brought, but has nothing new to bring. Is it a rip-off? No, but it reminds me of a child who saw a big kid wearing a leather jacket, and wore one too to show off to his friends while claiming that he never saw the other guy. No sir. The Matrix what now? Never heard of it. Speaking of which, have you seen my story? It’s got people entering deep sleeps and going into artificial worlds were anyone can be the enemy…

Rating: *******

THE OTHER GUYS

Will Ferrell… poor Will Ferrell… doomed to try out role after role, and no matter what he does, he will never find one as good as Ron Burgundy. He got such a good combination of annoying but funny, while in everything else without exclusion he's such a giant prick. Pity him. Pity him and Mark Walberg, both given average roles to play in an average buddy cop film... well, besides the fact that most buddy cop films make me want to claw my eyes out while The Other Guys made me laugh, walk out the cinema and forget what I just saw. It’s alright, but we aren’t talking The Naked Gun here. The good news is we aren’t talking about Police Academy either. A perfectly good film on its own merits, but put up next to any other film, it quivers shamefully as if it’s a cold day in the locker room. A good effort, but not going to make anybody’s jaws drop.

Rating: ******

SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD

Another film that I made clear of my opinion, and I stick by them. I called Four Lions the funniest film this year, and it is, but Scott Pilgrim is still really funny, and it has the best action scenes in any film of this year to boot, and it’s just as deep if not deeper than Four Lions. It says a lot about the human condition, and is uproariously funny. It’s a film so good, it makes Michael Ceria look like a really good actor. That’s insane. That’s like making eating a brick look like eating lobster thermidor, its madness. Still outshined by Ellen Wong and Kieran Culkin, but hey, baby steps. (EDIT: I kid, Ceria’s a better actor than people let on, and at least he isn’t Seth GODDAMMIT I HATE YOU Rogan) Is it Edger Wright’s best… well, I’d be lying if I said it was better than either Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, but it’s still something he should be proud of. Best film of the year, and considering the competition from Kickass and Four Lions and the fact that Michael Ceria in a lead role, that’s amazing.

Rating: *********

THE EXPENDABLES

Oddly enough, this was the film that the entire internet decided was at war with Scott Pilgrim… why? Because they’re both action films? Yeah, but they’re different kinds of action films. The Expendables is supposed to be a great big homage to bad 80’s action flicks of the Stallone and Schwarzenegger flavour, and yet still be a gritty realistic and modern action film at the same time. Is it? No, of course not. It goes too far to the grim and gritty, and thus is kind of bland. It also tries to appeal to us by having Sylvester Stallone, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Mickey Rouke, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger all in the same film. That’s a big sell. The problem? BRUCE WILLIS AND ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER DON’T DO ANYTHING!!! They’re cameos, and even then they don’t do any kind of action. YOU FOOLS!

These are my only real gripes. It’s an alright film, but generic as hell, a forgettable piece of filmmaking that isn’t bad in any way, but just… eh. Stallone, Li, Statham, Rouke, Willis and Schwarzenegger are all in better stuff. And on another note; The Expendables - stupid name. Expendable means that you really can do without it. I'd call rifles that didn't fire bullets but air expendable, not action heroes.

Rating: *****

The Films of 2010 - Part 2

CLASH OF THE TITANS

Or to give it its full name; SHAKY CAM WOOP WOOP WOOOOOOOOOOO VWOOSH CLANG CLANG boring talk about how shit the gods are VROOOOOM CLASH CLASH SHATTER BONK! Not a very good film at all. The action’s very good, or it is if we could see it, rather than staring a rock going at fifteen miles per hours across our screen with a lens flare at sunset with the occasional glimpse of a bald man in a skirt. Also, Titans don’t clash in the film. Nor gods. It’s just guy versus ape man, guy versus scorpions, guy versus snake lady, end of film. And the Kraken is the biggest let down in movie history. He’s epic in scale, sure, and he looks fantastic, the build-up to his arrival is omnipresent and when he does arrive it takes ten minutes for us to see him emerge fully from the ocean…

… then one hit with a Medusa head, a quick stab of the sword and POOF, he’s gone. Suck. My. Balls.

Rating: ***

KICKASS

Or to give it’s full name; VROOOOOM CLASH SWEARING CLASH SHATTER BONK BONK GORE DEATH BLOOD SILLY ACCENTS BLOOD BOOBS BLOOD, but now we can actually see it. The comedy… eh. It’s hit and miss. When it’s good, it’s really funny. When it’s bad, it’s cringe-worthy. The story’s kind of contrived, but hey, superhero film. But the action. Oh boy, the action. One word: Hit-Girl. While the rest of the action is really good, managing to keep a fine balance between visceral bloody realism and charming inventive silliness, whenever Hit-Girl, the most foul mouthed and violent character in recent fiction (and she’s played by a twelve-year old girl to boot), the blood and profanities really start flying in the best action sequences since The Matrix, and where you’ll find most of the film’s best laughs. A must-see for Hit-Girl alone, and the rest of the film is great too.

Rating: ********

IRON MAN 2

Snore, snore, snore. I still can’t believe people like this film. I mean, what the fuck’s wrong with you, Marvel? Iron Man was a great film, a non-stop barrel of fun, but this? It’s a 2 and ¼ hour long action film with ten minutes of action, and even that is pathetic. And trying to make Tony Stark a dramatic and troubled character is insane. He has so much loot lying around it’s frankly insulting, has Scarlet Johansson as a secretary who has a tendancy to not button up her shirt all the way (if she IS wearing a shirt, rather than that cat suit which I'm convinced was painted on her), has several sentient robot suits that do shit for him, has a fucking awesome house and basically rolls over in the morning to find nine beautiful women wearing a smile and little else when he can’t bonk Johansson. So he has blood poisoning due to his battery-heart thing? So bloody what? Ever heard of blood transfusions? Heart transplants? Do these concepts not exist in this world of flying robo-suits? This isn't the fucking 50's when Iron Man was originally created, this is 2010, damn it! Sadly, this and the lack of action are what drag this film down, no matter what the good cast and interesting villains can do.

Rating: ****

FOUR LIONS

Chris Morris of Brass Eye fame presents his first ever film, and in true Morris tradition, it has one of the most offensive premises in the history of cinema; a wacky comedy about Jihad terrorism. However, also a Morris tradition, it’s about something more than it lets on. This film is about more than just terrorism. It presents the three sides in the debate of Islamic Extremism; the terrorists themselves, where even the smartest and most competent of the group is idiotic to the point of psychosis (ironically, the most real portrayal of actual terrorists in the media), the authorities, who have the best of intentions but go about stopping the terrorists with such ineptitude that they’re almost half the problem, and other Muslims, who refuse to intervene for the stupidest of reasons. Heavy stuff there, and it all feels real and has such a dramatic weight, but it never detracts from the humour, which is outlandishly cartoony and funnier than pretty much any film made this year.

Rating: *********

TOY STORY 3

Believe it or not, a few years ago, I thought that Pixar were losing their edge. Cars wasn’t great and, at first, I couldn’t stand Wall-E. In time it grew on me, but for a moment, I was really worried that Pixar was faltering. Then Up came out, and is easily one of their crowning achievements. Pixar were clearly listening, and came to the conclusion that making people sad makes a film good. Not a true statement, certainly, but Toy Story 3 seems determined to prove me wrong, with one of the most effecting villains to come out of the cinema in a long time and some truly nail-biting drama involving our beloved toys and a big steaming furnace. Not quite as heart-achingly beautiful as Up, but what Toy Story 3 doesn’t have in the drama department, it makes up for in action and humour. Another funny film, but the action’s the real selling point, the break-out scenes being the highlight of the film. A very worthy end to one of the best trilogies in film’s history, Toy Story 3 is something you must see; otherwise the Thought Police will burst into your house and shoot you in the kneecaps…

Rating: *******

The Films of 2010 - Part 1

SPONGE CULTURE PRESENTS
THE FILMS OF 2010

So, here’s one for you. Every single film I saw this year that was released in this year. Now, a quick few disclaimers. Firstly, due to the number of films I saw this year, I won’t be going into too much depth. Secondly, no I haven’t seen every film this year. I didn’t see such dross as Twilight; Eclipse or such masterpieces as Shutter Island. If your favourite or pet-peeve isn’t on this list, I didn’t see it so don’t say ‘How dare you don’t say X is the greatest movie ever!’ and, before you recommend stuff, consider that I might plan on seeing them. Thirdly, I’m writing this on December 1st. So, December films won’t be reviewed unless I see them before I’ve finished writing. That means no Tron Legacy, no Machete, no Unstoppable (unless as I said I end up seeing them). I’m probably doing another version of this in sexy video format, so by then I might have seen those films.

The list is going in order of release rather than quality. This is also one of the few reviews to have a ratings system. HE-AR IST ZA KEY, MEIN FURHER!

* - Would rather set fire to my pubes and disembowel myself than watch again.
** - Made me puke in shame.
*** - Better than being lynched, though not much better.
**** - Forgotten it even exists.
***** - Enjoyed it at the time, but can’t remember much of it
****** - Good film, though don’t expect the Promised Land
******* - Well above average or even good film. Buy it on DVD next year.
******** - Watch only once. Watching it twice could ruin your appetite for other, not as good films.
********* - Near perfect. Better than riding a T-Rex.

SHERLOCK HOLMES

Cheating here as it came out last year, but I saw it this year, so I’ll let it slide. Sherlock Holmes’s first outing in a very long time, and boy was it worth the wait. Ok, the plot’s ridiculous, the Rachel McAdams side-plot goes nowhere fast and the central mystery virtually non-existent and you aren’t given the clues necessary to work it out until the end, but the books were like that, and the two leads are worth the price alone. I wasn’t the only one to be cynical about Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law but they fit the roles beautifully and have a marvellous chemistry, the closest portrayal of either character yet. Coupled with great action, and you have one, dare I say, elementary ride AHH HA HA HA HA HA I’m clever.

Rating: *******

ARMOURED

Yes, I’m spelling it the British way. Go me. A kind of forgettable film. If you’ve ever seen any action film ever made, you’ve seen this. An interesting premise and a half-decent script doesn’t elevate this film above average scores, and the lacklustre action doesn’t help, but overall no big deal-breakers, and is better than sitting in at home bashing your head against a wall in sheer boredom.

Rating: *****

PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS; THE LIGHTNING THIEF


Thief is the word here. Thief of Harry Potter, of Lord of the Rings, of Eragon and indeed of any family film made since ever. The script, the set pieces, everything seems like what would happen if Harry Potter was from New York. Not to say this film brings nothing new to the table. It also brings terrible acting, a mess of a story, shitty effects and a complete disregard of the source material. Not a few changes made here and there, either, I mean EVERYTHING is different, and not just the stuff they changed for convinience such as 'Oh, the only actor we can find to play Grover is black, so we'll make him black' or 'Oh, we've ran out of money to create this great God-like special effect, we'll just make him look human but with some glowy stuff done in Photoshop', I mean stuff they didn't need to change but did anyway, to the point where the whole point of the original series is cast out; Percy is 16 instead of 10, the villain’s different, several major characters are nussubg, the plot’s changed completely and only one of the scenario’s from the book is used, and being a bad film, it’s the worst part of the book they kept intact. Thanks, Hollywood. And this is before you account for the film on its own merits. Worst film of the year, by a long, long way.

Rating: *

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Tim Burton doing what he loves to do the most; pretending to be Terry Gilliam. Attempting to make a dark sequel to the original Alice in Wonderland, Burton instead makes yet another tiresome love letter to his wife Helena Bonham Carter and his other wife Johnny Depp. While all the other characters range from tolerable to very good indeed, particularly a surprisingly complex Alice, they get shoved to the side by JOOOOOOHNY!!! DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPP!!! and OMG BOHNAM CARTER IS CER-RAAAAAZY LOL ROLF LMAO!!! That and boring action and a story that spasms like a dying horse add up to an ultimately yawn-some experience.

Rating: ***

HUBBLE 3D

It’s hard to talk about a documentary made to show off the 3D technology of IMAX, because, well, it’s a documentary made to show off the 3D technology of IMAX. Nothing more. Nothing less. And yet… I loved it. It’s a truly masterful work, and I honestly couldn’t imagine watching it in 2D. It’s a really good film, not really going to tell you a lot about the human psyche, but it will tell you that calming New Age music combined with space imagery flying very slowly in your face will entertain you for longer than you’d think.

Rating: *******

ROB STOAKES REVIEWS - Cats and Dogs

Sponge Culture Reviews
Rob Stoakes Reviews

Cats and Dogs
2001
Lawrence Guterman
Village Roadshow Pictures

Prologue

There are some ideas that are truly brilliant, in both the scientific and media world. The toaster, Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water, H.G. Well’s The Time Machine, eating meat, the wheel. However, many of them also bring up a big question. WHY DID NO ONE THINK OF THIS BEFORE?

I mean, 2001? THAT’S how long it took for someone to make a film about cats fighting dogs? I still don’t believe it, somebody MUST have done this kind of thing before. Toy Story wasn’t the first film about toys coming to life, so surely someone could’ve put two and two together and said ‘I’ve got the best idea for a kid’s film EVER!!!’ However, sometimes, when you have a unique idea, there’s a reason nobody’s thought of it before. I remember loving this film when I was a kid, but the thing is that it didn’t get a particularly good write up. Also, I remember really liking the little known Disney’s Action Game series, but besides A Bug’s Life they were horrible. So, am I just being a nostalgic weirdo, or is there really something in Cats and Dogs? Let us observe.

Plot

Our film opens with the montage of American suburbia you’ve seen in every single family film made in the nineties. It even has a jaunty combination of flutes and violas for the soundtrack. Jesus Christ, compared to this Vanilla Ice was black. So we start off with a crazed dog chasing a cat like mental. The chase is insanely cartoony, with dogs shaking their heads with that ‘walla walla walla walla’ sound effect, incredibly fake looking trees that bend if something the weight of a feather lands on it, fifties housewives with large apple pies and dogs smacking themselves on glass doors they thought were open before sliding down slowly. At the end of the chase scene, the bloodhound nearly gets the cat, before being kidnapped by a van with the license plate ‘CATZRUL’ on it. Hmm, I wonder if the director wants the dogs to win.

Now we are introduced to our first main character, a Shepard dog by the name of Butch, who goes into a hi-tech kennel that has technology James Bond would call unnecessary. He tells Dog Command that ‘Buddy’ has been catnapped. OH NO! What ever will we do without BUDDY!!! AAARRRGGGHHH! So, over the credits sequence we are narrated by the chief of Dog Command that Buddy was working on ‘the Brody case’ and though he is safe (how does he know?) he needs to be replaced as soon as possible, and that this is the work of a rogue feline cell (24, the domestic edition!). Apparently, the future of man and dog alike depends on ‘The Brody’s’ and, believe it or not, this scene is played with a completely straight face. Remember, the montage is of dogs swapping bones and getting onto planes. CATS AND DOGS! THE MOST DRAMATIC MOTION PICTURE OF THE DECADE!

In all fairness, I didn't take that film too seriously either


We then cut to meet our main character Lou, a Beagle played by Tobey Maguire of Spiderman fame. He dreams of freedom outside of the barn he lives in, desperate for adventure, and attempts to escape with a complete lack of success. He gets berated by his peers, which just goes to show that Tobey Maguire was playing Peter Parker before the Spiderman movies were even made. However, his peers are told to go with a large Doberman, who replaces them all with a crack unit of Doberman puppy agents. We then meet one of the Brody’s, played by Elizabeth Perkins, who adopts Lou over the others. UH OH! I SEE A HIJINKS A COMING!

So then we meet Scotty, Mrs Brody’s son, whose name suits a dog more than the actual dogs in this movie, but whatever. He’s not impressed by Lou, because Lou isn’t Buddy. Then we meet Mr Brody played by Jeff Goldblum AAARRRGGGHHH!!! MY EYES!!!

Ok, it’s easy to make Jeff Goldblum jokes so I’ll try to keep them to a minimum. He’s got an allergy to dogs that he is attempting to find a cure for. It’s an odd plot point, but hey, this is actually an interesting idea for research. It’s probably impossible, but hey, we could apply this kind of research to other allergies, like nuts or fish! This could save lives! We could even use the reverse! Topple oppressive dictatorships because they didn’t know that they couldn’t eat salmon! Annihilate armies by giving them allergies to peanuts and contaminating their water with peanuts! WE COULD DOMINATE THE WORLD! I COULD DOMINATE THE WORLD! I WOULD BE A GOD! I…

… I…

Oh yeah, the review.




It’s Dirty Harry!

So Scotty puts Lou out for a short while, and Lou sees a biscuit float down on a balloon, but Butch saves him from the explosion, as this was a trap. Butch starts babbling at Lou about his training and introducing him to his team, Peak the tech wizard, Sam a ninja sheepdog (stop laughing). However, Butch quickly realises that Lou hasn’t a clue as to what anyone is talking about, though it talks him longer than should’ve done, seeing as Lou often says ‘Sorry, but what is all this?’ I think Johnny English could’ve worked that out sooner than this moron.

Now we meet our villain, Mr Tinkles, Blofeld’s cat, who says nothing, does nothing, and really just walks about for five minutes until stopping. NEXT SCENE!

Actually, for that, we’ll have to wait for a while, because, like almost every movie I’ve reviewed so far, the plot just stops for fifteen minutes. Why is it that every single movie I watch has a beginning and an end but just forgets to have middle? The film suddenly becomes a series of random encounters in a fucking video game. You know when family movies in the early 2000’s would try to structure themselves by going ‘Beginning, nothing, action, nothing, nothing, action, nothing, action, ending’ or some variation of? It was to make video games easier to make. So, here’s a counter for boss battles throughout this movie, because there is a fight with ninja cats that doesn’t really have any purpose other than a boss battle.

BOSS BATTLE: 1

So Scotty goes to some football (or as Mrs Brody pronounces it “SOCK-errrr”) trials, and it’s revealed that he is absolutely shit at it. However, this allows Lou and Scotty bond, and we meet Ivy, an old flame of Butch who’s supposed to be a femme fatale, but whatever. Then we see Mr Tinkles, who is around for a minute to tell his servant to ‘send in the Russian’.

BOSS BATTLE: 2

A Russian Blue to be exact, a cute little kitten with a typical KGB voice who leaves me begging that he was voiced by Rudger Hueur. He wasn’t and he sounds nothing like him, but he should do. This guy manages to use fake dog poop concealed in a hairball to trick Mrs Brody into thinking that Lou shat on the carpet. I don’t believe that, though, it’s hard for me to swallow HONK HONK!

So, the lab door that contains the dog allergen is covered in plastic explosives that the Russian sets to explode. He then notices that Lou and Butch are in the house, and begins to rip the houses, and them, to shreds. However, the bomb is stopped, and the Russian is interrogated by Command with little success.

So, Lou and Scotty are bonding and playing football and generally having gun (kidnapping in 10, 9, 8…) when they accidentally go into Mr Brody’s lab, and their football smashes many glasses and spills all the juices into one another. Mr Brody’s comes back to find that the cure is completely ruined... or at least it should be, considering that the whole thing was completely smashed to pieces, but in fact, the cure now works. SCIENCE!

Mr Tinkles overhears that the cure is working, so he decides that now is the time for action. It is revealed that his comatose master is the CEO of a fake snow factory (bwuh?), and he uses his master to get into the factory, (with cats driving a limousine, no less. Why is this film taking itself seriously?) and fires all the employees, converting the building into his new base of operations. He then devises the next step of his plans, kidnapping the Brody’s and sending a ransom tape to Lou and Butch. The price for their release? The research! Gee, I wonder if he really will let them go.

So, once again, the plot stops for about ten minutes. We get five minutes of them wandering around Dog Headquarters and another ten of Lou and Butch going “We should save them.” “No we shouldn’t.” “Yes we should.” “No we shouldn’t.” Regardless of what anyone says, Lou takes the research to Mr Tinkles and, what a surprise, Lou gets swindled and beaten up. WELL WHAT A SURPRISE!!! It’s almost as if the evil cat owned by Ernst Blofeld was… LYING! Mr Tinkles reveals his plan, though, to inverse the formula and make everyone allergic to dogs. Hey, that’s my plan! It doesn’t matter, though, because Ivy has a tracking device on the limo.

OK, just one question… HOW IN THE NAME OF POSEIDON’S BEARD DID SHE GET THE TRACKING DEVICE ON THE LIMO?!?! SHE WAS BACK AT LOU’S HOUSE WHEN HE WENT TO RENDEZVOUS, SO DID SHE TELEPORT? DID THE LIMO PASS THE HOUSE?! WHAT HAPPENED?! TELL ME THE TRUTH!

So Mr Tinkles reveals to the Brody’s that he is a cat, and that his plan is to use mice to spread the allergen all over the world. He also tests his own formula on Scotty, making him allergic to dogs, before leaving them to die in a fire, along with his despised servant Calico.

However, his plan is thwarted by the dogs, and though he fights back…

BOSS BATTLE: 3

… he is defeated and dogs and humans are safe once again from the cat menace. Because apparently, all cats are scumbags! OWN A DOG AND ONLY A DOG! HATE CATS! BURN YOUR CATS!!! ARGH!!!

As you might guess, I’m a cat person.

Acting/Characters

So, the acting in this movie. Hmmm…

… give me a minute…

… huh.

It’s not bad, certainly. It’s just not good either. The actors play their parts adequately, with Alec Baldwin’s Butch being the typical jaded professional tasked with training naïve rookie Tobey Maguire, and they both do alright. Then there’s Scotty, and while not particularly brilliant, it’s good to see a kid in a family film who doesn’t act like the typical kid in a family film. He starts out kind of whiny but he keeps under control and only ever whines once or twice, he’s not very good at sport but doesn’t let it really bother him and he’s actually a half decent actor. Otherwise, pretty damn forgettable… besides Sean Hayes as Mr Tinkles, the villain, and this guy is AWESOME!!!

Sean Hayes is best known as Jack in Will and Grace, and his comedy roots shine through here. Despite the jokes themselves not being particularly funny (more on that later) this guy still had me in stitches, and yet still came across as a legitimate threat. I mean, ok, the plan was stupid, but he’s actually a good villain, smart, barely seen, mysterious, quite clearly insane and sadistic. By far his best moment is the ransom tape, because it’s bloody funny and yet still feels sends shivers down kid’s spines with his very real threat to kill the family if the research isn’t brought to him. One criticism, though – Blofeld’s voice, as in, he should’ve done a Blofeld impression. Come on, it was on a plate, Mr Hayes. Get on the ball!

Animation

Hurr hurr hurr, are you shitting me?

OK, so this was one of the earliest attempts to make convincingly real animation, and does it show or what! They apparently made the cats and dogs speak with three methods; just filming them, used for scenes were they would move realistically and you wouldn’t really see their mouths, puppets, for when they only had to move a small amount but unlike really cats or dogs, and CGI, for talking and crazy movement. And, well, it’s not seamless.

The puppets? Wibble wibble wabble wabble STIFF JERK sums it up nicely. And as for the CGI… well, they aren’t animated badly, but the humans in the original Toy Story were more convincing than these 3D models. The Looney Tunes in their live action films fitted in better than them. It’s animated well, and the models are incredibly detailed, but it’s the modelling that falls apart for this film. You can immediately tell the difference from a cat and a green ball on a stick.

Other Notes

So, the main two attractions of this film are comedy and action. The comedy can be summed up in a word. Crap. Besides Mr Tinkles’ dialogue, most of the jokes consist of dogs doing things dogs normally do, but repeatedly saying ‘make sure the humans don’t notice the bomb’. There’s also a tiresome collection of action movie tropes being enacted by animals, such as Matrix Bullet Time, pulling angry faces and ninja fighting. This film doesn’t quite understand the difference between parody and copying, a lesson that Seltzerburg seems to have also ignored in homage to this film.

Speaking of fighting, the action in this film is actually pretty good, which may sound strange after all the bashing I gave over the animation. The animation is very fluid, and this allows for some very creative fight scenes. A particular highpoint is the fight with the Russian Blue kitten, which is brilliant simply for the cathartic mess that ensues. Or even the CAThartic mess that ensues, HONK HONK HONK!

Oww.... my credibility

Final Word

So, this film has its ups and downs. It’s not incredibly funny but it’s got some really good action scenes, the heroes are one-dimensional but the villain is awesome. I could even recommend it for kids, and their parents should get a chuckle out of it. But the question that I wanted to answer was, did it hold up? Was it as good as I remember? Was it the glorious fleece of god that I did once worship?

In all honesty, no.

It wasn’t bad. I’ll give that. It is actually quite fun, but man was I disappointed. Maybe this is something just for children, but I was seemingly blinded. Maybe it was because there wasn’t anything like it at the time, where CGI was trying to fit in with live-action seamlessly, but it just falls short. Maybe it belonged in that time period that it inhabited. Vanilla Ice belonged to the early nineties. The Carry On Columbus film taught us all that we should keep Carry On films in the fifties to seventies and no later. Cats and Dogs is probably the best film I’ve reviewed so far, but it just doesn’t belong in the futuristic world of 2010 (or whenever you’re reading this). So what did they do?

They made a sequel, that’s what. Nine years later.

Silly silly film industry.

Nothing from me for the next two weeks. Apologies.

Let's Play Metroid Fusion; Part 2 - Duke Samus Forever

Ever thought that Metroid Other M would've been a lot better if Samus Aran had a Northern accent? Discover for yourself at the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARSUaiuNgYw

A Metroid/Duke Nukem crossover; yay or ney?

ROB STOAKES REVIEWS - Manos The Hands of Fate

Sponge Culture Reviews
Rob Stoakes Reviews

Manos – The Hands of Fate
1966
Harold P. Warren

Prologue

Here we are.

The ultimate.

The dead-end in the maze. The bottom of the barrel. What is widely considered to be the worst movie of all time. And I’m not talking about Eat Pray Love bad. Not simply bad. Not Transformers 2 bad. Not Ed Wood bad. Not even Uwe Boll bad. Not even awful, or wretched, or disgusting hideous. This is way worse. I’m talking about the complete opposite of any good film. It might not be a good idea for a reviewer to do the worst film of all time early in his career, but I’ll try. This is the end of the road. This is every critic’s worst nightmare. This is Manos – The Hands of Fate. No need to introduce it. If you are at all familiar with bad movies or B-movies, you have heard legend of Manos – The Hands of Fate. So, let’s dig in. I’m scared.

Plot

So, our film begins with a family of three, Michael (played by director, producer and writer Harold Warren, because it was such a good idea when Tommy Wasseau did it) his wife Margaret (Diane Mahree, who you have never heard of) and daughter Debbie (Jackey Neyman Jones, who not even Diane Mahree has ever heard of), in a car. They plan to go on holiday, so they set off and drive into the Texas sun…

… and drive…

… and drive…

… and drive…

… and fucking drive…

… wait, they’ve been stopped by a policeman! No, doesn’t matter, he lets them past… sigh… so they drive…

… and drive…

… and drive…

… and fucking drive…

… and drive…

… and drive…

… and AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!

This takes eight minutes and seven seconds, I fucking kept count. EIGHT MINUTES OF NOTHING!!! ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY NOTHING! NOT A WORD OF DIALOGUE! OR EXPOSITION! THIS ISN’T EVEN THE CREDITS SEQUENCE! NO WORDS COME UP! NOTHING HAPPENS! EVEN CARRY ON CAMPING GOT STUFF DONE! MORE STUFF HAPPENS IN A TWO MINUTE EXCERPT OF THE YUGIOH ANIME THAN THIS BORING, FESTERING WASTE OF CELLULOID!!! ARRRGGGHHHH! HELP! HELP! ABORT THE MISSION! THE GOGGLES, THEY DO NOTHING!!! NOTHING’S HAPPENING!!!! NOT EVEN THE PHRASE ‘MAKE IT STOP’ WILL WORK BECAUSE IT HASN’T EVEN STARTED!!! WHAT’S THE SAFETY WORD?!?! HELP!!! HELP!!! HEEEEEEEEEELLLPPP!!!

… well, at least the music’s nice.

So, Michael admits to Margaret that he’s lost, so they decide to ask for directions from a man standing at the doorway to a house. And here we are: the scene you’ve all been waiting for:

I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the master is away.

Now, I am dead certain I’ve seen him in an episode of Trigun at some point.

So the family asks Torgo where Valley Lodge is, when he says that there’s no place like that anywhere near. Then Michael realises that it’s getting dark (IN BROAD DAYLIGHT!!!) and asks Torgo if he can spend the night. His wife is, however, distressed, saying that she doesn’t like the look of the place and doesn’t want to stay there. Michael tells her to calm down, and that it will be only for one night, but she carries on insulting Torgo’s home RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM!!! As loud as she can, while he’s looking directly at her, and after he has told her that it’s getting dark and there’s nowhere to stay around here. Oddly enough, Torgo takes her side, saying that the master might not approve and that he doesn’t like kids or dogs (a dog which though the family says they have isn’t actually in shot or even heard in this scene). Sorry, I mean to say; “But the MAH-star will not app-PRUVE! He doesn’t LIKE kids and DOHGS!” Eventually, he caves in, allowing the family to spend just one night at his abode. This is after a whole minute of them just looking around awkwardly. Then Torgo goes to help get the luggage, which in of itself is worth this movie just to see how fake his limp is, and the fact that Michael is willing to let a quite clearly mentally unstable and physically disabled man get his luggage for him. “SLAVE! FETCH ME MY SUITCASE, YOU LEGLESS BASTARD!”

Once Michael and Margaret get inside, they notice the strange picture of the master. They talk about his disapproving looks (get used to the words ‘disapprove’ and ‘not approve’ because Torgo’s every other line is one of these two). Michael asks Torgo where the master is (after a dodgy cut, meaning that every stands around for a minute before going ‘OH SHIT WE’RE ON’ and I won’t mention it again because, once again, this happens in EVERY SINGLE SHOT) and Torgo says that the master is not on this world but he is with them everywhere they go. He also tells the wife that the master likes her when she gets nervous about the dog in the picture, to reassure her of her safety, but of course after implying that somebody’s dead before telling them that they like them doesn’t quite do it, and Margaret is so fucking jumpy that a wolf howling outside makes her flip her shit, despite the fact that it’s clearly far away and wolves aren’t exactly uncommon in Texas as far as I know. Mind you, it doesn’t really sound like a wolf, more like a camel in Age of Empires 2. Anyway, she DEMANDS that Michael get rid of it, and Michael’s a colossal moron, so of course he complies. Oh, and it’s dark now, despite only five minutes passing from midday to midnight. However, rather than chase the animal, he just stands at the door like a gormless idiot staring into the void! Then the family dog whose name doesn’t exist runs out to fight the camel-wolf-beast-that-we’ll-never-see. Fight music flares up dramatically while we look at a blank screen and hear some dogs barking. Truly, a battle of the fucking ages we have here.

Michael decides to save the dog, so he goes to the car and gets A BLOODY LUGER! Too late, though, for the dog’s been killed by the animal. Margaret immediately blames the FUCKING HOUSE THAT THEY ARE LIVING IN BECAUSE OF COURSE WHETHER OR NOT A WOLF CAN KILL A POODLE DEPENDS SOLELY ON YOUR GEOGRAPHY JESUS CHRIST THIS MOVIE SUCKS HELP! HELP! HEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!

So, the next morning, the family have a conversation in the living room about how they want to leave. Michael calls Torgo, who stumbles in like a drunk, and slurs ‘did you want me?’ Then Michael demands that Torgo puts the luggage back, and fast! Shouting at Torgo too! THE DUDE’S DISABLED! Sure, his limp is less convincing than the graphics for the original PlayStation, but if we’re going by movie logic Torgo is a cripple who can’t walk properly and Michael is clicking his fingers. GOD I HOPE YOU DIE IN A FIRE!

Hey everybody, it’s Jack Black!

So, now outside, it’s still night time (?) but the car won’t start. Not that we’d know, all I see is a black screen. Meanwhile, Torgo is talking to Margaret (after staring at her for ten seconds of no dialogue) and of course Margaret is still a massive bitch, telling Torgo that she’s had enough of this place when a) she’s only been inside for ten minutes and b) TORGO’S RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER! Torgo tells her that it wouldn’t be safe to leave now, because the master wants her for his wife. Margaret doesn’t react to this. At all. She just stands there like an idiot. I can imagine the actress just saying in her head ‘oh fucking hell what’s my line, what’s my line?’ Torgo tells her that the master can’t have her because he fancies her. OK, I mean, she’s not that hot, but in the desert you don’t really have much alternative. Margaret screams for Michael while STANDING COMPLETELY STILL! You know, you could just run away from Torgo. He’s not that fast, you know. You could just run. Torgo apologises, however, saying that he meant no harm. Wait, I mean “I meant no HARM, madam.” Margaret immediately bitches and moans, but finally says she won’t tell Michael if he protects her from the master. God I hate this woman. I want Torgo to win. He’s my favourite character now.

Michael and Margaret meet up again in the living room with Debbie (there being no other room in the house). Michael says that the car won’t start and he doesn’t know why. He asks Torgo if there’s a telephone. Guess what the reply is. “The MAH-star does NAHT app-PRUVE of such, devices.” So, finally they decide to stay for the night. Then Debbie goes missing (though considering how little we’ve seen of her, I’m sure she’s been gone for longer and they’ve only just noticed) So they try to look for her outside even though both doors to the house are bolted. This they emphasise REPEATEDLY! But, however, Debbie comes back, with a new dog! The dog from the portrait of the master, in fact. It’s about the size of Debbie, but Debbie’s quite clearly a strong lass seeing as she’s just holding it back with consummate ease. Also, her voice sounds like a grown man pretending to be a child. They go to where she found the dog, which is a tomb where a load of women have been tied up to large pillars and the master is lying down on a stone tablet. Debbie and Margaret lock themselves in a bedroom while Michael decides to ask Torgo what in blue blazes is going on. He doesn’t say it like that, though. He actually says “Torgo’s got some explaining to do” in the manner of a disapproving father in a bad US sitcom.

“Now, son, what did I tell you about having a crypt in the basement?”
TORGO LOOKS TO CAMERA SHEEPLESSLY AND SHRUGS SHOULDERS
“Who, me?”
CUE WILD LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Torgo goes down to the crypt and tells the master that Margaret is his, not the master’s, and that he has all the wives he needs. YOU TELL HIM TORGO! WOOH! GO TORGO! He then proceeds to plant his face into one of the dead tied up women’s hips…

… before perving on Margaret undressing. Then he attacks Michael, knocking him out and tying his body over a tree. GO TORGO GO! GET BACK AT THE MAN! FUCK YOU MICHAEL, THAT’S FOR COMMANDING THE DISABLED MAN AS YOUR PERSONAL SLAVE!

Back at the tomb, the master wakes up, and BAAAAAAAAAH HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!! God he looks stupid. With the pasty white face, Stalin moustache, and Fu Man Chu dress. He looks like Gomez from the Addam's Family during his years as a cardinal in the Vatican.

Then we cut to a policeman talking to a couple who were making out. This scene last for thirty seconds and is completely pointless.

So, the master prays to Manos, played in this motion picture by a marble bust of Ernst Blofeld. He brings his wives to life, and they unexpectedly teleport to around the fire and start gossiping as if they’re at their fucking book club. Seriously, this is the most unconvincing cult ever. They just start babbling to each other while the master looks confused. They then start arguing as to who should die and who should not. They all stop shouting, then the master shouts ‘SILENCE!’, then they start talking all over again (?). He leaves to kill Torgo (NOOOOO! NOT TORGO!) before the women start arguing over whether or not to kill the child. Then a fight starts, which as you might guess is a terrible fight. The fight music too is just funky jazz, making me think I’m watching a 1940s porno. This entire scene goes on for FIFTEEN MINUTES OF POINTLESS BICKERING!!!

Finally, the master confronts Torgo, who is asleep, so of course it takes two minutes alone for Torgo just to stand up. The master kindly waits for Torgo to get up before berating him, telling him that he has failed, and that he must die. The method of killing? Staring at him! OF COURSE! That’s all he does, just stares at him. Then he prays to Manos, telling him that the Hands of Fate will kill Torgo. Well, that was… anticlimactic.

Anyway, one of the women finds Michael and proceeds to kiss his unconscious body, before slapping him. Hey, woman, that’s one hell of a gear shift. This is before we see more shots of the bloody fight. With this, we see the master perving on Margaret. What’s so hot about Margaret if you’ve got a tomb full of women to satisfy you? Anyway, he runs back to the tomb to stop the fight, before telling them to sacrifice Torgo. They force him onto the sacrifice table, and… well, it’s kind of odd.

Michael breaks free from the ropes after waking up, going to save Margaret and Debbie, but the door’s locked and he refuses to shoot the doorknob with his Luger because, um, Superman wears his Speedos outside his costume. Back at the tomb, Torgo is killed by being rubbed on his chest and patted on the cheeks by some scantily clad women (well, it’s not really my thing but I’m sure it wouldn’t kill) before being exploded…

… no…

… not Torgo…

… why Torgo…

…WHY?

WHY, LORD, WHY?! MAKE IT NOT TRUE! NOT TORGO! ANYONE BUT HIM! PLEASE SPARE TORGO! HE WAS TOO YOUNG! HE WAS TOO BEAUTIFUL! I LOVED HIM AND YOU’VE KILLED HIM! YOU BASTARDS! YOU HEARTLESS BASTARDS! NOOOOO!!! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!

We must be strong for Torgo.

Michael gets to Margaret who, like a broken record, demands that she leaves. Lady, I think we’ve guessed that we might want to leave the crazy place with the tomb full of dead women and a dead man running around killing people. Speaking of which, the master is slapping one of the wives, a wife who was giving him lip for being an idiot and who oddly enough looks like Princess Diana. Meanwhile the family runs for it, with the master and his wives in hot pursuit. Then, get this, MARGARET WANTS TO GO BACK!!! AND THEY DO!!! IDIOTS! DIE, YOU IDIOTS!

The police show up suddenly (?) looking around talking about gunshots (though Michael hasn’t shot anything), and they stand around a bit. Once again, this is completely pointless.

Back at the house, Michael and family confront the master. Michael shoots the master ton, but the master looks stupidly at them as if he’s looking at something behind them. Cut to the next morning, when another family drives up to the house, after YET ANOTHER FIVE MINUTE DRIVING MONTAGE, before meeting Michael at the door of the house, who says ‘I am Michael. I take care of the place while the master is away.’ Well, what a cheerful ending. I still can’t believe I watched all of that.

Acting/Characters

The acting is, well… I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the master is away.

That pretty much sets the standard. It really is all as bad as that. Debbie especially. Neyman Jones is a terrible actor even by child actor standards. She makes Jake Lloyd look like Lawrence Olivier. And her voice is eerie and alien, a warbling incoherent moan like a walrus that’s got its nutsack caught in a revolving door. Nobody else is quite so bad, but it’s pretty damn repugnant. Oddly enough, the best actor is Harold P. Warren himself. He’s not good at all, but he’s not… well, he is bad, and I mean less emotive than a background extra in The Matrix but at least he’s not painful. Unlike the master’s ‘laugh’. It isn’t as convincing as saying ‘Ha ha ha ha ha ha’ because that’s what he actually does. He just stands like an idiot, rolls his head back and goes ‘Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha’ like a retarded four year old child in a school play, which oddly enough has the same production value as this film.

Other Notes

So you might have guessed that this isn’t a scary film, like, at all. While for horror films, this is usually the biggest possible problem it can have, but there’s another huge issue with this movie. Nothing is explained. Absolutely nothing is explained. While in horror stories rooted in reality not explaining stuff is pretty damn scary at times, such as Black Christmas and The Birds, ones that trespass into the world of the supernatural need to explain themselves to an extent. Because, in the end, what the fuck are The Hands of Fate anyway? The master says that they’ll kill Torgo, but in the end he does it himself. And just what is Manos? The master repeatedly prays to Manos and refers him as a god. Ok, so he’s the god of what? Come on, movie, tell us. TELL US! WHAT IS MANOS A GOD OF? WHY DOES HE NEED SACRIFICES? DOES HE ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING? WHY DOES THE MASTER HAVE SUPERNATURAL POWERS? DOES HE HAVE SUPERNATURAL POWERS? IT’S IMPLIED, WHAT WITH THE ENDING, BUT HOW DID HE MANAGE TO DO THAT? HE COULDN’T CONTROL ANYONE’S MIND BEFORE, SO WHY NOW? I THOUGHT AT THE BEGINNING THAT HE WAS MANOS, BUT HE ISN’T!!! WHY? WHY DOES HE NEED SOME MANY WIVES? WHY DOES HE NEED TO KILL MICHAEL? WHY DOESN’T HE KILL MICHAEL? SOMEBODY JUST TELL ME THE TRUTH!!!

Thanks to this film, I’ve taken up excessive drinking.

Final Word

Did you know that this film was the result of a bet?

Harold P. Warren was a fertiliser salesman who betted Stirling Silliphant, writer of screenplays such as The Towering Inferno, In the Heat of Night and The Poseidon Adventure, that he could make a successful horror film on a limited budget of $19,000. That should tell you how BAD this movie is when the writer, producer, director and lead actor sold horse shit for a living. And I refuse to believe that it cost $19,000. I know films are expensive, but I could re-shoot this film scene by scene on a budget of $50. It is horribly written, horribly shot, horribly acted and horribly edited. It’s about 67 minutes long, and I still can’t believe that I managed to sit through it. It’s atrocious, it’s ghastly, it’s…

… it’s…

… sigh. It’s an underrated film.

It’s not nearly as bad as it’s made out to be. Well, it is, but nowhere near to how boring people say it is. It’s actually one of the most entertaining films I’ve seen of all time. It’s now one of my favourites, due to just how ludicrously stupid and funny it is. I was in stitches, and I highly recommend this film to anyone who likes the fascinatingly awful and the terribly entertaining. Manos – The Hands of Fate; it gets my seal of approval. Sorry, I mean ‘the MAH-star will app-PRUVE!’

ROB STOAKES REVIEWS - Carry On Camping

Sponge Culture Reviews
Rob Stoakes Reviews

Carry On Camping
1969
Gerald Thomas
The Rank Organisation

Prologue

British humour. What exactly is ‘British Humour’? Humour that originates in Britain? Obviously, but British Humour is also used to describe a genre of comedy. Obscure jokes about dead composers? Well, name one joke from The Young Ones that entailed this, and Fraiser’s an American show and it doesn’t stop them. Silly and surreal humour? Well, yes, Monty Python and the Goon Show are British, but Spongebob Squarepants and Arrested Development aren’t. Simply funny? Well, the snobbier Brit will say that no other country has ever been funny and every British comedy is genius, but then you watch Carry On Camping.

For those without the knowledge of British cinema’s longest lasting cancer, the Carry On films were a series of low budget comedy films lasting from the mid 1950’s to the late 70’s, with 31 films in the series. As you can imagine, this isn’t exactly a series known not to fester but it had a fairly clever device to avoid such stagnation. Rather than have a series of films with the same actors playing the same characters, the actors would play different characters in different situations. This tied into the fact that the place they were filming, Pinewood Studios, were filming a lot of different films during this period, so they’d just use the same sets and make a parody. For example, Carry On Cleo was a parody of Cleopatra which came out around about the same time, and Carry On Screaming was a parody of hammer horror films, lather rinse repeat. First problem; the actors would always play the same actors anyway. Second problem; Carry On Camping was set in a muddy field. Why? Well, let’s find out. Or rather, we don’t and instead I don’t have to watch this horrible, stupid mess.

Plot

So our film opens with a load of nude women running around.

Yep, we’re in a Carry On film all right.

No, this is a film about nudist camps which everyone in the audience is disgusted by, which begs the question as to why they decided to see it. Well, Sid James’ character isn’t, also called Sid, therefore making my job of remembering his name easier. He’s gone with his girlfriend Joan, played by Joan Sims, and his friend Bernie, played by, guess who, a guy named Bernard. Bernard Bresslaw, to be precise, who oddly enough will go on to star in Hawk the Slayer and Krull. A strange transition. Bernie’s brought his own girlfriend Anthea, who will do nothing, say nothing, and basically be nothing in his film. So the four of them are arguing about the fact that Sid and Bernie are pervs and Joan and Nobody are prudes. THIS SCENE CONTRIBUTES SO MUCH!!!

Now we meet Peter, a portly gentleman who quite clearly wants to go to somewhere sunny for holiday, like Monte Carlo, only to see that his wife is packing a load of camping gear. He’s a meek and weak-willed tub, who is bullied by his domineering wife. This actually starts to be quite creepy, as if it were the moment in the horror film were the murderer snaps. When they’re talking about how a goat ate its way into Peter’s tent and shat on him, his wife laughs a torturous laugh that makes me beg for Scratch from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and mentions how they both had a good laugh, to which Peter says ‘Yes, you did, didn’t you.” In an insanely foreboding voice no less. And this isn’t the only time. He just is constantly about to snap, summon his unholy army and butcher the entire cast.

He also repeatedly talks about his day at work, lying to his oblivious wife. The film claims these are lies, with events involving strip clubs, opium, harems, but seeing as this is Satan we’re talking about, he’s obviously truthful in describing these hedonistic acts. His wife angers him with her insistence in going to a camp, so he tears up his Monte Carlo brochure, turns his wife into a goat and drains her of her blood.

Now we go to a camping shop, with Charles Hawtrey, the gawky glasses one, playing Charlie (surprise) a naïve first-time camper who wants to go camping but has never done it before. He is first seen in a tent with a young sexy shop assistant, and it’s quite clearly a misunderstanding, with jokes like “She was teaching me how to stick the pole up” being rampant, but all I can think of it Charles Hawtrey’s winky, which is as bad sights go is up there with an earthquake in New York, Margaret Thatcher in a cold shower and a day out in Hull. Sid and Bernie come in the shop, talking about how their girlfriends aren’t bonking them despite three months of dating (Sid, you look sixty, OF COURSE you aren’t getting bonked) and how they’ll take them to that nudist camp from earlier without telling them. Great idea! Because that’s how you win someone’s trust… lie to them, take them to a nudist camp and ask them to bonk you.

Now we cut to an all-girls school in the middle of a catfight between Barbara Windsor and some other bird, all wearing short skirts, before having an orgy with some builders.

Yep, we’re in a Carry On film all right.

This is inter-cut with the only two redeemable characters, even though they’re considered the stuffy kill-joys. The matron Miss Haggard, played by Hattie Jacques in the same damn role she always plays, and the always brilliant Kenneth Williams as, well, Kenneth Williams. A prudish, upper-class, incredibly gay yet incredibly straight at the same time and really not getting paid enough for this work. He and Miss Haggard have a genuinely funny scene, so of course it lasts less than a minute.

Then we cut to Satan and his wife setting off for the camping site on a tandem. Satan on a Tandem… that’s the name for an indie band if I’ve ever heard one.

Then we cut to Sid, Bernie, Joan and Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Review setting off for the camp as well. In the world’s smallest car…

Speaking of cars, Kenneth Williams, Miss Haggard and the girls of the school all go to the camp in the world’s largest bus. Well, it’s not a bus, more of an oil tanker. Barbara Windsor struts about in a swimsuit (?) much to the delight of Luke Skywalker.

The bawdiness is strong with you, but you are not a matron yet.

Now, I didn’t think that I’d ever compare a Carry On film to Little Mermaid 2, but like that sick, the plot just stops for the next forty five minutes. They all just try to get to the camp. Sid, Bernie, Joan and the Invisible Woman get there first, only to find out that it isn’t a nudist camp and that it’s just an expensive car park with more mud than Glastonbury Festival ran by a greedy farmer called A. Fiddler (because he’s who I want in charge of my money). The schoolgirls get there half an hour later with Charlie, stopping at a Youth Hostel for a few shenanigans, with Matron falling in love with Kenneth Williams who’s too busy repeatedly thwarting Luke Skywalker’s attempts to penetrate the ventilation shafts of any of the girls’ secret bases and use his Lightsabre to oh god now I’m doing it. They come just before Beelzebub and his wife, who were joined by Charlie, a character so inconsequential it’s actually funnier than any of his real jokes. Now we’re all here, something will happen, right?

No, this is a Carry On film, remember. This has to be less eventful than any given Final Fantasy fanfic. All that does happen is that Sid and Bernie try to get off with Babs (Barbara Windsor’s character, are you surprised she’s called ‘Babs’?) and her friend and the Prince of Darkness wanders around being irate. Anything of note happening? NO! NO NO NO NO NO! THIS IS SO BORING! THIS IS A SHIT FILM! HELP ME! HELP ME! AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

So all the girls go to a monastery at the ten minutes to go point, with Sid, Bernie, Joan and Doctor Mysterious joining them. However, one of the girls doesn’t go, who is charmed by Lucifer’s black magic into taking him back to her tent in a scene I guess was put in at the actor’s request. Meanwhile, Sid disguises himself as a monk to get with Babs, who tells him that at nights out they’ll get out for a bit of bonking. OUR PROTAGONIST! A LYING CHEATING SCUMBAG! I think I’ve worked out the inspiration for Aladdin. This is done while Belial goes back to his wife and Charlie, who has been sleeping in their tent since they got here, and he destroys them both in a grand pit, carving pentagrams on their foreheads and burning them at the feet of his new wench in a blood ritual of the grandest of scales. Then Matron tries to get it on with Kenneth Williams despite his desperate pleadings not to.

It wouldn’t be funny if it was the other way around, would it?

On a tangent here, but I’m really fed up of this joke, where a woman decides that a man is desperate to bonk her while he says no, because, well, I’ve seen it too many times. This is pulled in a lot of films, and is generally considered funny. BECAUSE SEX WITH ONE ADULT NOT CONSENTING BECOMES FUNNY WHEN IT’S A BLOKE WHO DOESN’T WANT IT! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! HAAAAA! HAAAAAA! HAAAAAAAAAAA! Seriously, how is this actually funny? I mean, it’s not exactly a situation you can pull a lot of jokes out of, and it’s not even timed well. It’s just bizarre and out of place. I can’t actually think of any situation it WOULD be funny. It’s part of a whole domineering-wife joke which has been done too many times to be amusing anymore, and this is just a slightly racier version of that, and because this is a Carry On film, we can’t do without raciness. Somebody name me an instance this hasn’t been a tired, clichéd and derivative joke.

And yes, the thing I find the most annoying about a comedic rape scene is that I’ve seen it too many times. I’m a cold dead robot with a heart of obsidian. Pity me.

So, with five minutes to go before the end of the film, the main plot begins. That’s right. FIVE MINUTES UNTIL THE END!!! It turns out all the girls have gone to a concert in the field next door, and the band the Flowerbuds (I’m serious) are causing a bit of a racket. Actually, it’s more because the crowd is full of hippies, and this is late sixties British forty somethings being angry at essentially nothing, and all this sequence does is make me wish I was at a concert right now. So all the campers drive them away, by attaching them all to a string and pulling them on a tractor…

… but the hippies have taken the girls with them. Oh no, whatever will we do without such developed and intricate characters? Kenneth Williams and Matron give chase, taking Baphomet’s tandem, but he fears not. He tells his wife; “We won’t need it in Monte Carlo. We’ll go on a ferry, with the camping gear, and dump it all over the side.’ His wife initially looks shocked, but then the devil gives her one look, and her mood changes. I would change my tune if confronted with the Antichrist. And Sid and Bernie admit to Joan and Miss Non-Existent 1969 that they were going to have a sexy party with the girls, and the punishment? They must have a sexy party with them instead! OF COURSE! IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE!

Acting/Characters

This is just about as close to being good as a Carry On film can be, because, in all fairness, everybody does an amazing job. Sid James is the Cockney pervert, Bernard Bresslaw is the big gullible idiot, Joan Sims is the disapproving eye-rolling nanny, Hattie James is the matron, Charles Hawtrey is meek and mild and Kenneth Williams is Kenneth Williams. And there’s a reason they’re so good at these parts. Do you want to know what that reason could possibly be? I’ll give you three guesses.

No.

Not that either.

That’s right. THEY’VE ALL PLAYED THESE CHARACTERS BEFORE!

Sid James isn’t a good Cockney pervert here. He’s ALWAYS a Cockney pervert. The entire cast is almost like an opposite to Timothy Dalton, because while Dalton stopped being Bond to avoid being type-cast, these guys have built their entire career on being typecast this film is SO STUPID!!! ARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!

Humour

What humour?

Well, have you ever seen a Carry On film? Congratulations are in order, for you can see into the future as to what this film classifies as humour. For those who haven’t, you are officially dead. However, if the picture below is any clue…

… get the main focus?

Yes, it’s double entendres, busty ladies, trombones going ‘waa, waa, waa waa waa, waa, waa’ whenever a teenager with a big bottom walks by and all things bawdy in general. American Pie based their humour on that entirely too, and they all (yes, all of them) suckled gonads, but at least they didn’t do it for 31 films. This is the 17th film, and, really, rather than being painful it’s just sad. While the not the festival of torture Carry On Dick was, this is clearly where the writers started running out of ideas, and considering how little ideas Carry On had normally, this is a damn poor attempt. Consider this fact; the most famous joke from this film is that Barbara Windsor’s bra flies off during a stretching exercise. I think they did something like that in Carry On Teacher, but the main difference is, of course, THAT FILM WASN’T SHIT!!!

Final Word

Whose idea was this?

I mean, why a camping holiday? Did we really need a film about Sid James going on a fucking holiday? How did this even get past the planning stages? THEY SHOULD’VE KILLED IT WHEN THEY HAD THE CHANCE! Even considering that this was a Carry On film, could somebody had noticed that nobody liked Carry On films at this point… and the worst thing is that this is considered the best of them. Because humanity is stupid. Seriously, it’s remembered because of one scene. ONE! SCENE! Would you like to guess? I mentioned it in the last paragraph. That’s right. Barbara Windsor getting her knockers out. Because who needs comedic timing, a plot that stays focused, clever writing and indeed a budget when you have breasts? I know the Internet didn’t exist before 1969, but there were the other Carry On films, and indeed real life women if you have half decent social skills, and they didn’t have Barbara Windsor’s bizarre laugh.

This isn’t quite when the series went downhill, I would say. The series was tumbling in a downward spiral long before this film was made. I’d more say this was the point of no return. This is the capstone to the mess that was Carry On films, a last pitiable spasm of a dying horse, and to be honest watching said horse die slowly, pathetically, is beyond more entertaining than this film. So this week, go out and kill a horse and watch it die. THE END OF THE REVIEW! GO HOME!