Clueless: Austen Revisited

Clueless is a coming of age comedy film directed by Amy Heckerling, loosely based on the Jane Austin novel Emma. The plot sees teen socialite Cher (Alicia Silverstone), Queen of her high school, take the new girl Thai (Brittney Murphy), under her wing.

I have heard a lot of people talk about this film for a while, it has a real strong cult following, so I decided to check it out for myself. I was naturally comparing it to the other adaption of Emma, the more recent adaption from this very year.

I found this to be the better of the more recent American Emma adaptions, it had that lively spirit and wit that I feel the 2020 version was lacking. I always enjoy when they modernise classic tales and give them a newer twist, like the Leo Romeo and Juliet film from a while back.

I thought that all of the characters felt warm and had a good amount of rootability, though Cher did nasty thing it never reached a point where I didn’t like her as a character, she never felt cold or mean spirited.

The one thing I would flag up is the icky main romance. They changed a lot of things from the classic story for this film so why they kept this in is beyond me. In the film Josh (Paul Rudd), is Cher’s stepbrother, to add to that he is in college (University for non-Americans) and Cher is in high school she is 16 years old, both of these factors make for a deeply troubling romance, that honestly shouldn’t happen.

Overall, a quirky fresh take on an old classic. The characters felt warm and the humour landed even if the odd nearly incestuous age inappropriate relationship didn’t.

Pros.

A fresh take

The humour

Fun rootable characters

Cons.

A few things were lost in translation

The main central romance was deeply troubling

3/5

Reviewed by Luke

A United Kingdom: One Of Africa’s Greatest Romance’s

A United Kingdom is a British biographical romance drama film directed by Amma Asante. The plot follows the real-life story of Sir Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo), and Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike) Khama, a king to be who defied the world and married a common English women. Their love was met with hate and strife at damn near every turn, but they kept fighting.

I think this film is a triumph, it was sweet, compelling, and also infuriating and a bit sickening at times. Film’s like this highlight how far as a society we have come, but also how much further we have to go.

I found the romance between Oyelowo and Pike to be entirely believable, they had a strong chemistry that carried throughout the film. Both actors gave incredibly good performance with Oyelowo’s maybe taking the cake. The part when he is speaking to his people and trying to convince them why he has brought an English woman to be there Queen and he has tears rolling down his face is nothing short of powerful.

My one complaint of the film would be that it has pacing issues, as is often the case with biographical film, I understand that it has a lot of history to tell as it doesn’t want to leave anything out, but it feels a lot longer than 111 minutes.

Overall, a strong film that you need to watch. The love on display is compelling and proves that if we are ever to overcome hate we must all embrace the love we have for each other.

Pros.

Believable chemistry

David Oyelowo

Rosamund Pike

Powerful and effecting

Cons.

It feels much longer than it actually is

4/5

Reviewed by Luke

The Broken Hearts Gallery: A Love Story For The Hoarders

The Broken Hearts Gallery is a romantic comedy film directed by Natalie Krinsky. The plot sees recently dumped Lucy (Geraldine Viswanathan), open up an art exhibit dedicated to all the items that people still have of their exes; post breakup. She hopes by doing this she can get some form of closure from her own breakup as well as help others find the same.

Forget Tenet, forget The New Mutants, this is the film cinemas need to get people to come back. There is something so communal about this film, it is something that we can all relate to, it is so personable that it is hard to not form some sort of attachment to it.

Yes, some of the lines are cringe (they name the film title in the dialogue multiples times), and they feel the need to throw in some hot topics here and there to prove that they’re trendy. However, in spite of these two things I found myself really getting into this film.

The comedy is strong, and it genuinely had me laughing quite a few times, I found Viswanathan to be a really likeable lead and easily the best thing about the film. The romantic chemistry between the leads is strong and believable and will drive you to finish the film to see how things end up.

Overall, this is just a warm feel good film, that is something I needed right now, and I am sure a lot of you reading this do too. It is not going to be the best film you’ll see all year, but it is a fun hour and a half and that is enough.

Pros.

The heart

The humour

Warm and wholesome

Very personable and relatable

Cons.

A few cringe lines throughout

4.5/5

Reviewed by Luke

Love, Guaranteed: A Quest Of Thirst

Love, Guaranteed is a romantic comedy film directed by Mark Stephen Johnson. The plot follows Nick (Damon Wayans Jr), a man who has been on over 1000 dates with the dating website Love, Guaranteed and is still yet to find ‘the one’. Enter Susan (Rachel Leigh Cooke), a lawyer who is in desperate need of a winning case, sparks fly and love blooms.

This film very much gets worse as time goes on, the characters become more and more unlikable and considering the fact that start off as poorly conceived cliches you can imagine how bad they are by the end. The message of the film seems to be oddly inconsistent and change on the fly. At one point the film is pushing that it is wrong to guarantee love, but by the end of the film it is fine to guarantee love because the baddies payed the main characters some money; the film is morally bankrupt.

Wayans Jr tries his best to inject some much-needed charism into this film, because god knows that Cooke is a wet blanket, but the poor script leaves him with little to work with. Everything about this film feels artificial and as though it has been made by comity, that is to say everything feels just a bit too safe and false.

Overall, this is a very by the numbers rom com, you can tell no real thought or effort was put into it. The romantic spark isn’t there and the characters and their dialogue is just awful.

Pros.

Wayans is trying

Cons.

It is on for too long

It feels low effort

The leads have no chemistry

The characters start off as cliches and quickly get worse

0.5/5

Reviewed by Luke

Bridesmaids: Melissa McCarthy Is Actually Funny, For Once

Bridesmaids is a comedy film directed by Paul Feig. The story follows Annie (Kristen Wiig), a woman whose life is coming apart at the seams, yet she handed the responsibility of being her best friend Lillian’s (Maya Rudolph) maid of honour. What follows is a struggle for power between Annie and Helen (Rose Byrne), Lillian’s new fancy friend who seems to upstage Annie at every turn, with the struggle between the two threatening to take over the whole wedding.

I have been meaning to watch this for some time, I enjoy the films of Paul Feig for the most part, with the exception of his Ghostbusters film, so I went in with high expectations. It does serve to be a more nuanced version of a gender swapped Hangover, which many accused it of being, and is probably the better of the two films.

I appreciated the comedy of this film it was far more subtle then I was expecting to be. When I saw the names of those involved with it, I was expecting gross out jokes and a lot of physical comedy, and though that is a part of the comedy profile of the film there are also a lot of smart jokes as well. In that regard Melissa McCarthy was actually bearable, not only that but she made me laugh.

Overall, this film showed off the talent of all involved except Byrne who it wasted badly, a strong comedy film and a mostly enjoyable watch.

Pros.

The comedy

Reigning in McCarthy and the others

Not relying on gross out gags and slapstick and having some actual well thought out smart jokes

Nailing the drama

Cons.

There is no reason that this film is on for two hours and ten minutes

4/5

Reviewed by Luke

Patrick The Pug: Choose Drugs Not Pugs

Patrick The Pug is a romantic comedy film directed by Mandie Fletcher. The plot sees young woman Sarah (Beattie Edmondson), become stuck with her grandmothers’ pug after she dies. At first Sarah hates the dog as it screws up her life in many ways, but then she learns to love it. Also there is some kind of Bridget Jones esque romantic comedy happening in the background.

So, this is very watchable but also very tame. The issue with it is that it doesn’t seem to know who it is aiming itself at. On the one hand it is playing up all the dumb humour with the dog, which by the end of the film seems to have supernatural powers, that clearly appeals to kids, but then it has all the romantic comedy stuff for grownups. So who is it for?

The humour is passable, and Edmondson is fine in the lead role, that is the thing, nothing is never bad or good with this film everything is just fine. I enjoyed seeing some other famous British faces filling out the cast, though for the most part they only had very small roles, but still somehow managed to out act Edmondson.

There is also a troubling underdone of a white saviour narrative here and there in it, with Sarah appearing to lead her non white students away from a life of crime, which has some not so stellar implications, but hey maybe that was just how I read it.

Overall, this is not good or bad just very meh, but watchable meh. A knock off Bridget Jones with a pug.

Pros.

It is very watchable’

It feels like comforting junk food

Cons.

It isn’t very funny

It feels too safe and as though it doesn’t know who it was made for

The racial undertones

2.5/5

Reviewed by Luke

Moonrise Kingdom: A Flood Is Coming

Moonrise Kingdom is a comedy drama film directed by Wes Anderson. The plot follows a pair of young kids who fall in love and decide to escape their restrictive homelives to be together, prompting a man hunt.

So, I have talked at great length about Anderson’s quirks in filmmaking in other reviews, so I won’t go too much into it here, only to say that this might be the best usage of them yet. They work in such a way that they make the film feel cheery, even though a lot of bleak things happen, it never feels depressing; it has a childlike sense of wonder and nativity that prevail throughout.

The kid’s actors were fine, that is big praise considering normally child acting ranges from terrible to god awful.

The two stars on the acting front are Edward Norton as the Scout Leader and Bruce Willis as the town’s sheriff/ policeman. Now, Norton’s character is very sweet and wholesome, and he is almost impossible not to root for, but also he is expectedly good. The real star on the acting front is Willis. This is because to most people it is clear that Willis stopped trying years ago, he mainly just does paycheck roles and straight to video stuff now, but this film proves that when he is trying he can still be great.

Overall, a very sweet tale of outsider love told in a way only Anderson can.

Pros.

The clear Anderson touch

Bruce Willis actually trying

The childlike wonder and optimism

The child actors aren’t terrible

The Jason Schwartzman cameo

Cons.

A little slow with the pacing, a bit of bloat

4.5/5

Reviewed by Luke

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Film Of A Generation

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World is a comedy action adventure romance film directed by Edgar Wright based on the comic of the same name by Bryan Lee O’ Malley. The plot follows Scott (Michael Cera), a young man who falls under the spell of Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), however in order for the two of them to be together he must defeat in battle her seven evil ex boyfriends.

So, the fact that this film was not a box office smash and universally beloved when it came out is nothing short of a crime. Over the course of the last ten years since it came out I must have watched it at least 10 times if not more. There is just something so pure and so joyful about this film that is really hard to capture in words, but I will give it a try.

Not only are the leads of this film terrific, but it also boasted a wide array of secondary characters and unlike other films, each of these feel like real people in their own right even if they only have a few minutes on screen. They are each given their moment to shine and shine they do.

The fights are madness incarnate, reminiscent of classic video games and thrilling through and through. Each of the seven evil ex’s feels memorable and Scott’s struggle to defeat them feels genuine. When he eventually gets the ending he deserves, (no spoilers here), it feels earned and is also a cheer worthy moment.

Overall, a modern classic that should have been recognised more for the sheer brilliance that it is.

Pros.

Having a great world

Incredibly likeable and compelling leads

Having well realised secondary characters

Incredibly memorable and quotable

Fun to watch

Cons.

None

5/5

Reviewed by Luke

Jexi: A Man Has Sex With A Phone, Need I Say More

Jexi is a comedy film directed by Jon Lucas and Scoot Moore. The plot sees loser Phil (Adam Devine), get a new phone that seems intent of making his life better. A bond forms between Phil and his new phone called Jexi (Rose Byrne), and the two have to navigate the difficulties of modern life together, and then Phil gets a girlfriend and all hell breaks loose.

So, high art this film is not, but damn is it funny. I had heard nothing but bad things going in so I was expecting the worst and was genuinely shocked when I was laughing almost from the get, if you view this film as a so bad it is good kind of film then you will enjoy it more for sure.

The writing is poor, but the film encourages you to not think about it and just watch a man have sex with his phone, try and get that image out of your head, part of the fun is the ridiculousness. The comedy works surprisingly well, and Byrne and Devine bounce off each other really well and have a great back and forth. Byrne especially is great; her mean girl style of humour really seems to be working in her favour.

Overall yes this film is trash, but it is also a hell of a lot of fun. I was laughing near constantly for an hour and a half; my one critique would be that the romantic stuff doesn’t work and feels deeply cringey.

Pros.

It is hilarious

Rose Byrne steals the show

Byrne and Devine have a great back and forth

It is bizarre

Cons.

Sometimes it is cringey and awkward

The writing is poor

4/5

Reviewed by Luke

Life After Beth: Whats Love Without A Bit Of Cannibalism?

Life After Beth is a horror comedy romance film directed by Jeff Baena. The plot follows Zach (Dane DeHaan), a young man who has just lost his girlfriend Beth (Aubrey Plaza), however, before Zach can spiral into grief he is reunited with his girlfriend: something is different, however. Beth is now a zombie.

So for many years this has been amongst my favourite romantic comedies, it is so wholesome and has so much to say. When first reunited Zach is so glad to have his girlfriend back, but as time goes on he starts to see it as more of a curse, it begs the question would you want more time with your dead loved one if they weren’t really the same person you knew anymore and were instead something darker.

Plaza is perfectly cast and Baena seems to know how to get the best out of her as the duo would team up years later for The Little Hours, she is great in that too. She is tragically hilarious and her and Zach are a cute horror couple. DeHaan is doing his usually brooding routine, but it fits the film, so it works.

Overall, the definition of a hidden gem, not many people know about this delight of a film if you’re one of them right your wrong. It also has a truly comedic awkward cameo from Anna Kendrick, what is not to like. Check it out!

Pros.

The romance

The horror elements and implied zombie apocalypse

The awkward comedy

The commentary

Cons.

It has a very pacing issues and some sections are weaker than others

3.5/5

Reviewed by Luke