The Popcorn Post: A Few Short Reviews [Seeking A Friend for the End of the World; I Give it a Year; Warm Bodies]

Seeking A Friend for the End of the World

I found Seeking A Friend for the End of the World to be an incredibly charming movie, as one would expect of a flick featuring the talents of Steve Carrell and Kiera Knightley. The film was quite refreshing in that it didn't really spend too much time attempting to suspend the disbelief around the whole concept of the world ending, and carried on in a "look, you're either with this all the way, or you might as well just turn it off now" sort of way. It was also quite nice to have an end-of-the-world movie that doesn't concentrate on overly-muscular males attempting to subvert the universe's impending doom, while everyone else runs around disobeying laws left, right, and centre because the consequences won't matter. At the heart of it, this movie depicts what the everyman would do at the end of the world.

As the end of the world is quite a delicate matter, this movie isn't exactly a laugh-a-minute humourfest, but does well to be eloquently charming at just the right times, complimenting the down-to-earth nature of the movie as a whole.

In essence, if you like an alternative look at things, and you're a bit of a sucker for a sob-story, I recommend Seeking A Friend for the End of the World. Kiera Knightley and Steve Carrell work well together, even if some of the writing does let them down at points, but the film is rather beautiful nonetheless.

7/10

I Give it a Year

I Give It A Year is just one of many wedding-themed rom-coms to have been churned out recently. Unfortunately [and, again, following the trend set by several movies of late], the movie is about as hilarious as taking seven punches to the face from Mike Tyson.

Worryingly, trailers and promotional materials describe the film as being the funniest British movie to be released in a long while - and if this is the case, it might be time for every single active comedy writer in Britain to go home and sit with the lights off to think about the sheer misery that they're creating. This would hopefully include Stephen Merchant, who reaches a whole new level of unfunny "annoyingness" with his appearances in this flick. In fact, none of the cast members shine in the movie, and most seem to be thoroughly forgettable [that's if you ever knew them in the first place].

Unfortunately, the actors aren't helped at all by the writing, which fails to entertain, and could only be described as "funny" by someone who has lived under a rock for the past decade. The lack of humour is not made up for by any discernible plot, and five minutes into the movie, you'll probably be able to guess the ending - and the producers would have done everyone a favour by condensing the 1 hour and 47 minute waste of film into just a 5 minute short.

I Give It A Year? I wouldn't give it 10 seconds.

2/10

Warm Bodies

As a result of relentless advertisement on the television, I figured I'd watch Warm Bodies, which appeared to be a zombie rom-com with a heart. The film features Nicholas Hoult [who you might just recognise from his roles in About A Boy and Skins, despite the thick layers of zombie make-up], and Theresa Palmer.

Hoult plays a zombie called R - who appears to be the only living-dead creature who has some sense of human emotion and love, who bonds with Julie [Theresa Palmer], despite being against eachother in the fierce battle between humans and the ex-humans.

Despite this rather [sickeningly] sweet premise, I found the movie to be slightly disappointing. Nicholas Hoult appeared to lack any sense of comic timing and discernible emotion within his long, dreary monologue at the start of the film, which is about as entertaining as chewing through a piece of cardboard. Unfortunately, other than John Malkovich [y'know... because he's JOHN MALKOVICH], the same can be said for most of the actors in the film. Despite some hints of writing promise, the talent doesn't particularly shine in this film, and most of the actors are quite forgettable.

Stick with the film, however, and after a while, you'll realise that the film is a zombie-echo of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet [if you didn't expect that after seeing "R" and "Julie", then you might want to just sit in silence and have a long, hard think about how you missed that], with many similar themes and occurrences between the two tales.

All in all, though, I suppose I wouldn't turn away from Warm Bodies if I was forced [or asked?] to watch it, but it won't be going on my "watch again" list.

5/10

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Book Review: One Day [+ A film too far?]

The Book Bit
It's not often that one can read a book that perfectly condenses life, warts-and-all, into 464 pages of paperback perfection. Most authors tend to capture a wonderfully two-dimensional perspective of life. It's either usually too happy, too sad, or too damn boring.
David Nicholls, however, has managed to flesh out the emotions to a tee, making the characters of his lengthy and emotionally dense tail an become immaculately believable in the mind's eye of any reader.
The main characters themselves are perfect representations of the genres that pertain to their gender: Dexter is a lad-lit author's dream, being higher class, rather attractive, and the boy-about-campus who doesn't mind a party or seven. Emma, in a strange yet fitting contrast has popped straight out of a chick-lit novel, with her staunch feminism, 'unconventional-cute-looks' and her permanent and unfailing strength to protest for something or other.
Strangely enough, these two opposite characters find themselves together in a hotel bed on St Swithin's Day, just after they've both graduated from Edinburgh University. While Emma has crushed on 'Dex' throughout the years at university, he is trying to plot an inconspicuous escape from the bed- but both are starry eyed and rather perplexed as to what lies ahead, with their vice chancellor ensuring them that the doors of opportunity are 'flung wide'. To Dexter Mayhew, thinking ahead too far forward in the future is terrifying, being one of those fashionable 'in-the-now' males.
As always, though, the heart-to-heart can't last forever, and we sadly see the pair go their separate ways- thought they vow to keep in contact. Dexter jets off around the world visiting far flung lands across the globe, and Emma keeps her feet on the ground in Britain, starting off by working for a community theatre company along with a closet racist and a definitely-not-closet exhibitionist. Both Dexter and Emma write to eachother furiously; staining pages with messages that tug on the heart-strings and convey that they like eachother just that little bit more than they're letting on. Dexter, too, rather surprisingly offers several poignant letters, showing magnificent care for Emma- though, of course, it could have been the exotic alcohol talking.
Throughout the book, where we see the pair's communications and meetings every St. Swithin's day. Dexter's career runs about as high as the emotions in the book, as he becomes a British television star. Emma's, however, sinks. After the community theatre stint, she ends up working in a cheap Mexican restaurant in North West London, and every day, slowly but surely, becomes another painful chore; serving customers several varieties of tortilla, and having to socialise with Ian Whitehead, a colleague and part time stand-up comedian who just can't find the off button on his 'humour'. Through this time, jealousy floods from the tale like a river flooding from a broken dam, almost to the point where the reader can taste it in their mouth. It seems as though, despite the main characters' blatant hankerings for each other, their paths will never cross in the same way again, as Emma gets involved with Ian, and Dexter gets involved with anything that moves and may have drugs.
Slowly but surely, as in real life, the characters change and adapt, and the emotions they create suddenly create a huge dark hole within the reader, matched only by the voraciously addictive nature of the book. At times, David Nicholls' bracing wordcraft creates massive moments of hunger, with the reader praying for the mental and romantic torture to end as he plays with the lives of Dexter and Emma, bringing them within touching distance of each other, but always, somehow, leaving them miles apart.
The book itself is incredibly well written, and as emotions run as high as the Alps and as thick as treacle, the plot compliments it perfectly, offering several twists that always leave the reader wanting more.
Rating: 9/10

The 'Popcorn Post' Bit
Assuming that you don't live under a rock, you'll probably know that One Day has been adapted into a movie. Living in London, it's hard to escape that fact, with a theatrical poster being cheaply applied to almost every bus in the capital.
For a book that was wonderfully expressive, and left high expectations in the mind's eye, the movie [or the trailer, at least] seems to be desperate and disappointing. While I am an Anne Hathaway fan, and am in awe of her various talents, her casting has been a big problem for me, and her 'Yorkshire' accent sounds like she took cut-price diction lessons from Kate Middleton.
In my mind, I would have preferred a home-grown, English cast to play the major roles, something that worked beautifully in an adaptation of another of Nicholls' books, 'Starter for Ten'.
It's safe to say that the film is a massive let-down, especially when compared to the most graphically pleasing media player in the world: the mind. Whether it ruins the reputation of the fabulous book, however, remains to be seen.

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Popcorn Post: The Ugly Truth? More Like An Ugly Movie.

So here we are. This years' "Men are from mars; women are from venus"- type movie is upon us. The setting for this film is the among wonderful glitz and glamour of the American TV Scene.

The male, sex-crazy, chauvinist character in this movie is played by the ever-increasingly-irksome Gerard Butler. Named Mike Chadway, he "anchors" [or to put it more accurately, just rabbits forever through what looks like a £4.99 digital camera from Argos] a show called "The Ugly Truth" on a small network channel.
TV Producer Abby Richter [Katherine Heigl] has a morning show that's struggling; and her bosses have threatened to axe the show because of its boring, watered down nature.

And hey presto [as if you didn't think this would happen], the sharp-talking chauvinist gets a slot on the morning show, against Richter's wishes, and the magic [or so it's meant to be] begins. Chadway proves an instant hit, but, sticking to her guns, our heroine doesn't have a word of it.

... Until Mike issues her an ultimatum.

Abby meets her new neighbour; a doctor named Colin [who first appears half naked in his first scene], who she takes a little more than a shining to. Mike [in his role as god of the male mind (and seeing as he thinks that all men think with their penises, it would be fair to think of him as the god of all c*cks)] makes a pact- if he gets her together with Colin, she has to respect him. But if he fails, he has to quit his job.

And as expected, it all goes to plan. Until the big switcharoo in the plot near the end...

As I may have previously mentioned in this review, Butler annoys me. In this movie, he tries to adopt an American accent to portray the TV presenter. Does he succeed? Not in the least. His accent isn't even the worst part- his portrayal of the chauvinist is completely horrible. With a character like this, a lot of humour is needed. The timing needs to be spot on, and the comedy needs to work, if the person isn't to be perceived as a complete and utter ar*e.
Props, though, to Katherine Heigl. She tries to cope as much as he can with Butler's 2D performance, and she lightens the movie up somewhat.

Craig Ferguson makes a cameo appearance in the movie. His scene is fraught with inaccuracy, unbelievability, and just general shoddy work [none of which is his fault, may I add]. But because this is a film review, and not a review comparing the REAL "Late Late Show" to staged versions of "The Late Late Shoe", I won't launch further into it.

To Summarise: The storyline sucks, the acting from the male lead is sickeningly horrible, the acting from the female lead tries [but fails] to prop the film up, and the film actually isn't that funny. To be quite honest, all there is eye-candy [Heigl's cleavage for the boys, and Butler's "rugged good looks" for the girls].
Not worth the celluloid it's printed on.

Rating: 4/10

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