THE HANGOVER II: gave me a thumping headache

Do you remember the incredibly positive word of mouth surrounding the release of 'The Hangover' in June 2009? The film raked in almost $45 million on its opening weekend and for a couple of months it was the must see movie. It seems like everyone who saw it loved it and told their friends to see it.
Ok, now fast forward two years and the eagerly anticipated release of THE HANGOVER II. The gang of overgrown adolescents we'd grown to love were back in a crazy new adventure. On the back of that excitement the film did double the box office business on its opening weekend, but where was the positive word of mouth? Where were the glowing reviews? The only people I remember talking up the film were the cast members on the promotional circuit.
No one else is gushing about THE HANGOVER II because it's a godawful, cynical, calculating, lazy and unfunny film. It is to 'The Hangover' what 'Blues Brothers 2000' is to 'The Blues Brothers.'
Working on the basis that if it was funny the first time it'll be just as funny the second time, director Todd Phillips and his 2 co-writers have simply extracted all of the elements that made the first film so entertaining and transplanted them into a new setting. Instead of Las Vegas, Nevada it's Bangkok, Thailand providing the backdrop for the eve of wedding misadventures of Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Zach Galifianakis).
I'm not trying to argue that part 2 is a carbon copy of the original because that might suggest some time and thought went into careful crafting an exact replica. Part 2 doesn't even aspire to those heights. It's nothing more than a tired retread of part 1. And the constant reference by the characters to events that happened in the original only serves to remind us how good the first film was compared to this soulless sequel.

LIMITLESS: meh!

LIMITLESS is the first time Bradley Cooper's had to carry a film on his own and he does ok. In fact, ok just about sums up this movie. Everything about it is alright.
I neither hated nor loved this thriller about a drug that can open up the unused 90% of the human brain, giving the taker an incredible advantage in almost every facet of life. I felt reasonably entertained but never fully engaged. Cooper's a likeable enough leading man but he couldn't get me to invest in his character.
It was a treat to see Robert de Niro doing more than simply going the motions in some overblown unfunny comedy (the whole Fockers franchise) or ill-advised drama ('Rightous Kill'), but overall LIMITLESS is the kind of film I can take or leave.
I didn't feel it cheated me out of 100 minutes of my life but I wouldn't have missed anything if I'd invested that time elsewhere.

ALL ABOUT STEVE: suffering for my ardour

Until this afternoon I've been so hot for Sandra Bullock I'd drive fifty miles to watch a silent movie of her ironing bedsheets. But having just sat through her latest movie ALL ABOUT STEVE I've downsized that maximum distance to ten feet (and she'd have to be ironing underwear).
ALL ABOUT STEVE seriously challenges "Miss Congeniality 2" for the title of worst Sandra Bullock film ever. This alleged rom-com is a witless, lame ragbag of slapdash cliches devoid of originality, humour or entertainment value.
Ms Bullock has built her career playing lovable klutzy outsiders who overcome all manner of (usually) self-induced adversities to triumph personally and professionally. In the best of these ("Two Weeks Notice", "Miss Congeniality") her social ineptness has been endearing and often adorable but here it's just plain disturbing. Her character, Mary Horowitz, is unintentionally borderline autistic. She's very intelligent but totally clueless when it comes to developing personal relationships or appreciating how her obsession with her job (she creates crosswords for a small Sacramento newspaper) appears to others. At one point she actually jots down her editor's advice to "be normal" as if that's the only way she's going to remember it.
When she develops a fixation with tv news channel cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper) after a disastrous blind date and starts following him across country from one assignment to the next the effect is scary. Mary (who constantly refers to herself in the third person) is more stalker than smitten, and completely unconvincing to boot. Bullock fails to imbue Mary with even an ounce of credibility as a character, settling instead for a weird mix of childlike innocence, demented schoolgirl and overage virgin. Imagine watching someone with no concept of the meaning of the phrase "to act" being instructed to act. To be fair to Ms Bullock her performance is no worse than the script or Phil Traill's direction, both of which tarnish the description pedestrian with their lazy and total lack of effort and imagination.
Rom-coms don't make any claim to be realistic nor do audiences expect the story that unfolds to be completely plausible or even likely. But it would be nice to be offered the possibility that it might happen. A token gesture in the direction of believability rarely harms an audience's ability to enjoy. For example, showing or perhaps simply suggesting that the CNN-style cable news channel Steve works for employs more than one cameraman and reporter rather than having him and egotistical journo Hartman Hughes (Thomas Haden Church) as the sole team dashing from one breaking story to the next across vast distances apparently at the speed of light.
As star and producer of ALL ABOUT STEVE my beloved Sandy has only herself to blame for this execrable mess. What was she thinking?! Was she thinking? If even there was an argument for installing a fast forward button in the arm of each cinema seat this film is it. It's ninety six minutes of my life that I'll never recover. Do her and yourself a huge favour and remember her as she was, and not what she's become.

THE HANGOVER shows Rogen and Ferrell how less is more

THE HANGOVER is the cinematic equivalent of one of those miracle cures for alcoholic overindulgence which promises to wipe away the painful consequences of last night's excesses.
It's the long overdue antidote to the surfeit of increasingly repetitive comedies focussing on the social and sexual ineptness and/or boorishness of twenty-something men to which the names Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow, Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd are customarily attached.
While many of the elements are reassuringly familiar, director Todd Phillips has succeeded in making them feel fresh and somehow different. His trick (although the word suggests some kind of stunt which this certainly isn't) is to treat his three lead actors as equals on screen. Where Ferrell and Rogen tend to hog the story and force the rest of the cast to play off of them, there's no such hierarchy in THE HANGOVER. The story is constructed as an ensemble piece which also allows Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis to take the lead in individual scenes without diminishing the importance of the other two.
Fired up by the promise implicit in the slogan "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas", nerdy dentist Stu (Helms), laid-back schoolteacher Phil (Cooper) and heavily bearded man-child Alan (Galifianakis) take off for Sin City with buddy Doug to celebrate his impending marriage. They're determined to give him an unforgettable final hurrah before he settles down to married life but when they awake amidst the wreckage of their hotel suite the following morning none of them can remember what happened. There's a crying baby in the closet, a tiger in the bathroom, Stu's lost a tooth and Doug is nowhere to be found. It's their efforts to discover what they did that night in the hope that it'll lead them to Doug which form the backbone of the story.
Along the way they encounter a hooker with a heart of gold, a lisping gay Chinese gangster and - most bizarrely - Mike Tyson playing himself and looking fat (although I wouldn't say that to his face). They're shot at, arrested, tasered, and beaten with baseball bats as they race around Vegas trying to reconstruct their movements. What makes this such an enjoyable experience is the way that each new piece they add to the puzzle doesn't make the picture any clearer but instead suggests several different scenarios.
While there's relatively few laugh-out-loud moments there's enough to keep a smile on your face and you definitely do not want to miss the photo sequence over the closing credits.