Why Him? ****
Obvious in its story direction – totally predictable in fact. The skill is how well it gets there and produces ample belly laughs to really enjoy along the way. For Cranston fans, it shows this great actor’s chameleon acting skills.
Tag: Judd Apatow
Sausage Party ***
Goes off with a saucy sizzle and an outrageous bang but wilts at times along the way. If it wasn’t for the grand gang-bang finale boost, it would be a meaty disappointment left undercooked in places.
The Five-Year Engagement **
Where do you go after showing all your naked glory in Forgetting Sarah Marshall? For Jason Segel, fresh from The Muppets, you head back to familiar Apatow territory to play the big, misunderstood softie in need of some good lovin’. Although The Five-Year Engagement isn’t as clichéd as some rom-coms, it still suffers from some …
30 Minutes Or Less ***
After Zombieland, director Ruben Fleischer was always going to have big boots to fill with his next film. He remains very much in the same comedy adventure genre, only taps into the Apatow school of idiocy with puerile, often chauvinistic man-child humour. The redeemable feature, however, is Fleischer doesn’t dwell too long on the visual …
Horrible Bosses ****
We’ve all had one. They come in all shapes and sizes. Their mission, it seems, is to make our working lives a living nightmare. So it’s understandable that Michael Markowitz’s story, Horrible Bosses, brings a gleeful curiosity as to how other helpless souls deal with their own private workplace horror. Director Seth Gordon’s cast of …
No Strings Attached – 3*
After playing such an intense and psychologically disturbed young woman in Black Swan, Oscar nominee Natalie Portman deserves a bit of light relief, and Ivan Reitman’s No Strings Attached offers just that – for both actor and viewer alike. Instantly, it has critics convulsing at the very thought of ‘yet another romcom’, and even more …
Life As We Know It – 3*
Not to be confused with the 2005 teen angst series full of hormonally-charged monologues, this is a new comedy from Green Lantern writer/producer Greg Berlanti who cut his directing teeth back on little known romcom, The Broken Hearts Club: A Romance Comedy, over ten years ago. Berlanti has since had ample practice lifting relationships off …