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| Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette in a 'would be weepie' cancer drama, Miss You Already |
IT'S hard to make a cancer victim unsympathetic but boy do they pull it off in Miss You Already, a would be weepie in which, I’m sorry to say, the main character couldn’t die quickly enough for me.
Miss You Already
(12A, 112mins)
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Stars: Drew Barrymore, Toni Collette, Dominic Cooper, Paddy Considine
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke who made the first and best Twilight, the picture promises a lot. It stars the always lovely Drew Barrymore as a London-based American, Jess, and Toni Collette as her best friend Milly, a high flying PR professional married to a former rock star, Kit (Dominic Cooper).
The screenplay by actress Morwenna Banks attracted much buzz before production for its supposedly moving and hilarious portrait of a close female friendship rocked when one of the characters, Milly, learns she has terminal cancer on the same day her friend, Jess, discovers that she is pregnant.
My hopes were high - a British Beaches! - but whatever promise there was on paper has sadly not translated to the screen. In part this is because the story is meandering and unfocused - the point of it never entirely clear - but chiefly because the terminally ill Milly is such a terminal irritant.
Yes of course learning that you are not long for this world gives you license to behave badly but Milly is a charmless, self-pitying narcissist who ignores her children, cheats on her husband and is prone to public displays of boorishness and aggression, usually alcohol induced.
If her unappealing character and behaviour was the purpose of the story - prats can get cancer too - then that would be valid and interesting, if not great viewing, but we are supposed to find Milly winsome, outrageous and hilarious: a crazy free spirit who commandeers a black cab on a whim and drunkenly corrals her friend on a wild 200 mile taxi journey to Yorkshire in the middle of the night.
In other words, we are supposed to adore Milly as much as Jess adores her, her best friend since childhood. However, theirs is a friendship that is so incestuous it’s impossible for other people to get a look in - and that includes us the audience.
During the opening montage with accompanying voiceover (always an ominous sign of lazy filmmaking) we learn that the pair are so close they shared “sexual encounters” growing up - icky - and as the film continues you begin to wonder why they didn’t just marry each other.
Milly’s husband Kit barely gets a look in, a handsome stooge who provided the sperm for two children but otherwise appears to have nothing in common with his wife. Jess’s husband Jago (Paddy Considine), meanwhile, is literally his wife’s sperm donor - struggling for a baby the pair resort to IVF.
Once Jago has successfully fulfilled his task both Jess and the story have little need of him. A construction worker, he is dispatched to an oil rig for six months to pave the way for Jess to give birth beside the person she really loves - Milly, even if the latter is about to croak.
Despite their devotion to one another, the pair’s friendship isn’t touching. They spend most of their time laughing inanely at private jokes - hilarious for them, less so for us.
On the plus side, the picture doesn’t shy away from depicting the horrors of cancer treatment. Milly has breast cancer and undergoes gruelling chemotherapy before having a double mastectomy, the scars of which we see.
Yet it’s hard to shake off a feeling of manipulation and exploitation. What is the point of this story? It feels as if a horrible disease is being used to conjure tears where none our merited.
For a very effective and powerful cancer drama see The C Word which screened on BBC1 earlier this year, starring Sheridan Smith as real-life cancer sufferer Lisa Lynch. It was deeply moving, superbly acted and inspirational. Lisa was a delight. Milly, alas, is not.
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| Captive can’t decide whether or not to go “the full Christian” or simply be a taut thriller |
Captive
(12A, 97mins)
Director: Jerry Jameson
Stars: Kate Mara, David Oyelowo
Based on a true story with an evangelical subtext, Captive can’t decide whether or not to go “the full Christian” or simply be a taut thriller. The result is watery and ineffective, albeit elevated by strong performances.
Kate Mara plays a drug-abusing single mother, Ashley Smith, who has lost custody of her daughter to an aunt. David Oyelowo, who played Martin Luther King in Selma, is rapist Brian Nichols who goes on the run after shooting dead a judge and several others in a courthouse, shortly before facing sentencing.
While on the run, he takes Ashley hostage in her own home and over the course of several hours they open up to one another and find something of a spiritual connection. However, it’s never clear to what extent God really touched these characters, nor do you ever really fear for Ashley’s life. The result has a TV movie feel.
VERDICT: 2/5
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| Costner is at his most relaxed and appealing in McFarland |
McFarland
(PG, 129mins)
Director: Niki Caro
Stars: Kevin Costner, Maria Bello
Fans of Kevin Costner sports dramas are in for a minor treat with Macfarland. Made by Disney it’s the story of a reject college football coach, Jim White (Costner) who washes up in one off the poorest towns of America, McFarland in California, to teach at the local high school.
The unruly Hispanic pupils are no good at football but they can run fast and have grit and stamina from their back-breaking work picking vegetables on local farms. White transforms into a cross country running coach - with heartwarming results.
There are no great surprises here but the cultural backdrop - almost everyone in the town is Mexican - adds interest and Costner is at his most relaxed and appealing.
VERDICT: 3/5
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| Lessons In Love: One of the worst romantic comedies of all time |
Lessons In Love
(15, 99mins)
Director: Tom Vaughan
Stars: Pierce Brosnan, Salma Hayek, Jessica Alba
What has happened to Pierce Brosnan’s judgment? Post-Bond he enjoyed some notable successes and around the time of Mamma Mia looked set for a solid late career as a genial charmer.
However, after a number of duds he now stars in one of the worst romantic comedies of all time, Lessons In Love.
He plays a womanising English professor in Los Angeles who has a child with one of his students (Jessica Alba) but falls for her screechy sister (Salma Hayek). It’s just the kind of rubbish that is killing off the genre: boring, contrived and witless.
VERDICT: 1/5
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