St. Vincent - review

Ain't them Bill Murray's Saints?

Bill Murray certainly qualifies, as he delivers one of his best performances since Lost In Translation outside of a Wes Anderson movie.

Vincent is a proper grumpy old man. Miserable, grouchy and unlikeable and Murray does of a great job of channeling the darker side of his humour to make audiences a bit standoffish with him to begin with before the cracks in his armour start to appear and we begin to understand why he is the way he is.

The trailer suggests a buddy comedy of sorts between Vincent and the young kid next door (especially due to the casting of McCarthy and O'Dowd in supporting roles) but it is a much more than that, at times sad and moving but perhaps more could have been done to embrace the darker elements of the script as it feels like some of this was watered down in the final edit.

There is laughter and tears and a Murray mint performance that was good but perhaps not good enough to qualify for sainthood.

3 stars

Cuban Fury - review

An extreme incident of bullying causes child salsa champion Bruce Garrett to pack it all in. 25 years later, a grown up, slovenly Bruce (Nick Frost) finds himself dusting off his Cuban heels in try and win the heart of his Salsa-loving boss Julia (Rashida Jones) but faces competition from office lothario Chris O'Dowd.

You can imagine this a sequel to Billy Elliot on the "what if..." he had listened to his dad and given up dancing and ended up working in a lathe manufacturing plant.

In his first real leading man role, Nick Frost goes Hot Fuzz to Hotstepper and to his credit does the majority of his fancy footwork himself and would do rather well on the next series of Strictly Come Dancing.

With many hours spent in the dance studio learning the steps, it would have been nice if as much time and effort had gone into the script as the character of Julia isn't really fleshed out beyond she's his boss, American and likes salsa. Plus there is sadly also a lack of real laughs which is surprising given Frost's involvement with most of them coming from O'Dowd doing his best 80's sleazeball douchebag impression.

There is no "Ten from Len" or even a "SEVEN!" for this comedy which has a good heart but sadly takes the odd misstep when it comes to laughs thus finding itself rather flat footed leaving us with a salsa that is sweet rather than spicy.

3 stars