Patrick - review

Patrick is a complete dog's dinner of a film.
A quintessentially "British" comedy which consists of around 1/3 of Beattie Edmondson's Sarah gurning and stomping her feet at how awful her life is; 1/3 laughing at Sarah's attempts to run and 1/3 Sarah shouting "Patrick!" and pug reaction shots where he tilts his head.
The story of a Bridget Jones-esque character having to deal with an unwanted dog, a new job, dysfunctional love life, etc, etc is so formulaic and predictable that if it was a Choose Your Own Adventure book, there would only be one option per page because every single audience member could correctly predict how the plot will unfold scene to scene.
Also the movie seems to be one 96 minute long infomercial for singer Amy McDonald's new album as the soundtrack consists of around nine of her songs which relate to the plot.
How to sum up the experience of watching Patrick? Pitiful, Unfunny, Ghastly, Lazy and Yawn-inducing. So that would be P, U, G, L, Y, you ain't go no alibi, you Pugly!

1 star

John Wick - review

John Wick is proper old-school filmmaking. The kind of movie that can be described and pitched in one sentence:

"Keanu Reeves kills everyone associated to the Russian gangster who murdered his dog".

Or even more succinctly, "Don't get on John's Wick"!

This is a throwback to the action movies of the 80's and if filmed back then, would probably have starred someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Steven Seagal.

Reeves is arguably an actor who, as Ronan Keating might put it, "says it best when he says nothing at all", and it works perfectly for the character for whom actions speaks louder than words and starts off as a man consumed by the loss of his wife and sees a glimmer of hope in the form of an adorable puppy called Daisy.

I can legitimately use the word "adorable" as I experience an entire audience at my Unlimited preview collectively "Awwww" when he stared at him with those puppy dog eyes... and the puppy stares back.

When Russian gangsters attack Wick, take his car and kill his dog, slowly but surely the real John Wick begins to emerge as he returns, step-by-step, kill-by-kill, into the world he left behind.

The movie takes it time with the slow reveal of exactly who Wick is and what he did... most of it revealed in a great monologue about the Bogeyman by one of the film's trump cards Michael Nyquist, who delivers a terrific deadpan comic performance as the gangster whose son unleashes the beast in Wick.

Directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch are former stuntmen who worked with Reeves on The Matrix and have crafted action scenes that utilise the skills he has learnt over the years ("I know Kung Fu") and have developed a new style of fighting involving weapons that could be deemed "Gun Fu".

The film, like its title character, is lean, mean and doesn't outstay its welcome.

At one point Wick remarks "People keep asking if I'm back and I haven't really had an answer, but yeah, I'm thinking I'm back."

Not only is Reeves back with a bang, but in a world that features so many great ideas like a hotel just for assassins with "house rules" and a cleaning company that specialises in the clean up of murders where everything is paid for in gold sovereigns, there is so much more to explore that I for one hope that John Wick is back for good.

5 stars

Pudsey: The Movie - review

2014 why do torture me so? Just when i think i have seen the worst film based on a character made famous on television in the form of Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie, Pudsey: The Movie comes along to take a massive cinematic dump on my ocular cavities which no pooper scooper can ever clean up.

This was not the hard-hitting biopic of how Pudsey the Bear lost an eye and became an activist for children but instead a movie spawned from the devilish mind of Simon Cowell seeking to inflict even more damage on our eyes and ears, because Jedward wasn't enough, this is clearly nothing more than a BGT cash cow (or dog) thus accounting for David Walliams as Pudsey.

Pudsey the dog won Britain's Got Talent by walking on his hind legs and performing quirky and charming dance routines with his trainer Ashleigh. It was their bond that made the act special and how the British public know him.

So imagine my surprise to find that in the movie Pudsey is a stray dog and trainer Ashleigh is reduced to nothing more than a screen credit!

Instead of going down the Step Up route where Ashleigh and Pudsey try out for a dance school, they have gone for a Babe-style movie featuring talking animals with the dodgy CGI moving mouths, which incidentally do nothing to distract from the fact that Pudsey has a massive underbite which makes him look more like Cujo than Uggie (who is referenced in a opening sequence that "spoofs" The Artist which is the closest this film ever get to an Oscar winner).

The film exposes Pudsey the dog to be a one trick pony and the trick wears thin very fast.

Much to my chagrin, Pudsey survived the opening montage set to a horrendous dance/techno theme song in which he ran into a Chinese restaurant in Soho (clearly the rumours aren't true) and I was forced to endure 80 more minutes of an experience even more awkward and uncomfortable than having a dog humping your leg and not having the decency to call you afterwards.

The film revolves around Pudsey going to live on a farm. Now in my head "going to live on a farm" is a story that parents told their children when a sick pet died or had to be put down, and this is one canine offspring that needed to be out of its misery to ease the pain and suffering of all involved.

The mutt's nuts? More like a complete dog's dinner.

1 star