Ani-MAY-tion: Cars 2 (2011)

While I was pleasantly surprised by my recent, long overdue, viewing of Cars, I knew that I shouldn’t get my expectations too high for either of the sequels. Although I have forgotten the full conversation, I remember hearing that one was dire and one was a pleasant surprise. I hope the third Cars movie is a pleasant surprise, because this one wasn’t very good.

When Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) rises to the challenge of racing Francesco Bernoulli (John Turturro) he ends up unwittingly amidst a scheme that could lead to the death of many cars. It’s all to do with selling fuel, but a couple of secret agents (voiced by Michael Caine and Emily Mortimer) are on the case. Unfortunately, a misunderstanding leads to them thinking that Mater (Larry The Cable Guy) is working alongside them. There are chases, there are death traps, and there are many moments that have Mater defying the odds to make progress in his “mission”.

While I understand the need to avoid a complete replay of the first movie, Cars feels like a movie series with a limited number of plot options. And, let’s face it, many successful franchises have managed to repeat a formula over and over again, with minor tweaks, including a certain other huge Pixar title. Kids are especially pleased by repetition, which makes the road taken here (no pun intended) all the more bizarre.

Writer Ben Queen does what he can with the premise, presenting a kid-friendly James Bond adventure with Mater being the accidental hero of the piece, but he ends up delivering something incredibly weak. The main lesson feels overwhelmed by the secret agent shenanigans, and the secret agent shenanigans pale in comparison to almost any other film in this vein that you can think of. It doesn’t help that co-directors John Lasseter and Bradford Lewis don’t seem to have any interest in elevating the material, relying on the voice cast to make up for the many weaker elements.

That would be okay if the voice cast was better, but it’s not great. Caine and Mortimer ARE great, but they are absolute highlights here. Wilson is fine, but sidelined in favour of everything else going on, Turturro is equally undone by his relatively limited dialogue (he is fun when he gets time to chatter away), and the likes of Eddie Izzard, Joe Mantegna and others are wasted in supporting roles that don’t give them enough to do. The person who gets to do plenty is Larry The Cable Guy, who is enjoyable enough as Mater, but also quite an acquired taste (although there’s a chance that younger viewers will just lap up everything he says and does).

I didn’t absolutely hate this, mainly thanks to the slick visuals and a couple of small gags that made me chuckle, but it was very disappointing. Am I wrong for wanting another plot that saw Lightning McQueen having to learn some new tactics for a different kind of racing? Probably. Could that have been better than this bit of silliness though? Probably. It gets bonus points for the casting of Caine though, who is the best thing about it.

4/10

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Doctor Jekyll (2023)

Okay, I am going to start this review with a note. I will always strive to refer to people by their preferred names and pronouns. It's not being "woke", contrary to vocal idiots who keep crying about it. It's offering the basic level of politeness that we automatically tend to offer to anyone while not obsessing about what toilet facilities they want to use. With that in mind, Eddie Izzard is credited here as Eddie Izzard, and I'll be referring to them as such here.

A reworking of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson tale, Doctor Jekyll played well to horror film festival audiences last year, with many singling out the performance from Izzard as being well worth your time. I was eager for this to hit the VOD market, and made time for it this week when I was able to purchase a digital copy of it. I'm happy to have given it my support, but I am a bit surprised by those who heaped so much praise on it, suspecting this may be another case of the festival bump that can often occur when watching a new film with a like-minded group of genre fans (something I am sure I have been guilty of myself). Or maybe it was also helped by the love for the Hammer Studios name, who are behind the distribution of it here in the UK.

Scott Chambers plays Rob, a young man trying to get his life back together after serving some time in prison. He ends up being given a job caring for the enigmatic Doctor Nina Jekyll (Izzard). Doctor Jekyll seems to like Rob, keen to give him a chance even while her assistant, Sandra (Lindsay Duncan), just seems to want rid of him. As we all know, but our lead character here crucially doesn't, you tend to have a Hyde wherever you have a Jekyll. This particular Hyde (Rachel Hyde) has a plan, and Rob is an unwittingly vital part of it.

Written by Dan Kelly-Mulhern, his first and only credit so far, this is a decent reworking of the text that feels majorly boosted by the canny use of Izzard in the titular role. The thematic strands being explored, and tied together into a strong narrative rope, feel both timely and well worth including to modernise and rework the timeless tale of terror. Director Joe Stephenson isn't a complete newcomer, having previously worked on a number of TV shows and a previous film, Chicken, where he also worked with both Chambers and Morgan Watkins (who plays Rob's brother, Ewan), and he handles things here very well, keeping the focus on the performances without making it all feel hampered by the fairly limited locations and small cast.

I cannot overstate how great Izzard is in the lead role here, a casting coup so inspired that it makes it impossible to imagine the film without their presence. They weave between light and darkness in ways that anyone familiar with the tale should expect, and their eloquence and verbosity perfectly matches the way that the bifurcated character is written. It's a shame that Chambers, so good in the aforementioned Chicken, cannot come close to matching Izzard. His character seems a bit too resigned to failure in the first half of the movie, but then becomes far too easygoing and unguarded in time for the third act to play out. Watkins is fine in his role, Duncan is enjoyable for her limited amount of screentime, and Robyn Cara plays a figure from Rob's past who may end up jeopardising the job that he needs to keep hold of. Oh, there's also a cameo from Simon Callow, who is used well for his fleeting appearance.

This is very good stuff, although it's never as intriguing or transgressive as it could have been. It's messy, especially when it falls apart during the final scenes, but it's full of elements to admire, from the characterisations to the commentary on "big pharma", and recommended to those after something that nicely blends the familiar with a sprinkling of modern freshness.

7/10

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Prime Time: Get Duked! (2019)

Get Duked! enjoyed a good festival run last year, if my memory serves me right, but I didn't catch it. It was then titled Boyz In The Wood (which I think is a better title) and I just didn't fit it into my schedule when it was a potential viewing choice back then. I'm glad I finally got to it now though.

Rian Gordon, Lewis Gribben, and Viraj Juneja are, respectively, Dean, Duncan, and legend-in-his-own-lunchtime DJ Beatroot. They're all in a bit of trouble, which leads to them being signed up to the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme. They'll be dropped into an area of Scottish countryside and left to make their own way to a pre-determined point, with a number of factors being rated during their experience. One of those factors is teamwork, which looks a lot less likely when they're joined by Ian (Samuel Bottomley), an eager young man who actually volunteered for the scheme. In fact, getting to their destination at all starts to look very unlikely when the teens start to be hunted by a gun-toting "duke" (Eddie Izzard) and his wife (Georgie Glen).

Written and directed by Ninian Doff, Get Duked! is a fantastic feature debut from someone I'll now be eager to see more from. Doff has built up a decent selection of music videos in his filmography, having worked with the likes of The Chemical Brothers, Kasabian, Miike Snow, and Run The Jewels, and he delivers a film that crackles with energy, genuinely great humour, a smattering of hip-hop, and class warfare.

Funnily enough, as light and disposable as the film may seem, in some ways, it's that last element that separates this from many other riffs on The Most Dangerous Game. The people doing the hunting here are the ones we have seen in the news more and more lately, usually for all the wrong reasons. People that have everything they want, take whatever else they fancy, and don't think the rules apply to them. They're not breaking the law. They're helping to maintain a natural order.

The script is sharp and witty (there's a monologue here from a scene-stealing Alice Lowe, talking about a bread thief, that is one of the funniest things I have enjoyed in years), the soundtrack is very enjoyable, and the very end scenes bring everything together in a way that is both ridiculous and yet also absolutely satisfying, and bound to make you smile.

It also helps that every single cast member is doing top work. The young leads are about as perfect as you could want them to be. Gordon and Gribben are very standard . . . idiots (certainly in how quick they are to just try whatever idea first comes into their heads), Juneja keeps having an opinion of himself that doesn't seem in line with his rapping abilities, until he discovers an unlikely fan base, and Bottomley is the kind of young man you just know has a favourite Thermos flask. Izzard and Glen are suitably menacing as they stalk their prey, more so in the way they really don't seem to try and hide their homicidal intent, and Jonathan Aris is the teacher responsible for dropping the teens off and leaving them to their own devices. You also get some Highland police officers (the two main ones played by Kate Dickie and Kevin Guthrie), their quest for the aforementioned bread thief nicely juxtaposed with a more dangerous potential threat, and a farmer (James Cosmo) who ends up being gifted a DJ Beatroot CD. Cosmo has given many great performances over the years, but the sight/sound of him driving his tractor while singing along to some juvenile penis-centric lines of rap should be high on any list of favourite Cosmo moments.

This would double-bill nicely with Attack The Block if you want to see both urban and rural adventures of youths being hunted by dangerous predators. I'd argue that the enemy here is much more dangerous than any alien entity. And I'd also argue that this is the better of the two films, but there's not much in it, and let's revel in the fact that the past decade gave us both.

9/10

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