Boy Eats Girl (2005)

As lovely as she may be, it's weird to think that there was a time in which Samantha Mumba was being sold as some kind of worthy addition to a movie cast. I cannot even recall her musical hit(s), but I recall never thinking of her as being poised for a career in acting. But a small filmography proves me wrong. The quality of the movies there, well, that's a different matter entirely.

Boy Eats Girl isn't terrible. It's just a bit confused. Which is what you might expect from a zombie film that is also hitting all of the beats for a standard teen flick. It's still better than Warm Bodies, but that's not saying much.

Mumba plays Jessica, a young woman who has an admirer in the shape of Nathan (David Leon). But Nathan doesn't want to make a move, for fear of ruining their friendship. Despite the encouragement from his other mates, Diggs (Tadhg Murphy) and Henry (Laurence Kinlan). Much like so many other teen movies, you get a school bully (Samson, played by Mark Huberman), a gorgeous "rival" (Cheryl, played by Sara James), and a mother (played by Deirder O'Kane) who panics when she finds out that her son has accidentally suicided himself and tries to fix it with a book of mumbo jumbo sorcery that starts a zombie epidemic. That last part may not feature in many teen movies, but it's in this one.

There aren't many other titles in the filmography of director Stephen Bradley or writer Derek Landy that stand out. You might say that Boy Eats Girl is the biggest thing they've done, in terms of the cast involved and the exposure it had when first released. Which makes it easy to see why they've never really clawed themselves up to some higher level. There's enough here to make it a fairly enjoyable enough 80 minutes, as long as you're not too demanding or hard to please, but there's not enough here to make it stand out in any way. The comedy falls a bit flat, the zombie carnage is very tame, and the third act just leads to everything ending with a whimper, rather than a bang. What works, surprisingly, is the mix of characters. They may be a bundle of stereotypes, but they're all given enough individual moments to help them be more memorable than they otherwise would be, and the cast provide varying results.

Leon isn't a bad male lead - imagine if Andrew Lincoln made his debut as a strung-out goth - and Mumba is pretty and sweet enough to make the central potential pairing worthwhile. James, Huberman, O'Kane, and the likes of Bryan Murray and Lalor Roddy all do well in their supporting roles, but the main chuckles come from Murphy and Kinlan, the sidekicks who are willing to help their mate when able to break through their fear-induced paralysis.

A lot of people will absolutely hate this. It uses zombies in a way that zombie movie fans will dislike, it tries to coast along on a mix of small-time charm and youthful energy. But it almost works. Almost. It might have done a bit better if it didn't also feel designed to give Mumba a push that never really felt earned (as much as I don't actively dislike her).

4/10

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Mrs. Santa Claus (1996)

Good ol' Angela Lansbury, she can do just about anything. She spent many years solving murders, of course, in Murder, She Wrote, she was a wonderful granny in The Company Of Wolves and her filmography is dotted with moments of greatness, such as her turn in the original The Manchurian Candidate. And then she has her all-singing, all-dancing Disney standing. Mrs. Santa Claus may not actually be a Disney movie but it certainly feels like one. A bad one, at that.

Lansbury plays the titular character, a woman who has stood behind and supported her husband (played by Charles Durning) for many years, working just as hard to make Christmas what it is while receiving no credit for it. She yearns to travel and have an adventure. So she does. Yes, Mr. Santa Claus takes the reindeer and goes off on a little trip of her own. Unfortunately, one of the reindeer has a bit of trouble which means that Mrs. Santa Claus may have to extend her time away from hubby. As long as she can survive Manhattan and get back before Christmas then everything will still be okay.

Set in the early 1900s, there's just nothing here to make this a worthwhile viewing for anyone but the most undemanding musical fan. Yes, it's a musical. However, the songs by Jerry Herman leave a lot to be desired, I can't think of one that I actually enjoyed and now can't remember any of them (which is a small blessing). That wouldn't be quite so bad if the writing by Mark Saltzman provided some entertainment but it doesn't. Director Terry Hughes takes those negative qualities and somehow makes them worse, populating the movie with a number of poor actors and actresses.

Lansbury is fine in the lead role but she doesn't have the spark that she once had, it's as if she's going through the motions. Her manner is all just too artificial, perhaps simply too sweet in these more cynical times to be believed. Durning isn't onscreen for long but he's fine, as is Michael Jeter (playing an elf named Arvo). The same can't be said for the likes of Debra Wiseman, David Norona, Terrence Mann, Lynsey Bartilson and Bryan Murray, all playing their characters in an annoying and amateurish manner that would look bad even in a particularly cheap episode of Dr. Who (now now, many people love Dr. Who nowadays but you can still tell whenever there's that one episode that didn't get the same budget as the others).

Despite the fact that I hated the movie, I will say that some of the production values were okay and that it's always good to see Lansbury in a role that doesn't have her solving murders while writing books (god, I used to hate that show). I've heard from other people who have thoroughly enjoyed this but I honestly can't figure out how their minds allowed that to happen. Watch it if you like but don't say that you weren't warned.

3/10

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