Prime Time: Merv (2025)

When is a Christmas film not a Christmas film? Despite the argument that crops up every single year about Die Hard (and don't start me on that again, people forget how many Christmas seasonal elements are in there as they argue against it), many movies are put forward as holiday treats without actually leaning in to the cheer and cheese of the season. Merv is one of those movies. It's not entirely tinsel-free, but there's a lengthy middle section that takes place in an area of Florida that is a far cry from any desirable winter wonderland.

Zooey Deschanel is Anna Finch, a woman who has recently ended a serious relationship with Russ Owens (Charlie Cox). They try to stay civil, for the sake of sharing the custody of their beloved dog, Merv, but it's tough. It gets tougher when Merv is diagnosed with depression. Russ decides to take him away to a doggy resort in Florida, but the trip becomes just a little bit more tense when Anna joins them. Will they be able to "fix" Merv, or will that only happen if they find a way to fix themselves?

Written by the husband and wife team of Dane Clark and Linsey Stewart, this is an enjoyable enough comedy drama that just doesn't do enough of what viewers may be wanting. The Christmas-tinged scenes are there, but few and far between. The rom-com stuff (or maybe it's more appropriate to refer to it as anti-rom-com stuff) doesn't come across as effortless or charming. So you're really left with a film that you will love or hate based on your reaction to Deschanel, Cox, and seeing lots of pampered pooches onscreen. There are lots of dogs wearing clothing in this film, and if that doesn't seem sweet to you then you should probably swerve this. (it's my partner's pet peeve, no pun intended, so she was rolling her eyes and swearing more than expected while we watched this).

The good news is that Deschanel and Cox are both fine in the lead roles. The bad news is that they're not used as well as they could be. They're stuck in an awkward place, working around one another as they focus on their dog and often avoid the real worries and fears occupying so much of their headspace, but one or two sequences (one involving some fun and dancing, the other getting to the heart of why they separated) hint at a better film hidden away here. Ellyn Jameson is another dog owner who takes a liking to our male lead, which makes him consider how much he is struggling to move on, and she does so well with the friendly and flirty conversation that viewers may be tempted to watch the film head in a completely different direction. Patricia Heaton and David Hunt are parents who are dutifully visited during the holiday season, and Chris Redd and Jasmine Matthews are friends who know what is best for our leads (as dictated by the movie anyway) before they eventually figure it out for themselves.

Director Jessica Swale does a serviceable job, but she feels as hampered as her leads. This is a film right in the middle, neither leaning into every trope nor pushing back against them in a way that could have considerably livened things up. The only thing it gets absolutely right is the cuteness of the main dogs, which means major bonus points for animal lovers. Everyone else will be likely to feel slightly disappointed by the time the end credits roll.

5/10

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Prime Time: Eat Locals (2017)

It all starts with an argument over feeding rights. Eat Locals is a vampire movie that shows the tricky task of vampires trying to navigate both the modern world and one another. And the best way to do that is to establish rules and rations on feeding. But you just know that there's always someone who will be greedy.

When the plot kicks in properly, Eat Locals focuses on a young man (Sebastian, played by Billy Cook) who unwittingly finds himself among a group of vampires, where he seems destined to be fed upon or turned into one of them. That cannot go as smoothly as planned, however, due to a special little army unit who are out to kill the pointy-toothed devils.

Directed by Jason Flemyng, making his debut, and written by Danny King (who has a number of shorts to his name, and one feature co-created with Dexter Fletcher), this is a film that may have viewers willing it to do better, although it never manages to hit the giddy heights of even an average horror comedy.

People try though, I'll at least say that, and the cast has plenty of familiar faces to help keep things ticking along nicely enough. Freema Agyeman, Charlie Cox, Annette Crosbie, Vincent Regan, Eve Myles, and Tony Curran are the most memorable vampires, Dexter Fletcher and Ruth Jones are a couple living close to Fanged Feeders HQ with their own dark secret, and Mackenzie Crook has a minute or two in the role of a military man named Larousse.

It's a shame that Eat Locals tries to mix in a bit of everything without ever doing it well enough. There's some blood and gore, but usually either hampered by some dodgy FX work or the fact that it doesn't go far enough. There are some very low-key laughs, but this material seems to be crying out for much better dialogue and a number of smarter gags. There are a couple of good ideas as the plot looks, at one point, as if it is going to tie together some separate elements in time for a cracking grand finale. That doesn't happen.

Lovers of vampire movies will find nothing here to draw them in. The sub-genre has so many other films to choose from, and many of those are funnier, or bloodier, or smarter than this. Which leaves the cast as the main selling point. As a selection of names, the list isn't bad, but they have the same problem that everything else in the film has. Nobody gets enough time/space to properly realise their potential. That's a real shame, especially in the scenes featuring someone as great as Curran.

Maybe Flemyng will use this as a learning experience. Maybe he had fun and will just make his next film in exactly the same vein (no pun intended). Or maybe this is all we'll see from him. Not everyone who has a career in front of the camera can slide into place behind the camera. At least he didn't make something absolutely dire though, so that's something.

4/10

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The Theory Of Everything (2014)

It's a biopic. It's British. It features someone striving to battle a debilitating disease. And the lead performance is one that could be called transformative. Yes, The Theory Of Everything is one big chunk of tasty Oscar-bait. That doesn't mean that it's great.

Eddie Redmayne stars as Stephen Hawking, arguably the most famous scientist of the 21st century. When diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease, at the age of 21, he was only given about two years to live. That was in 1963. This film shows his life, from horsing around with his university chums to meeting Jane (Felicity Jones), the woman who would become his wife, and developing his theories on black holes, time and our entire universe. It is a potted history of someone who has changed the way we view both outer and inner space.

Adapting the book written by Jane Hawking, Anthony McCarten takes all of the moments that you'd expect to find here and places them exactly where they should be. There's a distinct lack of imagination and flair on display here, with the exception of one or two pleasant surprises. Overall, the film has the air of a TV movie, albeit one with a sizable budget.

Director James Marsh seems content to let his cast take on the heavy lifting, as it were, and translates the screenplay by McCarten into equally lacklustre visuals. You get snapshots of the English countryside, there's a fitting score that's always ready to swell whenever an emotional moment needs highlighted, and any bad feelings are hastily covered over or thrown into the back of a pantry, where they are left to grow and fester until they can no longer be ignored.

There's no denying, however, that the cast DO elevate the material, with Redmayne giving quite a superb physical performance as Hawking. He's cheeky, charming, stubborn, pained, and much more besides, often all at once. Jones also does very well in her role, although she suffers from the fact that her character is landed with most of the heavy-handed, emotional fare. Sorry, that should say "most of the heavy-handed, EMOTIONAL fare". David Thewlis is a delight in his supporting role, playing a teacher who also becomes a friend to Hawking, Charlie Cox is nice enough, and Maxine Peake livens things up slightly in the last third of the film, playing the nurse who would make Hawking lovestruck again.

The Theory Of Everything is a pretty poor film. It's predictable, it's bland, and it doesn't even feel as if it goes deep enough into the minds of the main characters. Those central performances help to lift it just above the realm of average, with Redmayne doing such a great job that I wish he'd had a better movie to star in.

6/10

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