Mean Girls (2024)

Maybe it is my brain refusing to accept the passage of time, maybe it is the idea that turning Mean Girls into a musical isn’t a very good idea (although this was already a stage show before being turned into this film), but I was not looking forward to seeing this. The cast of the original movie were all so perfect, the script was consistently brilliant, and it hasn’t exactly faded away into irrelevance since it first hit our screens. Despite my major misgivings, and an extra Spidey-sense tingle when they advertised this without letting people know it was a musical, I tried to stay open-minded. I needn’t have bothered. This is pretty dire.

Angourie Rice plays Cady Heron, a teenage girl who ends up experiencing the ups and downs of high school when she finally gets a chance to attend one after time spent being home-schooled by her mother (Jenna Fischer) while they lived in Africa. Cady struggles, but is soon befriended by Janis (Aul’i’ Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey). After Janis and Damian explain the school cliques to Cady, and then see her unexpectedly befriended by “the plastics”, they come up with a plan to destabilize and break down the established heirarchy. It all relies on taking down the top mean girl, Regina George (Reneé Rapp), and her two main confidants (Karen, played by Avantika, and Gretchen, played by Bebe Wood).

With Tina Fey still in charge of the writing, having adapted Rosalind Wiseman’s book for the original movie and then worked on the musical, it’s impossible to call this a completely laugh-free zone. Unfortunately, the funniest lines are the lines that worked so well in the first film, and were arguably all delivered better by that original cast (with no offence intended to the players here).

Married co-directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. feel locked in by the script, and they aren’t helped by the weak selection of songs, all of which lack energy and creative staging. The production design, wardrobe choices, etc. all work very well, but the script and direction stumble in between each one of the unwelcome songs.

The cast try hard, and it is because of them that I kept willing this to improve before the ending rolled along. Rice is a decent lead, although she does better with the wide-eyed innocence than she does in the third act of the film, and Rapp is such a great Regina that a better film around her would show her to be equal to the Regina played by Rachel McAdams. Fey and Tim Meadows reprise their roles, but somehow don’t do quite as well, Fischer is sweet in her few scenes, and Busy Philipps is fun as the wannabe-cool mom this time around. Sadly, the rest of the cast have to settle for being lesser replacements for their original counterparts. Cravalho, Spivey, Avantika, and Wood are all good. They just aren’t as good as those who made the roles their own the first time around. The same can be said of Christopher Briney (playing the young man who catches Cady’s eye) and Mahi Alam (head of the mathletes).

If you love the original Mean Girls then I don’t imagine you will love this. If you have yet to see it then I don’t imaging you will love this. It is hard to think of who will get the most from it, especially when the original film is just so much better, and isn’t punctuated by unmemorable and unnecessary songs.

3/10

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April Fools: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

I first watched Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story a year or two ago, and I was underwhelmed. But I didn't write up a review, because although I hadn't seemed to like it while it was on I kept thinking of individual lines and moments long after the end credits had rolled. That was a good sign, surely, and another good sign was the fact that it had so many fans trying to convince people that it was a great comedy. So I decided to buy it and give it another chance. I'm glad I did, because I now agree with those who were telling me how good it was. It's one of the best comedies that Judd Apatow has had his name attached to in the past few years, thanks to a mix of great gags and spot on parodies.

Predominantly riffing on the life of Johnny Cash, as depicted in Walk The Line, John C. Reilly is the talented, but afflicted, Dewey Cox. Haunted by a tragic accident that led to the death of his brother, Dewey spends some years trying to prove to his parents (Raymond J. Barry and Margo Martindale) that he can make it as a talented musician. Unable to win over his father, he heads off with his teenage love (Kristen Wiig) and starts his musical career in earnest. In between singing his way to success, fathering numerous children, and discovering the joys of a variety of drugs, Dewey meets and falls in love with Darlene Madison (Jenna Fischer). But Darlene won't stray beyond the close friendship zone until married.

While it's incredibly silly throughout, Walk Hard is also incredibly smart. The songs, for one, are good enough to be the genuine article, especially the title track. And the script, written by Apatow and director Jake Kasdan, manages to fit in every cliche and homage without, somehow, feeling overstuffed. And then it throws in hilarious lines such as: "Did you hear that? I'm Dewey's 12 year-old girlfriend!"
Okay, that might not seem so hilarious now, but when you watch the whole scene, and hear Kristen Wiig triumphantly delivering that line, you may well find it as funny as I did.

Reilly, Wiig, Fischer, Barry and Martindale all do a great job, with the leading man proving to be quite the asset to the movie, but this is a film taken up a notch by a supporting cast full of talented and funny people clearly enjoying what they have to work with. Tim Meadows almost steals the film, as the band member who introduces Dewey to a variety of drugs, but Chris Parnell, Matt Besser and David Krumholtz are all worth mentioning, as are Jack White (with a hilarious Elvis impression), Harold Ramis, Jane Lynch, John Michael Higgins and many more. And then there's the added bonus of hearing the strange accents affected by Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Justin Long and Jason Schwartzman as they attempt to mimic the Beatles in a scene that I find fairly amusing, but others may find annoying and a bit too self-indulgent.

Jake Kasdan has been proving himself quite a capable director for years now, and this is another title that nestles comfortably alongside the other successes in a feature filmography that, for the most part, aims for quality over quantity.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Walk-Hard-Dewey-Blu-ray-Region/dp/B0014T7EV4/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1397246079&sr=1-2&keywords=walk+hard

Hall Pass (2011)

The Farrelly Brothers have come a long way since their paean to all things dumb, Dumb & Dumber, cleaned up at the box office. From that great starting point we’ve had the good (There’s Something AboutMary), the bad (okay, they only produced Say It Isn’t So, but their names were all over the marketing) and the divisive (Me, Myself & Irene and Stuck On You are two movies I really like but not everyone feels the same way). And now there’s Hall Pass.

Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis play two married men who are given what seems like a fantastic gift from their loving wives - a hall pass. A hall pass is, in the context of the film, a week off from marriage. The guys can relive their days of bachelorhood and get everything out of their system before returning to the family home and settling back down for the rest of their lives. With no restrictions, the two men should obviously be able to live out those fantasies that they've been harbouring for years. Well, while the theory is sound it turns out that the two men are a bit rusty when it comes to actually making any real moves towards ladies.

Written and directed by those Farrelly funsters (Bobby and Peter, who were both helped out in the scripting department by Pete Jones and Kevin Barnett), Hall Pass is an amusing comedy very much in the vein of their past works. There's plenty of refreshing honesty mixed in with the laughs, at least one gross moment and many lines of dialogue guaranteed to offend anyone who wants to be easily offended. Sadly, there aren't any memorable set-pieces and the whole thing suffers from the presence of Sudeikis (he was okay in Horrible Bosses, but I have no idea why the man is being given lead roles - he may get to deliver funny lines but he's not a talented comedic performer).

Thankfully, the cast also includes the lovely Jenna Fischer, Christina Applegate, Nicky Whelan, Stephen Merchant and Richard Jenkins. And Owen Wilson, of course. Some people don't like his standard laid back schtick. I do. There are also appearances from Farrelly regulars such as Rob Moran and Danny Murphy, while Vanessa Angel, Lauren Bowles and even Alyssa Milano join in the fun.

I laughed quite a few times while watching Hall Pass, but there were only two gags that made me laugh hard - one involving Wilson and two naked men and the other moment took place at the very end of the film - and I just don't think that's good enough for a film with this cast and those men behind the camera (yeah, yeah, roll your eyes all you want, I have loved a number of their past films).

It would seem that, for a change, most audience members agreed on this one. It had a fairly high budget for a comedy ($36M, apparently) and didn't exactly provide a rip-roaring return on that investment. Meaning that we've probably been spared a Hall Pass 2. At least that is an extra reason to smile.

5/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hall-Pass-Triple-Blu-ray-Digital/dp/B004MYF6YU/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1365989019&sr=1-2&keywords=hall+pass