Finding Emily (2026)

A fun rom-com that explores the aftermath of a fateful "meet-cute", Finding Emily makes use of a number of sub-genre tropes, but becomes a more interesting film when it spends some time dissecting and subverting the filtered POV of someone who believes that they have fallen in love.

Spike Fearn plays Owen, a young man who finds himself at a loss after a great encounter with a young woman dressed up in a fairy outfit. She gave him her phone number, but there's one digit missing. So all he knows is that her name is Emily, she was dressed as a fairy, and she attends the university where he works (don't worry, he works in the student union, this isn't a look at some icky teacher-student relationship). Armed with this information, Owen sets about to find his Emily, which leads to him encountering a multitude of young women named Emily, including Emily Raine (Angourie Rice), a psychology student who offers to help Owen when she spies a chance to prove her thesis that love is the same as temporary insanity.

The feature directorial debut from Alicia MacDonald, Finding Emily tries hard to stay fresh and fun throughout, placing itself right in between something more grounded and something with a sprinkling of magic and romance. The Manchester setting helps, moving it a step or two away from the onscreen world of rom-com leads like Hugh Grant and Renée Zellweger, as do the challenges encountered by Owen on his journey to reconnect with someone he believes he was fated to be with.

The screenplay from Rachel Hirons is smart and funny, making me want to check out some of her past work (which includes a few more rom-coms, from the look of things, and . . . a 2023 movie showcasing some breakdancing skills). You get good amounts of sweetness throughout, but it also has fun pitting romanticised flights of fancy against the realities of modern life, especially when showing how the behaviour of rom-com leads is often unacceptable, and even quite a bit creepy, when viewed without any rose-tinted glasses on.

Fearn is a good lead, and his character is enjoyably upbeat and optimistic for most of the runtime. Rice plays the more cynical one, of course, but she does well to show how she's gradually drawn more towards appreciating the outlook of the young man that she offers to "help". Sadie Soverall makes a good enough impression in her first scenes, as "Fairy Emily", to make the desperate quest feel worthwhile, and there's a fun mix of supporting characters played by Prasanna Puwanarajah (a Professor trying to ensure that one of his best students doesn't ruin her thesis), Minnie Driver (a beleaguered Dean), Cora Kirk (good friend of Rice's character), Nadia Parkes (a university podcaster/presenter), as well as a veritable army of Emilys.

Cannily moving through a familiar modern world while swerving away from anything that could seem too dark (although it comes close once or twice), this is also helped by a strong selection of tunes on the soundtrack, as well as the essential chemistry that develops between the two leads. It's a shame that it rarely maintains the fun inventiveness that it shows in one or two small "set-pieces", but I'm sure that most people will find themselves charmed and entertained by this. I'm not sure they'll remember it in a year or two though.

6/10

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Prime Time: Cinderella (2021)

Writer-director Kay Cannon has a number of films to her credit, but is arguably best known for her work on the Pitch Perfect movies. I enjoy the Pitch Perfect movies, despite them generally going along with the usual rules of diminishing returns. So I went into this new version of Cinderella with a sense of optimism that many others lacked. Even when the bad review started to appear, I tried to have a little faith in the idea that I would be simply entertained. That faith didn’t take long to start dissipating.

Cinderella isn’t terrible, not all of the time anyway. It’s just often not that good, and then some sequences get worse than that. And you have to tolerate small appearances from certain cast members that I just keep finding less and less tolerable each time I see them.

I won’t summarise them story. I cannot help you if you don’t know about poor Cinderella already. The titular character is played here by Camila Cabello, the Prince is played by Nicholas Galitzine, and the cruel stepmother is played by Idina Menzel. Pierce Brosnan, Minnie Driver, and Tallulah Greive are the other royals, Billy Porter takes on the fairy godmother role, although it is reworked slightly, and British panel shows were robbed to place Rob Beckett, James Acaster, Romesh Ranganathan in amongst the fairytale antics. And James Corden gets some screentime, unfortunately. 

Mainly placing itself in that specific category now known as “jukebox musicals”, Cinderella starts off well enough, with an enjoyable mash-up that includes the excellent “Rhythm Nation”. It’s a shame that the rest of the film doesn’t do as well, with most of the other song choices being mistreated by their rearrangements. A Queen song is murdered, an En Vogue song just reminded me of their appearance in Coming 2 America, and the less said about “Seven Nation Army” the better.

Cannon knows what she wants to present to viewers, and she delivers something obviously straining to blend the modern and cool with all of the traditional fairytale moments that you expect. This is olde worlde antics with modern sensibilities laid over everything, but it doesn’t work as well as it could.

A big reason for that is cast. The “old guard” have a lot of fun in their roles, particularly Brosnan and Driver, but the leads fail to convey any real sense of them actually enjoying themselves. I don’t like the singing style of Cabello (all whiney, quivering, use of five syllables in words where two are present) and she doesn’t have the right presence to hold your attention in the non-singing parts. Galitzine is no better, lacking charisma and unable to sell either the heart or humour in his main scenes. Porter is fun in his small amount of screentime, which is really just one main scene, and Maddie Baillio and Charlotte Spencer raise some smiles as “the ugly sisters”, but it must be said that the British personalities don’t get enough to do, so are just there to prompt thoughts of “oh, look who it is” when they appear. At least Nandi Bushell also gets to join in with the fun for all of two seconds.

Fairytales have been adapted and twisted so often over the past few decades that you are spoilt for choice. Almost all of the other movies you could think of, right now, are better than this. It isn’t absolutely terrible. It is just a mess that consistently feels like it is trying to hard to be clever and cool, while rarely managing to be either.

4/10

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Stage Fright (2014)

If you don't think that musical numbers can enhance a comedy slasher movie then you should run off right now to watch, and enjoy, The Legend Of Beaver Dam. It's a short film written and directed by Jerome Sable, with help in the music/lyrics department from Eli Batalion.

Stage Fright allows the two to stretch out the weird juxtaposition of bombastic tunes and copious amounts of bloodshed. It provides some amusement, but ultimately just ends up proving that the short film form was the best way to package this material.

After a great performance in The Haunting Of The Opera, a starlet named Kylie Swanson (Minnie Driver) is violently murdered by a masked killer. Fast forward many years later and we are introduced to a bunch of characters looking forward to some time in that most traditional of slasher movie settings, the summer camp. This particular camp is overseen by Roger McCall (Meat Loaf), the ex-boyfriend of Kylie. There are also two camp workers (Camilla, played by Allie McDonald, and Buddy, played by Douglas Smith) who happen to be the children of Kylie. The summer camp is focused on musical theatre, and I think you can guess what their big production is going to be for this year. And a masked killer strikes again as Camilla decides to try her luck and audition for the main role.

Thanks to a strong opening sequence, followed by a musical number that features some highly amusing lyrics, Stage Fright looks like it could be bloody good fun. As long as you know what you're in for then you can sit back and expect to enjoy yourself. Unfortunately, it starts to slide downhill quickly, trudging through a fairly redious middle section and then on to an unexciting and uninspired climax. Any supposed shocks in the third act are entirely predictable, although I do suspect that Sable made them that way on purpose, an extra joke about the standard slasher movie template. Elsewhere, the non-musical moments are tiresome, none of the characters stand out (not even any of the leads), and the song lyrics (once more crafted with help from Batalion) quickly become quite bland and unfunny.

Meat Loaf isn't too bad in his role, but he's one of the few highlights. He brings a bit more personality to any role he plays, of course, and this helps him to overcome the weakness of the script. McDonald and Smith don't fare so well, although they both have at least one scene each in which they show the potential to be better. And Brandon Uranoqitz, Ephraim Ellis, Kent Nolan and Melanie Leishman all blur in to one big mass of potential summer camp corpses.

Some of the kills are fun and I'm still not completely against the idea of a slasher movie that mixes such differing musical styles for comedic results. I just hope that the next time this is attempted, IF it is attempted again, the end result is a big improvement.

4/10

http://www.amazon.com/Stage-Fright-Blu-ray-Minnie-Driver/dp/B00JVFRH7E/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1420398308&sr=8-2&keywords=stage+fright

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And/or you could also buy my e-book, that has almost every review I've written over the past 5 years. It's very reasonably priced for the sheer amount of content.

The UK version can be bought here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395945647&sr=1-3&keywords=movie+guide

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As much as I love the rest of the world, I can't keep up with all of the different links in different territories, but trust me when I say that it should be there on your local Amazon.

Ani-MAY-tion Month: South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut (1999)

South Park. Everyone knows about it by now, don't they? The lo-fi animated show created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone that became a huge success. Anyone who has seen 6 Days To Air: The Making Of South Park already knows the energy and creativity it takes to make each episode of the show, but adapting it into a decent feature movie should bring all new challenges and problems. Or, at least, that would be the general consensus. But nobody ever told Parker and Stone the rules, which is why they consistently manage to break them, and do so with no small amount of success.

The plot of the South Park movie sees Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny all sneaking their way in to see the new Terrance and Phillip movie, Asses Of Fire. The movie is a non-stop parade of flatulence and profanity, with one or two great musical numbers in the mix. The boys are, understandably, very impressed. They're also very impressionable, and it's not long until all of the kids are using language that upsets all of the adults. Keen to find a way to solve the problem, the parents, led by the militant Sheila Broflovski, settle on a course of action that should please everyone with a sense of decency. They blame Canada. Unfortunately, that could lead to World War III, and an opportunity for Satan to come up from Hell and rule over an apocalyptic landscape. Maybe the naughty language wasn't so bad after all.

The great thing about Parker and Stone is the way they can take pot shots at everyone and everything while still keeping their eye very much on a main target. On this occasion, the target is reactionary measures taken by people desperate for something to be angry with.
As the adults all sing at the end of the "Blame Canada" song: "We must blame them and cause a fuss, before somebody thinks of blaming us!"

There are some fun celebrity vocal cameos, but otherwise this is business as usual for the two South Park guys as they provide their usual crowd of voices. I don't know much that worked against them during the big musical numbers, but it doesn't seem to have done any harm. In fact, the musical numbers are SO good that this movie allowed Parker and Stone to pop along to the Oscars, in a memorable night that provided some great images easily available with a little searching (seriously, look them up).

Profane, hilarious, full of great musical numbers (including the main hit from Terrance and Phillip), smart, and brilliantly developing South Park for the big screen without ever losing its essence. I highly recommend South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut. But not for the kids.

9/10

http://www.amazon.com/South-Park-Bigger-Longer-Blu-ray/dp/B00AEBB8TM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1398209785&sr=8-2&keywords=south+park+bigger+longer+and+uncut

And if any ONE person ever clicks on this link and buys this stash of South Park madness then I will be very grateful - http://www.amazon.com/South-Park-Complete-Seasons-1-15/dp/B008DI03T4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398209840&sr=8-1&keywords=south+park+box+set

Don't forget, every copy of my book sold gets a few pounds in my pocket, and gets you a good read (if I say so myself).

The UK version can be bought here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395945647&sr=1-3&keywords=movie+guide

And American folks can buy it here - http://www.amazon.com/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395945752&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=TJs+ramshackle+mov

As much as I love the rest of the world, I can't keep up with all of the different links in different territories, but trust me when I say that it should be there on your local Amazon.