Review #875: 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2' (2013)

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs was a pleasant surprise back in 2009, with directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord - before they hit the big-time with 21 Jump Street (2012), it's sequel 22 Jump Street (2014) and The Lego Movie (2014) - taking a rather ridiculous premise based on a slim children's story and making it both hilarious and supremely inventive. It was a story that was wrapped up nicely as not to require a sequel, but with box-office success comes the inevitable follow-up. Miller and Lord lampooned the whole idea of sequels with 22 Jump Street, but decided against helming the next chapter in Flint Lockwood's eccentric world, which makes it all the more surprising that Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 is even more delightful than the first.

With the town of Swallow Falls engulfed by giant food as a result of the events from the first film, Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader), his girlfriend Sam (Anna Faris), his father Tim (James Caan), and the rest of his fellow townsfolk are relocated to California by inventor and TV personality Chester V (Will Forte) while the place is cleaned up. Flint, Chester's biggest fan, is invited to work at Live Corp., where he will be allowed to work on his crazy inventions undisturbed in the hope of landing a permanent job. His 'celebrationator' creation falls flat, but Flint is still summoned by Chester to be informed that the search-parties back in Swallow Falls have gone missing, and the place is now overrun by giant cheeseburger spiders.

The cheespiders are just one of many delightful and bonkers 'foodimals' in the film, others of which include shrimpanzees, tacodiles and watermelophants. They're the type of physics-dodging nonsense a child would come up with while bashing plastic figures together, so no doubt children will love them. Adults too, will no doubt get a certain kick out of temporarily switching off the logical side of the brain and turning up the nostalgic side. It's also beautiful to look at, in a hyperactive, blink-or-you'll-miss-it sort of way, with the sheer volume of these bizarre creatures darting in and out of the picture providing a feast for the eyes, and the cheespiders proving to be somehow terrifying and cute at the same time.

Above all, it's laugh-out-loud funny and relentlessly chaotic, and there's probably a 'message' in there somewhere as well. Not that the film is too concerned with preaching morals and not that the audience will call for it; it's too busy being exhaustively entertaining for all that. The returning acting talent (although Terry Crews replaces Mr. T as super-ripped cop Earl Devereaux) is uniformly excellent, and newcomer Forte, along with some loopy character design, helps turn Chester V into a charismatic and ever-bending (literally) super-creep. Like a packet of sweets, it can be like a sugar overdose at times, but you'll most likely keep on eating and feel buzzed for a short time afterwards.


Directed by: Cody Cameron, Kris Pearn
Voices: Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, Will Forte, Andy Samberg, Benjamin Bratt, Neil Patrick Harris, Terry Crews, Kristen Schaal
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #774: 'The Expendables 3' (2014)

The first two Expendables movies, though no-one would label them the next Citizen Kane, were enjoyable for what they were - daft, funny 80's throwbacks where grizzled and saggy has-been's re-lived their glory days, when a cold-blooded murder would always be rounded up by amusing quip. Sylvester Stallone put together a huge ensemble of recognisable faces; some veterans of action cinema, some relatively new to the game, and managed to wet the pants of many middle-aged action junkies by reuniting the founders of Planet Hollywood.

But they were fun and nostalgic because they were aware of how silly they were, wise enough not to take itself too seriously. The third instalment of the surprisingly continuing franchise - The Expendables 4 is set for the green light - has made the decision that macho posturing and homoerotic banter is simply not enough, and we must now somehow care for these characters and take them seriously. The trouble is, no matter how loveable some of these actors are (or were), their characters are such one-dimensional meat-heads that, apart from physically, it's hard to even tell them apart, let alone give a damn for their safety.

After the successful rescue of former Expendable Doctor Death (Wesley Snipes), the lug-head crew go straight onto their next mission to take down some warlord or other, only for the groups leader, Barney Ross (Stallone), to recognise the man as Expendable co-founder and long-thought-dead Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson). Stonebanks seemingly went dark years ago, and after he seriously wounds Caesar (Terry Crews), Ross wants revenge. Not wanting to be responsible for the deaths of his friends, Ross turns his back on the Expendables and, with the help of assassin estate agent Bonaparte (Kelsey Grammer), rounds up an all-new (and young) gang of eager mercenaries to take down the man he once called a friend.

The franchise has been growing ever more child-friendly since is started. In the UK, the first movie was an 18 certificate, the second was a 15, and this, a 12A. It's hard to figure out just who this movie is aimed at. Sure, kids with short attention spans will probably enjoy the wobbly-cammed action scenes, but the series' long-term fans, the middle-aged nostalgics, will be scratching their heads at the lack of blood and soft dialogue. It also spends far too much time focusing on Ross rounding up his new gang of indistinguishable and astonishingly dull youngsters. Only Galgo (Antonio Banderas) sticks out, and even his motor-mouthed comedy routine soon gets annoying.

Of the old-hand newcomers, Harrison Ford - replacing Bruce Willis when the latter got greedy, leading to one of the films best lines - is suitably game, but Wesley Snipes' characters is lazily written and is no more than a carbon copy of Jason Statham's Christmas (he's 'good with knives'). However, Mel Gibson, who seems to operating under the idea that if the audience is going to hate him anyway, he may as well have fun with it, is the best thing in the entire film. For such little screen time and lack of complexity, he is undeniably creepy, and director Patrick Hughes has missed a trick spending so much time away from him.

The Expendables 3 is crushingly bad. Even haters of the first, and best, film can surely appreciate it's pumped-up, old-school charm. Two films later, and the series is a bloated, confused money-maker, isolating it's original target audience and seems under the impression that as long as there's an explosion here and a cornball line there, that it can be forgiven for sheer bad writing and film student execution. Maybe it is time for Stallone, Lundgren, Schwarzenegger et al to hang up their boots and war paint and make way for the next generation. But if the charisma-free block-heads whom Stallone finds (it seems that if you can pummel a man's face in, then espionage and machine-gun operation comes naturally) are anything to go by, then maybe it's time for the entire straight-to-DVD genre to finally call it a day.


Directed by: Patrick Hughes
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson, Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews
Country: USA/France

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #526: 'The Expendables 2' (2012)

Since 2006's Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone has been on a nostalgia trip, re-visiting the characters and genres that catapulted him to the A-list in the 1980's and early 90's. After his rather average yet commercially successful homage to cheesy action - 2010's The Expendables - Stallone and his crew are back, with some extra recruits and some familiar (and aged) faces from the genre. Thankfully, Stallone has passed the director's chair to Simon West, a director who has plenty of experience in blowing shit up with the ridiculous yet irresistibly enjoyable Con Air (1997). If there was a main problem with the first film, it was that Stallone's action scenes were messy and confusing, hardly akin the kung-fu-inspired action of the 1980's.

After returning from a successful mission in Nepal, new recruit Bill (Liam Hemsworth) announces his retirement at the end of the month. Shady CIA operative Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) forces group leader Barney (Stallone) into taking a mission to recover a mysterious item in a crashed plane located in Albania. The group, including Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), Toll Road (Randy Couture), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), and newly appointed technical expert Maggie Chan (Yu Nan), are ambushed by international criminal Claude Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme) who kills Bill and flees with the retrieved item. Gradually the team uncover a plot to find a storage of plutonium left over from the Cold War, and the enslavement of a nearby town by Vilain.

Early rumours that Stallone was going for a milder tone to allow a younger audience to see and enjoy the film are quickly dashed with an opening scene full of exploding heads and CGI blood. Stallone loves his blood and explosions - that was clear from 2008's almost pornographically gory Rambo. His goal was to aim higher and bigger with the sequel, and while on a whole it is pretty much on par with the first, the scope is certainly larger and the giddy in-jokes are more outlandish and obvious. The film is certainly full of love for the genre that was so good to Stallone, and what person that grew up in the 1980's and 90's would not smile at the sight of Planet Hollywood's Stallone, Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger mowing down bad guys side-by-side?

Yet it is at times so ridiculous and self-consciously cheesy that it comes across as a parody of itself. Schwarzenegger and Willis steal each other's catch phrases ("I'll be back!"/"Yippee-kay-ya") and Stallone even cracks a Chuck Norris Facts joke, and while these are funny, it takes the edge off the action and creates a feeling that none of these characters are really going to be in any real trouble. While Mickey Rourke sadly departed the project and Jet Li only briefly appearing, the addition of Chuck Norris and an actually very impressive Van Damme certainly compensate (the latter adding to his surprisingly moving performance in JCVD (2008)). But the film is crammed with far too many characters that pushes the whole Expendables crew minus Stallone well into the background. It won't stop me watching the upcoming third instalment, but this is no more than an amusing way to kill 90 minutes - much like the films it's playing homage to.


Directed by: Simon West
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Liam Hemsworth, Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #399: 'The Expendables' (2010)

Following the recent re-vists of two of his most iconic characters, John Rambo and Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone continued his oddly touching nostalgia trip to the heydey of his career with this homage to the glory days of the action film, the 1980's and the early 1990's. It was a time where anything from a kidnapped daughter to the overhauling of a military dictator could be solved by removing your upper clothes, adding a touch of oil, and finding the biggest guns you can get your hands on, and possibly the only era that would have ever allowed the likes of Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris to become movie stars. Of course, Stallone was one of the big three that formed Planet Hollywood (along with Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger) and was one of the undisputed stars of the time, but with the problem of age (and lack of acting ability) creeping up with him, Stallone's roles have become thin of late. It seemed the perfect time to remind us just why people loved him, by directing this balls-out love love letter to carnage, and, like Rocky Balboa (2006), it's actually pretty good.

The Expendables, a group of bikers and mercenaries, are sent by the mysterious 'Mr. Church' (Bruce Willis) to overthrow the dictator of Vilena. The groups' leader, Barney Ross (Stallone), and Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) travel for research, and discover that the country's dictator, General Garza (David Zayas) is merely a controlled figurehead for ex-CIA operative James Munroe (Eric Roberts). Things quickly get out of hand, but the two manage to escape amidst an array of explosions. Falling for their informer Sandra (Gisele Itie), who also happens to be Garza's daughter, Ross decides to return to finish the job, and this time taking martial artist Yin Yang (Jet Li), gun-nut Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), and bomb expert Toll Road (Randy Couture). But ex-Expendable Gunnar (Dolph Lundgren) - recently dispensed for almost hanging a captive on a previous mission and for drug use - travels to Vilena to work for Munroe.

Anyone going into this film wanting or expecting an engrossing storyline, a witty script, or anything resembling character development, will be sorely disappointed. This is 100% dedicated to gun porn, explosions, and homoerotic exchanges, precisely the thing that the early films of Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme were known and loved for. What it does have however, is a lot of heart. Stallone is undoubtedly a romantic, and he has formed a cast full of old-school action stars (Mickey Rourke has en extended cameo as Tool, and Schwarzenegger briefly appears in a scene that made me oddly giddy), as well as some of the new faces of straight-to-video, sorry, DVD (wrestler Steve Austin also appears as Munroe's head grunt Paine).

However, The Expendables seems to suffer most from the thing that noticeably plagues modern action films, and that is badly filmed and confusing action scenes. Rather than actually showing the fighting (and there are many here that deserve better, namely Jet Li), they fill the screen with a mixture of blurs, shaky hand-held camerawork, and rapid editing. It seems that Stallone thinks that as long as the audiences' eyes are busy, regardless as to whether they know what it happening, then they will be happy. And a lot of the macho talk gets quite tiresome quickly, and as token black guy Hale Caesar talks about his gun like it is a girl in that "hell ye-ha!" sort-of-way, the film came across as nothing more than a walking erection.

Yet with a film put together with such genuine heart, I found it impossible not to like, and it certainly transported me back to my childhood when the action wave was still in full flow, and I was obsessed with the likes of Commando (1985). I'm pleased that a sequel is also not far off, and the added casting of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Chuck Norris, as well as an extended role for Schwarzenegger (who now has time for acting given his political career has thankfully ended), has me obviously excited.


Directed by: Sylvester Stallone
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Eric Roberts, Dolph Lundgren, Giselle Itié, Randy Couture, David Zayas, Mickey Rourke, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Bruce Willis
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie