Superbad

The verdict: Sub-par stoner comedy with a few good gags, and a couple of decent performances. More like super-average.

The rating: 5/10

The Seth Rogen/Judd Apatow axis marches on. After the one-two of The 40-year-old Virgin and Knocked Up, they quickly followed up with what looked like being the sucker punch: Superbad . Written by Rogen this time, with Apatow producing, it unfortunately fails to live up to the promise of the previous two movies.

It's a teen gross-out comedy, with Arrested Development's Michael Cera in one of the leads. Sounds good, right? Well, unfortunately, the ideal audience for Superbad is either under sixteen years old or drunk. If you're neither of these things, I don't think you'll like it.

For a start, there have already been so many other movies with this kind of story, summed up by imagining one nerdy kid saying to another "dude, we totally need to get laid before we finish high school." 'Superbad' follows on from a less than illustrious, but long line of similar gross-out comedies, some of which were funnier.

Cera is likeable as Evan, Jonah Hill less so as the loud-mouthed Seth. The two are on a quest to get beer, and are aided by their mate with the fake i.d., Fogell, played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Not a name that you'll remember easily, but while Cera unfortunately only gets a few decent scenes to work with, the Fogell character generates most of the funniest moments in Superbad, f'sho.

The thing is, it's dumb, incoherent, and generally populated with idiots. Now, sometimes this is a starting point for good comedy, but not in this case. It has a few warm moments to counterweight the many many dumb, crass jokes, but not enough plot to make it interesting.

Superbad was a huge hit last year, but didn't come close to living up to the hype for me. Then again, I was sober when I watched it...

The Kingdom

The verdict: Slick, tense thriller with plenty of smarts and bucketloads of action.

The rating: 7/10

Nothing at all to do with County Kerry, 'The Kingdom' tells the story of the FBI's attempts to investigate a large-scale attack on an Western housing compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabian. Ronald Fleury (Foxx) heads the investigation team pushing to put their boots on Saudi soil, but the the complex political backdrop, as well as high-profile nature of the atrocity, means that they are not entirely welcome.

The American brass are initially unwilling to send FBI investigators to Saudi on the grounds that they are targets for the fundamentalist Muslim attackers who committed the original atrocity, and that their presence would render the situation even more unstable. The Saudis, for their part, are unwilling to allow interference in their own investigation, especially from non-Muslims. The presence of a female investigator is also a cause for some concern. Cue some serious political wrangling from Fleury.

Once in Saudi, the team are reluctantly assisted in their investigation by a Saudi Colonel, played with real presence by Ashraf Barhom, and the initially frosty association between Foxx and his guide slowly develops into a mutually beneficial working relationship. You know, the old 'frosty at first' kind of deal.

The movie is essentially a tense investigation book-ended by two long action set-pieces, and this structure works well. The investigation is well scripted, and builds the tension well, with all five central characters likeable enough to win the audience over. And why not, when the supporting cast is this good? Chris Cooper is amiable enough as the bomb site investigator, and Jennifer Garner works well; even if she does spend a lot of the movie crying, each episode of tears is thoroughly warranted. Jason Bateman too, continues his career resurgence with a creditable performance as the comic foil, and he has some great one-liners, which serve as a welcome coping mechanism for the audience as the tension builds. Jeremy Piven also has a nice turn as an American foreign department official, popping up every now and again to try and persuade the team to return home, before they do any political damage.

As for the action, well there is a moment about an hour into the movie where things suddenly take a turn into '24' territory, but it works very well. The action is visceral, realistic, and very much in the Paul Greengrass style, with hand-held shaky-cams following the cast, and everything ticking along at a relentless pace. Bullets, grenades and rockets fly, and we are right in the thick of it.

I have reservations about Jamie Foxx as a leading man, but he does a decent job here, despite still needing serious elecution lessons. The script is tight, with almost every central character likeable enough to root for. My only quibble was the Saudi Colonel. Foreign heroes in American movies must be god-fearing, squeaky-clean and have young kids for some reason, and his presence in the movie unfortunately reminded me of the away missions on the old Star Trek shows. Imagine Kirk (Foxx), Bones (Bateman), Spock (Cooper) and Uhura (Garner) beaming down to a planet with an anonymous red-shirted crew member, and you get the idea of the Saudi character's precarious position, right from the opening scenes.

That said, this is a quality movie, a diverting, well-written, actioner with a liekable cast, and PCMR heartily gives it two thumbs up.

Blades of Glory

The verdict: Cracking stuff, Heder and Ferrell are a superb double-act, and this is laugh-out-loud funny.

The rating: 7/10

Man, just lately it seems Will Ferrell can do no wrong. He's top of PCMR's list of Hollywood funny men, with 'Talladega Nights' and 'Stranger Than Fiction' both providing seriously good entertainment in 2006. Next off the production line is a movie that sounds so formulaic that it just couldn't be any good.. right? The premise of 'Blades of Glory' is really quite simple: two men figure-skating as a pair. Now, there is the potential for a comedy turd here, and in the hands of the wrong cast, this might have been an offensive Rob Schneider vehicle waiting to happen. Thankfully, some inspired casting, an excellent script, and just the right dose of Ferrell's brand of improvisation have turned Blades of Glory into what might just be the best comedy of 2007.

Ferrell's co-star, Jon Heder, is probably best known for his iconic performance as 'Napoleon Dynamite', but here he plays the skating wunder-kind Jimmy MacIlroy. Jimmy was plucked from an orphanage age 4, adopted by a millionaire horse-trainer turned human-trainer, and given the kind of training montage Rocky would be seriously proud of.

Jimmy's main rival is Chazz Michael Michaels (Ferrell), a sex addicted tornado (his words) and the only champion figure skater to win an adult movie award. Whereas MacIlroy's routines are graceful and delicate, with Sarah Brightman's voice to accompany his twirls and pivots, Michaels' is all about tha masculinity, baby. His moves are all pelvic thrusts flame-throwing and fist-punching, and are more likely to be accompanied by something by Aerosmith than Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The two are naturally fierce rivals, but fall from grace when they are banned from the sport for fighting on the Olympic winner's podium, when they tie for a Gold medal. Disgraced, they each follow their own downward spiral until three and a half years later, when Jimmy's stalker points out that he has only been banned from figure skating in his own division... meaning pairs skating is an option.

A chance encounter between MacIlroy and Michaels leads to another public scrap, and this one is caught on tv by MacIlroy's former coach. When he sees these two idiots throwing each other round a room backstage in some regional ice-rink, he gets the idea to pair the two of them up, and things start kicking off from there.

These two characters couldn't be more different, but the spark between the two leads is excellent, and they work extremely well together. No-one does angry bickering quite as well as Ferrell, and for the first half of the movie, his scenes with Heder are just a constant sequence of jibes and digs, with not all of them making perfect sense. Heder holds his own though, and this performance bodes well for his future, which looked bleak when 'Benchwarmers' was released.

The bickering scenes in this one reminded of the scene in 'Talladega Nights' where Ferrell's Ricky Bobby sparred with Sacha Baron Cohen's gay French Nascar driver, and the two were barely restraining their genuine laughter. I got the same sense of enjoyment from the two main actors on this one.

Ferrell's moments of improvisation are dotted around this movie, but the script is also genuinely good, with many memorable moments - the sex addicts meeting springs to mind, or Chazz Michael Michaels describing his love for his hairbrush, or the JFK and Marilyn Monroe routine, all quality. Also, the direction and special effects are excellent, capturing the details of the performances on the ice brilliantly, including close-ups of the two leads disgusted faces during some of the more intinmate moments of their routines. This part of the comedy, which could have been a homophobic disaster, is subtle and never over-played.

There are some recognisable faces in the support cast too. Rob Corddry from the Daily Show has a wee part, Romany Malco from 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin' also turns up, and 'Arrested Development's Will Arnett has a great turn as one half of MacIlroy and Michaels' main rivals: the creepy and weird Stranz Van Waldenberg.

Ferrell seems to be working his way through popular sports for his source material at the moment, with NBA basketball next on the list. Semi-pro is out next year and sees Ferrell star alongside Woody Harrelson (excellent! - Ed) and André Benjamin, otherwise known as André 3000 from Outkast (hmmm - Ed). Heder's been busy lately too, with three more movies coming out this year. (And he can draw ligers... mwa haaa - Ed)

In the mean-time, PCMR is bigging up 'Blades of Glory' as a comedy of genuine quality, and wonders, how long can Ferrell's dynamite run last? He's overdue a turkey, but this ain't it. Two hearty thumbs-up from me and a recommendation to go see this one.