Review: Barnyard

UK Release: 20th October 2006

This CGI cartoon crosses the thematic conceits of The Lion King with the skewed world presented in Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoons, where animals stand up and talk whenever humans aren’t looking.

Kevin James voices fun-loving cow Otis, who must face up to his manly responsibility when his father (Sam Elliott, who does a mean Johnny Cash impression at one point) is killed by coyotes. Writer/director Steve Oedekerk, better known for his live-action films Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls and Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, brings a strong cinematic sensibility to the proceedings, and Barnyard brims with often laugh-out-loud sight gags and one-liners.

Younger children may be a little disturbed by the violence and the movie’s dark undertones, while the more literal-minded will just feel confused by the film’s muddled biology: all the cows, male and female alike, have udders.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate PG
Running time 89mins

Review by Leslie Felperin

News: Danny Glover

Still much-loved for his turns in the Lethal Weapons films, playing Barnyard’s Miles the Mule must have been a nice break for Danny glover, who’srarely away from the front of the camera these days. He’s already completed one other movie, while two others are in post-production, three more are currently filming, and yet another two are in pre-production. Quite how many see the light of day, however, we can but wait and see…

Most promising, from advance buzz at least, is likely Dream Girls, due out in the UK at the start of February 2007, where Glover will appear alongside Afro-American Hollywood bigwigs Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy and pop princess Beyonce Knowles, set around a ficitional 1960s black female three-piece singing group based heavily on Diana Ross and the Supremes. The stage version has been running since 1981 – and it’s just possible that Dream Girls could immitate Chicago‘s successful transition to the big screen.

Glover has also got a role in the next film from Michel “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” Gondry, the Jack Black-starring Be Kind Rewind, following the travails of two movie store clerks who accidentally wipe their entire stock, and so have to recreate famous flicks for their most loyal customer. It could be genius, it could be nonsense. hard to say this early.

He will also crop up in the Marky Mark Wahlberg-starring actioner Shooter for King Arthur director Antoine Fuqua (due May 2007 in the UK), with Glover playing the lengthily-named Colonel Isaac Fitzsimmons Johnson. That is almost certain to be mindless nonsense, but could nonetheless make a packet from those of us who like our action flicks big and mindless…

News: Courtney Cox

Following her initial apparent big-screen success with the Scream movies, the curse of the former Friends stars seems to have come back to hit Courtney Cox, Daisy the Cow in this week’s Barnyard, with a vengance. If initial responses to her next film are anything to go by, she’ll soon be doing even worse than fellow ex-Friends star Matt LeBlanc, whose spin-off sitcom Joey is at least still going, even if it is rubbish.

Her next project is the Tim Allen “comedy” Zoom, where Allen shamelessly rips off last year’s mediocre Sky High as an ageing superhero teaching a group of kids how to take over his mantle. But ignore the plagiarism – the worst crime is the utter lack of any laughs. How long until Jennifer Aniston, with her string of so-so romantic comedies, is the only Friend with anything resembling a Hollywood career – and so how long until the increasingly inevitable reunion special?

News: Steve Oedekerk

The director of this week’s animated comedy Barnyard will see his live-action comedy script Evan Almighty – a sort of sequel to 2003’s Jim Carrey vehicle Bruce Almighty – hit our sceens in July 2007. Although Morgan Freeman will be returning as God, Carrey is replaced by fellow comic Steve Carrell – most famous for The 40 Year Old Virgin and the US remake of The Office – who appeared in the last movie as the focus of Carrey’s wrath. As the Evan of the title, now a US Congressman, Carrell is approached by God to build a new Ark – of the Noah variety…

Oedekerk will also provide the voice of Mr. Beady in the TV spin-off series of Barnyard, planned for next year, as well as doing an Orson Wells by appearing in the lead, writing and directing Kung Pow 2: Tongue of Fury. Hardly Citizen Kane, but still… Busy guy.

News: Kevin James

The voice of Otis the Cow in this week’s Barnyard may remain best-known for his TV work in the lead on US sitcom The King of Queens, but after starring alongside Adam Sandler in next year’s I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry, all that could change. James and Sandler play two Philadelphia firement who decide to pretend to be gay to qualify for couples allowance and, with a cast that includes Dan Ackroyd, Steve Buscemi, Jessica Biel and living legend Richard Chamberlain (one of the few big-names of movieland to have publicly outed himself), it could well prove a hit.

Three more projects have also recently been announced where James finally gets the big screen lead: Field Trip, where he’ll play a substitute teacher with an unruly class; Monster Hunter, where he’ll play a shildpsychologist who gets rid of monsters under the bed; and Man in Uniform, where he’ll – erm – play a man who dresses up as a policeman for some reason, no doubt with hilarious consequences… Still, looks like this is a comedian on the up.

Review: The Grudge 2

UK Release: 20th October 2006

Director Takashi Shimizu has made a career out of ghost stories. Or to be precise, he’s made a career out of retelling the same ghost story over and over. The Grudge 2 is the sixth reworking of his original Japanese outing — 2000’s direct-to-video Ju-on. It’s also a direct sequel to his recent Hollywood remake starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as an American in Tokyo terrorised by ghosts. Gellar returns briefly here, but is largely supplanted by Amber Tamblyn as her sister, who’s trying to stop the supernatural beings reaching the States.

Those familiar with the series will find little that’s original, as Shimizu shamelessly recycles set pieces from earlier incarnations of the story. Yet his masterful ability to inject even innocuous objects (telephones, wardrobes and shower cubicles) with a foreboding sense of dread delivers some occasional, hair-raising chills.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 102mins

Review by Jamie Russell

News: Sarah Michelle Gellar

Despite her top-notch turn in the modernised Dangerous Liaisons that was Cruel Intentions back in 1999, and money-making roles in the two live-action Scooby-Doo flicks, Gellar’s career has hardly boomed since her fame-making TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended three years ago. Nonetheless, she has been a bit of a workaholic, with four movies already completed or in post-production, and two more in the pipeline.

First up, due out in January, is yet another horror flick, The Return, where Gellar’s nightmares lead her on a quest to solve a 15-year-old murder. She is also set to challenge our gag reflexes in an entirely different way in The Girls’ Guide to Hunting & Fishing, where she’ll play a young woman enters a romance with an older man – played by Alec Baldwin, of all people.

More promising sounds The Air That I Breathe, an experimental drama based on an ancient Chinese proverb, where she will play “Sorrow” alongside Kevin Bacon’s “Love”, Brendan Fraser’s “Pleasure” and Forest Whitacker’s “Happiness”. The one that could really make it for her, however, is Alice. Due for release in America in July next year, Gellar plays a grown-up version of the Alice from Lewis Carrol’s beloved novels, who returns to Wonderland following an emotional breakdown.

News: Takashi Shimizu

It looks like the Japanese horror maestro still hasn’t tired of his Grudge series. Having already directed four Japanese versions and sequels and two English-language, Americanised takes in just six years, he has announced yet another Japanese sequel, to be released next year. Ju-on: The Grudge 3 will follow Ju-on: The Grudge 2, Ju-on: The Grudge, Ju-on 2 and the original, video only release Ju-on, and may yet be translated into English as yet another sequel to The Grudge and this week’s The Grudge 2. *Phew…*

Review: I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed

UK Release: 20th October 2006

The mysterious fate of Moroccan activist Mehdi Ben Barka, who was kidnapped in 1965, has already informed Yves Boisset’s 1972 thriller The Assassination. In this historical drama, Serge Le Péron is less concerned with his disappearance and the attendant world of espionage than the Left Bank scene in mid-1960s Paris, where opportunistic ex-con Georges Figon (Charles Berling) seeks to make his name as a film producer in collaboration with screenwriter Marguerite Duras (Josiane Balasko) and director Georges Franju (Jean-Pierre Léaud).

Atmosphere is everything here, as Le Péron draws on the noirish precedents of Jean-Pierre Melville to create political, criminal and artistic milieux that are contrastingly sinister, scurrilous and self-servingly pretentious. But he does speculate intriguingly about Figon’s relationship with Ben Barka and its consequences for a nation teetering on the brink of implosion.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 102mins

Review by David Parkinson

News: Simon Abkarian

If all goes well, the actor playing the titular deceased character in this week’s French flick I Saw Ben Barda Get Killed could be set to follow in the footsteps of fellow countrymen Jean Reno and Gerard Depardieu and make the leap into bigger-budget English-language movies. The 44-year-old has been working insanely hard over the last few years, and has just had his first English-language role in the biggest film of next month – the new James Bond movie Casino Royale. His part may be fairly small – he’s only a henchman – but will nonetheless almost certainly increase his profile enough to open up fresh opportunities.

Review: The History Boys

UK Release: 13th October 2006

Alan Bennett’s hit stage play, about a group of Sheffield grammar school boys being drilled for their Oxbridge entrance exams, makes an efficient transition to the big screen.

Utilising the original stage cast, director Nicholas Hytner wisely opts to change as little as possible, resisting the urge to open up the material cinematically. This brilliantly serves Bennett’s screenplay, which is a masterpiece of wit and intellectual erudition worn feather-lightly; a perfectly balanced blend undercut with the darker subject of history teacher Hector (Richard Griffiths) and his sexual attraction to the boys.

Which leads to this thoroughly enjoyable film’s only flaw: there’s something slightly implausible about these pupils who combine a kind of romanticised notion of male adolescence extracted from Goodbye Mr Chips with an incredible nonchalance towards the subject of homosexuality and their teacher’s repeated attempts to cop a feel. Still, it’s not a documentary, and this niggle is more than made up for by the performances, which are uniformly first-rate.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 109mins

Review by Adam Smith

News: The History Boys

Since opening at London’s National Theatre in May 2004, Alan Bennett’s play has been performed in Hong Kong, New Zealand and on BBC Radio 3 and Broadway, where it picked up six prizes at this year’s Tony Awards.

Now, however, after more than 500 sold out performances, and with the original cast all captured on celluloid for eternity, all the actors are moving on to pastures new, letting fresh faces have a go at making the roles their own. So if you’ve missed it at the theatre, best head to the cinema now…

Review: Open Season

UK Release: 13th October 2006

This boisterous inaugural feature from Sony Pictures Animation won’t give Pixar any sleepless nights, but it does have a simplistic appeal.

Co-directed by The Lion King film-maker Roger Allers, it’s a familiar, computer-generated eco fable in which domesticated grizzly bear Boog (voiced by Martin Lawrence) sees his pampered existence as a mountain-town tourist attraction cut short when he befriends a mischief-making deer (a fantastic Ashton Kutcher). In a hilarious set piece, the duo cause so much mess in a convenience store that Boog eventually ends up released back into the wilderness — three days before hunting season begins.

What follows is a predictable lesson about man’s destructive effects on nature, boosted by quick-fire banter, brightly coloured visuals and plenty of kiddie-pleasing scatological humour. The pace slackens in the second third, hampered by narrative clichés and some weakly stereotypical supporting characters, though it picks up with gusto for a final imaginative animal/hunter showdown.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate PG
Running time 86mins

Review by Sloan Freer

News: Jon Favreau

Very much second fiddle voicing one of the sidekicks in this week’s Open Season, following the success of his turns behind the camera on Elf and Zathura, Favreau is gearing up for his biggest directing gig yet with the forthcoming superhero flick Iron Man, due 2008. Although much can – and probably will – change in two years, the casting of Robert Downey Jr in the lead just last week is a promising start to what could yet prove to be a genuinely interesting choice after the recent glut of uninspired and insipid superhero movies.

News: Ashton Kutcher

The toyboy hubby of Demi Moore is going to be hard to avoid at the multiplexes this month, cropping up in the Kevin Costner-starring The Guardian, out this week, before appearing amidst the impressive ensemble cast of actor-turned-director Emilio Estevez’s much-anticipated political drama Bobby – which debuts at the London Film Festival on the 26th – about the assassination of JFK’s brother Bobby Kennedy.

He currently has no other projects in the pipeline, taking a well-earned break after the eight months of hard physical training he did before his appearance alongside Costner in The Guardian.