Review: Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny

UK release date: 24th November

Jack Black’s twin careers as actor and rock musician merge in this fantastical tale of his band’s humble beginnings and the search for the demonic guitar pick that will turn them into rock gods. He’s joined in the quest by fellow Tenacious D band member Kyle Gass, and ropes in cameos from real-life rock gods Meat Loaf (as his dad), Ronnie James Dio (as his heavy metal muse) and Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters (as Satan!).

If those names mean nothing to you, then this is probably a movie to miss. But if they do, or if you’re a Jack Black fan, then this may well float your boat. It’s an over-the-top and endearingly self-indulgent slice of Spinal Tap-style self-mythologising that sadly, after a wildly funny start, rather runs out of comic steam.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 94mins

Review by David Aldridge

Review: Sixty Six

It’s 1966 and England is hosting the World Cup Finals. It’s also the year that 12-year-old Bernie celebrates his bar mitzvah. But guess what? The final match and Bernie’s big celebration both fall on the same day. And, as England’s hopes of taking the trophy rise, so the scale of Bernie’s bar mitzvah falls. Suddenly, even close family concoct reasons to be stuck in front of the TV on the day that Bernie has looked foward to for years, and has planned down to the smallest detail. But at least the growing soccer mania leads to an improvement in Bernie’s relationship with his rather distant father.

Gregg Sulkin makes a likeable lead as Bernie and Eddie Marsan gives a solid performance as his dad, but the real revelation in this engaging coming-of-age comedy is Helena Bonham Carter, who’s nicely cast as an ordinary wife and mother.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 93mins

Review by David Aldridge

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

Review: Accepted

UK Release: 6th October 2006

Accepted will certainly strike a chord with young people undergoing the stresses of the university admissions procedure; whether anyone else shows an interest will depend on their liking for lighthearted sophomoric fun.

Justin Long plays Bartleby Gaines, a chipper teen who is turned down by all his college choices. Instead of retiring to his bedroom to sulk for a couple of years, he enterprisingly creates a college for himself and his fellow rejects. The resulting university’s unorthodox curriculum includes courses on “Doing Nothing” and “How to Blow Stuff Up with Your Mind” — a more useful preparation for life, surely, than the ubiquitous Media Studies.

This is good-hearted nonsense carried off with some aplomb by first-time director Steve Pink and his young cast. But, while it’s certainly an antidote to the scatological teen-humour seen in EuroTrip and the American Pie franchise, it never quite reaches the heights of its obvious inspiration, John Hughes’s classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 93mins

Review by Adam Smith

Review: Echo Park LA

UK release: 29th September 2006

This touching rites-of-passage drama from co-directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (The Fluffer) has undoubted charm, despite the shortcomings in its storytelling. The Spanish title — Quinceañera — refers to the traditional Mexican celebrations held for teenage girls to mark their 15th birthday.

Magdalena (Emily Rios) is a young Mexican-American girl whose own festivities are thrown into turmoil when she reveals she is pregnant — without, she claims, having had sex. Banished by her ultra-religious father, Magdalena goes to live with her great-uncle Tomas, who is already playing host to her gay cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia).

The film shows how LA’s Echo Park neighbourhood has become increasingly gentrified, with the old ways of the Mexican community changing for the better — and for the worse. A heavy-handed gay subplot briefly skews the story’s direction, but when the closing credits roll all that really matters is the young cast’s passion and vivacity; shame we couldn’t see just a little more of it.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 90mins

Review by Damon Wise