Once again, the film fights are behind. Time to catch up:
Knocked Up is a surprisingly grown-up comedy. Expecting a bit of a gross-out, it was a pleasure to see a well-developed movie; with a decent enough plot, and even some (shock) character development. While it still has enough set-pieces to entertain (the trip to Vegas being particularly notable), it’s good to see that they’re part of the story, rather than the story being an excuse for them. It’s not a masterpiece, by any stretch, but it is worth seeing. One of the best comedies of the year.
Let’s get straight to it for the next one: 1408 is about as lazy a Stephen King adaptation as you can make (without producing utter excrement like Dreamcatcher). That’s a real shame as it has a handful of genuinely jumpy moments, before it descends into horror movie cliché, dream endings, and King’s own silly trappings: haunted inanimate objects. Cusack does the best he can with the material, while Samuel L Jackson phones in his five minute performance. Pretty dreadful, despite a decent opening.
As I’m sure many have realised by now, Run, Fatboy, Run is not a Simon Pegg film. Sure, he stars in it, but I’d be willing to bet that his 3rd-tier writing credit is due to the handful of jokes he wrote for it (and I’d bet on which ones they are). David Schwimmer, as director, proves himself woefully incompetent. He manages to create a fairly one-dimensional world, with painfully unrounded characters and poor motivations. It being a comedy is no excuse, as Pegg himself has proven time and again, for simply holding up a flimsy premise as completed material and running some fart jokes through it. Apart from the outstandingly funny Dylan Moran, this film is without merit.
Finally, Michael Clayton has George Clooney as a kind of fixer lawyer, dropped in to solve problems. Although he’s supposed to be great at it, the character isn’t doing so well. His best friend has gone nuts and is going against a multi-million dollar client. The main problem with this film is direction: it meanders in the set-up, and fails to really get going at any decent pace. The performances are strong, and the story is interesting enough, it’s just not going to really grab anyone.
It’s a tough choice, and Clooney nearly had it, but I think the winner from these four has to be Knocked Up.