Hellboy (2019)

The Low-Down: Hellboy, a cult comic creation dreamt up by Mike Mignola, is a fascinating meditation on the eternal ‘nature vs. nurture’ debate: can a demon child rebel against the blood that flows through his veins and choose his own fate? The movie-going public was first introduced to the existential crisis that is Hellboy in 2004 by visionary director Guillermo del Toro, whose gothic sensibilities and love of the ugly misfit were a perfect fit for the source material. 15 years and a couple of jettisoned productions later, the third Hellboy film – a del-Toro-free reboot, rather than a sequel – is finally thundering into cinemas, and will have you wondering if it was worth all that time and effort.

The Story: Hellboy (David Harbour) – under the guidance of his adoptive father, Trevor (Ian McShane) – is hunting down monsters for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD) when destiny comes a-calling. Nimue (Milla Jovovich), a dastardly sorceress of world-destroying power, is set to break free from her several prisons so that she can turn the world of men into a haven for monsters. Accompanied by living ouija board Alice Monaghan (Sasha Lane) and grumpy BPRD agent Ben Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim), Hellboy must decide if he will help or hinder Nimue as she sets the apocalypse in motion.

The Good: This new incarnation of Hellboy is fierce and unapologetic in everything it does – from its shiveringly awful monsters to its explosive moments of mayhem and carnage. If that’s your kind of thing, you’ll enjoy what director Neil Marshall, best known for cult horror flicks like The Descent and Dog Soldiers, is going for here. He leans heavily into the ‘creature’ aspect of ‘creature feature’, particularly in nightmarish scenes featuring Nimue regaining her body (think Frankenstein, with an added cringe factor) and unholy mess of a witch Baba Yaga collapsing and contorting her way across the screen.

The Not-So-Good: Unfortunately, the film is a mess in pretty much every other way, teetering between brilliant, batshit and bad – often in the same moment. Part of that is due to the strangely uneven special effects and prosthetics, which range from eye-popping to laughable. But it’s in Andrew Cosby’s desperately plot-obsessed screenplay too, which contains some great, fun ideas but constantly undercuts itself with painfully banal dialogue and minimal character development. It’s a very peculiar experience to be simultaneously fascinated by and disappointed in a scene or character, and that keeps happening throughout Marshall’s film.

Safe Harbour? You’d never know it beneath the unwieldy prosthetics, but Hellboy is played – this time around – by one of the breakout stars of Netflix’s Stranger Things. It’s a shame that you can barely see what Harbour is bringing to the character and the performance; his hangdog charm and ability to emote is buried under layers of red make-up and a stubbornly fake chin. He looks great in still photographs, but often appears clunky and clumsy in motion. Script-wise, Harbour isn’t given much to do, beyond playing catch with the next plot point and battle sequence. As a result, his Hellboy winds up as the least interesting character in a film actually named after him.

Running The Good Race If nothing else, Hellboy has a lesson to teach Hollywood and casting agents the world over about whitewashing and the importance of representation. Ed Skrein was originally cast as Ben Daimio, but voluntarily withdrew from the project when he realised that the character was of Japanese origin. It’s still annoying that Asians from different countries are interchangeable in Hollywood terms – Kim is of Korean descent – but, hey, baby steps are better than nothing. At least Kim acquits himself quite well in a complex role, although his British accent is wobbly at best.

Recommended? It’s a toss-up. There are enough good ideas and visual flair for Hellboy to be worth a watch, but it’s also sorely missing the crucial ingredients that made del Toro’s films take flight: heart and soul.

 

Hercules (2014)

Brett Ratner makes big, dumb movies. Now, strictly speaking, there’s nothing wrong with that. Not every movie has to win Oscars galore; some movies can exist solely to entertain. However, even with that caveat in mind, Ratner’s track record isn’t great. For every fun, silly entry in the ridiculous Rush Hour franchise, there’s his bigger, dumber, altogether more reviled version of an X-Men movie to scrub off the CV. Hercules – a cheeky-yet-sombre reinvention of the Greek hero and myth – lodges itself somewhere between the two extremes. It’s big and dumb, sure, and often in a hugely amusing way – but, at other times, it’s actually impossible to ignore the film’s frankly terrible plotting.

The first inkling that this is not the Hercules you know comes in the form of Dwayne Johnson. Buffed to the max and sporting a skinned lion’s head for a helmet, this “hero” is actually a mercenary for hire – wading into battle for the sake of monetary reward. It turns out that there’s nothing all that demigod-like about the guy we all thought was the son of Zeus: his feats of great strength and endurance, known popularly as the Twelve Labours of Hercules, are merely stories, tall tales embellished to make him seem larger and more heroic than life itself. Instead, this version of Hercules roams Greece with his merry band of myth-makers: knife-thrower Autolycus (Rufus Sewell), Amazonian archer Atalanta (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal), storyteller nephew Iolaus (Reece Ritchie), berserker Tydeus (Aksel Hennie) and wry soothsayer Amphiaraus (Ian McShane).

That’s actually a pretty interesting premise – one that allows Ratner to have quite a bit of fun while he lays out the rather more serious bits of his plot. Indeed, Hercules is saved from its generally leaden story by the rich, sarcastic vein of humour that runs through it. We may have to be regaled by the twists and turns of Hercules’ recruitment by Lord Cotys (John Hurt) to fend off the apparently supernatural enemy advances of rabble-rousing warlord Rhesus (Tobias Santelmann). But much of the joy of the film comes in its unapologetic bursts of comedy. Iolaus – effectively the troubadour of the piece – sings Hercules’ praises in a thoroughly tongue-in-cheek manner, hawking leather armour while his uncle rolls his eyes.  Tydeus barrels headlong into Hercules’ precious shield-wall. Amphiaraus constantly awaits the fiery death he has foretold for himself. It’s all quite happily ridiculous.

The film is considerably less successful when its plot rears its ugly head and it moves into heavy-handed, dramatic territory. There’s something intriguing about the politics in Thrace, particularly between Lord Cotys and his feisty daughter Ergenia (Rebecca Ferguson), but it’s dwarfed by a host of competent but not hugely inspiring action sequences. This is also the kind of movie in which the villains don’t kill the hero of the piece when they have the chance, just so the movie can keep on going. And keep on going it does, into a bizarre misfire of a final act that undoes a lot of its earlier, rather canny deconstruction of Hercules’ myth.

Johnson, always a winning presence, is effective but strangely under-used here. The kind of twinkle-eyed comedy the Rock has proven so good at is bypassed, sadly, in favour of plunging Hercules into a bitter battle with his inner demons. Hurt, too, is hamstrung by a role that’s too solidly black-and-white – whatever the shade of Lord Cotys’ morality. But the supporting players are clearly having a ball. McShane, in particular, practically waltzes through and away with the film, hitting his action beats as squarely and sublimely as he plays his distinctly hammy comedy.

In summary: anyone hankering after a straight-laced re-telling of the Hercules myth will be disappointed. This is most emphatically not the film for them. To be fair, it’s not quite the film for those who are looking for something a little edgier either. At some points, Ratner’s film hits the mark: it cleverly peels away the layers of legend to reveal the person beneath – an uncommon man, but no anointed demigod. At others, its plot debunks itself into incoherence, and the melodrama of it all threatens to overwhelm the far better-judged moments of humour. The final result is a big, dumb movie that’s undeniably entertaining, but falls short when it tries to be something more.

Basically: A trademark big, dumb Brett Ratner movie that veers haphazardly between the sublime and the excruciating.

Cuban Fury (2014)

Nick Frost usually comes as one-half of a package deal. With Simon Pegg (and their behind-the-scenes collaborator Edgar Wright), Frost has starred in three of the most gloriously subversive, smart and silly British comedies of the past ten years: Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End. Can he hold the screen and get the laughs when he’s headlining a film, with neither Pegg nor Wright in sight? The answer is, thankfully, yes. Cuban Fury is a great vehicle for Frost – he grounds the fun, loopy, cheerful dance comedy in something a little more real and affecting, even if the film doesn’t quite hit the brilliant heights of the aforementioned Cornetto Trilogy.

After being bullied mercilessly by a pack of boys as a child, Bruce (Frost) swears off the one thing he’s really good at: salsa dancing. Fast forward a few decades, and he’s a bored, boring office drone forced to suffer the company of Drew (Chris O’Dowd), his lewdest, rudest, meanest colleague. When he meets his new, gorgeous boss Julia (Rashida Jones), however, Bruce feels compelled to step out of his comfort zone – especially when he realises that she loves salsa dancing too. Even as Drew tries to worm his way into Julia’s affections, Bruce resolves to put on his dancing shoes again.

The plot of the film is something of a hit-and-miss affair – it can occasionally feel like it’s been forcibly stitched together from a bunch of really great stand-alone scenes and ideas. Some of the narrative decisions don’t make a whole lot of sense either. Why, for instance, is Julia anointed the boss rather than a new colleague? It seems to complicate matters unnecessarily throughout the entire film, given the ethical issues at stake in an employer-employee relationship.

But there’s no real need to over-think things when Cuban Fury is just so goshdarn chirpy, funny and entertaining. The film practically radiates its own brand of amiable humour, often zipping from goofy wordplay to awkward slapstick within the space of a single scene. Amidst the roof-top dance-offs and mix-tape mix-ups, there’s even a little room for huge helpings of heart. Bruce becomes a better person for doing what he loves, and it’s a joy to see him find the confidence he’d lost all those years ago.

Whenever the script misses a beat, its oddball characters come to the rescue. Frost’s Bruce is a standard-issue unlikely hero, and Jones is almost criminally wasted as the  painfully underwritten Julia. But the weirdos dancing around them are a delight. Hilariously committed to the part of Drew, O’Dowd is clearly having fun being as rude, nasty and offensive as he possibly can. Ian McShane is marvellous as Bruce’s dour old dance teacher, Ron, and Kayvan Novak steals scenes aplenty as Bruce’s gleefully flamboyant new friend Bejan. Even so, it’s Olivia Colman who walks away with top honours: she’s spectacularly funny and appealing as Bruce’s open-hearted, game-for-anything sister Sam.

Cuban Fury isn’t a game-changer by any stretch of the imagination. Unlike the Cornetto Trilogy, it doesn’t have something smarter and more subversive to say about its chosen genre of film. This is a sports-laced romantic comedy with no greater ambition than making its audience laugh. Not every element of it works perfectly, and the script can be lead-footed in parts. But, when it comes down to it, the film is so sweet and silly that it sometimes approaches the sublime.

Basically: There’s no dancing around it: this flawed but hugely enjoyable film comes with bucketloads of charm and humour.

The Golden Compass (2007)

The Golden Compass has most definitely not met with the kind of critical reception that would suggest the sequels (there are two books left to wrap up the Philip Pullman trilogy of novels about fantastic parallel worlds) will be greenlit. Also, I’m not sure if the studio that sank US$180 million into a movie with a fairly untested director – Chris Weitz’s only other movie of note was American Pie, which really can’t compare in any way to the scale, grandeur or even genre of Compass – is willing to do so twice over if the film doesn’t recoup anywhere near that amount in terms of worldwide box office receipts.

Thing is, that would be rather a shame – lovingly bringing together the best of Pullman’s numerous and deeply original ideas, Weitz has crafted a wonderful blockbuster, laced with magic and the kind of mindblowing, breathtaking fantasy that hasn’t come along since… well, The Lord of The Rings trilogy. (Narnia tried to assume that mantle but honestly couldn’t hold a candle to Compass in terms of scope and depth – yes, even with that whole Christ analogy thing it had going for it.)

I am getting ahead of myself a little though. Before I wax further lyrical:

Set in another world that’s like ours and yet isn’t at all like ours, in which a person’s soul manifests itself in the form of his or her accompanying animal daemon, Compass is the story of Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) – a headstrong imp of a girl left by her guardian Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) in the care of an Oxford don as he heads off to chase down the mystical, mythical Dust – a heady semi-religious concept which isn’t spoken of in polite circles and whispered about only among the intelligentsia, even as the Big-Brother-alike Magisterium keeps a tight rein on political and intellectual dissent. Lyra doesn’t know this, of course. Even though she’s slightly puzzled by the sudden disappearance of her good friend Roger (Ben Walker), she’s dazzled by the fizz and sparkle of the mysterious and beautiful Mrs Coulter (Nicole Kidman) and leaves Oxford to travel around the world as the latter’s assistant. But, as she discovers a far more sinister side to Mrs Coulter than she knew before, her own destiny unfolds before her in the form of an alethiometer – the titular golden compass – placed in her keeping before she leaves Oxford. Soon, it becomes all too clear that Lyra’s quest to recover Roger has far greater implications and consequences than she could ever have anticipated…

Weitz does a truly admirable job of distilling Pullman’s enormous, sprawling fantasy world into a coherent whole – Compass, if it doesn’t surpass the novel on which it’s based, at least does justice by Pullman’s vision. While Weitz has had to consciously prune away or smooth over some of the more controversial material (to avoid lending credence to spurious allegations that have frothed up recently that Pullman was denigrating Christianity, specifically Catholicism, in his portrayal of the Magisterium), this hasn’t significantly affected how the basic plot unfolds in the film. In fact, the storyline spins itself out in a far more straightforward way than in the novel, working here to actually clarify a lot of the murkier, more confusing parts of the book (which I felt veered awfully close to navel-gazing at several points) while retaining all the key plot points to ensure that nothing is lost in the translation to the silver screen. As for the controversies that bombarded the movie before it opened: pfah. Compass is no more contentious than any of CS Lewis’ works – intellectual ideas expressed through fiction – except that one is orthodox and one, well, isn’t. It’s fantasy, people. No need to get your knickers in such a twist over it.

What Weitz manages to do also, with marvellous aplomb, is breathe life into Pullman’s fantasy universe, juxtaposing imposing armed polar bears (a particular highlight being the dethroned, humiliated prince Iorek Byrnison, voiced by the kingly Ian McKellen) with flying airships and cars that look, like, well, nothing on earth. A mix of Victorian steam-punk and cutting-edge future technology, Compass has no lack of gorgeous visuals and stunningly inventive character design. Everything is simply splendid, as Lyra races through ice-capped landscapes, her fluffy daemon Pantalaimon (voiced by Freddy Highmore) at her side, or witches personified by the dark beauty of Serafina Pekkala (Eva Green) sweep across the midnight sky.

The cast Weitz has assembled is great as well – Kidman, far blonder than the brunette Mrs Coulter in the novels, nevertheless bites into her ice-maiden role with relish, and her particular brand of chilling creepiness (amplified by the evil golden-orange monkey that trails after her) stays with you when you emerge from the theatre into the sunlight. Richards, in her debut acting role, is impressive as the feisty Lyra, holding her own against the likes of Kidman and Craig in what is effectively a one-girl show. The voice cast assembled for the universe’s daemons is excellent, of course, with prize honours going to (obviously) McKellen and Ian McShane as his devious opponent King Ragnar. Craig doesn’t get much of a look-in – his character has a sum total of ten minutes of screen time, if that – but will definitely get more room to flex his acting muscles should the subsequent books in the trilogy be committed to film.

This, I suppose, is my biggest problem with Compass. Sure, it can be argued that the plot hurtles along with little concern for those who can’t keep up, or even for deep emotional exploration of the characters. Too long? Maybe. The real problem is that the film sets itself up as such an great precursor to the next two films: which might, all things considered, never be made. Even more worrying is that The Golden Compass remains the most filmable and, crucially, enjoyable of Pullman’s novels. The second is good and the third simply self-indulgent and inexplicable – when a series can only go downhill, how much faith should one place in Weitz’s ability to pull two more rabbits out of his hat to complete the trilogy?

That, of course, isn’t much of a criticism of Compass as a film – for the most part, the movie was simply a cracking, involving watch, bringing out the best of Pullman’s characters and the enticingly different world he created for his Lyra. A smarter, deeper fantasy film than its outward gloss would suggest, this is a great – although much critically maligned – calling card for Weitz. Now if only he can work the same magic on the rest of the series, should it ever be made.

Shrek The Third (2007)

Ah, the dreaded threequel – Shrek The Third thundered into cinemas this summer at the tail end of a bunch of other movies claiming to end off movie trilogies (Spiderman 3, Pirates 3 etc). As with its fellow box-office hopefuls, has the law of diminishing returns wreaked its havoc in the magically satirical, tongue-in-cheek land that is Shrek‘s Far Far Away? Well, there’s no denying that Shrek 3 is nowhere near as impressive as either of its predecessors – it lacks the sheer inventive wit that made the first movie such a breakout success and instant animation classic, and has considerably less spark than the second film – failing to come up with a new character quite as potent and immediately popular as Puss In Boots, for example. That being said, Shrek 3 has the advantage of coming from a family of films that has long ago ironed out a winning, charming formula that works just fine; simply by not deviating from it, and on occasion pulling out a corker of a funny scene, this movie avoids heading down that dread road known only as sequel-mandated mediocrity.

Big ugly green ogre Shrek (Scottish accent courtesy of Mike Myers) is blissfully married to his princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz), but finds himself increasingly having to fill in for the ailing frog king (John Cleese) – usually with disastrous consequences – on the latter’s royal duties. When the frog king finally croaks (wow, that was too easy… almost like the writers PLANNED THAT PUN!), Shrek decides to seek out Fiona’s cousin Arthur (Justin Timberlake) and get the pimply pipsqueak to take over the throne instead. But even as Shrek hunts for Artie with the help of his trusty, noisy sidekicks Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss (Antonio Banderas), the nefarious Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) tires of life as a bit-part actor and rounds up Far Far Away’s foulest villains – including a snarly Captain Hook (Ian McShane) – to take over the kingdom while Shrek is away. Can Fiona, her feisty mom Lillian (Julie Andrews) and a coterie of fairytale princesses go against storytelling convention to save the day?

So plot is very much not Shrek 3‘s strongest point – the story remains pretty trite, however much the writers try to pepper it up with Shrek’s anxieties about becoming the father of a brood of ogre babies he can’t control, or Artie’s wistful teenage angsting about not fitting in anywhere. From a bumbling, unlikely anti-hero in the first movie, it’s become clear over the course of three movies that heroism comes only in a big, green and farting version. Which also means that it’s a foregone conclusion that poor old Charming, however hard he tries, isn’t going to get away with his scheme. But, and this is the key reason the movie remains so enjoyable despite having a predictable, almost piss-poor story, the draw of the Shrek franchise has never been its plot. Each movie has had a quest of sorts for Shrek to undertake – and the fun part comes in watching the characters and situations, ranging from the outlandish to the downright hilarious and almost always utterly inventive, spill out around him as he struggles mightily to complete his quest.

I must admit that it is quite a shame that Artie, the new semi-lead character that had to carry quite a bit of the film’s emotional ballast, is weak and not particularly memorable. He’s a plot device, nothing more, nothing less. I suspect that there’s also only so much the writers can do with Shrek and Fiona – they both remain amiable presences throughout the film, and it’s undeniably sweet the lengths to which each will go to save each other’s big green asses. But that’s something we’ve known all along. Unlike in the first movie, when the quirks and foibles that made up their thorny, prickly relationship formed the basis of the film, they are almost the sideshow here, as the movie explodes merrily in every other direction, new characters teeming off the page and onto the screen with great enthusiasm.

Fortunately, there really is no shortage of great minor characters in Shrek 3, to the extent that some of the older, better-established ones get short shrift in terms of screen-time. Donkey and Puss, for instance, remain wildly funny, as anchored by the brazenly confident vocal performances of Murphy and Banderas… but one gets the sense, as they’re plunged conveniently into an extended body-swap joke, that the writers were looking for cheap, easy jokes rather than the more thoughtful, sly situational comedy they’ve concocted before. But who really wants to quibble when you get a host of new secondary characters as loopy and amusing as this batch? The fairytale princesses, all voiced by SNL alumni and each one a riff on a popular Disney character, are a hoot – Snow White (Amy Poehler) is as aggressive a bitch-on-wheels as a dainty princess can be; Sleeping Beauty (Cheri Oteri) a narcoleptic who falls asleep at random points throughout the film; and Cinderella (Amy Sedaris) is more than a little obsessive-compulsive in her need to clean up after. And because the Shrek producers felt that they hadn’t plundered Disney’s archives quite enough, we also get the chance to meet revered wizard Merlin (Eric Idle) – except that he’s gone rather barmy, decked out as he is in his too-short nightshirt and living in a tricked-out, New-Agey house that plays inspirational music on cue when Shrek and Artie need to have a “moment”. Even Hook gets a look-in as a typically rubbish panto-type villain, even breaking out a piano at one point to bang out the soundtrack for a fight scene… until Shrek smashes said piano to bits. At least in this respect, Shrek 3 retains the cheeky, irreverent tone that made its predecessors so much fun to watch.

I couldn’t wax lyrical about the characters without pointing out that some old favourites get great moments too. Returning favourite Pinocchio (Cody Cameron) gets a monologue in question form, as he tries to muddle Charming up completely while avoiding telling a lie about Shrek’s whereabouts. The three pigs with inexplicable German accents (also voiced by Cameron) are cute too, forming a mini-Greek chorus as Charming interrogates the fairytale creatures. Best of all, however, is the return of the Gingerbread Man (Conrad Vernon) in what is surely one of the funniest scenes all year – when threatened with bodily harm by Charming, the ever endearingly squeaky Gingerbread Man is afforded a unique moment when his life literally flashes past his eyes, and you’re not likely to see anything more inventive, funny and just plain wacky for a long, long while.

Throw all these characters in the mix, with some really classic, typically snarky lines of dialogue (“Help! I’m being kidnapped by a monster who’s trying to relate to me!”, and an exchange I can’t quite recall now between Donkey and Puss about why Donkey wears no underwear) and you’ve got a movie that trundles along at a happy, thoroughly enjoyable clip. Is it as good or as creative and fresh as its predecessors? No. That’s pretty obvious. But if a movie like this can shoehorn a moral so unsubtly into its plotline (‘You and you alone make you the person you want to be – who cares what other people say about you!’) and emerge mostly unscathed at the other end, you gotta give it some props. Shrek 3 doesn’t grab you in the heart the way some of the best animated films (like Shrek or The Incredibles) can, preferring instead to coast along on its tried-and-tested formula of pop-culture references and witty in-jokes. A sellout? When are Hollywood movies anything but? Perhaps the one other thing I can say in favour of Shrek 3 is that, although this movie boasts some marvellous animation (watch Charming toss his sparkling golden hair in the wind!), this is emphatically not one of those animated movies when you find yourself occasionally, or even far too often, distracted from the story by the gloriousness of the animation (see: Ice Age 2). That doesn’t make it a classic, by any means – but it surely makes it entertaining. And with doubts cast over both Spiderman 3 and Pirates 3 as to whether they were worth the film they’re printed on, why look any further than the reliably formulaic, reliably funny Shrek 3 for a summer blockbuster that really will please all the family?

Scoop (2006)

If I could be bothered to hunt through my recent reviews of Woody Allen movies, I’d probably be confirmed in my belief that I haven’t given him an unqualified good review in a very, very long time. (Unless I was reviewing some of his classics from the 70s or 80s.) People complain that the man’s in a rut, or that he hasn’t hit the same creative peak he kept achieving without breaking a sweat back in the 70s with classics like Annie Hall, Love And Death, Sleeper… and those are only the funny ones. I’ve tried to be an apologist for the guy as long as I can, and I do believe my ratings of his recent movies have occasionally been more charitable than the actual scripts or overall execution of the concepts deserved.

Well, no more. I know Scoop isn’t anywhere near as critically well-received as its immediate predecessor Match Point, which also stars Allen’s current muse, the buxom, blondely American Scarlett Johansson. And the movie doesn’t break any new ground the way his classic comedies did, like when Allen’s character in Annie Hall invited the audience to listen in to the neurotic little conversations in his head. But in terms of being a thoroughly entertaining, funny romp, Allen seriously hasn’t fired on this many cylinders in a very long time. Speaking as one who’s always preferred his comedies, I’ve found his attempts at full-out comedy since the decade opened in 2000 either a little forced (Small Time Crooks), too darkly bitter and mean (Anything Else) or just a tad messy for my liking (Hollywood Ending).

He even seemed to have lost touch with that quintessentially weird, chatty and death-obsessed Woody Allen character he mostly reserved for himself (there being no one else in the world quite so… well, weird, chatty and death-obsessed), to the extent that the incarnation of this character in Anything Else was frustratingly dark. He even completely removed any trace of this side of himself from his last two movies (MP and Melinda and Melinda – Will Ferrell wasn’t a good enough substitute in the comedy half of M&M). But here, it’s the character he plays, two-bit magician Sidney Waterman aka Splendini, who is the personification of his return to form: when Sidney babbles his way through a developing friendship with Johansson’s Sondra Pransky and gets increasingly entangled in a murder mystery, the movie feels as familiar as the best of Allen’s wordy, self-reflexive banter. So no, nothing new here – more of a return to form, with excellent dialogue and great comic timing constantly wringing wry, wry laughs out of a delighted audience. But when the original was so good, there’s no reason to break the mould, is there?

Anyway, I’m getting way ahead of myself – most of the review is already written! But I always feel the need to insert a brief synopsis somewhere, even if only to remind myself in future of key plot points in the movie. Scoop opens on the funeral service of Joe Strombel (Ian McShane), a hard-nosed investigative journalist who hits upon the scoop of his life beyond the grave… and so determined is he never to give up a story lead that he keeps finding ways and means to return to earth and give student journalist Sondra tips on how to follow up on the story. He warns her that the suave, handsome Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), son of a lord and bred from youth for a career in politics, is actually the Tarot Card serial killer who’s been plaguing the dark-haired prostitutes of London for ages, and wants her to gather evidence to break the case wide open. In a pretty unlikely sequence of events (but who cares?), Sondra manages to introduce herself to Peter by faking her own drowning – as Jade Spence, with Sidney introduced as her father, Sondra starts to hang out in Peter’s exalted social circles… and starts falling for him. She finds it increasingly difficult to believe that he could be a murderer after all… but what if he is, and Sondra is just getting herself deeper and deeper into something she just can’t handle?

In this case, as with the case of the similarly madcap Manhattan Murder Mystery, the actual murders and the culprit behind it all are actually far less important than you’d think. The whole murder mystery case serves as an intriguing enough backdrop for the characters to banter with one another, of course, but isn’t particularly original – and I doubt that was what Allen was going for. No, the is-he-isn’t-he aspect of the movie, as we watch the suavely handsome Peter charm his way into Sondra’s heart, is fairly run-of-the-mill, and the reason why I expect many critics didn’t take too kindly to the movie. Not original enough, I suppose they’d say – but honestly, I never thought this was the real point of Scoop at all. The real point of it, as far as I could ascertain, was to throw two completely rubbish characters into a situation in which they’re completely out of their depth, and have them somehow bungle through solving a mystery – or not – by a series of wildly unlikely chance occurrences (hello, Sondra’s main tip comes from a dead guy).

Oh, that and the wildly enjoyable dialogue, of course. It’s hard to tell how much of it was improvised on the spot between Allen and Johansson (though the latter admitted in interviews that, although she was given free rein, she didn’t stray too far from an already excellent script), but the banter is free-flowing, charming and wonderfully Allen-esque in its bumbling, free-flow-association way. It’s been a loooong time since I’ve laughed so hard at one of his movies, but I did that here, whether it was through Sidney’s snarky asides about his purported daughter (“she’s learning-disabled [but] practically normal now”, or how drowning is a genetic trait of the family), or the quirky interplay between Sondra and Sidney (“If you put our heads together, you’ll hear a hollow noise”). I’m actually one of those people who hates it when Allen reins in that acerbic, albeit very rambly, wit of his – and here he gives the character of Sidney carte blanche to be as random as he wants, so we wind up with corking lines like “I was born of the Hebrew persuasion, but I converted to narcissism” (so Allen!) and moments in which Sidney tries to remember a simple combination through a very complicated mnemonic system (“16 blue ponies, 21 airplanes, and 12 spinning midgets”).

While it’s clear that Allen himself hasn’t had this much fun onscreen in ages, he also scores a really excellent cast to tell his story and crack his quips this time. Johansson was almost too detached in MP, playing up as she did her sex-bomb femme fatale image. With Scoop, however, Allen reveals her to be an adept comedienne as capable of going toe-to-toe with him in long, rambly, snarky discussions i.e., she is, in this movie, his Diane Keaton for the noughties (though of course Johansson doesn’t quite measure up to the original!). Jackman does what he does best – look hopelessly handsome and be hopelessly charming – and does it so well that it’s easy to neglect the fact that his character could have been made far more intriguing, dark and complex. As I pointed out earlier, however, the murder mystery is almost secondary to the comic process of truly amateurish detective work that accompanies it – Sidney and Sondra almost always just getting caught trying to get into Peter’s music instrument vault, their attempt to bring their story to a newspaper only to be stumped about just where they originally got their lead etc. So it doesn’t matter that Jackman’s character is a bit of an empty vessel – when he’s onscreen, he makes it sing and that’s all that really matters. McShane, in a small role, is always amusing every time he fades into the picture, imparting more of his macabre wisdom as he eludes Death’s scythe yet one more time.

Whether you’ll like Scoop depends a lot on how much you can endure Allen at his most self-indulgent. This movie, in a way, feels like a huge ‘screw you’ to his critics – after triumphantly wresting back some respect from them with the deeply dark, sexy MP, he appears to be intentionally going back to what he loves and does best: a murder mystery (did you know Annie Hall was actually about a murder case but those bits were sliced off because it felt like two different movies?), laced through with comic suspense and romance, and starring, most prominently, his nebbishly Jewish, neurotic alter ego. If you can’t take any of these things and were never much of an Allen fan to begin with, this probably isn’t going to be the most enjoyable of movie experiences for you. But if you go in there just wanting to thrill in a movie whose tongue never once leaves its cheek, and is peppered liberally with Allen’s zinging, smartly-paced dialogue and great musical cues (not swing as before, or opera as in MP, but classical this time), not to mention an enthusiastic cast – including himself – boasting great, sparkling chemistry, you’d be hard-pressed to do any better this year than with Scoop.

High praise for a comparatively slight movie, you say? Certainly. But when the auteur in question is Woody Allen, who is a genius at creating remarkably rich movies that aren’t really about all that much when it comes down to it, all I have to say is: welcome back, Woody. I’ve missed you.