Ricky Gervais has been busy like a bastard in recent years, with his podcasts, TV series, books and more. He also found time to make some films. 2008's Ghost Town, a romantic comedy that lazy twats would describe as a cross between The Sixth Sense and... well, just about any romantic comedy ever made, was the first real attempt by Hollywood to cash in on his success. But kind of failed. Gervais is a grumpy dentist who starts to see dead people after routine surgery goes wrong... and you can probably guess the rest. Kristen Wiig steals the film as a fake tan-obsessed surgeon, Tea Leoni is the love interest and the underrated Greg Kinnear is the ghost of Leoni's dead husband who hangs around with Gervais when he realises Gervias's character can see him. However, Gervais's character is just a bit too grumpy (and unfunny) for too much of the film, and it kind of drags much of the film down, especially when he is in just about every scene of the film.
Undeterred, Gervais came back in 2009 with The Invention of Lying, a film he co-wrote and directed (he did neither on Ghost Town). Made with a much lighter tone (but greater satiric undertone), this is much better than Ghost Town. This is one of those "In a world..." films that are usually pretty terrible, but this, set "in a world" where no-one has ever lied, using the conceipt mainly to satirise religion, is actually fairly good, although it gets a bit sappy towards the end as the rom-com elements come to the fore. A good effort!
Influential 60s band The Rutles star in the documentary All You Need is Cash, telling their story from rise to break-up, and features contributions from luminaries such as Mick Jagger, George Harrison, Michael Palin. And to a lesser extent Dan Ackroyd. Featuring classic tunes such as 'A Hard Days Rut', 'OUCH!' and 'Tragical History Tour'. Who are The Rutles? They're only the band The Beatles could have been, as Alan Partridge might say. Highly entertaining.
Staying on a musical theme, The Rocker stars TV's Dwight Schrute as an old rocker (drummer) who joins a young band! With hilarious consequences! You can probably guess the rest (unless you're an idiot); his new band makes it, his old (now successful) band fall flat on their faces at the end.... it's pretty good but 4 episodes of The Office would be much funnier.
I only bought Breaking the Rules because I was looking up the terrible 1990s TV Series Tropical Heat and star of the series Carolyn Dunn happened to star in this film as well. And because it was 1 pence on Amazon (second hand). It's very 80s and very rubbish.
No comments:
Post a Comment