Shut up, Crime!

Blu Review: SUPER
18 – 92mins – 2010
Written by: James Gunn
Directed by: James Gunn
Starring: Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Kevin Bacon, Liv Tyler, Gregg Henry, Michael Rooker, Andre Royo, Sean Gunn, Stephen Blakehart, Nathan Fillion, Linda Cardellini, Rob Zombie
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The second film I’ve watched in a fortnight which takes its bow on home video despite the kind of considerable star clout you would normally expect to carry a film to multiplexes with ease. But while The Resident (reviewed HERE) was a genre flick from an iconic studio which was overshadowed by a bigger hitter, James Gunn’s Super is a positively tiny indie production so audacious and unpredictable it borders on schizophrenic, which also suffers from being released in the trail of a major blazer with a spookily analogous concept.*

Super is another ordinary-sap-decides-to-fight-crime-in-a-homemade-outfit comedy – although when I say comedy I do mean it in the blackest sense imaginable; seriously, the ‘18’ rating is well and truly earned here with a torrent of uber-violent, uber-profane and uber-uncomfortable scenes which are just as likely to make your jaw drop as chuckle in amusement. Rainn “Dwight Schrute” Wilson is perfectly pitiable as Frank D’Arbo, a bitter and enraged sad sack who takes the law into his own hands after his junkie wife Sarah (Tyler) runs off with conceited dealer Jacques (Bacon).

Inspired by a religious TV mascot (Nathan Fillion cameoing as “The Holy Avenger”) and touched by the “Finger of God” (voiced by Rob Zombie) in a surreal dream sequence involving a lobotomy and alien tentacles borrowed straight out of Gunn’s 2006 tongue-in-cheek sci-fi Slither, Frank believes it is his destiny to become “The Crimson Bolt”, a superhero with absolutely no super powers whatsoever, but a startling proclivity for smashing small time criminals around the head - with a monkey wrench. The scene in which he crushes the skulls of two queue jumpers at a movie theatre is both hysterical and disturbing in its graphic excessiveness.

The brilliant Ellen Page (Smart People, Whip It!, Inception) is as infectiously exuberant as ever as comic-store-clerk-cum- kid-sidekick “Boltie” (real name Libby). Her enthusiasm to join Frank's questionably delusional cause veers from excitable to dangerously unsettling yet it's hard to see her as anything but adorable (well, except in one scene...) and she frequently steals the show (“What the fuck's a 'Robin' anyway?!”).

As this frankly atrocious crime fighting duo ransack the town in their quest to keep the streets clean of scum (“Don't steal! Don't deal drugs! Don't molest kids! You don't butt!”) the comedy ranges from the raucous to the awkward – this is, after all, a real world diegesis where they look like twats and can't fight for shit – but as the film heads for its climax and Frank sets out to win back Sarah from Jacques' drug-peddling clutches the death toll rises exponentially as, somewhat contradictorily, the film reveals its very human heart.

Crucially, no matter how diabolically brutal the ass kicking or excessive the gore (and, trust me, it is), you're still willing Frank to win; to overturn injustice and make something of his depressing and uninteresting little life. Super certainly isn't for everyone: you'll either love the savagery or be appalled by it, but after watching this last night and initially grading it with an ambivalent “3 ticks” my appreciation grew throughout today and I'm now looking back on its kooky, outlandish qualities with inflated affection. "The Crimson Bolt" and "Boltie" will definitely be getting a second spin in this CR@B's crib.


In a CR@B Shell: Barmy, brutal and sadist, yet concurrently gut-busting and bizarrely sympathetic, James Gunn's multifarious Super is a highly-strung and subversive off-beat treat for fans of twisted, insolent comedy – but it's definitely a perturbed little pup.
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* You already know which film I'm referring to, so I won’t mention it by name like EVERY other critic thus far has done, but I will link to my REVIEW, ever desperate am I for some cross promotion :-b

School of C*cks

Cine Review: BAD TEACHER
15 – 92mins – 2011
Written by: Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky
Directed by: Jake Kasdan
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Jason Segel, Lucy Punch, Phyllis Smith, John Michael Higgins
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If you thought the high school students of American Pie were a puerile bunch of sex-obsessed wasters, then you haven’t met Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz); the most foul-mouthed, vain, materialistic, responsibility-dodging layabout at John Adams Middle School – and she’s a teacher!

“Shut the front door!”

Dumped by her prosperous fiancé for being a vacuous gold-digger, Elizabeth returns to the profession she despises to make ends meet, wherein she sticks on a continuous run of videos to amuse her pupils while she sets about winning over hot-bodied goody-goody substitute – and, most importantly for our Bad Teacher – heir to a wristwatch empire, Scott Delacorte (Diaz’s real-life ex Justin The Social Network Timberlake).

“I want to sit on his fac– Hiiiii!”

Problem is that Scott has fallen for over-zealous star teacher Amy Squirrel (Dinner for Schmucks’ Lucy Punch; as loopy as ever), while Elizabeth attracts the unwanted attention of grounded – but broke – gym teacher Russell Gettis (Gulliver’s Travels’ dopey Jason Segel). Certain that a boob job will win over minted Scott, Elizabeth undertakes all manner of back-handed and down-right illegal ventures to raise the necessary funds for the life-changing op.

While sniggersome in places (it’s the age-old juxtaposition of people of authority acting inappropriately against type), Bad Teacher isn’t quite the off-the-hook riot the trailer promised, while the mortification factor is understandable given that the writing duo are regular scribes on NBC’s squirm-fest The Office . But whereas Michael Scott’s misguided work-based shame was buffeted by heart, Elizabeth is curiously void of emotion or a moral compass.

Watching Diaz manipulate her peers while cruising through life smoking pot, snoozing in class and cursing at children does get rather old after an hour and a half, and only sarcastic Russell comes out of the film with a modicum of decency (even if he's hardly a prize catch); Amy’s career-minded determinism quickly shifts to envy and suspicion while sickening Scott is quite simply a douche.

While the third act game-changing revelation that producing a class of top grades in the state test will bag the triumphant teacher a hefty bonus does make Elizabeth change tack and buckle down, Scott’s plot arc soon fizzles out, hampered by a bizarre hole in the story which sees him decide without any form of hesitancy that it’s perfectly acceptable to dry hump Elizabeth on a school trip while his girlfriend is ill at home!! Was there a scene missing or did I blackout through a major decision? Either way, he’s still a douche.


In a CR@B Shell: Diaz’s one-dimensional Bad Teacher is rescued from crude humiliation by a faculty of kooky characters, but as funny as it is while it’s on, Jake Kasdan’s school comedy is as unmemorable as one of Elizabeth’s skive-easy lessons. This average effort barely scrapes a trio of ticks but must try harder.
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Bangkok Atrocious

Cine Review: THE HANGOVER PART II
15 – 102mins – 2011
Written by: Scot Armstrong, Craig Mazin, Todd Philips
Directed by: Todd Philips
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong, Mason Lee, Paul Giamatti, Jamie Chung, Nirut Sirijanya
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Back in the swirling mists of time – well, 18months ago to be precise – I published a pithy paragraph long review of what many critics were proclaiming the “funniest film of the year”: The Hangover (travel back to the early days of The CR@B Shack by clicking on this ‘ere LINK). I disagreed. It wasn’t so much that I hated the stag party misadventures of Phil (Cooper), Stu (Helms) and Alan (Galifianakis), simply that, after all the hype, it wasn’t the funniest film of 2009; merely chucklesome at best. I awarded it an average 3/5.

Inevitably with any box office smash, the studio saw dollar signs and a sequel was promptly green lit, imaginatively called The Hangover Part II (wouldn’t Another Hangover have been catchier?), to be released at the tail end of May this year. I decided to give it a chance, hoping a second dose of inane drunken misfortune would up the ante of the first and deliver heartier laughs. After sold out screenings and a Rod Stewart concert (see HERE) foiled my attempts to attend a screening, last night The Hangover Part II finally caught up with me – and boy was my head sore!

Not because I laughed so much it hurt, sadly, or because I drank myself into oblivion in some sort of ridonkulous homage to the onscreen action, waking this morning unable to remember a thing about what I had witnessed (although part of me wishes I had). No, dear readers, my head hurt because I was so utterly dumbfounded by what was playing on the cinema screen in front of me.

Shifting the action from Las Vegas to Thailand , Todd Philips' much anticipated sequel is otherwise content simply to give its audience more of the same - even down to an awkward scene in an elevator! On an impromptu stag night prior to Stu’s marriage to Lauren (Chung), the self-proclaimed Wolfpack wake up after what was meant to be “one beer on the beach” with a chain smoking capuchin monkey, a severed finger and returning hyperactive gangster Leslie (Community’s zanily irreverent Jeong) in a dirty Bangkok hotel room.

To make matters worse, Alan’s head has been shaved, groom-to-be Ed is emblazoned with a Mike Tyson-riffing, copyright-infringing (seriously) facial tattoo, his fiancée’s younger brother – teen genius Teddy (Lee) – is missing, and no-one has a clue what the hell happened on the preceding evening. Cue an hour and a half of escalating madness as the oddball gang attempt to piece together clues and retrace their steps to track down Teddy and make it to the wedding on time.

It’s an outrageous and barmy escapade to be sure, as the Wolfpack are shot at by Russian drug dealers, threatened by a mobster (a refreshing cameo by Giamatti), beaten by mute monks (!!) and follow infinite false leads before they come to the conclusion that maybe Teddy hadn’t travelled quite as far as they first thought (deja vu much?). Alas, the ludicrous is also intermingled with the raunchy and outright offensive – a strip club of Lady-boys whom Ed had drunken anal sex with being a definite moral low – resulting in a lot of grown men shrieking incessantly as their celebration turns increasing dark and distasteful.

My main bone of contention lies with clueless simpleton Alan, whose brainlessness and social naivety veers from ignorance to mentally unsound throughout. I just didn’t find him at all funny and I question how anyone can laugh at a man so inherently unlikeable: he isn’t simply the friend who faux pas’ to the point of embarrassment – he’s a dangerous prescription pill-popping lunatic who’s completely oblivious to his own erroneous actions and I found nothing to like about him.


In a CR@B Shell: After a night as wildly calamitous as their trip to Vegas, the Wolfpack should have declared “never again” – and so should co-writer/director Todd Philips, who has delivered a nigh on duplicate disaster in The Hangover Part II, albeit one which leaves an even more unpleasant taste in the mouth.
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Rubber Bandit

Blu Review: RUBBER
15 – 82mins – 2010
Written by: Quentin Dupiex
Directed by: Quentin Dupiex
Starring: Stephen Spinella, Jack Plotnik, Roxanne Mesquida, Wings Hauser, Ethan Cohn, Charley Koontz
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In today’s desolate and arid cinematic landscape where CGI hullabaloozas, revenue-determined sequels and fruitless remakes are the order of the day, adventurous filmmaker Quentin Dupiex (AKA “Flat Beat” music producer Mr Oizo – remember him guys and gals?) must at least be congratulated for thinking completely outside the box in his search for a wholly original premise: his bizarre 2010 horror-comedy, Rubber, stars a sentient murderous car tyre with psychokinetic powers as its antihero.

Yep, you read that correctly.

On paper, this self-confessed homage to “no reason” sounds like an absolute rollicking blast of a B movie – how could a film about an animated tyre which can lock doors, turn on showers, switch television channels and make people’s heads explode be anything *but* mind-blowingly bonkers fun?! Well, you're about to find out, because despite a truly uncanny central conceit, Rubber is – even at a trim 80minutes – agonisingly and unforgivably slow going.

The first 20minutes are the real pace-zapping culprits, dragging the film into a boring lull even bloody carnage can't lift it out of. We are introduced to a group of spectators who are stood out in the desert watching and commenting on the film-within-a-film taking place before them – a film which only some of the “actors” think is scripted and others believe is completely authentic. It’s a supposedly avant-garde comment on people enjoying unrealistic films despite nothing on screen making a jot of sense – except Dupiex forgot to inject his "innovative" absurdity with even an iota of fun.

As the rolling rascal executes rabbits and scorpions (just for kicks) and becomes infatuated with a cute brunette motorist (Mesquida), what should have had me rolling about in hysterics at its kookiness had be getting genuinely angry with how terribly everything was handled. I haven’t been this infuriated by narrative inconsistencies since Lucio Fulci’s detestable City of the Living Dead (reviewed HERE). Tacky rot The Room (reviewed HERE) may not have had a percentage of Rubber's admittedly slick production values, but at least it brought joy to its audience – even if it was unintentional!

Rubber basically tries too hard to be daring and experimental – but clearly there’s a damn good reason why there’s never been a film about a killer wheel covering before: it's stoopid! Dupiex’s tongue-in-cheek utilization of the metafiction literary device also fails spectacularly: the on-screen audience initially want to watch the horror unfold through binoculars, but they are deprived of food and water and made to sleep in the desert as if being tortured, before an oddball director's lackey (Plotnik) slaughters a turkey for them to devour, which he has poisoned to kill them all off!! Say WHAT?!

All, that is, except one: a gruff guy in a wheelchair (Hauser) who refused to eat the raw “feast”. Thus, the slapdash “show” must go on for his sole amusement! It is never determined whether some, all or no part of the farce is real or fake, as the incredulities pile ever higher – the lackey later scoffs a table of food he surely knows is poisoned because he was the one who poisoned the turkey, killing himself while the wheelchair-bound spectator seems unaffected by any of the people keeling over around him!!

Ultimately, my frustration mounted to breaking point because there was simply no point questioning why anything was happening, as the same answer kept being thrown back at us: “no reason” – but that really isn’t good enough, leading to a perplexing, inconsistent, one-dimensional and unsatisfying jumble of garbage which misplaces any artistic direction or ironic intent it may have started with and doesn’t even impress on a solely shallow comedic or horrific level either.


In a CR@B Shell: An exasperating waste of time, Rubber squanders a potentially killer premise in an unexpectedly dull and demented one-joke Z movie which thinks it’s clever but manages to evade even its own “ironic” philosophy by asserting that there is absolutely no sense to any of it. Total burn out.
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Room for Improvement

Film Review: THE ROOM
15 – 92mins – 2003
Written by: Tommy Wiseau
Directed by: Tommy Wiseau
Starring: Tommy Wiseau, Juliette Danielle, Greg Sestero, Philip Haldiman, Carolyn Minnott, Robyn Paris, Mike Holmes, Kyle Vogt, Dan Janjigian, Greg Ellery
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A clear-cut contender for “Worst film ever committed to celluloid”, this self-financed 2003 travesty by unfathomably-accented auteur Tommy Wiseau is so inadequately appalling in every conceivable way that it has gained infamous cult status, receiving numerous midnight cinema screenings - including an upcoming exhibition at Christ's College, Cambridge on June 3rd - and (hopefully ironic) advocates from the likes of Hollywood A-listers Will Ferrell and Kristen Bell.

Clearly intended to be a profound and dark melodrama about the effects an affair can have on those close to you, The Room is more like a farce – none of the unknown cast can act (Wiseau himself the biggest offender), the same plot points are recycled ad infinitum while other more weighty developments (such as a drug money debt and breast cancer test) vanish without trace, the (often dubbed) dialogue is laughable, scenes take place in random irrelevant locations for absolutely no reason, the chronology is in absolute disarray, the camera often dips as if almost dropped while panning the room, characters come and go inexplicably lending no purpose to the story... I could go on!

It’s essentially a 15minute short film dragged over an hour and a half, with overlong location pans, impromptu “catch” sessions with an American football and excruciatingly long un-erotic sex scenes (one of which I have my suspicions was a repeat of earlier footage!) padding out the fluff. Wiseau can claim until he’s blue in the face that it was supposed to be laughed at, but it’s obviously not – it’s just an amateurish and inept product of a man whose ego (and wallet) is larger than his talent.

I’m literally stumped for a single redeeming quality to proffer The Room – even the title is preposterous, serving no relevance to the infinitesimal plot whatsoever. And yet, despite its multitude of faults, it is still well worth checking out, if only as an incredulous curio: seeing is believing – and even then you’ll struggle to grasp exactly how anyone could ever consider this abysmal train wreck to be worth making – but at least you’ll have an arsenal of excruciating quotes at your disposal.


In a CR@B Shell: Watch alone and you won’t make it beyond the first two minutes without tearing your eyes out, but watch with friends and you’ll derive much amusement from deriding this diabolical mess which, bluntly, doesn’t deserve even a single CR@B Howard tick.
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