Reese Witherspoon, Superman III and ice ballet - Reviews #166

Some shorter reviews this time, as you're busy and I don't want to be a nuisance.


Well, you can't accuse them of misrepresenting the movie, anyway.

*SPOILERS*
Superman III (Richard Lester, 1983) - Every so often you'll come across a film that you've always heard is terrible, and find that it's actually an undiscovered gem, a little masterpiece, a bafflingly overlooked beauty fully undeserving of its terrible critical reputation. Superman III is not that film. Superman III is shit.

Let me ask you a question: would you like to see Superman strangled to death by Clark Kent? Let me ask you another: did you think the problem with Superman II was that it didn't have Richard Pryor in it? Now let me ask you a third: would you like to see Superman fight a computer? If the answer to all three questions is 'yes', then I have exciting news for you: you're a moron, and I've just found your new favourite film.

The first half-hour of the film is actually alright. The slapstick ballet, while completely incongruous, is quite cleverly conceived (I like the fiery penguin, anyway), the sequence in which Supes gets changed in a passport photo booth is neat, and the two scenes shot at Clark's high school reunion - despite some weak comedy and an attack of the smugs - are genuinely very persuasive. Is it a bird? Yes, it's Annette O'Toole as lonely single mum Lana Lang, and she's really rather affecting, dancing with Clark to Earth Angel, one of the songs used so memorably at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance.

These sequences are interspersed with some high-grade idiocy and poor writing, but even the baffling inclusion of Richard Pryor doesn't feel like too much of a problem at this stage. He's walked into the wrong film by mistake, but he's still being mildly amusing. Come the 30-minute mark, though, and things start to go very wrong. Watching Superman II and III, you'll believe a man can fuck up a promising film series - and that man is Dick Lester. In this outing, the director's visual gags work reasonably well at first, with a Tashlin-ish sense of invention tied to a nicely rhytmic editing style. But boy can his stuff get irritating fast, partly because he has no conception of moderation. And partly because lots of his ideas are atrocious.

He isn't helped by one of the worst scripts of the decade. Granted, there's the odd zinger in there - "I ask you to kill Superman, and you couldn't even do that one, simple thing" - but such concessions to class are overwhelmed by reams of clumsy voiceover, risible exposition ("Kryptonite - I remember reading about it in an interview with him") and boring story. While Pryor's get-rich-quick gimmick is a clever touch later borrowed by Office Space, the bulk of the plotting is oppressively tedious and seems to bear the unmistakable mark of having been made up the night before shooting.

Though Reeve has fun as "Bad Superman", straightening the Leaning Tower of Pisa, blowing out the Olympic flame and - best of all - trying to shag Lana instead of saving a lorry that's hanging off a bridge, very little of what he does in the film makes any sense at all. Why would he accept a gift that is quite clearly Kryptonite? Or think that his alter-ego could be destroyed in a trash compacter? Oh, I know: HE WOULDN'T.

On paper, the film sounds fun, despite possessing perhaps the most singularly unpromising poster of all time. There's Superman going rogue, Pamela Stephenson cropping up as a pneumatic, deceptively intelligent moll, and a script that promises frequent recourse to some very '80s Doomsday predictions about artificial intelligence. In practice, it's just one long, embarrassing exercise in tedium and mythos-trashing, ill-conceived in just about every way. It even has the gall to offer a rather charming final five minutes, an inexplicable "look what you could have won", with a modicum of respect for its hero, and everything. It's all too laughably little, too ludicrously late, clocking in a full hour-and-twenty after the bottom fell out of the movie. And no matter how sorry he was afterwards, Supes still ruined the Olympic opening ceremony, didn't he? Wanker. (1.5)

***


Self-proclaimed "US citizen" Reese Witherspoon, showing off her insolent, wither(spoon)ing glare, back when the various components of her head were more in proportion.

The Man in the Moon (Robert Mulligan, 1991) - A flawed, familar but very worthwhile coming-of-age story, set in the rural South during the '50s and focusing on a 14-year-old tomboy (Reese Witherspoon in her screen debut) who falls in love for the first time, only for her 17-year-old heartthrob to become smitten with her sister. This final film from To Kill a Mockingbird director Mulligan is overly melodramatic in story terms and overly schmaltzy in presentation: shot in soft, sunny, TV movie-ish hues by Freddie Francis and cursed with an overbearing musical score that only really works in one scene - when its young heroine is gazing forlornly through a cemetery fence. But it's blessed with sincerity and self-confidence, has some unforgettable moments amidst the corn, and is lifted far out of the ordinary by Witherspoon's imperfect but brilliant debut turn. While she's still learning how to transmit complex emotion, there's something very genuine and attractive about her performance, illuminated as it is by a rawness and honesty that's since been eroded by the Hollywood machine. The film's shortcomings are clear, but it casts a spell: one that lingers. (3)

***


Yes, it's the most disingenuous film poster of all time, featuring a tantalising comic tagline and Rosalind Russell's X-ray vision.

The Velvet Touch (Jack Gage, 1948) - An unusually erudite mix of noir, thriller and melodrama, with a predictable, poorly-paced plot but a credible theatrical atmosphere and a very strong cast. At its centre is one of Ros Russell's best dramatic performances, as a stage star who accidentally kills her despicable director (Leon Ames). Her character is making a transition from comedic roles to meatier ones, and so was she; despite the wealth of familiar faces on show, this is unmistakably a star vehicle, tailored to her talents. But while Russell makes a deep impression with her powerful, commanding performance, the film's greatest joy is Sydney Greenstreet, as wonderful as ever playing an omniscient, belly-laughing, theatre-loving cop. Incendiary noir icon Claire Trevor fairly devours the sets as his self-pitying chief suspect. (3)

***


Phwoarr, Baloo.

Melody Cruise (Mark Sandrich, 1933) - An imaginatively-directed, super-stylised musical comedy, made by Mark Sandrich a year before he started working on the Fred and Ginger films, with inventive sequences based on the rhythms of everyday life - the first of which is a gem - some shimmering photography and the snazziest wipes I've ever seen. The Pre-Code story, full of women in their underwear, risque dialogue and arse-slapping, sees Phil Harris (later the voice of Baloo the Bear) bizarrely cast as an irressistible lothario and "gay boy type" who chases dames on a big boat, as his pal Charlie Ruggles tries to dissuade him from settling down with any of them - including a bright-eyed schoolteacher (the ever-appealing Helen Mack). The story's much too slight, there are only a couple of laughs and the love interest thinks nothing of throwing litter in the sea (boooo!), but it's also musically innovative - with plenty of rhyming dialogue - possesses the blueprint for Born Yesterday's closing gag, and is just amazing to look at: get a load of that sheet music in the night sky, made out of shining stars. Due to the paucity of plotting, there's even time for Sandrich to crowbar in an ice ballet number, shot from above in a slightly imprecise tribute to Busby Berkeley. (2.5)

***

Thanks for reading.

Rita Hayworth, This Means War and tuna - Reviews #130

An indie triumph, Loki in a low-key drama, and three absolutely rubbish movies. Plus: The Office (US), Michael Cera and Carmen Miranda.



Who Loves the Sun (Matt Bissonette, 2006) is an exceptional debut from Matt Bissonette, who went on to make the tremendous two-hander Passenger Side. Lukas Haas is a taciturn, unhappy and mysterious 30-something who returns home after five years away, and reconnects - in less than reconciliatory fashion - with ex-wife Molly Parker and cocky former friend Adam Scott. Growing in confidence and resonance as it progresses, it's an eloquent, moving and funny film, traversing apparently well-worn ground, only to find new avenues of exploration, and new insights. Haas and Parker are both very good, though once again it's Scott who takes top honours. His comic abilities have been front and centre of late, in TV sitcoms like Party Down and Parks and Recreation, but he's a tremendously gifted dramatic actor, and displays a heartbreaking vulnerability beneath his white-suited character's smarmy exterior. It's a fantastic film: effective as a character study; even better as a treatment of universal themes, arguing that most people face disasters of some magnitude, and we can only move forward by making peace with the past. (4)

***



Archipelago (Joanna Hogg, 2010) - An unhappy middle-class family decamps to the Isles of Scilly, where its frailties and internal tensions simmer and leak out across one gloomy week. The mother (Kate Fahy) is falling apart, her daughter is a stuck-up, self-hating bitch (Lydia Leonard) and sensitive younger brother Edward (Tom Hiddleston) is beset by bourgeois guilt that sees him trying to make friends with the hired help, prior to setting off for an 11-month aid mission in Africa. There's a touch of Festen in there, a bit of Bergman, perhaps even some of Woody Allen's Alice, but its concerns - particularly its preoccupation with class - are overridingly British. Hogg's second feature is acutely well-observed, and filmed in a way that suggests a series of overheard conversations, but it's also wilfully undramatic: there are barely any close-ups, narrative peaks are invariably followed by long silences and the stylistic gimmick does sometimes give the impression that someone has accidentally left the camera in the other room. While the slow stretches are integral to the film's purposefully faltering rhythm, they're not that interesting to watch: the film is at its best when bursting into restrained conflict, as in its awful, brilliant centrepiece, in which Leonard decides to send back her guinea fowl. (3)

***



Youth in Revolt (Miguel Arteta, 2009) - Ineffectual teenager Nick Twist (Michael Cera) needs to get kicked out of his mum's house, so he can hook up with the girl of his dreams, idealistic Francophile, Portia Doubleday. Enter his Belmondo-esque alter-ego, Francois Dillinger (also Cera), a moustachoied, smart-shirted sociopath with a ciggie permanently on the go. This adaptation of an early-'90s novel plays like a less successful version of Richard Ayoade's Submarine. It has the same interesting pictoral sense, dry sense of humour and amusing, introverted, sometimes obnoxious hero, but lacks focus and wastes the talents of an exciting supporting cast, giving Steve Buscemi and Justin Long very little to do. Taken as a whole, then, it's frustrating, but it has wonderful moments: its hero gawping, lovestruck in the shower as French music swells, two fine animated sequences and a handful of belly laughs. Those familiar with Cera's work should take to it more than most, and fully appreciate the rather heavy-handed subversion of his persona. (3)

See also: Cera also appeared in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, which got a bit tiresome after a while.

***



The Thief Lord (Richard Claus, 2006) - When protective, tousle-haired Prosper (Aaron Johnson) rescues his little brother, Boniface, from unfeeling relatives, the pair head for Venice, a place special to their late mother. Looking to elude their pursuers, including PI Victor Getz (Jim Carter), they fall in with the The Thief Lord, a masked teenager who gets by on his wits and acts as mentor to a group of orphans camping out in a derelict cinema. This by-the-numbers family film lacks the complexities and nuances of Cornelia Funke's source novel, leaning instead on cartoonish villainy and broad humour, but Johnson is a class act - particularly when asked to emote with face, not voice - and it's always nice to spend time in Venice, even if the locales could have been used more atmospherically. It's certainly nothing like the horrendous failure that was the adaptation of Anthony Horowitz's Stormbreaker, though it would certainly have benefited from more subtle and adventurous handling. The supporting cast includes Vanessa Redgrave and Alexei Sayle. (2.5)

***



That Night in Rio (Irving Cummings, 1941) - Fox's mainstream musicals were never in the same league as MGM's: the budgets weren't as large, the songs weren't as good and, crucially, the talent involved just couldn't compare. The Gang's All Here may have a cult following of Californian acid casualties due to its trippily garish visuals, but it's really no better than the rest: films like Down Argentine Way and Sun Valley Serenade, which only truly come to life when the incredible Nicholas Brothers make their typically brief appearances. (Ironically, Stormy Weather, an African-American musical which the studio didn't even deem worthy of Technicolor stock, is by far its most enduring and exciting outing.) This colourful but pedestrian remake of Folies Bergère de Paris - a near-classic Maurice Chevalier vehicle - has a typically charismatic Don Ameche taking on a dual role, as his American cabaret entertainer comes to the aid of his Brazilian baron, while almost nabbing the baroness (Alice Faye). Yes, you're right, quite a lot like The Prisoner of Zenda. It's actually a better farce than a musical (I swear Carmen Miranda does the same two songs in every film), though Faye's rendering of They Met in Rio is lovely - with some awesome blue notes. (2.5)

***



*SPOILERS*
Down to Earth (Alexander Hall, 1947) – Silly semi-sequel to Columbia’s dazzling 1941 fantasy Here Comes Mr Jordan, which sees the goddess of song and dance, Terpsichore (Rita Hayworth), coming down from above to destroy a Broadway show that paints her as a horny everywoman. Larry Parks, fresh from his success in The Jolson Story, is the show’s producer, who falls head over heels for the scheming, hoofing psycho. Hayworth is good, and the film looks amazing, with vast, vivid sets and sumptuous, sensitive early Technicolor. But after a fun beginning featuring Jordan alumni James Gleason and Edward Everett Horton, the story slows to a crawl, and just sort of sits there as Parks flounders and a game cast tries to enliven a set of tunes ranging from the forgettable to the downright poor, and keep afloat a plot with a ridiculous third-act twist. It’s worth a look for old movie nerds, but it isn’t a fitting follow-up to one of the most unusual and memorable Hollywood movies of the decade. (2)

Trivia notes: Here Comes Mr Jordan was based on a play called Heaven Can Wait, and was remade under that name in the 1970s. There is an unrelated ‘40s film called Heaven Can Wait, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Don Ameche. A third version of Here Comes Mr Jordan arrived in 2001, featuring Chris Rock in the Robert Montgomery role. That film was called... Down to Earth.

***



This Means War (McG, 2011) - This dire attempt at a date movie is a creepy, bombastic romantic-action-comedy, full of teeth-achingly awful dialogue, about CIA agents Chris Pine and Tom Hardy using their security clearance to stalk mutual girlfriend Reese Witherspoon. Speaking of agents, hers must be about the worst in the world. The script includes a joke about bipolar disorder, Hardy calling someone a "spaz" and an incredibly irritating supporting part for Chelsea Handler. Occasionally the film becomes halfway entertaining in a kind of pathetic, witless way, but most of the time it's just grating, offensive nonsense. The best bit is in the final scene, when Hardy has to shout above the noise of a plane, and briefly turns into Bane. Watch the unjustly maligned I-Spy instead. (1)

***



Mustang Country (John C. Champion, 1976) - Extraordinarily bad Western about milky-haired ex-rodeo champ Joel McCrea (in his last film) trying to catch a wild horse, avoid a bear, and bond with one of the worst child actors I have ever seen: Nika Rita, whose Native American foil redefines the concept of the wooden Indian. The film is shot in some pleasant locales, and McCrea does his best with what he's given, offering one nice moment of quiet grief, but the script, story and editing are atrocious. Hardly a fitting swansong for an icon of the genre, and of the American screen. (1)

***



*SPOILERS, BUT YOU'LL THANK ME. I ALSO SEEM TO HAVE STARTED SWEARING, BUT IN THE CIRCUMSTANCES THIS SEEMS ENTIRELY REASONABLE*
Weird Science (John Hughes, 1985) - This might be the most '80s thing that has ever happened. And one of the worst. If you found the scene in Sixteen Candles where Dong gets stuck up a tree hilarious but a little highbrow, then you'll love this steaming pile of hairsprayed, incomprehensible shit, in which Bill Paxton does literally and incomprehensibly turn into a steaming pile of shit. The premise - which sees two horny teenage geeks conjure up a hot 23-year-old with their computer - is great, but what John Hughes does with it is the exact opposite of great. It's sexist, racist, homophobic, and has a completely different message to the one it claims to espouse. I'm a big fan of Hughes, but this one's impossible to defend. And Anthony Michael Hall's drunk scenes are the most annoying on film. (1)

***



SHORT: The Campus Vamp (Harry Edwards, 1928) – Embarrassingly awful Mack Sennett two-reeler about a college boy ignoring his frigid girlfriend to consort with an annoying flapper (a young, brunette Carole Lombard wearing a cloche hat, who gets groped by a lobster). The plot makes no sense, the jokes are rubbish (with the sole exception of a man looking for his wife in a chest of drawers) and the characters are really annoying, though film nerds might enjoy a couple of the sequences being in two-strip Technicolor: love those reds and greens. If you want to see it, my copy is now at a charity shop and also contains three Our Gang shorts and the racist Harold Lloyd film, Haunted Spooks. (1)

***

TV:

This is what I have been mostly doing lately:



The Office (US): Season 2 (2006-7) – The series at its zenith, with Michael becoming more human (and slightly less annoying), the Jim-Pam relationship developing in beautiful and poignant ways, and just one great episode after another. My favourite bit has to be either Jim flicking on his messages after a lousy day at work, or the scene in the road at the end of the final episode. (4)

The Office (US): Season 3 (2007-8) – The third season is less realistic and more sitcomish, causing the dramatic scenes to lose a little of their resonance, while Jim and Pam seem to be kept apart more through dramatic necessity than credible plot development, and there’s an inability to fully capitalise on some of the more promising premises, like the convention visit. For all that, it’s still top entertainment, with as many fine comic moments as Season 2 (my personal favourite is Dwight’s impression of Jim) and an absolutely irresistible pay-off. (3.5)

The Office (US): Season 4 (2008-9) – Only one of the opening four, double-length episodes really works (Launch Party), but after that it really kicks into gear. Kevin saying “toona toona toona” may be the funniest moment in the show’s history. Bizarrely, Carell’s inconsistent, irritating central character remains the weak link in what is a riotously enjoyable series. (3.5)

The Office (US): Season 5 (2009-10) – A step up from Season 4. At its centre is the most successful episode ever, and one of the best, Stress Relief, which compensates for a deeply unfunny film-within-a-show with two very involving narratives and one of the most amazing cold opens I have ever seen. The season as a whole serves up the usual mixture of escapism, invention and affecting sentiment, and just when you think the basic format may be getting tired, Schur and co shake it up again. John Krasinki's spectacular comic timing remains something to behold. (3.5)

Errol Morris, Twilight (not that one) and fear eating the soul - Reviews #107

Fassbinder pays homage to Douglas Sirk, Errol Morris aims his lens at the British tabloids and Uma Thurman bullies Luke Wilson. Reviews:



Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974) – A widow (Brigitte Mira) finds a kindred spirit in a much younger Moroccan man (El Hedi Ben Salem), and they begin an affair, only to spark outrage and anger amongst her family and friends, one of whom kicks the TV in. Then, as the tide starts to turn in their favour, they begin to drift apart. Fassbinder’s film – based on Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, and a key influence on Todd Haynes’s Sirk pastiche, Far From Heaven – is wise and sometimes poignant, though his neat, calculated plotting increasingly gives it the feel of a deft satire, rather than a realistic portrait of human emotion, before he drags it back at the death. Still, it has some interesting things to say about racism and also classism in ‘70s Germany, while Fassbinder’s slow-and-steady visual style leads to some arresting imagery. There’s also a nice romantic bit where the couple get patronised by a posh waiter at Hitler’s favourite restaurant. That’s the director sporting the worst moustache of all time as Mira‘s son-in-law. (3)



SHORT: The City Tramp (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1966) – Fassbinder’s first film is a pretty good short about a homeless man (Christoph Roser) who keeps being interrupted whilst trying to shoot himself. Across 10 minutes, it blends neorealism, poetic imagery and humour that’s alternately stark and Chaplin-esque, and it’s nicely shot in monochrome, though Roser’s acting isn’t always very good – and he’s often the only one on screen. (2.5)

***



Tabloid (Errol Morris, 2010) – Typically brilliant Morris documentary about “barking mad” ex-beauty queen Joyce McKinney, who may or may not have kidnapped and raped a fat Mormon missionary in the late 1970s, but who certainly did become a tabloid sensation after her arrest in London. Full of fascinating insights, half-truths, remarkable details (you might not want to know how McKinney first attracted the press’s attention) and hilarious asides, with testimony from the woman herself – who in the journalistic parlance is “great copy” – one of her would-be accomplices, a former Mormon, a couple of tabloid hacks and a Korean scientist – as the film takes one of Morris’s famous left-turns near the close. The Mirror photographer, Kent Gavin, clearly thinks he’s a charming rogue spinning a cracking yarn, but actually just comes across as a complete scumbag. (4)

***



The Lincoln Lawyer (Brad Furman, 2011) – Legal thriller about a greedy attorney (Matthew McConaughey) who reconnects with his soul as he tries to uncover the truth behind two sickening attacks on women, while defending the rich boy (Ryan Philippe) accused of one of them. Also, his office is some kind of flashy car, which frankly is a rubbish character trait. This is a welcome and long overdue return to form for McConaughey, on similar ground to his breakthrough in the John Grisham adaptation A Time to Kill: a role that saw him compared to the young Gregory Peck, if only because he was playing a lawyer defending a black man. And while he’s only a fairly good actor, he has that intangible old-fashioned star quality. Yes, that really is what I am claiming. There’s also a good supporting cast, including Marisa Tomei – displaying effective sensitivity – William H. Macy, John Leguizamo and Bryan Cranston. The production is self-consciously hip in a slightly embarrassing way and the story is a little lacking in credibility, but it’s slick and very entertaining, aside from one extremely silly scene near the end. (3)

***



Head (Bob Rafelson, 1968) - The Monkees are plunged into a nightmarish, psychedelic whirl of genre-flipping '60s-ness in this trippy carousel-of-a-film, which sees the Prefab Four satirising their status as "God's gift to eight-year-olds" while sprinting through a succession of rapidly-changing scenarios, from Western to war film, musical to horror, sci-fi to post-modern, neurotic on-set shenanigans. Timothy Carey appears as a disabled Western villain, Davy Jones fights Sonny Liston, and Victor Mature plays a 100ft version of himself, who won't leave The Monkees alone. There are also cameos from the likes of Frank Zappa, Dennis Hopper, a Green Bay Packer and choreographer Toni Basil, while Jones performs a weird, sort-of-bravura song-and-dance version of a Nilsson song, flitting between varying versions thanks to some virtuosic editing. It all sounds amazing, but it's not really: its agreeably offhand manner and sense of playful originality offset by periods of serious self-indulgence and resulting boredom, before it's all cleverly tied-up at the close. Incidentally, writer-producers Rafelson and Jack Nicholson gave the film its non-sequitur title solely so they could announce their next collaboration with the words: "From the people who gave you Head". (2.5)

FUN FACT #1: Micky Dolenz looks like a squashed, gnomic Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
FUN FACT #2: Rafelson and Nicholson's next film together was Five Easy Pieces. They didn't use the tagline.

***



Twilight (Robert Benton, 1998) - Mopey Bella (Susan Sarandon) must choose between pale, blue-eyed vampire Edward (Paul Newman) and avuncular werewolf Jacob (Gene Hackman) in this first adaptation of the Stephanie Meyer novels. Actually, this is a laid back, likeable neo-noir, with Newman perfectly cast as a down-on-his-luck PI living in a rambling house with dying former actor Hackman - the housebound General Sternwood figure, for genre buffs - and his saucy, fatale-ish wife Sarandon. They and freelance fixer James Garner are all in their "twilight" years - except Sarandon, obviously, who's a lot younger and generally more naked. When Newman runs an errand for his landlord, he finds the bodies piling up around him and guesses it's something to do with an unsolved disappearance from decades before. The film has a formidable-looking cast and the performances from Newman and Garner make it, backed by a spectacular, woozy Elmer Bernstein score, but the photography and the script are strictly TV-movie standard, with cliched, clumsy lines galore. Stockard Channing is decent in support, while Reese Witherspoon appears in an early role, though she has little to do except take her bra off. (2.5)

***


Their faces are not this eerily-unlined in the film itself.

Spider-Man 3 (Sam Raimi, 2007) - Weird, pointless, shapeless sequel to one of the finest superhero flicks of the past decade, with three baddies - four if you count Spidey himself going off the rails - lots of domestic unrest and a montage in which newly violent, smarmy emo Tobey Maguire dances down the street, clicking his fingers at passing women. It's funny in itself, but it doesn't really belong here. The first Spider-Man film was one big letdown, but the second did everything right, with a riveting, character-driven storyline, arresting action sequences and scenes of startling emotional resonance. This third outing is entertaining, but it seems to stumble from one set-piece to the next, with little cohesion or coherence, and frequent, wild shifts in tone. There are excellent moments and Raimi's handling of Spidey's climactic ride to the rescue is typically thrilling, but Spider-Man 3 is still destined to be one of those sequels you pretend don't exist (X-Men: The Last Stand, The Godfather: Part III) so that the run finishes on just the right note. (2.5)

***


Nice tagline.

*SPOILERS, BUT NOT REALLY*
My Super Ex-Girlfriend (Ivan Reitman, 2006) - Everyman Luke Wilson gets on the wrong side of neurotic superhero G-Girl (Uma Thurman) by breaking up with her, in this lively but unfocused comedy. (The break-up is actually in the second half of the film, so the title is quite a big spoiler, as is that last sentence.) It's a fairly funny premise, the chemistry between Wilson and next girlfriend Anna Faris is superb, and there's good support from Rainn Wilson, Wanda Sykes and Eddie Izzard, but the laughs aren't really as frequent as they should be and the ending - while going where you want it to - is pretty dull. The best jokes are Wilson trying to get Thurman to leave their date to head off a runaway missile, villain Dr Bedlam (Izzard) hissing "Stop calling me that", after being addressed by his real name, and the shark. (2.5)