Screen: Reviews

SCI-FI
The Day The Earth Stood Still (12A)
3/5

There’s a great line in Gremlins 2 in which a cable TV horror host reveals he cannot show classic horror movies because they’re in black and white, and his boss “only likes colour�.

It popped into my head while I was thinking about The Day The Earth Stood Still. The 1951 original is widely regarded as one of the greats of sci-fi cinema, intelligently musing on the Atomic age in a way that is still relevant today.

But Hollywood knows its stuff, and quickly realised that what this film was really missing was a clumpy environmental message, lots of big effects, and, of course, Keanu Reeves.

It's like giving the Mona Lisa a TV makeover. She sure doesn’t look like the original with all that lipstick and mascara, but there’ll always be a few people on the high street that say she looks a lot prettier with a bit of slap on.

The re-make broadly follows the trail of the original, in which alien Klaatu arrives on Earth with a giant robot to announce that everyone in the galaxy has had a meeting, and has decided that mankind needs to be wiped out.

But while the aliens were initially concerned with man’s lust for war, this time it's our environmental messiness that’s really ticking them off. Eco-messages are mostly cringe-worthy when crowbarred into action films, and while this is hardly affecting stuff, at least it doesn't plumb the depths of idiocy reached in The Day After Tomorrow.

Those that mourned the arrival of this “re-imagining� won’t exactly be convinced, but this remake isn’t a loving re-tread of a classic.

It’s officially The Year’s Last Blockbuster, a polished, lumbering robot armed with awesome technology but lacking brain-power.

FANTASY
Inkheart (PG)
4/5

I’m not a big fan of Brendan Fraser, but I’m a sucker for a good fairy story. And quite frankly this one’s a doozy.

Brendan plays a man that can bring characters from books to life by just reading aloud.

But he dropped a clanger a few years back when he conjured up a few characters from the tome Inkheart, including a villain who’s out to cause havoc in the real world. Now he and his equally-gifted daughter have to weigh in and make everything right again.

Cornelia Funke’s original novel had a tantalising premise and was swollen with a love of reading, and it’s these features that really carry the film.

The visuals are rich and Brendan Fraser lugs over a few of his action chops from The Mummy to keep the pace going at a steady rate. There’s also some wonderfully hammy turns from a cast of characters that includes Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent and Andy Serkis.

Serkis’s approach to the role is perfect for a children’s film which requires a light dose of chills and a sprinkling of humour.

One criticism that can be made of the film is that it arguably fails to take full advantage of its wonderful premise – the possibility of conjuring any character from any book.

Nevertheless, it is certainly one of the better fantasy films you are going to see this Christmas.

PERIOD COMEDY
Dean Spanley (U)
4/5

The most common slur heaped on period dramas is they’re too busy with manners, marriage and massive tea parties to remember to be interesting.

That is certainly not true of Dean Spanley, a weird and wonderful tale bolstered by a superb cast who fully harness the potential of the plot.

While the themes of fraught father-and-son relationships and repressed emotion are all too common, they’re beautifully portrayed by the excellent Peter O’Toole and his co-stars Sam Neill and Jeremy Northam.
Northam plays Henslowe Fisk, whose life is clouded by his irritable and frustrating father Horatio (O’Toole).

After the pair attend a lecture about reincarnation, they invite Dean Spanley (Neill) round to dinner, who then becomes so entranced by his favourite tipple that he starts mumbling about his past life.

Armed with a certain lightness and mischievous comic timing, this film plays around with sentimentality and heavy dialogue without covering the whole reel in treacle.

With a lesser cast, it may have felt forced or odd. But with actors such as O’Toole and Neill at the wheel, it’s a well-balanced and humorous treatment of an intriguingly left-field story.