It's December 27th, though, and I've still overindulged and I still feel sick as a dog. I watched four films yesterday, and two or three on each of the two preceding days - I've honestly lost count. There were several Shreks, I know that, and the spin-off, Puss in Boots, and Muppet Christmas Carol, which was a little less fun and a whole lot preachier than I remembered. It's all been big-budget, big studio stuff and I'm feeling bloated and queasy from all the hypersaturated colours and smart one-liners.
I'd sworn I was going to have a day of abstinence today, but having just checked the schedules I see that Watership Down is on, and one wafer-thin vintage British animation won't kill me, will it?
In the meantime, though, I'm left with a problem: with such an embarrassment of riches fresh in my mind -or possibly such a wealth of embarrassments - what am I going to write about today?
An early contender was The Pirates! In an adventure with Scientists. It's Aardman, making it automatically reliable. The talented big-name cast put aside their egos and throw themselves wholeheartedly into their plasticene roles, with Hugh Grant at his most charming as the Pirate Captain and Imelda Staunton as a sort of steampunk Queen Victoria, a role she was surely born to play. The sight gags come as thick and fast as you'd expect, but the wordplay is equally witty, punctuated by an ebulliently eclectic soundtrack that can't help but raise the spirits. It's tremendous fun, just like pretty much the entirety of Aardman's output, but while this makes for a genuinely great time it leaves me with the feeling I'd essentially be re-writing my review of Flushed Away but with the names and dates changed.
I ruled out Monsters Inc because I watched it in bed and wasn't in the mood for making notes. Besides, it's Pixar, which is basically Disney, which is basically evil. It is, however, Pixar at their most imaginative, picking up one of their old favourite themes of middle-aged male insecurity and setting it down in an almost entirely new world where monsters harvest children's screams in order to power their city. There's a lot of sentiment here, of course, but it's kept fairly low-key and balanced by solid performances from John Goodman, Billy Crystal and Steve Buscemi. The pacing feels less hectic than in many of Pixar's other efforts, and if the eventual conclusion is predictably reassuring, that doesn't mean it doesn't mean it fails to satisfy.
Then there was Dreamworks' The Road to El Dorado, for which I got up at 6am, already secure in the knowledge I'd probably get up for it at 3am if that were the only way to catch it over the holiday period. I'll grant that it has its faults - I can't be wholly uncritical of any film that makes me enjoy the work of Elton John, for instance - but the sparkling dialogue and beautiful art win me over every time. This is one that always leaves me basking in a warm contented and slightly weepy fug, and I wouldn't miss it for all the world.
My final film yesterday, however, was also the most problematic, because it's the only one of the four that doesn't offer me a reliably good time. It's this one, therefore, that I'm going to tackle in a little more detail.
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I've been ambivalent about Marvel's Avengers Assemble since before I saw it on its release date at the cinema, and over two years later I still haven't made up my mind. The problem, I think, is that it unites a number of franchises about which I have very different feelings, and by the end of the movie absolutely none of those feelings have changed. So, dealing with them in order of personal preference...
I've never made any secret of my opinion that the original Iron Man is pretty much single-handedly responsible for the rehabilitation of the superhero movie. Not sure any more whether or not this is a good thing, but there you go. Any movie featuring Robert Downey Junior as Iron Man, therefore, is definitely something for me to get very excited about indeed.
Captain America: The First Avenger, meanwhile, failed to set my personal world alight, but I couldn't fault the storytelling or craftsmanship. It was a solid piece of moviemaking that I appreciated rather than actually liking, primarily because I like my comic book flicks with a little more humour. Any movie featuring Chris Evans as Captain America, therefore, merits a good-humoured nod and a vague vow to view it when I'm in the right mood and nothing else more interesting presents itself.
And then we have Thor, most of which I've mercifully forgotten although I do occasionally have traumatic flashbacks to the endless Natalie Portman reaction shots. Any movie featuring Chris Hemsworth as Thor, therefore, is to be avoided. Just so we're absolutely clear: I watched Rock of Ages rather than risk a second viewing of this one.
So, that's three key elements in the mix. There are others, though, such as the reliable sets of hands as the other three Avengers, including the first real appearance of Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye and the debut of Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/the Hulk. Also of note is the script by Joss Whedon, who writes some of the sharpest dialogue around.
There's a plot, I think; a standard-issue superhero job with a glowy McGuffin and lots of fights with identikit bad guys. There's a villain, too, in the form of Tom Hiddleston's Loki, who's failed to become the king of Asgard and wants to have a go at subjugating the Earth. As with Con Air, however, it's about the journey rather than the destination; the one-liners, the explosions and the Spandex.
The good
It's cute, this movie. It's very cute indeed. There are nifty one-liners and fun little touches and second-long moments that make my inner fangirl squeal and swoon. There's the moment where the Iron Man suit makes its first appearance soundtracked to 80s rock, and my immediate thought was what a colossal wanker followed by a huge rush of affection for the character followed by an equally huge rush of affection for the whole damned movie. The people who made this film, I thought, know how it's meant to work.The set design is generally great, too, with the Helicarrier deck and the Stark Tower Penthouse looking particularly fantastic. It all feels suitably real, even as the characters reduce it to rubble. Cinematography varies from serviceable to stunning; the concluding scenes after the set-piece battles have a proper comic book aesthetic that I really appreciated.
As might have been guessed from my earlier remarks, performances here are variable. We have a solid showing from Chris Evans, therefore, as the equally solid Captain America, whose immaculate hair deserves honourable mention on its own. Scarlett Johanssen does a great if slightly underwritten job as the Black Widow, just as Cobie Smulders does for Maria Hill. Robert Downey Junior sparkles as Iron Man, of course, offering flashes of a softer, more human side that receives a more thorough exploration in Iron Man III. The real revelation, however, is Mark Ruffalo, whose Bruce Banner provides the closest thing the movie has to a real heart. He does a fantastic job as the conflicted Banner, bringing out the best in the characters and actors around him and generally elevating the tone of the piece whenever he's onscreen.
The bad
The problem with a film on this sort of scale is that by definition, maintaining the human dimension is always going to be a problem. Now, on a personal level I'd have been more than happy had the movie consisted primarily of our six protagonists bickering with one another, but I'm aware that the target audience prefers a little more action. And action we're given, in endless sequences of sparks and explosions and property destruction, big and loud and, as we head towards the end of the second hour, just a little bit tedious. Not a lot happens in the last half-hour that isn't telegraphed in the first, although it's all done with a fair degree of commitment and style, but when, early on, Captain America accuses Iron Man of being unwilling to sacrifice himself, we all know how it's going to go. This isn't a film people watch for the clever twists, it's one they watch to see superheroes hitting one another, and I suppose that's okay.Less okay, however, is the way the film grinds to a halt whenever Thor and Loki are onscreen. Their dialogue is stilted and clumsy to the point of being embarrassing, and Thor in particular doesn't have the distinctive voice that marks out some of the other main players. Hemsworth looks perpetually ill-at-ease in a way that doesn't sit well with a character who's meant to be a charismatic leader, and if his performance is awkward I'm not sure he's the one who should be shouldering the blame for it. As Loki, meanwhile, Tom Hiddleston has become something of a fan favourite, but I found him somewhat anaemic - shouldn't a trickster god have more of a sense of mischief about him? His Loki is petty and spiteful but lacking in any genuine sense of menace, and there never seems to be any real sense of doubt as to whether the team of heroes will eventually prevail.
Resorting to cliché isn't always a bad thing, particularly when it comes to blockbuster movies. I did feel that Avengers Assemble was just a little bit too ready to dip into the Big Book of Superhero Movie Tropes, though, to the detriment of characterisation and occasionally common sense. The initial fight between Iron Man and Thor felt just that little bit too contrived, and quite a few gags culminated in punchlines that consisted of gratuitous violence. It's a shame, particularly in a film noted for sharp dialogue, and I did feel that the producers were afraid that in trying to produce a genuinely smart superhero movie, they might alienate a part of their core demographic.
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