Going solely on the trailers, the latest effort from Will Ferrell looks like a return to form, a crazed mish-mash of Lethal Weapon action and Anchorman stupidity. And it is. But for some reason, it just doesn’t gel.

Things get off to a promising start, with New York super cops Danson & Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson) blasting their way through criminals, driving a 1960’s muscle car through the side of a bus, blowing up buildings and firing off enough hot lead to drown a Terminator, and despite the reckless endangerment and massive property damage, they’re beloved by the population of New York and the worldwide media.

Of course, it isn’t all guns and glamour in the NYPD, which is where Ferrel, a safe, quiet and relentlessly stable Police accountant comes in. Teamed up with a bizzarrely hirsute Marky Mark when Danson & Highsmith jump to their death in a ridiculous display of bravado, it’s up to the worst cops in the precinct to take down Steve Coogan’s Bernard Madoff-like businessman and save the police pension fund.

All pretty formulaic no?

And that’s half the problem (we’ll get to the other half in a bit).

The Other Guys follows a very basic plotline that works out ok, and has some very funny lines. Ferrell’s background as a naive pimp named Gator is hilarious, and Wahlberg shows some likeable comic timing, coming off as likeable and genuine while directing traffic, lusting after Ferrell’s ‘plain wife’ (actually a smoking hot Eva Mendes). The whole thing is crammed to bursting with ridiculous one liners, idiotic situations (dirty Mike’s homeless orgies are a particular standout), and a relentless driving pace.

So what went wrong?

Ass is the norm for Ferrell’s movies, things don’t quite fit together properly. You get the feeling that someone had four or five unused scripts lying around and rammed them uncomfortably together. Of course, in a bit of nonsence like this, that’s not really a major problem. Instead, The Other Guy’s problems sit squarely in the lap of director Adam McKay.

The whole thing is poorly paced and badly shot, to the extent that any life and vibrancy is sucked right out of the thing, and it’s not just a question of scale. If this had been shot in an intimate TV show style it would be balls-out hilarious. Likewise, if they’d stuck McG at the helm and soaked it in slick then we’d be on to a winner (and I promise never to associate the name McG with the concept of win again). Instead, the movie hovers in a washed out, curiously 80’s middle ground, with action not as exciting as it should be, gjokes not as funny, and the whole thing…well, just underwhelming.

This has some of the best comedy lines and concepts of the year, but much like Ferrell’s wooden gun (a long story involving Michael Keaton and a poorly executed ‘desk-pop’…), it fails to leave a lasting impression.

Definitely worth waiting for the DVD, as a small screen would be infinitely more suitable.

Woody Allen’s latest has been out for a while in foreign parts, finally geeting a release here in blighty, but don’t panic -you haven’t been missing much.

So, Woody Allen. Let’s make this clear right now. He’s shit. There, it’s down on cyber-paper. I said it. feel free to add comments calling me an unintellectual pig who knows dick-all about filmmaking. I couldn’t give a crap, because you’re wrong and I’m right. Allen is a man who’d made a career out of one vaguely smirk-inducing moment in Sleeper. And that’s it.

Let’s make a Woody Allen movie together and see how Whatever Works stacks up shall we?

Step 1: Set it in New York.

Check. But not real, actual New York. Oh no. This is that familiar Allen parrallel universe where you can sit in Central Park at dusk and not get mugged, and buy a hotdog in the street and not die. An effect cleverly acheived by roping off miles of the city and not letting an actual New Yorker anywhere near the set. Woody’s NY is about as realistic as Mary Poppin’s London.

Step 2: Insert plot about Woody Allen using his oh-so-massive wit and intellect to ensnare a squaking younger girl -hey, she’s annoying but she’s got great tits! (unless she’s Diane Keaton obviously).

Whatever Works only scores a half point here because Wood’s just too damn decrepit these days. Instead we get Larry David, himself a man who’s in serious danger of outstaying his welcome. Sienfeld was often very funny, and Curb Your Enthusiasm is at least very clever, if not comedically appealing to all tastes, but the simple fact is that David has one default setting on-screen, and here he sticks to it like Lox on a bagel.

Depressed Physicist Boris Yelnikoff is solid Wood, panic attacks, nausea, nuerosis and failed suicide attempts -it’s all here. Actually, given the number of incompetant suiciders in Allen’s films, it’s a wonder the old git’s made it to old age, but unfortunately for us he has. If only something could cheer him up…what would do it….

Step 3: Insert slightly dim, bouncy girl some 30 years junior to our hero.

Yay! Evan Rachael Wood turns up and hey presto -Boris are happy. Instead of wandering moodily around a picaresque NY considering his place in a non-theistic universe, he wanders moodily around making occasional glib, self-deprecating remarks. The ganag’s all here. Aren’t they? wait…there need to be a few more issues…if only there was some way that the girl could bring…

Step 4:An annoying, issue-ridden family!

We got there in the end.

Yep, all we needed was to add in bubbly and slightly annoying Patricia Clarkson and worrisome and slightly annoying Ed Begley Jr, and we’re all set to watch them somehow make new lives and friends in NY’s mystical concrete canyons, finding the kind of connections that elude Boris for all his wit and angsty try-hard attitude.

What a crock of crap. Allen takes the same script he’s been unenthusiastically vomiting at us for the past 40 years, inserts David’s vaguely credible face in the hope of being somehow relevant and produces…exactly the same boring, unfunny, turgid mess of a film he’s always made.

Critics have lined up to suggest that Allen’s fire has gone out in the past few years, but frankly, I’m of the school that thinks he never had a spark to begin with – his original stand-up notwithstanding, the ability to pen funny lines for Bob Hope does not automatically confer genius status and the right to repeat yourself adnauseum for the better part of half a century.

A drippy, dippy, ill-planned mess, Whatever Works wastes some potentially stellar talent on a bad script that fails to amuse or educate and stock characters who fail to connect.

Russell Brand as an off-the-bandwagon rocker trying to make it to a gig. Sounds shit doesn’t it? On paper Get Him To The Greek looks like it was written on a coffee break at National Lampoon. In reality, it’s a right melon squeezer. Mainly because it’s quite good.
Despite Russell Brand freaking out the Jonas Brothers and lambasting the health system, the soon to be Mr. Katy Perry seems to have wormed his way comfortably into the US consciousness, and while his appearance as cartoon-rocker Aldous Snow in Forgetting Sarah Marshall was fun, upgrading him to central character status was always a definite risk. Fortunately it’s one Brand files neatly alongside ‘massive cocaine intake’ and takes in his stride.

Story-wise things are kept simple and are effective because of it. Record company low-life Adam Green trying his hardest to get ‘the most self-destructive man in rock n’ roll’ (that’s ‘MTV Rock n’ Roll’ not actual rock n’ roll obviously – think Avrl Lavigne rather than Sabbath) from an unsurprisingly swingin’ London to glitzy L.A in time for his big comeback concert -with hilarious results obviously.

The odd-couple buddy movie setup is overtried and overtested, but writer-director Nicholas Stoller steps up to the plate with aplomb, throwing out the goofy-cutesyness that made Forgetting Sarah Marshall such a well received rom-com, and replacing it with full-on Judd Apatow nonsense that fits the character and the set-up perfectly. All that’s left is to roll from set piece to set piece in London, New York, Vegas and finally the city of angels and keep the yuks coming – and come they do.

Brand wholly inhabits his character, and given his public persona it’s not hard to believe in Aldous as a living, breathing, snorting, banging entity, grinding through various unlikely scenarios without batting an eyelid. Jonah Hill meanwhile, has much more of a journey. While he manages plenty of wide-eyed shouting and falling over, the movie also takes time to show his changing opinions of both Snow and the music business and means that we actually end up with a character we give a hoot about, something sorely missing from the majority of modern films. By taking time to flesh out the characters, Stoller actually delivers a film that’s…well, a film, rather than just a movie.

To be honest, all this was a surprise, but a welcome one. The movie gives off a comic vibe that’s closer to 80’s hits like The Sure Thing than the current crop of Hollywood straight to Blu Ray cobblers, and while there’s plenty of references to Sarah Marshall thery’re nice points for exsisting fans rather than confusing for newcomers. The central casting is spot-on, and there’s some fun support from Diddy (I even feel stupid typing that. How does the man live with it?)as Brand’s slimebag manager Sergio Roma (typical African-American name there), proving himself to have surprisingly fine comic timing, while Colm Meaney of all people is lots of fun as Snow’s obnoxious git of a father.Ocassionally the jokes are thin or easy – a particularly Cordon-esque workout secuence in particular -but on the whole there’s enough quality gags to make you forgive any rough patches.

Overall it’s no masterpiece, but it’s far better than it deserves to be, and while the prospect of a thinking man’s Superbad may be a very weird concept to get your head around, it’s one that you shouldn’t let your preconceptions stop you from seeing.

OK, so let’s start with that title shall we? It’s awesome isn’t it? And I mean that in the untrue, full-on, bodacious 1980’s meaning of the word. It’s bloody ridiculous and very cool, but can the filler live up to the label?

…well…sort of…

HTTM was put together by three guys ( and a fourth if you count director Steve Pink) and follows the misadventures of three guys ( a fourth if you count John Cusack’s nephew Jacob –played by an ‘exactly the same as in Sex Drive’ Clark Duke) who head off in search of simpler, happier times and wind up back in the 80’s-where they’re thoroughly confused. Exactly like the script.

Basically, HTTM channels 80’s comedies like Police Academy through the childish lens of 90’s gross out flicks and winds up being occasionally brilliant, but –like its protagonists –rather stupid. It’s the cinematic equivalent of people who think Right Said Fred were an 80’s band.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s some very funny moments here, and the gross out works well (failed musician Nick working in a dog grooming shop where he spends his days removing shit from pampered pet’s arses is a particular high point on the upchuckometer) and the whispered catchphrases (“great white buffalo…”) have more staying power –and truth to them – than the rest of the film put together. The only real problem is that the movie doesn’t know what kind of comedy it wants to be. Firstly, there’s a mountain of jokes about 80’s clothes, technology, music and even cold war politics, but with each character following their own dreams, there’s also a weird heart running through it, as Revenge of the Nerds cross-pollinates with The Sure Thing.

It’s odd, but Cusack seems to be off in his own little romantic comedy, a much darker and more serious movie with Zooey Deschanel that doesn’t quite belong. Likewise Craig Robinson (best known as The Office’s Darryl Philbin) is taking part in a weird underdog makes good film with oddly inserted tits out moments.

It’s all a bit of a muddle.

That said, the leads are never less than likeable, the time travel isn’t dwelt on and shouldn’t be, referenced only by Jacob -”Do I have to be the asshole who says -’hey we drank too much and travelled back in time to the 80s?” and it’s nice to see Chevy Chase pop up as a Fletch-esque hot tub engineer. The back-to-2010 coda doesn’t make a lick of sense but then, neither does the end of Weekend at Bernie’s –another strong influence.

Like the decade itself, it’s probably better off being forgotten, it’s no classic but it has its moments –get a pizza in and enjoy. Just don’t drink any Russian energy drinks while you’re at it. A big, stupid, whirlpool of fun.

Wether or not we could kick as much ass as our favourite movie heroes is often up for debate around the STS office, I mean, we may only be of above-average strength, but we’re no Die Hard.

Anyway, the first trailer for The Other Guys is here and takes a look at exactly that conundrum, as certified action star Marky Mark and certified..erm..elf…Will Ferrell get promoted to all-action status when super cops Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson are taken out of the picture.

Protecting Steve Coogan’s Bernard Madoff-alike in Adam McKay’s comedy, the presence of the team behind Anchorman is always worth investigating and early news shows that McKay isn’t shrinking away from putting his high profile cast through the high-octane action wringer, meaning this could well be 2010’s hottest action comedy ticket.

Ricky Gervais recent success in Hollywood has obviously had a lasting effect, as his latest shows an assured directorial hand and a toning down of the outright comedy that’s marked his work with Merchant thus far, and while the plot may be structured around a conceit familiar from The Office – guy likes girl, girl engaged to wrong guy – there’s character development, some lovely cinematography, and a willingness to dispense with clichéd Brit-com staples that lifts this head and shoulders above the pack.

Set in Gervais’ home town of Reading in the 70’s , from the opening we’re immersed in a world dealing with the duality of a bucolic, sun drenched English summer, and the grim reality of factory life and three day weeks. Following Bruce (a cocky but likeably un-arrogant Tom Hughes) and friends Snork and Freddie (Jack Doolan and Christian Cooke respectively) as they attempt to change their dreary existence.

Freddie’s ark in particular showcases Merchant and Gervais’ flair for the bittersweet, as he desperately tries to woo his boss’ daughter Julie (a smart and hard-working Felicity Jones), while Bruce and Snork’s varied attempts to fight or think away their pain are handled with a lightweight, deft touch that comes off as cautionary without resorting to finger-wagging. There are some big issues on display here, and it’s a brave decision not to smother them in jokes or mawkish sentiment. Rather, the humanity and razor sharp observation lends a lingering and far more satisfying tone to proceedings.

While the characterisations are well-drawn, with some strong lead performances and wonderful back up (Ralph Fiennes is particularly good as Freddie’s oily boss), there is a tendency for the dialogue to appear over-scripted. This may be a result of over-familiarity with Gervais’ oeuvre however, as you occasionally can’t help but imagine the lines emerging from his mouth rather than the actors, but it’s a small complaint in an otherwise restrained and assured debut.

A well balanced but not overdone look at a difficult era doesn’t detract from the humanity at the core of the piece, and whatever your feelings about Gervais, it would be churlish to deride this. Overall it’s a great character piece backed up by strong writing, some cool tunes and a positive message that deserves every success.

I’m going to be honest here and tell you that I was never a great fan of Hicks. I always found his humour a little obvious. But then, he opened a lot of people’s eyes to some very real problems so I have nothing bad to say about the man, and neither do the producers of American: The Bill Hicks Story -and judging from the new trailer it’s a movie as politically charged as the man himself.

We”l keep our eyes on this (if we can see through the cigarette smoke) and let you know more as soon as we get it – look for a full review later this year.

God alone knows what John Cusack is thinking these days, sullying his once minty fresh, high fidelity screen persona with crud like 2010 and America’s Sweethearts. Fortunately it looks like he might be back on the winning horse as he and the three unlikeliest friends ever to grace the screen head back to the 80’s in new comedy Hot Tub Time Machine. Sure it’s stupid, but the decade that gave us the haystack rule of sexuality (the higher the hair, the sexier the woman…) was responsible for some of the gnarliest movie dialogue ever -so make sure you’re prepared with the new Hot Tub time Machine iPhone App!

Combining seemingly senseless words like ‘great white buffalo’ and ‘Twittagra’ will make sure you’re the most annoying person in your office for at least the next fortnight -get over to the Apple store and bag yours now!

The Freezepop T-Shirt in the back of my wardrobe is proof that we’ve all done stupid things to impress girls, but Nick Twisp takes it a bit further than most in Dimension Film’s new adap of C.D.Payne’s enormous teen saga, and just about gets away with it too.

Living in a trailer with Zakk Galifianakis isn’t my idea of fun either, so when Michael Cera’s secretly-cool dorky Twisp bumps into Sheeni Saunders, he seizes on her Francophilia with a vengeance, creating an entirely new hipster persona – the preposterously monikered Francois Dillinger – and sets about an escalating campaign of crime –all in the name of love naturally.

Payne’s original book is absurdist in the extreme, but transfers well to the screen thanks to it’s penchant for blackly-humorous, if ridiculous, skits that nailed their colours to that staple of teen drama: Girls love a bad boy.

Cera himself is a great piece of casting. Over the past year his career went into mini-freefall with the likes of Year One blotting his otherwise impeccable CV, but it helped foster a nice guy loser persona that he delights in ripping to shreds here, his performance subtle and tinged with spite. He excels in scenes where his two personalities play off against each other, Francois pencil-tache lips sneering with just the right amount of Gallic stereotype, while the surrealist touches that director Arteta excels at make it impossible not to laugh, even when watching the ravings of a split-personality nutjob. You’ll find yourself drawn to Dillinger, his Tyler Durden-lite blackmail and arson curiously loveable and compelling as he fights his very odd fight to get the girl.

Overall the movie relies a little too heavily on set-pieces, coming off as a surrealist sketch show at times, but with able performances from the leads and strong support from the likes of Steve Buscemi (as Cera’s teen-chasing dad) it ends up being a comic teen Fight Club that hopefully marks an end to Cera’s downward slump.

After spending New Years Day cleaning what, for argument’s sake, we’ll assume was mud mixed with chewing gum off the office floor, we finally had time to carry on checking out all the new movies crawling out of the toilet to infect your eyeballs like refugees from an early Cronenberg movie in the new year. Yep, it’s part two of our craptabulous round up of the biggest, worstest flicks of 2010!

6: The A-Team

The group ‘convicted of a crime they didn’t commit’ have been updated from Vietnam to the far less interesting Iraq War, but otherwise everything from Hannibal’s cigar to Murdoch’s hat is present and correct – look at this picture, Liam Neeson looks aces doesn’t he? Unfortunately, like everything ever made in the 80s, the A-Team was a load of crap, so expect to see whatsisface from The Hangover driving a cabbage-firing tank at some terrorists intent on taking over a suspiciously attractive girl’s farm in Wyoming and tell me that you think it’ll be cool. You idiot.

7: Twilight: Eclipse

To be honest I only stuck this piece of shit in here so that extra teenage girls would check out the site. Unfortunately they’ll all be chaste Mormons so it won’t do me any good. Not satisfied with pumping out two steaming loaves of vampiarrhoea, the studio money-sharks couldn’t resist farting out yet more of Stephanie Meyer’s absolute crap into your eyeballs. Expect a weird, borderline paedophilia love triangle and strong anti-feminist messages. Also expect girls with IQ’s lower than their pet Chihuahuas to love it, and for it to be a big pile of pigtarded claptrap.

8:The Expendables

Sly and the boys hide their bus-passes and stagger about in the jungle blowing shit up. Fuck yeah!

9:The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Both preceding Narnia films were badly put together shambles that not many people bothered to see, and those that did bother – didn’t like. So, sounds like a good idea to make another one doesnt it? Siblings Lucy, Edmund, Rudolph, Prancer, Frankenstein and Dopey head back to the slightly boring mystical land to fanny about on a ship with big bad brooding Ben Barnes, Eddie Izzard is oh-so-hilarious as an annoying mouse that would make Willy Wonka vomit, and Fox happily flush their cash down the Dawn Treader’s bilges for no apparent reason. Heaven’s Gate!

10: The Three Stooges

Probably not one for the ladies, as the Farrely brothers give Benicio Del Toro a bowl cut and provide plenty of wish fulfillment by pushing Sean Penn down a flight of stairs and smacking Jim Carrey in the face with a plank. With hilarious consequences.

Well, we have hangovers to re-enforce, so we’ll take a short break, but join us again shortly for part three, where we might even slip in a couple of films worth seeing (don’t count on it though)!

On paper Black Dynamite has all the ingredients to be an absolute crap fest; with it’s over-ripe source material and the terminally unfunny spoof-ensemble, it should come out making Date Movie look like Shakespeare, so it’s a very refreshing surprise to find an old school spoof with plenty of actually amusing gags lurking in a script that’s blessed with a modicum of wit.

Director Scott Sanders shows off an obvious affection for early ZaZ movies Airplane! and particularly Top Secret! as well as a genuine affection for the blaxploitation flicks he’s riffing on, following erstwhile Spawn Michael Jai White on a ridiculous mission to stop the ubiquitous Man from wreaking his diabolical mischief.

Story-wise, it’s a Vietnam vet avenging the death of his brother, caught selling drugs – not really of course, he was framed by honky – and battling his way through various superfly hoods with names like Cream Corn and Tasty Freeze to get to Mr.Big.

Jokes are scattershot but generally seem to have been thought out, rather than simply acting out scenes from other movies with added silly voices, the script takes aim at the fashions, recycled stories and budget constraints – there’s a very funny moment where the crew run out of fake tears during an emotional break-up scene – that made movies like Dolomite so much fun in the first place and manages a high hit rate.

With booms lurching into shot, incoherant edits, our hero forgetting which part of Asia he actually fought in and a nun-chuck wielding Richard Nixon, it’s bloody stupid, but none the worse for it. The recreated action scenes are spot-on, and even though they’re predictable they’re very, very funny. Things do get a little too OTT in a climax that’s thoroughly bizarre but even here there’s plenty of laughs to be had.

Won’t make anyone’s top ten list, but ideal for a night in with a pizza and a few beers.

Previously seen fighting for screentime in tripe like Night at the Museum 2, Jay Baruchel brings his A-game to this bizarre comedy that flirts with surrealism and political engagement, but doesn’t lose its sense of humour.

Baruchel plays Leon Bronstein, a 17 year old Canadian who believes he is the reincarnation of Soviet Revolutionary Leon Trotsky – surely in line for a ‘weirdest character’ gong come awards season – and attempting to recreate the worker’s paradise in his dad’s clothes factory. Needless to say, the controller of the means of production doesn’t agree with the socialist ideal, and packs the privately educated Leon off to state high school to get a real taste of working class culture.

It may be another fish out of water comedy, but it’s a clever one with a lot of very dry humour that takes stabs at US anti-socialism and the ridiculousness of high school cliques in equal measure. When under duress, Leon simply chalks it up to destiny – mapped out intricately on his Trotsky wall chart; a very funny document containing gems like: “get exiled (twice), marry an older woman (preferably named Alexandra), and get assassinated (hopefully somewhere warm), and his faith in providence soon ignites the ire of Student Union president Dwight, a Stalinesque figure who rails against a “Social Justice” themed high school dance.

Scoring big with a little-known cast who bring realism to some very caricatured roles (Colme Feore is particularly brilliant as the school Principal’s apparatchik), there’s also some very tight scripting that’s droll and never overstated, despite the bombast of Leon’s speeches. Likewise there’s some great movie in-jokes, cameras deftly recreating the agitprop style, all low angles and sweeping vistas, while more obvious recreations of Battleship Potemkin are handled well, making them more pastiche than outright parody. Even the soundtrack gets in on the act, bombastic flashes of Prokofiev and Shostakovich playing over images of rusting Lada’s, there’s an intricate attention to detail throughout that fleshes out the odd, almost-parallel world on screen.

Even without these details it’s a warm, fun film that belies its 2-hour plus running length and remains consistently engaging-even if we do (kind of) know the outcome. Delivering a message of collective action for positive change, it may not be to everyone’s taste, but it wears its red colours and its heart on its sleeve, and for a film about communism, deserves praise for its individuality.

Shane Meadows makes a welcome return to his no-cash-no-worries roots with his latest, upping the dry wit he’s displayed in the past to full on belly laugh comedy, following Paddy Considine’s loudmouthed roadie Le Donk, and accidentally focussing on Dean Palinczuk’s shy, huge, and possibly genuinely talented rapper Scor-Zay-Zee.

Previously Le Donk has shown up in a series of shorts, and it shows here, the format sometimes straining under the extended running time. As such, it’s something of an indulgence, Considine holding court, but luckily he’s consistently engaging as the fast-talking buffoon, a character you can’t help but like despite the constant screen hogging and streams of bullshit as he tries to blag Scor-Zay-Zee a support slot with the Arctic Monkeys at Old Trafford.

In the process the characters expand, we bump into Le Donk’s pregnant ex and her –much nicer- new fella Richard Graham, and experience that familiar Office-like crawling embarrasment as his obnoxious, unthinking behaviour very nearly costs Scor-Zay-Zee the gig.
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As it is, you find yourself genuinely rooting for the underdogs, Meadows coyly steering the narrative, playing himself as the unobtrusive doc director.

Given the tiny budget, it showcases Meadow’s natural creativity and versatility, and shows what a great team he and Considine make-promising big things for their long awaited boxing project King of the Gypsies.

An indulgence that may be better experienced at home than in the cinema, it’s never the less a funny, if thinly-stretched sketch that’s well worth a punt, with a constant gag hit ratio that many big budget comedies would be hard pushed to match.

While the Zombie genre is fast becoming overloaded, first time helmer Ruben Fleisher has an ace up his sleeve – he couldn’t care less. While writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have produced a sharp, funny -and most importantly genre-savvy – script, they pull off the clever trick of ramming metadialogue into a post-apocalyptic world that brings absolutely nothing new to the table. There are no knowing nods to the camera, no attempt to make the Zombies unique, they’re your basic, shuffling, brain-munching simpletons, wobbling mindlessly around the Midwest – and latterly, Beverly Hills – and generally annoying our heroes as they casually subvert the romantic comedy road movie for all it’s worth.

Jesse Eisenberg is the first survivor to appear on screen, and he’s in fine form as he relays his nerdy rules for staying alive, including such gems as “cardio- the fatties were the first to go because they were easier to catch”.

Eisenberg comes off like a young Woody Allen for the first act, hooking up with ex-House Bunny Emma Stone and her young sister – an adorably murderous Abigail Breslin – on a quest to California in search of a Zombie-free paradise. While it’s amusing enough in its own right, the nebbishness starts to run out of gas fairly quickly, leaving you unsure where this is heading.

Then Woody Harrelson turns up.

The role of dedicated Zombie killer Tallahassee appears to have been custom written for him, and he revels in it, playing a sort of dim-but-good-natured good ol’ boy – think Woody from Cheers meets The Terminator – a gun toting maniac with a decent helping of common sense; his expression as Stone tells him “There’s no Zombies in California” is worth the admission price alone.

Fleisher shows some fantastic comedy timing as the methods of dispatching the undead become increasingly creative – the piano dropped on head being particularly noteworthy – and the cinematography alternates between some fantastic Evil Dead handheld, transforming one bull in a souvenir shop sequence into a frantic piece of comedy gold, while some truly unsettling desert vistas accomplish everything Resident Evil aspired to in an instant, actually adding some poignant notes to the carnage and laughs.

Overall it’s a great, quick witted hour and a half of comedy violence, not afraid to alternate between puerile and dark, dry humour, it never comes off as unbalanced. A great, shocking ride that’s been done before, but never quite like this.

Just like the man himself, Ricky Gervais’ latest is smart, sarcastic, and just a little cloying…

Sky-high concept aside, how you feel about Gervais himself will probably be the biggest reason to see this movie or not. That said, the movie deserves to be a success, and in the US, where he hasn’t suffered from the same backlash simmering in the UK, it probably will be.

The concept itself is great; simple and thought provoking. Anyone who’s cringed through Liar Liar -or superior 1990’s comedy Crazy People- will know the laughs pure, unadulterated truth can generate, so it’s no surprise to find some very funny material here too. Matthew Robinson’s script has been honed into another exercise in humiliation and one-liners by Gervais, examining human nature and social one-upmanship with a well-trained eye.

The jokes are mainly throwaway but none the worse for it -a waiter telling a dating couple he’s been sipping their drinks springs to mind – while other lines happily take on religion and government, and there’s also a surprisingly strong dramatic undercurrent that peaks in a genuinely affecting hospital scene that seems to belong in another movie.

While it’s fast and witty, the romance -Gervais using his new found talent for telling porkies to seduce uber-woman Jennifer Garner – often comes off as overly saccharine, as though the rest of the script had to be shoe-horned into a romcom template to get funding, and it’s a shame as it undermines some otherwise very amusing moments.

Likewise this is distractingly heavy on the product placement and Gervais seems uncomfortable when called upon to be a genuine leading man rather than sticking to his usual self effacing/aggrandising schtick, and seems to be trying to deflect attention with an array of cameos that sometimes work (Rob Lowe) and sometimes don’t (Stephen Merchant).

Slightly unbalanced and teetering on the edge of one-note, it’s still knowing and funnier than
every other romcom this year, and should be applauded for trying to take the genre somewhere different.

Sam Mendes switches gears for a strange combo of road movie and coming of age drama that will charm you-if you can stand the characters.

Sam Mendes is can usually be relied upon for some serious Oscar-bothering action, so it comes as a surprise to find him eschewing the usual dramatic cinematography and high-drama relationships with big consequences for a quiet, comfortable old sweater of a movie. Production-wise heavy greys and browns abound, wrapping the viewer up in a downbeat Autumnal feeling, in short, this is a comfortable movie that deals well with a difficult concept – happiness.

In terms of plot there’s not much here; Expectant couple Burt and Verona live in a small dreary town, but when Burt’s parents decide to abscond to Europe they embark on a road trip, seeing out old friends-turned-parents for advice on the perfect place to raise a child.

A couple who are happily in love is an odd one for a film, and as a dramatic device it certainly struggles. There are no dark secrets here, just a young-ish couple looking for a nice place to live. The Ten Commandments it aint.

That said, the general good vibes are infectious, with small incidents becoming laugh out loud sequences, Mendes perfectly capturing the small moments that define mature relationships. The couple’s encounters with old friends can be strained, as the supporting characters often fall in caricature, and it’s simply not believable that the couple would tolerate Maggie Gyllenhaals god-awful hippy Earth mother. Fortunately the leads are naturalistic and likeable enough to counterpoint this, with Krasinski’s expressions echoing the audience’s thoughts –“Are these people for real?”

Overall, it would be easy to think of this as Mendes resting on his laurels, or becoming twee with age, but if you identify with the faultless leads, this is a surprising, silly and charming movie tat may not win any awards, but still ranks as another great film by Mendes.

It’s easy to see this as a gimmick, with the broken timeframe leaping backwards and forwards through the 500 days, focussing on smal vignettes in the discordant romance between Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Tom and Zooey Deschanel’s ‘Free Spirit’ Summer. Each day gives us a snapshot of the tiny moments that make up a relationship, giving the whole thing a sense of realistic denouement that’s usually noticeable by its absence from Rom-Com land.

It may be an obvious tactic, but even sequentially, this is a creative and involving story with a genuine hook – the girl ‘just isn’t that into’ the smitten boy, an all-too-often occurrence in real life relationships. There’s insight into the confusion and hurt that characterise one-sided love, and the foregrounding of small, yet revealing moments characterises a strong, confident script by Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber.

If the film has a serious flaw, it’s Zooey’s clichéd character. We’ve all bumped into a girl or two who seems free and easy, and here as elsewhere, it’s a predilection for odd music (well…The Smiths…) and kooky, wide-eyed behaviour masking selfishness and a refusal to commit. While Gordon-Lovett is grounded and believable, Deschanel comes of as a grinding bore, all home-dyed hair and flippancy revealing a lack of any true emotion or maturity.

That aside, this is a feel-bad story that’s remarkably good, playing out like a mirror universe Rom Com that’s a refreshing break from the norm.

Shuan of the Dead made its inherent, twee middle-Englishness a strength, knowing it could never match the apocalyptic imagery of zombie Ravaged American cities of its US counterparts.

Luckily, this isn’t a problem for Zombieland if this new international trailer is anything to go by.

Woody Harrelson looks like he’s having the time of his life; check it out and learn the rules of survival-and watch out for that piano!

Another week, another slick indie coming-of-age tale with a ‘dark edge’. What is it with the American film industry and ‘dark’? Maybe the California sun is too much for some Execs. Or maybe the audience are pretentious morons. Either way, the opening YouTube montage reeks of bad teenage poetry, images of Saddam being lynched, people being strangled – don’t panic, keyboard cat’s in there as well…
You got it. It’s a teenage movie dealing with… like.. the effects of the media man…

25 year old director Antonio Campos has style to spare and serious love for Gus Van Sant that elevates this above the 90210 dross it occasionally threatens to become. It’s a shame his script seems to be culled – think about that word – from a wanky media studies essay. Yeah, yeah – there’s a lot of TV and, yes, young American’s watch too much of it. So do young people everywhere – they just don’t whine and/or shoot people over it as often.

Style-wise there’s lots of shaky docu-cam that lends a hyperrealist edge that manages to stay the right side of Diary of the Dead, as we follow our brooding Robert Smith style hero around his boarding school, enjoy his penchant for dodgy grumble flicks and finally watch as he accidentally catches two similarly ruined youths taking crack cut with rat poison, with predictable results.

The whole trip is meandering and possessed of a distancing icy coldness that would do Michael Mann proud, but is undermined by themes of the voyeuristic nature of media that went out with the French New Wave, while the conclusion is predictable and pretentious.

It’s a solid first effort, and if Campos can find a decent writer – or hone his own skills – then he could be a major talent. Fascinating at times, but fails to leave a lasting image.

Finally arriving in cinemas after its Sundance premiere, HumpDay takes the old theory about homoeroticism in buddy movies to its logical extreme – and is partially successful.

When two college friends reunite after years apart, it doesn’t take much for the bohemian Andrew (Mark Duplass) to convince Ben (Josh Leonard) that the American dream isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and drag him along to a boozed up party where ‘creatives’ (or at least, their Hollywood avatars) smoke, drink and give pan-sexuality a try out.

During the course of the evening, the central odd couple decide to enter an amateur porn contest (as you do), Seattle’s real-life annual HumpDay, where contestants are asked to ‘take back’ porn from the silicone-implant brigade. The catch? They’re entering the Gay section.

As a comic premise, it does have mileage, with some engaging banter as the two alternately egg each other on or try to get each other to chicken out, while Ben’s exchanges with unsuspecting wife Anna (a standout Alycia Delmore) provide some of the few laugh-out loud lines in the movie. Unfortunately the mumble-core scripting and some uncomfortable gender stereotyping spoil things, with Lynn Shelton’s script trying too hard to satirise the modern American male sense of self, when a dumber and sillier approach may have worked better.

It’s not often that you find yourself arguing for a movie to be stupider, but while there are some funny lines, many jokes fall flat or are offensive as if the film itself is overcompensating.

It’s still successful in some ways, showing how the straight-laced Ben is still wild and kerazy at heart, while Andrew may not be the all out hippy he pretends to be, but it’s too little too late. Finding out that people behave differently in different situations is hardly groundbreaking, and once the focus is off the porn and onto the talk, it’s difficult to maintain any interest. While the notion of fluid sexuality and monogamy is given a once over, the film tends to rely overly on sitcom chatter rather than – excuse the pun – taking things deeper.

It could be a comment on male hang-ups, as the short scene with two bisexual women is far more incisive than the endless dialogue between the two leads, or it could be a case of a female writer unfairly relying on male stereotypes. When done right, the gender war can provide a poignant and very funny battleground, but any battle requires a sense of daring to win – and that’s sadly lacking here.

Gay for pay? No way.

Despite the greying beard, John Landis has about him the youthful, upbeat air of a man who can’t believe his luck. His enthusiasm and good humour are infectious as he jabbers about the upcoming blu-ray release of An American Werewolf in London, premièring at this year’s FrightFest, as well as touching on his greatest hits, upcoming Universal Theatrical re-releases and his relationship with the late Michael Jackson. STS was lucky enough to catch the man at the recent Midnight Movies showing of Werewolf at Soho’s Curzon Theatre, where he proved to be as amiable and amusing as many of his films…

Werewolf was written a good decade before you made it. Were you waiting for special effects?

It was written in 1979 in Yugoslavia and I made it in 1981, which goes to show, if you’ve written a script that you think is good and everyone tells you it’s shit – just wait! But it was a very odd script, because it was funny. Although, personally, I don’t think it’s a comedy. It’s a horror film that happens to be, I hope, funny. I made another film later called Innocent Blood, about a vampire in the Mafia that is a comedy, so that’s a little different, but when I wrote it I was trying to think of a monster that was international, and where I could shoot it. But honestly, it was actually designed for the Edie (Lord Edie, the plan designed to attract Hollywood to British studios thanks to judicious tax breaks) plan – this was actually the last British quota picture. One of the first things Margaret Thatcher did was to drive a stake through the heart of the British film industry by stopping the Edie plan, but this is a British film, so I wrote it to qualify. Which meant, of course, only two Americans!

But it’s interesting because London is the home of Gothic horror. You had R.L. Stephenson, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker. Dracula came to London, Jekyll & Hyde was in London, Jack the Ripper… It’s ripe with atmosphere, so I wrote it for London. Actually, It’s an interesting script because when I made it, I’d made Kentucky Fried Movie, Animal House and Blues Brothers, and they were all very successful, so I could finally make this, and the only change from the screenplay was the Aero Cinema.
In 69 when I was first here, and also in 75, I spent a lot of time here as one of the 12 writers of The Spy Who Loved Me and there used to be cartoon cinemas around town – the Aero in Piccadilly, one in Leicester square… and, they just showed really good prints of cartoons – like Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. And I thought it was great! Of course, Cubby Broccoli thought I was crazy, like “Why the hell are you going to see cartoons?” you know? But anyway, when I wrote it, it was at the Aero and it was a RoadRunner cartoon, but when I came back in 81, it was a porno theatre, and that’s literally the only difference. We shot that little English… you know… ‘Whoops, my knickers…’type thing.

It is an astonishingly accurate recreation of a type of cinema that almost no-one cares about! How did an American like you even know who Lindsey Drew was?

Well, actually she wasn’t yet Lindsey Drew – she was just a page three girl then. But all those movies like What The Plumber Saw or Keep It Up Downstairs or something… there were all these British double entendre movies that were just so bizarre! So I watched a couple, and it was the first thing we shot because we needed to project it, and I remember the British crew were like “Um… Mr Landis, the boom’s in shot”. And I was like “Good!”

Actually, it shows how times have changed. When we made this in 81, those boys were immediately identifiable as Americans, because they wore jeans and work boots and parkas. What do you call them? Anoraks? But now they could be from France, or Italy… they just wouldn’t look so obviously alien as they did at the time. The only other period thing was, it was the very beginning of punk on Kings Road, before it got commercialised, and when I saw them I thought they were so fabulous. I said “hey, come and be in the movie”and when it opened in the States, they’d never seen Punk. And they were all “what the hell is this!?” But now it’s dated.

Really? I’m not sure it has dated that much, if you go into a rural pub, these guys are still there and you’ll still get exactly the same reaction…

It’s interesting, because obviously I didn’t grow up here and it’s a movie based on my observations. Well, it’s a movie based on..movies – and my observations as a foreigner. I was always amazed how much I got away with. The boys turn up in a truckload of sheep and go into the Slaughtered Lamb – it’s not subtle! They’re dead, you know? But what is interesting is, in 1971 when I made my first film Shlock which is appropriately titled, Rick Baker was 20, I was 21, and he did the makeup which was quite sophisticated then, so I gave him this script then and said “figure this out!” And he actually did over the years. And it was years before I could get it made, so by the time I came back to Rick, I called him and was all “Rick! I got the money!” and he was like… [makes nonchalent whistling sound]… because he had just taken the job of The Howling. And I was like; “Joe Dante’s doing a werewolf movie? What the fuck? You didn’t show him the change-o-heads did you? And he said, “well, yeah, I did. Sorry”. “You bastard!!” But eventually Rick came and did Werewolf and his assistant Rob Bottin did The Howling and actually Rob went on to do Carpenter’s The Thing, which is a brilliant movie.

That actually links the movies, because The Howling opens in a porno theatre too.

Actually The Howling is an interesting movie. It’s more jokey, not that Werewolf is serious, but there’s that scene in the peepshow which I thought was terrifying. But then there’s that weird poodle werewolf…

It did seem like werewolf films came back in the 80s. I think in Stephen King’s book, Danse Macabre, he talks about the lack of good werewolf films and then there’s a dearth of them, even one King wrote. Teen Wolf, The Howling, Cat People…

Well, Cat People isn’t a werewolf movie…

It’s a werewolf movie with cats! Silver Bullet…

That’s a werewolf movie with werewolves! Did you ever see My Stepmother Was A Werewolf? Worst film ever!

Not Stirba: Werewolf Bitch?

[Laughing] How would you even know that? Anyway, I got an email about a year ago saying “I’m making a movie about the making of American Werewolf…” and I wrote back saying “You don’t have any of the rights to that! What’s wrong with you! You won’t be able to do anything with it!” [more laughter] But he said, “well I’m doing it anyway and I’d love to show you” and they showed me, and it’s amazing. They had all the British cast and I kind of bullied Universal and Werewolf comes out on Blu-Ray this summer, and it’s gorgeous. They went back and hi-res’d the negative, and the documentary will be on the DVD. It’s actually longer than the movie! But it’s really good, I don’t mean to sound surprised. It’s premiereing at FrightFest, and I don’t know if you’ve seen Werewolf in a cinema, but I was concerned, mainly about the detail on the makeup. But it looks amazing.

It’s actually very brave that the transformation takes place in a well lit place. In The Howling it’s in the dark, but you can see all the detail...

It was actually a huge challenge for Rick Baker. Actually, when I did Thriller I did every cheat I left out of Werewolf. Girls screaming, big music, cutaways… but here the whole point was that it was painful. I still think I show the wolf too much, but Rick’s work is really remarkable even now.

How did you go about casting the Brits in it? It’s a remarkable array of British acting talent, but not obvious choices.

Well, Jenny Agutter I’d known for a long time. She was friends with my wife. In terms of the rest of the cast, it was the RSC performance of Nicholas Nickleby! We saw it on Christmas Eve, and it was so fantastic I took John Woodbine, Lyla Kaye, David Schofield… he was the original elephant man. So I got 12 actors and I went with – Jim Henson and Frank Oz were shooting the Muppet Show here – and we went and saw Rik Mayall and Ade Edmonson at the Comic Strip, basically screaming at each other! But Adrian was shooting a commercial at the time – I always remember Rik not knowing what a spit-take was! And Brian Glover was a wrestler at the time, a lovely guy. He had that accent… “That’s Enoof!”

I’m actually very fond of the movie, not least because you rarely get to make your 18 year old movie. There are things that embarrass me. Thank god I had Jenny Agutter, because some of her dialogue is very clearly written by a teenage boy! But in terms of experience, it was great. We did it as a negative pickup, where the studio says “When you give me a finished film, on time to this script, I’ll give you £10 million or whatever and then you just take that note and borrow the money from a British bank, which you could do in those days. There was no Studio, just us. And Joyce Hurley, who I hired as producer, because Michael Winner at the height of the IRA bombings had used a smoke bomb in a taxi with no permission and just shut down the whole city, so the Met had banned all filming in London. But Joyce just said “well, we’ll have to work out how to make it happen”, so I hired her on the spot!

Actually it was the Chicago police who brokered my cooperation with the Met, and there wasn’t much filmed here. You couldn’t get permits, it was just down to the bobby on the beat. So we shut down Piccadilly for two minutes at a time. Actually, the bus driver is Vic Armstrong – the great old stuntman – and there’s a lot of those guys hiding in here. It was a lot of fun to make.

How did you feel about the reception the movie got?

Well, in Britain it was a big hit. Actually, in Australia they were like “hey! Americans and Brits get killed, fantastic!” [laughs]. In the US it did… okay, but it was too wacky. At the time it was quite radical – it was a different approach. I think it did have some bad effects because people are jokey all the time now, but it was great, and it’s how I met Michael Jackson.

Given recent events we are kind of obliged to mention your connection with Michael Jackson.

Michael saw Werewolf and contacted me and said he wanted to turn into a monster. He was, obviously, fascinated by metamorphosis. But what’s interesting about Thriller is that the album had been out a year, it was already a big hit. The news always gets it wrong. It was the number one album in the world, so I said I wanted to make a theatrical short. It’s a two-reeler. CBS records wouldn’t pay, but it was fun to make, nothing planned and when it came out, it quadrupled the sales. It created the sell through market, established MTV, it was a phenomenon.

How do you feel about all those things?

Well, I liked Michael very much, I mean, he was nuts, yeah, but I liked him, and he was a truly tragic figure. I worked with him again on Black & White, and he was a great talent – but a truly tragic figure.

What do you think about American Werewolf in Paris?

Well, now it’s years later I can say I was horrified and disappointed! Anthony Waller, he made a film called Mute Witness which was excellent, and they had PolyGram’s rights. So they approached me and had a very good script about skinhead, neo-fascist gangs in France, who were basically Werewolves killing tourists. But it had nothing to do with that script. I was very disappointed. I should probably mention that I sold remake rights recently to Dimension, so I hope they do a good job and, if not, then my version still exists!

Actually I’m excited, I’m making another British film. I just got hired by Ealing and I’m doing Burke & Haire. It’s a really good script. It’s 75% accurate, 25% fantasy, and it’s in the old Ealing style of very black comedy, about serial killing and grave robbing.

How do you feel about Werewolf’s enduring appeal?

Well, it’s always gratifying when you make a movie and people like it. Actually, Universal this summer are putting out a lot of their stuff. They’re doing Spartacus and Blues Brothers and Animal House in theatres. Including Carpenter’s The Thing. If you haven’t seen that in a theatre, then you really should.

*     *     *

With this the call for the screening calls Landis away, and he bounds off happily to greet Jenny Agutter and fellow director Neil Marshall.

A truly unique director with a body of work that stands repeat viewing.

Adapting little-known (at least outside the US) psychedelic kids’ shows can never be an easy task and doesn’t seem to be a particularly sharp recipe for box office gold. So Land of the Lost limps quietly on to British screens with little fanfare and while it does have its moments, there’s little to recommend here..

Will Ferrell wheels out his usual man-child schtick as Rick Marshall, a scientist so obsessed with timewarps he’s been ostracized by the rest of the scientific community. But, in a right royal turn up for the books, he’s proved right when he teams up with eye-candy assistant Anna Friel and dumb hustler Danny McBride, last seen in the so-so Foot Fist Way, and the three are transported- by canoe no less- to a strange, prehistoric dimension, full of rampaging dinosaurs and an evil reptilian army bent on conquering the Earth.

Director Brad Silberling (Casper, Lemony Snickett) knows his way around a kid-friendly adventure comedy, so it’s a surprise that much of the humour on show here is aimed squarely at adults. Hidden behind production design that’s lifted directly from the show, Papier Mache rocks n’ all, the two male leads discuss the evil ‘Sleestacks’ methods for ‘tapping that ass’ and there’s a healthy dose of swearing thrown in for good measure.

This could have been great. There are times when you can see the goofiness that powered Anchorman itching to get out, but the confusion over who the hell this is aimed at robs it of any edge. The cute-but-annoying sidekick, the sweet and goofy romance and lacklustre scares are pure kids film territory, but it looks like the Producers were hoping to draw in an older crowd on the basis of irony – the American movie kind, not the real deal – and the old ‘hey man, that show was crazy, they must have been stoned when they made it..’ theory.

The plot is paper thin, the script solid if unexceptional and a lot of the time it seems like we’re relying on Ferrell and McBride to provide laughs by shouting and screwing their faces up. While this might be vaguely enjoyable after an evening of substance abuse, it seems like a wasted opportunity, the odd funny line mixed in among over acting and repetitive scenes. God alone knows where the rumoured $100 million budget went, but it may have been better spent on some joke books.

Not for kids and not for grown ups – the whole thing is well and truly lost. File next to ‘Semi-Pro’ in the waste of Will Ferrell bin.

This is the latest effort from Little Miss Sunshine producers Big Beach, and as such it’s possible to forgive a little box ticking on their part as they try to recreate that breakout success. Alan Arkin’s role as a cranky huckster in particular sails a little too close to that movie, but luckily this is an altogether darker affair that boasts some well-conceived performances, offsetting its numerous sins.

Amy Adams and Emily Blunt star as two New Mexican sisters with an unusual business idea: A cleaning company specialising in grisly crime scenes.

The desperation to escape their mundane lives that sees them forming this enterprise is nicely underplayed and the energetic good humour with which they approach the job is a joy to watch. Adams in particular puts on a sparkling, nuanced show, balancing quiet despair with an upbeat, can-do attitude. Indeed, the two leads are so likable that it’s often difficult to believe that they would be in such dire straits to begin with – but the scripting is solid enough to make us believe how easily this can happen to the most popular girls in school, life leaving them stuck in a rut with their grumpy, oddball family members.

While the core is solid, however, we’re also forced to sit through several ker-azy sub plots that try far too hard to move things into indie-ville, their forced quirkiness ultimately distracting and annoying.

As they move from mopping up after motel shootings towards insurance company big bucks, the balance between laughs and darkness is sometimes off balance, things taking a darker turn as ill-advised relationships and trying to raise a young son take their toll on the strained relationships at the heart of things. Unfortunately, those subplots turn up again, meaning we’re eventually treated to some overtly complex exposition that results in a disappointing end.

That said, it’s an interesting, if try-hard movie that’s worth checking out for some excellent, subtle character acting – with special nods here to Clifton Collins Jr’s support, and a nice debut from writer Megan Holly.

Take a large group of proven comedic talent, and give them a script where characters with modern sensibilities live in an ancient or mythical world. If you do it right, you get The Life Of Brian. Do it wrong, and you get this steaming pile. Proof, if it were needed, of the lack of intelligent design in the universe.

Hunter-Gatherers ‘Oh’ (Michael Cera) and Zed (Jack Black) eat of the tree of knowledge (“hmmm…Kind of ‘knowledgey’ tasting…”) and set out through an old testament landscape in what should be a very funny buddy movie, but ends up being ‘Abbott and Costello meet their maker’.

As they travel from one unamusing scenario to the next, Cera plays straight man to Black, but unfortunately Black has long abandoned actual jokes in favour of shouting his lines in a cod Shakespearian style while rolling his eyes. As if they know it’s a dud, the edit team cuts scenes before the punchline, creating a stop-start film that has gaps filled with knob gags. Now, I’m not against knob gags – they worked perfectly well in Blackadder – but here they’re as ancient as the setting, with any wit or spontaneity seemingly removed in favour of more screeching and a curious and very Middle-American desire to avoid offending anyone.

Bumping into Cain and Abel, Abraham, Isaac and various other Biblical types on the way, Zed becomes convinced he’s on a mission from God, one that involves saving some attractive girls from the king of Sodom. Throughout it seems like there are two scripts at work here, one wanting to take on the Christian right and give Judao-Christian myths a good kicking, the other written by a horny thirteen year old with a short attention span. The whole thing is offensive, but not in a good way. Homophobic and misogynistic jokes are phoned in by an array of talent, all of whom should know better – while the production design looks like it’s been assembled for a high school review.

Another example of Harold Ramis’ spiral into awfulness – this should be avoided like a biblical plague.

If there is a more despicable word in the English language then ‘Kooky’, then I’m hard pressed to find it. Yet here it comes again, wandering through an otherwise enjoyable summer movie season, trying to convince us of its Zany charms and cheerful goodwill – and spoiling what could be a perfectly decent film.

Washout Brian is the youngest child of elderly parents, scraping together a living selling mattresses in the kind of washed out town that Paul W. Anderson would be proud of. For some reason that’s never elaborated on, Brian wants to adopt a Chinese baby. Always has. Isn’t that what all 20-something men want?

While entangled in the amusing red tape this generates, he bumps into an equally wacky rich-but-lost girl Happy (A wide-eyed and Uber-Cute Deschanel), and the two pursue an anxious and fragile relationship.

Unfortunately both actors fall short, confusing blandness with innocence and confusion, which is a shame because the other ingredients here could add up to a Juno-esque breakout hit. There are odd, semi-linked skits involving a murderous homeless guy and some massive and joyful ham from both John Goodman and Ed Asner as overbearing patriarchs. There are hints of a deeper emotional confusion on show, but despite being likable and generally amusing, it often feels like the movie is trying too hard to cement its indie status, while the actors never seem to really nail their characters.

Overall it’s an amiable enough movie and a pleasant enough way to pass a lazy Sunday afternoon, but ultimately it leaves the viewer frustrated that any emotional heft is skirted around in favour of deliberate quirks.

Smart and amusing – but too deliberately awkward to make a major impression.

Let’s start with the obvious: Bruno is F***ing hilarious. I actually cried with laughter at one point. The stunts are works of demented genius, with Baron Cohen’s dedication to staying in character just as extraordinary as it was in Borat.

The storyline is simple, stupid, and very, very funny. Bruno, fired from Austrian Fashion channel ‘Funkyzeit’, heads to America and adopts an African baby in a quest for ‘greater celebrity’.

The baby arrives by freight at the airport in an amusing set piece, but, as with Borat and Ali G, the real fun comes from Bruno’s interaction with clueless celebs and plebs.

This is also where the film runs into trouble. Baron Cohen is just too popular for it to completely work, and there are even some parts where semi-explanations for this are offered, but the film is hampered by people knowing exactly what’s going on. Likewise, Bruno himself is a little too over the top. While middle American hunting parties might take him at face value (and they do, just before they try to to shoot him), a lot of people don’t. Borat conformed to a lot of stereotypes and people thought he was real. Bruno possibly conforms to too many.

This doesn’t stop it being haemorrhage-inducingly funny. The local talk show ‘audience’ may be set up, going wild when Bruno tells us he swapped his baby for an iPod, but the look on Ron Paul’s face as he is unwillingly seduced is priceless.

Likewise, pointing out to an evangelist that he has ‘blow-job lips’ , annoying fashionistas and generally showing people up as stupid homophobes will keep you laughing non-stop, while the film’s depictions of gay sex cement its position in the tasteless hall of fame. Likewise, it even manages to one-up Borat’s naked wrestling with a pygmy sex scene that, if you can stand to look, has to be seen to be believed. Of course, Bruno doesn’t stop with homophobia, racism gets a kicking (famous moms parading their tots in Nazi uniform), religion gets it in the neck (Hasidic Hotpants, I kid you not), and general redneckery of all kinds is fearlessly laughed at.

To be honest, it’s sometimes hard to tell if the film is mocking these prejudices or carrying them out, but either way, it’s fantastically funny, and may be the last chance to see Baron Cohen get away with this brand of physical and mental (in both senses of the word) comedy, and that’s a real shame.

Very funny, very camp, with balls of solid steel. The funniest film of the year, hands down.