Review Category: Movie

When young teen Frikke discovers a mysterious camera and a copy of an unreleased computer game, he soon realises the extent of the mystery he has stumbled upon. As local children begin falling into comas while their consciousnesses are uploaded into the game and become hunted by its sinister antagonist, Frikke must unravel the puzzle behind the game’s very existence if he wants to save them.

Parts of Labyrinthus will seem familiar from any number of films, mixing together basic premises such as getting sucked into a computer game world (Tron), the following of cryptic clues (The Goonies), and the navigation of an eldritch labyrinth (um… Labyrinth), but they come together in such a way that feels, if not wholly original, at least distinctive enough to stop you from quickly becoming bored with them.

The film establishes the rules of its digital otherworld with deft precision, principally that anything photographed by the camera will be transferred into the game, while its physical form left behind in the real world will begin to wither and die (any potential metaphysical implications such as soul transfer are wisely avoided).

The labyrinth’s various areas, such as an origami forest, a newspaper gorge or a quite literal house of cards are imagined well, if realised a little simply by rudimentary CGI, and function with their own internal logic. One particular scene involving how to weaken a bridge made of cardboard will get anyone with a juvenile sense of humour sniggering.

The kids are all likable and individual characters, and don’t even begin to approach the kind of precocious brats that confident child characters always the risk of becoming, meaning you never stop rooting for them to find their way home. The puzzles are straightforward enough and the villain’s unmasking won’t come as much of a surprise, but it is a family film so there’s no call for it to be overly complicated. While Labyrinthus is a far cry from the greatest of teenage adventure films, it’s certainly enjoyable enough for what it is.

LABYRINTHUS / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: DOUGLAS BOSWELL / SCREENPLAY: PIERRE DE CLERCQ / STARRING: SPENCER BOGAERT, EMMA VERLINDEN, FELIX MAESSCHALCK, POMMELIEN TIJS, PEPIJN CAUDRON, HERWIG ILEGEMS / RELEASE DATE: TBC

Expecting Rating: 7 out of 10

Actual Rating:
 

When Infini, humanity’s furthest outpost mining hazardous material from an uninhabited planet, becomes compromised by a crazed worker after a biological outbreak, a rescue team are sent in to prevent imminent disaster. What they find there takes them to the very edge of reason, sanity and coherence as the very future of mankind itself is threatened.

Infini’s initial setup of most of humanity living in poverty and taking dangerous jobs to survive makes for an interesting setting with many avenues of potential, which makes it rather frustrating that it has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the rest of the film. After a promising start, many great ideas are disregarded or forgotten, in particular the idea of slipstreaming, teleporting by way of matter being turned into information and transmitted anywhere in the universe. Nothing is made of the dangers proclaimed (“data corruption”), while the associated time dilation, meaning that what takes place in a matter of minutes on Earth plays out over hours and days from the perspective of those transported (presumably for reasons to do with relativity but without any accompanying explanation), has no true relevance to the plot. It’s like someone mapped out an intriguing sci-fi world complete with neat touches, but was then unable to tell an actual story within it, so instead opted for a simple ‘search and rescue mission gone wrong’ plot, but in space.

Speaking of the story, the inspiration and influence of late-’90s sci-fi horror Event Horizon is writ large and loud across every moment, from dankly-lit rooms and tunnels of the desolate and compromised metal tomb, the empty darkness of deep space, and the slowly eroding sanity of the characters due to mental influence by unknowable external forces. Hell, there’s even a riff on the “I am home” moment, although with far less impressive shock appeal.

Such familiar plotting might have been forgivable were it not for the bland characters. If someone doesn’t make enough of an impression for you to remember their position in the team, let alone their name, it’s a safe bet to say you won’t be shedding any immediate tears when they snuff it.

There are a few neatly gruesome horror moments that make an impact, such as visceral gore frozen from exposure beginning to melt into gelatinous puddles after hitting room temperature or the glowing red eyes of encroaching madness from alien parasitic infection, but it’s not enough to truly maintain your interest.

Infini displays well enough its dark and grimy vision of the future, with the realisation of industrial sci-fi technology and how people’s lives become affected by such advancements, but it lacks the follow through to capitalise on its ideas or required sense of humanity to make you actually care.

INFINI / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: SHANE ABBESS / SCREENPLAY: SHANE ABBESS, BRIAN CACHIA / STARRING: DANIEL MACPHERSON, GRACE HUANG, LUKE HEMSWORTH, LUKE FORD, BREN FOSTER, DWAINE STEVENSON / RELEASE DATE: TBC

Expected Rating: 8 out of 10

Actual Rating:
 

It takes something for a short movie to grab the attention, and transport your mind into a place that you’d normally expect to be after a full ninety minutes or so, but Ross Adgar’s directorial debut does just that. During the intriguing, claustrophobic and very anxious ten minutes of film, one’s emotional range is truly run, leaving you actually wanting more.

John (Sills) has awoken at a church altar, a small selection of candles and a ticking metronome by his side. Confused, he opens the door… which leads to train carriage, brightly lit by the daylight and eerily deserted. He is overpowered by thoughts; recollections and things that piece together how he got there and why. As he walks the train looking for an exit, he always arrives back at the same place: a photo of his family, a radio broadcasting news reports of missing children and that altar.

With such a simple premise, it’s not terribly hard to work out what’s happening, but Adgar’s direction and, more importantly use of sound, raise the short above others of its ilk. It’s this sound design that underpins the apprehension and ultimately heightens the fear and accelerates the thoughts of what John actually has done to get himself into his own personal purgatory.

Sills conveys the emotions well, and certainly carries the film, being essentially the only ‘real’ character on screen (we’ll not go any further for fear of spoiling the enjoyment for the viewers).

The Railway Carriage should be doing the festival circuit this year, and should you get the chance to see it, make sure you do.

THE RAILWAY CARRIAGE / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: ROSS ADGAR / STARRING: DEAN SILLS, DAVID CHAMBERS, GERI PRESTON / RELEASE DATE: TBC

Last autumn, all eyes were on Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel Studios’ first non-superhero all-out space opera, based on an obscure comic book series and starring the little-known Chris Pratt. Pundits wondered if this could be the movie to finally throw a space spanner in the works of Marvel’s intricately detailed and meticulously-planned cinematic Universe. $775 million later and an audacious new franchise is launched – Vol 2 lenses next year – and Chris Pratt becomes Hollywood’s go-to action hero overnight, dominating summer 2015 Box Offices in Jurassic World. This year, it’s Ant-Man, a more traditional superhero character but also not exactly racing alongside Spider-Man, Thor and Iron Man in the public’s consciousness. Surely this time Marvel have gone too far, surely this time they’ve dropped the ball?

Not a bit of it. Following a long and difficult gestation period bringing him to the screen, Ant-Man is an absolute blast of a movie. After the dour Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the thunderous, often-portentous Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man is a glorious, irreverent ray of sunshine in a genre that tends to take itself a bit too seriously occasionally. It’s very determinedly part of the established Marvel Universe – the film is dotted with references to and from other films (and there’s even a cameo from a couple of familiar faces and post-credits sequences you won’t want to miss) – and yet it has a welcome fleetness of foot and lightness of touch which makes it a great rollicking adventure film in its own right. It’s helped, of course, by the casting of Paul Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man; best-known for a string of undemanding comedies, he brings his considerable comic chops to the role and yet he’s clearly also glorying in the opportunity to be an action hero at last – and one in a fancy costume, to boot. The core storyline is fairly generic off-the-peg stuff; nasty bad guy Darren Cross (Corey Stoll presumably filling in for Mark Strong who clearly wasn’t available to play his signature ‘bald baddy’ role), a former protégé of the first Ant-Man, Hank Pym (a superb performance by Michael Douglas clearly having a great time), is determined to develop his own ‘shrinking’ technology which he intends to sell to the highest bidder, military or otherwise. Hank sees the risks inherent in such technology falling into the wrong hands so, by a roundabout fashion, he enlists the help of hapless ex-con Scott Lang and, alongside his despairing daughter Hope (Lilly) trains him in the use of the original Ant-Man suit and slowly but surely he learns to communicate with the Earth’s smallest creatures, who become his staunch allies and a powerful, implacable army. But initially, Scott’s a reluctant and fairly inept hero and when Cross finally discovers the secret of shrinking technology, it looks like time might be running out…

Ant-Man is an old-school thrill ride. It’s frequently laugh out-loud funny – Scott’s three bumbling homie ex-con friends are a hoot and get some of the best gags – and, when in full-on action mode, breathtakingly exciting. It’s easy to be dismissive and ambivalent about CGI and special effects in an era when it seems there’s nothing Hollywood can’t do but the FX here, powered by Reed’s urgent, restless direction – are genuinely astonishing. It’s a film that needs to be seen in 3D, as the sequences where Scott shrinks and is either lost and imperilled in a world of blissfully-unaware giants or else riding on the back of his new best friend, flying ant Anthony, can really only best be properly appreciated in 3D. Ant-Man is probably the best argument yet for 3D filmmaking; in 2D, it’d surely be a flatter and less immersive experience.

Ant-Man is a joyous grab-bag of delights with subtle touches and flourishes which will delight fans of the comic strip character (whose own convoluted backstory is well-documented but sympathetically untangled here), newcomers devoted to the Marvel cinematic world and just about anyone who enjoys an intelligent, adrenalised and light-hearted adventure fantasy. Edgar (Shaun of the Dead) Wright may have been ousted from the project last year, but Reed’s direction has many flourishes Wright will surely approve of and the script, largely the work of Wright and co-writer Joe (Attack the Block) Cornish, is packed with their trademark clever, good-natured, no-nonsense wit.

Fast, fun-packed (but never frivolous) and riotously, raucously enjoyable, Marvel have defied the odds and they’ve done it yet again. Watch Ant-Man fly.

ANT-MAN / CERT: 12A / DIRECTOR: PEYTON REED / SCREENWRITERS: EDGAR WRIGHT, JOE CORNISH, ADAM MCKAY, PAUL RUDD / STARRING: PAUL RUDD, MICHAEL DOUGLAS, EVANGELINE LILLY, COREY STOLL, BOBBY CANNAVALE, MICHAEL PEÑA, ANTHONY MACKIE, ANTHONY THE ANT / RELEASE DATE: JULY 17TH

Expected Rating: 7 out of 10

Actual Rating: 
 

Earth is quietly invaded by a race of parasitic aliens that enter through the ears of humans and take over their brains, except for one that targets teenager Shinichi. Blocked by his headphones, the parasite ends up lodged in his right hand, and the two of them end up forced to work together if they want to survive against the hostile alien menace.

There is nobody in the world who does batshit crazy quite like the Japanese. And just so we’re clear, this is very much intended as a compliment. Adapted from a ten-volume manga series, the story sees the parasites use their hosts to feed off unsuspecting humans, leaving behind bloody, mangled and often decapitated corpses in their wake, while they also begin possessing influential people to slowly gain control of society. The film utterly revels in its savage depravity, the blackly humorous absurdity reminiscent of the unfettered insanity of Takashi Miike or Norboru Iguchi.

The core of the film is the developing relationship between Shinichi and Migi (his parasite, the Japanese word for “right”). Unheard of for the aliens, the two of them remain separate consciousnesses, and while some see them as an experiment to be observed, others take a more direct approach to the potential threat and regularly attempt to kill them. This is where the aliens’ fluid morphing abilities come in handy, as Migi is able to shape his makeshift limbs of Shinichi’s fingers into razor-sharp blades of flesh capable of dismembering with a single slice. Their growing symbiosis means that each begins to influence the other, with Shinichi slowly losing his sense of empathy and emotion, while Migi is forced to periodically sleep (which you just know is going to happen at the most inopportune moment).

As the film progresses the laughs begin to dry up as sympathetic characters are killed and callous scenes of wanton slaughter become the norm, and there are also some philosophical monologues about the human race’s destructive impact upon the planet and some existential rambling on the nature of identity. However, it never stops being a highly engaging and mesmerisingly violent thriller, and ends on a satisfying note that also leaves things well set for its second and final part to pick up.

INFO: PARASYTE (PART 1) / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: TAKASHI YAMAZAKI / SCREENPLAY: RYOTA KOSAWA, TAKASHI YAMAZAKI / STARRING: SHOTA SOMETANI, SADAO ABE, ERI FUKATSU, AI HASHIMOTO, MASAHIRO HIGASHIDE / RELEASE DATE: TBC

Expecting Rating: 8 out of 10

Actual Rating:
  

Liza is a young woman living in 1970s Budapest, and her only friend is Toni, the long-dead ghost of a Japanese pop singer. As Liza begins to search for the kind of wistful romance that pulp novels promise her is out there, Toni becomes jealous and starts orchestrating freak accidents that leave her would-be suitors dead in suspicious circumstances. As the police become increasingly suspicious she is a serial killer, Liza starts to believe she is cursed as a fox-fairy, doomed to bring death to anyone who tries to love her.

Right from Liza the Fox-Fairy’s opening it lets you know exactly what you’re in for. If the sight of a young woman in a nurse’s uniform performing a spontaneous song and dance routine with a man in a mint-green suit draws you in rather than immediately puts you off, it’s a pretty safe bet you’ll enjoy this film. Such is the off-kilter humour that by the time you witness a couple having sex while bouncing on a space hopper it will seem positively ordinary.

The film maintains a sense of the absurd throughout, and has the feel of a cartoon brought to life. The regular deaths are comic but gruesome, shadows of foxes are cast by everyday objects and Liza’s hairstyles, a running joke sees the police chief failing every time he attempts to use an idiom, and the crumbling and colourless apartment building in which Liza lives has a film of brightness cast over it despite the increasing number of corpse outlines taped onto her floor.

With this stonewashed unreality and surreal atmosphere, there’s a slight danger of the film slipping into throwaway (but nevertheless entertaining) ridiculousness, and so it might have were it not for Liza herself, who quite simply is utterly enchanting. While not young enough to be considered naïve, she is instead idealistic, always wanting to believe the best of people and seeing any negativity as misunderstanding rather than malice. We’re frustrated as she fails to realise how completely besotted the police detective Zoltan is with her, concerned when a sleazy womaniser sets his sights on her, and as worried as she is that she will never find the happiness she truly deserves. When the death toll starts to rack up and she genuinely begins to believe herself cursed and unworthy of love (“That woman’s more dangerous than Ebola”), we are pulled into that same despair with her, only to rejoice at every glimmer of hope that things might turn out for the best.

An urban fairy tale of dark whimsy and otherworldly forces impacting mortal lives, Liza the Fox-Fairy feels like the result of what might happen if Wes Anderson directed a romantic comedy written by Guillermo del Toro. For all its dreamlike bizarreness, at its heart it’s a story of hope, and one driven by unfettered optimism in the idea that true love need only be recognised for it to ultimately overcome all obstacles.

INFO: LIZA THE FOX-FAIRY / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: KAROLY UJJ MESZAROS / SCREENPLAY: BALINT HEGEDUS, KAROLY UJJ MESZAROS / STARRING: MONIKE BALSAI, SZABOLCS BEDE FAZEKAS, DAVID SAKURAI, ZOLTAN SCHMIED ANTAL CSERNA / RELEASE DATE: TBC

Expected Rating: 7 out of 10

Actual Rating:
 

Ignore the rotten title, what we have here is a twisty, tricksy British sci-fi thriller that’s far smarter than its txt spk might suggest. When armed men break into their home and either kidnap or murder Slater’s girlfriend (it’s hard to tell which) the confused young man is thrown into the midst of a vast conspiracy spanning several lives and identities.

Like a more dour Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind crossed with a less witty episode of Black Mirror, this homespun thriller has plenty of ambition and some impressively nifty visuals to back up its story. Identity is the name of the game here, Brand New-U selling us the idea of a world in which it is possible to ‘upgrade’ one’s life, slipping into new personalities and switching with dopplegangers (or ‘Identicals’) into entirely new lives. It’s here Slater goes (Lachlan Nieboer), pursuing Nadia (Nora-Jane Noone – considerably less Irish than she was in The Descent) across parallel lives – threatening to ruin everything for himself, her and Brand New-U in the process.

It’s portentous filmmaking, and can be difficult to keep up with at times. It looks first-rate, but the characters are impossible to connect with, beyond Slater, who just shouts all of the time. Familiar faces pop up in the shape of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D’s Nick Blood (albeit very briefly) and Tony Way, who lends the film its creepiest sequence as a threatening Santa Claus.

Like last year’s The Machine, this is a British genre piece with heart and a brain. The latter does tend to outweigh the former more often than not, making it a difficult piece to like, but its dedication to the cause is appreciated, nevertheless.

INFO: BRAND NEW-U / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: SIMON PUMMELL / STARRING: NORA-JANE NOONE, TONY WAY, LACHLAN NIEBOER, NICK BLOOD / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

If zombie movies had been as ubiquitous in the 1980s and ‘90s as they are today, Arnold “The Governator” Schwarzenegger would have been right in the middle of the zombocalypse,  machine-gunning his way through the undead horde and deadpanning “They won’t be back!” before leaping through a window to wrestle with a helicopter. But times have changed and it might appear (his forthcoming return to the Terminator franchise notwithstanding) that Arnie, now a spritely and still-formidable sixty-seven years old, is coming to terms with the ageing process and beginning to make films more befitting a man of his advancing years. But there’s still that little matter of the zombie movie…

Maggie is magnificent – but in ways we might never have expected from a film toplined by the former Governor of California. This is a quiet, contemplative, deeply unshowy movie which is as much – if not more – about mortality and coming to terms with life and inevitable death – as it is about nasty growling monsters. There’s been an outbreak of a “necromabulist” virus which turns the infected into drooling flesh-eaters. The outbreak is under control but it’s been a long, hard battle and mankind has taken a real hit. Normality is slowly being restored and farmer Wade Vogel (Arnie) has spent two weeks searching through the chaos to find his missing daughter Maggie (Abigail Breslin). She’s been bitten and has begun the slow transformation process. But instead of allowing her to be shunted off into a quarantine centre where the infected are apparently humanely disposed of, Wade takes Maggie home so she can spend her last few weeks with her family. Wade and his wife (Maggie’s stepmother) Caroline (Joely Richardson) try to maintain a veneer of normality as Maggie slowly falls apart, both physically and psychologically…

Maggie is a glowering, brooding movie, an art house ‘zombie’ film largely drained of colour and with a deep background soundtrack of distant rumbling thunder, underscoring its dour, downbeat storyline and the dreadful inevitability of its climax. Performances are dialled right back (handily for Arnie); Abigail Breslin (no stranger to the undead courtesy of Zombieland back in 2009) is superb as Maggie, the Daddy’s Girl at once resigned to and yet terrified of her fate. Her relationships with her family and friends have become awkward and fumbling and her attempts to find her temporary place in a changed world are frustrated by the horror of her situation; at one point Maggie wakes in the night to find maggots squirming in the rotting flesh of her decomposing arm. She sees her own potential future too when her once would-be boyfriend Trent, also suffering from the virus, is dragged screaming from his home by the Police when his own condition reaches the point of no return. Arnie’s on surprisingly good form too. There are no Oscars waiting in the wings, obviously, but for once the paucity of dialogue serves him well. He deftly portrays the torment of a man who just wants to do his best for his daughter and who can’t change the fate that lays in store for her however hard he tries or however much he chooses to ignore it. It’s a subtle, nuanced performance and demonstrates what Arnie might have been capable of if he hadn’t embraced his action man persona so completely back in his glory years.

Maggie is a tough, difficult film to watch because of the horrible inevitability of what we know is going to happen. Viewers recently touched by bereavement and the sense of hopelessness and despair it can engender – especially as it approaches – may find it all too much to bear. But those who persevere will be richly rewarded by perhaps the bleakest ‘genre’ movie since The Mist, a film which, however hard it might be to experience and endure, is one which they’re not likely to forget in a hurry. Quite possibly a little masterpiece.

INFO: MAGGIE / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: HENRY HOBSON / SCREENPLAY: JOHN SCOTT 3 / STARRING: ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, ABIGAIL BRESLIN, JOELY RICHARDSON / RELEASE DATE: JULY 17TH

Expected Rating: 6 out of 10

Actual Rating:
 

Where do you start with The Third Man? Regarded by many, including the BFI, as the greatest British film ever made, it practically reads as a tick list of how to make a perfect film – the beautiful, atmospheric setting of post-war Vienna; a superb, intricate plot, courtesy of Graham Greene; Orson Welles’ memorable villain; one of the best theme tunes in cinema; enough crazy Dutch angles to give Sam Raimi palpations, and the best mention of a cuckoo clock in cinematic history.

Plot-wise, it’s the most Hitchcockian film the great man never directed. Dime store novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) arrives in Vienna to take up a job offer from an old friend, Harry Lime. Upon arrival, he discovers his friend has died in mysterious circumstances, and with the help of Lime’s girlfriend (Alida Valli) sets about investigating the circumstances of his death. As he’s drawn deeper into the mystery, he runs afoul of both the racketeers looking to profit in the war-ravaged city, and the various occupying forces – in particular the British – who control various areas of Vienna.

Director Carol Reed incorporated many then little-used techniques from German expressionist cinema – including the frequent use of distorted angles – to add to his leading man’s sense of alienation, putting both him and the viewer in an unusual, uncomfortable environment. The technique’s shown up in everything from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to The Evil Dead, but has never been used to greater, more disorienting effect than here.

And then there’s Orson Welles. After one of the most memorable entrances in film history, the film takes great care not to overuse its villain. He appears in only a handful of scenes, but is mesmerising in each. His explanation of his own dubious morality – imparted from the top of the city’s famous Wiener Riesenrad Ferris wheel – is borderline enough to convince anyone to turn to a life of crime. It’s arguably Welles’ greatest role, certainly his best in a film he didn’t himself direct (rumours have persisted over the years the Welles at least partially directed The Third Man, something he himself denied).

It’s Welles’ performance which always gets the praise in The Third Man, but in truth, there’s not a weak performance here. Welles’ frequent collaborator Joseph Cotton and Alida Valli have less showy roles, but are no less impressive. They’re ably supported by a who’s who of 1940s British character actors, including Trevor Howard and James Bond’s Bernard Lee (Bond fans may also want to note that, besides the appearance of M, future Goldfinger director Guy Hamilton was assistant director here, and the film’s Ferris wheel made a memorable cameo in The Living Daylights).

Re-released in a stunning 4K restoration to mark Welles’ centenary, if you’ve somehow never seen The Third Man, now’s the perfect time. Every shot of the film has always looked stunning, but the restoration makes it look better than ever. Each shadow is blacker than ever before, each Dutch angle more disorientating. Whilst it’s not a perfect restoration – with some shots still betraying the film’s age – this is the closest we’ll ever get to seeing an as-new version. There’s also a comprehensive set of extras, including fans such as Martin Scorsese and Ben Wheatley waxing lyrical about the film and its influence on them.

The Third Man remains one of the greatest British films ever made (and yes, quite possibly the best). It’s thrilling, complex, morally ambiguous, beautiful to look at, and features a captivating performance from one of cinema’s true icons. Genuinely essential.

Extras: Audio commentary, interviews, filmmaker’s influence documentary (featuring Martin Scorsese & Ben Wheatley), alternate narration, restoration featurette, 90 minute documentary, radio play (written by & starring Welles), Graeme Green documentary.

THE THIRD MAN: LIMITED COLLECTOR’S EDITION (1949) / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: CAROL REED / SCREENPLAY: GRAEME GREENE / STARRING: JOSEPH COTTON, ORSON WELLES, ALIDA VALLI, TREVOR HOWARD / RELEASE DATE: JULY 20TH
 

It’s fair to say that from the beginning of Ted 2, when the opening credits stop the film dead for three minutes of a big musical number, we realised we weren’t going to get along with it. Sadly, this did indeed not bode well for the rest of the film, as it stops for musical or drug-related interludes about three or four times.

Actually, we should be grateful that it spends time away from the ‘subtleties’ of the main plot. Here’s a question for you: have you seen the excellent Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ‘The Measure of a Man’ about Data’s struggle to be recognised as a person? You have? Then you’ve already seen this movie. Let’s consider a follow-up question, for those who haven’t watched that fine hour of television. Have you seen literally any buddy movie? Then, again, you’ve essentially seen Ted 2. This is a film completely devoid of any originality.

But it’s a comedy, the plot isn’t important, you say. That is true, but there’s a difference between having an excuse of a plot and adhering rigidly to a precisely timed movie template (the third act’s coming around? Must be time for a completely arbitrary argument designed to separate the two leads). It’s just insulting and isn’t good enough in this day and age.

For what it’s worth, there are some genuine laughs in there. But there was just so much that we didn’t like. The unnecessary fight at Comic-Con, the endless cameos (what exactly was the point of Liam Neeson’s cameo? Answers on a postcard) and the truly horrendous life advice (babies do not repair an already-broken marriage).

There’s a whole spiel in the film about how so many people end up on the wrong side of history. You can laugh at the dumb jokes but if you try and defend this as a good movie then that’s where you lose us. Consider where your money is going. Please, don’t end up on the wrong side of history.

INFO: TED 2 / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: SETH MACFARLANE / SCREENPLAY: SETH MACFARLANE, ALEC SULKIN, WELLESLEY WILD / STARRINGL: MARK WAHLBERG, SETH MACFARLANE, AMANDA SEYFRIED, JESSICA BARTH, MORGAN FREEMAN / RELEASE DATE: JULY 8TH