markleachsa-1

My first reaction: hang on, physics doesn't work like that. But I put that aside, as I wanted so, so badly to like this movie. Paul Rudd is an amusing and likeable chap, even though the jokes and dialogue between him and his quantam-travelling family were old and heavy and stale, without a spark of spontaneity.

Evangeline Lilly is stunning, even on a bad day. But then, she must have had a series of awful days, because they managed to turn the astonishing Elven captain from the Hobbit, into a frumpy librarian and then punish her by restricting her dialogue to a few meaningless responses.

Michael Douglas looked thoroughly bored and if I hadn't caught dollar signs in his eyes now and again, I would have thought he'd been blackmailed into returning to this franchise.

Kang was played by a wooden puppet as far as I could tell, although I couldn't see the strings, so the effects department covered those up well. Good for them. An award please!

Katherine Newton who played Rudd's grown-up daughter did shine with enthusiasm as did some of the side characters. But the plot was old and full of cobwebs from other movies: The Return of the Jedi, Braveheart, Lawrence of Arabia and every other movie where a downtrodden people are prodded into revolution. I kept looking for an Ewok to appear, but sadly no, unless I missed them in the crowd of other creatures that had little, if anything, in common.

It was big on effects in order to disguise that it was poor on story, so if all you are looking for is fast-moving eye-candy, then this is the one for you.

Perhaps the one bright spot was the determined professionalism of Michelle Pfeiffer, who somehow managed to look and act younger and more dynamic than her 'daughter'.

If it wasn't for her, I would have wandered out of this tired rehash of old plots halfway through, instead of doing that with ten minutes to go. Somehow it was more interesting to go and watch people going in and out of the various screens than continue to the end. 4/10.

A friend tricked me into watching this, telling me it was an early Jim Carey movie. I think I'm going to have to disown that friend.

The acting is ... reluctant middle schooler at best, and the dialogue is more cringy than Dumb and Dumber, which by contrast is a story about two of the finest physics geniuses on the planet.

I skipped forward a few scenes from the gym scene - which was jaw-droppingly bad in itself - to take in a diatribe about modern political leanings which allowed such biblical monstrosities as co-ed dorms. Satan is alive and well and living in co-ed dorms apparently. Be aware, students!

And I can only confess that those were the highlights of this one-reeler as far as I could tell. I'm a live-and-let live type, but this was a live-and-then-burn-in-hell-for-all-eternity-because-God-loves-you-and-because-you-disagree-with-my-point-of-view movie.

Technically, the bloopers are perhaps the highlight of the movie, and luckily there are enough of those to keep an eye out for, such as badly placed mirrors reflecting the crew. The rest is more embarrassing than accidentally discovering your grandparents having sex. I actually found myself blushing at how awful this movie is, between my groans of distress at how awful this movie is., and protests at blatantly false claims and how awful this movie is.

It won an award for the scriptwriter, producer and star of the movie (all the same guy) and curious and bewildered at how it won an actual award, I looked it up. It was awarded by a faith organisation that has strong ties to the writer, producer and star (again, all the same guy.)

What a coincidence. Astonishing really.

Now, who can I trick into believing this is an early Richard Gere movie...?

I really did. After the meh feeling I got from Ep. VIII, I really wanted to love what is supposed to be the final chapter in the saga; to be able to look back over the nine movies with a good feeling. But... I didn't. The action was cool, but there were no 'wow!' moments, and almost everything on screen had been there before. Then, during what was supposed to be a tense scene, with Rey climbing through the wreck of the first (?) Death Star, I found myself wishing that they would make an Assasin's Creed game in that wreck - which, I admit, is weird. Throughout the nonology, the Force is the equivalent of mana in rp games - it's something you can draw on. I'm okay with that. It works on a sci-fi level and most fans are cool with it. But when the Force starts acting alive, doing things to its own agenda, and getting all supernatural on people, it all falls flat. It would be like having a magic wand - which is purely a tool for creating and activating spells - which, of it's own volition, suddenly turn up at your work and tries and talk your boss into giving you a promotion. It would be cool, but neither your friends nor your boss would believe a word of it. We go to Star Wars as its friend. But even we can't believe this bull. There were almost as many ghosts turn up to clean house here as there were in the final battle of Lord of the Rings. It's just so, so sad. The writers wrote themselves into a corner and had to use magic, or 'because God decided to lend a hand' to get them out of it.

Booooo!