Monthly Roundup – April 2018

12 Saturday May 2018

Tags

Action, Adventure, Alain Guiraudie, Alberto Cavalcanti, Amen Island, Animation, Anthony Russo, Assassin, Avengers: Infinity War, B-movie, Babak Nafari, Bank robbery, Barbara Britton, Billy Brown, Blaxploitation, Blue Sky, Brad Peyton, Bullfighting, Burglars, Carlos Saldanha, Children of the Corn: Runaway, Children's Film Foundation, Chris Evans, Christina De Vallee, Comedy, Crime, Danny Glover, David Paisley, Drama, Eugeniusz Chylek, Ferdinand, France, Genetic experiment, Hafsia Herzi, Horror, Jake Ryan Scott, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Joe Russo, John Cena, John Gulager, Johnny on the Run, Kate McKinnon, Le roi de l'évasion, Lewis Gilbert, Literary adaptation, Ludovic Berthillot, Maggie Grace, Marci Miller, Mark Harriott, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mike Matthews, Naomie Harris, Pine-Thomas, Proud Mary, Rampage, Reviews, Rival gangs, Rob Cohen, Robert Downey Jr, Robert Lowery, Romance, Ryan Kwanten, Sequel, Sydney Tafler, Taraji P. Henson, Thanos, The Hurricane Heist, The Monster of Highgate Ponds, They Made Me a Killer, Thriller, Toby Kebbell, Unhappy Birthday, Video game, William C. Thomas

They Made Me a Killer (1946) / D: William C. Thomas / 64m

Cast: Robert Lowery, Barbara Britton, Lola Lane, Frank Albertson, Elisabeth Risdon, Byron Barr, Edmund MacDonald, Ralph Sanford, James Bush

Rating: 5/10 – a man (Lowery) drives across country after the death of his brother and gives a lift to a woman (Lane) who tricks him into being the getaway driver in a bank robbery, a situation that sees him on the run from the police but determined to prove his innocence; a gritty, hard-boiled film noir, They Made Me a Killer adds enough incident to its basic plot to keep viewers entertained from start to finish without really adding anything new or overly impressive to the mix, but it does have a brash performance from Lowery, and Thomas’s direction ensures it’s another solid effort from Paramount’s B-movie unit, Pine-Thomas.

Proud Mary (2018) / D: Babak Najafi / 89m

Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Billy Brown, Jahi Di’Allo Winston, Danny Glover, Neal McDonough, Margaret Avery, Xander Berkeley, Rade Serbedzija, Erik LaRay Harvey

Rating: 3/10 – a female assassin (Henson) finds herself protecting the teenage boy (Winston) whose father she killed years before, and at a time when her actions cause a murderous dispute between the gang she works for and their main rival; as the titular Proud Mary, Henson makes for a less than convincing assassin in this modern day blaxploitation thriller that lets itself down constantly thanks to a turgid script and lacklustre direction, and which has far too many moments where suspension of disbelief isn’t just required but an absolute necessity.

Children of the Corn: Runaway (2018) / D: John Gulager / 82m

Cast: Marci Miller, Jake Ryan Scott, Mary Kathryn Bryant, Lynn Andrews III, Sara Moore, Diane Ayala Goldner, Clu Gulager

Rating: 3/10 – arriving in a small Oklahoman town with her teenage son, Ruth (Miller) attempts to put down roots after over ten years of running from the child cult that nearly cost her her life, but she soon finds that safety still isn’t something she can count on; number ten in the overall series, Children of the Corn: Runaway is yet another entry that keeps well away from any attempts at providing anything new, and succeeds only in being as dull to watch as you’d expect, leaving unlucky viewers to ponder on why these movies still keep getting made when it’s clear the basic premise has been done to death – again and again and again…

Johnny on the Run (1953) / D: Lewis Gilbert / 68m

Cast: Eugeniusz Chylek, Sydney Tafler, Michael Balfour, Edna Wynn, David Coote, Cleo Sylvestre, Jean Anderson, Moultrie Kelsall, Mona Washbourne

Rating: 7/10 – after running away from his foster home in Edinburgh, a young Polish boy, Janek (Chylek), unwittingly falls in with two burglars (Tafler, Balfour), and then finds himself in a Highland village where the possibility of a new and better life is within his grasp; an enjoyable mix of drama and comedy from the UK’s Children’s Film Foundation, Johnny on the Run benefits from sterling performances, Gilbert’s astute direction, excellent location work, and a good understanding of what will interest both children and adults alike, making this one of the Foundation’s better entries, and still as entertaining now as when it was first released.

Ferdinand (2017) / D: Carlos Saldanha / 108m

Cast: John Cena, Kate McKinnon, Anthony Anderson, Bobby Cannavale, Peyton Manning, David Tennant, Jeremy Sisto, Lily Day, Gina Rodriguez, Daveed Diggs, Gabriel Iglesias

Rating: 8/10 – a young bull called Ferdinand (Cena) whose disposition includes a fondness for flowers and protecting other animals, finds himself temporarily living with a supportive family, until events bring him back to the world of bullfighting that he thought he’d left behind; the classic children’s tale gets the Blue Sky treatment, and in the process, retains much of the story’s whimsical yet pertinent takes on pacifism, anti-bullying, and gender diversity, while providing audiences with a rollicking and very humorous adventure that makes Ferdinand a very enjoyable experience indeed.

The Hurricane Heist (2018) / D: Rob Cohen / 98m

Cast: Toby Kebbell, Maggie Grace, Ryan Kwanten, Ralph Ineson, Melissa Bolona, Ben Cross, Jamie Andrew Cutler, Christian Contreras

Rating: 4/10 – thieves target a US Treasury facility during a Category 5 hurricane, but don’t reckon on their plans going awry thanks to a Treasury agent (Grace), a meteorologist (Kebbell), and his ex-Marine brother (Kwanten); as daft as you’d expect, The Hurricane Heist continues the downward career spiral of Cohen, and betrays its relatively small budget every time it sets up a major action sequence, leaving its talented cast to thrash against the wind machines in search of credibility and sincerity, a notion that the script abandons very early on as it maximises all its efforts to appear as ridiculous as possible (which is the only area in which it succeeds).

The Monster of Highgate Ponds (1961) / D: Alberto Cavalcanti / 59m

Cast: Sophie Clay, Michael Wade, Terry Raven, Ronald Howard, Frederick Piper, Michael Balfour, Roy Vincente, Beryl Cooke

Rating: 6/10 – when his uncle (Howard) returns home from a trip to Malaya, David (Wade) gets to keep a large egg that’s been brought back, but little does he realise that a creature will hatch from the egg – a creature David, his sister Sophie (Clay), and their friend, Chris (Raven) need to protect from the authorities until his uncle returns home from his latest trip; though the special effects that bring the “monster” to life are less than impressive, there’s a pleasing low budget, wish fulfillment vibe to The Monster of Highgate Ponds that allows for the absurdity of it all to be taken in stride, and thanks to Cavalcanti’s relaxed direction, that absurdity makes the movie all the more enjoyable.

Rampage (2018) / D: Brad Peyton / 107m

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Malin Akerman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jake Lacy

Rating: 5/10 – a gorilla, a wolf, and an alligator are all exposed to an illegal genetic engineering experiment and become massively bigger and more aggressive thanks to the corporation behind the experiment, leaving the gorilla’s handler (Johnson) to try and help put things right; based on a video game, and as brightly ridiculous as any movie version of a video game could be, Rampage uses its (very) simple plotting to bludgeon the audience into submission with a variety of exemplary digital effects, while also trying to dredge up a suitable amount of emotion along the way, but in the end – and surprisingly – it’s Johnson’s knowing performance and Morgan’s affected government spook that trade this up from simple disaster to almost disaster.

Unhappy Birthday (2011) / D: Mark Harriott, Mike Matthews / 91m

aka Amen Island

Cast: David Paisley, Christina De Vallee, Jill Riddiford, Jonathan Deane

Rating: 4/10 – Rick (Paisley) and his girlfriend, Sadie (De Vallee), along with their friend Jonny (Keane), travel to the tidal island of Amen to reunite Sadie with her long lost sister, only to find that the islanders have a secret that threatens the lives of all three of them; a low budget British thriller with distinct echoes of The Wicker Man (1973) – though it’s not nearly as effective – Unhappy Birthday highlights the isolated nature of the island and the strangeness of its inhabitants, but reduces its characters to squabbling malcontents pretty much from the word go, which makes spending time with them far from appealing, and stops the viewer from having any sympathy for them once things start to go wrong.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) / D: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo / 149m

Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt, Josh Brolin, Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan, Tom Hiddleston, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Idris Elba, Danai Gurira, Peter Dinklage, Benedict Wong, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, Benicio Del Toro, William Hurt, Letitia Wright

Rating: 8/10 – Thanos (Brolin) finally gets around to collecting the Infinity stones and only the Avengers (and almost every other Marvel superhero) can stop him – or can they?; there’s much that could be said about Avengers: Infinity War, but suffice it to say, after eighteen previous movies, Marvel have finally made the MCU’s version of The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

The King of Escape (2009) / D: Alain Guiraudie / 90m

Original title: Le roi de l’évasion

Cast: Ludovic Berthillot, Hafsia Herzi, Pierre Laur, Luc Palun, Pascal Aubert, François Clavier, Bruno Valayer, Jean Toscan

Rating: 6/10 – when a middle-aged homosexual tractor salesman (Berthillot) falls in love with the daughter (Herzi) of a rival salesman, this unexpected turn of events has further unexpected repercussions, all of which lead the pair to go on the run from her father and the police; as much a comedy of manners as an unlikely romance, The King of Escape is humorous (though far from profound), and features too many scenes of its central couple running across fields and through woods, something that becomes as tiring for the viewer as it must have been for the actors, though the performances are finely judged, and Guiraudie’s direction displays the increasing confidence that would allow him to make a bigger step with Stranger by the Lake (2013).

Kidnapping Mr. Heineken (2015)

10 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

1982/3, Alfred Heineken, Amsterdam, Anthony Hopkins, Daniel Alfredson, Drama, Jim Sturgess, Kidnapping, Ransom, Review, Ryan Kwanten, Sam Worthington, Thriller, True story

aka Kidnapping Freddy Heineken

D: Daniel Alfredson / 95m

Cast: Jim Sturgess, Sam Worthington, Ryan Kwanten, Anthony Hopkins, Mark van Eeuwen, Thomas Cocquerel, Jemima West, David Dencik

In 1982, five friends working and living in Amsterdam – Cor Van Hout (Sturgess), Willem Holleeder (Worthington), Jan ‘Cat’ Boellard (Kwanten), Frans ‘Spikes’ Meijer (van Eeuwen), and Martin ‘Brakes’ Erkamps (Cocquerel) – are struggling to keep their construction business from going under. They don’t have any appreciable capital so the banks won’t lend them any money. But Cor has an idea (a New Year’s resolution in fact): to do something big, something that will see them all become immensely rich. That idea leads to a plan, and the plan is to kidnap the owner and founder of the Heineken brewery empire, Alfred ‘Freddy’ Heineken (Hopkins).

Needing to pull off this coup quite quickly, the five men begin to plan their abduction and how they will keep the ransom – $35m – and avoid being caught. They begin to watch Heineken to learn his routine, and to figure out the best time to grab him. They also realise that in order to look like professional kidnappers they’ll need to have some money behind them. So they rob a bank, and get away with enough cash to bankroll the abduction. At a shed owned by Jan, they construct soundproof cells where they can keep Heineken (and Ab Doderer (Dencik), his driver), and which are hidden behind false panelling.

The kidnapping is successful and the five men wait for the ransom note to be found by the police. They hole up at Jan’s shed, taking it in turns to check on Heineken and Doderer, and to wait for the ransom to be paid. But time passes, and after three weeks they’ve heard nothing. Willem is all for sending the police evidence that they will harm Heineken if the ransom isn’t paid, but when it comes to it he can’t do it. Another demand leads to the police and Heineken’s company agreeing to pay the ransom money, and the group successfully attain it. They stash most of it in buried tubes out in the forest, but in the days ahead they become more fearful and paranoid that the police will soon be snapping at their heels, and their long-term friendships begin to fray at the seams.

True stories – in the movies at least – usually come with the disclaimer that certain scenes, characters and/or dialogue have been fictionalised or conflated or created for dramatic purposes. This we know, and it’s always the problem with telling a true story: just how much of what you’re seeing is really true. The answer, of course, is absolutely none of it. It doesn’t matter if its’s based on a true story, or has the backing and involvement of the people it concerns or portrays, every single movie that’s based on a true story, or real events – what you’re watching is never going to be exactly what happened. And while we all know this deep down, still we take for granted that what we’re seeing actually happened, as if the writer(s), director(s) and cast have a special way of recreating past events exactly as they happened.

Sadly for Kidnapping Mr. Heineken, if that were the case, then it might help obscure or erase the movie’s most fundamental problem: it’s not in the least bit convincing or dramatic enough to work. A belated English language remake of The Heineken Kidnapping (2011), the movie is a tired, tangled piece that features five men who don’t seem to have anything in common except they take to kidnapping with apparent ease, especially when it comes to abandoning their consciences (not one of them offers any objections to the idea). And there’s an incredible naïvete about their decision that’s never properly addressed; none of them have a criminal background but they take to being criminals as if it were the most natural, and easiest, thing in the world.

With the movie establishing an awkward tone from the start, the middle section does little to rescue things, as Heineken gets the chance to be belligerent and caustic to his kidnappers on a regular basis, and they all sit around wondering why the ransom hasn’t been paid. Five more glum-looking faces you’re unlikely to see for quite some time, as the movie – scripted by William Brookfield from the book by Peter R. de Vries – fails to add any tension to proceedings, even when Willem wants to get violent. It gives rise to an odd feeling, that neither Brookfield nor Alfredson have made any connection to the story, and are telling it out of some sense of obligation.

The same can be said of the cast. Sturgess, usually a sharp-minded presence on screen, here seems held back by the vagaries of the script, in particular with regard to Cor’s relationship with his girlfriend Sonia (West), which appears to be of minor importance during the abduction but assumes a disproportionate relevance in the movie’s final third. Worthington continues to make audiences wonder why he gets so much work, giving a performance that’s so stiff you expect him to seize up at any moment. And Kwanten, thanks to one of the scruffiest wigs seen in ages, will have viewers trying to work out who he is (in real life) rather than how good his performance is. But spare a thought for Hopkins, playing yet another supporting performance and having to go from assured patriarch to rambling mental patient in the space of a competently edited chase sequence.

The story of Alfred Heineken’s kidnapping was a major news story at the time – in Holland at least – and is notable still today for the ransom being the largest ever paid for an individual, and for the fact that some of the money has never been recovered. The movie cites this at the end, along with the fates of the main characters (two of which may come as a very big surprise). But by then you’ll be less than interested, and just as relieved as Heineken probably was at being rescued from it all.

Rating: 4/10 – plodding, uninspired and plain dull for long stretches, Kidnapping Mr. Heineken is a movie that lacks commitment from its cast and crew, and ambles along with all the urgency of a downhill racer missing his skis; broadly factual (ironically, de Vries, who was an advisor on the movie, subsequently refused to watch the movie, citing numerous discrepancies between the movie and what really happened), this is a movie that gives new meaning to the words defiantly turgid.

Mini-Review: 7500 (2014)

27 Saturday Dec 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Amy Smart, Drama, Flight 7500, Horror, Jamie Chung, Leslie Bibb, Review, Ryan Kwanten, Takashi Shimizu, Thriller

D: Takashi Shimizu / 97m

Cast: Leslie Bibb, Jamie Chung, Ryan Kwanten, Amy Smart, Jerry Ferrara, Scout Taylor-Compton, Nicky Whelan, Alex Frost, Christian Serratos, Rick Kelly, Johnathan Schaech

Vista Pacific Flight 7500 is an overnight flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo. While the take off is routine, a bout of severe turbulence leads to a passenger (Kelly) having a seizure; despite the best efforts of travelling paramedic Brad (Kwanten) and stewardesses Laura (Bibb) and Suzy (Chung), he dies. With no immediate reason to turn back, the flight continues on but the passengers and crew encounter ever stranger events, including a life-threatening cabin depressurisation, the disappearance of the dead passenger’s body, and the lack of radio contact with Tokyo air control. As a supernatural explanation for things seems to be the most likely, Brad, his wife Pia (Smart), Laura, Suzy, and newlyweds Rick (Ferrara) and Liz (Whelan), with occasional help from fellow passenger Jacinta (Taylor-Compton), come to believe it’s all connected to the dead man, and look through his belongings for an answer. But what they find is even stranger still…

At first glance, this latest offering from the director of The Grudge movies (Japanese and American) has all the hallmarks of an intriguing mystery thriller, with its characters trapped in a confined space, supernatural elements, strange occurrences, and growing sense of menace. But as so often happens with this type of movie, the script is unable to support its own premise and soon gets bogged down in one unexplained phenomena after another, making several attempts to increase the tension and heighten the dread the passengers and crew are experiencing, but falling short each time.

Further problems arise from the characters themselves, with perfunctory back stories for all that resist any depth being added, and wallow in cliché: the stewardesses with relationship problems (are there any stewardesses in the movies that don’t have relationship problems?), the couple splitting up who re-commit through being put in peril, the “wild child” who just happens to have the explanation for what’s happening, and the new wife whose OCD traits are jettisoned at the first opportunity. With so little to work with, the more than capable cast are left adrift, with Shimizu opting to focus on poorly lit visuals and less than satisfying “scares”.

By the movie’s end, 7500 has descended into a collection of disjointed and there-for-the-sake-of-it scenes that fracture the narrative beyond any possibility of recovery, and it concludes with a scene so derivative and redundant it beggars belief. (It shouldn’t be surprising then that the movie was filmed back in 2012 and has only now found a release via home video.)

Rating: 3/10 – with its cast doing just enough to achieve lacklustre performances, and Shimizu matching them with his direction, 7500 soon plummets into mediocrity; this is definitely one flight that can be missed in favour of the next one.

Knights of Badassdom (2013)

28 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Comedy, Demons, Fantasy, Gore effects, Horror, Joe Lynch, LARPing, Live action role playing, Peter Dinklage, Review, Ryan Kwanten, Steve Zahn, Summer Glau

D: Joe Lynch / 86m

Cast: Steve Zahn, Ryan Kwanten, Summer Glau, Peter Dinklage, Margarita Levieva, Jimmie Simpson, Brett Gipson, Danny Pudi

When heavy metal loving Joe (Kwanten) is dumped by his girlfriend, Beth (Levieva), his best friends Eric (Zahn) and Hung (Dinklage) try to cheer him up by taking him on a larping weekend. Larping is short for Live Action Role Playing, the province of fantasy game players who want to act out their roles for “real” as well as doing so online. Eric is an enchanter, and has obtained a copy of a rare book said to have been written by Dr John Dee as an attempt to conjure angels but which was subsequently hidden when Dee found he was conjuring demons instead (though Eric thinks it’s just a prop he got off the Internet). Challenged by games organiser Ronny (Simpson) to come up with a casting spell that will allow Eric, Joe and Hung – accompanied by Lando (Pudi), Gwen (Glau) and Gunther (Gipson) – to progress to the games’ next level, they use an incantation from Dee’s book.

Unaware at first that in doing so they’ve raised a succubus – and that it’s taken on the form of Joe’s ex-girlfriend – the three friends and their new companions continue with the games. As the succubus begins killing stray larpers, it’s only when Hung, Ronny and Lando encounter her later that night that anyone becomes aware of what’s happening. She kills Hung and Lando but Ronny runs away; while he tries to find his way back to where the gamers are camped overnight, Joe and Gwen find Hung’s body and are joined by Eric and Gunther. They too try to get back to the campground but they run into the succubus; Eric recites another incantation to try and send it back to hell and the succubus runs off, apparently hurt. When Ronny sees the book he recognises it straight away and is horrified to learn what’s happened, and lambasts Eric for his stupidity, telling him that if he spoke Enochian (the book’s language) he would have known that the incantation wasn’t for sending the succubus back to hell, but for transforming it. Now the succubus is a demon, Abominog, and it’s down to the remaining group to stop it from feeding on the souls of anyone it encounters, and to destroy it.

Originally filmed in 2010, Knights of Badassdom has had a chequered history. A cut of the movie was shown at 2011’s Comic-Con but was held back from distribution by producers IndieVest Pictures (IVP). Rumours that IVP were cutting the movie without Lynch’s involvement were rife, and it seemed that the movie might end up being released in a bowdlerised version, one that didn’t match Lynch’s vision. Eventually a cut of the movie was screened in March 2013 and it was picked up by distributors Entertainment One. How the movie would have turned out without all that having happened we’ll probably never know, but even if Lynch did have a different approach to the one we’re presented with, it’s unlikely it would have saved the movie from being so bad.

The problem, mainly, is the movie’s tone. It wants to be a hip, clever horror comedy in the vein of Evil Dead II (1987), but where that movie was successful in its combination of extravagant, gory horror with laugh-out-loud sardonic humour, Knights of Badassdom is a crude misfire in comparison, providing lame jokes, gags that are shouted for emphasis by its cast, and which relies on Zahn’s intimidated baby face reactions to criticism as a humorous device. There’s also an over-reliance on having the cast speak in mock-Shakespearean English before relapsing back into modern-day slang or swearing; what the movie’s makers have failed to realise is that it’s not even funny once, let alone the numerous times it’s trotted out over eighty-six laborious minutes.

There’s a woeful lack of characterisation as well, with Joe turning out to be one of the blandest heroes to reach our screens, and the rest of the characters are given little to do but run around and shout a lot. Zahn does a watered-down version of his usual comedy schtick, Glau looks pretty but loses out to Levieva as the woman to watch (she gets far more to do as the bloodthirsty succubus), and Kwanten defaults to looking perplexed throughout (as well he might be). Only Dinklage makes an impression, embracing the intrinsic absurdity of getting dressed up and running around in the woods playing fantasy games, and having as much fun as possible; when his character is killed off, his presence is sorely missed.

With an emphasis on the gore that overwhelms the comedy (such as it is), Knights of Badassdom further demonstrates its inability to strike a balance between the two, leaving the viewer to wonder if Kevin Dreyfuss and Matt Wall’s screenplay really was this artless to begin with, or if the rumoured tampering is to blame. Either way, the movie fails on so many levels that by the time Abominog is despatched in a blaze of ill-conceived coloured lighting, the viewer can only heave a sigh of relief that it’s finally over (and for once there’s no hint of a possible sequel).

Rating: 3/10 – pleasingly old school gore effects aside, Knights of Badassdom has so little to recommend it that the viewer could well end up rooting for Abominog in its efforts to feast on the characters; dreadful and dire in equal measure and a warning to anyone trying to make a modern-day horror comedy.

The Right Kind of Wrong (2013)

09 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Albino bear, Blog, Jeremiah Chechik, Loser, Review, Romantic comedy, Ryan Kwanten, Sara Canning, Tim Sandlin, Why You Suck, Will Sasso

D: Jeremiah Chechik / 97m

Cast: Ryan Kwanten, Sara Canning, Ryan McPartlin, Kristen Hager, James A. Woods, Raoul Bhaneja, Jennifer Baxter, Will Sasso, Catherine O’Hara, Mateen Devji, Maya Samy

The loser with a heart of gold is a staple of romantic comedies, but usually the loser is looking to better himself or is struggling to make it out of the dead-end job that is getting them down. They meet the girl of their dreams, spend ninety minutes (or more) trying to win them over (often without the girl knowing they’re even trying), adopt a self-deprecating yet hopefully endearing approach, and wait for the miracle moment when the girl finally realises she’s in love with them and they can head off into the sunset together. But what if the loser was happy with their dead-end job? And what if the loser isn’t looking to better himself, but has tried and is okay with his lack of success? And what if the girl of their dreams isn’t going to realise she’s in love with them… probably?

This is the twist that makes The Right Kind of Wrong one of the more enjoyable romantic comedies of recent years. The loser in this movie is Leo (Kwanten), a would-be writer whose refusal to change even one word of his first novel has left him without a book deal, and has stopped him from writing anything else. When his wife, Julie (Hager) tells him that she’s written a blog about him detailing all his faults – called Why You Suck – and that it’s becoming wildly popular, Leo is bemused but unfazed. His attitude changes, though, when she leaves him. Deflated and miserable, he stays at home watching Julie continue to character assassinate him in TV interviews, until one day he goes outside and sees Colette (Canning). He’s immediately attracted to her, but there’s a problem: she’s in her bridal gown and minutes away from getting married.

Undeterred, Leo attends the ceremony and sees her marry handsome lawyer Danny (McPartlin). He also meets Colette’s estranged mother, Tess (O’Hara). They hit it off and Tess takes Leo to the reception. There, Leo gets a chance to talk to Colette and wastes no time in telling her she shouldn’t have got married, and that she should be with him. Colette is less than amused by Leo’s nerve and he’s thrown out. Still not put off, Leo begins finding out more about Colette, and keeps “accidentally” bumping into her in town. He attends the tours she conducts around the local area, sees her stealing a newspaper on a regular basis, and enlists the help of his workmate Mandeep (Bhaneja) in letting Colette see he’s more than just a stalker. When Danny begins to worry about Leo’s influence on Colette, things take a more dramatic turn, and a work-related threat leaves Leo unable to continue following his heart, and Colette.

The central conceit of The Right Kind of Wrong – that the loser is happy with their lot and doesn’t care what people think about them – helps the movie tremendously, providing the basis for some unexpected dialogue and several saccharine-free exchanges between Leo and Colette. Megan Martin’s script, adapted from the novel by Tim Sandlin, makes a virtue of Leo’s idiosyncrasies despite his wife Julie’s disparaging blog (and later, bestselling book). Leo doesn’t expect a lot from life but he does know how to live his own life to his own level of satisfaction, and it’s this attribute that makes the movie more engaging than most recent romantic comedies; you’re never quite sure what Leo’s going to do or say next in his pursuit of Colette, and often he’s so lacking in guile it’s no wonder Colette keeps shooting him down.

Of course, the outcome of the movie is only occasionally in doubt, and there’s very little that’s new or different in the way that Colette and Danny’s marriage crumbles under the accumulated effects of Leo’s attentions. But there are a few developments and incidents that aren’t foreseeable, such as Leo being beaten up by a group of teenagers, or his connection with an albino bear. These add spice to the basic mix, as well as keeping some of the audience’s expectations firmly undermined. The supporting characters are given small moments to make their mark, in particular Neil (Sasso), Leo’s publisher friend who is paranoid about his wife’s upcoming gallery opening being a result of her affair with the gallery owner.

Some aspects don’t work so well. Colette and her mother are reconciled in two seconds’ flat; in a similar fashion, Julie has a change of heart about Leo near the movie’s end; and Leo’s juggling skills are abandoned after being prominently featured in the movie’s first half. Danny and his lawyer cohorts are severely underwritten (as played by Woods, Troy Cooper is like someone straight out of a National Lampoon movie), and Leo’s attempts to conquer his fear of heights ends with an entirely too predictable disaster. Chechik’s direction is solid if unspectacular, but he has a sure grasp of the dynamic that evolves between Leo and Colette, and their scenes together are wonderful to watch. Both Kwanten and Canning are a joy to watch, and there’s a definite chemistry between them that makes the will-they-won’t-they? developments work so well.

The Right Kind of Wrong won’t win too many awards (probably), but it’s a genuinely simple romantic comedy that takes its basic premise and spins it out with clear affection for its two lead characters and their predicament. If it sometimes seems a little contrived, this doesn’t detract from the overall enjoyment the movie provides.

Rating: 7/10 – a robust but still lightweight endeavour that wins out because of its charm and the boyish enthusiasm of Kwanten; full of small surprises and a pleasant diversion if you’re in the mood for something both a little carefree and defiantly oddball.