Iron Man

WFTB Score: 9/20

The plot: Weapons manufacturer Tony Stark nearly becomes the victim of his own products on a visit to Afghanistan, though the life-saving equipment he makes to effect his escape gives him a new purpose in life. Back in America, his decision to cease weapons manufacture comes as a nasty surprise to Stark’s business partner Obadiah Stane, while Stark’s lovelorn assistant Pepper Potts just wants to keep him safe. Tony, meanwhile, is preoccupied with perfecting his natty new suit.

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is the archetypal playboy billionaire, dividing his time between living the high life and designing and selling Stark Industries munitions with his partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), friend of Tony’s late father. However, a jolly to Afghanistan to demonstrate the devastating power of the new Jericho missile takes a terrible turn when his convoy is hit and he’s kidnapped, close to death, by rebel forces. The attentions of fellow detainee Yinsen (Shaun Toub) save Stark’s life by attaching a car battery to his heart, a situation Stark improves upon by using his own arc reactor technology; and when his captors, led by Faran Tahir’s Raza, demand that he build them a Jericho, he instead devotes his time to making a weaponised, flying suit which he uses to escape.

The experience convinces Stark that his company should stop making armaments, an announcement which alarms Stane and Stark’s Marine buddy Rhodey (Terrence Howard) enormously, while Tony’s PA Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) is just glad to have her boss home. With the help of well-spoken computer Jarvis (voiced by Paul Bettany), Stark works on his ‘iron man’ suit and uses it to right wrongs in Afghanistan, though the real enemy may be lurking closer to home.

I’ve tried to watch Iron Man on a couple of previous occasions and really struggled with it, though I couldn’t define exactly what it was that bothered me. Having now paid attention throughout, I think I know what the feeling was: déjà vu. Not for this film specifically, you understand, but for most of the things that happen in it. For while it’s slightly unfair on Jon Favreau’s movie, its release after both Batman Begins and Transformers has to invite comparisons: like Batman, our hero is a wealthy industrialist with a secret identity; and like Transformers (though more specifically, the later Revenge of the Fallen), the film gets very excited about military hardware and the explosive power of clashing metals and detonating missiles.

Furthermore, I’m uneasy with actual wars being used as backdrops in movies which don’t have anything to say about the conflicts, and while the picture regarding the Taliban-like Afghans isn’t quite as clear-cut as it might first appear, the film is still quite happy to depict them as brutal, incompetent and entirely disposable.

This also impacts on our view of Tony Stark. We’re clearly meant to like him, but whatever epiphany Stark has following his ordeals, it doesn’t turn him into an instantly relatable comic-book hero. It remains hard to tell whether he’s on anyone’s side bar his own, since he’s hardly a friend to the military or to the plebeian population – you wouldn’t call Iron Man to rescue your cat from up a tree.

On the other hand, Stark’s ambiguity is filtered quite brilliantly through Robert Downey Jr.’s performance; the actor has had an extraordinary life and has frequently looked likely to squander his talents in spectacular fashion, but here he hits pay dirt with a performance that is in part glib surface and mumbled quips, but also contains a determination and depth of feeling that distinguishes Stark from most superheroes. He’s the heart of Iron Man in a way that Bale patently isn’t in Chris Nolan’s Batman films. In particular, Downey forges a strong relationship with Paltrow, who is effective if unexciting (sorry Gwynnie). Jeff Bridges, disarmingly bald, proves he can act any way he’s asked, while Terrence Howard apparently isn’t Cuba Gooding Jr*; he is adequate, though nothing more.

I wouldn’t disparage Iron Man as a piece of film-making. It’s longish but carefully paced, and the action set-pieces are put together with considerable skill, the effects used to good effect to give a clear steer on what’s happening. I gather, too, that there’s a decent amount of fan service given by the various iterations of the Iron Man suit as it’s coming together – Tony’s test runs are livened up with some smart physical comedy. The problem is that the tests are also the venue for a massively signposted plot point, and although I understand that this is how these movies work, I would have liked some originality from at least one of the four writers. Sadly, formula appears to be king, right down to the cute but by-now hackneyed Stan Lee cameo.

I suppose the one word I’d use to describe Iron Man is ‘competent’. That’s really not bad going, when there are plenty of comic-book movies that don’t work at all: Elektra, say, or The Green Hornet (which, on the evidence of the first half hour at least, is clearly miscast and tonally all over the place). However, if the word also implies a lack of excitement, that’s not entirely accidental. Downey Jr. does what he can to make the lead role fresh and funny, but this adaptation is hamstrung by its slavery to comic book convention.

NOTES: This isn’t remotely a race thing; I simply wasn’t aware that Terrence Howard existed and assumed he was Cuba. I made exactly the same mistake with Elaine Hendrix, who isn’t Missi Pyle, when watching The Parent Trap.

Also to note (in late 2018) that this review was written in the innocent days of 2013, when Cinematic Universes were barely even a thing. I have signally failed to keep up with events since and am unlikely to do so in the next 10 years.

Nanny McPhee

WFTB Score: 15/20

The plot: Nanny McPhee sweeps into the chaotic house of widow Cedric Brown and his seven children and immediately sets about casting her spell over the unruly brood. She had better work her magic quickly, however; Cedric’s Aunt Adelaide demands that he remarry within the month, or the whole family will be cut off without a penny.

Life’s hard for undertaker Cedric Brown (Colin Firth). His wife having died shortly after the birth of seventh child Agatha, his days are more than full trying to earn a crust while the kids run riot, although he still relies on the financial support of short-sighted Aunt Adelaide (Angela Lansbury). When the children see off their seventeenth nanny, Cedric and his limited staff of cook Mrs Blatherwick (Imelda Staunton) and maid Evangeline (Kelly Macdonald) are in no position to cope; so Cedric is mightily relieved when ‘Government Nanny’ McPhee (Emma Thompson) pitches up with a host of facial disfigurements, a stern way with words, and a magical stick.

Under the rebellious leadership of elder child Simon (Thomas Sangster), the kids resist the new nanny’s discipline, only to find that doing what they want mysteriously gets them into terrible trouble. There’s bigger trouble still on the horizon: firstly, Adelaide desires to take a child under her own wing; and even if that plan can be thwarted, Cedric still needs to remarry or the family will be left destitute and destined to be broken up. Surely there’s a more eligible woman than Celia Imrie’s frightful Mrs Quickly?

Were one feeling spectacularly grouchy, one could just about muster a charge sheet against Nanny McPhee. The most damning indictment is that McPhee (based on Christianna Brand’s Nurse Matilda) is undoubtedly a close cousin of P. L. Travers’ Mary Poppins. Perhaps aware of this, the film plays up McPhee as a negative image of Poppins, at least in appearance; it may also have been a conscious decision not to include any songs, a correct decision whether intended or not.

Another charge is that anyone with an appreciation of – well, fiction, to be frank – will know which way the wind eventually blows the second Evangeline appears; again, guilty, but such is the way with fairytales. Others will recoil at the vivid colour scheme, which recalls pantomime sets, especially when Mrs Quickly bustles into town with her gaudy outfits (for the kids too!) and tips the movie into an excess of noise, colour and mess. There’s even a sense that director Kirk Jones is aiming for a Tim Burton vibe, a feeling strengthened by Patrick Doyle’s Elfman-like and occasionally intrusive score. The vibe doesn’t really pay off, and neither do the special effects: the friendly donkey earmarked to stand in for one of the children looks weird and brings Shrek to mind, not to this movie’s advantage.

All the above is true. Nanny McPhee is broadly pantomimic in style and obviously derived from Mary Poppins, paying direct homage to it at times (kites, anyone?). However, it’s also an utterly charming fairy tale in its own right, infused with a genuine sense of wonder and magic; the humour, colour and fantasy of the movie offers much for the young and young at heart alike, standing in stark contrast to dowdy, sensible tales such as Ever After. Emma Thompson, as screenwriter, knows when to lay on the humour and when to darken the tone, so the movie moves along with the rowdy children’s exuberance, the underlying sadness of the departed wife, and the impending threat of disaster all at once, without ever flagging.

The final scenes, with their pure white motif, recall Shrek in a positive way and can’t help but pull on all but the most cynical hearts; what’s more, McPhee’s five lessons are reminders that good manners, instilled properly, are key to good communication and harmonious co-existence, deftly capturing the zeitgeist of contemporary TV show Supernanny. And there are welcome stings of entirely inappropriate comedy: Cedric is hilariously cheerful about a bout of influenza that boosts his trade; and when was the last time you heard the word ‘incest’ in a kid’s film, let alone delivered in the manner of Edith Evans’ Lady Bracknell?

More than the writing, the film is truly distinguished by the quality of its acting. Thompson is wonderful, expressing her emotions with short grunts, sharp movements and expressive looks which cut straight through the make-up; thankfully, there’s no hint of an explanation of McPhee’s origins or why her appearance changes after each lesson is learnt – the visual metaphor is allowed to stand for itself. Firth’s highly-strung performance is funny, but he also makes you feel his predicament, while hardly anything needs be said about Angela Lansbury other than that she’s every bit as professional as you’d expect.

Macdonald has a sublime capacity to become whatever she needs to be: touching as a lowly scullery maid, she also makes for a lovely lay-dee, even with food on her face. Much credit should also be given to Sangster, who cements his promise from Love, Actually with a performance full of nuanced emotions. The other children, too, are much more palatable than movie kids have a right to be, though I could have done without words being put into the mouths of babes. If you have refined tastes, the combined larking of Staunton, Imrie and Patrick Barlow and Derek Jacobi as Cedric’s unbelievably camp parlour assistants might come over as overkill; personally, I enjoyed their pantomime turns, Imrie in particular playing up the wicked stepmother to great effect.

Nanny McPhee is, when push comes to shove, a children’s film, and it would be silly to say that it offers adults the same sweet treats it gives to children. That said, it is a great children’s film, which deserves to become as well established a classic as Disney’s practically perfect progenitor.

James and the Giant Peach

WFTB Score: 10/20

The plot: Miserable orphan James Trotter struggles under the cruel regime of his vicious aunts Spiker and Sponge, until a chance meeting with a mysterious stranger results in an enormous peach growing outside the house. As James finds out, the peach isn’t the only thing that has grown to an enormous size, and – with the huge fruit as a craft – he and an unusual gang of insect friends set off for high adventure on their way (they hope) to New York.

Although it’s many, many, many (ok, that’s enough manys) years now since I last read a Roald Dahl book, I have read quite a bit of his output. From Danny the Champion of the World to Matilda, from The BFG to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there are sustained themes of children suffering loneliness, poverty and cruelty, but leavened by fantastical escapes, wonderful adventures and (of course) happy endings. All of this and more is true of James and the Giant Peach.

Young James (Paul Terry) has his idyllic childhood shattered when a rhinoceros dispatches his loving parents, leaving him in the ‘care’ of his vicious, selfish Aunts Spiker and Sponge (Joanna Lumley and Miriam Margolyes). These dreadful women feed him on fish heads and use him as a general lackey, so it’s little wonder that stranger Pete Postlethwaite knows the poor boy is miserable.

James spills the man’s gift of a bag of magical crocodile tongues, but they do their work on a withered peach tree and – as James finds out when he crawls inside the gigantic fruit that blossoms – a number of surrounding insects: a wise grasshopper (voiced by Simon Callow), a tough-talking centipede (Richard Dreyfuss), a matronly ladybird/bug (Jane Leeves), a nervous worm (David Thewlis), a spider fatale (Susan Sarandon) and an elderly glow-worm (Margbolyes). The peach tumbles off the tree and lands in the sea, where the crew set about finding a way to get to James’ dream city of New York. But as they are to discover, navigating a giant peach across the Atlantic is no ordinary task and they encounter extraordinary dangers. James hasn‘t necessarily finished with his horrible aunts, either.

Assuming you’ve seen it (naturally), the film that should immediately spring to mind when watching James… is Selick’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, not least because Jack Skellington (or a very close relative) is the main villain of the film’s central animated section. And you can tell that the director’s passion is very firmly focused on the stop-motion animation, since almost everything that’s good about the film is to be found in the middle. The movement of James (turned into a big-headed mannequin) and the creatures is fast and fluid, and although their characteristics are far from cute they are striking and effective. The exciting action sequences are interspersed with heart-warming homilies, wherein James’ good nature earns him friendship and respect from his new-found peachmates.

All of which makes you wonder why Selick didn’t have the courage to make the whole film as an animation. Because, sad to say, the live-action opening (around twenty minutes or so in length) almost kills the film stone dead, notwithstanding the best efforts of Lumley and Margolyes in their all-too-convincing hideousness. Young Paul Terry is unfortunately not the most instantly engaging actor, and just when you’re pleading for the big-peach adventure to get going, he strikes up with a poorly-sung rendition of a maudlin Randy Newman song (there are better ones, though none match up to those in Toy Story or its sequel).

Add in the altogether odd interlude of James’ dream sequence, where (in paper animation) he becomes a hungry caterpillar chased by familiar demons, and what you end up with is a film that threatens to be rather dark and complex for younger children, and with too many longueurs for older viewers.

More than any of this, perhaps, is the difficulty faced by many attempts to turn children’s literature into a successful movie: nothing, not even Quentin Blake’s charming illustrations, can compare to the imagination of an active mind; and while the animated parts of James and the Giant Peach are technically successful, the story doesn’t deliver as a whole, whether or not you’ve got your own ideas about how everyone and everything should look. Assuming you can keep them interested for the humdrum start, this film will keep little ones fairly entertained, but it rarely inspires the wonder Dahl‘s words could so easily conjure. That said, I’d still like to see someone have a go at The Great Glass Elevator, just to see Selick, Burton or anyone have a go at Vermicious Knids and Minusland.