Animation
Charlie The Wonderdog (PG)
Review: Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a superpowered golden retriever hiding its identity with a blue eye mask and flowing red cape! Director Shea Wageman’s rumbustious animated fantasy takes flight a few weeks before Krypto the Superdog goes for walkies with Supergirl on the big screen. Broadly comedic in tone, with a madcap plot that bears striking similarities to yesteryear’s Night Of The Zoopocalypse, Charlie The Wonderdog is a tail-wagging odyssey of friendship and self-belief that bounds excitedly between disparate elements masterminded by co-writers Steve Ball and Raul Inglis.
Fifteen years after an otherworldly creature carrying a glowing orb crash-landed on Earth, a spaceship commanded by an alien queen (voiced by Rhona Rees) abducts ageing golden retriever Charlie and neighbouring house cat Puddy from their front yards to find the perfect present for her spoilt son, the alien prince (Sebastian Billingsley-Rodriguez). The bratty heir can’t choose between his mother’s menagerie of stolen critters and before Charlie and Puddy are safely returned to terra firma, they are blessed with superpowers and an ability to speak.
Charlie (now voiced by Owen Wilson) celebrates his restored vigour and new abilities with wide-eyed owner Danny (Dawson Littman). “Be gone hip dysplasia,” whoops the dog. “Be gone rheumatoid arthritis!” Charlie feels a responsibility to use his powers for the benefit of mankind and he takes on the mantle of Wonderdog. Next door, Puddy (Ruairi MacDonald) terrorises his neglectful owner Otis (Zac Bennett-McPhee), and declares interspecies war on any furry adversaries that stand in his path. The despicable feline frames Charlie for a crime he didn’t commit – cue tongue-in-cheek newspaper headlines of Golden Deceiver – and slinks into the fickle, money-grabbing affections of US President Rose (Tabitha St Germain).
Charlie The Wonderdog is a spirited story of good versus evil played out between four-legged adversaries and their humans. The narrative arc is smooth and predictable and laughs are concentrated in the opening hour before the Machiavellian moggy enacts a nefarious plan to enslave mankind and propel cats to the top of the evolutionary food chain. Wilson’s honeyed vocal performance polishes dialogue that gets noticeably clunkier and he catalyses winning rapport with Littman. Visuals are strong with some neat flourishes such as viewing one scene of skullduggery from the cramped vantage point of a snoring human owner’s hairy nostril.
The script teases a small lump in the throat when it focuses on the connection between the eponymous canine protector and his favourite human, Danny, who is beginning to accept that Charlie’s best years are behind him and he will soon ascend to dog heaven. Screenwriters Ball and Inglis open an escape hatch from having to discuss mortality and the cyclical nature of life in upsetting detail.
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Romance
Finding Emily (12A)
Review: A feelgood Gen Z rom-com from the producers of Bridget Jones’s Diary and Love Actually, which begins with a meet cute at a booze-fuelled Manchester student club night, should work. Lead actors Spike Fearn and Angourie Rice are innately likable, the dramatic set-up of Rachel Hirons’ script is modelled on the covert duplicity of 10 Things I Hate About You and She’s All That, and Minnie Driver mines giggles as the university’s long-suffering dean. Yet something about Finding Emily does not click into place and the preordained gooeyness of the film’s final stretch of self-reflection feels performative rather than heartfelt or hard-earned.
Owen (Fearn) works as a sound engineer at Manchester City University. He lives with his playfully antagonistic older brother, Matt (Jack Riddiford), and Matt’s partner Freya (Isabella Laughland) in the family home, which holds memories of happier times with their late mother. One night, Owen encounters free-spirited student Emily (Sadie Soverall) dressed as a fairy and is smitten. He asks for her phone number and she types into his mobile phone. The next morning, Owen sends Emily a text and realises her contact details are incomplete.
He embarks on a relentless quest to track down his Emily from among the 318 registered on campus. Psychology student Emily Raine (Rice), who is writing her final thesis on madness induced by romantic attachment, is convinced Owen would be a perfect case study for her essay. “He’s my very own Stanford prison experiment,” she gushes to Professor Westlake (Prasanna Puwanarajah). She offers to help Owen and he is blissfully unaware that Emily R is exploiting his misery to secure a top grade. Meanwhile, Emily R’s spiralling obsession with finding the mystery woman puts a strain on her relationship with best friend Anna (Cora Kirk) but does offers temporary distraction from her obsession with old flame Tristan (Timothy Innes).
Directed with a light touch by first-timer Alicia MacDonald, Finding Emily loses its way as Rice’s accomplice repeatedly dodges opportunities to end her self-serving deception. She persists, with devastating consequences, exploiting Owen’s naivete as fodder for intellectual analysis. Emily R’s disregard for other people’s feelings renders her unsympathetic, bordering on dislikeable, making it almost impossible for screenwriter Hirons to redeem the film’s romantic heroine and convince me that she was worthy of Owen’s forgiveness.
Fearn’s innate charm is heavily traded currency and Rice skips around the contradictions of her tenacious international student, who likens ham-fisted British flirting to “a random word generator”. As an eternally hopeful romantic and unabashed sucker for rom-com conventions, it feels like heresy to admit that I was actively and passionately rooting against the prefabricated happy ever after.
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Horror
Passenger (15)
Review: If you were travelling down a deserted road at night and saw another vehicle ahead, pulled off to the side and its warnings lights flashing, would you slow down to offer help or drive on? Kindness kills in a supernatural horror directed by Norwegian filmmaker Andre Ovredal, who previously made Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. Passenger is a scary story shot largely under a cloak of darkness that unleashes a ghoulish otherworldly predator on anyone who chooses to assist a fellow traveller.
The film opens in nerve-shredding fashion with a car stopping on a night-time road to allow one man (Miles Fowler) to relieve himself in the woods. When he returns to the vehicle, the driver is missing. Cracking branches indicate something unseen in the gloom. The tragic aftermath of this comfort break is witnessed by Tyler (Jacob Scipio) and girlfriend Maddie (Lou Llobell), who have downsized from their city apartment to living in a customised van. A nomadic life is Tyler’s dream and Maddie is happy to support him. “If we survive six weeks on the road, we can survive anything!” he grins.
Alas, his positive outlook doesn’t reckon with a demonic stalker known as The Passenger (Joseph Lopez), who attaches himself to unwary drivers and signals his insidious presence with three parallel slashes in their paintwork. This merciless phantom haunts Tyler and Maddie and torments them regardless of how fast they drive away from the scene of the initial accident. During a pitstop, Maddie encounters long-term van dweller Diana (Melissa Leo). “People don’t take trips. Trips take people,” she remarks cryptically, close to a noticeboard of missing posters of couples who have vanished without a trace on similar grand adventures.
For 70 minutes, Passenger is an efficient exercise in escalating dread, punctuated by obligatory jump scares. Director Ovredal and cinematographer Federico Verardi steadily rotate the camera through 360 degrees around a stationary vehicle or character, waiting for someone or something to materialise. Sometimes nothing happens, sometimes the eponymous boogeyman launches a stealth attack. Llobell and Scipio allow fear to slowly suffocate their lovebirds, who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Explosions of graphic violence bookmark the ill-fated road trip and gore is used sparingly.
Frustratingly, the resolution is clumsily executed. Screenwriters TW Burgess and Zachary Donohue choose one of their characters as a mouthpiece for important folkloric information about the Passenger. His grim history and a way to potentially vanquish the demon are hurriedly dispensed as a monologue that becomes laughable with each new morsel of trivia. Tension evaporates in a matter of seconds and a handbrake is applied permanently to suspension of disbelief. The wheels come off and Ovredal does not have any spares.
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Sci-Fi
Star Wars: The Mandalorian And Grogu (12A)
Review: Nostalgia is a powerful drug that triggers dopamine rushes to the brain. Filmmakers peddle it – sometimes shamelessly – by playing a specific song, pointedly reusing a line of dialogue or visual motif. Director Jon Favreau’s feature-length expansion of the Disney+ TV series The Mandalorian engineers a deeply nostalgic mission in a galaxy far, far away to rescue the only living heir of Jabba the Hutt. Swashbuckling action, rough-and-tumble comedy and adorable puppets and animatronics courtesy of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop recapture some of the gung-ho charm of the original trilogy including the thrilling sight of X-wing starfighters flying in formation ahead of a daredevil bombing run.
Star Wars: The Mandalorian And Grogu unfolds a few years after the events of Return Of The Jedi. The Empire has fallen and imperial warlords remain at large. Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and young apprentice Grogu continue to root out threats to a fledgling New Republic. Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver), who served as a pilot for the Rebel Alliance, dispatches Din Djarin to meet with the Hutt twins. Jabba’s cousins are desperate to find their missing nephew, Rotta the Hutt (voiced by Jeremy Allen White), and return him safely to the seat of power on Nal Hutta.
The Mandalorian and Grogu head to the planet of Shakari to track down Lord Janu (Jonny Coyne) and his hench-creature Hogsbreth (Matthew Willig), who are supposedly holding Rotta hostage. Din Djarin relies on information from a talkative food vendor (voiced by Martin Scorsese) to locate the heir to the Hutt throne, who is an unwitting pawn in a bigger conspiracy. The unbreakable bond between mentor and protege is tested as they risk their lives for each other. As Din Djarin wisely notes: “The old protect the young, then the young protect the old. This is the way.”
Star Wars: The Mandalorian And Grogu is a crowd-pleasing caper, which made me deeply nostalgic for the original instalments of George Lucas’s sprawling space saga. Favreau begins with the bang of Din Djarin mounting a bipedal All Terrain Reconnaissance Transport (AT-RT) scout walker to stage a daring assault, at ground level, on three hulking All Terrain Armoured Transport (AT-AT) vehicles. Practical effects and puppetry including a hilarious troupe of tiny Anzellans who chatter in high-pitched tones like Minions are more successful than some of the digital trickery although a close encounter with a giant dragonsnake is exhilarating and Allen White’s heart-tugging vocal performance elevates Rotta.
Surprisingly, he’s a standout character from this rip-roaring escapade. A script co-written by the director, Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor leans in heavily to tried and tested knockabout humour and the cuteness of the eponymous infant. The Force is strong in Grogu and in Favreau’s picture.
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