Film Review of the Week

Comedy

The Drama (15)

Review: Honesty is the best policy until you’re the one on the receiving end of a disarming disclosure. The cold, unvarnished truth hurts in The Drama and Norwegian writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s twisted romantic comedy revels in the toe-curling discomfort and agonising silences that follow one candid confession in the stressful days leading up to a wedding.

Partially deaf literary editor Emma Harwood (Zendaya) meets her socially awkward husband-to-be, British museum curator Charlie Thompson (Robert Pattinson), in a coffee shop. He pretends to have read the book in her hands, The Damage by Harper Ellison, and clumsily engineers a conversation that leads to dinner, an after-hours kiss at his workplace and, eventually, a marriage proposal. Charlie’s good friend Mike (Mamoudou Athie) agrees to be best man and Mike’s waspish wife Rachel (Alana Haim) is surprised to be chosen as maid of honour. In the week leading up to the nuptials, the two couples meet to agree the menu for the wedding reception.

Wine flows freely and Mike and Rachel cheerfully confide that before their big day, they told each other the worst thing they had ever done as a demonstration of their unwavering trust in each other. With lips and inhibitions lubricated by the alcohol, Charlie and Emma openly share their most shameful moments. Emma’s confession kills the joyous vibe and unsettles Charlie, who secretly questions if he truly knows the person who will be standing opposite him at the altar. As the ceremony approaches, nerves jangle and wedding photographer (Zoe Winters) and museum assistant Misha (Hailey Benton Gates) are unwittingly caught in the crossfire.

For the opening half hour, The Drama feels much more grounded than writer-director Borgli’s previous film, the unhinged comedy horror Dream Scenario, starring Nicolas Cage as a university professor who unwittingly infiltrates the nighttime imaginings of countless strangers. Once Emma reveals what flitted through the mind of her alienated teenage self, the mood of this picture changes abruptly and we repeatedly squirm in our seats as the soon-to-be-weds try in vain to repair damage to their relationship.

Borgli’s script rubs huge handfuls of salt into wounds and Zendaya and Pattinson deliver compelling performances as the characters’ worlds unravel at sickening speed, building to a cringe-inducing crescendo on the wedding day when toasts and speeches throw social niceties onto a bonfire and slosh on the paraffin. The filmmaker incinerates realism during an overblown and ponderous finale, which sparks feverish debate about forgiveness and understanding. There is plenty of drama, as promised by the title, but whether it’s truly satisfying is another matter. I struggled to swallow what Borgli served for his final course. Raw ingredients are mouthwatering but his dish feels overcooked.

Action

Fuze (15)

Review: Ten years ago, Northumberland-born director David Mackenzie masterminded one of the great 21st-century heist films, Hell Or High Water, about a pair of brothers played by Chris Pine and Ben Foster who rob banks to save their Texan family ranch from foreclosure. Frustratingly, the slow-burning fuse on his new crime thriller, staged in the heart of London, turns out to be a damp squib. Fuze fizzles out before an unnecessary and plodding coda that explicitly recreates the characters’ tangled back story from earlier expository dialogue.

A construction crew on a building site unearths an unexploded Second World War bomb and immediately alerts the authorities. Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent Zuzana (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) coordinates the evacuation of all residents and workers from a one-mile radius around the rusted munition while Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) expert Major Will Tranter (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), his deputy Military Sergeant Dootsie Keane (Saffron Hocking) and their team swing into action. They carefully inspect the bomb and identify the ticking of a timer that could complicate the operation. As the lead operative on scene, Tranter acts as a mentor to the newest member of his EOD squad, Martin (Alexander Arnold), so he can learn the best ways to deal with this high-pressure situation without knowingly endangering himself or anyone else in an army uniform.

While police focus on clearing the scene, master thief Karalis (Theo James) and his crew including right-hand man X (Sam Worthington) take full advantage of the deserted streets to target the safety deposit vault of a bank close to the affected building site. It’s imperative for the bomb disposal unit to work in silence but the robbers require noise as cover for their subterranean drilling. Meanwhile, immigrant son (Elham Ehsas) and his family, who live in an apartment adjacent to the targeted bank, wait for the all-clear so they can return home.

Fuze feels suitably lean and muscular with a 96-minute running time but there’s scant emotional meat on the brittle bones of Ben Hopkins’ script to sustain interest. Detonators repeatedly misfire, leaving behind a surprisingly simplistic tale of retribution and reward that telegraphs its intentions far in advance. Suspense instantly dissipates.

Taylor-Johnson caters to his thirsty fanbase with gratuitous buttock nudity in a steamy shower scene, which serves no narrative purpose, while James retains a firm grasp of a South African accent. Neither actor is stretched and co-stars Mbatha-Raw and Worthington are disappointingly minor cogs in the machine. Only one plot twist can’t be easily guessed, by design, but the rest are predictable. It’s frustrating that it takes so long for pennies to drop for the impacted characters. Almost everyone gets what they deserve but there’s no visceral thrill or comfort in small victories.

Animation

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (PG)

Review: Oh brothers! Moustachioed siblings somersault into action to save a kidnapped princess in a fast-paced computer-animated sequel directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, which continues to drip feed nostalgia to fans of the video games. More casual viewers, including me, may grow weary of the barrage of frenetic action sequences, loosely bolted together by a rudimentary quest narrative that is curiously devoid of tension and jeopardy.

Plumbers for hire Mario (voiced by Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) respond to an urgent plea from the poncho-clad Tostarenan in the Sand Kingdom to unclog a warp pipe inside a giant inverted pyramid. The blockage turns out to be Yoshi (Donald Glover). The adorable green dinosaur befriends the brothers and accompanies them on their madcap misadventures. The fledgling friendship is tested when Bowser Jr (Benny Safdie) abducts Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson) from the Celestial Kingdom.

The villainous heir apparent plans to steal Rosalina’s powers as an energy source for his Boomsday Weapon, which will be activated unless his fire-breathing father, Bowser (Jack Black), is returned safe and well. “Your first princess-napping!” proudly declares Magikoopa adviser Kamek (Kevin Michael Richardson). Rosalina acts as guardian to star-shaped creatures called the Lumas, and one twinkling ward tracks down Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) and implores the ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom to spearhead a rescue. Accompanied by Toad (Keegan-Michael Key), Peach joins her friends on a hare-brained odyssey into space.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie depreciates the fluff and tumble of the original film, sandwiching extravagant set pieces between thin slivers of character and plot development. Mario’s romantic interest in Peach, which leaves the plumber blushing behind his face fur in the opening 30 minutes, is largely ignored for the rest of the film. So too is older Bowser’s inner turmoil, attempting to reconcile his newfound affection for Mario with a predetermined role as the series’ cackling antagonist.

Animators repeat visual flourishes from the 2023 origin story: an escape from Bowser’s Jr’s clutches is stylised as a side-scrolling platform level from the eight-bit games. When one character plays a row of teeth like a xylophone, the deadly dentistry resonates with the opening notes of the 1985 Super Mario Bros game. The sequel runs 10 minutes longer and it feels like screenwriter Matthew Fogel is treading water for stretches. Comic tornado Black is relegated to the sidelines and barely registers above a pleasant breeze. Other popular Nintendo franchises including Star Fox and Pikmin are plundered for colourful cameos to expand the film’s storytelling horizons beyond Donkey Kong and its lucrative spin-offs. Slick if a tad soulless, the only thing that is genuinely super about Horvath and Jelenic’s picture is the word in the title.