Film, Comedy

Hancock

3 Jul 2008

SUPERHERO/COMEDY (12A) 91min The writers and director of Hancock take a hyper-powered leaf out of the Mystery Men and Return of Captain Invincible school of heroism with Hancock. Will Smith plays a nihilistic superhero who has fallen out of favour…

Kung Fu Panda

3 Jul 2008

COMEDY/ANIMATION (PG) 91min In the words of Carl Douglas’ 1974 disco hit: ‘Everybody is kung fu fighting.’ Everybody, that is, apart from overweight panda Po (voiced by Jack Black). He dreams about joining his heroes, the Fierce Five, in butt-kicking…

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny

The devil plays guitar

13 Nov 2006

Tearing modesty a new asshole, Tenacious D describe themselves as ‘the world’s greatest rock band’. The D’s two members, Jack Black (vocals and rhythm guitar) and Kyle Gass (lead guitar and backing vocals), name check among their inspirations Kiss, Dio…

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

13 Nov 2008

Forget the salacious sounding title, Zack and Miri is a Kevin Smith movie so it was never going to be a Ron Jeremy skin flick. Indeed, it’s an archetypical Smith movie – an over-sentimental tale in which boy knows girl, boy and girl have relationship…

Michelle Monaghan

4 Oct 2007

Background Monaghan studied journalism for three years at Columbia College in Chicago. To earn pocket money she worked as a model and ditched the typewriter to work as a fashion model when she quit her studies. What’s she up to now? Having…

Ratatouille

4 Oct 2007

(U) 110min COMEDY/ANIMATION Writer/director Brad Bird’s animated version of The Iron Giant made him the obvious candidate to follow on from John Lasseter’s innovative groundwork at Pixar, where he scored an immediate hit with The Incredibles. So even…

Preview of the year 2007

2007 is about the future. And about the past. It’

3 Jan 2007

THE FUTURE Cyberspace invaders We may not be flying around in hover cars or wearing spangly all-silver outfits, but thanks to the internet the future has truly arrived. And the revolution will continue apace in 2007, argues Suzanne Black. A…

WALL-E

17 Jul 2008

ANIMATION (U) 103min Can Pixar do no wrong? On the evidence of the CG animation studio’s ninth feature film, the answer is a resounding no. Once again Pixar pushes the envelope in the field it’s been trailblazing since the early 1980s, delivering…

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

24 Apr 2008

ROMANCE/COMEDY (15) 110min The Judd Apatow movie production line shows no signs of abating as Forgetting Sarah Marshall follows the template of Knocked Up to deliver some laughs, banal moralising and side characters that outshine the lead. Writer and…

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging

17 Jul 2008

TEEN COMEDY (cert tbc) tbcmin After successfully tackling teenage tomboys in Bend it Like Beckham, Gurinder Chadha takes a step into younger territory with this adaptation of two of Louise Rennison’s bestselling books for girls. Looking at life…

Sydney White

17 Jan 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 107min Ever since Amy Heckerling’s Clueless loosely adapted Jane Austen’s Emma to a modern High School setting it’s been the done thing to drop classic texts into a contemporary teenage setting. Joe Nussbaum’s Sydney White…

Space Chimps

31 Jul 2008

ANIMATION/COMEDY (U) 80min Crowded out in the summer schedules by WALL-E and Kung Fu Panda, Space Chimps is the latest effort from Vanguard Animations destined to suffer the also-ran status of Valiant and Happily N’Ever After. On the whim of a…

Choke

13 Nov 2008

(18) 92min Unrepentant sex addict Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell) has always believed that life is about making other people do stuff for you. By day he does as little work as he can at a historical theme park and by night he cons money in restaurants…

Summer scoops top prize at Bafta Scotland awards

10 Nov 2008

Summer, Grand Theft Auto, Gary’s Wrr and Lorraine Kelly were amongst the winners last night at the Lloyds TSB BAFTA Scotland Awards. The ceremony, at Glasgow’s City Halls with an audience of over 800, was broadcast live online worldwide.

Wild Child

14 Aug 2008

ROMANCE/COMEDY (12A) 98min ‘What is this, Hogwarts?’ exclaims bratty Californian kid Poppy (Emma Roberts, niece of Julia) on her arrival at a genteel girls boarding school in England, ruled over by tough-but-fair headmistress (Natasha Richardson).

The Brothers Solomon

1 Nov 2007

COMEDY (15) 92min Comedians Will Forte and Will Arnet dumb down their already dumb strain of Saturday Night Live humour to exhausting effect in this lowbrow comedy. When their father (Lee Majors) lapses into a coma, the understandably single Solomon…

One Last Dance

20 Sep 2007

COMEDY/CRIME/ROMANCE (18) 110min (Tartan DVD retail/rental) Straight-to-DVD premieres no longer herald generally third-rate titles, as this off-beat Asian crime film proves. Written and directed by Brazilian filmmaker Max Makowski, and financed and…

Postal

13 Nov 2008

(18) 99min Uwe Boll doesn’t have the best pedigree in movies; he’s an oft-reviled director with a penchant for videogame adaptations. But one thing you can’t dismiss is that the man has balls, and Postal is flat-out in-your-face nutzoid entertainment…

Igor

16 Oct 2008

ANIMATION/COMEDY It’s a tough life for hunchbacked assistants of mad scientists. Igor (voiced by John Cusack) ekes out his precarious existence as humble servant to the sinister Dr Glickenstein (John Cleese), an evil genius set on winning the annual…

All the world’s a stage

15 Sep 2008

Merchant City Festival (25-28 Sep) www.merchantcityfestival.com Located in the heart of old Glasgow, this event locates a programme of film, theatre, comedy, visual arts, street theatre, live music, food and fashion within an area of real…

You Don’t Mess With The Zohan

14 Aug 2008

COMEDY (12A) 112min Anyone who tries to understand Middle Eastern politics based on the contents of an Adam Sandler comedy deserves all they get. Despite his good intentions he bites off more than he can possibly chew in this, his new comic opus. For…

Priceless

5 Jun 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 104min The best things in life are free, but all seasoned Riviera gold digger Irène (Audrey Tautou) wants is her own credit card from an ageing sugar daddy. Meanwhile, luckless, impoverished bar tender and dog walker Jean (Gad…

Ladyfest

Various venues, Edinburgh, Sun 4 May–Sun 1 Jun

24 Apr 2008

Ruby-red lips, set perms and Avon panstick. Not the traditional image of a feminist – certainly not the popular, laddish stereotype of a feminist. However, Ladyfest, Edinburgh’s first female-focussed festival, launches this fortnight with an event that…

Made of Honour

24 Apr 2008

ROMANTIC COMEDY (12A) 101min Tom (former teen heartthrob Patrick Dempsey) is a wealthy New York City playboy. Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) is Tom’s best friend and the single constant female companion in the life of a serial shagger. But when Hannah is…

Harmony Korine

13 Mar 2008

Harmony Korine was thrust into the limelight aged 22, when his sensational script for Kids garnered him the status of overnight sensation. Then came Gummo, a film made in the best traditions of German maverick Werner Herzog, which established the young…

Day Jobs

22 May 2007

Look closely at your electrician. Can you imagine him as a rock singer? What about your cleaning lady - does she exhibit in the Saatchi Gallery? And have you heard the one about the aerobics teacher with a book deal? For a variety of (mostly financial…

My Best Friend’s Girl

13 Nov 2008

(15) 99min From Howard Deutch, the auteur behind the seminal teen movie Pretty in Pink starring Molly Ringwald, My Best Friend’s Girl is a 1980s throwback rom-com, updated with scatological language. Dane Cook, so disagreeable in last year’s Good…

Let's Talk About the Rain (Parlez-moi de la pluie)

30 Oct 2008

In an interview to promote their 2004 feature Look at Me, the French actors/filmmakers Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri felt that they couldn't pitch their films at Hollywood meetings, and their latest collaboration Let's Talk About the Rain again…

You, the Living

27 Mar 2008

COMEDY/DRAMA (15) 93min In an unnamed Nordic city a moustachioed tuba-player starts talking about savings and pensions, while making love to his wife who is wearing a military helmet. A dog is dragged along a pavement, attached to the walker of its…

Southland Tales

29 Nov 2007

SCI FI/COMEDY/DRAMA (15) 144min Los Angeles, 4 July 2008. Society is on the brink of social, economic and environmental collapse and an action star/boxer, a porn star and a police officer are making a last stand. Writer/director Richard Kelly’s…

Wristcutters: A Love Story

15 Nov 2007

There’s a thick-blooded vein of Slavic humour running through Croatian writer-director Goran Dukic’s absurdist purgatorial romantic comedy. Adapted from Israeli writer Etgar Keret’s short story, Kneller’s Happy Campers, Dukic’s feature debut boasts a…

Clubland

20 Sep 2007

COMEDY/DRAMA (15) 107min Brenda Blethyn is on Little Voice form in this touching, bittersweet Australian comedy. She plays Jean, an ageing stand-up comedienne whose best days are behind her. She’s also a control freak who refuses to accept that her…

Easy Virtue

30 Oct 2008

England, the 1920s. Dashing young socialite John Whittaker (Ben Barnes) returns to his ancestral pile with his spunky new American wife Larita (Jessica Biel). A hotbed of dysfunction, xenophobia and bankruptcy the family home contains his highly-strung…

Ghost Town

16 Oct 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE Middle-aged ‘smock-wearing tooth jockey’ (dentist) Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais) is a hateful runt of a man. He lives a life as contained as it is misanthropic. After going into hospital for an endoscopy, Bertram starts to see dead…

The Rocker

16 Oct 2008

COMEDY Twenty years on from being dumped by big haired ‘soft-cock rock’ 80s legends Vesuvius, drummer Fish (Rainn Wilson) still burns with the indignation of the holy. While crashing at his sister’s house he agrees to be the drummer for his nephew’s…

Get Smart

21 Aug 2008

After the financial/emotional excremental woes of Evan Almighty and Dan in Real Life, comic Steve Carell shores up his career with a safe property: Peter Segal’s tent-pole blockbuster revamp of 1960s spy spoof Get Smart. Maxwell Smart (Carell) is an…

The Producers

21 Aug 2008

COMEDY Mel Brooks’ classic and surely – with full respect to High Anxiety and Blazing Saddles – his greatest film still stands up brilliantly forty years on. For those unfamiliar with its plot, we meet a rapacious Broadway producer (Zero Mostel) and…

Superhero Movie

5 Jun 2008

SPOOF/COMEDY (12A) 85min The presence of Airplane’s David Zucker amongst the executive producers and Leslie Nielsen amongst the cast raises hopes that Superhero Movie might offer a classier strain of parody than Date Movie or Meet the Spartans. Alas…

I Served The King of England

22 May 2008

COMEDY/WAR (15) 119min Czech writer/director Jirí Menzel’s adaptation of Bohumil Hrabal’s novel depicts the life of aspiring hotelier Jan Díte (Ivan Barnev) as a non-stop cavalcade of good food and even-better sex enjoyed under the darkening shadow of…

In Bruges

10 Apr 2008

CRIME/COMEDY (18) 107min A pair of mismatched professional hitmen are sent to the picturesque titular Belgian city to lie low after a job in London goes wrong. There, young philistine Ray (Colin Farrell) and older, cultured Ken (Brendan Gleeson) argue…

Garth Jennings - Son of Rambow

27 Mar 2008

‘Would you like a slice of sponge cake with your cup of tea?’ Garth Jennings says amiably. ‘I made it this morning. Not sure if it’s any good, mind.’ A warm welcome aboard his floating studio, housed on a barge on a canal in north London, this may…

Mrs Ratcliffe's Revolution

20 Sep 2007

COMEDY/DRAMA (12A) 102min The National Lottery logo often elicits audience groans at the start of a film; twee comedy-dramas like Mrs Ratcliffe’s Revolution are the reason why. Set in 1969, Billie Eltringham’s film begins when British couple Dorothy…

Steve Coogan to become Eddie ‘The Eagle’

9 Aug 2007

Comedian Steve Coogan has been signed up to tell the life story of Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards in a film due to go into production early next year. The project, which has been in the pipeline for a number of years, will be shot in the UK and Calgary - the…

Merchant City Festival

Tales of the Merchant City

7 Sep 2006

This year’s celebration takes place from 20-24 September across Glasgow’s vibrant artistic quarter, and features more than 300 events in 70 venues, which this year includes the recently renovated Old Fruitmarket and City Halls. Jason Byrne and Adam…

Burn After Reading

16 Oct 2008

THRILLER/COMEDY Modern idiocy and bleak humour are the order of the day in the Coen’s latest – a reworking (conscious or otherwise) of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of An Author. Foul-mouthed CIA analyst Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich…

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

2 Oct 2008

COMEDY Toby Young’s semi-scandalous memoir about the period the gobby English journo spent carousing with the rich and famous, while working at Vanity Fair magazine in New York is given a mainstream movie makeover with this enjoyable enough romantic…

Pineapple Express

4 Sep 2008

As with last year’s Superbad, male bonding lies at the heart of the latest Judd Apatow production which also comes from the screenwriting team of Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen. After playing one of the cops in Superbad and starring in Knocked Up, Rogen…

Teeth

19 Jun 2008

HORROR/COMEDY (18) 93min Vagina dentata is the Latin name for a vagina with teeth, a primal fear which crops up in a number of different cultures and philosophies, now emerging at the centre of this teen flick written and directed by Mitchell…

In Search of a Midnight Kiss

5 Jun 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (15) 99min Writer/director Alex Holdridge’s dispatch from the frontline of the LA dating scene is exactly what it depicts: a witty, slight affair. Wilson (Scoot McNairy) is a detached single desperate for a date to provide him with a…

Welcome to the Sticks

8 May 2008

COMEDY (12A) 106min Dany Boon’s box-office hit is the most successful French movie of all time. In just seven weeks on release, it broke 1966 comedy La Grande Vadrouille’s record for the highest ever attendance for a French film on home soil with 17…

The Cottage

13 Mar 2008

COMEDY/HORROR (18) 91min The art of the horror comedy is in juxtaposing terror with humour until both are intensified into hysteria. Good examples of the genre include John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London, Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2 and Wes…

The Game Plan

28 Feb 2008

FAMILY/COMEDY (U) 110min ‘Can you smell what The Rock is cooking?’ Although wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson doesn’t get to use his trademark catchphrase in Disney family-values comedy The Game Plan, his charismatic presence turns some…

Be Kind Rewind

14 Feb 2008

COMEDY (12A) 100min Michel Gondry’s freewheeling satire on copyright law features a frustrated filmmaker Mike (Mos Def), who works in a VHS-only video store in an apartment block due for demolition. When his dad (Danny Glover) is out of town finding…

Juno

(12A) 96min

31 Jan 2008

This year’s Little Miss Sunshine style sleeper hit – Jason Reitman’s feelgood comedy about teenage pregnancy – owes its appeal to the performance of Ellen Page in the leading role. With the circumstances of the conception quickly glossed over with a…

Kenny - DVD review

Spoof documentary

31 Jan 2008

When a film comes billed as ‘one of Australia’s best ever comedies’, it’s difficult to know whether to be excited or petrified. From a nation who has given us the rank hospital sitcom Let the Blood Run Free and the gruesomely overrated Kath and Kim…

PS I Love You

4 Jan 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 126min As the well-connected daughter of the current Taoiseach, author Cecilia Ahern could surely have pulled a few strings to ensure her novel PS I Love You avoided the abhorrent adaptation offered here by…

What's Up, Tiger Lily?

4 Jan 2008

COMEDY (PG) 76min (Optimum retail) Despite insisting in the intro to his 1966 directorial debut (of sorts) that Gone With the Wind used the same strategy, this was the first film to remove the dialogue of one movie and dub a completely new stream of…

Happily N'Ever After

1 Aug 2007

Although its makers claim they conceived Happily N’Ever After long before that big green ogre Shrek took over the box office swamp, animation filmmakers Paul J Bolger and Yvette Kaplan’s procrastinations mean that this contemporary take on olde fairy…

Moliere

2 Jul 2007

COMEDY/DRAMA Your familiarity with the work of France’s most celebrated playwright may well dictate how much enjoyment you can glean from Laurent Tirard’s populist fantasy about an unwritten (and untrue) episode in the life of the great Molière.

Clerks II

(15) 97min

18 Sep 2006

COMEDY ‘With no power comes no responsibility,’ declares the tagline on the poster for Clerks II, neatly summarising the minimal progress made by Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Randall (Jeff Anderson) as they leave behind their jobs as time wasting…

Angel

4 Sep 2008

After years of gleeful, near bi-polar genre shifting, France’s greatest living film parodist, Francois Ozon (5x2, 8 Women, Sitcom), makes the film that every gay teenager, who has grown up in the latter part of the 20th century, would kill to…

The Wackness

21 Aug 2008

COMEDY/DRAMA Jonathan Levine’s follow-up to the surprisingly good horror film All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is another voyage into nostalgic romanticism and teenage growing pains. This time Levine is pining for his lost youth with a film set in 1994…

Step Brothers

21 Aug 2008

COMEDY ‘Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream’ is the George W Bush quotation which opens new Will Ferrell comedy Step Brothers. Such crude expression sets the tone for a sporadically funny but generally gross comedy in…

Saturday’s child - Tina Fey - Baby Mama

17 Jul 2008

America’s newest great comedy phenomenon is Tina Fey. Eddie Harrison uncovers the comic genius in her first big screen adventure, Baby Mama

Baby Mama

17 Jul 2008

COMEDY (12A) 99min Each generation gets the Mary Tyler Moore it deserves; as creator and star of NBC’s 30-Rock sitcom, Tina Fey has earned herself the right to be 2008’s funny-girl. And even though writer/director Michael McCullers seems intent…

Mes amis, mes amours

3 Jul 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (15) 106min Mes Amis, Mes Amours resembles a Gallic version of a Richard Curtis movie, set in an affluent, quarter of London and peopled by French expats: it’s less a romantic comedy than a sentimental fantasy of city living among an…

Sex and the City

5 Jun 2008

DRAMA/ROMANCE/COMEDY (15) 145min As Carrie Bradshaw might say – ‘I couldn’t help but wonder how four ageing divas were going to resurrect Sex and the City: The Brand’. Is it possible that Charlotte, Samantha, Carrie and Miranda could pull off the same…

California Dreamin’ (Endless)

22 May 2008

DRAMA/COMEDY (15) 154min Tragically Cristian Nemescu, the 27 year-old writer-director of California Dreamin’ died in a car crash whilst working on the post-production of this richly ambitious film (together with his sound designer Andrei Toncu), hence…

Smart People

8 May 2008

COMEDY DRAMA (15) 94min Another week and another dysfunctional American family comedy. Scripted by novelist Mark Poirier and directed by newcomer Noam Murro, Smart People examines the improbable rejuvenation of widowed, middle-aged English professor…

Also Released - Film

10 Apr 2008

Leatherheads (PG) 113min •• Directed by and starring George Clooney, Leatherheads is a wannabe Preston Sturges-style romantic comedy set against the backdrop of the burgeoning American football league in 1925. Dodge Connolly (Clooney) is a cocky but…

Vegas Baby

10 Apr 2008

COMEDY (15) 86min (Momentum DVD rental/retail) One of the problems with Eric Bernt’s wannabe lad comedy is that there’s a twist in the tale that even the planners for Heathrow Terminal 5 could spot in advance. But it’s not the only problem. There…

Semi-Pro

28 Feb 2008

COMEDY (15) 91min Will Ferrell raises his game with this typically energetic and supremely daft ‘frat pack’ comedy that also boasts a surprising winning streak in its semi-serious celebration of the now defunct American Basketball Association. With…

Margot at the Wedding

28 Feb 2008

DRAMA/COMEDY (15) 92min Writer/director Noah Baumbach starts proceedings on his latest feature with a block capital title caption, forewarning the audience that his latest offering pays homage to the French New Wave, in particular the work of Francois…

You Kill Me

29 Nov 2007

COMEDY/THRILLER (15) 92min John The Last Seduction Dahl’s latest film is a work of modest ambition that manages to hit just the right notes. The gleefully morbid script, by screenwriting team Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (The Life and…

DVD Roundup

15 Nov 2007

‘No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees/No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds!’ That’s how English poet and humourist Thomas Hood chose to describe the month of November. There is some of Hood’s cheeky sense of observation in John Waters: This…

Good Luck Chuck

1 Nov 2007

COMEDY/ROMANCE (15) 99min After demonstrating his lack of timing as editor on three Rush Hour films, Mark Helfrich makes an unsurprisingly awful directorial debut with this crude romantic comedy. US stand-up comic Dane Cook plays Charlie, a…

I Do

1 Nov 2007

ROMANTIC COMEDY (PG) 90min Meet Louis Costa (Alain Chabat from The Science of Sleep). He’s a 40-something Parisian perfumier, happily content with his bachelor existence. Yet, the women in his family – specifically domineering mother Genevieve…

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

20 Sep 2007

COMEDY (12A) 110min Adam Sandler’s determination to earth his angry-funnyman persona within real-life tragedy has already resulted in the flop of maudlin post-9/11 drama Reign On Me. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry offers a rather sunnier view of…

Cohen lines up less amusing character for new movie

6 Sep 2007

After doing really rather well with Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen has inked to star in the movie version of his ‘not really as good’ character Bruno. Universal will be hoping the fashion reporter schtick will attract the huge audiences that lapped up his…

Laurel pen pal letters to go under the hammer

5 Sep 2007

Letters charting the 10-year correspondence between a Scottish housewife and comedy legend Stan Laurel are to be sold at auction today in Edinburgh. Walterina Hunter wrote a letter to Laurel as a fan in 1952, which led to the two becoming pen pals.

License to Wed

9 Aug 2007

When lovebirds Sadie (Mandie Moore) and Ben (John Krasinski) become engaged, Reverend Frank (Robin Williams) puts them through a tortuous marriage preparation course to see if they deserve to be married in church.

Art School Confidential - DVD review

Art School Confidential

3 Jan 2007

COMEDY/DRAMA The surprisingly swift DVD release of Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes’ adaptation of Clowes’ graphic novel is saddening but hardly surprising. By far and away the weakest film that Zwigoff has made (following on from the off kilter joys…

Sir Kenry at Rawlinson End - DVD review

Sir Kenry at Rawlinson End

27 Nov 2006

SPOOF/COMEDY Confoundedly eccentric, inordinately shambolic and downright hilarious, this one-of-a-kind British cinema oddity plays like a collaboration between Luis Buñuel and the Monty Python team. It’s actually the fever dream of Vivian Stanshall…

Stranger Than Fiction

(12A) 113min

27 Nov 2006

COMEDY/DRAMA/FANTASY We’re so used to Will Ferrell playing the crazed maniac that it’s a pleasant surprise to see that he can play the straight guy equally well. He’s Howard Crick, a taxman with an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder whose life is turned…

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny - review

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny

13 Nov 2006

COMEDY/MUSICAL Jack Black and Kyle Gass formed rock band Tenacious D a dozen years ago. Noteworthy, mostly, for their wild and profane lyrics, their existence has witnessed a best selling album, a short-lived HBO series, and the movie stardom of lead…

Sarah Silverman - Jesus Is Magic

31 Jul 2008

COMEDY (18) 72min Taboos are there to be shattered, barriers are in place to be broken down and sweary words are there to be bellowed out on prime time television. Sarah Silverman knows all this and has made it her speciality. This rather…

Tonight’s the night - Saturday Night Live Comedians - Baby Mama

17 Jul 2008

Tina Fey is the latest in a long line of comedians to come through the writer’s rooms of NBC’s legendary comedy show Saturday Night Live. Here’s a few more familiar faces

Three and Out

24 Apr 2008

COMEDY (15) 106min Heard the one about the suicidal 50-something Irishman Tommy (Colm Meaney) and the London tube driver and aspiring novelist Paul (Mackenzie Crook), who needs somebody to throw themselves under his train in order to collect a…

Strange Wilderness

10 Apr 2008

COMEDY (15) 84min Dude, where’s my countryside? From Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison company, Strange Wilderness is another stoner-meets-nature comedy from director Fred Wolf, writer of the similarly low-rent male-bonding opus Without a Paddle. Peter…

27 Dresses

27 Mar 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 110min During an interview to promote Knocked Up, actress Katherine Heigl said of the Judd Apatow comedy that brought her worldwide fame (after her years lighting up Grey’s Anatomy): ‘It paints women as shrews, as humourless and…

First Sunday

27 Mar 2008

CRIME/COMEDY (12A) 97min When trousers fall down to reveal brightly-coloured underwear, any comedy is instantly revealed as low-brow, yet this vehicle for ex-rapper Ice Cube written, directed and produced by his old promo director friend David E…

Meet the Spartans

13 Mar 2008

COMEDY (12A) 83min Date Movie and Epic Movie were unforgivable atrocities against comedy, but writer/directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer manage to deal themselves a slightly stronger hand with their latest effort Meet the Spartans, which sets…

Les Visiteurs - DVD review

Comedy

31 Jan 2008

As the film which famously out-grossed Jurassic Park in France on its homeland release in 1993, the original Les Visiteurs holds a special place in the hearts of Francophile cinemagoers. It’s really just a reasonably fun slapstick comedy of the sort…

The Good Night

17 Jan 2008

COMEDY/DRAMA/ROMANCE (15) 93min Not above cashing-in on family connections, writer/director Jake Paltrow’s romantic comedy casts his older sister Gwyneth as the dowdy, disaffected partner of commercial jingle writer Gary (Martin Freeman). A kind…

The Twelve Chairs

4 Jan 2008

COMEDY DRAMA (12A) 93min (Network DVD rental/retail) When Hipolito (Enriqye Saniesteban) hears that his dying mother-in-law has left a fortune in jewels stashed away in one of her dozen imported chairs, he determines to find the missing fortune.

Balls of Fury

Comedy

13 Dec 2007

The prospect of a comedy about table tennis isn’t a particularly exciting one; somewhere over the course of Dodgeball, Talladega Nights, Blades of Glory and Hot Rod, the comedic possibilities of idiot sportsmen ran out of puff some time ago. Randy…

Bee Movie

Animation/comedy

13 Dec 2007

The buzz about Bee Movie is that it’s a cute animated fable for children that also showcases popular comic Jerry Seinfeld, who developed the project with the writers from his titular sitcom. The sting in the tale is that, while vaguely palatable to both…

Fred Claus

29 Nov 2007

FAMILY/COMEDY (PG) 115min In his third film with director David Dobkin (Clay Pigeons, The Wedding Crashers) Vince Vaughn trades far too heavily on his familiar wise-guy charms in this cloying Joel The Matrix Silver-produced Christmas offering.

He Was A Quiet Man

29 Nov 2007

DRAMA/COMEDY (15) 95min It seems a long time ago that Christian Slater was making a living as the ‘young Jack Nicholson’ in teen yarns Heathers and Pump Up The Volume. In this audacious crime caper, written and directed by Frank A Cappello (No Way…

The Band’s Visit

29 Nov 2007

Last chance to see Eran Kolirin’s warmly enjoyable comedy about an Egyptian ceremonial police band lost in Israel. Think Brassed Off in the Middle East. GFT, Glasgow & Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Fri 7–Thu 13 Dec.