BY JOHN CAMPBELL
cinema Reviews
ENTERTAINMENT
UP FOR LOVE
There are the grand passions that, in the dark, the big screen delivers in a calculated, perfectly sound-tracked tsunami of emotion – love and desire foremost among them. Overlooked, perhaps because it is so subtle and quiet, so everyday, is affection. This cheesy but adorable little movie has tons of that life-sustaining human connection. It’s not quite ‘beauty and the beast’, but the hook that is designed to draw the audience in is that Alexandre (Jean Dujardin) is only four foot five inches tall. The girl he falls in love with – and their meeting, over the phone, is a brilliantly conceived and executed ‘one-take’ intro – is Diane (Virginie Efira), a tall, gorgeous blonde lawyer. The film’s strongest visual metaphor comes soon after, when the couple, on their first date, do a parachute jump from high above the craggy Provencal coast of France – the camera work is stupendous, the thrill of letting go breathtaking. Most extraordinary, however, is how director Laurent Tirard manages to make it all so believable, for the premise is far-fetched to put it mildly and the CGI at first only underlines the silliness of it. But this is where actors come into their own; Dujardin, who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Valentin in The Artist (2011), leaves you in no doubt that Alexandre is a real bloke, and he does so entirely through facial expressions and dialogue delivery. Efira’s performance is similarly unforced as the young woman who, though she knows better, struggles to cope with the fact of Alexandre’s unique physicality. The film is an obvious (and sometimes a tad overstated) reflection on the ‘size doesn’t matter’ line, but it goes beyond that and with the lightest of touches explores the idea of integrity and the value we give it – as well as being true to her feelings for Alexandre, Diane, as a lawyer, must decide if she will defend a shonky client in court. It’s a movie that gets better the longer it goes, with an exuberant dance scene. I loved it.
OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY
In these less than optimistic times, it is imperative that we be grateful for tender mercies. Having seen the previews for this, I anticipated with dread another gross-out in the style of The Hangover and Bridesmaids, so to say that it is not as bad as I feared is probably the highest praise I can muster for it. There is a fart joke in the first five minutes, courtesy of Kate McKinnon, the ‘other’ actress who was so grating in the pathetic re-make of Ghostbusters, and there is a predictable indulgence in tits and arse – a dick, too, which has become almost ho-hum – but a reasonable story is threaded through the mire and held together by decent performances and a snappy edit.
Set in Chicago (the windy city gets nowhere near the exposure of New York, but it always looks shiny and vibrant – with snow falling, it’s beautiful), Clay and Carol (TJ Miller and Jennifer Aniston) are siblings at war over the running of their inherited IT company. Clay has always been the slacker, so to win over a potential client who will save his branch of the business from closure, he organises a Christmas party that would make the Satyricon look like a teddy bears’ picnic. The love interest is centred on the brainiac chick who is devising a whole new way of going online (Olivia Munn), and her boss (Jason Bateman, an affable actor who always gives the impression that he has just lost a pound and found a penny). The gags are topical – the Uber driver (Fortune Feimster) is hilarious – and the language, if in not exactly wholesome, falls short of the execrable boorishness that now passes itself off as witty repartee. As someone who is only partially addicted to cyberspace, it was a trifle sad to see the exuberance displayed when everybody had their signal restored after going offline, but this is one of those movies in which closing credit bloopers are mandatory – unfortunately, they’re not remotely funny.
68 December 14, 2016 The Byron Shire Echo
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