#38 SPY

#38 SPY

Starring Melissa McCarthy, Rose Bryne, Jason Statham, Jude Law, Miranda Hart, Bobby Cannavale, Allison Janney and Peter Serafinowicz.

Written and directed by Paul Figg. 120 minutes long.

This is Figg and McCarthy's third film together after Heat and Bridemaids. For my money, McCarthy is hands down one of the funniest comedians around.

McCarthy plays CIA analyst Susan Cooper whose day job, sat back at Langley is offering guidance and intel via an ear-piece to spy extra-extraordinaire, Bradley Fine, Jude Law. But when during a mission, Fine accidentally kills a criminal mastermind, who just so happened to be the only man who knows the location of a tactical nuclear device that's up for sale the race is on to find the bomb. Trouble is the only other person who might know is Rose Bryne's Raina, the dead man's foul-mouthed daughter and she knows the name and face of every active agent a knowledge she shares with Cooper by killing Fine while all she can do is watch and listen, unseen, via his ear and eye-piece. Now it's up to Susan Cooper to go into the field and find the bomb, trouble is not everybody at  the Agency is convinced she's the right woman for the job and foul-mouthed Jason Statham's Rick Ford - a one-man killing machine goes rogue to prove she isn't the man for the job.

Initially it's hard to like McCarthy's Cooper, she's so filled with self-doubt and loathing that the film's in danger of descending into a pity bath, but just as you start to find her character deeply infuriating  the film takes a glorious turn for the better when Cooper is forced to turn from a sad, frumpy, middle-aged house wife into the most glorious obscenity spewing, vicious and brutal spy with a license to kill you've ever seen. But this isn't just the McCarthy Hour, the film is crammed full of actors all enjoying themselves immensely, perhaps no more so than Statham who practically steals the show with his Rick Ford character displaying an impressive talent for exceedingly broad humour. Indeed, every one in this film deserves a mention, from Peter Serainowicz's breast-obsessed sex pest CIA Italian operative to Miranda Hart's Nancy – Susan's best friend, these are all comedians doing what they do best.

Moving at a fair old pace, the film never slows and as such avoids a saggy middle or a disappointing third act, perhaps because this isn't written by a committee or writing team, but by Figgs himself who clearly has a vision for his film, so that even the Macguffin makes sense. There are also some incredibly brutal fights and gross-out humour that had the audience howling in disgust and delight in equal measure and it doesn't skimp on the action either, this is a Spy film not as parody or homage but as a true comedy. Indeed, I haven't laughed this long or this hard at a Hollywood movie for an absolute age.

At its core, this is a film about relationships, the one between Cooper and Nancy, Cooper and Fine and Cooper and Raina, and it's that last one that's the funniest as the two women engage in a brilliant eye-for-an-eye swear-athon that had me in tears. So much fun, can't wait to see it again. If you didn't like Bridesmaid or Heat then this probably won't be for you, but then who knows, this might just win you over. It sure did me!

8/10

#37 MAN UP

#37 MAN UP

Starring Lake Bell, Simon Pegg Rory Kinear, Ophelia Lovibond, Sharon Horgan, 

Written by Tess Morris and directed by Ben Palmer. 88 minutes short.

RomComs, I love them! Seriously, beneath this cold, grim exterior there beats the heart of an eternal romantic, married 26 years still buying flowers and shit for the wife, plus I well up faster than a sink hole on a flood plain, so I needed no inclination to go and see this.

The simply brilliant Lake Bell is Nancy, a 34 year-old, relationship-phobic, singleton with over four years on the clock. Simon (I'm a serious actor, me) Pegg is 40-something Jack, coming up to a year since his wife left him for his best friend and still seriously tramuatised by the experience. Their lives collide when Nancy, on her way to her parent's 40th wedding anniversary to give a speech, is mistaken by Jack to be Jessica - his blind date for the day - at Waterloo station due to a mix up over a book (it's too difficult to explain, you'll have to trust me on this, it's not that important).

ANYWAY, they meet up and the film follows them on their first all important date. It starts awkwardly, as I suppose all blind dates do, but then they click over what must be the world's most expensive bowling game ever, I mean seriously the number of shots and bottles of beer these two neck must have cost a ruddy fortune, plus they seem to play like a dozen games, and ten pin bowling isn't cheap, no sirree! I mean our local Hollywood Bowl charges £5.75 per game and the one in the film charges £39 per lane, that's for one game, so let's say they play three games that's close to 120 quid, before the booze! Blimey, these two must be seriously loaded, plus he owns his own flat in London and he's a Online Brand Manager and we discover that Jessica works in the City so I suppose they can afford to have a first date like this. By Christ, my first date with Pet was a stage play in London, plus a drink or two, so 20 quid tops.

ANYWAY, a romantic, screwball comedy (for this is surely one of those) wouldn't be a romantic screwball comedy if everything went swimmingly and the spanner-sized fly in the ointment in this film, is Rory Kinear's uber-creepy barman, Sean - who went to school with Nancy and knows she's not the Jessica that Jack keeps calling her. Sean is Nancy's very own stalker and even has a photograph of her sleeping in her childhood bedroom in his wallet, which he shows her to prove how much he loves her. When she explains her deceit to Sean, he threatens to tell Jack she's not Jessica unless she gives him a blow job in the toilet, something I don't think Greogry Peck ever did to Audrey Hepburn, but then times change.

ANYWAY, to cut a long story short, actually it's not that long a film, but the getting to this bit in the plot seems to take quite a while, Jack discovers that Nancy, isn't the Jessica he was expecting to meet he goes somewhat off the rails and the two fall out quite spectacularly so it's obvious we're already at the Girl loses Boy stage of the Girl meets Boy, Girl loses Boy, Girl get Boy back RomCom equation. However, because this isn't the real world, there then follows an 'only in the movies' race around London to retrieve the plot's Macguffin, a lost manpurse containing an all-important note book, don't ask, it's complicated before the big glorious pay off.

This is a funny film, admittedly not the funniest ever made but it certainly doesn't outstay its welcome and Lake Bell is simply brilliant, Pegg less so but that might be because of his hair and also his character is slightly unhinged and desperate, but to give him his dues he knows comedy and his timing is perfect and the two of them spark quite nicely off each other. Ticking all the boxes you'd expect from a RomCom, even a screwball comedy variety, this does what it says on the tin and leaves you with a warm fuzzy glow in your chest. Plus it has a brilliant theory about sex and the blowjob paradox and a genuinely brilliant failed date sequence at the top of the film that's used to introduce Lake Bell's character.

By the way, Lake has to be singled out for having the best English accent I've ever heard from an American actor, male or female. She totally gets the inflection and better still swears like an Englishmen.

A nice date film, probably best seen with someone.

7/10

#36 SAN ANDREAS

#36 SAN ANDREAS

Starring Dywane Johnson, Alexandra Daddario, Carla Gugino, Colton Hayes,  Paul Giamatti, Ioan Gruffudd and Kylie Minogue. Written by: Carlton Cuse, Chad Hayes, Carey Hayes, Allan Loeb, Jeremy Passmore, Andre Fabrizio. Directed by Brad Peyton.
107 minutes long.

Grieving dad, Dywane Johnson flies helicopter rescue missions. His soon to be ex wife, Carla Gugino and their surviving grown up daughter, Alexandra Daddario are about to move in with mum's uber rich industrialist boyfriend, Ioan Gruffudd and speccy nerd scientist, Paul Giamatti has just discovered how to predict earthquakes literally seconds before they hit – (everything starts shaking). And British engineer Colton Hayes is applying for a job at Ioan's big office block on the day Alexandra visits the office and a 9.6 earth quake hits San Fransico and the San Andreas fault line, a day after the Hoover Dam collapses thanks to an earthquake. And that's all you really need to know, cos after that it's disaster time, and I'm not just talking about the awful dialogue or the cliched plot, for god's sake, man this is a disaster movie! What did you expect? Things fall over, things explode, things flood, things sink, things fall into other things and a huge tsunami hits town for some shits and giggles. Along the way a few people die on screen, but not too many cos this is a 12 A after all and there's absolutely no blood!

This really has nothing that much to recommend it. It certainly isn't 2012, it's a thinly made remake of Earthquake with Dywane doing a Charlton Heston, and no that's not a euphemism for some bizarre sexual practice. He's the Rock, stoic, heroic and dynamic. His soon-to-be together again exwife is also balls out brave and heroic as is their daughter who spends the film saving her future wife, Colton Hayes and his brother time after time. Oh and Kylie Minogue turns up long enough to get a credit than exits stage right.

This is fun while the disasters are smacking the shit out of everything but crushingly uninteresting when it's just one character emoting like it's Oscar season to another. Finally, don't bother with the 3D, it's fun while it's things crashing but not so much when it's not, which is most the film.

6/10 for the effects.

#35 MOOMINS ON THE RIVIERA

#35 MOOMINS ON THE RIVIERA

Written by  Xavier Picard, Hanna Hemilä, Beata Harju, Leslie Stewart, Annina Enckell. Directed by Xavier Picard, Hanna Hemilä. 80 minutes long.
This French Finnish production is traditionally drawn which makes a delightful change from the churning CGI animated sausage machine of Hollywood.

Doing away with a new screenplay this is an adaptation of Tove Jansson's original comic strip: Moomin on the Riviera. And as such, it keeps the strange, surreal, dreamlike quality of original Moomins story doing away with the need of an actual plot replacing it with a rambling, meandering tale that slides from one situation into the next with no rhyme or reason. Nor are there any knowing in jokes for adults to enjoy, as such unless you're a fan of the original wonderful comic book series you're going to find this a tad tricky to enjoy.

This will appeal to the very young.

7/10

#34 TOMORROWLAND

#34 TOMORROWLAND

Starring George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Brit Robinson and Raffey Cassidy. Written by Brad Bird, Damon Lindelof, Jeff Jensen. Directed by Brad Bird. 130 minutes long.

In a world obsessed with the apocalypse and global warming, precocious late tween Casey Newton (Brit Robinson) dreams of going to the stars and loathes the fact that NASA are dismantling their last shuttle launch pad and commits acts of sabotage to stop them. Sadly her actions only result in seeing her arrested and distressing her, soon-to-be-out-of-work NASA engineer single-parent father. But when Casey discovers a mysterious pin (badge) that shows her the world of tomorrow she embarks on a journey to find her destiny, along the way teaming up with a curmudgeonly, scientifical old recluse, Frank Walker (George Clooney) and a strange young girl called Athena who knows more than she's letting on. After that it's a leisurely plod from one plot point to the next as Frank, Casey and Athena are chased by a black SUV full of grinning robots until our band of plucky heroes finally get to Tomorrowland and bicker with the  baddy and his army of four henchmen and some cute-looking robots.

Because this is co written by Damon Lindelof, most of the dialogue consists of one character asking another a question which isn't answered and conversations where one character monologues uninterrupted for five minutes, before another says, 'What?'. Actually 'What' is the single most over-used word in this film or at least it seems that way. Characters say 'What' a lot in this film, usually before being told to shut up. This is one of those really irritating films that demands that no one  answers a question up front. Characters know things that would help others but don't explain, waiting for the right moment, usually as it happens so it can be explained as it happens. Jesus, if everyone had just said it right off the bat, then we'd all have be home a good hour earlier. 

This isn't all bad, the film looks great, it's beautifully directed and has one sequence that is just jaw-droppingly wonderful, sadly it's the in-film advert for Tomorrowland that blends a million perfect CGI effects into one seemingly single take and it looks utterly fantastic and I wish that had been the film rather than the doom-laden tale of woe that this is, a film with a message that is the world is seriously fucked unless you dreamers out there take-over the means of production and save the world.

You find yourself yearning to spend longer in the Tomorrowland we are given a glimpse of, even when it's the silent, near empty city it turns out to be. You want to explore it, to be amazed because it's the most amazing aspect of the film. Unfortunately this is a film with a serious message to impart, a message that must be given, look it's made by a serious director and writer who know how to save the world, you have to listen, they know how to save us all! It's up to you! Seriously!

Too many characters shriek, too many characters whine, too many characters bitch needlessly and there's the most pathetic fight I've ever seen that sees two 50 year old men, carefully roll about lightly slapping each other. This feels like one of those Disney films of the 70s in terms of peril and drama and lacks anything resembling a proper punch, more like a limp, slap to the shoulder.

Oh, how slightly disappointing. 

5/10

#33 SHAUN THE SHEEP

#33 SHAUN THE SHEEP

 

Written and directed by Mark Burton and Richard Starzak, 86 minutes long.

Life on Mossy Bottom Farm has become a drudge, the live-stock farmer - Farmer, once a young man with dreams and ambitions, but now just another work-zomibe going thru the motions alone and miserable with an obviously slowly failing farm is desperately scratching to make a living. Seriously, he's down to his last five sheep, three pigs and a bull. Surely it can't be long before the ballifs are banging on his door and he's eating both barrels of his shotgun? Life has clearly not dealt Farmer the cards he wanted and it's obvious he's sub-consciously crying out for something different, otherwise how else could Shaun's subsequent plan for a day off have worked so brilliantly?

Farmer isn't the only one crying out for something new. Wanting a day off from the drudgery of farm life too, super-intelligent, destined one day to be the Sunday roast, Shaun the sheep contrives a brilliant scheme to dupe Farmer into sleeping the day away in a rotting, cockroach infested caravan thus allowing Shaun and the other, not so bright, sheep to spend the day doing what they like, however their cunning plan goes horribly wrong and the poor farmer is almost killed in an horrifically judged stunt that sees Farmer left in a brain–damaged coma following a high-speed car chase and sickening car crash in the middle of Big Town that sees him suffer an appalling and graphic head injury. When Farmer's dog and the sheep's prison warder, Bitzer races off to try and save his master, the lunatics take over the asylum.

The moral of this story should be 'Be Careful What you Wish For.', because back on the farm, without Farmer to provide and protect, life quickly becomes desperate, the sheep begin to starve, the pigs run riot destroying the farmer's house and the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy infected bull breaks free from his quarantine zone rampaging around the farm, attacking anyone stupid enough to get too close.

When Bitzer fails to return as well, and with the threat of starvation growing, Shaun hatches a second desperate plan to restore order and heads off into town. What follows is a terrifying Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now crossed with Midnight Express journey into the dark underbelly of humanity as Shaun and then the rest of the sheep try to live and survive in this strange new world.

Waking up from a three-day coma with amnesia, Farmer stumbles out of the grossly under-funded NHS-run hospital in just his pajamas and is found living rough on the streets by a kindly hair-dresser who gives him a home and a job. He discovers he has a true talent for hair dressing and begins to get better, with no memory of his past life, he re-invents himself, calling himself Mr. X and starts to enjoy his life, free at last from the chains of the pathologically needy sheep.           

Meanwhile, both Shaun and Bitzer are captured by the unnamed hero of the film, an animal catcher who locks up the animals in a maximum security facility. forcing the other, now insanely desperate sheep to stage a savage and brutal jail break that sees the animals rescue their comrades and torture their jailer with an electric cattle prod, leaving him badly burned and severely traumatized.

The rest of the film, sees the sheep track down Farmer, kidnapping him from his new life and forcing him reclaim his memory with a series of sickening and brutal deprogramming exercises, while the animal catcher races against time to track the, clearly BSE infected, animals back to their farm lair before they can infect Farmer...

Phew, how they managed to cram so much plot into this word-free 82 minutes brisk animated delight is a credit to this film's dynamic duo writing/directing partnership of Mark Burton and Richard Starzak. While not as funny and brilliantly inventive as Curse of the Were Rabbit, Shaun the Sheep is nevertheless a genuinely sweet and funny film with some utterly inspired sight gags and some wonderful animation, there's so much going on and the film is so packed with details that you keep finding yourself laughing at something off to one side, like the portrait of the Giles granny in Farmer's house. Best bit must be the pantomime horse the Sheep construct that's seen in the trailer.

Kids will love this and parents will laugh at the hundreds of gags put in just for them, nothing quite beats good old British, Plasticine, stop motion animation. It makes such a wonderful change from the CGI sausage factory of Hollywood.

8/10

#31& 32 MAD MAX - FURY ROAD

#31 & 32 MAD MAX - FURY ROAD

Starring Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, Nicholas Hoult and Hugh Keays-Byrne.

Written by Brendan McCarthy, Nick Lathouris, George Miller and Eric Blakeney. 

Directed by George Miller. 2 hours all too short.

The lights go down, the screen goes black, after the logos a gruff sounding old codger, probably Max himself, does a spot of narration and then it starts. Two truly astonishing hours later and, if you're like me, you'll be stumbling into the light outside, still dazzled and shell-shocked by what you've just seen and days later, you'll still be getting Nam-like flashbacks, itching to see it again in case you dreamt the whole thing.

Starting with a car chase and ending two hours later with, arguably the same one, this is a staggeringly original visual experience. What little plot there is is so linear it makes straight lines look wonky. Instead insane, relentless forward momentum propels the film along, just like a car chase. This is more about characters reacting to the world around them, so what more plot do you need? The main focus are Theron's Furiosa,  Hardy's Max, and Hoult's Nux and incredibly for a relatively short film each manages to have a story to tell, their characters go through arcs and are changed by the experience, quite an extraordinary achievement for what should be a brain-dead, action, summer blockbuster and indeed in a lesser director's hands, say Michael Bay would be. 

All you need to know is that it's the far-future, it's post apocalyptic and bands of survivors scour the wasteland in souped up off-road cars looking for gazoleen and water.

Bollocks, I keep trying to write about this film and all I do is list superlatives and try and make it sound high-brow. So sod it.

Balls out the best action film I've seen this year (sorry John Wick, but you're still my second favourite) indeed, this is without doubt, one of the greatest action films ever made. I avoided the 3D version and now I regret it. This needs to be seen on the biggest screen possible! And I want to see it again on the IMAX in 3D!

Huge kudos to George Miller who made this. He created this genre with Mad Max back in 1979 and comes back to show the world he's still da king! I for one pray to the non-existent god I don't believe in that Miller sticks to making more [insert superlative of your own choice here] films like this one and less festering, stinking mush like Happy Feet.

By the way, the first Mad Max film was the second 'X' film I ever saw at the cinema, I was 15. and I can still remember it to this day, I'm fairly sure that 36 years from now I'll be just as fond of Fury Road, assuming I survive the apocalypse and can find enough gazoleen to power my generator and run my TV and Blu Ray player.

10/10

#30 SPOOKS: THE GREATER GOOD

#30 SPOOKS: THE GREATER GOOD

Starring Kit Harington, Peter Frith, Jennifer Ehle, Elyes Gabel, Lara Pulver, Tim McInnerny, Hugh Simon, Eleanor Matsuura and Tuppence Middleton.

Written byJonathan Brackley and Sam Vincent. Directed by Bharat Nalluri. 104 minutes brisk!

Can't really describe the plot in any detail for fear of revealing too much but what I can say is          leader                                       is                                                  and                                                   forced to go                to        him and               who the          MI5 is, along the way re-recruiting                                                   Kit                   's Will                       and surviving on his        . After that it's a cat-and-mouse chase against the clock to                the              ,          a terrorist                in the heart of              and get home in time for tea.

Feeling a little bit shabby and frayed around the edges and actually not as stylish as the BBC TV show, this is nevertheless a very fast-paced and entertaining spy thriller with more twists and turns then something very twisty and turny. A good cast and some nice action makes this a satisfying double length episode. Sadly marred by a repeated visual gag of notes being left for various characters to read at highly-critical moments and the sense that we the viewer are always playing catch-up.

If James Bond is Waitrose and Bourne is M&S then this is an entertaining and gripping solid bargain basement spy-thriller, which is proudly and happily, unashamably Lidl through-and-through.

7/10

#29 THE AGE OF ADALINE

#29 THE AGE OF ADALINE

Starring Blake Lively, Harrison Ford, Michiel Huisman and Ellyn Burstyn.

Written by J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz. Directed by Lee Toland Krieger, 112 minutes long.

Blake Lively is Adaline Bowman who meets the love of her life when she's 25, has a daughter she calls Flemming and becomes a widow not long after. Then she suffers a fatal car crash, after crashing her car in a freezing river, and is revived by a lighting strike, which leaves her unable to age. 20 years later she becomes a person of interest to the FBI and arrested forcing Adaline to go rogue, dropping off the grid, 60 years before that sort of thing becomes de rigueur for the fashionable modern spy. Now she spends her life separated from her daughter and forced to change her identity every 10 years so as to avoid detection.

Cut to her 107th birthday at a fashionable  San Francisco New Year's Eve party and Adaline meets Michiel Huisaman's Ellis Jones - an insanely rich app inventor - who makes her reconsider her life-style choice and perhaps consider a relationship with him. Trouble is he's the son of Astronomy professor Harrison Ford who just so happens to have been one of Adaline's lovers back in the 1960s.

With an intriguing premise, a good looking cast and a nice eye for the camera, the Age of Adaline seemed like a good choice, sadly it's lacking something, like a soul or a heart. It's all very bland and uninvolving, Blake Lively's Adaline is such a closed shop, so Vulcan-like in her lack of emotion that it's hard to really care for her, plus the romance, which never seems in doubt feels a tad unemotional. The most interesting aspect of the film is Adaline's relationship with her daughter played by Ellyn Burstyn who looks old enough to be her grandmother.

This is slight stuff, not terrible but just not terribly engaging. The thing is there's such an interesting idea at the core of this that it feels sadly squandered.

6/10 

#28 BIG GAME

#28 BIG GAME

Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Onni Tommila, Ray Stevenson, Felicity Huffman, Jim Broadbent, Victor Garber, Mehmet Kurtuluş and Ted Levine

Written by Jalmari Helander, Petri Jokiranta. Directed by Jalmari Helander. 90 minutes long.

On the cusp of his 13th birthday and armed with only a bow and arrows, Oskari (Onni Tommila) drives off, alone, to spend one day and one night in the 'big forest' and bring back whatever the  forest gives him to hunt. It's a rite of passage for the men folk of his community. Trouble is he's pretty feeble when it comes to pulling the bow and none of the men think he can do it, least of all his dad.

Meanwhile, sad-sack and lame duck president, Samuel L. Jackson is the victim of a terrorist attack and dumped in the middle of the forest where the two find each other and redemption, while battling enemies both foreign and domestic. And back in the US, one US General, the Vice President, the single sole female character in the whole film, and Jim Boardbent as the least-convincing CIA agent I've ever seen watch the whole thing on TV, while bickering.

Imagine if the late, great, much lamented, Children's Film Foundation still made films for the Saturday Morning Pictures and decided to make Die Hard for kids set in a forest and you have Big Game, the most action-packed kids film I've seen in ages, which, since it was based on a work of YA fiction written by Dan Smith is hardly surprising.

Great premise, fabulous looking trailer and Samuel L. Jackson, what's not to love? Well, sadly this film. There are some aspects that are very refreshing, I particularly enjoyed the father-son dynamic of Jackson and Tommila and indeed I saw this with my 12 year-old son. But the film itself is too slight and riddled with jarring plot-holes big enough to fly a Presidential Jumbo jet through to really get behind and enjoy. The trailer promised so much but sadly it's all in the trailer the film itself is lacking something. It's one of those films where you have to suspend your disbelief, or in this case have it surgically removed to really get behind it. The action sequences are fun but the villains who number just five and are lead by Ray Stevenson and Mehmet Kurtulus, make the whole thing feel too small and ludicrous. And you'd have thought that if the President was shot down over a Norwegian forest that the US would be a tad more efficient at tracking him down but apparently not. Still it's quite fun in a stupid way but avoid the trailer as it gives away the whole plot of the film, including the very last scene.

That said, the location is literally spectacular and made for a refreshing change as did the young hero, Onni Tommila who steals the whole show.

Disappointingly, just 6/10.

#27 GET HARD

#27 GET HARD

Starring Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart, Craig T. Nelson and T.I.

Directed by Etan Cohen and written by, (although I was surprised cos I'd assumed it was just made up as they went along, still you live and learn.) FOUR PEOPLE! Sweet mother of god, FOUR people had a hand in the writing of this. Staggering. It took three of them to come up with the 'story', Adam McKay, Jay Martel and Ian Roberts. Then it took Jay Martel, Ian Roberts and Etan Cohen to turn that 'story' into the screenplay. I'm guessing by this stage Adam Mckay just couldn't take any more and left, so at least he still has a small shred of his integrity left.

And it's only 100 minutes long, which is odd because it actually feels longer than the 10 year Will Ferrell's James King is given as his prison sentence.

Anyway the story, for what it's worth. On the night of his engagement party - to the boss's daughter, Master of the Universe and Wolf of Wall St., James King, Will Ferrell - playing his usual man-child persona – is arrested for embezzlement, charged, convicted, sentenced to 10 years in San Quentin, and given 30 days to get his affairs in order. But guess what he's been framed. Terrified he's going to die in prison he reaches out to the only black man he knows, Kevin Hart's Darnell Lewis (who he assumes has been to prison) for help to 'get hard' for prison. There then follows a series of mediocre to middling jokes about rich people being out of touch, the working class, mexicans, African American culture before the glut of  gay jokes about oral sex, erections and male rape are dropped into proceedings as Ferrell prepares for his ten-stretch by learning how to "keister"and secrete weapons up his arse. Finally it's the obligatory 3rd act where everything turns out okay and the baddies are revealed and King and Lewis become best buddies.

Lazy, humourless, pointless and generally very dull. A couple of laughs along the way and that's it. This one proves, hopefully, that once and for all, Will Ferrell was only ever funny as a supporting character and his singular trick of portraying perennial men-children has not only grown up, got married, had children, reached middle age, watched his kids leave home, retired, out-lived his wife then gotten rather old, before finally dying of very old age and being cremated before having his ashes scattered off a cliff.

I seriously think that the last time this man was funny was in Elf. And yell Ron Burgandy at me, that was a one trick pony that couldn't sustain a whole movie. Don't believe me? Try watching Anchor Man 2. And he's playing another man-child.


3/10 (for glimpsed boobs in background)