THE TROLL HUNTER (2010 - Cert 15)

I recently went to see Apollo 18 and in my review I was quick to pronounce the 'found footage' film dead. Although I did lay down the caveat, unless the makers of a film manage to do something new or interesting with the formula. And Norwegian André Øvredal has managed it with The Troll Hunter.

It all starts off as you would expect, a message on the screen introducing the film, explaining that tapes were found containing a whole load of footage and the following is what was cut from all of that celluloid. So far so seen all before. What follows that message is not at all what I would have expected, much more than I had hoped for (and from the trailer my hopes were high) and it all left me wanting more. Much much more. In a very, very good way.

We start off following three students who are trailing Hans, who they think is a bear hunter (played by Otto Jespersen). He has become a bit of a mystery in local circles, he travels in a caravan and is kitted out with a load of gear that all seems to be a bit heavy handed, even for bear hunting. Interview attempts are refused gruffly, they wait bored as he sleeps by day and heads out on the road at night. That is until one night they head deep in to the Norwegian forests and get caught up in an exchange between Hans and the creatures he's really hunting. Trolls. Yes, Trolls. 


The whole film is played with a completely straight face. Any disbelief that trolls really exist is quickly disposed of, as everyone accepts that this is a monster that we have to live with. There is a Troll Security Service, a shadowy FBI like division that is tasked with keeping them away from populated areas. The Troll Hunter Hans talks of myths (or what we think of as myths) as scientific fact, for example he talks of rapid calcification rather than turning to stone. It's this serious take on what is all grounded in fairy tale stories that bring the laughs, deadpan delivery of such stupid lines can't fail but bring a tickle. Then you have the trolls themselves. They look great, a few quid has clearly been spent on the effects (a budget of £3m is reported) and the film makers are proud of them. This isn't Jaws with only fleeting glimpses of what's involved, we see the monsters in all their glory very early on. There is no disputing that there is a cartoony quality to their appearance, and once again, when this is up against a tone that is so serious without any nods or winks to camera, it is genuinely both fun and funny. 


It isn't all fun and games though, there are some genuinely scary moments. As you might expect there are plenty of jumps (easy to pull of on the handheld camera), but the scenes where the trolls are on the rampage are really exciting. They are massive hulking creatures and we are with the little people and their handheld camera. There is an impressive scale to it all. There are also one or two unexpected moments of unsettling violence (that you don't necessarily see, you actually hear) that do catch you off guard. Just when you get the sense that this is a fun, friendly romp, a bit of death and destruction comes along and makes you think twice about where the film is going. It just doesn't let you settle.


Otto Jespersen really deserves a hell of a lot of credit. He is really the only person on screen for any proper length of time, and the whole thing hangs on his performance. He nails the Quint-like character and then some. He gets all the best lines, never smiles and gets to be a bit of a hero at the end. If he didn't get it so right, the film would have fallen over very seriously. 


The Troll Hunter is an absolute blast, it ticks all of the boxes, fun, funny, scary, it really puts you through the mixer. Its probably summed up best by it's last 5 minutes, going from barnstorming heroics, to sombre conclusion but then still finding the time to tack on some explaining at the end containing the biggest laugh of the lot.


The found footage film can live on, especially if André Øvredal has anything to do with it.

BATTLE LOS ANGELES (2011 - Cert 12a)

With titles such as LA Noire, Heavy Rain, Grand Theft Auto 4 and the Uncharted series, the video game industry is pushing the boundaries of what that particular medium is capable of. The games are now extremely cinematic in their outlook and development, they have fully developed narratives, rounded characters with depth and emotion, in other words your actions, as the gamer, have consequences. It's come a long way since Pong. With the incredible sums of money generated by the games developers and distributors, many people have commented that it has the potential to even become the new cinema. So while people who make the games are striving to improve plots, hiring well known screenwriters, actors and directors, cinema needs to do something to stop the supposed shift from popcorn to the joypad.

Battle Los Angeles appears to think that cinema should do the same thing in reverse. While games aspire to be cinematic, Jonathan Liebesman wants cinema to be emulate the formula that have made games so successful.



This isn't a gripe at the overuse of CGI. Yes, there is a lot of computer generated effects in the film, but that's the way things are now. It's a film about massive alien spacecrafts attacking the earth, you expect these to be created with a few clicks of a mouse. In fact, the effects are very impressive, possibly some of the best I've seen, all for a relatively modest budget of £70m.

No, my complaint is that the film seems to have been structured just like a video game. It's as if someone applied tracing paper over the game blueprint and completely copied. Action, dialogue, action, dialogue, action, dialogue. I appreciate that this is the general state of big budget blockbusters, that's no different from Transformers, Indy or Pirates, but it's the quality and purpose of the dialogue between bangs that is the problem. It's there solely to introduce the next piece of action, setting up the next mission or level. If anyone has played a video game, like Tomb Raider for example, you will know that in between stages there is a 'cut scene', which basically comprises of poor acting, a number of cliches, all culminating in a 'now we need to go and get this thing and put it in that thing'. End of cut scene, off you go. That is exactly what Battle Los Angeles is like, but with cranked up cliche. Characterisation is kept to a minimum, instead the marines are lifted from any story involving marines we've ever seen. Aaron Eckhart, the lead (looking bemused as to why exactly he is doing this (money of course)), has a back story involving Iraq and losing a team of soldiers, blah, blah, blah, do we think he might reprieve himself and exorcise those ghosts? This collection of marines also appears to be the most annoying set that could have been found or created. A number of 'not really knowns' struggle with Christopher Bertolini's useless script. The grunts from Aliens this is not. It's gratingly irritating, formulaic, exposition, nonsense that serves only to get in the way of the alien bashing, which is another facet that looks at (and steals from) video games.

When our marines first encounter them, they are sneaking through claustrophobic LA streets, darting in and out of houses, the camera leaping about from one point of view to another. Yes, just like a First Person Shooter but with photography that could have been lifted from The Hurt Locker of the Green Zone. Liebesman has clearly been playing Call of Duty or Resistance, because he has served up as FPS film. At first it's quite exhilarating and tense, there is something quite interesting about an alien shoot out that feels and looks like an Iraqi war film, but set in the States, but it all wears very thin, very quickly. You play video games to feel involved, watching Battle Los Angeles is like sitting their watching someone else play a game that you have no interest in. It's boring. What is also unforgivable is that at first the aliens seem to need hundreds of bullets to kill them, then our heroes discover what part of the body is weakest. Once that happens, only a couple of bullets are required to dispatch, no matter how far away the shooters are. The menace completely vanishes and the aliens become an annoying part of the scenery.

Does it do anything well? I did like the fact that there was no story set up with the aliens before it all kicks off. It is very much filmed from the view of the marines, and they are thrown straight into it without any warning or real intelligence. I presume that is true to many of the missions that they undertake, they wouldn't be party to all of the facts. Unfortunately, Liebesman and the script don't have the conviction to carry on with this, instead the reason for the invasion is speculated on in television and radio reports, completely falling out of sync with the rest of the film. It simply doesn't fit. It smacks of film makers patronising the audience, presuming that we would not be able to cope without some sort of background.

I had looked forward to this, I love a monster film, I love a big budget popcorn churner, it looked like it might be an interestingly gritty glimpse at a war that human kind could really lose. Instead, it's a shallow bore of a film without any emotion at all, very rarely excites and never engages.

THE INBETWEENERS MOVIE (2011 - Cert 15)

I must admit that when this project was first announced it didn't excite me. Don't get me wrong, I'm a massive fan of the television series (if you haven't seen it by now, you really must pull your finger out) and it's accurate observations of being a teenage boy inter-spliced with gross out humour that never fails to shock and bring laughs, but a film version? Really? We've been here before, On The Buses and Kevin and Perry Go Large are British examples, the disappointing X-Files film is another that springs to mind, where something has been lost in translation to the big screen. Sitcoms work in brilliant 25 - 30 minute bursts, they aren't baggy, the story lines have to be concise and the writers can focus on the laughs. Treble or quadruple the length and all of sudden everything becomes bogged down with plot and concept and it loses balance. I feared for The Inbetweeners.

Then I saw the trailer. Ordinarily for a comedy, they try and pack the best jokes into the preview, if that was the case with The Inbetweeners then we were in a lot of trouble. If that was the best that the four chaps could muster then a baggy plot is the least of our worries, it just wasn't going to be funny. That trailer and my reservations meant that I had firmly decided that The Inbetweeners was one where I would be waiting for DVD, I've only got so much free time to get to the flicks (jobs eh?).



Then word began to spread and money began to be spent. I didn't hear a bad word said about it, from both critics and the man and woman on the street, it was top of the UK Box Office for four consecutive weeks, raking in almost £40m in that period. That's more than The Hangover 2 and the fourth Pirates film. Third biggest film in the UK this year, behind the final Harry Potter and The King's Speech. Whether it's good or not, that is a remarkable achievement for something that started life as a little know sitcom on E4.

So I gave in and went to see whether it was worth all the fuss. And I have to say that it is.

The film sees boys finish sixth form and Simon dumped by his sweetheart Carly. Surely the only way to get over her is to go to on holiday with the boys? The almost formulaic decision to move the setting to a trip to Malia brought groans of derision and only increased my reservations, but it must be said that it was an inspired choice. It's a rite of passage for us growing up, it's part of our quest for independence. And all boys holidays bring about funny stories....

The best way to sum it up is that it really is just like the television programme. What would you expect, the writers and usual director all being retained. As a result it never really feels cinematic, apart from an opening short that goes from the sky into Simon's bedroom. That never really matters though as the sentiment behind it has not been lost, the edgy gross out humour is there, the foul mouths are there and the awkward comedy that us Brits are now famous is present and correct. Most importantly it is funny. The jokes in the trailer that I didn't think worked, were now funny, put them in a context and you have laughs. The big set piece scenes fit nicely, although never really living up to those key moments from the TV series. The characters are as we remember them, Neil dim-witted and enthusiastic, Simon is the usual wet lettuce and overly eager to please, Jay continues to talk the finest vintage BS that you could imagine and our narrator Will still exasperates as to how he ended up in all of this, despite the fact that he secretly loves it. Many people have commented on just how perfectly The Inbetweeners encapsulates what it's like to be a teenage boy, but as a bloke who has done these holidays, it's incredible just how authentic some of it feels. The roles of PR's getting us into clubs, the matching t-shirts, the transfer from the airport, the hotel lottery, being stuck at a family pool, it's all perfectly observed and much of my enjoyment of the film must be put down to how it all reminded me of a time long gone by.

As the outpouring of word of mouth and positive reviews have turned into a tidal wave, people have started to claim that the film is our answer to American Pie, and I've got to say that I think just doesn't really give it the compliment it deserves. The Inbetweeners has a but more of a soft side than it's American comparison and the numerous sequels and imitators. There are some really nice moments in it, as the boys go from arguing and making up, that really are quite sweet. I particularly liked an exchange between Neil and Will, the posh one asking rhetorically what the point of it all is, only to receive an unexpected answer that was just what the doctor ordered. There is nothing like teenage boys making up, all grunts and limp handshakes.

It's not just about the four chaps though is it? It's about their hormonal hunt for women. And it's the women, the group of four girls that are the object of the boys' affections, that did irritate me a little. Not that there is anything wrong with their performances, Laura Haddock, Tamla Kari, Jessica Knappet and  Lydia Rose Bewley all doing a decent job, but what doesn't work is that they are all clearly out of the chaps' league. There is just no reason why the girls would be susceptible to the advances, particularly when all the boys do is offend or act like the chocolate teapots that they are. I know that The Inbetweeners isn't completely grounded in reality, but the girls are completely out of sync with the caricatures that the majority of the characters are.

Despite all of that, come the end of the film when everyone lives happily ever after, that is all forgotten and I was completely sold on the lessons that the boys had learnt, which I think is down to the brilliance of the creations of Will, Simon, Jay and Neil. There is a history there, 3 series before the film, we know those characters and we've been through a lot with them, it's that affection that carries the film through the occasional stretches without any chuckles and had me forgiving any misjudgments.

It's not perfect, but it's yet another great look into the trials and tribulations of being a teenage boy in the world of fishbowls, boat parties and sex on the beach. It's nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be, in fact it was far better than I feared, with a very unexpected sensitiveness to it. Traces of a couple of very tiny, barely noticeable, tears were not what I was anticipating.