Film: Tristan + Isolde

Tristan + Isolde is the story of young lovers torn apart by the cruel fate of living in a world divided by history, politics and geography. The details of the forces keeping them apart don't really matter: all you need to know is that the stars have conspired against them, and their love can never be. It's clear from the start - fate has pulled them together, and fate will tear them apart.

All that matters is whether you can give yourself over to the star-crossed romance. Can you engage with a tale of a forlorn young man who washes up on an Irish shore in a funeral boat - a funeral boat his friends and step-parents put him in after believing him killed in battle? Can you believe that he'd be found by a beautiful princess, who would tend to his injuries and rapidly fall in love with him? Can you feel their hearts breaking more and more as time goes by, as circumstance after circumstance attempts to destroy their fatalistic bond?

The answer will probably be yes. Only the cynic or the genuine unromantic would have trouble letting themselves go in Tristan + Isolde.

You may well find fault with an unsurprisingly bombastic musical score, or the occasional bout of self-conscious histrionics from the leads, or perhaps the heavy-handed direction of Kevin Reynolds (no stranger to heavy-handed ye olde times movies, having helmed Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, Rapa Nui and The Count Of Monte Cristo). But the faults are a predictable - and perhaps unavoidable - by-product of a film dedicated to doomed young love. (Can you think of a film about doomed young love that doesn't involve self-conscious histrionics from the leads?).

Tristan, played by James Franco - a man who was cast in a James Dean biopic for very obvious reasons - is everything an audience could want: he's lovestruck, romantic, doe-eyed and spends a fair chunk of the film walking about with no shirt on. Sophia Myles, as Isolde, delivers a fine performance that is very nearly overwhelmed by her stunning good looks. Rufus Sewell - as the king Isolde is eventually set to wed, and Tristan's step-father - is in seriously good form, looking betrayed, defiant, loyal and, most impressively, genuinely in love.

You should know what to expect from Tristan + Isolde. If you're imagining sweeping shots of lush, green countryside, you're on the right track. There are the obligatory spurts of violence - this was the olden days, and those days were all about lopping someone's hand off in the name of your king. There are the scenes of merryment in the village, in which lots of people wearing hessian sacks drink mead from giant mugs and do jigs. It's all par for the course, and the film would feel strange without it. This is a film about romance, not film-making. And it delivers the romance.

Tristan + Isolde is out now.

(Originally published at Rouser).

Film: The Pink Panther.

For the most part, The Pink Panther isn't funny. Which is a desperate shame, because that's absolutely all director Shawn Levy seems to have aspired to; never mind Kevin Kline using two very different accents, forget about the half-baked plot, think not of the lack of chemistry between actors. As long as the film is funny, Levy might have figured, the punters won't care about the little things. And he's right. Comedies don't have to aspire to much to be brilliant. They just have to be funny.

But when you have a silly plot, dodgy accents and actors who look like they'd rather not be there, you better hope to the gods of comedy that you've got some laughs somewhere in the celluloid. A drama can get past a poor plot with a fine script or some brilliant performances. A horror movie can usually get by with a spooky soundtrack and some clever editing. But if a comedy doesn't click, you've got nothin'. A comedy exists to make people laugh, and so it's easy to forgive some big faults when you're in the throes of a serious belly laugh.

Indeed, when The Pink Panther is funny, it's easy to forget about the things so clearly wrong with the film. When a cyclist is hit in the head, through the incompentence of Steve Martin's Inspector Clouseau, the cyclist falls from his bike on to a fruit stand, and the fruit stand inexplicably explodes. It's the highlight of the film: a genuine act of surreal comedy, the kind of serious weirdness chronically lacking in a film that can't seem to grasp that audiences are far too smart for generic slapstick.

In the opening scenes of the film, an old woman is accidentally hit in the face and an old man in an electric wheelchair zooms backwards and stacks it over a railing, his terrified screams far more disconcerting than funny. Both incidents are the result of Clouseau's idiocy, of course. Kevin Kline speaks over the footage in a dubious French accent he inexplicably abandons ten minutes into the film, falling into a pompous English accent he has no problem with.

The plot involves a dead soccer coach (a non-speaking role for the typically charismatic Jason Statham), a Russian ex-military trainer, a ludicrously hot and stunningly boring pop singer (Beyoncé Knowles), a secret agent (played by the atypically unsure Clive Owen) and a big diamond. But then, the plot doesn't matter. It's Clouseau we're here to see. He's the source of the hijinks. He's the one we're going on the ride with. In the 1963 original, Peter Sellers' Clouseau wasn't just the main character; he was the film.

Steve Martin isn't quite up to the Peter Sellers standard, but he does have an admirable crack at making the character his own. Martin has a funny accent, a silly moustache and some occasionally funny scenes involving the punching of unsuspecting curtains. But his assistant Ponton (Jean Reno) and his secretary (Emily Mortimer) steal the show, the only real characters in a film jam-packed with uninspiring caricatures. Reno brings a frustrated, concern gravity to a film that desperately needs it to counteract Martin's silliness.

Alas, not even a top-notch cast and inexplicably exploding fruit stands can save The Pink Panther. It's just not very funny.

The Pink Panther is released March 9th.

(Originally published at Rouser).

Life: Drunken Sydney Idiots.

Last year saw thousands of drunken Sydneysiders splashed across frontpages the world over, their collective inebriated retardedness manifested in jingoistic chanting and beachside beatings of innocent young men and women. Yes, the Cronulla riots represented a genuine zenith for the grand old Australian tradition of hitting the piss and acting like a dickhead. The drunken idiot scene looked to be experiencing something of a renaissance, with hordes of angry youngsters coming into a scene desperate for new blood (both figuratively and literally).

But since that terrible December day, many of the up-and-coming drunken idiots of Sydney have been placed in prison – or worse, their mums have grounded them. As a result, the culture of boozing up, screaming at police, taunting people on the streets and throwing half-full bottles of beer at random things has deteriorated rapidly. Many critics are wondering whether this year will be the worst yet for a community already struggling with a variety of problems: cuts to Centrelink payments, increasing education rates and a police crackdown on buffoonery and thuggery – two of the hallmarks of the drunken idiot scene.

And yet, there remain some rogue practioners of this ancient Australian art. Despite decreasing levels of interest from the mainstream, these boozehounding fools still dedicate their Friday and Saturday nights to starting fights and smashing streetlights.

Scott Michaels, 23, a bank clerk from Marrickville, is one of those rogue idiots. Each weekend he can be found at the great pubs of the inner west: the Town Hall Hotel, the Duke in Enmore, the Vic On The Park… or wherever he’s allowed in by unattentive bouncers. ‘The Townie is the toughest to get into,’ he says. ‘Ever since they renovated the place, the bouncers have turned bloody strict. Two weeks ago they wouldn’t let me in ‘cause my eyes were red – just ‘cause I’d smoked a few bloody cones! Fuckwits!’

After being booted from the Town Hall that night, Scott thrilled the crowds of Enmore Rd. as he stumbled home drunk and stoned. He tried to start a fight at the Oporto Chicken carpark, screaming obscenities at some male university students. ‘Why don’t you fuckwits go and get some dogs up ya’?’ was the highlight of the tirade, Scott impressing those listening by instinctively pluralising the classic ‘get a dog up ya’’ lined made famous in David Caesar’s Idiot Box. ‘It just came to me,’ says Scott. ‘I figured there was a few of them there, so I had to say dogs instead of dog. I was just lucky to have worked it out so quickly.’

Later in the evening, Scott was given a warning by local police after he urinated in a council rubbish bin and flashed his testicles to punters outside the Enmore Theatre. (The ‘ball-surprise - as its known in the scene - was first performed by Elmore Glennard in Goulburn in the early 1960s. Glennard had spent some years attempting to invent an amusing use for the zippered fly attached to blue jeans, which were growing in popularity at the time. Glennard also went on to invent the ‘ball-explosion,’ a trick he performed only once due to his immediate death).

Andrew Stewart, 19 and unemployed, is also a proud drunken idiot. ‘I was there at Cronulla,’ he says. ‘You know that footage of that fat cop throwing his stick around at at everyone? I was part of that crowd. I wanted to hit him with a brick… but I couldn’t find one.’ Andrew is considered one of the most proficient drunk, angry young men in the Sutherland Shire. ‘I’m the only cunt who’s ever gotten banned from Sutherland Leagues three times in one night!’

Early February saw him perform what he calls his ‘vom-punch-implosion.’ After drinking fourteen neat bourbons at Mortdale RSL, and biting three female patrons, Andrew was forcibly evicted from the premises. ‘Then I tried to punch the bouncer, but he punched me… and I threw up at the exact moment he punched me.’

So do Scott and Andrew see a future for drunken idiots in Australia? Scott is optimistic: ‘As long as there’re beers on tap, there’ll be trouble. An Australia without drunken fuckwits isn’t an Australia worth living in.’ Andrew has his doubts. ‘I reckon once I get a job I’ll stop drinking as much. Anyway, it seems like a bit of a waste to try anything else after the vom-punch-implosion. But if I can’t get a job… I dunno’, I’ll probably just blame the Muslims and try to start some fights with them.’

(Originally published at Rouser).