Men, Women and Children (16) * - Esther McCarthy
Director Jason Reitman has a pretty good strike rate when it comes to grown-up drama, which makes this awful misfire all the more baffling.
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MEN, WOMEN and Children should be renamed First World Problems, such is the navel-gazing, self-obsessed nature of the modern dilemmas it attempts to tackle.
It's a real surprise to see Reitman, who's brought us such fine dramas as the underrated Young Adult, as well as past awards-season favourites like Juno and Up in the Air.
While the movie sets out to be an earnest look at how modern-day technologies like the internet and mobile phones have changed the way we interact with each other, little feels real or true about the dramas we encounter here.
And quite frankly, there are few more boring things you could watch on a cinema screen that characters e-mailing and texting each other, which is what happens ad nauseum in this instance.
The Fault in Our Stars’s Ansel Elgort plays Tim, a shy boy who spends too much time playing video games and has a crush on Brandy. Her hyper protective mother (a very one-note Jennifer Garner) monitors her daughter’s online and phone activity in the belief the internet is evil.
Meanwhile, an unhappily married couple (Adam Sandler and Rosemarie DeWitt) are using various online methods to cheat on each other.
There are other story threads to underline Reitman’s apparent message that the internet is the root of all that is wrong with society, sidestepping the truth that people have always lied to and deceived each other.
It’s a dour, nagging film that for all its good intentions, has nothing new to say.
The Penguins of Madagascar (G) **** Esther McCarthy
A spin-off comes to the big screen to delightful effect as those bold penguins from the Madagascar series get their own movie. Thanks to a great script and some imaginative animation this works a treat.
The movie opens with a cute - but not too saccharine - origins story in which Skipper, Kowalski and Rico go rogue in their South Pole home, only to find they’ve become disconnected from the rest of the penguin pack.
They have responsibilities, too, in the form of the egg-hatching baby penguin, Private, who they take under their wings.
Doom lurks in the form of the villainous Dr Octavius Brine (voiced with aplomb by John Malkovich). He’s never forgiven them for outdoing him in the cuteness stakes - and forcing him to find another home - when they were both resident in the same city zoo.
He’s determined to destroy our waddling heroes, forcing them to join forces with a slick, mysterious organisation called The North Wind.
Led by the husky-voiced Agent Classified (Benedict Cumberbatch, whose mispronunciation of the word ‘penguin’ throughout just adds to the mayhem) they are an elite band of agents who may just be able to save the penguins from meeting a grizzly end.
There’s a spontaneity to The Penguins of Madagascar, an up-for-it approach from all involved, that makes it the wackiest and funniest animated movie since last spring’s wonderful Lego Movie. Grab a child and go.
