Something 4 The Weekend by
Welcome ladies, gentlemen and film
fans everywhere to entertainment manchester's weekly
feature 'Something for the Weekend'. If, as
Forrest Gump once might have said were he a film fan,
cinema really is like a box of chocolates, then think
of us as your mini-menu, steering you away from the
coffee creams and towards the Turkish delights of the
movie world.
It's half-term time again, so that can only mean one thing: kids’ films. Hurrah. Or rather not, because most of this week’s offerings are utterly baffling, even to young hipsters such as ourselves. The first is the rather curiously named The Last Mimzy. Despite reading the website, we still have no idea at all what exactly a mimzy is, never mind why there’s only one of them left, but it appears to be an integral part of the film's plot, which has already been compared favourably to E.T.
Based on the 1943 short story by Lewis Padegtt, the film follows two children as they stumble across a mysterious box containing items which they believe to be toys. However, when they start playing with them, they gain mystical powers and are turned into super-geniuses who become the saviours of some kind of intergalactic species. These, we think, are the mimizys of which the title speaks, but we really can’t be sure, seeing as they sound like a cross between a Philip K Dick novel and a Martha Stewart recipe, and that’s a combination far too terrifying to comprehend for a kids’ film.
Still, the kiddie sci-fi action doesn't stop there as Disney release their latest affront to our collective childhoods with Meet The Robinsons. Despite having a cool retro-future aesthetic and those frogs that have been telling you to shut the hell up in the cinema for the last few months, the film hardly sounds like the thing that's going to get the Mouse House’s ailing fortunes back on track.
Based on the book A Day with Wilbur Robinson by William Joyce, it focuses on Lewis, a brilliant young inventor who creates a memory scanning machine in a bid to find his long lost birth mother. However, before he has the chance to use it, it’s stolen by the evil Bowler Hat Guy (that's his real name, not just us not knowing what the hell is going on). Dejected, Lewis encounters a mysterious stranger named Wilbur Robertson, who helps him track down the behatted villain with a time machine.
Again, we cannot stress enough that this is an actual film and not just us making stuff up. Thankfully a much less confusing kids film is also released this week in the nice, simple shape of Mr Bean's Holiday. No Mimzys or bowler-hatted men here, just Rowan Atkinson gurning his way around Europe and eventually shambling towards the Cannes Film Festival. Wait, why the Cannes Film Festival? What on earth has Mr Bean got to do with the Cannes Film Festival? Also, if he’s so stupid, how can he drive a car? Or pay the mortgage? Or get a job? Sigh…
Thankfully, if none of that tickles your pickle then you can go for something altogether less family oriented and far more straightforward with The Hills Have Eyes II. As fans of the 1977 Wes Craven original, we felt Alexandre Aja's 2006 remake was entirely unnecessary, but faithful thanks to its director's love of 70s horror. Sadly, Aja has now jumped ship leaving a typically terrible sounding sequel which concentrates on a bunch of scantily clad teenagers, rather than the family unit. Wes Craven scripts with his son, so it could be worth a look seeing as he is one of the few horror filmmakers still around who can add a sense of morality to the violence. But we’re really not expecting too much.
Finally, there's foreign fare in the shape of Days of Glory, a French drama set at the height of the Second World War in which four African men join the French army in a bid to free the country from the occupying Nazis. That should keep the kiddies pleased...
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