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Arthur

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Paul

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It’s a rare breed of moviegoer who count Russell Brand as anything but vaguely insufferable, and even they’re likely to conclude his acting lies some way south of ‘accomplished’. If anything, he is best understood as a purely accidental star. Even then, a remake of ‘Arthur’ seems like an unusually foolhardy venture; Brand is resolutely not Dudley Moore, and yet still he must try. But if you’ve ever dreamt of your hands at his throat, then the film’s surprising humility and dry wit may at least loosen the grip enough that you might both get something from it.

When Arthur works, it’s because of strong casting and a mischievous sense of fun. Brand, whose Wildeian theatrics come at the expense of nuance, was clearly conscious of the legacy entrusted to him. In choosing to acknowledge but not ape Moore’s particular style, he is instead free to direct his energies towards a drier, more cautious performance than you might expect. I watched a tender moment of boyish adoration between Arthur and his long-suffering nanny (Helen Mirren), and wondered where exactly *this* guy had been hiding the whole time.

For the uninitiated, Arthur is an infantilised playboy and heir to a billion dollar fortune. His mother Vivienne, having grown tired of her son’s litany of public embarrassments, offers him a choice: either marry his ambitious, shareholder-approved ex-girlfriend Susan (Jennifer Garner), or continue on and be exiled from a substantial inheritance. The eternal temptations of money over love are a quandary Arthur is least qualified to consider, owing to a life of staggering opulence far removed from any reality you or I might recognise. A different screenplay may well have cast him as a male model, perhaps one who forlornly considers his empty existence to the strains of ‘I Started a Joke’.

As is often the case, Helen Mirren is the best thing about a middling film. The 1981 original saw Hobson characterised by a stuffy John Gielgud performance that took ‘reserved’ as the outlier amongst already conservative direction notes. By comparison, Mirren is far more trill and mothering, with a withering scorn that provides many of the film’s best moments. An opening tracking shot follows her as she picks over last night’s discarded lingerie and spent champagne bottles to arrive at Arthur’s bedroom door. “Points for knowing her name and saying it with confidence” she hums, escorting his latest conquest out. “Now wash your winky thoroughly; you never know what exotic wildlife that girl was harbouring between her thighs”.

If Hobson fulfils his parentage, then Naomi occupies the role of love interest. Behind an understated glamour that spells ‘cinematic second fiddle’, lies a quirky spirit whose forbidden tours of Grand Central set Arthur’s heart a-flutter, inspiring him to woo the effervescent blonde with outlandish gestures only money and a kind heart can buy. Certainly, if she’d hoped to maintain an air of detached consideration, then plying her with gymnastics, fine dining and candy bricks in a privately-hired New York landmark would hardly seem to be playing fair.

Gretta Gerwig is good in everything; she just has that intrinsic quality. In his own review, Roger Ebert was taken to compare her to Amy Adams, and it’s true they share a natural glow that illuminates even dull work. Despite a winning performance in last year’s Greenberg, Gerwig remains an unexposed talent who will likely remain as such just as long as she’s relegated to The Girlfriend. As it is, her spirited Naomi intertwines handsomely with Hobson and Arthur to ground the film in charmed relationships that delight where other characters – Susan, Vivienne – barely escape the shackles of their matriarchal scheming.

I don’t suppose Arthur is likely to win over entrenched fans of the original, but it has delights of its own. Even if it’s not particular funny, there is an underlying charm to proceedings, and as a twisted romance between a boy and his nanny, it kinda works. Granted, Russell Brand wasn’t the obvious choice to replace Dudley Moore, but he’s the right one for the film he finds himself in: an initially self-conscious affair that finds its footing by revelling in work that belatedly threatens – if not succeeds – to step out of Moore’s long shadow and begin anew.

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Cedar Rapids

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Paul

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Though any number of words might come to mind while watching Cedar Rapids, ‘exhilarating’ is unlikely to be among the first. Slight and inconsequential, perhaps. Gentle, even. A great many films have woven those qualities into thrilling narratives, but Cedar Rapids isn’t one of them.

Tim Lippe is what critics like to call ‘small town’, which is as fitting a description as any. He possesses laudable characteristics – being honest and kind – none of which resonant on a dramatic level. Occasionally there are moments that work. One scene has Tim laying next to divorcee Macy (Sigourney Weaver), whom he meets for a once-a-week bedroom rendezvous. She used to be his teacher. When he excitedly pulls out a promise ring and asks if she once lusted after him as he did her, she deadpans “Well, you were 12″.

Working in insurance is what people like Lippe do in films like this, although finding the motivation to get him to a convention in Cedar Rapids takes a bit of invention. Once there, the writers pin their hopes on this bundle of guileless geniality doing the rest, and to a point he does. The problem is that Tim’s adventures are about as exciting as you’d imagine possible at an insurance conference, and not a smidge more. For all the charmed innocence that sets up a great moment of roommate discovery – “There’s an African American man standing in my room. He’s smiling at me” – there’s the inescapable sense of watching these pleasantries coming from a character type more than an embodiment of anything tangible.

With two in the bed, as it were, Dean Ziegler arrives to roll his roomies right over. Ziegler is John C. Reilly channelling Will Ferrell as an overgrown clown whose role is clearly defined, allowing Reilly to serve it without threatening a fresh take on the old standard. The inspiration for Cedar Rapids lies somewhere between Fargo and The Hangover, and the three ramshackle roommates set out on a diminutive adventure befitting that heritage: unfortunate entanglements – romantic or otherwise – lead to team bonding, a mission to right corporate wrongs on an unsatisfying path to growth, and rural drug busts with wanton prostitutes. If you want a summation of the experience, taking ‘derivative’ and ‘tepid’ as your starting points won’t lead you far wrong.

A good cast has assembled here to do mediocre work. Lippe is informed by Ed Helms having played a similar straight-arrow for 7 years in The Office, and Reilly is equally well-acquainted with his guffawing loon (as in 2008′s Step Brothers). Anne Heche shares some nice scenes with Tim, and the palpable sadness behind their flirtations promise more tenderness than the film is ready to allow them. Amongst a cast of veterans spinning their wheels, Isiah Whitlock Jr stands apart. He breaks from type in kindness and a series of overt, playful references to The Wire that sprinkle a delightful garnish on his real-life Cleveland Brown. Whether the straight guy or the fall guy, whatever the film needed considerably more of, Whitlock had it to spare.

Even so, very little about Cedar Rapids inspires commentary much beyond “meh”. I can’t even damn the film with the faint praise of having tried hard, because it doesn’t do that either: it’s as mild-mannered as its star, and passes the time without incident to recall. There are occasional jokes and consistent performances, but the two rarely come together in any satisfying way, with the familiar plot seeming far too laboured for a movie as brief as this. More the poorer half to Mike Judge’s Extract than a continuation of the Apatow raunch-a-thon, Cedar Rapids defines mediocre, with neither the pace nor voice to transcend dullness masquerading as existential angst.

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Duke Nukem Forever

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Paul

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It’s humbling to consider just what has been achieved since 1997. Every Half-Life game, sequel, spinoff and modification was released in those 14 years, while Grand Theft Auto became a cultural phenomenon that sold nearly 100 million copies. Apple burgeoned into a technological giant whose marketable innovations have touched nearly all our lives. Great men and women have sent probes billions of miles into space. We’ve explored Mars and travelled the depths of the Earth’s oceans to find remarkable new life. Almost the entire internet as we know it has come into being, with 2 billion people joining together in a shared consciousness utterly without parallel across the breadth of human history. That is the dizzying, awe-inspiring scale of human accomplishment that has taken place in the time 3D Realms were making Duke Nukem Forever.

If ever there was a lesson in how not to ship a game, Duke Nukem Forever would be it. It has become more than just another delayed sequel, forming instead a cultural meme around which entire communities have formed. Fans and detractors alike watched as release dates came and went, with only occasional word from 3D Realms’ George Broussard to assure the faithful it even existed. When the game was cancelled in the spring of 2009, the response was muted; ambivalent even, as though it were not an actual game that had been cancelled, but merely the idea of one. After the bitter legal wranglings that followed, came the surprise announcement that Gearbox Software had taken over development of the great unshippable product of our time. If you asked them why, they’d tell you of their reverence for a great gaming icon, how they felt duty bound to give him the send off he was owed.

In June 2011, Duke Nukem Forever was finally released.

You can’t spend 14 years developing something and not have people begin to expect the extraordinary. On that basis, Duke was always destined for failure. There was really nothing 3D Realms or Gearbox could have delivered that would have even begun to account for all the years wasted and the millions spent. Having waited for so long, it seems almost a cruel letdown to talk of it aspiring simply to be an accomplished first person shooter, as though it were duty bound to transcend genre in the way the similarly delayed Shenmue had several years before. Simply put, Duke Nukem remains as it ever was: a fun, inventive shooter that should be judged as such.

Still it fails.

Given an opening montage that sets its hero against a backdrop of violence, shotguns, women and destruction, it’s clear that Duke Nukem Forever is strictly business as usual. The nonsensical plot makes but a fleeting appearance, detailing a planet once more under attack, with the President facilitating a plot to abduct our most generously proportioned women in the name of Chamberlain-style diplomacy. In every possible way, DNF is very much of its time, which is to say 1997. Neither your enemies nor the ubiquitous ham-fisted satire would seem out of place in its predecessor, and even the TVs are manufactured by Boobtube; broadcasting a mix of news and pornography in keeping with a meta-opening that rewards the destruction of a stadium with identical twins going down on you. Blimey.

When the enemies of old come, they do so without brains or anything you might mistake for tactical nous, as susceptible as ever to the forgotten art of indiscriminate firepower. Falling back on established set-pieces is common, in encounters that see you repelling wave after wave of PigCops in combat lacking even the rudimentary inventiveness of Bulletstorm, let alone anything more inspired. Having considerably more in common with Serious Sam than it does Mass Effect, Duke feels wholly retrograde, dropping us into a bravado-fuelled romp reminiscent of some barely passable game from the 90s that we inextricably continued to champion long past the point of irrelevancy. I forget the name.

In such circumstances, it’s helpful that the expectedly ludicrous arsenal is present and correct. Your starter pistol might have been your dependable weapon of choice, except for how much more fun it is to shatter frozen enemies with the heel of your boot. Likewise, a rapid-fire rocket launcher is a great go-to right up until you exchange it for your first novelty Shrink Ray. They’re all satisfying in their own way; even the garden-variety shotgun packs a satisfying enough punch that you’ll be loathe to part with it, which is a shame seeing as your inventory restricts you to just 2 rifles and a stash of steroids: an odd choice for a game whose trump card is the very excess a stunted inventory curtails.

The proving grounds for those weapons are environments as varied as their development was disjointed. There are stops at casinos and burger joints on the way to rescuing the fair maidens of ‘Duke Dome’, an outlandish American Football pilgrimage to Duke’s muscle-bound brand of chivalry. A succession of ghost towns and abandoned highways lay further afield, before you arrive at an embattled Hoover Dam foreshadowing a painful development: Xen. Yes, it’s back. The looming symbol on the Colorado River fades away as an alien organism encroaches on the walls of the dam, guiding you down into an indescribably joyless succession of alien sphincter portals in a jump-pad infused recreation of Half-Life’s biggest mistake that manages to be twice as long and even more maddeningly obtuse.

Topside, the horror is compounded by 3D Realms insistence on transforming Duke into a platformer on a micro scale, with one level tasking you to traverse a flooded kitchen by way of conveniently placed utensils and crates to rescue a fast food maiden from the certain fate of being trapped in this ratmaze shitbox forever. There are good natured jabs at Valve and Gears of War along the way, but it all seems pretty toothless when you consider the re-heated 1990s gimmicks that 3D Realms bother to serve up. Rest assured, if you ever find yourself nostalgic for Sin Deathmatch, I can only recommend you leave it as a fond memory.

Not that it’s all bad. Remember the dream sequences from Max Payne? Well, Duke has its own version, except that instead of being haunted by the death of his daughter, Duke just has to ransack a titty bar of his own creation in search of popcorn, vibrators and condoms; the last being perhaps the game’s only concession to the passage of time, the securing of which reminded me of those oddly addictive dating sims I haven’t played on the internet. Promisingly, the game’s much vaulted claims of interactivity – until then limited to scrawling crude dickerdoodles on every available whiteboard – are finally realised in an array of twinkling distractions, with everything from fully functioning poker machines to air hockey matches helping wile away the hours until your next condescending, are-we-really-still-doing-this lap dance.

Things gets even better when Duke Nukem goes vehicular. A collapsing Vegas casino sees you throw around in a little RC car that could, tearing it up over impossible leaps across the gaming floor and out into the buffed foyer. Later, the bright lights of Las Vegas open into miles of desert as you hop into a full-size version to hoot around play chickening with the locals. It’s all pretty reckless and life affirming, and while careering around the Hoover Dam in a forklift might seem silly – and it is – it’s also a unique pleasure made possible by the insanity inherent to the Duke Nukem universe at its best.

Such joyful anarchy doesn’t last long, of course: the monotony of old just has to be served once more in a laborious march towards barely iterated objectives that adhere rigidly to the Keycard here, Battery there gameplay of 1995. Even some of the basics are a chore: every five minutes or so, your unbuttoned harem of suck-and-vacs gasp in breathless wonder as you hammer the space bar to open every single door, nut and gate in the joint. TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP. Oh hey, maybe I need to loosen that valv-TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP. Given the surprising prevalence of puzzles to solve, it’s something of a chor-TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP.

More than a reasonable set of controls, what the game lacks are the kinds of destructible environments that could have leveraged Duke’s knuckleheaded physicality for more innovative gameplay. You’d like to think that all those years of development would have explored the strategy of collapsable scenary in lively arenas, instead of what is resolutely a static, featureless corridor shooter that brings nothing new to the conversation and simultaneously manages to fuck up some of the old stuff. And even then, there’s half a chance that this kind of brainless spectacle might still have worked in episodic form, but that too is denied us: like everything else they do here, when confronted with a choice 3D Realms step back to the safety of the familiar, relying on a full-length format that their dated gameplay just can’t sustain.

Of all the things I felt when playing the Duke Nukem, perhaps the strongest was simply a desire for it to be over. I’m not above getting some puerile kick from giving an exploding mothership the finger, but strip away the incessant bravado and pseudo machismo, and there’s nothing left. This is a feature-length Mutant Bash TV at nearly 20x the cost and half the engineering wonder, and I can’t describe just how much of an incalculable waste of resources it feels, or how difficult it is for me to accept that so much time has been spent achieving so little.

Credit must go to Gearbox for recognising that a game of such middling ambition needn’t spend another decade in development hell, committing all its resources to finally dragging this rotting husk over the line. Sometimes, as if by chance, it’s almost good enough to warrant that effort: in those all too rare freewheeling driving sections, or your lucid adventures in the strip club. The weapons that place value in variety, and an ending which hails nukes down on a final encounter that succeeds by sheer force of will if nothing else; concluded by a single key stroke action that, if juvenile in the extreme, is all the more fitting for it.

Yet no matter what positive impact Gearbox and fellow developers Triptych Games had on Duke Nukem Forever, the package as a whole doesn’t amount to much more than we saw in the infamous 1999 E3 trailer that became our reference point for over a decade. How little has been accomplished since then is as astounding as it is depressing: programmers and artists wasted on a cultural relic embarrassingly out of step with the prevailing winds of gaming and society as a whole. 14 years of failure have culminated in the greatest failure of all, and I can only say that I’m glad the game has finally seen the light of day. Not as proof that 3D Realms weren’t wasted their time after all, but that they were; this is their legacy now, a final puncturing of the pervasive myth that Duke Nukem was worth pursuing in the first place.

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