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Member's Reviews

The Wild, a review by Rich




Title: The Wild

Runtime:78
Certificate:U
Year:2006
Genres:Animation, Adventure

Plot:Get ready for an amazing family adventure you'll never forget. Disney uncages the laughs in the hip and hilarious comedy The Wild.
When a funny band of furry friends escape from the city zoo, they discover that New York city is the biggest, craziest jungle of all. Bursting with bonus features, including a hysterical bloopers and blunders reel, deleted scenes and more, The Wild is ferocious fun for audiences of all ages.
My Review:
Mildly amusing animated feature, very clever in its use of cutesy animal characters, but done before and since by the likes of ice age, madagascar and lion king, and bettered several times.
It lacks the pacy script, the 'adult' and kids jokes, but does score highly on the grahics side.
More suited for the younger child I think.
My Rating
 :D



(From Riches Random Reviews on January 9th, 2010)

Member's Reviews

Run Lola Run, a review by Jon


Run Lola Run
2 out of 5



Time is running out for Lola. She's just received a frantic phone call from her boyfriend Manni, who's lost a small fortune in cash belonging to his Mob boss. Now, she has to run for his life, to try and come up with the money before Manni pays the ultimate price for his mistake.

I remember this film being a lot of fun and it still is, but bloody hell it’s dated. It seems to get taken rather seriously too, which I don’t quite understand. It’s a childish premise, stretched way past breaking point and has a very strange moral centre.

The plot is simply Lola (Franke Potente) getting a call from her drug-dealing, mobster wannabe boyfriend. He’s been a prat and left 100,000 marks on a subway and a tramp has taken it. He will soon be killed by his mobster boss if he can’t replace it. So, Lola has 20 minutes to find the money (her banker father is the obvious choice) and get to Manni before he makes a foolhardy attempt to hold up the local supermarket. The sequence repeats three times, complete with flashy animation inserts, a thumping soundtrack and incidental musings on life as Lola tries different routes to the solution. Groundhog Day, basically.

So it has this philosophical view of life and death, and how fate works and how we do the right thing at the right time. Or something. Now it’s still much better than the similar pretentious sequence in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but my problems with it are thus:

Manni is a petty criminal who wants to be a proper criminal when he grows up. The money is from a drug deal. His first thought for a solution is to rob a supermarket. Because he has a gun and he’s a criminal. Am I being thick or something, but why the hell am I supposed to sympathise with his situation? It seems morally at odds with this fancy Buddhist notion of little things affecting big things and Lola’s Zen like ability to rewind time, narratively speaking (and later, save a heart attack victim by holding his hand). Letting Manni get killed and seeing how Lola handles it, with her sense of fate and reason for living, would have been much more interesting.

I might sound two-faced, after all some of the best films are about anti-heroes with questionable ethics, but the character is written as being an affable, misguided young chap, whom Lola loves beyond anything. And the film makes no effort to show him the error of his ways. No redemption. This is not Bonnie and Clyde or even Pumpkin and Honey Bunny from Pulp Fiction, which allowed them to succeed with irony.

The other problem I have, is that when Lola finally does succeed (sorry, should that be a spoiler?), what the hell did she actually do? The plot is self-serving. The only reason the first two attempts don’t work is because of her. In the end, the only thing she really does is the heart attack guy. And what’s with all the damn screaming to break glass? It’s all flash and no thunder.

Then again, while it is flashy and self-serving to point of being pointless, it’s very well done and cinematic, especially in how the heroine looks so wild and forms a natural contrast, almost like a costumed super-hero. The soundtrack is likeable if you like that sort of thing, the actors are very good and it’s concisely well-written with some nice banter. The absolute ace is Potente. Her look is striking, though strangely attractive and her delivery is excellent.

Whether it is actually any good, despite being watchable, depends entirely on your own take. I thought it was over-done bollocks.

(From Jon's Alphabet Marathon 2010 on July 17th, 2010)

Member's TV Reviews

Angel Marathon, a review by addicted2dvd


Angel: Season 1

7. Bachelor Party
Original Air Date: 11/16/1999


Guest Stars:
Kristin Dattilo
Carlos Jacott
Ted Kairys
Chris Tallman

My Thoughts:
A good episode... we find out a bit about Doyle's past in this one. Cordelia is really starting to like Doyle by now. But at this point she still don't know he is part demon. At the very end of this episode Doyle has a vision about Buffy... so this must be the prelude to the first time Angel goes back to Buffy for an episode.

My Rating:

(From Angel Marathon on February 24th, 2010)