ON CIRCUIT: Arthur and the Invisibles, The Bucket List, Gone Baby Gone and more.
Arthur and the Invisibles
It’s ‘Honey I shrunk the kid and now he’s one of those tiny freakish troll-toy things” in this mildly amusing children’s fantasy romp from director Luc Besson, who wrote the book of the same name. Arthur (Freddie Highmore) must travel to the land of the Minimoys, a diminutive African tribe living in his back garden, and recover a buried treasure in order to save his grandmother’s (Mia Farrow) home. Story elements and many of the gags are lifted from other popular fantasy stories such as the Shrek series and Harry Potter, making this an unoriginal offering. That being said, it does not take itself too seriously and, at just over 90 minutes, it won’t hurt you to sit and engage in some escapism with your little ones. — Warren Foster
The Bucket List
Watchable dramedy about two terminally ill men (Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) who make up a list and set off to do the things they always wanted to before they kick the bucket. There is nothing terribly original about the premise, conclusion and the tragedy-of-not-living-life-to-the-fullest moral of the story. But the film has two saving graces. First (and most noteworthy) are the performances of Nicholson and Freeman who play wonderfully off each other as the uninhibited and dying odd couple. The second is that the humour is vested in sharp, witty dialogue that is neither contrived nor insulting to the viewer’s intelligence. — WF
Gone Baby Gone
Despite his movie career stumbling, Ben Affleck has obviously retained enough goodwill to be able to direct this big, earnest feature, and to put his younger brother in the lead. Casey Affleck is in fact the weak point here: he’s too young and fresh-faced for a role that demands some world-weary gravitas. He compensates by looking very serious throughout. Michele Monaghan as his girlfriend and sidekick does a bit better, but the well-depicted working-class context and the supporting cast (including a blisteringly good Ed Harris) are doing most of the work. A child is kidnapped and a massive manhunt ensues. Investigators Patrick and Angie (Affleck and Monaghan) get drawn into the toils of this search and all its attendant emotion; about halfway, the film digresses into another case before returning to the central issue, then dissipates its hard-won sense of gritty realism by over-complicating the plot. — Shaun de Waal
Good Luck Chuck
Charlie Logan (Dane Cook) enjoys an extremely active sex life, courtesy of a hex placed on him by a jilted childhood crush — women who sleep with him unerringly meet the love of their life in the next man they date. This backfires, though, when Chuck himself falls for Cam Wexler (Jessica Alba) and must now parry her sexual advances lest he lose her forever. It’s a stale(r) version of Shallow Hal, employing everything from gross-out humour to scenes of attempted rape and Clouseauesque slapstick in trying to elicit a laugh. Cook, a popular stand-up comedian, manages to produce a smile or two in his murmured one-liners, but that’s about all there is to the film. Oh, and Alba looks pretty, which, one assumes, is what she’s there for. — WF
Talk to Me
Don Cheadle gives an entertaining performance in this moderate biopic of Petey Greene, the ex-convict turned radio talk-show host, whose motormouth style at the mic blasted the white man’s hypocrisy about civil rights in 1960s Washington. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Dewey Hughes, his manager, and Martin Sheen is the embattled president of the studio who can’t handle Greene’s radical energy. The movie is decent enough, but contains Greene’s story in a sentimentalised career arc. Still, Cheadle and Ejiofor are watchable. — Peter Bradshaw