ON CIRCUIT: College Road Trip, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Opera at Cinema Nouveau and Speed Racer.
College Road Trip
Useless ”comedy” in which Martin Lawrence plays a controlling police dad (the clichés practically write themselves in this film) who insists on driving his daughter (Raven-Symoné) off to college, aiming to assess his little girl’s future locale for himself. The slapstick might appeal to younger audiences, but why choose a theme beyond their recognition? Why make this film at all? Why, Martin, why? — WF
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Judd Apatow’s comedies are always watchable and sometimes hilarious, but with this latest to emerge under his aegis I have to admit it is getting harder to defend them against the charge of misogyny. This is basically a vehicle for its writer and leading man Jason Segel, an Apatow repertory player who was in the TV show Freaks and Geeks. He plays Peter, a slackerish and likable if not lovable guy who is dating hot TV star Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell). Sarah dumps him in favour of drawling Brit pop singer Aldous Snow, played by Russell Brand, who is actually the best thing in the film. Deeply upset, Peter goes on holiday to Hawaii, only to find that Sarah and Aldous are staying at the same resort, delirious with non-stop sex. There are some laughs, but not that many, and a weird, nagging undertow of self-pity and resentment of beautiful women making honest guys’ lives a misery. — Peter Bradshaw
Opera at Cinema Nouveau
Starting on June 20, Cinema Nouveau Cedar Square and V&A WAterfront will be showing operas from the New York Metropolitan Opera. (They are digital projections.) The schedule is:
June 20 to 26: Puccini’s La Bohème, starring Angela Gheorghiu
June 27 to July 3: Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, starring Juan Diego Flórez, Peter Mattei and Joyce DiDonato
July 4 to 10: Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, starring Anna Netrebko and Roberto Alagna
July 11 to 17:Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment, a new production starring Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez
July 18-24: Mozart’s The Magic Flute, directed by Julie Taymor
July 25-31: Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, starring Karita Mattila
Speed Racer
After the debacle of the Matrix trilogy (in the final third of which the directors’ reputations declined exponentially, like a batting collapse in English cricket), the Wachowski brothers are back. But their minds are more frazzled than ever. This deafeningly loud and flashy film is the feature-length version of a Japanese anime series about a super-fast racecar driver called Speed Racer. That is: his first name is Speed and his surname is Racer; Speed is what Mr and Mrs Racer named him. His elder brother’s first name is merely Rex, which appears to indicate that his parents believed that racing was the younger sibling’s destiny. — PB