![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Movie of the Week: Gambit
Nov. 22nd, 2012 06:18 pmScripted, if not directed by, the Coen brothers, so my expectations were high-ish, however by the time I got to the end of this movie I honestly didn't have much of an opinion about it either way. Had I enjoyed it? Well, sort of...
Amusing, yes; sweet, yes, but somehow slightly disappointing. I will say that the audience was laughing out loud, however, so it might just have been me. This movie has everything going for it, on paper - Colin Firth and Alan Rickman to name but two. It's an old fashioned comedy with an overabundance of trouser, piddle and fart gags with a few punch-outs on the side. If this had been 1960s I'd have been looking for Sid James and Hattie Jacques because in many ways this was just short of being a more PC version of a Carry On movie. All it needed was a custard pie fight.
Not that I mind Carry On movies. They were a product of their time. And to be fair you know Colin Firth loses his trousers - it's on both the poster and the trailer.
There was nothing wrong with any of the performances. Firth's character was slightly uncomfortably inept, Rickman's somewhat OTT - nothing unusual there, then. I'm not sure why this doesn't quite hit the mark... but.... It's like eating a main meal of meringue. Tasty but insubstantial. It needs a layer of meat and potatoes to give it a bit more heart. Colin Firth and Cameron Diaz have next to no on-screen chemistry. To continue the Carry On analogy, she's Barbara Windsor without the sympathetic cheekiness. I've liked Diaz in some things, 'Knight and Day', for example, though it will take a long time to get rid of the taste of 'Bad Teacher' out of my throat.
The plot works, however, and I did like the twist ending which was flagged up at the beginning when I come to think of it, only I missed it.
Special mention to Tom Courtenay as the Major, the narrator of the movie and its saviour in more ways than one. I'd also give a special mention to the actors who played the Savoy hotel clerks, however imdb doesn't list them - which is a pity.
And speaking of imdb - unfortunately the imdb blurb gives away the twist if you read it carefully (luckily I hadn't read it first).
Amusing, yes; sweet, yes, but somehow slightly disappointing. I will say that the audience was laughing out loud, however, so it might just have been me. This movie has everything going for it, on paper - Colin Firth and Alan Rickman to name but two. It's an old fashioned comedy with an overabundance of trouser, piddle and fart gags with a few punch-outs on the side. If this had been 1960s I'd have been looking for Sid James and Hattie Jacques because in many ways this was just short of being a more PC version of a Carry On movie. All it needed was a custard pie fight.
Not that I mind Carry On movies. They were a product of their time. And to be fair you know Colin Firth loses his trousers - it's on both the poster and the trailer.
There was nothing wrong with any of the performances. Firth's character was slightly uncomfortably inept, Rickman's somewhat OTT - nothing unusual there, then. I'm not sure why this doesn't quite hit the mark... but.... It's like eating a main meal of meringue. Tasty but insubstantial. It needs a layer of meat and potatoes to give it a bit more heart. Colin Firth and Cameron Diaz have next to no on-screen chemistry. To continue the Carry On analogy, she's Barbara Windsor without the sympathetic cheekiness. I've liked Diaz in some things, 'Knight and Day', for example, though it will take a long time to get rid of the taste of 'Bad Teacher' out of my throat.
The plot works, however, and I did like the twist ending which was flagged up at the beginning when I come to think of it, only I missed it.
Special mention to Tom Courtenay as the Major, the narrator of the movie and its saviour in more ways than one. I'd also give a special mention to the actors who played the Savoy hotel clerks, however imdb doesn't list them - which is a pity.
And speaking of imdb - unfortunately the imdb blurb gives away the twist if you read it carefully (luckily I hadn't read it first).
