The Grenade, by Australian playwright Tony McNamara, has catapulted up the internationally-renowned chart of Fiona’s Favourite MTC plays to be equal number one with Grace. Grace made me weep. The Grenade made me have an embarrassing coughing fit because I was laughing so hard. So in the lesser-known but equally lauded chart of Fiona’s Favourite MTC Comedies, this is an absolute number one.
Political advisor Busby McTavish comes home to his beloved family one night and finds a live grenade on his lounge room floor. Who would do something like this? When you’re in politics, it could be anyone—or perhaps it’s an enemy of his teenage daughter Lola, because all teenagers have enemies. Or is it someone closer to home? Could something like this twist your trust in your family? Busby takes charge, turns his house into a fortress, and watches his family’s every move. And somehow, it’s hilarious.
After all these plays it still takes me a while to warm to seeing people physically in front of me acting and to let myself get involved in the world of theatre after being so used to cinema, where, because it’s onscreen with elaborate sets, you can abandon yourself to that “reality” much easier. But happily this didn’t take long, distracting me with jokes straight away—and the flawless set helped. A rotating stage held four different scenes, some malleable, all perfect, though most of the play was set in the McTavish’s plush lounge room and kitchen. The faultless lighting turned the rooms into night and days so realistic I was almost surprised to find it dark outside when I left. The sound seemed a bit low at the start (or I have been listening to my iPod with the sound up too loud again, a probable alternative), but then became pitch-perfect, with fitting dramatic musical interludes as the set revolved to the next scene. So, top-notch production, meaning that at the end when the actors gesture to the crew of the play I was clapping just as hard.
Garry McDonald surprised me by cutting quite a dashing figure, trim in his nice suits and still looking the same (from the upper level of the Playhouse, anyway) as he did twenty years ago. Busby’s wife, ex-nun Sally, is played with beauty and naive humour along with the fraught panic of a new mother by Belinda Bromilow; Neighbours starlet Eloise Mignon shines as the high-pitched Mensa-genius daughter, openly attempting rebellion. Wheat, the oddity love interest of Lola played by Gig Clarke, gives a persuasive and esoteric performance; Jolyon James channels Fabio as open-minded erotic novelist Randy Savage, commissioned along with romance novelist Sally to write a new genre of novel (“erotomance”, or “romagasm”), and there to upstage Busby in every possible way and send women into a frenzy with just a touch. Genevieve Picot is Busby’s ex-wife Kerry, a woman unafraid of admitting her faults (Busby shouts at her, “You shagged two of my co-workers!” and she says, “You said to mingle!” to which he replies, “I didn’t mean juices!”). Rounding out the cast is Mitchell Butel, as Whitman, McTavish’s energetic and amoral co-worker.
Busby is occasionally a bit of a prick, and has a job that celebrates such a character trait, but ultimately he is redeemed by the adoration he has for his family. Characters like Wheat, who arrives for his first meeting with Lola’s father wearing a balaclava, and Randy, whose heroic acts toe the line of the unlikely, are so bizarre and unrealistic that they veer right back into strangely human. They’re an idiosyncratic bunch, frankly, especially six-month-old Michael, Sally and Busby’s son, whose astonishing exploits have his family convinced that he is a demon.
Look, it’s not as perfect as I’m making it out to be. If there’s one thing I never find funny, it’s men whining about how women never have enough sex with them, a gag that is as painfully overdone in this play as it is in reality. The actually fairly horrific subplot about Busby’s current work situation is handled far too lightly. But on the whole, it was hilarious, and I would completely recommend it. The fact that it’s an Australian script doesn’t hurt either; you can get all choked up with patriotic pride in our abilities as a nation, too. Nowhere else could a joke about Julia Gillard’s tongue ring make any sense.
When I first started this blog, I assumed I’d be writing only about books. After all, books are what I know and sell. Turns out what I apparently most like to talk about, however, are movies, but now that I’ve given myself a stern talking-to regarding cinema prices I will have to limit them. Or, so I tell myself until next Friday when I start to get a hankering for a Frozen Coke and a sweaty ticket box queue. I have read books, but they’ve mostly been okay, not really good enough to get into a flap about or terrible enough for me to enjoy getting my teeth into. Until now, when—as always—it’s a children’s book that reminds me just how excellent those papery things what have words in them can be.
I sat down to read the start of Rebecca Stead’s novel over lunch last Monday (rye bread toast with avocado, tomato, salt and pepper, because I know you’re interested) and put it down briefly when I decided I should do some real work, then decided instead that I should just maybe read a little bit more of the book and snack on some bagel crisps. Well, the crisps were disgusting (damn you Burns & Ricker) but the book made me forget them completely, and I finished it in one fascinated sitting. When You Reach Me tells the story of twelve-year-old Miranda, in sixth grade at a New York City school in 1978. She and her mother live together in an apartment above her oldest friend Sal and his mother Louisa; Miranda’s mother has a great boyfriend called Richard; everything is going fine. Then one day, as they’re walking home from school together, Sal is confronted by another kid and punched squarely in the stomach and the face. Miranda helps him home and is worried, but the incident changes their friendship and Sal will not talk to Miranda. While Miranda tries to figure out why this is happening, and gains some new pals in the ethereal Annemarie and smartass Colin, another, more unexpected storyline is building up—one involving notes left for Miranda with predictions that can only mean one thing. And that is time travel.
I first heard of this book from a co-worker who was explaining it to myself and a customer. It sounded great and she clearly enjoyed reading it, but the time travel aspect threw me off a little. I spent all of high school paying attention in English and reserving all of my staring-moodily-out-of-the-window for science classes, so while I know they didn’t teach time travel in Science (at least not at my high school) I always feel a little out of my depth reading science fiction, even that aimed at people I am old enough to parent. But When You Reach Me handled all discussions of time travel with such a perfect touch that it explained the necessary concepts clearly without ever sounding patronising, bar snippy character Julia who tries, along with wise Marcus, to explain it to a baffled Miranda, but eventually stomps off saying, “I’m glad someone here has a brain.” The time travel is both an important part of the story but it never threatens to overwhelm the reality of being a kid in a world where relationships are difficult, and that is why it is so great. Mira loves her mother but is embarrassed by their home in comparison to her friends’ apartments; she begins to fall in love; she fights with her new pals. She also learns a lot and even when she is angry or in the wrong, she is still a perfectly human heroine who has a good heart. While I haven’t been twelve for a while, reading it took me right back to what conversations and relationships were like when I was the same age. Life could be funny and upsetting and comforting and awful and the most exciting thing in the world. When You Reach Me is a beautiful, funny, read that doesn’t sugarcoat reality, making it more than accessible for older or adult readers while still being wonderful for the upper-primary age group it depicts.
First of all, I have to tell you that before Kick-Ass was released at the cinema, I had bright purple hair and a china doll haircut. I can only assume that Mindy Macready, AKA Hit Girl, was drawn squarely based on me. Alas, that’s where the similarities end. I’m twenty-seven, not eleven, and if I was in a fight I would probably just flail around crying, while Hit Girl would calmly and with a couple of sweary zingers dispatch of everyone in sight. Quite frankly, she is the most awesome thing in cinema. I am just the most awesome thing currently on this couch. (Truth as cat has vacated to the carpet and I only have to vie with two cheap cushions.)
Spider-man should just give up and get walking pout Tobey Maguire to pulp all copies of the DVDs. The Dark Knight should sell all its copies at a dollar each and use the funds to pay for the operation that Christian Bale’s voice box clearly needs. Iron Man can stick around (sequel pending) because it had what Kick-Ass did: great entertainment value. (I’m predicting a good April in the superhero genre.) Kick-Ass was the goriest, most curse-filled superhero movie I’ve seen, and all the better for it—it was different, but still satisfyingly familiar.
Everyteenager Dave hangs out with his two friends in comic book stores and pines after fellow classmate Katie. He wonders aloud why more people don’t become caped crusaders, helping their fellow man when they can—why everyone just turns a blind eye. His friends point out that it’s a dangerous idea, but Dave won’t let go, and after buying some gloves and a scuba-diving outfit online he tries his hand at becoming someone worth admiring.
Unlike She’s Out of My League, this guy’s friends are smart cookies. It is dangerous. An attempt to stop car thieves turns into a bloody and unexpected failure that is compounded when he stumbles into the path of an oncoming car. The end result is the closest to a superpower that any human could have, and with clearly no lessons learned, Dave—now Kick-Ass—takes it upon himself to stick up for the people, this time with a higher pain tolerance. But he’s not the only superhero in town.
Big Daddy is an ex-policeman, bitter and with the priorities of an eleven-year-old. Luckily for him, he has an eleven-year-old, his daughter Mindy (aka Hit Girl) whom he has educated in the ways of superheroicness. Her “homework” consists of comics and movies and the rest of their time is spent in training as they pick their way through drug dealers and criminals to get to the supervillain—well, an everyday villain—Frank D’Amico. D’Amico misinterprets Big Daddy and Hit Girl’s shenanigans as Kick-Ass’ doings, and decides he must be taken down. Enter new superhero/villain/D’Amico son Red Mist, desperate to demonstrate his evil worth while also being generally quite everyday himself.
The casting is fantastic; Aaron Johnson plays Dave, after a stint as John Lennon in Nowhere Boy. His blue eyes will make you come over all weak at the knees when he is otherwise ensconced in his superhero costume, and he plays Dave pitch-perfect as someone who, despite the star power around him, carries the movie by being utterly likable. Nicholas Cage is Big Daddy, and channels Adam West as a loving father who doesn’t see a problem with his daughter laughing, “I’m just fuckin’ with ya, daddy,” in a diner. Hit Girl herself is Chloe Moretz, whip-smart in (500) Days of Summer, and right now cooler than anyone else in film. Frank D’Amico is played by Mark Strong, who also did a fabulous evil turn in Sherlock Holmes, and a kind of lesser, acceptable evil in the underrated gangster flick Rocknrolla. Christopher Mintz-Plasse is Red Mist, doing well with what is surely one of his final roles playing a teenager now that he’s starting to look like a grown-up.
Bar a not entirely perfect green-screen ending, the stunts and special effects are great, the entire film is a whole stack of ridiculous fun, while also retaining a sense of the ordinary. Dave’s relationship with Katie, who believes he is gay and takes him under her wing, has the exact right awkward chemistry that teenage relationships do. Dave’s pals are normal but hilarious and their friendship strikes the right chord. The major players in the film are all clearly a tad batshit insane to be doing what they do, but all are human beings, from Hit Girl making her father a hot chocolate and the way he clearly worships his daughter, to D’Amico taking his son to the movies (and, in a quietly hilarious scene, discussing what snacks to get in the car outside his factory, pausing only for the screams of someone inside being tortured.) The splatty and kaboomish ending is the kind that could bring on a round of applause from cinemagoers. Both ordinary and extraordinary, Kick-Ass is a great night out, though not for the faint-hearted or anyone who will call child services on account of Chloe Moretz saying the c-word. Which, I discovered, is alarming no matter how prepared you are for it.
I think I’m doing a commendable effort at linking my reviews of films currently showing at the theatre. The last two have shared the word “dragon” in the title (but, happily, no other similarities), and this movie connects to How to Train Your Dragon by sharing two actors: Jay Baruchel and TJ Mills. Last time I physically saw Baruchel in a movie, he was the shifty heartthrob in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Now, apparently he’s the gangly and awkward one. In She’s Out of My League, Baruchel is Kirk, a slightly useless guy in his late twenties who works at the airport and has a group of equally useless friends who all seem to do nothing at work but sit in the transit lounge and talk about girls. Mills is one of those friends, a bit of a bastard, very sweary, vaguely appealing in an abrasive kind of way. There’s also the handsome friend, who does nothing but stand and look handsome, and the romantic friend, who likens everything to a Disney movie. In a way, they appear to be mimicking the friendship group from (500) Days of Summer, though bereft of a smartass little sister played by Chloe Moretz or any other friend who actually knows what they’re talking about.
Kirk is trying pathetically to win back the heart of Marnie, the fairly horrible ex-girlfriend who—along with her new boyfriend—still hangs out with Kirk’s family and is seemingly preferred by them as well. His friends tell him to stop, but there’s no other girls on his horizon until gorgeous event planner Molly, played by the beautiful Alice Eve, accidentally leaves her phone behind at the airport. Kirk finds it, and to thank him, she takes him out to dinner. Despite the misgivings of his pals and Molly’s caustic friend Patty, their relationship flourishes. Kind of.
Where this movie falls flat is that their relationship never feels real. They do have a mild amount of chemistry and are separately pretty affable, but every conversation Kirk and Molly have is awkward, strained and painful to watch. The camera pans out on these stilted discussions, plays a happy tune and suddenly we see them laughing and joking. The prerequisite relationship montage shows them getting along fine, but the audience is not really privy to why they get along. Just like their friends, concerned about the difference in their ratings—Molly being a “hard” 10, Kirk wallowing around the five mark—you won’t be convinced their relationship will work out either. So when the inevitable scene comes where their preconceptions of the romance outweigh what they feel, it is the least surprising thing and you aren’t too concerned if they both go off and lead full happy lives without each other. But it’s a rom-com, so of course it doesn’t end there.
On the upside, a lot of scenes are hilarious—Kirk’s ball-shaving scene, which you may have seen in the trailer, is one; another is when he gives his family what-for as they sit in a plane waiting to head off on vacation. It also ventures into gross-out comedy with Kirk a little too excited just before he meets Molly’s staid parents. Much of the comedy is derived from that pained, uncomfortable Meet-The-Parentsesque humour, which is my own personal bugbear. Don’t we get enough in reality? Do we need to watch others suffer too? (Two Parents sequels say yes, but I say no.) The soundtrack to She’s Out of My League is pretty great, with tunes from the likes of The Fratellis and sex-in-tight-pants Pop Levi. Overall, the movie is no hard ten of a hot blonde made entirely of friendly, but the five of a guy with no self-esteem who listens to his friends over his own feelings.
I was surprised to see this, Diablo Cody’s first movie since Juno, shooting straight to DVD. Juno was such a hipster success here with all its jive-talkin’ and rising starlets—how could Jennifer’s Body, starring Megan Fox’s body, not be a hit seen by squillions? Well, because it’s terrible.
Juno was a movie that suffered from too much hype. It was a good piece of cinema, but could never be as brilliant as the frenzy of adoration made it out to be. I thought it was fine, but hardly flawless, and as we all know no one actually talks like anyone in that film actually did. Still, Ellen Page is pretty endearing and any movie with JK Simmons in it can’t be that bad. Or, so I thought until he turned up in Jennifer’s Body, apparently the school’s only teacher and wielding a ridiculously fake hook hand. The school I mention is the high school that Fox’s Jennifer and her bestest pal ever, Amanda Seyfried’s Anita, go to. Jennifer is a beautiful cheerleader, Anita (otherwise known as Needy) a slightly dorky, fizzy-haired companion. (You can tell she is dorky because at the start she wears glasses, which she apparently doesn’t need at the end of the film when she gets tough.) Needy has a boyfriend in the lovable Chip.
And that’s just about all the background information you get on the girls. They go out one night to a seedy bar to watch a band whose lead member is “salty”, according to Jennifer, and after the gig is abruptly cut off when the entire place goes up in flames. They escape unharmed, and Jennifer gets into the band’s van and leaves Needy behind, worrying that her friend has made a stupid move. (Arguably, agreeing to play Jennifer was Fox’s first stupid move here.) And she has, but not as expected—when Needy sees her next, Jennifer is a demon, and a bloody, vomiting, hungry one. Her favourite food of choice, alas, is young cliched males. With the town in fear of the brutal serial killer on the loose, no one but Needy understands that it is Jennifer that is the culprit, so she takes matters into her own hands.
The movie bites in just about every way. It’s not particularly funny, bar a couple of amusing scenes—like when Needy and Chip are indulging in some awkward but adorable teenage bonking, and Needy gasps in horror from a vision of Jennifer eating a fellow student. Chip pauses in concern and says, “Are you okay? Am I too big?” (Aw, teenagers.) It’s not scary either, and I can’t really interpret much social commentary from it. The student body—what little we see of it—are parodies of themselves; Goths that are willing to declare their love of the Dark Lord at a fellow Goth’s funeral with his straitlaced parents looking on, bemused; a few goofy-looking footballers the size of houses who only wear letterman jackets and aren’t too bright. It’s not gory, it’s not dramatic, it’s not involving—it’s a big roll of film that gives you nothing at the end. Sometimes, it’s just confusing, like when Needy goes to the prom in a bright pink dress with poofy sleeves that would have been divine in 1986 but now seems like an unexplained joke, and isn’t even useful for fighting in. When an injured Chip sees her in her dress and says, “You look beautiful,” she says, “Oh my god, you’re delusional!” in all seriousness. While Juno was almost entirely made up of a newfangled teenage language, Jennifer’s Body doesn’t have as much, and then, unforgivably, explains itself when it does. “Salty” means “cute”, in case that wasn’t blindingly obvious already.
I tried hard to think of something good about the movie, but all I could come up with was one thing: Fox herself. For all the movies I’ve seen her in (er, just Transformers, actually) I’ve never really seen her just stand around or walk or have a multitude of expressions. Even when she is gaunt and starved of human flesh, even when she is vomiting spiky black bile—she is an absolute knockout. Perhaps I just covet blue eyes because mine are brown, and long flowing black hair because mine won’t grow fast no matter how much I will it to, but she really is beautiful, even though in this movie she is nothing but an absolute bitch, even before she is a demon.
There’s no twist, it’s boring and pointless, and frankly whatever you imagine this movie to be like will be better than how it is, so just go on Google Images, find some pictures of Megan Fox, print them out, make them into paper dolls and create your own version. It’ll be Oscar-worthy in comparison.
Well, I have consulted with shamans, looked to the stars for guidance, flipped a hundred coins under the exact same conditions and asked John Edwards who should win. Drum roll please, because the winner of our two Capital Punishment Comedy Festival Tickets is...
LeahJane! Congratulations, expect to be contacted with your ticketing details. Have fun! Laugh lots! Don’t forget to take a spare pair of underpants.
(And thanks to Sally for guiding me to random.org! Also congratulations to her too for her own personal win.)
Due to some unexpected good luck and your friendly neighbourhood comedians, read, watch, listen has been offered two free tickets to see Capital Punishment at the Melbourne Comedy Festival—and they’re up for grabs for you, dear reader. If you want to get your greasy paws on these tickets, for Thursday night’s gig in Melbourne Town Hall’s Backstage Room, all you need to do is leave a comment here—and you don’t need to be a blogspot member to post a comment. All I want from you is to leave your name and a joke, no matter how terrible, and I’ll randomly pick a winner on Wednesday morning and post the winner then. And I’ll even start!
Q: What’s brown and sticky?
A: A stick.
See, you know you can do better, don’t you? Well, go on then.
