Nostalgia, big lizards and teenage mood swings

Okay, I don’t do this very often. I really don’t. There was a time when I wrote reviews of every movie I went to see. Not for this for website, though. Not for anyone. I wrote them for me. For no reason at all, really. Spot the only child.

This is was back when I used to stick every cinema ticket to my bedroom wall. Which took a lot of blue tack and left a lot of holes in the wallpaper when I moved out of my parents’ house.

Anyway, this weekend, I managed to watch a few movies, so I thought why not share my findings with the rest of the class.

A quick and pretty obvious disclaimer: These opinions are entirely my own and are in no way designed or expected to undermine or challenge anyone else’s opinions. A proposal I know the internet hive mind has always been incredibly eager and excited to grasp (normally by the throat).

GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS

I’ve been waiting a while to watch this movie for free. I paid to see Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla at the cinema and was pretty underwhelmed. Then I paid to visit Skull Island and managed to main that same underwhelmed feeling while throwing in a couple of eyerolls. I did, however, enjoy Godzilla vs Kong at the end of last year. It wasn’t a great movie by a long shot, but it was big enough and dumb enough to talk me into switching my brain off and watching a big ape use a big axe on a big lizard.

So, when King of Monsters came out on Prime a couple of weeks ago, I added it to my watchlist. Now I’ve watched it I think I can safely say ‘meh’. Don’t get me wrong, I can see why fans of Godzilla were far happier with this than Gareth Edwards’ first offering in the expanding universe of monsters punching monsters with people stuck awkwardly in the middle of the brawl, trying to learn valuable life lessons.

On paper, there seems to be a lot more to love here. A lot more recognisable monsters for a start. Also your big named co-stars don’t die early on for no real reason at all and the movie rarely cuts away from the action scenes just as they get interesting. All of that said, though, this movie just felt amazingly dull to me. It’s sluggish. It’s middle of the road, ignorable background noise.

I can get past the special machine that talks monster. I can tolerate the many tacked on subplots that aren’t about big monsters trying to kill each other. I didn’t even mind all the look at pretty Mothra stuff. What really bugged me was that fighting didn’t feel visceral. Or entertaining. Or fun.

The CGI overload just gave the entire thing a sense of being a bad video game adaptation or the backdrop to a half decent rollercoaster. It also felt dated, when this movie is only a few years old. At least Edwards gave his Godzilla a fight where you felt some of the blows and Godzilla vs Kong did its best to really sell you on the titanic grudge match you were there to witness. Hell, even the straight faced B movie Skull Island gave us one solid tussle between Kong and whatever the red shirt monster was in his prequel. King of Monsters, however, felt like an overly priced cartoon to me. Although, I will say this, Ken Watanabe absolutely steals the show with a certain underwater scene.

Personally, I would rather watch something like Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur than this. Something with that Krull, Flash Gordon vibe. Not because it’s good. You know, because King Arthur: Legend of the Sword really isn’t all that. Still, at least you can feel that movie’s trying to find a new way to tell a familiar story and it never pretends to be anything other than what it is. Also, let’s be honest, the soundtrack is way better.

What blows my mind with these new Godzilla movies is the cast list. Between the first Godzilla and his recent match with Kong, they have pulled together one hell of a roster of famous names. Charles Dance. Bryan Cranston. Vera Farmiga. Tom Hiddleston. Samuel L. Jackson. John C. Reilly. Brie Larson. David Strathairn. Millie Bobbie Brown. Rebecca Hall. And that’s barely scratching the surface. Just think of the franchise you could build with all that talent and all that city smashing money.

BILL AND TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY

We’ve been taking a run up to Face the Music in our house recently. Sam had never seen any of the B and T movies before, so we had ourselves a trip back in time using a phone box the other week and, this Saturday, we visited heaven and hell and fought some bad robots with some good robots.

I remembered loving this movie when I first saw it, but I had completely forgotten the wild swings that the wild stallions (sorry, Wyld Stallyns) take over the course of their second movie. Bogus Journey totally abandons any sense of time travel and goes on an off the wall, down the drain nightmare ride through the afterlife and aliens and A.I. and Joss Ackland instead. So it’s so long Napoleon in a bowling alley and hello to playing Twister with the Grim Reaper. And that’s before we get to, ahem, Station.

But, for all of the weird aliens and looming threat of military academies, I still love this movie. I know it isn’t perfect or logical or even that smart. The Scooby Doo reveal at the end is a headscratcher to say the least and the extras playing the crowd at the battle of the band aren’t doing a great job of hiding their boredom from the cameras, but it’s just too much fun to ignore. Come on, there’s an evil Easter Bunny and Alex Winters playing Bill’s grandmother and Ted’s possessed dad playing James Taylor style air guitar. What’s not to like?

DAYS OF THE BAGNOLD SUMMER

A really smart, really sweet British comedy about a teenage metal head who gets stranded with his mum for the summer when he should be going to America to see his dad. It’s a movie that never reaches too far for the laughs or the feels. The performances and the writing are the stars here and and keep the whole journey grounded and relatable. There were definitely a few moments when I cringed in an outbreak of recognition.

Monica Dolan is phenomenal as the struggling mum and it’s great to see both Alice Lowe and Tamsin Greig putting in strong supporting roles while Belle and Sebastian supply the soundtrack, which gives you a sense of both the movie’s humour and it’s heart. This is an indie movie with a simple story to tell and it manages to do everything it needs to do without overstaying it’s welcome or overstating its characters.

BILL AND TED FACE THE MUSIC

Yep, the long journey through my 90s nostalgic finally got us to the movie I missed on the big screen last year. A movie I was worried had been both overhyped and underhyped at the same time. A movie I put on and braced myself as the opening voiceover started. Thankfully, it turned out to be absolutely the movie I needed on a Sunday afternoon. Funny, ridiculous and heart warming.

I was amazed at how well this third offering actually ties together the previous two movies. Not only that but it genuinely sets out to answer two totally unnecessary questions that its predecessors raised almost by accident - why would one song change the world and how do two young men grow up when they’ve burdened the fact they’re meant to unite with the world with just one song.

Oh, the bagpipes. The bagpipes and the Theremin. At Missy’s latest wedding.

Don’t get me wrong, Face the Music is not perfect and it’s clearly trying to keep the fans on its side a lot of the time (although, for my money, it’s a better movie when it stops trying to do that). Regardless, I found plenty to get onboard with here. Yes, even the killer robot made me laugh and I really had no problem with little B and T at all. In anything, I think they added a much needed new dynamic to these movies.

I didn’t feel Face the Music strayed too far from its past and it also didn’t ignore a few of the blind spots that both Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey tripped straight over in their own time. And, while it did have me missing George Carlin and some of the stakes did feel pretty rushed, this movie gave me a whole heap of new characters to love, a pretty sweet ending and one slightly ropey Louis Armstrong.

The trick now is they need to never make another one. Or a reboot. Or a movie where they fight Wayne and Garth for a chance to rule the hollow earth. Although I might watch one where they end up in Scott Pilgrim’s world…