Cameron Diaz in Bad Teacher

With the weather playing all sorts of tricks this June (apparently it’s even raining in LA) minds start wondering back indoors and the flicks start to look more appealing than flipping burgers in the pouring rain on your budget BBQ from B&Q whilst holding an umbrella!

There are about half a dozen films out this week in the UK but we’ve decided this week  to focus on just three that will be the main interest for most people. These films are Green Lantern, Bad Teacher and the very interestingly named The Beaver. Reviews are a mish mash of The Evening Standard and Metro featuring Anna Smith and Larushka Ivan Zadeh laced with a dash of sarcasm from a celebrity blogger called FJ.

 So here we go?
Bad Teacher:  Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake and Lucy Punch are the focal points in this film about a gold digging teacher played by Cameron Diaz (recently jilted) on the prowl for her next victim at school and sets her sights on a geeky teacher type played by Justin Timberlake. Of course she ends up with competition from another squeaky clean type played by Lucy Punch who also happens to be engaged to said next victim.. Cameron Diaz is coming out as playing a very convincing celebrity magazine reading obsessed type that wants what celebs have got and will do pretty much anything to get it thinking this is the path to happiness and of course it is not. The plot is coming out as a bit thin but there are laughs involving politics in the workplace and the characters are slightly odd but at least they do have some sort of depth…. but not that much.. As Anna Smith says “It passes the time in a surprisingly amusing fashion”. Metro Rating 3 stars.

The Evening Standard are not so impressed by Bad Teacher saying  ”it’s good for a few laughs but in the end neither outrageous or funny enough  Rating 2 stars.

Film of the Week by virue it’s the best of a not too exceptional bunch and we do lke Cameron Diaz.

The Beaver.  The title paints all sorts of strange images in the mind and this is a strange film? This film is directed by the actress Jodie Foster and stars Mel Gibson so we do have some names here. How the beaver title comes into play is via Mel Gibson playing a mentally depressed character called  Walter Black who moves out of his marital  home and finds a puppet in the form of a beaver.. He then decides that he is unable to communicate with anybody directly including staff and family instead they have to communicate to him through said  Beaver puppet. It’s pretty clear Walter Black has seriously lost the plot here but by talking through his Beaver puppet friend he bizarrely  gradually becomes the more normal man he used to be. The question that hangs throughout the film is “can he survive without his new found beaver puppet?” Coming out as average across the board and is an interesting look into mental illness and obviously there are amny laughs along the way. The concept gets 10/10 but again it’s a film that passes the time but is nothing exceptional.Rating 3 stars.

According to The Evening Standard this film got a ten miniute standing ovation at the Cannes film festival. Mel Gibsons puppetry skills cannot be denied but The Standard are unimpressed regardless and rate it at 2 stars.

Green Lantern  A lot of interest in this film and one of the most heavily advertised films i’ve seen for a while, it’s everywhere even on You Tube. From past experience unless it is a blockbusrer like say Avatar, this doesn’t bode well and equates to hype and I hate hype with a vengenace more so in the music industry than say in film. Green Lantern is basically a film adaptation of the DC Comic of the same name and stars Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively. To cut a long story short the film is about Hal a Maverick Jet Pilot  type who has a girlfriend  (on/off)  inj the form of Blake Lively. He is selected to join the superhero guardians of the unviverse called “The Green  Lanterns” (couldn’t they come up with a better more scarier  name) and ends up going into battlle with all sorts of nasties including a  CGI giant alien with enormous tentacles.  The support cast are being billed as being more decent than the main including Peter Sarsgaard, Angela Bassett and Tim Robbins.  Here’s how Larushka Ivan Zadeh summed up this film She doesn’t mince her words.

It feels as enjoyable as sitting an English Exam on a sunny afternnon

and it gets worse

This is a  tedious suckfest where the 3D can’t actually make it any worse. Rating 2 stars

Oh Dear. What does David Sexton of The Evening Standard have to say. He disagrees and rates it at 3 stars but then he is a bloke. To confuse matters Rotten Tomatoes have gone one step further and gave it a miserable 1 star. You pays your money and you  takes your chances with this one as the saying goes. From my past experiences this sounds like one to avoid………..but hey what do we know and has got Blake Lively in it?

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