Film Round-Up: Luca, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway and Gunpowder Milkshake
More reviews for your short attention span!
Luca
Luca and Alberto are sea monsters who run away from home to adventure in a human town. It’s great to see another Pixar film come out, even if it is only on Disney+ rather than in the cinema. Hopefully the next one ends up in the multiplex. But maybe it’s for the best that this one missed the cinema as it’s not Pixar’s best effort. It’s a beautiful film and hits all the right spots, you won’t regret watching it. It’s just not that special. Pixar have set a standard with their films and other than the odd dip, which tends to be when they make a money spinning sequel, they tend to be excellent. This is the first time with an original film since Cars where I felt they were spinning their wheels with a well worn storyline and not really stretching themselves. I expect Pixar to be pushing the boundaries, not just doing the done thing like they are here, even if the done thing is still pretty good.
Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway
The Peter Rabbit books become a massive success but when Peter himself is labelled as a bad seed because of them, he runs away and meets a thief rabbit that knew his dad. Look, I know the first film got a bit of a bad rap because people decided to compare it to Paddington, but that’s unfair. Barely anything is as good as Paddington. But that film was fine and so is this one. Yes, James Corden is in this but the script mocks him as much as Twitter does so it’s all good. There are a surprising amount of clever jokes in this film as it goes through a fairly standard plot and there seems to be a determination to make Peter Rabbit into the kids version of Deadpool with the amount of meta jokes he makes. Delighted to be the first person to say that sentence. It is all let down by a rushed ending which is basically just a montage. Other than a wet fart of a conclusion, this is a decent film for the kids.
Gunpowder Milkshake
Karen Gillan leaves her gang in order to protect a little girl which makes her vulnerable to all the people she has wronged. I’ve talked a lot about John Wick having its imitators and for a while that’s been a good thing because films like Atomic Blonde and Nobody have been very good. Here we have an imitator that isn’t that good. It gets the style part of it right, this film looks very cool and the action is perfectly fine, if nothing that raises the pulse too much. But it has no substance to back it up. It’s desperate to world build and have epic things in the background like John Wick, but it feels very desperate. The script feels desperate and try hard too. It’s the swapping out of convention words for fancier ones which just feel like the people behind this film are trying very hard for this film to be a bigger deal than it is. The acting is also poor and stilted, though this feels like a stylistic choice from the director so no blame on the actors involved in it for me, and that’s not just because I fancy Karen Gillan a lot. But even with how much I like her, I don’t think watching this film is worth it even for her.
