Another Drop Kick To The Heart

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Pixar films are great because you can take a first date to see one and if they're not in floods of tears by the end then you know they're likely to be a fucking sociopath and you're in danger. Not that I go on many dates, of course. The only chance I have to meet people is through Tinder and recently I've been left swiping on everyone like a motherfucker because I've started getting off on the idea of being the one that rejects them for a fucking change. So even though Pixar's latest Onward is quite clearly a children's film, I ended up going to see it alone. Which is fine. I'm aware that in a row of parent, child, parent, child, parent, child, me, that I must look like a nonce. But I also don't want people disturbing me when I'm at the cinema and so I'm quite happy to have children be told not to go near “the bad man”. Still. I probably shouldn't be getting my dick out even if it is just to maintain that illusion. I went into this movie pretty blind having avoided all trailers and reviews and so I wasn't sure what it was going to be about. As it turns out it's a fantasy film that takes place in a world that's relatably our own but where magic is treated as being part of the mundane. Imagine The Lord Of The Rings but if the Hobbits were stopping every few miles to brag about how many steps that their fucking Fitbits were up to. Or the Narnia movies if Edmond had to ram his fingers down his throat because he'd eaten too much Turkish Delight and his Instagram followers were commenting that he was becoming a fat prick.

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The Fantastic Five

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Fourteen years after The Incredibles hit theatres we finally get the wittily titled Incredibles 2. Each member of the family has a different super-power whilst the franchise as a whole displays the amazing skill of having not being sued by Marvel for ripping of the Fantastic Four. Mr Incredible is super-strong, his son and daughter are super-fast and posses the power of invisibility. Meanwhile Elastigirl, the family matriarch, has the kind of power that makes her super flexible and therefore able to easily achieve the kind of positions that we men would usually have to have a rib removed to achieve. As her name suggests her body also appears to be made of elastic with her limbs and torso able to stretch much further than my patience when at the cinema with a bunch of screaming fucking brats. At this point in the story, all superheroes have been made illegal because, at the end of the day, I guess they're just a bunch of fucking do-gooders with too much time on their hands and a latex fetish. In which case it's even more admirable of Elastigirl that, when forced to give up her job as a hero she chose to live a quite domestic life, when she could be making a fucking fortune in Amsterdam.

I mention Elastigirl more than the other members of her family because this sequel is very much belonging to her. Despite the decade and a half gap since the original film was released, this second part to the franchise only takes place a mere minute or two after we left off. For live-action, this would of course be impossible due to an actors insistence on ageing as humans do, or attempting to dodge the aging process by turning into whatever the fuck Mickey Rourke is. However one of the little joys of the film is in how it starts with the gang still facing off against that mole-man villain that's also a rip-off of a Fantastic Four villain. The family quickly decide to deal with him only to find themselves in even more trouble due to the destruction that the ensuing battle ends up causing to the city. Although if I was a member of that family I'd simply show them the end of Man Of Steel in which Superman leaves Metropolis in such a state that you could filter it through a fucking sieve and tell them to count their lucky fucking stars. As such, Elastigirl finds herself being picked up by an influential brother and sister who claim that they can change the super-hero image around and have her profession re-legalised by winning public favour. All she has to do is a few missions that will show her in a more positive light. Although the way the world seems to be going right now, she could save herself the bother by just mentioning some “shithole countries”, locking a few kids up at the border, and then watching her fuckwit followers grow by the day. 

Throwing a small spanner in her works however is the arrival of a new super-villain known as the Screenslaver who essentially acts like an evil Derren Brown and dresses like Tom Hardy's Bane in a gimp-suit. I won't give too much away here except to say that any twists revolving this character are about as obvious as a mans cock in a pair of speedos and you've have to be pretty dense not to see them coming. At the same time as all of this, Mr Incredible is forced to stay at home with the children and seems to be having such a miserable time with it that I began to understand why wrestlers go mad and kill their families. Originally oblivious to his baby Jack-Jack's super-powers, we watch and laugh as he struggles to keep track of the infant as it reveals more and more of its gifts. There's at least one particularly hilarious sequence in which the father attempts to control his baby as it fights a racoon that really does hammer home how much Louise Woodward over-reacted when all hers did was cry a bit too much. If there's any criticism of the stuff with Mr Incredible it's that, although the funniest part of the movie, his section has almost nothing to do with the main story at all. Where Elastigirl is really pushing the narrative forward we simply seem to cut back to the rest of her family whenever it's time to lighten things up with a funny scene. If a perfect film is like a clock with everything ticking over then this is like a sundial in which you're allowed to tug one out every twenty minutes. Both essentially get the job done it's just one is a little messier. 

If we take for granted that everything else about the movie was pretty great, from the animation to the action, then I'd like to point out that one of the things that I enjoyed about it was its message. Screenslaver's power is that he can hypnotise you to do his bidding but only if you stare at a monitor which is something that we obviously all do these days. Whether it be the television, your phone, or a computer, I'm at the point now where I consider reality my loading screen and I can't wait to get back to staring at my precious pixels. As such I suppose the villain of the movie is a subtle warning about the powers of manipulation that these screens can have on you which, in an online world of Russian bots, is something remarkably current. Just look at adverts alone which can have a remarkable effect on our behaviour and you might see this film as a cautionary tale of giving in to the demands of the screen. Essentially the film used trailers to get you to come and stare at it on the big screen and then gave you a lecture about having given in to these demands. Although watching Elastigirl discovering the source of the villains power and seeing her run about manically attempting to stop people staring at the monitors, I was reminded of my own Mum during my childhood. Except with Elastigirl I understood that it was to the benefit of everybody's health to turn the televisions and computers off and she wasn't just being a fucking kill joy. 

The other thing that the film does pretty brilliantly is take a look at the correlation between legality and morality. Is something bad simply because it's illegal? And is breaking the law justified if it's an unjust law in the first place? As I take a drag from an outlawed but ultimately relaxing substance, I have to admit that I'm not sure where I stand on this. But it's also interesting to see a family film deal with a subject so interesting, when only a mere few weeks after the James Corden-voiced Peter Rabbit made us ponder how far we can kick a fucking rabbit. It was also interesting to see Elastigirl justify her own hypocrisy of believing the law to be absolute and then setting about breaking that law in order to have it changed. Essentially she has to be a superhero to prove that being a superhero is a good thing in order for the law prohibiting super-heroics to be abolished. I guess she's of a similar mind to the members of MI6 inCasino Royale who only give out a licence to kill to agents like Bond once he's proven that he can kill at least two people first. Incredibles 2 doesn't delve as hugely into this issue as perhaps I would have liked it to, but it's still a pretty lofty and impressive subject for it to touch on. Toy Story is obviously a great movie but the only real idea that it has is that you should have your action figures facing away from you when you want to knock one out... unless you're a perv. 

So overall I'd say that this sequel is a completely worthy follow-up to the original movie, if never quite being as brilliant as it. If the first movie was Kurt Russell then this one is his son Wyatt in that they look the same, are both great, but I've spent longer loving the original to be able to consider them equal. If you want a film that you can take everybody to see and don't mind the widespread sexual harassment and deeply worrying misogyny from the studio behind it then Incredibles 2 is the film for you. I have no idea if they'll make a sequel to this movie but if they do I'll certainly be first in line to watch it. And then I'll be boarding up the fucking doors when I get in because I hate children and it pisses me off that I have to endure their noise just because I want to see a film in which they're the target audience. At two hours long I suppose this movie might test the youngest of children's patients but it's also rated PG. Which means if you're taking your very young child to see this movie then you're probably a terrible parent anyway and so may as well go one fucking further and show them it on a double feature with The fucking First Purge.Thanks for reading, motherfuckers, and see you next time.

Lifting Your Spirits

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Pixar's Coco tells the story of a Mexican family that have been dramatically let down by a musician, which is something that I'm sure we can all relate to. Especially if you're also a Morrissey fan and are finding it increasingly difficult to defend the mad-bastard comments that he keeps making. Here however they're simply hurt by a family member that picked up his guitar and fucked off to pursue his musical ambitions instead of staying to be with them. As a result the family has banned all forms of music from being enjoyed within their vicinity, which includes stifling Miguel, the youngest member of their family, and his dreams of playing guitar. All of this seems a bit harsh to me. Everybody gets fucked by something at some point but at no point did my great-grandmother ever ban me from being impregnated by a sailor with the clap. Despite this, Miguel still sneaks into the loft when everybody is asleep in order to practice guitar against his families wishes. Again.. what young boy hasn't hidden himself away during the night so that he can strum his instrument? Eventually his family discover his secret and in a moment of pure rage his grandmother grabs his guitar and smashes it against the floor. I actually got really angry at this bit. Miserable old knobhead. Miguel should have smashed something that she loves to teach her a lesson. Her fucking fragile bitch hips for example..

Kids Need To Learn That Life Is Grim

If you're depressed about being a fuck up then it's probably Disney's fault. I'm not blaming the house of mouse for the fact that you're seemingly incapable of achieving happiness but rather that you consider it your own fault. Being the constant miserabilist that I am, I've taken to asking most people within my social circle if they're happy and the two most positive responses that I've had are “I'm in a happier place” and “I don't like this line of questioning”. Am I happy? No. I wake up every morning, rate my joy out of eight and then stick my head in the oven, on that gas mark and for that equivalent amount of minutes. Literally nobody will admit to being content because nobody actually fucking is, but in this world of social media we assume that everybody is swimming in an ocean of success whilst we're trying not to drown in a swimming pool of piss. People used to be worried that the grass was always greener on the other side but some days I can't help but feel it'd simply look better from six foot below.

Inside Out Excels For Knowing That Females Are People Too!

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As an only child that went to an all boys school and who has since become almost terminally single, I grew up in complete fear of all woman-kind. I mean.. what were they?! They liked dolls, the colour pink, and would one day grow two massive arse cheeks on their chest for babies to suck on. I was predominately exposed to females through the goggle-box which terrified me with images of Bonnie Tyler screaming down the camera like the Welsh God of Drunken Anger. Even movies rarely focused on the vagina'd gender unless they were spoon-feeding us a turgid love story about a frumpy tart's desperate attempt to win the heart of some terribly English prick. Talk about boring! As a young boy I didn't care about 'romance' and so found those movies and characters to be about as interesting and relatable as a tiny stain on the rim of a cat's anus. In the years that I've since spent growing up I'd like to think that I've gained some insight, but sadly it seems that most mainstream movies haven't. If you want to see a film starring a woman in the lead role of a movie which doesn't fall into the romance genre, then the odds are she's going to be on her knees as twenty men tug one out around her. Thank God then for Pixar and their new film Inside Out which aims to have a look at a young girls brain and answer the age old question of 'what the fuck is going on in there!?'

Bye-Bye Dreams

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Hands up who can think of an aspect of life that isn't completely fucking miserable. If you have your hand up, you're wrong. I can enjoy something up until I get to the halfway point but then I realise the conclusion is coming up soon and I can't help but focus on the total bullshit of being alive. I quite like Saturday but then I tend to spend most of my Sunday's simply weighing up if I'd prefer to spend the next five days in work or just save myself the bother and stick my head inside the fucking oven. Some people see an old couple walking hand in hand and think it's sweet that they've managed to stay together for so many years. I just wonder which of them is going to go first and selfishly leave the other to wither in a misty fog of loneliness, Alzheimer's and piss. It sounds like I'm being mean but I swear that I'm speaking the truth. The only way you could possibly end your life on a high is by making sure you leave your loved one in the shit by fucking dying on them. When I reach old age, I think I'll keep a cyanide pill in one of the gums of my false teeth. If my partner so much as sniffles, I'm cracking it out, biting down and burning my insides into oblivion safe in the knowledge that things could literally never have ended better than this.  

Even Frogs Have Rainy Days

At the time of writing, I am depressingly well into my third decade of existing. Although twenty-three is quite young to some people, if you work it out in dog-years I should have died a long time ago. However despite being so close to the end of my natural life, I had never really been exposed to The Muppets. Other than Return of the Jedi which was one glove puppet away from being the original Muppets in Space, the only thing I had seen- and only recently- was The Muppet Christmas Carol.

Although I did quite enjoy the film, my main issue was that it was a Christmas movie. To me, Shitmas is just an excuse for people with similar blood to pretend that they don’t hate each other whilst celebrating the alleged birthday of some magical Chuck Norris. I don’t like being reminded of it. Having said that, Michael Caine in The Muppet Christmas Carol is amazingly realistic - he looked so much like the real thing that I am in awe of the puppeteer who presumably controlled him via the traditional method of hand-up-the-arse-hole.

So beyond who Kermit was, my knowledge of The Muppets was moderately lacking. Other than that, I also knew that Miss Piggy was the one who looked like a slimmed down Vanessa Felts and that like AIDs, The Muppet Show was a phenomenon that had peaked during the eighties. I was therefore a little bit of a newcomer to this furry cult when I recently sat down to watch their new film The Muppets.

The movie starts by introducing us to Jason Segel and his muppet brother Oscar. At this point, the Muppets have become old news. Like the Nazi's, they've split up and all gone their separate ways scattered around the world. Kermit has become a recluse who, presumably, collects his piss and wears shoeboxes on his feet and the old theatre is now being used for tours. Their anniversary is coming up and to celebrate a year of fucking Amy Adams, Jason Segel has decided to take her there as a holiday. Oscar ends up going with them too because he's the Muppets biggest fan and the gooseberry is presumably hoping for an incestuous, cross species threesome with the other two. Personally I'd never shag a Muppet, if they're going to enjoy being fisted there's just no point in doing it.

So anyway, they go on the tour and Oscar finds out that Chris Cooper wants to destroy the building in order to reach some oil underneath. Because he’s a Muppet, Oscar would much rather help his own species than aid our worsening fossil fuel crises and so decides to try and save the theatre. This involves recruiting Kermit and all the other Muppets, putting on one last show and raising enough money to be able to retain ownership of the place. If they'd have said they were doing it for charity too they would have made their money a lot quicker. Although I guess the filmmakers didn't want the Muppets to go down the ‘exploitation’ and ‘fraud’ route for some reason. Whatever…

Just to put it out there, I loved this film. It was brilliant. It was kind of like going to a gig for a band you don’t know and slowly realising that you really like them. You end up wishing you’d been into them to start with, just to enjoy the show even more. Kind of like losing your virginity to a model: there’s no denying you had fun but it would have been even better if you had previous experience to draw on.

Like a band’s live show, this film is a celebration of all that is great about the Muppets. Although it’s made for anyone, those who are already fans will be particularly overjoyed with all the references to the Muppets’ history. In the end, even I felt nostalgic for things that I had no knowledge of- a bit like whenever I hear an old person go on about ‘the good old days’. I wasn’t alive then, but I start to think that, yeah, despite two world wars, the holocaust, mandatory racism and Russia’s nuclear threat, the past was a better place. To me The Muppets was an effective advert for the television show. I’ve fallen in love with the characters and now I want to catch up with everything that they’ve done.

One of the things that I genuinely loved about this new film was how sad it was. I was once told by an ex-girlfriend that I didn’t have a heart and that I, instead, had a swinging brick on some rope. If that was true I would have used it to make her shut the fuck up. Contrary to what the sow thought, my heart is made up of meat and cholesterol just like everybody else’s. To me, the film was all about regret and loss. The Muppets who were once loved by each other and the world are now all down in the dumps, forgotten and alone. The plot is less about saving the theatre and more about reuniting a group of friends and restoring their happiness. If I had been a kid I think I’d have cried all the way through this. Kind of like when I was six and my parents thought it would be a good idea to let me watch things like E.T., Bambi and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

At the risk of contradicting myself here, the other thing that was so good about the movie was just how cheerful it was. There was a very definite vein of sadness running through it, but like in Drive, all the characters were just so nice. The songs by Bret Mckenzie were ridiculously catchy, upbeat and everything was just unusually but refreshingly un-cynical. In the real world, cynicism is a weapon that we need to be able to survive. In the world of The Muppets, everybody can be taken literally at face value. You get the feeling that in this world if Kermit had spent the night with a whore, he’d be more at risk of falling in love with her than having his wallet stolen. I guess the film made me feel sad for the characters but happy about life which is an achievement. It usually takes a lot of marijuana, four hours of cartoons and a big bag of quavers to give me a shot of optimism like that.

The plot is kind of simple, but who cares? That just gives us more chance to get to know the characters and watch the weird things that they do. If I have one criticism of The Muppets however, it is the celebrity cameos which are just a little poor. They spend the whole movie building up to an A-List celebrity who will host their show, only to reveal it as Jack Black. Firstly Black had already been in the film, and secondly, is he still famous? I know he had a stint about 6 years ago with King Kong and School of Rock but he’s done fuck all since. I heard he’d spent the last few years touring around a few music festivals but in all honesty, I’d assumed that was as a roadie. In fact the most famous person in this movie was probably Whoopi Goldberg and even she hasn’t done anything decent since starring as the title character opposite Arnie in 1987’s Predator.

But then maybe that was the point. Maybe they didn’t want to bring in someone that would take the attention away from our band of misfit heroes. Or maybe the point is that the Muppets were now so un-famous that Jack Black was the best they could get? I guess the fact is, I like this film so much that I’m not only willing to forgive the appearance of Whoopie Goldberg, but also that bearded retard from The Hangover. He crops up at one point as a tramp in a role I can only assume is preparation for the day the world realises he’s as unfunny as that smug, morning after franchise. I’ve never had a hangover but that franchise still managed to give me more than a headache.

By the time the film reaches its conclusion, the only way to not feel good about life would be if you had been raped mid way through watching it. It may be a kid’s film but I still loved it. Pixar aside, this has got to be my favourite Disney movie since Pulp Fiction. Like Batman and James Bond, the Muppets have now also been rebooted for a modern audience and I can’t wait for the sequel.

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