Superb. Go and see it!

A medieval romp through the delicate foliage of true love, honour and courage. This movie has pace, humour [oh the excellent humour], high emotions, on-the-edge-of-your-seat moments, and more. I’m sure there are detractors who will cry ‘oh how predictable’ and ‘oh but where was the twist’. Well to them – tosh.

We got hokum and bunkum by the bucket, and we loved it.

The characters were moving and interesting, the dialog was sharp, the humour had me laughing out loud, and whilst it may have been easy to predict the story and the results, it never detracted for a moment from the entertainment value provided.

Planet of the Apes ran in a straight line and I disliked it as a result; let’s face it, so did this movie, but here it didn’t matter, because we were being dragged along in its wake feeling glorious and enriched.

With a nod and a wink to the excellent Plunkett And Macleane we are given a period fantasy with a modern feel and an updated sound track. The movie opens with the medieval crowd singing Queen’s ‘We will rock you’, and the banquet dance scene includes modern music and dance in a period setting.

Excellent performances all round, but for me, Paul Bettany stood out as Chaucer. Audacity, charisma and an on screen presence which left me wanting more.

So generally, an excellent feel-good movie, entertaining, thrilling, funny, well worth £5.50, and one I will be buying on DVD no doubt. I strongly recommend seeing it.

Hmm, overall, dissapointing is how I would describe this version of the ‘classic’ Planet of the Apes. Just to make it clear, I’ve not seen the original movie properly, nor have I read the book so I didn’t really have any pre-conceptions.

The story plodded along, and felt very linear, there weren’t any real surprises along the way, and I can’t even claim this was because I knew roughly what happened in advance. It was because Tim didn’t put any effort in to hiding or disguising what was going on. That may have been his personal choice of course. The acting was passable, the makeup was rather impressive, I really couldn’t tell what was CGI (was there any?) and what was live-action. But the plodding linear story, oh dear. It had no pace, no feeling of excitement, no feeling of any real danger. There elements which could have really been expanded or investigated further. Perhaps there wasn’t time.

The ending has caused plenty of debate, and I didn’t feel that it worked as well as Tim might have hoped. It makes me wonder about what happened, how things got like that, but it’s a frustrated wondering rather than an interested analytical wondering.

If you get the chance, see it on the big screen if you’ve nothing better to do that evening, because it looks impressive, but don’t go out of your way to do so.

Well, well, well. A mixed bag. No, not Lara, she’s nice.

Want a one line summary? Tomb Raider is an excellent action movie spoiled by long periods of exposition and emotionless dialog.

The director is obviously excellent when it comes to action sequences. The four main sequences are all superb, with the 2nd and 3rd sequences being some of the most exciting action I’ve seen in a film for a while. Not in the same style as The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, or Charlie’s Angels, but more the Die Hard style of action. It’s good. Angelina rocks 🙂

The pace during those action scenes is excellent, the initial pace of the movie is good, but it just dies to a slow crawl after the third action sequence, for far too long. Then, when the last action sequence comes along, it’s not quite enough to lift it back up again.

The story is ok, if you liked the game, you’ll appreciate it, but it’s not terribly impressive, and the threat never felt very real, which meant the point of the thing never felt very right.

Sure, Lara kicks ass, but you have to ask yourself why.

Don’t get me wrong, I was entertained, but I just lost my suspension of disbelief during the dialog, it dragged on too long. More action, less chat would have worked better I think.

I’m glad I went and saw this on the big screen, if you get the chance, go, but don’t expect something quite as good as The Mummy or Mission Impossible. It is however, on a par with The Mummy Returns [which also suffered a little from long exposition] and much better than Mission Impossible II.

I will be buying the DVD.

Oh, and a nice bonus – Lord of the Rings trailer on before the movie – most excellent

Go and see it.

Do not pass go, do not collect your £200, just go and see the movie.

Forget the fact that it’s a kids movie, forget the fact that it’s got astoundingly good computer animation, just enjoy the humour, I haven’t laughed this much in the cinema for a long time.

In a topsy-turvy fantasy faerie world, our out-of-the-ordinary hero, Shrek, rescues an out-of-the-ordinary princess, with the aid of a talking donkey.

Excellent lines, excellent scenes, excellent mickey taking [Disney, Matrix, River Dance, Blues Brothers, the list goes on ….] and just thoroughly entertaining.

Truly something for all the family.

Once you have seen it, come back, and read this phrase again, “the toad!”, and you’ll be chuckling for hours.

I think the only quote I can sum up to reflect my opinion is, “no redeeming features what-so-ever”.

I have a longer opinion, but it boils down to the above.

Oh, and the editing crew needs shooting.