Reviews

I never saw a trailer for this movie, but the title card showed Chadwick Boseman in menacing silhouette, and a hand wrapped in a weaponised chain, and boasts an accomplished supporting cast including Luke Evans and Alfred Molina, so, I was hopeful. Sadly, the cast are wasted on the weak, derived and implausible script.

Boseman plays the titular Jacob King, a taxi driver who travels from Cape Town to California, USA for one week with $600 in his pocket, after receiving a frantic call for help from his estranged sister Bianca; she is missing when he arrives. Using information gleaned from people in Bianca's seedy neighbourhood, Jacob learns that his sister's husband Alex suddenly abandoned the family, never to be seen again, and that her stepson named Armand is also missing. Later, Jacob finds Bianca's mutilated body in a local morgue, turned in as a Jane Doe.

Here is the first implausibility: rather than identify the body and report the murder to the authorities, Jacob denies that the body is that of his sister, thus setting himself up as the avenging big brother (Ohhhhh! So, THAT'S how he became involved with the Avengers!).

Second implausibility: at the beginning of his vengeful quest Jacob injures several goons, killing none (and not one criminal has a firearm?!! In Los Angeles, USA??!!), but he introduces himself to everyone, friend and foe alike, as Bianca's brother. Knowing only this, a simple search and a few phone calls would have told his enemies exactly who he is, that he is, as we learn later, not a poor cabbie, but a Cape Town police detective of some rank, making his vigilantism and failure to report Bianca's murder even more bizarre. One can only deduce that he developed his mistrust of California police from watching Beverly Hills Cop.

Third: no security? The final boss level villains, are, of course, heavily moneyed, yet, they seem to have no basic security measures, like cameras or even security staff. In other words, the action scenes are lacklustre. Only once is Jacob in what one might call inescapable danger, and our hero alleviates things by throwing a screaming tantrum, compelling a murderous police officer (the only cops we see in the whole movie) to inexplicably get out of his patrol car in the middle of a traffic jam to quieten Jacob, inadvertently making his inescapable situation escapable.

Fourth: no consequences. Yes, we know that movie villains and heroes routinely pile up bodies with impunity, but we're led to believe that nothing happened after the final boss receives his comeuppance. Really? Some famous, wealthy and important people are involved. Surely, something happens somewhere. Nothing?

Fifth: superhuman healing. Despite the violence Jacob suffers at the hands of his enemies, after sleeping for what seems only hours or, perhaps, as much as only a day, almost no sign of swelling, bruising or bleeding is visible on him or even his clothes.

Sixth: Did I mention that Jacob learns what became of his brother-in-law and his sister's stepson? As it happens, that information alone would be enough to bring down at least part of what looks like an extensive criminal element; now, THAT would have been a compelling story.

Director Fabrice du Welz was so focused on trying to make an action flick that he completely lost the plot, in more ways than one, and failed to deliver a good, or at least, original story first. But, at least we got to see the brooding demeanour and hear the accent that helped Boseman land the role of another king.

Instead of sushi and caviar, we got watered-down baby formula.

My daughter and I love this movie. We watch it every time it's on TV. It's the humour that gets us. As for my review, I liked the performances of the leads; their chemistry is palpable, and you can see that this was the movie that started their real life together. Vince Vaughn is funny, but underused. It's never revealed how John's and Jane's respective employers didn't know their stars were married for "5 or 6 years", but it must be a horrible violation if two competing assassination "companies" are willing to join forces to kill them. If only we knew the details of why. Prizzi's Honour this ain't, but it doesn't really try to be. Unfortunately, all the cool, slick fun of the first 75 minutes, and even the first few minutes of the confrontation with the ninjas, degrades in the final shootout: as others have said, the ninjas with machine guns shoot like storm troopers, while John and Jane perform their ballistic ballet. My biggest complaint about the movie is the end: are we to believe that, despite the fact that two assassination organisations merged for the express purpose of destroying John and Jane, now that they've killed all the ninjas, the kill order has been lifted and they're safe? I mean, it's not like they ran away; they even continued going to the same marriage counsellor. The end feels as if that's where the story should be starting. It's a fun and funny movie, but it feels unfinished.

For the most part, it's an OK show. I enjoy watching it when the topic is something I'd be interested in. However, my biggest peeve against the show is that most of its episodes can be narrated in two sentences: "A worker puts the raw material into the mould. The machine takes over to complete the process." This is not a show about how things are made. It's a show about how machines mass-produce items with no craft or art involved in the process. I would like to see how something is actually made. For example, I would like to see how a frame is constructed and a membrane of skin or wood strips is lain over it to produce a kayak. I don't want to see "a high-powered press forces the molten plastic pellets into the mould. When it cools, a worker sprays fibreglass onto it and paints it." Yes, many things are mass-produced, but not everything.

I loved the first one, had a lot of fun with the second (the water wheel scene is a classic), but I agree with those who said the third was too long. 'Twas so. There was enough material in it to make 2 movies. The plot was too confusing to follow with any real sense on a single viewing. It has taken me several viewings at home to properly follow a lot of the plot points, like who's on whose side, etc.

Spielberg did the right thing with the second and third Back to the Future movies: he split them into 2 movies so he could properly explore each chapter of the story. Verbinski should have done the same with this one. He should have just concentrated on a great adventure to rescue Jack from the Locker battling the kraken along the way. That would have left the way clear for a rip-roaring battle between the pirates and Beckett in the 4th movie.

There was much too little done in Davey Jones Locker. They walk onto the beach and Jack sails across the sand to them, end of rescue.

The audience got a raw deal when the kraken, everyone's favourite villain and source of tension in the second movie, was simply written out in the 3rd with not so much as a stick poked into its eye.

What was the purpose of the whole 'free Calypso' plot line? So, she turned into a giant pile of crabs to do what, indicate to us that Miss Harris would not be part of a 4th movie? I could have written a less expensive scene to explain that.

Ten years on and, having borne and raised a child, Elizabeth aged not a day? Is that a continuity problem? Was that scene supposed to come at the end of a 4th movie in which she finds the fountain of youth? How come the naval officers didn't take command of the ship during the final attack when Beckett froze? Even if he was paying them, he was a company man, not a naval officer.

Maudlin mAudlin maUdlin mauDlin maudLin maudlIn maudliN Sickeningly maudlin!!!!

Four girls with questionable entertaining ability want to make it big in the music business. Not a new story. My daughter loves this movie, but then again, she loves everything from Disney. I think I'm neglecting my duty as a parent by not locking out this channel.

The movie is quite ludicrous and really strains the will. I failed the test and finally had to run out of the room leaving my daughter rapt. I tried not to pay any attention to the, but I can see and hear the TV from the kitchen. Several times I had to laugh aloud, not because something funny had happened on the screen, but because something so mind-numbing had happened that I had to choose between laughing and screaming. The only person not trying to talk "urban" (read: American Black) all the time was Raven Pearman, and that gets old really fast. The straw that broke this camel's back was the ultra-maudlin last scenes with the dog in the hole. I moaned and protested audibly when the news crew arrived, when the police spoke in such urgent tones about shutting down power, when Raven started pleading into the camera, and finally, when she started singing. I didn't wait for the others to pick up the cue and start harmonising. That's when I ran out the door.

Given the fact that the little mermaid, one of the most irritating of all movie characters, got two sequels, why haven't the animators at Disney brought out a sequel to the great mouse detective, one of the finest cartoon movies made? This is a great movie in the vein of the old classics like Pinocchio and others of that era. it brought back the drama and class so long missing from Disney's animation efforts, starting in the late 1980s.

Basil is brilliant if absentminded.

Dawson is performed in the tradition of Nigel Bruce: intelligent enough to study medicine, tough enough to serve in the military, yet, a buffoon outside his surgery (I've never understood that dichotomy in the popular portrayals of the character).

Vincent Price is deliciously wicked as Ratigan (love the medals).

I agree the movie is too short at 74 minutes. It's intelligent enough for adults to like it, so it could have been quite a bit longer without having parents fall asleep in the cinema.

If there's a failing with the movie, it's that Basil doesn't actually solve the crime like Holmes does. He knows something is wrong and stops it, but he doesn't actually figure it out.

I'm dying to see a sequel, but I'm wary that Disney would candy-coat it too much, as is their wont.

i read the DVD case. it promised a stellar cast and adventures for my 8yr old daughter. i got it for my daughter and watched it with her. it was awful from start to finish. it made me cringe all the way through. i could feel my IQ dropping the longer i watched.

1. flatulence humour. no thanks.

2. anachronistic dialogue and so-called "cool" slang.

3. pitiful indoor sets. it looked like they were just shooting the same set from a different side of the room.

4. references, in what was probably meant to be a children's movie, to adult movies like the silence of the lambs was just the pits.

5. smartmouthed and pointless characters.

the lone bright spots for me were mcraney and redgrave. at least they sounded almost authentic.

oui. c'est le garbage.