Reviews

I picked this up for about 50p at a car boot. Intrigued because I am a big Donald Pleasance fan and this was a movie I'd never heard of. Unsurprisingly, as from the card box, it was probably last released in the UK around the late 1970's.

The box promised an hour and a half of adventure. Well it was lying, but that's probably because this movie is impossible to categorise or explain.

Essentially, it's probably a road movie. although the road is a mountain track and the vehicle is a three wheeled, three seater quad bike, and the "adventure" consists of the three protagonists constantly bickering and beating each other up.

The three characters - Logan, Gladys and Mazella are losers. Not lovable losers mind you. Losers with a capital L. Logan is a forgetful fool, possibly with Tourette's. Gladys is a bitter widow and Mazella is a buffoon. They all hate each other.

They decide to go and find Logan's Father's Gold Mine. On the way, they trespass on an Indian burial ground and get politely told to "fuck....off". They meet a nicer Indian whom Mazella donates his Mickey Mouse T Shirt to. They leave the brakes off their motorised trike, which falls off a cliff and then they find the mine. Which is unminable. They find a pot of gold under the floor and decide to raft the gold back to civilisation. They lose the raft and the gold.

That is the entire plot. It's not riveting. However, something strange happened. By the end, I found I was laughing with the characters, not at them. They are not endearing, and they can't stand each other's company. But by the time you've been through their trials and tribulations. You, as the viewer, have formed a bond with them, as they have between them. And that's down to the superb acting.

The point of the characters is not who they are, but where they have come from. And this is revealed throughout the film. Logan's account of his Mother's death is an astounding piece of acting by Pleasance. Logan shrugs it off, it means nothing to him, because Logan himself is not clever enough to realise how much it affected him, yet Pleasance puts Logan's history into every tic and swear word. The same with Gladys and Mazella. They are three rather unpleasant people until the film leisurely explores why they are who they are, purely through dialogue. It doesn't absolve them or make judgments.It just gives us three people with nothing, whose desire is gold, and who end up with nothing but each other, but the ending provides no comfort to their story.

There is no existentialism here, as is common in most road movies. Just simple numbing life and how it keeps happening at you without you having much say in the matter. The film quality is appalling, I still can't figure out how the colour manages to look both oversaturated AND washed out (Although the landscape is nonetheless breathtakingly beautiful), the directing is dodgy, the script banal, the acting as I say, is superb. Yet somehow, this is much more than the sum of its parts. It's not profound, moving, edgy or anything else. It just is. And being so, allowing the characters to flesh themselves out, makes it enthralling.

Not for everyone, but everyone should see it at least once, for absolutely no good reason, except that somewhere along the line, you begin to care about these three hapless jerks. This happens approximately two minutes before the end. So make sure you hang around till then.

This is a polarising film. People either love it or despise it, it seems. Me, I despise it. The film comes from the same context as Lindsay Anderson's Oh Lucky Man, but while that is a masterpiece, this is just horrible.

Both films take Kafka's unfinished novel - America, for their inspiration and general ideal. America is a surreal story of a youth's travels through the country. Kafka uses the this character as a pure observer, one who does not change over the course of the journey (although the book is about 300 pages and still seems only a quarter finished, so we'll never know). Allowing Kafka to concentrate and comment on the absurd/surreal situations and surroundings. Oh Lucky Man follows this same template to show Britain through the eyes of Malcolm McDowell and Weekend does the same for France.

Both films are also hugely Brechtian, using various tricks and techniques to point up the fact that this is NOT REAL, this is confabulation etc. But the difference comes where Oh Lucky Man uses the constructed film to convey the absurdity of life and the class system, Weekend uses the constructed film to bludgeon us to death with ideological polemic. Because Godard goes further than Anderson in his Brechtian principles, we end up with two principle characters in which we have no investment, at all. We're forced to spend 90 minutes with them, yet we couldn't care less about them. Deliberately so. But in doing this, Godard leaves us with a film that is entirely about his own message, which, in the first half of the film is provided through relentless and overbearing symbolism, and in the second half through a series of long speeches directed to camera. Combined with unpleasant and unnecessary scenes such as the really horrible pig slaying, far worse than any of the off camera violence of the car crashes.

The end result is like listening to a student political apparatchik droning on and on and on about his views whilst repeatedly kicking you in the head so that you get the message. The problem with Brecht is, if you alienate the audience too much, then you've alienated them from what you are trying to convey. Which always seemed self evident to me.

The parts that really stick in the craw for this movie though, is the contrast between the extremely sexually explicit verbal description of the threesome at the start and the off-screen comical rape in the middle, which, even if it could be viewed as allegorical, completely destroys the film's faith in itself and it's characters, what little of it existed in the first place. It's so French with a capital F, it hurts.

Watch Oh Lucky Man instead. That is a work of genius. Weekend is a work of pretension.

Two stars, and only for the traffic jam scene and the piano scene, which are just hints at genius, although they actually make the end result more frustrating and unsatisfying as without them, this is a bad film by the worst most pretentious director in the world, with them, well it's obvious that this is a damn good technical director making the most intellectually pretentious film in the world. Somehow that's far worse.

Some comments on this movie focus on the ending, labelling it unnecessary, violent, whatever. Saying it ruins the film.

I sometimes wonder if people like these watch the same movies I do.

Lamb as a movie has it's faults, it's about half an hour too long, at some points the slow pace becomes a chore to get through. A couple of minor issues for a film in which Liam Neeson and Hugh O'Connor give performances of their lives. In Hugh's case this is exceptional considering he looks about 8. The ending is not the problem and if you watch the movie and listen to the characters and understand the motives and feelings, you will understand. It's not like the director went out of his way to hide these. There's a massive hint read out on the radio for goodness sake.

Neeson is pitch perfect as a man out of his depth. Driven to do the right thing he struggles to cope with the consequences of his actions, eventually reaching the only conclusion that makes sense. However the film is not a tragedy. Eoin has a few weeks of happiness with someone who truly cares about him. But the happiness cannot last and the man of God must finally face himself as a coward. Having done the unthinkable out of love he does not have the strength to commit himself to God. Make no mistake, the end is harrowing, but compelling. Neeson outdoes himself. But he is outdone himself by Hugh as Eoin, the smoking, swearing, epileptic child who will none the less enrapture you as much as he does Michael Lamb.

This is a rare film but so worth seeking out. I wish more people had the bravery to make movies as hard as this one.

No. I'm being unfair, there are two or three things that are right with this TV adaptation. Susan, Hex, Nobby Nobbs. Ummm.

Lets concentrate on these good things for the moment. Susan: Michelle Dockery looks the part and plays it well, future star here. Hex: Well apart from the Anthill Inside gag which was horrendous but hey really do seem to have created a marvel here. Nobby Nobbs: At first sight I thought David Tennant playing Nobby was so far off the mark as to be in another country, however it's really really weird how quickly he does become the ultimate representation of Nobby, that smile is quite incredible, obviously it's different from the Nobby in the book, but of all the changes made, this one was the standout.

OK. So what was wrong with this? It was blatantly obvious that Sky wanted a Christmas show and someone said hey, what about Hogfather, it's this great book which is a satire about Christmas. And so they commissioned it, without any thought to the rest of the Diskworld series.

First problem, too much exposition for those who have read the book (and in the wrong places) not enough for those who haven't.

Second problem, Hogfather is not a good book to adapt, especially if you are aiming at kids, certainly not as the first introduction to Discworld. However, it does have a Santa Claus figure, which is what was wanted.

Third problem, Any director wanting lessons in how to waste a great cast should watch this. David Jason is one of the finest British comedians ever born, watching him trying to struggle with the completely dead sight gags here is painful. Also, because it is aimed at the kiddies, Albert (A chain-smoker) is not allowed to smoke but instead has all his rollies fall apart on him in said dead sight gags. If you don't want to send a smoking message, cut cigarettes completely, or make the character what he actually is, a gnarled husk of an unlikeable sod who's as withered as his tobacco, not a happy elf as played by Britain's best loved comedian (Who somehow gets the lead credit?) I could go on about how others are wasted, but other people do that quite adequately.

There are many other problems, but I won't go on too long. The ones worth mentioning are turning the Faculty Wizards into a group of pointless old men who stand around mumbling, failing in any way whatsoever to capture any kind of flavour of Ankh Morepork, instead filming it like a costume drama, ignoring most of the minor characters, rubbish sets and direction in the Tooth Fairy's tower - witness the guards. Not killing the actor playing TeaTime for his horrendously awful voice and really bad performance. I could go on, and on.

Yet. And there is a yet. I enjoyed it. For all its faults there were bits where I really rooted for the good guys. Where I got into the action. I even chuckled at a few points. I don't know if I would have if I hadn't read the book, I'd probably have been too confused. But nevertheless, even if this is not the adaptation I wanted it to be, hopefully it will go on to inspire other better adaptations (Preferably starting from the beginning and with Tom Baker or Christopher Lee as death).

And no, it is not Terry reading the narrative. It is the late great Ian Richardson. There is no doubt that Terry is a great writer, but he has not been blessed with a great oratorial voice.