Carrey on: Jim Carrey outshines his animated co-star in ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 3’.
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3 *** (109 minutes) PG
Veteran scene-stealer Jim Carrey proves for the third time here how no amount of digital wizardry can keep up with his ability to snatch the attention away from anyone foolish enough to think they can outshine him.
In the latest tornado-paced outing – and rest assured, there’s more to come – our blue-haired Sega video game hero and his multi-hued crew have to awkwardly join forces with their arch enemy Dr Ivo Robotnik (Carrey) to face down a world-threatening foe.
For good comedic measure, Robotnik is joined by his similarly moustachioed grandfather, played again by Carrey, who also worked as a creative consultant on the film, no doubt accounting for why his dual performance is so energetic.
To be honest, the story details can be tough to follow, and if your mind happens to drift for a moment to review your grocery list, you could lose track.
That said, the young’uns who crammed into the preview appeared to have had no such trouble, responding to every prompt and even emitting cheers. This is what immersion in Sonic culture earns you. Here’s hoping these future taxpayers pay a similar degree of attention in class.
The piece is as loud and manically paced as the previous two adventures, and adults duty-bound to take kids to see it will appreciate all the pop references and wisecracks Carrey delivers.
As for its length, the film could easily be retitled Sonic 3: The Film That Refused to End. Seriously, there are about four false endings, but the movie keeps jumping to the next scene. It’s a tad tiring, but at least nobody will be complaining about getting short-changed.
BETTER MAN **** (135 minutes) MA
This hugely entertaining cinematic surprise package would otherwise have been a pretty conventional musical biopic about British rock singer Robbie Williams – but for the fact that Robbie Williams is played by an all-talking, all-dancing, all-singing monkey.
Sounds nuts, even stupid and, frankly, the first reel or two of Better Man play like a failed gimmick. It’s like watching an unauthorised remake of Howard the Duck, only with a simian centre stage. You can’t help thinking of Lancelot Link. (Go on. young people, YouTube it.)
We’ve been watching digitally rendered apes prancing across our screens for decades now, with all the King Kong, Godzilla and Planet of the Apes movies. So, while the visual effects in Better Man are unquestionably impressive, they’re nothing new.
Then we get to the Rock DJ number, and the film upshifts dramatically. It’s easily the best movie musical sequence this year and seals the deal with the film’s crazy central conceit, the visuals proving so photo-realistic you end up embracing the idea that this CGI simian is human.
The narrative itself is a standard soup-to-nuts tale common to the pop music realm, chronicling Williams’ life story from his rough childhood, his big breaks, battle with drink, drugs, money, too much fame and his Jovian ego.
Having just sat through the tedium of the Pharrell Williams Lego biopic Piece By Piece, Better Man clocks in as a gimmick-driven vanity project that actually works.
Directed by Australian Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman), with Robbie Williams credited as a producer, the film features top cinematography by Erik A. Wilson and is likely to be one of the more engrossing and bizarre films you’ll see for a bit.
An independent Australian production (the biggest one so far, we’re assured), Better Man was mostly shot in Melbourne. How great it would be to see this amount of effort devoted to a local story.
ANORA **** (139 minutes) MA
There’s plenty of great gangster fun to be had with Anora, a raucous crime-comedy action jaunt featuring a gaggle of hoodlums who are even more likeable than the brood we met in GoodFellas.
Stripper Anora – played superbly by Mikey Madison, who some will recognize as one of the Manson Family hippies from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – thinks she’s hit romantic paydirt when she meets Russian party boy Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), quitting the pole and moving into his gated mansion.
It’s not his place, of course, but his parents’. Duly shocked and humiliated by their son taking up with a “prostitute” (a term Anora resents), they dispatch some heavily accented heavies to void the marriage and bring Iva home.
While the fab comic performance from Madison is clearly the film’s highlight, it’s the hot-headed centre of a giddy, fun ensemble piece as the group head into the night, looking for Ivan.
Terrific stuff.
THE ROOM NEXT DOOR ***1/2 (107 minutes) M
From veteran Spanish director Pedro Almodovar comes The Room Next Door, an outstanding, if decidedly sombre end-of-life drama that easily ranks as one of the best works in his eccentric and chequered 50-year career.
Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton put in Oscar-worthy performances, playing a successful author and cancer-ridden war reporter respectively. The former is asked by her friend to be there when she takes her own life in a remote house.
Avoiding easy sentiment, the delicately told story unfurls at an unhurried pace as the two women explore the motives behind the decision and the legal ramifications they know will follow.
A REAL PAIN ***1/2 (90 minutes) MA
In this biting comedy-drama, two American cousins decide to pay tribute to their Holocaust survivor mother by visiting Poland via a small tour group.
Playing the calm family man is writer/director Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network), a giving soul who has a tough job keeping control of his rude, immeasurably annoying cousin, played with pitch perfect timing by Kieran Culkin.
Featuring a host of awkward scenarios, A Real Pain is a finely honed and bittersweet tale that seamlessly swings between being very funny and being painfully sad. Some simple scenes – such as the one at the grandmother’s old house – prove unaccountably moving. A real jewel.