Nick Moran

For what's clearly trying to be a bad-mannered sex comedy, there's nothing particularly rude or funny here. This is mainly because the central character is both unlikeable and hard to believe. And also because this British movie reveals its moralistic intentions as the story develops from one contrived scene to the next. Thanks to the cast there are moments of wit here and there, but all of them are undermined by the uneven tone.

At the centre of the mayhem is Frank (Jason Durr), who runs a sex-toy company with his pal Bill (Nick Moran). Business is good, and life is a series of drunken parties populated with curvy women. Fed up with his refusal to grow up, Frank's estranged wife Rachel (Orla O'Rourke) talks their doctor into giving Frank a fake diagnosis to shake him up. Now believing that he has a fatal heart condition, Frank suddenly decides that he needs to get his life in order, clean up his professional life and bond with his 15-year-old son Sam (Dylan Llewellyn) on a series of days out. He also decides to help Sam get the girl (Poppy Drayton) he has his eye on.

The most annoying thing about this underdeveloped script is the way it portrays Frank as such an idiot that he never asks a single pertinent question about his condition, including treatment options and a second opinion. And yet Frank upends everything in an effort to change. This is so ludicrously implausible that it highlights the other contrivances in the script, most pointedly how Bill has managed to create such a successful company when he knows absolutely nothing about women or sex. None of this is the fault of the actors; both Durr and Moran have plenty of charm, but the misogynistic characters they play simply never feel like real human beings.

Continue reading: Down Dog Review

Lock, Stockis in fact, probably the best film since Pulp Fiction in which there are no really good guys. Pulp Fiction, Lock, Stockbegins with what would seem to be a simple story, that quickly careens out of control. In this case, four buddies; Tom, Eddie, Bacon, and Soap, pool their money together to back can't lose Eddie at an unbeknownst-to-them rigged game of cards. Of course they get fleeced, and end up in heavy debt to the local heavy. What follows is a madcap plan to recoup the money by intercepting a heist Eddie has fortuitously discovered his neighbor is carrying out. The interrelation of the problems with the original heist, along with the interception of it by Eddie's gang, and a couple of other local illegal activities result in a frantic circle of destruction.

Continue reading: Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels Review

After all its TV commercial posturing about "re-envisioning" a classic as a post-Hong Kong actioner, "The Musketeer" betrays the truth of its utter lack of real ambition in the casting of a wooden, charmlessly handsome, totally generic Hollywood pretty boy in the title role.

His name is Justin Chambers (Jennifer Lopez's irritating Italian suitor in "The Wedding Planner"), and he looks and acts like he got the part only because Chris O'Donnell -- the industry's preferred choice for glinty-eyed, mannequin-souled heroes -- already played D'Artagnan in Disney's weightless 1993 adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' "The Three Musketeers."

Out to avenge the murder of his father some 14 years before, this D'Artagnan is "all for one" without the "one for all." Ostensibly, he ventures to Paris to join King Louis XIII's elite guard, only to find them disbanded and in disarray following a power shift that favored troops loyal to the power-mad Cardinal Richelieu (Stephen Rea).

Continue reading: The Musketeer Review