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#653 – Elysium (2013)
Elysium (2013)
Film review #653
Director: Neil Blomkamp
SYNOPSIS: In a future where the rich and wealthy have escaped an overpopulated and polluted earth to live on a luxurious space station orbiting the planet, Max da Costa is attempting to survive on the surface. When an accident at work leaves him exposed to lethal radiation and only a few days to live, Max decides to team up with an old criminal acquaintance to infiltrate Elysium and access the medical facilities there…
THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Elysium is a 2013 sci-fi film. Set in the year 2154, where the earth is overpopulated and polluted, Max Da Costa (Matt Damon) is exposed to lethal radiation at a job, and is given only a few days to live. With the only way to cure himself on board the space station Elysium, where the rich and powerful live in luxury, he teams up with a hacker and an old friend in order to find a way up there and cure himself. The plot of the film is, at its core, very predictable: all of the pieces and characters motives fit together and progress in the exact way you expect. Not entirely a bad thing, as it makes the film flow nicely, but you can’t help but feel there’s something more that could have been done with it. As it is though, it’s all fairly self-contained and entertaining enough, with the film being tied together with some strong action scenes and energetic fights. The concept of a divide between the poor on the planet and the rich in the space station above is a fairly simple one to grasp, and doesn’t need any real explanations to grasp it as the underpinning of the story.
If the film looks or seems familiar in any way, then perhaps you’re remembering the 2009 film District 9. This is not coincidental, as Neil Blomkamp directed both films, and clearly brings a shared vision of a ruined earth for both films. Even one of the villains in Elysium, Kruger, is played by the lead actor from District 9 (Sharlto Copley). The two are different films, but there’s a lot of similarities that inevitably draw comparison. Whereas District 9 dived deep into it’s themes and explore issues of discrimination amidst an alien invasion, Elysium really struggles to get it’s theme of extreme class divide in the same way. Even Blomkamp himself admits he didn’t get it across in the way he intended to. As mentioned, the film’s action and energy is decent, and the plot flows nicely; it’s just that any further depth into it’s themes never really grab the viewer’s attention.
The imagery of a dilapidated earth are rendered well, with plenty of dirt and grime that highlights the conditions on the planet. In contrast, Elysium has a more utopian aesthetic, combined with the more futuristic setting of the rotating space station. Max as a character feels deeply underdeveloped, as his only motive is to get to Elysium to cure himself, and lacks any other thoughts on what is going on around him. It makes sense, sure, that he is only focused on staying alive, but it does leave a hole at the centre of the film that ties the main character to the various machinations around him. Overall, Elysium is a perfectly serviceable action film with a clearly defined story and setting. In terms of bringing the themes behind the story. the film fails to do so in any meaningful way, and draws inevitable comparisons to the director’s former work, which did it much better in District 9. Not a bad film by any means, but clearly doesn’t fulfil the vision laid out for it.
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#652 – Color Out of Space (2019)
Color Out of Space (2019)
Film review #652
Director: Richard Stanley
SYNOPSIS: Nathan Gardner moves his family to a remote farm after his Wife’s cancer surgery. One night, a strange meteorite crashes near their home, exhibiting a strange colour. Over the coming days, the family begin to experience strange events that leave them bemused and suffering as their reality slowly unravels…
THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Color Out of Space is a 2019 film based on H.P. Lovecraft’s The Color Out of Space. Retold in a modern setting, the film follows Nathan Gardner (Nicholas Cage) moving his family to his late Father’s farm after his Wife’s successful surgery. A meteorite crashes near the house and starts to affect everything around it, leaving the family to try and survive the psychological nightmare they are in. As the minds of the family members unravel due to the warping of reality around them, we are subjected to a host of horrors and strange events, combining gruesome body horror reminiscent of The Thing with the psychological unravelling of the inhabitants of the house. With both of these themes swirling around, there is a lot going on in the film that assaults the senses from multiple directions. I did feel that the film didn’t really flow and progress in a natural way as reality slowly degraded, but you could argue that was the point. The film doesn’t really lead anywhere, and the characters are mostly left to be subjected to the meteorite’s bizarre influences, which again, you can argue is the point. The otherworldly use of colour is pretty cool at points, but I can’t help but feel it had a lot more potential in wrapping itself round the events that happen throughout.
Another thing which might either help or hinder your enjoyment of this film is the acting: the characters all have their own quibbles and quirks that come out when things get weird, but there’s no real character arcs to get stuck into. Nicholas Cage brings his typical unhinged acting into his role as his character slowly unravels, and you might find this distracting or appropriate considering the weirdness that’s going on. The family rarely act like a family given their disparate characters, and it doesn’t really come together on that point. There’s hints about the past of some of the characters and their trauma, but it’s never fleshed out or dealt with. The other characters, such as hydrologist Ward and squatter Ezra (Tommy Chong) are quite nebulous and only really serve exposition or an outsider narrative view.
There’s definitely an attempt put in to capture the weirdness and otherworldly aspect of a Lovecraft story. Color Out of Space does its own interpretation, blending psychological horror with physical gore that is made very well, and showed off just enough to capture the imagination. It is unsettling, and it aims to be unsettling, so I think it works in this respect. This does lead to a lack of coherence in the plot, as there’s little direction or progression, and the acting is all over the place. I personally found this very hard to get into, but appreciated some of the effects; it’s just a shame they didn’t cohere around a cleaner narrative.
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#651 – Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Film review #651
Director: Lana Wachowski, Lily Wachowski
SYNOPSIS: Jupiter leads an ordinary life when she is caught up in an interplanetary struggle when it turns out she is the genetic reincarnation of the head of the most powerful business in the galaxy, and inheritor to a vast fortune. Caught up in a battle for the inheritance of her supposed genetic double, Jupiter has to figure out who she can trust as she is kidnapped across the galaxy by those who want her inheritance for themselves.
THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Jupiter Ascending is a 2016 sci-film. An ordinary woman discovers that she is the genetic reincarnation of the head of the Galaxy’s most powerful empire, and is caught up in the struggle for control of it between three siblings. A simple enough story in theory, but let us set the tone here: it is bad, and borderline incomprehensible. Obviously the film is trying to capture the feeling of the main character being introduced to a galaxy which she has not known anything about, but there has to be some way for the viewer to be able to follow what’s happening too. What we get is just Jupiter being passed back and forth across different planets, spaceships and the like, with no real sense of place or establishing where in outer space we are at any given time. The film is constantly interrupted by characters having to explain things to Jupiter, meaning we have to suffer through it as well. The film obviously wants to create an expansive universe, but it really sweats the small details to the point that information overload sets in, and the explanation never applies to anything from that point on. The whole scene with the bees recognising Jupiter in the sense that bees “recognise royalty” was so unbelievably stupid I don’t know where to start: they could have just written any other way to show her status, but to do it with bees raises far too many questions: do bees not sting human monarchs as well then? It doesn’t matter, because it is never referenced again after it’s unceremonious one-time use. The film has some expansive and detailed CG effects, and the action scenes have a certain pacing, but always resolve themselves the same way: with Cain saving Jupiter at the very last second. By the fifth or sixth time it happens it’s so predictable the whole fanfare around it is just wasted. Also, Cain has these anti-gravity boots that he constantly uses in his action scenes to fly about, but apparently no one else in the galaxy has access to these things as they are left running about on the ground after him? The Wachowskis bring in their conceptual exploration of transhumanism and discovering who you are as they typically do, but there’s no depth to it or interesting exploration; it’s just more explaining minutiae that drags the film down into getting stuck on little details that don’t matter.
The film is supposed to have this overarching love story between Jupiter (Mila Kunis) and Cain (Channing Tatum), and how Jupiter has never been in love because her Mother taught her never to get close to anyone or something. There’s the germ of a narrative here, but it’s hampered by another of the film’s huge problems: the characters never becomes proper characters. Everybody in the film just feels like they can’t settle into their roles, and as such you only recognise the actors just being themselves. These are all fairly competent actors, so they know what they’re doing, they just aren’t given anything tangible or unique to work with. As such, any chemistry or character development is severely limited. By far the most obscene performance is Eddie Redmayne as the villain Balem Abrasax: he constantly talks in this low whisper which makes him impossible to take seriously. His role is so over-acted that it’s distracting from anything his character does. In fact, his character disappears for nearly all the film, so he’s not really all that important. The rest of the cast are Sean Bean being Sean Bean (although his character doesn’t actually die) and others that barely make a scratch in the film. The crew of the spaceship Aegis have a supporting role, I’m just not sure what it is, due to the constant moving around different planets and locations across space mentioned, it’s hard to keep track of just what is going on and what their motivations are.
The film does have some good CG effects and the otherworldly locations are rendered with good detail and a graspable scale. Unfortunately, that is the only positive I can really take from this mess of a film. Jupiter Ascending is a mess of poorly structured plot, ill-defined characters, and bemusing performances that nowhere near fulfil the concepts and narrative themes they are attempting to develop. Every action scene playing out essentially the same even drains the film of any entertainment value. I simply cannot recommend this film in any way.
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#650 – Cyborg X (2016)
Cyborg X (2016)
Film review #650
Director: Kevin King
SYNOPSIS: When a computer virus infects the weapons manufacturer X-Corp, it’s drone weapons hunt down humans and reduce the world to ruin. Hiding out in the desert, a group of survivors happen to learn that X-Corp CEO Jack Kilmore has been kidnapped by the cyborgs that now roam the planet nearby. They plan a rescue mission to retrieve him and use the knowledge he undoubtedly has to turn the tide of the war against the cyborgs…
THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Cyborg X is a 2016 film and the fourth film in the Cyborg series of films. That said, the film has no ties with any of the previous films other than the name, and the year it is set would, in theory, make it a prequel. However, nothing in the film itself shows up in the others. The weapons manufacturer X-Corp has developed a new form of warfare in the form of cyborg drones that can implant and control humans, but when a computer virus infects the system, the weapons attack humans indiscriminately, reducing the world to a very familiar post-apocalyptic wasteland. In the aftermath, we find ourselves in a desert in the middle of nowhere: the favourite setting of post-apocalyptic films that have no budget to build sets. A group of survivors are banded together here and discover that the X-Corp CEO Jack Kilmore has been kidnapped by cyborgs nearby and mount a mission to rescue him, figuring he has knowledge that can be used to win the war. A very typical story (a bit too “inpspired” by Terminator at some points) accompanied by a typical cast of mediocre characters leave this film dull and predictable, although you shouldn’t be expecting much considering the obvious lack of budget and wooden acting.
The film has a fair amount of violence and gore, but the effects aren’t particularly great. There’s one scene where a guy wakes up to find the entire lower body is missing, and he just starts crawling with his insides hanging out and shooting cyborgs without any regard for logic and the fact he should be long dead. The CG effects are even worse, and aren’t going to convince anyone. All of the cyborgs have the same look to them as well, which is strikingly similar to Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. It’s a bit odd how the cyborgs are supposed to be humans who have had this drone thing attached to their face and transformed, but they all manage to look exactly the same for some reason, probably just because they could only afford to outfit one guy with the gear. Nothing in this film feels authentic, entertaining or exciting, it’s just another low budget post-apocalypse mess that fails to do anything noteworthy.
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#649 – Cyborg 3: The Recycler (1994)
Cyborg 3: The Recycler (1994)
Film review #649
Director: Michael Schroeder
SYNOPSIS: In the future, cyborgs are hunted by “Recyclers” who dismantle and sell them for parts. Cash, one such android, visits a doctor to find that, for some reason, she is pregnant. This draws the attention of a Recycler who chases her down, leading her to the hidden Cytown where cyborgs take refuge from the hunters. But with them fast approaching, they must prepare to fight and defend themselves…
THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Cyborg 3: The Recycler is a 1994 sci-fi film, and the third in the (loosely affiliated) Cyborg series. Set sometime after the events of Cyborg 2, we see the return of the cyborg Cash, who is played by Khrystyne Haje rather than Angelina Jolie this time, as she visits a cyborg doctor after experiencing her energy being drained to discover that somehow she is pregnant, and a new cyborg is growing inside of her. This whole plot element is really tenuous, and explanations about how it has actually happened barely cover the logic of it all. Nevertheless, she is the first cyborg to become ‘pregnant’ and when Recycler Anton Llewellyn learns about her, he begins to hunt her down for her parts. Cash flees, with the help of one of the Cyborg’s creators, to Cytown, where Cyborgs live secretly and free from being hunted. This leads to a recycled story of the town’s inhabitants having to defend themselves from the marauders in the form of the other Recyclers that Llewellyn has banded together. Yes: it’s essentially the plot of Mad Max 2, recycled for your viewing pleasure, nearly fifteen years after the fact, and with none of the characters, action or the effects that make it work. The film focuses on the villain Llewellyn almost as much as Cash, giving about equal screentime to each. The trouble is there’s not really much to Llewellyn’s character, and nothing to develop, or a backstory to explore. The implication of Cyborg’s being able to give birth is said to “change everything,” but they never really explore this in any detail. The film also ends without the baby even being born, which feels like the film had no real idea how to resolve it.
Aside from all the issues with the plot, you get your typical post-apocalyptic schlock, with goofy looking vehicles and gangs of motorbikes, which always manage to survive nuclear war it seems. There’s some okay practical effects scattered about, but nothing too memorable. Overall, Cyborg 3 is slow paced, lacking in substance, and fails to distinguish itself amidst the plethora of similar films in the genre. The fact that this series of films has made it to the third one is baffling.
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#648 – Cyborg 2 (1993)
Cyborg 2: Glass Shadow (1993)
Film review #648
Director: Michael Schroeder
SYNOPSIS: In the future, cyborgs are a part of everyday life. One cyborg production company takes to take out its competitor by sending a cyborg packed with an experimental explosive to their headquarters. When the cyborg’s instructor falls in love with her, the two escape, aided by a mysterious helper who shows up on screens to guide them to safety…
THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Cyborg 2 (Sometimes called Glass Shadow) is a 1993 sci-fi film and a sequel to the 1989 film Cyborg. Even though it is part of the Cyborg series, it has no relation to the original in terms of story or characters, apart from a brief flashback. Set in the year 2074, cyborgs (or androids, technically) are commonplace in all aspects of life, with cyborg production being dominated by two companies: Pinwheel Robotics in the USA, and Kobayashi Electronics in japan. Pinwheel have come up with a plan of corporate sabotage to put Kobayashi out of business by sending one of there cyborgs there as a spy and packed full of an experimental explosive that will be detonated and level the entire company. The chosen cyborg, Casella Reese, is trained by cyborg instructor Colton “Colt” Ricks, who has fallen for her, and when he learns the plot to send her to her death, escapes with her, leaving to them being hunted down as they flee. The setup of the film is fairly simple stuff, as the two end up on the run and pursued through the futuristic world. There’s nothing that stands out in this respect, as the film moves from setup to setup without much development between. There’s some okay visuals and effects with the cyborgs that just scream 1990’s sci-fi aesthetic, and clearly some thought and expertise has gone into making this work, but yes, it definitely looks of its time. The film is shovelled full of pointless action and nudity like you’d expect too, but maybe that’s what you’d expect from this sort as film as well.
Probably the most notable thing about the film is it being the film debut of Angelina Jolie as the female lead. Being only eighteen years old as well, she seems a bit out of place. It’s not a great film to debut in, but I suppose everyone has to start somewhere. The whole cast is a bit flat with no stand-out performances or characters. You’re not given much of an insight into Colt’s motivations (besides having the hots for the android), and the villains are a bit cartoonish. Everything is shot in very low lighting that probably obscures some of the cheapness, as well as most of what is going on. With all that said, the film is probably still better than Cyborg, because something actually happens, but Cyborg 2 does little to distinguish itself or make itself remotely interesting.
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#647 – Cyborg (1989)
Cyborg (1989)
Film review #647
Director: Albert Pyun
SYNOPSIS: In the near future, the world has become a post-apocalypse wasteland, and a ruthless gang is terrorising what is left of the United States. A female cyborg is sent to retrieve data from New York City and return it to Detroit in order to finish the development of a cure for a plague that is killing the survivors. She runs into a man who is fighting the leader of the gang, and asks him to escort her to Detroit…
THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Cyborg is a 1989 sci-film. Set in the typical post-apocalyptic wasteland of Mad Max ripoffs (and post-nuclear America too, I suppose), a plague is ravaging the survivors, and scientists in Detroit send a cyborg to New York City to get data that can help them complete a cure. While there, a gang tries to capture her so they can control the cure, and she seeks the help of Gibson Rickenbacker to escort her back to Detroit. The whole setup is very typical of this type of film, with the lone lead character who has abandoned his humanity rediscovering it as he is forced to accompany other people on a dangerous quest across the wasteland. There’s nothing that really sets the film apart from the oh so many similar films of the time. There’s some decent action that mostly revolves around Van Damme’s kickboxing expertise, but it’s all fairly par for the course.
In a film where one of the main characters is a cyborg, Van Damme still manages to come off as the last human character: his line delivery is barely audible, and clearly struggling with speaking English at some points. The villain is just your typical unhinged psychopath that doesn’t offer anything interesting, and everyone else is equally as dull. There’s some decent practical effects with the whole cyborg, but nothing too remarkable. The film really fails to embrace its best aspects: the fight scenes, and too much stunted dialogue upsets any sense of pacing. Probably not the worst of these types of movies, but Cyborg fails to really offer anything interesting, and doesn’t capitalise on the few things it does competently.
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#646 – Dark Tower (2017)
Dark Tower (2017)
Film review #646
Director: Nikolaj Arcel
SYNOPSIS: Jake Chambers is having dreams about another world in which a Gunslinger tries to stop the Man in Black form destroying a tower and thus the world. When some workers from a psychiatric ward come to take him, he recognises them wearing human skins like in his dreams, and manages to flee through a portal to the world in his dreams. There, he meets the Gunslinger, and the two of them attempt to bring down the man in Black before he can finish off both of their worlds…
THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Dark Tower is a 2017 film and an adaptation of Steven King’s series of novels of the same name. The story revolves around Jake Chambers, an ordinary schoolboy who has strange dreams about a ruined world and a gun-wielding man facing off against a Man in Black. When he discovers that the world is all too real, he teams up with the Gunslinger to save both his world and theirs. Emerging from a troubled production which saw the rights for the film passed between a number of studios and directors, the film takes the eight book series and condenses it into a just over ninety minute film. It should be evident that this comes fraught with problems. I have never read the books, but I am aware that the whole series is full of lore and worldbuilding, and the main issue with this film is that it has very little, and clumsily establishes what it has to before it rushes off onto the next plot point. I’m sure that there is an interesting world and mechanics in this story, but there’s no time taken to build or present it. The film throws the story into a typical three-act structure that again just skims over any worldbuilding and relies on the typical movie structure to carry the story through. First, we get Jake thrown into the Gunslinger’s world, then we get the Gunslinger thrown into Jake’s world with a typical fish-out-of-water experience in a very typical New York City setting, and then we get the finale. There’s no room for anything special or unique. Even if you want to make the argument that it isn’t trying to faithfully adapt the novels and just do its own thing with the material, it doesn’t do that either: it just slots it into this very formulaic structure.
The only thing real highlights of the film are Idris Elba’s performance as the Gunslinger, and some of the action scenes are quite nice. The rest of the characters don’t really offer anything interesting. Matthew McConaughey as the Man in Black with his ability to do just about anything is very flavourless. I a sense, I understand how this film became such a mess with it’s constant handing off to different people, meaning that any vision of it has been rewritten and dissected so nothing coherent remains. Even so, condensing such an obviously lore-heavy series into a film that barely stretches ninety minutes is evidently going to be fraught with problems without serious reworking: the solution the film finds to this is to shove it into a very typical structure that barely keeps it afloat in place of any worldbuilding. And it is the serious lack of worldbuilding that hampers this film: there’s no sense of place, setting, or consequence that makes anything matter. Dark Tower has some good moments, but barely coherent storytelling and worldbuilding leaves it a mess of a film.
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#645 – About Time (2013)
About Time (2013)
Film review #645
Director: Richard Curtis
SYNOPSIS: Tim learns from his Father that the men in his family have the ability to travel back in time. He uses this power to help improve his life, as his Father suggests, and upon meeting Mary, he does everything he can to make their relationship work…
THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: About Time is a 2013 sci-fi romantic comedy film. After a lacklustre New Year’s Eve party, Tim Lake learns from his Father that the men in his family (himself included) have the ability to travel back in time. He decides to use this power to improve his life by finding love. When he encounters Mary by chance, he has to use his powers to make sure their relationship is perfect. The film focuses on using these powers within the range of the romance genre, and sidesteps a lot of the other issues that this power could address: Tim is clearly established from a well-off family that get along well, so has no real need to use his powers for money or the other typical things people would try to get if they had these powers. It pigeon-holes the film in only dealing with certain things, but it’s a romance film, so it should have a specific focus I suppose. When he meets Mary, he has to use his powers to make sure their relationship goes right, but when he inadvertently changes the past so they never meet, he has to go back in time to try and meet her by “chance,” which means he learns where she is going to be at certain times. now, I suppose you could argue that this is “okay” since they already did meet naturally and hit it off before Tim changed the past, so arranging himself to meet her by chance is just him repeating what he had done, but there’s still this feeling of him being manipulative about the whole situation that just irks me, and remained with me throughout the film. The film never once raises this dilemma that he changed the past so he should maybe just deal with it, and just carries on as if it’s not really an issue. The fact also that Mary never finds out about his powers really makes the relationship very one-sided.
The film is, despite the film’s title, about love, and hinges on the developing relationship between the two main characters. Both Tim and Mary have some compatibility, and there’s certainly some charm in their interactions. The film offers us a fairly well-rounded picture of the couple, from their first meeting, to marriage and children. The film doesn’t really offer a climax of any sort, it just levels out as Tim learns to make the most of life one day at a time. All of the issues and problems faced throughout the film don’t really feed into this climax, and are often easily fixed by the whole time travel business so they never happened, and no one really develops via their mistakes. As mentioned, Tim and Mary have a certain amount of chemistry, and they deviate enough from the typical romance leads, but their quirky personalities that ramble on in that quirky fashion is not going to endear them to everyone, and even if you appreciate the charm their base awkwardness brings, it does get old after two hours. We don’t really get a sense of any of the other characters either; we get a narration introducing them at the beginning, and that serves to sum up their whole character throughout the film, so again there’s very little development or anything new than what is immediately established.
The film takes a bit of a shift towards the end as Tim’s Dad passes away, and Tim begins to go back to the past to speak with him before he no longer can. It offers a touching finale to the film, but also it just doesn’t really fit in with the romance between Tim and Mary, as the latter is pretty much side-lined. I get that Tim’s dad first introduced him to the power, and is a secret between them, so it kind of closes the circle of the films story, but it would have been nice for it to at least play more of a part throughout the film so everything is weaved together a bit better. It is at this point as well that the film just throws its own rules about time travel out of the window, having Tim go back visiting his father before he died and such. The film hand-waives the issue of a butterfly effect of altering the past away in the beginning, and as mentioned Tim never really has to deal with the consequences of his actions. The romance film is director Richard Curtis’s bread and butter, but adding in the time travel element creates a lot of issues, as I always say: if you’re going top have time travel in your film, you need to know how it works, or it will quickly unravel the whole film with plot-holes and the like.
About Time has enough charm and chemistry to carry out its duties as a romance film, but suffers from side-stepping the problems that time travel inevitably creates, and ignores addressing consequences in fear of disrupting its attempt at creating the perfect romance through the redoing of very specific moments. There’s a bit too much of holding the film together on vibes alone rather than exploring its premise with any amount of depth. It’s Richard Curtis doing what he does best, but lack of any real plot or development of the characters leaves little substance underneath. It hits the right notes when it needs to, but it’s quite muddled when it needs to how it got there. maybe it’s charm can carry you through the film, or, like me, maybe it just flounders a few times too many.
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#644 – My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006)
My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006)
Film review #644
Director: Ivan Reitman
SYNOPSIS: Matthew Saunders starts dating Jenny Johnson, and learns that she is the superhero G-Girl. When he decides to break up with her, he must contend with the wrath of a superhero, while a supervillain schemes to take her powers…
THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: My Super Ex-Girlfriend is a 2006 sci-fi comedy film. Matthew Saunders starts dated jenny Johnson, a woman he meets on the subway, and finds out that she is the superhero G-Girl. When he decides to break up with her, she decides to get revenge on him and make his life a living hell. The premise of the film is simple enough to grasp and offers the potential for some comedic moments. The trouble is that the film manages one or two of them and doesn’t take full advantage of it to take it anywhere interesting. It relies on crude humour that hasn’t really aged well, and also doesn’t really push any boundaries. One of the reasons for this is probably the PG-13 rating the film obviously wanted, and so anything that might have pushed said boundaries is obviously sidelined in the interest of playing it safe. Even so, there’s still plenty you could have done within the rating to make it more interesting, but due to a shoddy script devoid of imagination, and poor pacing, in which the ‘break up’ only happens half way through the film and leaves no time for anything substantial to happen before it has to set the stage for a resolution finale.
The one thing of note about the characters is that none of them are very likable: they’re all fairly flawed and annoying in some way. Uma Thurman is the stand out role and plays her part as the super-hero and nerdy neurotic alter-ego well, although a a lot of very cliché and unhinged traits are just dumped onto her character. Matthew as the male lead barely registers any interest, and Eddie Izzard as the villain is very half-baked. There’s also the distinct feeling that by the end of the film and everything is “resolved,” that no one has really learned anything. Overall, there’s certainly potential in the concept, but an obsession with a PG-13 rating and playing it safe leaves you thinking you could imagine much more interesting possibilities than what My Super Ex-Girlfriend actually gives you. Unlikeable characters, a fairly empty screenplay, and lack of many stand-out comedic moments leaves very little impression, despite Uma Thurman’s solid portrayal of the role she is given.
