No.237 : What We Did On Our Holiday (2014)

What We Did On Our Holiday at the IMDb

 If you like films about bickering couples (and who doesn’t?) this may well be the one for you.

Tenth Doctor David Tennant takes his family on a journey through time and space - well, it happens over a couple of days and they go to Scotland - where marital and family differences are all played out around the celebrations of his father’s (Billy Connolly’s) birthday.

Tennant is married to Rosamund Pike and rather than thank the Good Lord he spends all his time fighting with her - to be fair e never really got over Billie Piper. The pair live in London with their three stage school kids and have a daunting trip ahead of them to the Scottish Highlands where his brother (Ben Miller) and father live.

Ben is a total asshole who bullies his son and values his money over everything else. Bet he learns a lesson soon! He also has the worst Scottish accent you can imagine and it must have been that Alexander Armstrong was busy that weekend.

The family gather and we start to learn some home truths including some infidelity and that Billy has cancer. The innocent kids give away a lot of the family secrets to which wise old Billy dispenses increasingly annoying homilies, as he tries to protect them from the fractious family difficulties.

As the day of the day of the big birthaday party arrives an event occurs that leads all of the family to reevaluate their values and relationships. Yes, I’m afraid it’s that dull!

This was a largely inoffensive film but one that became increasingly annoying as it progressed. The characters were all thinly drawn and I didn’t really care why they were bickering never mind hope that they could become reconciled. The kids all did their best but there were a lot of fluffed lines and the wisdom of their innocence quickly became a real niggle.

The pivotal scene after an hour was as mawkish as it was unlikely - some of the impromptu building work carried out would have stumped Brunel!

It was a good cast with a lot of familiar faces popping up for five minutes but they were largely underused with shouting and yelling taking centre stage over any attempts at wit or charm.

The film was written and directed by Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton of ‘Drop the Dead Donkey’ fame and it’s a shame they produced such an anodyne and forgetful comedy rather than take a few chances, as we’d expect from them. It’s definitely not one to hate but just a twee and forgettable bit of fluff with nothing really to say and no laughs offered either.

Best Bit : No Osprey? Let’s paint one on the film!
‘W’ Rating 10/23

No.189 : Widow on the Hill (2005)

Widow on the Hill at the IMDb

Made for TV true crime drama next - you can accuse us of cherry picking here at the 'W' Movie Blog.

Natasha Henstridge stars as Linda, the titular widow who is a nurse with a penchant for low cut tops. The film has the narrative device of a TV show interviewing Linda as she faces a murder charge. The story is then told in flashback with occasional cuts to the present day as the interview develops. We learn from the off that Linda has been accused of killing her new husband, James Brolin.

We meet James in livelier times as a wealthy landowner whose wife is dying. He hires a nurse from an agency and gets Natasha - Bingo! James’ daughters don’t like the new lady in their Dad’s life and worry she’s a gold digger. Pretty soon James’ wife shuffles off and in no time Natasha is in the wife’s fur coat and in his bed. Her sexy style turns the old man’s head and she’s married to him in no time flat.

His daughters however fail to be won over especially as the new wedding ring is the one mum promised to her daughter. The lovely Natasha starts to woo her way into the county set but we all know she’s after his cash - or is she? Have we been seduced by the evil schemer or does she really just have a taste for James’ silver locks and outdoorsy style?

It’s not long before she starts shagging the staff and threatening the family - can this total bitch get away with ruining the family and inheriting the house?

This was a decent enough TV drama but there wasn’t too much to recommend it apart from Natasha running about in a fetching black bra and panties set. Her character was thinly drawn and we knew she was a wrong ‘un from the off with her scheming and manipulating. She didn’t offer much that would garner our sympathies and although she was set up to be a villain she just came across as a bit of a bitch.

Brolin is always likeable but he lacked believability as the rich sucker being drawn in by feminine wiles. His two suspicious daughters were just annoying and the supposedly drunk one didn’t look like she'd ever had as much as a sweet sherry.

The narrative device of the news show was a decent stab at keeping us guessing with the story being broken down to small chunks, with the present day Linda commenting on the events we’d just seen. There was no prospect of any surprises however with Brolin’s fate sealed before we met him. The script was so biased against the slutty wife that we knew the outcome early on but it was good fun to see how evil she could get while wearing a succession of bras.

It was a strange choice to have the whole film build up to the trial and then cover the court action itself with a couple of on screen captions. Maybe they ran out of cash or indeed underwear.

The production values were decent enough but it was essentially a family drama set in a small town so it didn’t need a Death Star or cast of thousands. It wasn’t anything to rave about but it’s certainly worth a look if you catch it on late night TV.

‘W’ Score 15/23

No.176 : White Noise (2005)

White Noise at the IMDb

If you think our TV is bad you should see Michael Keaton’s local TV station - nothing but static 24 hours a day. Still beats ‘The X-Factor’ I guess.

Keaton plays Jonathan Rivers, a successful architect with a pretty author wife. He has an unnecessarily complicated marital situation with an unfeasible young ex-wife but I guess this was used so that his annoying child didn’t have to be there all the time.

Anyway, the wife reveals she’s up the duff and her book is about to be published these happy news items can only mean one thing - immediate death! True enough, after a late night waiting up for the wayward wife Keaton finds that her car has been found missing and she is presumed drowned in the river - Rivers by name… After a few days of unconvincing worry he heads back to work but spots fatty Ian McNeice trailing him - maybe he dropped some do-nuts - it isn’t made clear.

He confronts the slobby stalker only to be told the wife is dead and he has messages from the other side. Keaton clearly hasn’t read the script and tells him to bugger off but soon after the cops turn up with the body. We flash-forward six months and Michael is trying to make a new start. He is still hearing the static however and rather than bin the nylon shirts he heads over to McNiece’s house - and doesn’t even take a pie.

McNiece reveals what we the viewer already know that dead people can communicate using the medium of static - well we did get to see the trailer. The slovenly psychic plays Keaton a few crackly snippets that convince him so much that he’s soon using a Dixon’s gold card to fit out his house with a state of the art static observation unit. He also meets a fellow mourner who vouches for the obese occultist as he managed to find some crackles that sounded like someone she once knew.

Things develop quickly as every video tape reveals a new secret and sends Keaton across town to save some lives. He guesses his dead wife is directing him to people who are soon to die in the hope he can save them from their fate. This meddling doesn’t go unnoticed however and, despite being warned off by the world’s only genuine psychic, Keaton ploughs on. He better watch those three ominous shadows in the playback - they could develop in to some unconvincing CGI is he’s not careful!

‘White Noise’ is a decent high concept effort but essentially it’s just an updating of the ‘meddling with the Ouija board’ ‘B’ movie. Keaton has little charisma and his descent from loving husband to grieving widower to obsessed researcher barely lifts an eyebrow.

There were some interesting touches but no real scares and it was only the wait for the big reveal, that made no sense, that kept me watching. The constant hissing of the static screens was most annoying and I barely got beyond the opening credits due to this. The effects were poorly rendered with the three bogeymen looking about as threatening as a Bee-Gees reunion - there again…

The big showdown at the end upped the pace somewhat but I don’t think the outcome was earned with a tragic sacrifice looking more like a irresponsible wet floor. The full manifestations of the static was not explained and the bad guy was so unexpected a flashback was needed so we could say ‘oh it was that guy’.

The film had a couple of scares and some uncomfortable scenes but all in all it was a forgettable piece of undemanding trash that looks as dated as Keaton’s collection of VHS tapes.

Best Bit - Gonna have trouble getting those jeans off.
‘W’ Score 10/23