The Great Gatsby

This one can be easily termed as a classic. And it shows under classics on Amazon.  I tried to download and speed-read but I guess there wasn’t enough time.  I was expecting The Great Gatsby to release only next week.  I guess I need to be a bit more cued in.  But I must say that, 10 minutes into the movie, I thought it was actually true to the book – because that is all I could read before walking into the movie.

A Few Best Men

So the fact is that I was supposed to watch the Charlize Theron RomCom titled “Young Adult” and realized that mistakes in online schedules are not characteristic of India at all. For 2 days in a row, I experienced a gaffe in show timings at the local theatre in Adelaide called Wallis Cinemas @ Mitcham Mall. Firstly, The Iron Lady was called out as the 1205 show and turned out to be the 1235 show – lucky I say. But not so lucky when The Young Adult was called out as the 1830 show and turned out to be the 1710 show. So now what? I wasn’t going to go back without watching a movie. So I picked up the 1910 show of A Few Best Men which not only resulted in 90 minutes of acute pain but also in missing the first minute or 2 of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I am not sure what pissed me off more – watching the movie or missing the first couple of minutes of the next one. I guess it was both!!!!


AFBM turned out to be an excruciatingly painful example of British Slapstick – yes there is a genre of comedy called British slapstick because I just experienced it and it sucks!!!! While I didn’t expect a stunning example of classic comedy – the posters were quite obvious about it – I didn’t expect the latest form of British torture. Indeed MI5 would be seriously considering putting those serious terrorists who refuse to break, through the likes of AFBM. Spill out the secrets that you have hidden from us or else we will force you to watch AFBM.

From the first frame it becomes quite obvious that you are in for a tough time. Mia Ramme (Laura Brent) meets David Locking (Xavier Samuel) during a random vacation in Tuvalu (a Polynesian island for those who are unaware) and they fall in love over 10 days and decide to get married. Now Mia is Aussie. And David is well …. British. So it comes as no surprise when David’s mates back home turn out to be a bunch of idiots – Tom (Kris Marshall), Graham (Kevin Bishop) and Luke (Tim Draxl). By this time you are quite certain that u r in for a more than tough time!!!!

The pain gets excruciating when the actual facts start falling out of the cupboard. Mia is a Senator in waiting. Her dad is the current Senator and is rich like nearly nothing else. David is a nitwit. His friends get pally with a dope runner as soon as they get to Oz. They are even bigger nitwits. Mia’s sister is twice her size and pretending to be a lesbian. Her mother is a frustrated wife of a senator. 4 snorts of lethal cocaine doesn’t kill someone it just makes them extremely happy and go blabbering all over the place. The list is endless.

To cut a long story short, Stephan Elliott (Priscilla Queen of the Desert) cannot direct to save his life. The cast cannot act to save theirs. The dialogues suck. The comedy is non existant unless u are a sucker for slapstick (not to mention severe pain). And even if this is playing on an in-flight, which it will starting a month or two, you should avoid it like the plague I say. 3 on 10 for some decent moments that enable you to survive this crap.

Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf4aaxIH-nQ