Overheated coachload of stereotypes
Sunday October 04 2009
Driving Aphrodite
Cert 12A
Dissatisfied with her life in the US, Georgia (Nia Vardalos) moves to Greece where she becomes a tour guide in love with the sites but disillusioned with the people she has to show them to. A new international coachload arrives for her to guide: she gets crotchety, they get bored, but over the course of their week they find a middle ground and realise some home truths.
Driving Aphrodite (it was called My Life in Ruins in the US) means well, and the cast is appealing enough -- it's the story mechanisms and characterisations that let it down. As the coach passengers board in pairs of racial stereotypes --obnoxious American ones, chilly English ones, oversexed Spanish ones and pally drunk Australian ones -- it dawns that this Ark of Eejits contains every cliche going. Irv (Richard Dreyfus) isn't as smart assy as he seems, the driver Poupi Kakas -- no really -- has hidden depths, Georgia isn't that uptight.
In short, no-one is what they seem and while this is a nice, perky message, when an entire coachload of strangers morphs from nasty to nice after a week together on an overheated bus in shoddy crap hotels it's feel-sick, not feel-good.
It's another case of taking a poor story and disguising it with a pretty location, not that the Greeks come out of it too well. There are a couple of good lines and it would be passable if it wasn't trying to be so relentlessly upbeat. Overall, it is so contrived as to be painful, funny in places but perhaps if your aim is to be My Big Fat Mamma Mia, you can only fail.
AO'C
Driving Aphrodite is now showing
Surrogates
Cert 12
IN the not too distant future humans have opted to live through Surrogates, increasingly humanoid robots who do jobs such as shopping, socialising, driving... almost everything, in fact. Humans can take any virtual risk they want from the safety of their own homes, the result being a virtually disease-, crime-, prejudice-free outside world populated by physical ideals.
A fundamental safety is breached by a weapon that can kill not only Surrogates, but their Biologicals as well. The first victim is the son of the inventor of Surrogates, and Agents Greer (Bruce Willis) and Peters (Radha Mitchell) are assigned to the case, first linking it to The Prophet's (Ving Rhames) rebel anti-robot group, then to more corporate causes.
There are some good ideas in this, the concept of living a virtual, idealised life rather than a real one is interesting. As is the critique of a wish for an idealised physique, the visual abolition of ugliness, age and disability -- although in this context there's something vaguely ironic about the portrayal of real people as pyjama-clad and miserable looking with hideously discoloured teeth. However there is no real explanation why things such as crime and racism have diminished, and no convincing explanation of why 90 per cent of the populations would so readily retire to their beds.
As a result, the film lacks any real emotional depth, and the dead child backstory is just a bargain-basement emotional hook. Willis is fine, veering from airbrushed Bruno-haired surrogate to bald haggard human, but Brucie is best when he's hamming it up and his understatedness here is no small part of why the film feels so flat.
It's not bad, but it's not good, too much is going on in a small space (88 mins long) and it could have been better. A good movie for teenagers to go to.
AO'C
Surrogates is now showing
Pandorum
Cert 16
THAT cautionary adage about faraway hills being greener is given a reboot courtesy of sci-fi adventure Pandorum. In the case of this feature, directed by Christian Alvart, it's a case of faraway planets being greener.
The year is 2174, and concerns about the Earth's imminent demise has led to a mass evacuation on the Elysium, a massive inter-stellar Noah's Ark. The intended destination is Tanis, a distant planet which is said to be able to support human life, but as the opening scenes reveal, things haven't gone according to plan.
Waking up from an extended "hypersleep", crew member Bower (Ben Foster) and Lieutenant Payton (Dennis Quaid) find themselves seemingly alone on a malfunctioning Elysium with temporary amnesia having left them oblivious as to both the purpose of their mission and the reason it was aborted. Maintaining radio contact with Payton, Bower takes it upon himself to explore the ship's murky labyrinth with a view towards finding and repairing the reactor that will restore the ship's power.
The discovery of the butchered remains of fellow crew members successfully establishes a sense of the sinister, while the arrival of the flesh-eating fiends on the scene supplies the final pieces of the hell-realm jigsaw. Cue race against time as the fate of the species depends on Bower staying alive long enough to restart the reactor.
Pandorum is not in the same league as recent sci-fi offerings such as Moon and District 9 but it does deliver enough thrills to suggest that undemanding genre fans are likely to remain engaged for the duration. The middle third drags a good deal but the ending is worth waiting for, Antje Traue has some good moments as the token babe on board while excitable types will find the flesh-eating fiends deliver decent fang for your buck.
PMcK
Pandorum is now showing
- Aine O'Connor, Padraic McKiernan
Originally published in
