About Time

We flew in from Auckland on Wednesday, arriving about 4.30 and after about five minutes at home and absolute craziness from the dog, found ourselves going out again, to the movies.  Our daughter had won a couple of seats, courtesy of More FM, to a preview of About Time.  Written and directed by the New Zealand-born Richard Curtis (Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral) this is a wacky romantic comedy that, for the most part, holds its peculiar time travel idea together without losing credibility (at least while you're watching the movie, which is all that's important).  Curtis is supported by a wonderful cast, with one of Brendan Gleeson's sons, Domhnall, in the main role, and Rachel McAdams as his girlfriend. Bill Nighy plays the hero's father, with that wonderful dryness and seeming vagueness that he's so good at. And a great deal of warmth, because this isn't just a romantic movie, but one about fathers and sons, and their relationships, and about what happens when death begins to knock. There are a host of other excellent actors, including Tom Hollander as a bitter and foul-mouthed playwright, and brief and uncredited performances by Richard E Grant and Richard Griffiths as two actors in Hollander's play.

The script is a little loose in structure, but this may in part be the result of its telling the story of a man as he grows from his late school years into married adulthood, where he becomes a father himself. There are times when the time travel aspect seems to be put aside while other things move on, but just when you think Curtis has forgotten about it, he drops it into the story again and reshuffles the plot. At times it seems as though Curtis has given himself too many characters to play around with, but he seems to manage to juggle most of them pretty well.  Only Harry Hadden-Paton, as one of Gleeson's slightly dopey friends, and Richard Cordery, as an uncle given to seemingly Alzheimer's laden non sequiturs, seem never quite to fit into the whole scheme of things. Nevertheless, t
here are plenty of witty lines, lots of adept comedy playing, and some unexpectedly emotional moments.

Morning Glory

Over the last week and a bit I've been away on holiday, so blogging has gone off the radar completely. Which isn't a bad thing, and I haven't actually missed it particularly. However, it's nice to get back to doing some writing, even though taking a break from that too has been fine.

Anyway, while we were in Wellington over the weekend, we went to the movies - mainly to rest our weary feet, I think. The choices weren't great, or else the times weren't convenient, so we wound up seeing Morning Glory with Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton.

Keaton, who's a superb actress in the right roles, seems these days to play dopey characters with issues. However, given the material she has in this script, she does it perfectly, and is often very funny. Ford plays Mr Grump of the Year - or the Third Worst Person on the Planet, as one of the other characters describes him (the underused Patrick Wilson, who's supposed to be the hunk in the story, but gets no room to develop his character in any great way). Ford doesn't have to do much except be grumpy, and he does this very well. He's probably relieved that he never has to walk at more than a snail's pace - at 68 it's definitely time for him to hang up the action hero hat. (There was a noticeable moment early on in his last Indiana Jones movie, where he was required to jump up from one tall box to another. As a fellow-sexagenarian I could feel his - and see- pain.)

Rachel McAdams, who's not an actress I've really come across before, (though she was in the Sherlock Holmes movie that came out a year or so ago, but I think there she was struggling to be seen amongst all the hamming-up done by the two male leads) here plays an 'energiser Bunny' as Roger Ebert puts it. Quite honestly, she drove me a bit batty: she was supposed to have great talent, but was such a ditz that you had to wonder how the talent could shine through. Anyway, she's the lead, and she has a ball with her kookie character. I'd hate to come within a hundred miles of the person she plays, but that's okay, I'm not likely to, since this person gets up at 1.30 am every day to go and produce a breakfast 'news' program. Whether what they do is 'news' is what the movie is partly about, and is the source of Ford's character's issues. The former NZ Breakfast Show presenter Paul Henry was widely regarded a plonker after what he said about the Indian politician and the Governor General, but it's likely that most of the characters in Morning Glory would approve him entirely. He'd certainly fit in with their mentality.

There are few serious moments in the movie, when one character actually faces up to another with the truth, but the truth usually gets whizzed out the window a few seconds later.

I think we were probably too tired to enjoy this for what it is, but at least in the dark of the theatre we could take our shoes off without anyone noticing, and rest our weary feet.