The Pink Panther 2

People who have the time to care may discover that I didn't entirely hate the new version of the Pink Panther, even in spite of it having the obvious pitfalls that I suspected it would have, and so I toddled off to see The Pink Panther 2 with my expectations a little higher than they were for the first film. Incidentally, I think it's pretty clear that the days of unique titles for sequels have passed - now we just stick a number after the original title, or attempt to do something clever like put a number into the original title. With Fast & Furious it looks like they can't even bothered to change the original title...people will still go see it no matter what.

The big difference between the new series of Pink Panther films and the original series is the target audience. Blake Edward's films may have been slapstick, but the target audience was clearly an adult audience (witness the amount of boobage in A Shot In The Dark if you don't believe me). Steve Martin's films are a family event, and the first film succeeded by catering to that audience. That said, it's strangely where the second film tends to go awry. For some reason, while most people know they are making a family film, some of the screenwriters (possibly Martin himself) has forgotten this, and there are a few jokes in the film which sit uncomfortably with the rest of the film - most notably the jokes about being politically correct. Now, while I laughed out loud at these jokes, and particularly enjoyed the "my little yellow friend" reference to the original films, the joke about oggling the beautiful girl - funny though it was - seemed just crass given the level of the film. I had a similar feeling when, in "The Cat In The Hat", the cat almost swore.

The other thing that is infinitely annoying about this film is the complete lack of continuity with the first film in regards to the Pink Panther. In the first film, it was the largest diamond in the world, but was in a ring on a football coach's hand. Now, it is the symbol of France and is far, far too big to be in a ring. This sort of carelessness is, quite frankly, just annoying and it's here where the screenwriters and producers need to go back to the original films to take some lessons: don't contradict yourself...you don't have to have the Pink Panther in the film to call it a Pink Panther film. All it needs is Clouseau.

Steve Martin makes less of an impact as Clouseau this time round, and sadly, once again saves the day by being a very intelligent detective rather than than just extraordinarily lucky. Fortunately, while Martin is going overboard with his physical comedy and just looking stupid, there are others to take on some of the comedy - in this case Alfred Molina and, surprisingly, Andy Garcia. Molina has some clever lines, but Garcia comes dangerously close to stealing the movie with amazing precision on his lines and, more than that, giving some equally clever slapstick comedy. I would actually love to watch more of Garcia's character rather than Martin's.

I see that the box office returns for this film are particularly bad and so, as a consequence, I doubt we will see a Pink Panther 3. At the end of the day this is probably a good thing. There is a place for this kind of film, but it's quite far removed from the original Pink Panther concept and as a result really isn't a Pink Panther film.

Doctor Who: Beautiful Chaos (BBC Books)

Gary Russell has had a pretty charmed life given he is a Doctor Who fan and one would assume that, although he hasn't gotten to actually portray the Doctor, he must have reached the second best goal of his life. Over the years he has produced Doctor Who audios, written Doctor Who novels and is now a script editor at Upper Boat. It's a little surprising then that Beautiful Chaos is his first New Series Adventure.

Beautiful Chaos has Donna return to Earth and so characterisation is going to be the most important thing in this novel as the Doctor/Donna relationship has to now factor in Sylvia and Wilf. Writing for Donna is a bit tricky, as one tends to write more for Catherine Tate than for Donna, and writing for Sylvia is just as hard as you have to make a negative character still sympathetic. Regardless of the story of Beautiful Chaos, Russell has managed to nail the four central characters and the complex relationships between them. Wilf is postive, loving of Donna's new life and deeply respectful of the Doctor, while Sylvia is negative, but for all the right reasons - she is terrified of losing her daughter so soon after losing her husband, she has shouldered huge responsibilities while Donna has left them, and she is struggling to accept the situations that have been thrust onto them. The majority of the story takes place before Donna is finally returned to her family, but a coda gives us a chance to see that even Sylvia has a grudging respect for the Doctor and an understanding of what he means to Earth.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given his tendency towards what people refer to as "fanwank", Beautiful Chaos mines the series history for its villain, bringing us the evil Mandragora Helix that once plagued the fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane in Italy during the 15th century. Central to the Doctor's defeat of this entity, which is attempting to manifest and control Earth, is an elderly lady who Wilf has taken a shine to, and who suffers from Alzheimer's. This is a tricky topic to deal with and Russell handles it rather sweetly, not shying away from the disease and the inevitability of its outcome. Rather nicely as well is Wilf's wonder why the Doctor can't cure it after all his travels.

All in all, Beautiful Chaos is probably the best of the four Doctor/Donna novels to date, helped no doubt by the fact that Donna's journey has finished on screen. But good work Gary for providing such a great character driven story.

Doctor Who: Planet Of The Dead

When you set the bar high, if you fall short people are going to criticise you for not being as good as you were. For James Bond that meant that Licence To Kill, despite being a box office smash, was regarded as a bit of a failure because it didn't make as much money as the other Bond movies - it was compared to it's predecessors, rather than it's competition. So as a result of that, with Doctor Who's special effects always looking so great these days, I have a gripe about the CGI rendered flying bus at the end of Planet Of The Dead. It just looked more than a little pasted on, particularly when one of the swarm smashed into it and appeared to make no indentation on the bus whatsoever.
It's a pretty good thing, I feel, when the biggest complaint you have with an episode of Doctor Who is the below-par CGI. In light of the fact that this episode was still in post production days before it was broadcast, perhaps the smash of the bus in Dubai caused the tighter than usual post production.

There were a number of things to note about this particular story, and one of them was the much talked about overseas shooting in Dubai. Dubai looks quite impressive as the planet Sans Helios, effectively nothing more than a giant desert, but one can't help feeling that it was marginally unnecessary.

The guest cast was up to its usual standard, but there were four standouts for me, all of whom deserved to be mentioned. From the least important; Noma Dumezweni returning as Captain Magambo (although this is the first time she appeared in the normal universe) gave us a lot more to the character than was seen in her last appearance. Of particular note was her pulling a gun on her scientific advisor to order him to shut down the ever growing wormhole that was the mcguffin of this episode. Harsh though it may seem, her actions seem very much in keeping with a UNIT soldier who sees the protection of the planet more important than the safety of a few civillians.

Next up is Ellen Thomas as Carmen, the older lady who has a psychic gift which gets better and better on the alien planet of the dead. Although she has very little to do, really, in the story, it is her prophecy to the Doctor at the end of the story that is more disturbing than anything else.

Lee Evans plays UNIT scientist Dr Malcolm Taylor who is an affectionate parody of the traditional Doctor Who fan (unlike the parody that was the Victor Kennedy). Taylor has read all the Doctor's files and knows his adventures inside out and loves the Doctor. With his county accent and "I love you, I love you, I love you" line at the end of the episode, this character had great potential to be extremely annoying and, frankly, crap. However, Evans gives the character a lot of warmth and is a very, very likable person.

But it was Michelle Ryan that generated the most concern for the hardcore Doctor Who fans. Her turn in Bionic Woman was hard to pin down, and despite a good performance in Jekyll, there was always the Eastenders shadow hanging over her. As Lady Christina de Souza, Michelle Ryan played a companion very much in the mould of Romana, and this character worked very well opposite Tennant. Christina has Martha's sass, Donna's independence and Rose's admiration of the Doctor. I wanted her to continue with the Doctor on his travels, and was disappointed that she didn't.

Cast aside, as usual, and with the exception of a certain bus, the production was up to its usual standards. The Swarm was quite disturbing, and looked quite scary, while the Tritovores, which in photo looked terrible, came across quite effectively and their deaths were actually a little sad.

I found myself enjoying Planet Of The Dead a lot more than I did The Next Doctor, and as we count down to the Doctor's tenth regeneration, it seems as though we have some great stories to come.

Red Dwarf: Back To Earth

It's been twenty-two years since Red Dwarf first lazily made its way across our screens, at the time being repainted by its slobby only-living crew member Dave Lister, and nine years since the substantial former-hologram Arnold Rimmer kneed Death in the balls to make an escape from the Reaper. Since that time, Red Dwarf fans (myself included) have hoped for a return from the team, and our hopes were constantly kept up by "The Movie" - a movie with a script, a cast, but with no funding.

Now Back To Earth brings the crew back for three episodes (half a season no less). Sadly, there is something less than satisfying about this particular outing.

It really comes down to the fact that Back To Earth is essentially a "best of" collection of the original series. Three episodes without, sadly, an original idea in sight.
The first episode has the crew bored out of their brains (hello Backwards) while Kryten is on holiday, but on his return they discover there is something on board the ship (hello Polymorph) and it is in the water supply. Kryten, Lister and Cat go to investigate, leaving Rimmer to man the sonar (hello Back To Reality). When they destroy the squid in the water (Back To Reality again) a new hologram arrives giving Rimmer a day to get his affairs in order (err...Me^2) and then sends the entire crew into a new dimension.

I won't bother detailing the final two episodes, which essentially revolve around the crew discovering they are fictional characters of a television show called Red Dwarf, and they need to find their creator, a la Blade Runner. Finally, they discover that they are recycling the actual plot of Back To Reality.

The first episode takes about ten minutes for the actors to get their act together and remember how they played their parts, and at that point the squid fight takes place which is quite entertaining - primarily because Rimmer dances to elevator music as the fight gets out of control on the screens behind him. It's very slapstick, but it's the highlight of the episode. Indeed, it's the highlight of the first two episodes. If the first episode was a slow news day on the Dwarf, the second episode is positively static. The concept of the crew discovering that they are fictional characters was extremely clever and very funny in Back To Reality, primarily because it allowed the cast to play an alternative group of characters who were quite far removed from their regular characters. Sadly, although the plot of Back To Reality is recycled here, the alternative characters don't actually appear and so as a consequence there is little to actually laugh at.

Part Three is probably the funniest of the three episodes, and strangely enough the appearance of Kochanski actually lightens the episode. Craig Charles got the opportunity to have a rather emotional moment in Part One, but in Part Three the ending is Charles best acting in the entire nine series. Part Three also contains the other funny moment in the story as Krtyen, Rimmer and Cat attempt to inveigle themselves into Coronation St.

Sadly Part Three also contains more recycling than the rest of the episode, including obvious jokes from The Simpsons and plot from Blade Runner. Even worse, the Blade Runner and Red Dwarf plot points are actually highlighted when the characters remind the audience of the episode they came from.

Tim McInnerny said that he would never do another series of Blackadder because people didn't want to see the cast fat and bald; they wanted to remember the series as it was. Red Dwarf is proof positive that it is better to travel in hope than it is to arrive as after waiting nine years for Red Dwarf to return, the result is nothing short of a waste of talent.

Bernice Summerfield: The Two Jasons

I was about two-thirds of the way through The Two Jasons when I suddenly thought to myself, "hold on a sec...this is just Death And Diplomacy all over again". Sure enough by the time I got to the end of the novel (or novella really, because this is not a terribly long book), Dave Stone pointed out that he was indeed just retelling the Death And Diplomacy story because it needed to be told for the new audience of Benny fans who would never have read this book.

Except...I'm willing to bet that the only people who are listening to these Benny audios, and reading these Benny novels are only doing so because they continued on from reading The New Adventures back in the nineties. And after nine years, if people are still listening/reading these things then they don't really have a lot of a problem with the Jason/Benny backstory.

So essentially, one can't help but wonder...what's the point of this book then? It tells a story that most of its audience has already read or really don't care about.

OK, yes the story is quite entertaining (although you really need to be a fan of Stone's work or, quite frankly, you'll hate the entire thing) and yes there are some new elements in the book that we haven't read before, but frankly it's going to take more than a "ooohhh look - Roz and Chris...and a thinly veiled reference to the Doctor" to make the book worthwhile.

Doctor Who: The Story Of Martha (BBC Books)

Series Three of Doctor Who provided Martha with a nice, year long gap to have a lot of adventures that we would never know about because the entire year was undone when the paradox machine was destroyed. Dan Abnett attempts to bridge the gap a little with this particular novel, though it is interspersed with a number of short stories by other writers who give us adventures that Martha had with the Doctor elsewhere.

David Roden's story tells how a group of people appear to be turning into monsters, though it transpires that this is actually a natural evolution and when the final survivor gets the opportunity to die or change...well...

Steve Lockley & Paul Lewis tell the story of a space station who receive messages from aliens that offer the the opportunity to solve all their problems.

Robert Shearman's story deals with the Doctor and Martha joining an explorer who plans on going to Antarctica, but the Doctor begins to realise that they are going nowhere and have been doing the same thing over and over again.

Finally Simon Jowett's story is a love story of a human and an "artificial" which is forbidden, although it soon turns out that the humans are actually only advanced "artificials".

Most of these stories, truth to tell, are quite underwhelming. Only Robert Shearman's story really stands out above the others, and this is primarily because it is told in such a different style to the other three.

However, that said, the framing story is quite a lot of fun as we join Martha tracking across the world and we discover why Japan was destroyed at the Master's insistence. It's quite a novel idea to think that an alien race were about to invade Earth but were interrupted by the arrival of the Master's own invasion.

The Story Of Martha is an entertaining read, and shows that there is still a place for the short story concept in the new world of Doctor Who. It's a shame that we don't see more of it.

Monsters Vs Aliens

Dreamworks seemed initially to be just knocking a few animated movies together in an effort to make some money. There was hardly any attempt to actually do it properly, and on occasion it seemed that their ideas were identical to other animated movies that were being released at the time. With Monsters Vs Aliens, Dreamworks has come up with a very clever idea that incorporates a few quite funny concepts.

Told mostly from the perspective of Susan, we meet a young woman who is hit by a meteorite and promptly becomes a giant (with white hair, bizarrely). And so we get the first thread of the storyline which is Susan attempting to deal with becoming a "monster" and being unable to return to her old life.
We meet the other monsters - the Missing Link, Bob, Dr Cockroach and Insectosaurus. It's worth mentioning the rather excellent vocal work down by actors Reese Witherspoon (Susan), Seth Rogan (Bob), Hugh Laurie (Cockroach) and Keifer Sutherland (playing their captor General W R Monger). These actors really bring their characters to life and ingest them with a large amount of humour.

Of course the fact is that the monsters are all based on a group of 50's monsters that were always a bit of a joke (50ft woman, the Blob, the creature from the black Lagoon, and one of Godzilla's opponents). It's this sort of thing that really, really makes the movie a family movie - the kids can enjoy the general silliness, but the adults, particularly the older ones, who can identify who these monsters actually are.

Through in an alien who looks like a 1950s alien, but with tentacles, and agani Rainn Wilson gives Gallaxhar the OTT performance that is perfectly required.

There is still a lack of depth to this movie, unlike the Pixar movies, but Dreamworks is clearly making a lot of effort, and they are starting to produce some quite quality work.