The Love Punch

Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson used to be married but then Pierce decided secretary's were a much better sexual option. They have a daughter who goes to uni and some whacky friends who look remarkably like Timothy Spall and Celia Imrie. Pierce is some bigshot business owner in London whose business is bought and shut down by a french dude. Pierce and Emma decide to go to Paris to track down this dude and get their money back, even though apparantly everything he has done is legal, if a little dickish. He says in no uncertain terms "non and get out of my house you english pigdogs", I may have paraphrased a little there. The not so happy couple then decide that the completely appropriate response to this apathy is to kidnap 4 Texans, break into a wedding and steal a $10million diamond from the french dudes fiancee whilst roping in Tim and Celia. O yeah and their son is a super hacker whose roommate is fond of public masturbation.

To say this film is awful would be an understatement. It starts with the divorced couple at a wedding and opens with a very nice little joke about the infidelity that plagued their clearly unhappy marriage, this is where the humour decides to jump ship. There are literally no other laughs in the entire film which in and of itself is no bad thing if it wasn't desperately trying to make you laugh. I honestly would have had a better time with Mike Tyson slapping me repeatedly whilst asking me "Are you laughing yet?" and biting my ear every time I said no. The storyline is complete and utter horseshit. At no point does a single character even begin to entertain the notion that stealing a diamond is illegal and insanely stupid. The best friends think its a great idea, the hacker son doesn't think twice about helping them and even the fiancee seemingly thinks what they are doing is fine. One thing I have learnt from this film is that apparently the french police are downright negligent in their duties as Emma and Pierce drive dangerously around paris, fire guns in restaurants, drug and tie up Texans, break into weddings, steal things and hack into everything they possibly can. This would all be fine if they were master criminals but they are idiots who do everything in the most blatent way possible without any form of repercussion. One of the most annoying parts is following the kidnap section Timothy Spall takes one of the Texans hats and the other three lose their shit over this theft, never mind the kidnap or planned diamond heist, no no no, this is fine but hat theft??? how dare you Timothy. The worst thing by far about this however is the talent that is in it. The 4 main actors are frankly some of our countries best, in particular Thompson and Spall, and all of them should know better. To be honest the rest of the cast should know better aswell but I forgive them because we all have bills to pay.

It's awful, just plain awful, and everyone involved should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Verdict: 0/5, yes it's that bad

Avengers: Age Of Ultron

Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansen and Jeremy Renner are teaming it up again and looking for things from the first film. They smash and crash and arrow people in order to recover the mind control staff thing Tom Hiddlestone used to cause a little havoc. They find it and RDJ decides the crystal thing THAT WAS USED FOR UNSPEAKABLE EVIL would make a great building block for artificial intelligence. Said artificial intellingence turns out to be a homicidal James Spader and RDJ and the gang need to get the non twin Olsen, Kick Ass and a whole bucket load of SHIELD people to help beat James before death and stuff goes down. Oh yeah and there's a colourful Paul Bettany in there aswell.

I have said it before and I will say it again, I am a supergeek who loves all things Marvel. I mean I even own the dreadful Hulk that starred Eric Bana and I've watched it all the way through and everything. Excitement levels were at an all time high walking into the theatre to watch this latest Marvel offering and it pains me to say that I was ever so slightly disappointed. The story is very good and the slight shifts in the superhero lore flow very well and are very cleverly handled. The acting is top notch from all parties and the new additions to the cast, Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, are pretty spot on. There is a lot of humour involved as always and overall it fits nicely into the narrative if a little forced in places. The action is ramped up and is nothing short of spectacular with Hulk vs Ironman a particular highlight. Joss Whedon is a man who knows how to make one hell of a spectacular film without alienating the die hard comic fans like myself. Now onto the problems.

As I said before the humour sometimes felt a little forced and this is no more evident than when Ultron himself is in the spotlight. Now he is not exactly a stand up but he does make the odd quip which feels very much out of place. When we first meet Ultron he is newly formed, in a broken, mangled body with a broken, mangled voice and is genuinely terrifying as a prospect. The shame of it all is that once Ultron gets a shiny new body he loses a little of his presence and just isn't as scary. I'm not saying I didn't like the new Ultron I just preferred the tone of the first encounter with him and wish they had stuck with that. There are also a couple of romantic story arcs in the film which feel a little out of place and honestly I could have done without them, particularly with Scarlett Johansen who has possibly the most irritating sexy voice in the film industry. This in and of itself is annoying as she is a brilliant actress and not light on sex appeal anyway so why she feels the need to overact it god only knows. Finally I have to mention Paul Bettanys Vision character, sorry if this is a spoiler for you, who is done very well but I wasn't fully sold on him. Yes this is mainly because I don't really like The Vision as a character, or a name for that matter, but it just didn't gel for me and the disappointment started to eek back in.

Overall this is a cracking watch and very well done it's just not as good as the previous film or a lot of the individual character films. Admittedly that doesn't mean much as the standard of Marvel films is remarkably high and consistently so. Great job all round.

Verdict: 4.5/5