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Dan Owen reviews
P a r t T w o
The hardest working comedic actor in Hollywood right now is Ben Stiller. Hehas had an unprecedented run of mostly successful movies, and even appears incameos inbetween! Here, Stiller teams up with Vince Vaughn as a rebel coach inthe screwball sporting comedy Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. It wasstraight-forward, brainless fun for fans of pratfalls and dumb haircuts, soits target audience of teens and twentysomethings lapped it up.
Saturday Night Live regular Will Ferrel had been making tentative steps intoheadlining comedies with small parts in the likes of Starsky & Hutch, but itwas last year’s Elf that proved Ferrel could be… well, the new ChevyChase! In Anchorman, Ferrel played preening San Diego newsman Ron Burgundy ina movie set in the 70’s when women began to take over the newsrooms. The movieis patchy and a little uneven at times, but the star power of Ferrell and somechoice moments made Anchorman one of the year’s funniest films.
After proving to audiences that the cult of Quentin Tarantino didn’t die after1997’s Jackie Brown, QT blew audiences away with his kung fu action flickKill Bill Vol.1.In 2004, audiences finally saw the second partKill Bill Vol.2 -which morphed into a modern western and toned down the Japanese fisticuffs.For some, it was a big disappointment, others warmed to its different beat.But whatever your opinion, it’s obviously a labour of love and one of themost originally unoriginal movies ever!
Harry Potter & The Prisoner Of Azkabanwas the third Potter movie and,with the departed Christopher Columbus replaced by Alfonse Cuaron, it becamethe best. The plot was slightly flimsier than The Chamber Of Secrets, buteverything else surpassed its predecessors – better acting, richer design, morerealistic special-effects… all equalling an onscreen lesson in how thevision of a director can transform the material. Roll on Goblet Of Fire!
After resurrecting The Mummy for a new generation, Stephen Sommers turned hisattention to three big-name monsters for Van Helsing, with Hugh Jackman.Here, Sommers and his crack ILM team concocted a rollercoaster ride inTransylvania where we met a foppish Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and aCGI Wolf Man. The movie made a mint worldwide, but its strained plot and zerocharacterisation hamstrung the movie. Gorgeous to look at, entertaining in asilly way, but ultimately unsatisfying hocus pocus.
Maximus has a lot of answer for! Since Russell Crowe’s now iconic Gladiatorscowled through the silver screen, the hunt has been on to find more historicalepics to update.Troywas the one most favoured to succeed, helmed byWolfgang Petersen (The Perfect Storm) and starring a litany of stars – BradPitt, Orlando Bloom, Eric Bana and Peter O’Toole. The spectacle is certainlythere in some impressive fight scenes, but only Bana chisels out a decentperformance, leaving old-timer O’Toole to teach the youngters how to giveacting gravitas to what essentially becomes a beautifully made, yetoccasionally hollow, epic.
Roland Emmerich likes to blow things up. Not since Hitler has someone fromEastern Europe been so hell-bent on destruction! InIndependence Dayhe trashed the White House, inGodzillahe levelled New York, and now withThe Day After TomorrowEmmerich wipes out ofthe Northern Hemisphere with a variety of apocryphal weather changes. Applaudedfor its scientific basis (despite the accelerated timing!) this movie becamethe thinking man’s blockbuster. Emmerich always likes to use underrated actorsin his movies (they’re cheaper too, meaning more cash for SFX!) but betweenthe impressive scenes of tornados, floods and killer storms, fundamentallythis plays like an old-fashioned 70’s disaster flick with a 21st Century meteorologicaltwist.
The Bourne Supremacy.Well, with Pierce Brosnan leaving the James Bond franchise, the future of 007is up in the air (at time of writing), and for many the modern Bond’s have beenbeset with stylistic problems. For many, the greatest spy franchise of recenttimes has become the Bourne series – based on the books by Robert Ludlum, andstarring Matt Damon in his singularly impressive movie role.
Great acting, a decent plot and some nifty directing from Brit Paul Greengrass,ensure Supremacy is as good (if not better) than its predecessor, and perhapsa sign that Commander Bond should get back to basics to remain top dog in theworld of movie espionage…
A real disappointment this year was Marvel comic’s remake of The Punisher,starring Tom Jane as the vigilante who seeks revenge on the gangsters whokilled his wife. Some quite graphic violence and hard-hitting action pleasedaction junkies, but it was all very so-so and forgettable.
Englishmen everywhere bemoaned the Americanization of King Arthur, a JerryBruckheimer production. Even a half-naked Keira Knightley couldn’t save thisimpressively staged but vapid spectacle of gruff soldiers and mud-smearedwarriors. Clive Owen made a limp half-Roman Arthur, while the supposedly morehistorically accurate account of the Arthur mythology meant excising everythingpeople love about the tale…
Hero became the second most popular Chinese martial-arts masterpieceafterCrouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.- coasting in on the back of Quentin Tarantino’sKill Bill 2and cementing Jet Li as an incredible action star – although not in US movies!Hero had the usual beautiful camerawork and phenomenal wirework, but the storyalso had plenty of resonance and crossed the cultural divide.
Garfield. A movie based on the famous Jim Davis comic-strip – perfect for asummer blockbuster… circa 1986! Yes, this movie was hopelessly outdated andmired by a terrible script, woeful acting and the ridiculous decision to makeGarfield a CGI animation, while other animals remain… well, normal. A silly,painful and pointless exercise.
Page Content copyright © Dan Owen, 2004.
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2004 Retrospective – Part 1 – 2004 Retrospective – Part 3
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.