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Stickmen (2001)
Watchability factor 10!
Stickmen was great on video for an easy night in. Having heard positive feedback about it for so long I was pleasantly surprised when my high expectations were not disappointed. Sure - it bore some similarities to Lock Stock, but who cares? The caper genre is nothing new. Plans are made, foiled, remade, and the crafty plot comes with some genuinely funny laughs. In fact, I liked it better than Lock Stock for the mere fact that in the place of mass gratuitous violence was a game: we see more confrontations with pool cues than with guns, and yet Stickmen still maintains the seedy/tough flavour. Not only that but there are female characters who are central to the plot, and they even have their own personalities! A great piece of filmmaking.
Footrot Flats: The Dog's Tale (1986)
It's a... Slice of 80s
This film was indeed a big hit when it came out in the mid-80s. I watched it again recently for the first time since seeing it on the big screen, and was suprised at how different my perception was of it as an adult rather than a kid. As a kid I don't remember the awful synth music being quite so awful, yet of course this can be put down to the decade which spawned it. The voice of the dog was also far too weak and naieve, and was the script, I didn't feel that it captured the dog's character as I imagined it having grown up reading the Footrot Flats cartoons. Aside from the script and soundtrack though, I thoroughly enjoyed watching this movie again. The backgrounds are great and really capture the dark gritty feel of rural New Zealand. The animation is good and the rugby scenes are funny and really capture the end of an era - farmers dreaming of being All Blacks, not for money but for glory. The days before the All Blacks donned Adidas shirts. I think that if the soundtrack was re-recorded and some of the script changed this A Dog's Tail could be re-released and make a comeback in the theatres. However as a slice of 80s it is a pristine example as it is.
Chicken Run (2000)
Enjoyable but could have been so much more...
This was a great film for kids, a visual feast from the Aardman team, but I just wished it had provided just a little more for grown-ups. I have to agree with previous writers that the script didn't stand up to the quality of the animation, with jokes that just weren't always funny. I wouldn't go so far to say that Chicken Run was 'totally forgettable' however, as this film has stayed in my head since first seeing it nearly a week ago. Where the script fell down the visual gags held it together, and indeed the impressive animation gives one enough to ponder on in technical terms. How anyone can say that this film is too scary for kids I just don't know, even with the beheading sequence. One of the best things about Aardman animation is the sense of reality it envokes in spite of the ludicrous situations, rather than being just another oversensitive piece of fluff production-line flick. If anything I would have preferred a Ginger with a little more gusto since, despite her role as the central character, the delivery of her lines sometimes seemed a bit weak and watery for such a driven leader-of-the-coop type character. If Aardman really wanted to make this film stand out (AND still be a role-model for kids) then instead of ending up in a happy-ever-after type paradise Ginger would be going on to free other hens in even worse conditions: Chicken Run II: The Breakout from Battery Hell. But all in all this was a good evening's light entertainment.