This week, a strange blend of unicorns, artificial intelligence, and lava chicken. I'll start with the biggest film of the Easter holidays, A Minecraft Movie. I'm a little worried the movie's title suggests there could be more films to come. For fans of the game, I'm sure this is great. It was nice to see the cinema packed on a Monday afternoon, especially given how sunny it was.
There isn't much point going too far into the plot, but essentially Steve (Jack Black) is a struggling door knob salesman who breaks into a mine to fulfull a childhood dream, and discovers "two thingys" that when combined, transport him into an alternative universe, where everything is made of cubes. He builds himself a few properties, including one made of pink sheep's wool, but The Nether (a hellish underworld) threatens to steal the orb and take over the cubey paradise.
Anything you can dream, you can make. As one of the characters says, "this place makes no sense". Too right. The mix of hot lava and chicken to create a new snack was mildly amusing, whilst the pandas were pretty cute. But there was some horrifically bad CGI, and Jack Black was even more over-the-top than usual. I'm glad it didn't outstay its welcome at 100 minutes, and I did enjoy the appearance of Jennifer Coolidge, plus Jason Mamoa was quite fun as a washed-up arcade game champion.
Look, I'm grasping at straws here, trying to find a positive spin. I really didn't enjoy this film at all, but the kids in the screening seemed to, and it's clearly found its audience, so it requires no endorsement from me. I've not owned a console since the Nintendo GameCube (which didn't feature in this film, FYI). I understand its appeal, but I was longing to build a secret portal out of the cinema. Or make a better film.
Death Of A Unicorn had a certain B-movie charm, but I'd like to have seen more of Richard E Grant (a bit like the fleeting appearance of Pierce Brosnan in Black Bag). Paul Rudd plays a man who accidentally hits a unicorn while driving to a rich family's country pile, and it's later discovered the creature's blood has magical healing properties. That's before other unicorns follow the signal being sent out by its horn, and come to find him. There's more shonky CGI in this film, but I did quite enjoy it overall. Will Poulter as the bratty, entitled son is the highlight. Boris Johnson being attacked by an ostrich this week was more amusing, mind.
Subservience (Netflix) sees Megan Fox play an AI assistant who is 'switched off' by her master so she can enjoy the movie Casablanca again without knowing the plot (yes, really). She turns on the family, and it all gets quite steamy at one point, but Companion did a similar storyline better. I'm also looking forward to a Megan sequel (Megan 2.0), which is out later this year!
