DVD Review: Dinner For Schmucks (2010)

Words: Josh Blacker

'Dinner For Schmucks' (UK Release: 17 Jan '11)

Director: Jay Roach
Cast: Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Zach Galifianakis, Jermaine Clement

If you’d never seen the original 'The Italian Job' (1969), would watching 'The Italian Job' (2003) make you want to?

'Dinner For Schmucks' isn’t a terrible film. It has promising talent - Steve Carell, Jermaine Clement from 'Flight Of The Conchords', Paul Rudd and David Walliams. It has a promising premise - a monthly dinner hosted by Tim’s (Rudd) colleagues at his private equity firm, where each guest must bring an idiot. The guest who brings the ‘best’ idiot wins; Tim must impress to secure a promotion.

Tim meets Barry (Carell) by chance - and so ensues, of course, a farcical comedy. All the usual tricks are there: mistaken identities, physical comedy, funny accents and a deranged ex-girlfriend.

BBC iPlayer: The Sinking Of The Laconia

Words: Josh Blacker

SYNOPSIS: Presented in two 90-minute parts, this British-German co-production tells the remarkable true story of the sinking of the troopship RMS Laconia by German U-Boat U-156, and the rescue of Laconia survivors by the U-Boat that sank it.

Written by Alan Bleasdale, 'The Sinking Of The Laconia features some magnificent actors on both British and German sides, including Brian Cox, who plays a fantastically cynical Captain Sharp of the Laconia.

The story of the Laconia incident was a defining moment in the war at sea. Confusion over whether the Germans really had saved hundreds of civilians, Allied soldiers and Italian prisoners of war, or whether this was simply a ruse du guerre designed to attract Allied ships to sink, led to the Americans to reveal a secret Air Force base, and consequently to bomb the Red Cross-displaying U-156 in an attempt to prevent knowledge of this base reaching Axis commanders.

Channel 4oD: Any Human Heart (2010) Episode 4

Words: Josh Blacker

'Any Human Heart': 'Episode 4'

SYNOPSIS: "Jim Broadbent, Matthew Macfadyen and Sam Claflin take the lead role in William Boyd's funny, moving and ambitious adaptation of his best-selling novel, exploring one man's tumultuous and unpredictable journey through the 20th century" (Channel4.com)

This final episode of 'Any Human Heart' wasn’t without one last hurrah on Logan Mountstuart’s part. Despite recovering at the beginning of the episode from being struck by a car at the end of the last, it’s not long before Logan is out making adventure again.

Drawn by his poverty into joining the Socialist Patients’ Kollective - believing it at first to be a patients’ rights group, somehow - he ends up selling the SPK’s weekly propaganda rag on the streets, because every good Marxist revolution needs its own newspaper. Here I think we lose something of the Logan we knew - this Logan is naive and unquestioning, despite his previous background as a journalist and writer.

Channel 4oD: Any Human Heart (2010) Episode 3

Words: Josh Blacker

'Any Human Heart': 'Episode 3'

SYNOPSIS: "Jim Broadbent, Matthew Macfadyen and Sam Claflin take the lead role in William Boyd's funny, moving and ambitious adaptation of his best-selling novel, exploring one man's tumultuous and unpredictable journey through the 20th century" (Channel4.com)

I wasn’t entirely impressed with 'Episode 2', which felt like so much filler between the exciting young life of Logan Mountstuart and all his girls, and 'Episode 3' where Jim Broadbent actually has some lines.

Although the events of the last episode had seemed far too fast to be treated well, this episode seems to have packed in almost as much drama while managing to explore some of the depths of emotion a lot better - as well as packing in a few very funny moments.

Channel 4oD: Any Human Heart (2010) Episode 2

Words: Josh Blacker

'Any Human Heart': Episode 2

SYNOPSIS: "Jim Broadbent, Matthew Macfadyen and Sam Claflin take the lead role in William Boyd's funny, moving and ambitious adaptation of his best-selling novel, exploring one man's tumultuous and unpredictable journey through the 20th century" (Channel4.com)

I couldn’t help but feel disappointed at this second episode of William Boyd’s screen adaptation of his novel Any Human Heart. Perhaps it’s because there was much less sex. But why was that?

'Episode 1' left us with Logan entering his middle age, played by Matthew Macfadyen, with a wife and child in one home, and a pregnant mistress in another, and 'Episode 2' plunges us into a Europe gripped by war. Firstly, the Spanish Civil War, to which Logan is dispatched as a journalist. Here is my first great disappointment.

Channel 4oD: Any Human Heart (2010) Episode 1

(Ed's note: Josh has kindly offered to cover the new four part Channel 4 adaptation of the novel 'Any Human Heart', providing reviews that will undoubtedly be bolstered by his study of English at university.)

Words: Josh Blacker

'Any Human Heart': Episode 1

SYNOPSIS: "Jim Broadbent, Matthew Macfadyen and Sam Claflin take the lead role in William Boyd's funny, moving and ambitious adaptation of his best-selling novel, exploring one man's tumultuous and unpredictable journey through the 20th century" (Channel4.com)

'Any Human Heart' opens with a recurring dream that an old Logan Mountstuart (here Jim Broadbent) can't get his head around. A small boy in a boat, observed from the river bank by three figures. Logan thinks it might represent a soul passing through time, and that, perhaps, is the crux of this series. The three figures are, in close-up, Logan Mountstuart at different stages of his life - “I'm always different people”, Broadbent narrates, only to be echoed by Matthew Macfadyen and Sam Caflin. It is perhaps a laboured device, but it gets the point across.