"Twin Town" (18) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin
Comparisons between the Welsh movie, Twin Town, and the Scottish film, Trainspotting, are inevitable not least because the executive producers of the Welsh film are Andrew MacDonald and Danny Boyle, the producer and director of Trainspotting. Furthermore, both movies feature marginal characters caught up in crime, drug-taking and anti-social behaviour, along with strong language and some disturbing visual images.
However, Twin Town does not approach Trainspotting in terms of scale, ambition, or, crucially, achievement, and whereas Trainspotting was marked by a persuasive humanity and sense of social concern, Twin Town appears to be designed merely to shock, manufactured for controversy. Set in Swansea, it's the first feature directed by the actor, Kevin Allen, who spent his teenage years in Wales and whose previous work as a director amounted to a couple of well-received soccer documentaries.
In the documentary on the making of Twin Town, which was shown by the BBC last Saturday night, Kevin Allen came across just as juvenile and opportunistic as his principal characters in his movie. They are the Lewis brothers, Jeremy and Julian (played by real-life brothers Llyr Evans and Rhys Ifans), who are known as "the twins", even though they are not twins. Their daily life revolves around stealing cars and driving them at high speed, taking drugs and generally causing chaos.
When their father is injured in a building accident and his employer, Bryn Cartwright (William Thomas) refuses to pay compensation, the twins declare war on Cartwright, a nouveau riche contractor and local rugby club chairman who, in an arch Bonanza reference, resides in a spacious home known as the Ponderosa.
In a black comedy which pushes the borders of bad taste, the movie's most gratuitous sequences include a poor Godfather reference in which the twins place the severed head of her poodle on the pillow of Cartwright's wife, and a nightclub scene in which the twins urinate from a height upon Cartwright's daughter while she's performing in a karaoke contest.
Those offensive Sequences undermine Kevin Allen's self proclaimed "acid love letter to my home town". It's unfortunate, because the film gets off to a lively start, contains some witty spurts of anarchic humour and features a hard-working cast playing universally dislikable and unsympathetic characters.
"Eddie" (12) Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin
Some movies are so devoid of imagination and so blandly formulaic that the audience is whole scenes ahead of the predictable narrative from start to finish. In the case of Eddie, the slender storyline is so tiresomely familiar that it telegraphs the entire movie to the audience as soon as it starts. All that remains is the joining of the dots.
Here's the pitch: Whoopi Goldberg plays Edwina, nicknamed Eddie, a New York limousine driver and loud-mouthed basketball fan who unfailingly supports the fading New York Knicks. In an unlikely turn of events, she's appointed their coach by the team's new owner (Frank Langella), a gimmick-obsessed operator who dons a stetson and puts trainers on his horse's hooves before he rides out on to the basketball court.
You don't need to be a clairvoyant to figure out the consequences. Will the players resent a woman taking over as coach, especially one with no experience beyond shouting unsolicited advice from high in the cheap seats? Will she divert them from their personal problems and their financial greed to concentrate their minds on the game? Will she manage to whip them into shape before it's too late? Will they soar up the league? Is the Pope a Catholic?
Reeking of deja vu at its most stale, the witless screenplay for
Eddie has been cob bled together by writers whose dismal credits include such dross as Revenge Of The Nerds, Problem Child and the unspeakable Pauly Shore yarn, In The Army Now. It is assembled in stodgy directing-by-numbers style by Steve Rash, who made such a very promising debut with The Buddy Holly Story in 1978 and has failed singularly to make anything interesting since. And Goldberg is shamelessly on auto-pilot throughout, recycling tired old routines with barely a hint of convincing enthusiasm.
"Return of the Jedi" (12) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin
The Star Wars: Special Edition trilogy concludes with the rerelease of Richard Marquand's 1983 movie, now digitally enhanced. Luke Skywalker (Mark Ham ill) has returned to his home planet of Tateooine in an attempt to rescue his friend, Han Solo (Harrison Ford) from the clutches of the vile gangster. Jabba the Hut.
However, he is unaware that the Galactic Empire has begun construction of a new armoured space station even more powerful than the first dreaded Death Star. Skywalker is now capable of rejecting the temptations of the flesh, but he remains susceptible to the spiritual temptation of pride in this robust entertainment which charts his spiritual progress with skill. Weaker on character and narrative than The Empire Strikes Back, Marquand's film compensates with some dazzling aerial combat sequences and spectacular special effects.
