Tags: blog, film, animation, comedy
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday August 17th, 2025
A very goal-orientated film
When Bull finds out that his owners are going to have him neutered, he and his pack of buddies decide to have one big night out before the chop.
What follows is cartoon dog version of frat/sex comedies from the eighties-noughties. Think Porky’s or American Pie. As a result, this film feels old fashioned. It tries its best to convince that it’s shocking and transgressive and that nothing is off limits. And yet it has very clear lines as to what it will and won’t depict. Balls, blood and bums: yup! Dicks, vaginas, vomit: absolutely not. After twenty minutes, once you’ve worked out where the lines are drawn, it all feels very safe.
It’s a shame that it can’t draw more inspiration from Ren & Stimpy. The animation is clearly in debt to it (one scene involving a skunk is a flat-out homage) so it would have been great if it had borrowed some of that duo’s anarchism.
One part that did feel surprisingly modern is the characterisation of Bull and his friends. They’re all quite kind and sweet to each other, they look out for each other and care about each other’s welfare, without asking for anything in return. It’s actually quite good natured, even when they visit a dog sex-club, and the result is that on the occasions when the comedy falls flat, you’re never irritated by the characters.
Thankfully, the comedy is pretty good most of the time. It’s at its best when it’s being smart rather than crude, which admittedly it doesn’t do quite often enough to make this an essential viewing. But often enough to have me chuckling most of the way through and, on the odd occasion when the crudity combines with smart observations on dog behaviour, a few belly laughs as well.
Tags: film, blog, comedy, drama, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday June 08th, 2025
Wanna see a bunch of Nazis get fucked up?
Of course you do, who wouldn't. Well boy have I got the film for you.
This is a portmanteau film featuring four, based on real-life stories (spoilers), all taking place over twenty fours hours in Oakland, 1987. And it is a blast.
The music is absolutely amazing, it is relentlessly funny, the gore is off the scale, every performance is absolutely nailed. There's a surprise guest cameo appearance from someone who abso-bloody-lutely understands the assignment.
It's a love letter to Oakland. To the eighties. To films. To kicking the shit out of Nazis. To teaching clowns how to juggle. To just having a good time.
An actual riot of a film.
Tags: blog, film, comedy, drama, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Wednesday August 13th, 2025
Did you watch University Challenge last night?
A love triangle where the a character has to choose between love and money is a fairly common staple. The best ones offer sharp commentary on society and relationships.
And they do not come any sharper than the first half of Materialists which focuses its laser-like gaze on dating and marriage within our capitalist financial system. I was not expecting just how brutal Celine Song’s assessments of modern relationships would be, laying out harsh realities clearly for the audience without ever slipping into lazy cynicism.
I was also not expecting it to be this funny. Having laid everything clear out in front of the audience, each character is then given enough rope with which to go one step too far and into absurdity. This contains the biggest belly laughs I’ve had from a film so far this year.
Things get a little less clear in the second half though as the films starts to focus on the romance, rather than the commentary. Song’s previous film, the masterpiece Past Lives presented two choices: neither the correct one, both of which would result in regrets, and it’s heartbreaking. It seems as though this is going to pull off the same trick, but as the film moves past the halfway point, it seems to make a decision as to which is the ‘right’ choice for Dakota Johnson’s character, but without fully convincing me.
The result is an ending that neither quite fits the form of a beautiful romance, or subverts it. After the cutting edge of the first half, the ending felt a little blunt. It’s still worth watching for that blistering opening salvo though and there’s enough ideas in here to make me eager for future work from Song.
Tags: blog, film, comedy, family, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday August 26th, 2025
A Bear of Very Considerable Heart
The title pretty much describes everything you need to know about this film. It’s Paddington and all the characters you’ve grown to love over the last two Paddington films, but on holiday in the jungle.
Once again, all those characters are intensely likeable. And once again, even (especially) the villains are thoroughly enjoyable, played with camp and freedom, getting their comeuppance in a suitably joyful manner.
It’s not just the characters that are lifted straight from the first two films. The cinematography has a great eye for a good shot, but also tells its story coherently, even (especially) when the slapstick starts to snowball.
The meticulous plotting is back. Just about everything is either a set up or a pay-off, it all clicks together satisfyingly, like a really good Lego set.
The laughs are evenly paced throughout the film and it’s never, ever boring, not for a minute. And it’s pro-immigration message couldn’t be more welcome and well received than right now.
What it doesn’t quite bring from the first two films is that little bit of magic they both had, that extra special sparkle. To a certain extent it doesn’t need to. The warm afterglow from Paddington 2 is so great that it envelopes this entire film like a big bear hug. You want to love this film, maybe a bit more than it deserves.
So whilst this is fun and enjoyable enough on its own terms, it only feels like an encore to Paddington 2. But who doesn’t want that?
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: tv, blog, comedy, drama, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday August 02nd, 2025
In praise of mid-range TV
Great art should be challenging. Great art should challenge what is possible, should challenge what I am capable of comprehending.
But when I've got home after thirteen hours working two jobs, when I've only got a few hours to sit down and decompress, before I have to go to bed and get up ready to do it all again, I don't want to be challenged. I want to be entertained.
It's times like this that I miss the days before "prestige" tv, before multi-series story arcs and a cast of thousands. I miss being able to switch on an episode of Columbo or Quantum Leap or Star Trek TNG, know who all the characters are within the first few minutes, and then get a story with a start, a middle and an ending.
Poker Face gets this, it's not a challenging show. You don't even have to work out who the murderer is, it just shows you right off the bat. But what Poker Face also understands is that I'm not an idiot and I don't want to be condescended to.
Poker Face is smart. It just puts those smarts into producing a solid, witty, delightful story into every forty five minute episode.
It does have some concessions to modern tv mores. The first and last few episodes of each series act as story bookends, setting up and paying off Charlie Cales' dealing with the Mob and the FBI. But it's not where it's at it's best. It's at it's best in the middle episodes of the series which most closely hew to the syndicated shows like Columbo and Murder, She Wrote that it's so clearly enamoured with. Episodes 5 to 9 of Series 2 in particular is an astonishing run, every one a belter. The John Cho & Melanie Lynskey helmed "The Sleazy Georgian" is the standout. Fun, funny, smart and deeply empathetic. The kind of storytelling that makes you feel connected to the world and the people around you. That makes you feel good about going to bed and getting ready to start the day anew.
Tags: film, blog, comedy, drama, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday May 31st, 2025
Outdated plot, contemporary and beautiful people
I've not seen the 1993 film that this is a remake of. It's somehow passed me by despite being a big fan of Ang Lee. So I don't know how much has changed from the original. But good lord this film feels weird at times.
The plot is characterised by the kind of high-concept, situation lead set-up common to rom-coms of the eighties and nineties. But the direction takes a little bit of a back seat, allowing the actors the time and space to make their characters entirely believable, despite the patently absurd (and staggeringly predictable) situations the plot places them in.
And it works. That time and space is where the comedy lives. There are plenty of proper belly laughs that come from nothing more than a sideways glance or muted 'harrumph'. Youn Yuh-jung's grandmother managed to steal almost every scene without even moving her face. Understated, character-led comedy is exactly my kind of thing and this film has it in spades.
If I have a criticism of the film, it's the cinematography. It's very basic and lacks flair. It's arguably not a problem for a rom-com, except... art plays a big part in this film. Both Bowen Yang and Han Gi-Chan play artists whose work is genuinely beautiful and yet the film seems almost completely un-interested in exploring that. Which is an issue when that art plays a part of one characters plot-changing and emotional decision. The moment works, the characters make it work, but it would have been so much more powerful if you saw in the art what that character saw. But the film doesn't give you that opportunity.
But I loved this film. It's relentlessly funny. And I believed in the characters even if I didn't believe in the plot. Beautiful.
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday April 11th, 2024
Dick Turpin and His Essex Gang
Over the last ten years or so, sit-coms seem to have gradually shifted in tone. Less snark, less sarcasm, less satire. More inclusive, more diverse, more hopeful. It's not just that the news is so relentlessly grim that people want something to take their minds off it. It's also the fact that the news is so utterly stupid that it's impossible to satirise, so completely shameless in its stupidity that even if you did there would be no point.
And whilst I loved the snark, sarcasm and satire of the comedies of my youth. A combination of wearied age and experience means that I'm very much enjoying this new inclusivity, diversity and hope.
The latest sit-com to push those qualities to the fore is Noel Fielding's Dick Turpin, which is amiable and good natured to a fault. It's border-line 18th Century Ted Lasso.
Dick wants to be a famous highway man but also wants to be good and kind. Much of the comedy comes from this incongruity. His crew want to be a team of tough criminals, but they also want to be themselves. Even more comedy from this. It's often delightful, occasionally laugh out loud funny.
There's a couple of stand out performances: Hugh Bonneville is in cracking form, and Kiri Flaherty is a delight as Little Karen.
Only Connor Swindells disappoints as Tommy Silversides and that's only because his character is so clearly inspired by Lord Flashheart that it's impossible to avoid the comparison. And comparison to Rick Mayall is never going to end well.
So it's not Blackadder. It is however, very much Maid Marion and Her Merry Men. Which either means my initial observation about the changing tone of sit-coms was wildly incorrect. Or Maid Marion... was massively ahead of its time.
Tags: blog, tv, comedy, fantasy, 2024
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday May 30th, 2024
Dead, dead good
The third best thing I can say about Dead Boy Detectives is that if this had been made twenty years ago it would have been one of the most radical pieces of tv of the era. And yet now it’s depictions of same sex relationships feels completely normal. In fact, those relationships are possibly the most ‘normal’ thing about the show. This is a very good thing.
The second best thing I can say about Dead Boy Detectives is the way it handles real world darkness (such as domestic abuse, child abuse, male violence, bureaucratic ‘violence’, homophobia, agoraphobia etc) whilst staying in the framework of a ‘Monster of the Week’ show. It either deals with this stuff head on, via metaphor, or subtly and in the background. There’s a lot going on here, everything feels like it’s about something and the fact that it packs so much in without feeling over stuffed, ponderous or frivolous is a marvel.
And the very best thing I can say about Dead Boy Detectives is that this is just fabulous entertainment. Funny, warm, witty, imaginative, caring. Honestly, the superlatives could keep flowing for pages. The entire cast play their roles to a tee. A special mention has to go to Lukas Gage’s supurrrlative1 Cat King and it’s a wonder that there’s any scenery left at the end after Jenn Lyon has so enthusiastically chewed through it.
Magnificent.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Sorry, not sorry ↩
Tags: blog, film, comedy, 2024, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday April 18th, 2024
Elmer Fudd: The Movie
What do you do when you desperately want to make a classic era Warner Brothers cartoon but haven’t got the budget for all that expensive animation? Well, if you’re Mike Cheslik the answer is to get a bunch of guys to don animal costumes and then make a black and white silent film.
It wears its influences on its sleeve, taking inspiration from Looney Tunes, Chaplin and more recent fare from Pixar and Aardman. And tries to do all that on a clearly minuscule budget. Crucially, it absolutely succeeds.
It’s slapstick and sight gags are consistently funny. It’s endlessly imaginative, throwing new ideas at the screen every few minutes, each more outrageous than the last.
Which, sadly, proves to be the films flaw. It’s too long, too stuffed with ideas to hold your interest over an hour and three quarters. Classic Looney Tunes worked because they stuffed all their ideas into a short, violent burst of mayhem. Pixar sustain interest through emotional investment. Aardman have amazing animation and an ability to pack in jokes at an absurd rate.
Hundreds of Beavers doesn’t quite match up to any of those and I was ready for the film to end a good twenty minutes before it actually did.
Still, it seems churlish to moan at a film for trying to give you too much. This is exactly the movie the film makers wanted to make and I really can’t applaud them enough for doing so.
Tags: blog, film, comedy, 2024
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday April 02nd, 2024
Michael Jai White takes the Black Dynamite formula way out west.
Bit of an odd one as the dramatic elements are good enough to stand on their own two feet without the comedy. And the comedy is good enough to not need the well thought out story.
So it ends up with the jokes being too spaced out to be truly riotous, and the drama never quite builds up enough momentum to properly excite. And the representation of Native Americans is awful, just awful.
That said, it is funny and the plot is engaging, so it works none the less.
Special props go to Erica Ash who steals every scene she's in. One of the best film comedy performances I've seen for a while.
Tags: film, blog, comedy, 2024, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday April 09th, 2024
Turns out that "Borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered '80s" is great, actually
Lisa is a misunderstood, lonely teenager. Her dad doesn't understand her, her cheerleading step-sister doesn't understand her and mental health nurse step mum positively hates her. She spends her free time in a decrepit grave yard talking to the gravestone of a dead poet, whose zombified body she inadvertently resurrects.
Cue journey of self discovery as she tries to hide, fix and date her hot zombie poet boyfriend. The problem being that what Lisa discovers about herself is that she's an absolute dick.
And this is what makes this film an absolute riot. Whilst Lisa is always entirely relatable (all of us were a this self obsessed at one point in our teenage years), watching her gradually embrace her new found self confidence to the point of serial murderer is glorious.
A Diablo Cody script being sharp, warm, funny and insightful is hardly a surprise. But Zelda Williams 80's-to-the-Max aesthetic really is. It's not nostalgic as she doesn't remember the eighties. Instead, she leans into the idea that this is an eighties teen comedy made by someone who's never experienced the actual eighties and instead has pieced together what it was like from pop-culture. It's familiar but new and I loved it.
One of the films of the year for me, an absolute belter.
Tags: blog, tv, comedy, 2024, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday April 15th, 2024
Peak Minty
Whisper it: I think this is the funniest thing on iPlayer.
Diane Morgan has taken the essence of the 80's British sitcom, it's idiotic main characters, it's absurdly contrived plots, it's mixture of utter banality and occasional surrealism. She's jettisoned all of the set-up, all of the fluff and filler, anything that isn't generating a laugh every few seconds. And she's ended up with a fifteen minute show that's a rocket fuelled gem.
She's improved upon her influences in just about every way. Let's start with the main character, Mandy.
Each episode see's Mandy Carter trying her hand at a new job, usually at the behest of her exasperated Job Seeker's officer. And each episode it goes disastrously wrong. But not because Mandy's stupid or clumsy. It's usually because she's just bored (something we can all relate to at work) or distracted. Sometimes it's because she's actually hyper-competent and ends up taking things too far.
Because Morgan clearly loves Mandy. Mandy isn't an object of scorn or ridicule. We laugh at her, yes, but it's always with affection. Mandy is, in a very bizarre way, somebody to be admired.
Then there's the celebrity cameos. A combination of Morgan's eye for casting and the fact that each episode is so brief means that there's an avalanche of celebrities of all stripes prepared to give up a day (probably significantly less) for filming, all looking like they're having the time of their lives.
And each one is a surprise. Either because the cameo is deliciously played against type (Sonia-from-Eastenders channeling her inner Don Logan from Sexy Beast is an absolute treat) or because the setup is so misdirected and obfuscated that the punchline is glorious.
And finally there's the surrealism. The sheer pace of the jokes and inventiveness leaves no place for something as boring as reality. If it's funny: it's in. So even though the form of the jokes feel familiar, the way each joke jackknifes the plot further away from mundanity makes everything a surprise.
Just glorious, an absolute gem.
Oh Mandy, you came and you gave without taking...
Tags: blog, film, comedy, drama, 2024, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Friday April 05th, 2024
Marissa Tomei is a tugboat captain
I’d much rather a film shoot for greatness and not achieve it, have eyes bigger than it’s belly. I’d rather watch something that reaches for the stars and falls short than something that has no interest in the stars at all.
Having said that, if you are going to do something slight and charming, do it like She Came to Me.
Peter Dinklage plays an opera composer suffering from writers block and whose marriage to Anne Hathaway may be on the rocks. A one afternoon stand with tugboat captain Marisa Tomei unlocks his creative process and gives everyone a lot more than he bargained for.
Everything about this film oozes effortless charm, humour and wit. I laughed the whole way through and enjoyed my time with the characters to the point I cared about them a lot. Even if the plot is light and more than a little contrived.
And Marisa Tomei is a tugboat captain. Wonderful.
Tags: blog, film, comedy, drama, 2024, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday May 30th, 2024
Randall Park and Sherry Cola on top, top form
Just how unsympathetic can you make a movies main character? There’s been some great movies centred around truly awful people and the usual way to make the audience enjoy their journey is either by making the character charismatic or by making their situation interesting. The danger there, though, is that it’s possible to make the characters personality flaws likeable, excusable, or even desirable.
Justin H.Min’s ‘Ben’ is deeply unlikeable. The film is careful not to have him do anything thats irredeemably bad but neither is he interesting or charismatic. He’s rather tedious and boring (although admittedly an incredibly gorgeous) person. In fact, the most interesting thing about him is that he’s best friends with Sherry Cola’s ‘Alice’, who absolutely is interesting and charismatic. And if she see’s something in him, well there must be something there.
Except that Alice is also a bit of a shitty person and the thing they see in each other is their own flaws reflected back at them. A fact that means they feel comfortable in each other’s company and can feel seen whilst not being judged.
This is a really funny film where the jokes land often enough to keep you engaged but never overwhelm the drama. There’s a few proper belly laughs in there as well.
There’s a lot of dialogue around internalised racism that feels very personal and insightful, and even manages to mine it for comic potential. I felt like the creators really had something to say about Asian representation in media and they managed to do that in a way that was thought provoking without giving easy answers.
No Easy Answers extends to Ben’s character arc. There’s no lessons learned at the end, no redemption or setting things right. But there is an acknowledgement that things have to change. Maybe he will and maybe he won’t. But the fact that he might feels warm and hopeful.
Tags: blog, tv, comedy, drama, 2024
Author: KickingK
Date: Wednesday May 08th, 2024
Totally Completely Thomasin McKenzie
This show starts with Vivian, her life a mess, contemplating suicide, finding out her grandad has died. The man who raised her from a small child when her parents died in a car accident spilts his estate equally between her and her two elder brothers. John gets his massage recliner chair. Hendrix gets his golf clubs. Vivian gets his huge cliff edge mansion.
Except it’s a set up. It turns out that the huge, vertiginous cliff face on which the house is perched is a hot spot for suicide attempts. Her grandfather’s calling was attempting to dissuade those attempting to jump. And, by passing that calling onto his granddaughter, hopes that she might save herself by saving others.
The undoubted highlight of this series is the family dynamic between the three siblings. Watching each of them bicker and argue, all of them failing to come to terms with their grief and decades of feuding is both funny and heartbreaking. This is one of the most believable onscreen families I’ve seen.
A large part of that is down to Thomasin McKenzie who is approaching Toby Jones’ levels of watchability. Like Jones she has an absolute charisma that is constantly engaging. And yet also seems so completely normal and down to earth. She has an ability to make me believe in any story she’s telling.
My only criticism1 is that there’s two story elements fighting for space in the script: the one about trying to save people from committing suicide and the one about the family coming to terms with grief. And whilst both feed into one another, it’s the family narrative that gets most of the attention. And whilst that’s arguably justified, it’s absolutely wonderful after all, it feels a little unbalanced. Lives are at stake here and yet it gets less screen time than Hendrix’s marriage.
It’s not helped by the fact that Amy, the first suicide attempt that Vivian prevents, is one of the least well drawn characters in the show.
Still, despite the fact that it never quite manages to live up its central premise, there’s enough good stuff here for me to heartily recommend it.
1. Well, apart from the music which is either slightly too kooky for it’s own good or has needle drops that sound like they were chosen and edited by the same people who work on Home and Away. ↩︎
Tags: blog, film, comedy, drama, 2024
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday April 14th, 2024
Julian Dennison elevates a very slight affair.
I find it difficult to offer much analysis on this as I found it to be quite lightweight in a lot of ways.
The subject matter kind of implies that this should be hard hitting, a moving account of New Zealand society’s endemic racism to Maori people. And whilst this is portrayed, it’s mostly as background and context for Josh’s (played by Julian Dennison) coming-of-age story. It never goes as deep or as in depth as you want it to.
On the positive side, focusing almost completely on Josh means that you get to see how this affects him as a person, which is what the film is more interested in. It helps that Julian gets a chance to show that Hunt for the Wilderpeople wasn’t a fluke. He’s absolutely pitch perfect in every scene. Only overacting in the moments where he’s supposed to be overacting as his character fumbles his way to becoming a thespian. The rest of the cast are on fine form as well.
It also features the first time that I, in my ignorance, have seen the Haka performed in a context that wasn’t sporting or ceremonial. It is absolutely electric and the highlight of the entire film. A spine-tingling scene that’ll stay with me for a long time.