David recommends ... DON'T BOTHER with GAINSBOURG, INCEPTION, or KARATE KID

Three films which argue the case for immediate legislation to ban movies over 2 hours long.  Come on Coalition.

Not much for the art movie crowd on general release at the mo, so many will be tempted by the over-long and plodding GAINSBOURG. No one split the French public like Serge G, and this biopic fails fully to demonstrate why. 

On the one hand a talented polymath - artist, pianist, guitarist and songwriter, then singer - and above all a musical innovator. On the other hand a troubled and repulsive man, his life dominated not just by alcoholic excess but by an increasingly embarrassing obsession with sex. Manifested in a bizarrely successful interest in younger and younger women and in tacky, tastelessly prurient song lyrics. French women divide into those who loathe him for his sexual expressions and those who wanted to sleep with him.

Eric Elmosnino is superb as the adult Lucien, name changed because he was told it "sounds like hairdresser's boy". He takes Lucien / Serge from shy young man hamstrung by lack of confidence in his looks to hideously slimy, alcoholic lounge lizard. But even this massive performance cannot save what is just a boring and unsatisfying film. 

It fails as drama, falling into the biopic trap of trying to show too much of the subject's life. It fails as explanation, despite some cod Freud and a half-assed Terry Gilliamesque device - a character wearing a large papier mache head with an enormous nose. meant to reflect Gainsbourg's preoccupation with Jewishness, looks and being an outsider. 

It also fails in honesty. In racking up a record number of cliches - artist as precocious, different, outsider, troubled, special, rebel etc. yawn - it falls into the trap of liking the subject too much and downplaying his downside.  Innocent 16 year-old singer France Gall was persuaded to record a song he wrote for her about a girl who likes lollipops. She and her agent father failed to realise that the song was but a string of references to oral sex. Apart from being crassly vulgar, this almost destroyed her career, and blighted it for years. In the film the episode is treated as a boyish prank by a charming 60s rebel.

It is that 'rebel' persona which is most offensive in the film and accounts for much of the adoration of Gainsbourg by millions of his compatriots. French culture could not handle the youth and music revolution of the 60s, tied up as it was with Anglo-American blues-based pop and rock.  How could young French people express themselves in a music culture dominated by slow, miserable ballads and jaunty, Django Rheinhardt jazz? 

Johnny Halliday, Sylvie Vartan and France Gall tried to imitate cross-Atlantic pop and rock with French lyrics and French accents. Others stayed stuck in national musical traditions left somewhere between the wars.

Gainsbourg began in traditional style - ballads or Django guitar.  In the mid 60s he joined the "ye ye" pop movement of Vartan and Gall. But soon became France's foremost popular music innovator. Experimenting, synthesising, taking genres from all over the world and mixing them up. Constantly trying new things.


Was it any good? Not to anyone outside of France, lol! But for hip young French people Gainsbourg offered a vehicle to differentiate themselves from their parents while also asserting a national identity separate from the Anglo-Americo-Saxons.  And as Gainsbourg slept with Bardot and Birkin, drank too much, and ignored sexual mores he became a rebel icon. 


But French society has remained far more conservative than those of the US or the UK. So it does not take much to be a rebel on that side of the Channel. On this side the 'scandal' of Gainsbourg's reggae version of La Marseillaise - "Aux Armes, Etcetera" - just seems naff. In the movie he screams at protestors, "I am a rebel, and this is a rebel song!"  


In fact it was a revolutionary song. Revolutionaries change things. Singers who smoke too much and drink themselves to death change nothing. Rebel Without A Point.

INCEPTION is promoted as intelligent sci-fi meets gripping action but it is just vacuously over complicated, over long, and boring. The script, which apparently took 10 years to develop, commits the ultimate Crime Against Cinema by failing to develop its' characters in the first half. And in some cases, not at all.  For over an hour I just did not care about the characters enough to try and understand what was going on.  By then it was too late.

It must be a first in DiCaprio's career to play a character so unable to generate empathy or interest. He is flat, one-dimensonal. A sub-plot about his wife - is she alive, dead, a figment of imagination? - only begins to take off after an hour or so. By which point I did not care.  A criminal misuse of the best thespian in the piece, the sublime Marion Cotillard. Apparently willing to be in any old crap to make it in Hollywood.  All other characters are entirely lacking in any personality whatsoever.  Cardboard cut outs.

The story completely failed to make me suspend my disbelief, so I will not test the reader with it in detail. One capitalist wants to manipulate another capitalist (are you caring?) and employs Leo's team to enter into the target's dreams and implant an idea (do you believe?) which will destroy his commercial empire and leave the client dominant in the market place. The rest is crap science and sub-Bourne action.

Stick with The Matrix and Total Recall.

Finally KARATE KID is, you guessed, over-long and boring. Beautifully shot, it succeeds well in its' primary purpose as an advert for China as tourism destination.  And does quite well in its' subliminal role to portray China as modern, commercial, high-tech country full of brand new cars and no hint of human rights violations.

As for the rest, it's that Dr Johnson review all over again. It is "both good and original; unfortunately the good parts are not original and the original parts are not good". 

The original Karate Kid is one of the best coming-of-age movies ever made. The relationship between fatherless, bullied boy and damaged old Japanese drunk, Mr Miyagi, displays great psychological depth, taking the film to an almost spiritual level.

In this sequel the story is entirely unchanged. But in another Crime Against Cinema they have omitted the totemic "wax on, wax off" sequence and line, which provided the entire basis of both the Myagi method and the metaphor of how younger males can, should and sometimes do learn from older men.  Robert Bly's "Iron John" made flesh (OK, celluloid) and a text book for the gender-role re-negotiations of our times.

This time round the kid's journey to Kung Fu champion (it's not Karate any more) in just one week is entirely unbelievable. Especially so as newcomer and instant star Jaden Smith is incredibly good at it. Jackie Chan's damaged, alcoholic mentor has him take his jacket off and put it back on for a few days and suddenly young Jaden can do all the moves and at miraculous speed. Just silly.

Chan bravely attempts a deeper, darker persona than in his career so far, and does not entirely succeed. But A for effort and keep it up. Meanwhile Jaden Smith is superb is all aspects - action, comedy, being cute - but then with two Hollywood A-list parents his stardom will hardly be a surprise.

A last word for the character of Jaden's screen mother.  A cringe-makingly embarrassing stereotype of  The African-American Mother. Not since Gone With the Wind have we seen such lawdy eye rolling.  The nearest this re-make gets to the psychological depth of the original is a subtle, even subliminal put-down of that stereotype. In the absence of Jaden's deceased father she cannot get her boy to hang up his jacket; male mentor Chan can. But she will be box office gold, as no one laughed louder in the Camden Odeon at her antics than the Black British women in the audience.