The Good , The Bad and the Uglies

After all those spies, this week, comedies of differing flavours. Starting with the bad:

Rush Hour 3 - 1.5/5

The original Rush Hour was an OK movie - an entertaining enough buddy-cop-action-comedy, but certainly not demanding a sequel, lot alone a threequel trundling along 10 years after the original in a desperate bid to re-launch Chris Tucker's career.

This is by far and away THE worst of the summer threequels (and that's saying something) - its tired, lazy, unoriginal and deeply unfunny. It's funniest moments are all borrowed from much better sources, such as the riff on Abbott and Costello's classic Who's on First sequence.

Plus there is far too much of Tucker, surely amongst the most irritating and unpleasant screen performers, and not enough of Chan. The film does brighten up when Chan swings into action, but it still feels like you've seen it all before including a final fight on a famous world monument (see Shanghai Knights among others).

Added to this, you have the undignified sight of cinematic luminaries Philip Baker Hall, Roman Polanski and Max Von Sydow (as the least surprising of surprise villains) lazily stumbling their way towards a paycheck whilst making no effort to improve things.

Not worth the ticket price, unlike the good:

Knocked Up - 4/5

The latest from writer/director Judd Apatow (The 40 year old virgin) follows career minded Alison (Roswell's Katherine Heigl) and stoner Ben (Seth Rogan, one of Steve Carrell's co-workers from The 40 year old virgin), who after a drunken one night stand find themselves expecting a child. This might not be the most promising premise for a comedy, but it works superbly well.

The lead couple are given a certain amount of credibility - Alison is toned down several notches from stereotype career-bitch, whilst Ben is given enough barely concealed insecurities to make him believable and likeable, if, at times, he almost seems like a slightly stoned Woody Allen. Around about them is some great support from the brilliant Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd as Alison's sister and brother-in-law to her hilarious bosses. There is maybe slightly too much of Ben's stoner friends, who prove the films weak link.

This is much funnier than The 40 year old virgin, with a mix of brutally honest and biological comedy which goes some way beyond risque and some great set pieces, like a trip to Vegas under the influence of mushrooms - hotel chairs have never been so funny. But before you get too disapprroving, like The 40 year old virgin, under the gross-out comedy this sneaks in some real heart and a surprisingly moral take on learning to accept responsibility and commitment.

Funniest film in a long time.

Which brings us to the oddballs:

Eagle vs Shark - 3/5

A romantic comedy of sorts, but a million miles from the Hollywood beautiful people. This New Zealand film follows the story of Jarrod and Lilly - two rather nerd-ish losers whose actions and reactions, despite being in their 30s, have a decidedly teenage feel to them. The obvious comparisons are with Napoleon Dynamite. The thing is that if you are going to build a movie around characters who rather make you cringe, you need to add enough likeability to keep the audience engaged and writer/director Taika Cohen only just manages to pull it off.

Lily (Loren Horsley) has a certain cute charm, but Jarrod (Jermaine Clement) is rather too self-obsessed and selfish, which makes Lily's obsession with him all the more baffling. His character and self-realisation comes rather too late in proceedings.

However along the way there are some nice touches and good array of other amusing oddballs. There are also some surprisingly dark and some surprisingly tender moments, along with some nice subversions of cinematic cliches - like the race to stop the love interest leaving on the bus and, in the film's greatest sequence, the showdown with childhood enemy.

It might be a bit of an acquire taste, but if you like the slightly offbeat, there's enough here to make it worth checking out.