You don't have to be a fan of The Hangover franchise to get most of the jokes in Part III, although it certainly helps. How else would you understand why the line “It all ends tonight” is so funny, or why the arrival of Mr Chow causes such hilarity in the audience?
There are few films of which you can say there's something for everyone - but there is something for everyone in Jeff Nichols's third film.
Judging by those associated with Great Night Out, it looked like ITV had found the successor to acclaimed thirtysomething drama Cold Feet. It has the same production team behind The Worst Week of My Life - one of the funniest programmes in BBC Comedy's recent output - additional material by playwright Jonathan Harvey, who is responsible for some punchily witty scripts in Coronation Street, and a cast of talented actors.
“Feel good” is a description applied far too frequently in reviews, often to movies which are formulaic and saccharine in the extreme. However, Le Havre is a film that’s begging to be described as just that, though it’s far from conventional or fluffy fare. This buoyantly beneficent and frequently hilarious picture combines artful absurdity and a neo-noir aesthetic with a pervasive sense of social justice and a laudable belief in the kindness of strangers.
Like a fist to the face of the traditionally insipid, female-fronted rom-com, Bridesmaids marks a departure from the oft-derided norm, not by being brassy or crude (OK, there might be a sizeable helping of the latter) but because of its authentic humour, credible character dynamics and the foregrounding of female friendships over romance. It is also wildly funny.
If you can judge a man by his friends then the volatile Joseph would be something of a contradiction. His best mate is looking death in the eye, riddled with sickness and regret (and by all accounts left that way by the lifestyle they both shared). Then there’s the wheeler-dealer prone to racist tirades. On the redemptive side is the charming, if porcelain-fragile friendship that he strikes up with dedicated Christian Hannah. It’s this friendship - and that which he also forms with a young, isolated boy on his estate – on which the film pivots.
A time-tested formula gets tantalisingly tweaked in Friends with Benefits, in which Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis attempt to confine their relationship to the purely sexual without the ick factor of emotions getting in the way.
If you have begun to tire of blokey-jokey films such as Wedding Crashers, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and The Hangover, then try this female-oriented movie that covers some of the same territory but from the distaff side. It’s well written and acted, and realistically portrays female friendships and how women really talk about men when they’re in all-female company - but most of all it is deliriously, side-splittingly, laugh-out-loud funny. Chick-flick it ain't.
Anya Reiss must be the most precocious playwright in London. Her 2010 debut, Spur of the Moment, written while she was just 17 and still studying for her A levels, won two Most Promising Playwright awards, from the London Evening Standard and the Critics’ Circle.
The secrets and lies, delusions and foibles of a group of thirty-, forty- and fiftysomething friends are laid bare in French director Guillaume Canet’s third feature, following his breakthrough international hit Tell No One (2006). This alternately genial and scathing comic drama explores the dynamics of friendship and the fragility of romantic relations. It’s a story fuelled by the friction and frissons between companions, who come together in the aftermath of a tragic accident, and take off on a misguided getaway which becomes a fortnight of reverie and recriminations.