Freakier Friday, The Life of Chuck and The Roses

 

Well it was certainly freakier. The first half of Freakier Friday was so noisy, shouty, fast and gross. Whoever decided to put in a massive food fight? I was just about to leave when things began to calm down. So much so that the second half was actually quite good as the body swopping settled down to become a reasonable drama. Lindsay Lohan was actually quite good, even if Jamie Lee Curtis is too old and never changes. Tom Shone in his review said she was the best reason to see this movie. No. It was Lindsay that I thought held the whole thing together. Who would believe that. She did seem to have a bit of trouble when she has to play her daughter, but who cares. Tom Shone in the the Sunday Times says "in the latest movie you spend a lot of time trying to work out who is swapped into whose body because it's a four way exchange". But they had to do something different from the original

The Life of Chuck is actually one of the best films I have seen for some time. Who would have thought that of a Stephen King adaptation. The three acts are told in reverse, so at the beginning we have a kind of dream sequence. Nothing feels real. Why are all these posters about Chuck. Then his image in all those windows. Who is he? We find out a little in the second part as our narrator (Nick Offerman) reveals this man walking through the city is indeed Chuck, in middle age. This short section starts with Taylor Gordon setting up her drum kit in a pedestrianised part of town where she is a busker. It's Chuck who is passing by and he starts to move to the beat. What we have then is a seven minute dance sequence when Chuck invites Annalise Basso,who is watching, to join him. 

Now I'm not an expert in drumming, only that I have some listening experience. At Dunmow Jazz Club in the early sixties, the drummer would occasionally have his own prolonged solo. At some concerts at college or on stage we would get the same. So what happens in the film, to me, was quite extraordinary. One of the best things I have ever seen on film. As Taylor changes the beat or adds a riff for the different rhythms, so too do the dancers change. You can see this sequence on YouTube, but you really need to see it in the cinema with great acoustics. I was thrilled. Here is Ashley Boucher talking to Tom Hiddleston in the Entertainment website. 

Next came crafting the perfect piece of music for the routine, which Hiddleston calls "ingenious" in the way it "progresses through different rhythms and styles of dance."

"The whole sequence contains within it all of the dance styles that Chuck will have learned as a young man that his grandmother taught him, that he learned at the twirlers and spinners dance class in middle school," he says. "They're radically different rhythms, to go from jazz to swing to the cha-cha and then to bossa nova and the polka. The rhythm of the beat completely changes, and the rhythm of how the body has to move in accordance with that beat."

The final act takes us back further to Chuck as a boy. We get to learn how he started to dance and found this huge talent inside him. He has a great relationship with his father (an unrecognisable  Mark Hamill). The locked door of their Cupola is typical Stephen King. Mark Kermode thinks that the film is "really lovely" and is about an idea, not a traditional narrative. A long review in Sight and Sound Magazine by Roger Luckhurst concludes that director Mike Flanagan "has become King's most sympathetic interpreter on film". 

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I was not sure at all about going to see The Roses. Benedict Cumberbatch and, particularly Colman, did not strike me as a comedy duo. However, it was better than I thought it would be. There is enough warmth in their marriage for some time before things go pear shaped. The two are great actors and the repartee is interesting. All down to a fine screenplay by Tony McNamara. The novelty is the fact that the husband stays at home with the kids and the wife becomes a celebrity chef with a growing number of restaurants. We see what can happen when the children are brought up by a fitness fanatic father, and how the busy mother never gets to see them. The time lapses were unusual as we belt through the years. Not for me a laugh out loud comedy, more black than that. There are the odd funny moments and touching scenes, but havoc in the later stages becomes predictable. The supporting cast were awful. Or was that their characters? No review in Sight and Sound Magazine. A few good songs on the soundtrack starting with Happy Together and later Love Hurts. A little obvious.