Chris At The Pictures

2016’s summer of so-so cinema is finally invigorated with the arrival of this absolutely barnstorming entry in the rebooted Star Trek universe, as J.J. Abrams hands over the bridge to Fast & Furious alumnus Justin Lin. Soon after the Enterprise crew respond to a plea for help in uncharted space, they find themselves shipwrecked on a desolate world. Stranded, scattered and on the run from the murderous Krall (Idris Elba), Kirk, Spock and co. must forge alliances with fellow maroon Jaylah (Kingsman’s Sofia Boutella) to prevent the pebble-faced villain from retrieving an alien artefact of immense power.

That’s not so much a setup than the essence of Star Trek Beyond: it’s an episode of the original series writ large, where teamwork and problem-solving trumps the point-and-shoot method that Abrams’ preceding films were more than occasionally guilty of. As if tonal allusions to the TV show weren’t enough, we also get the classic distress call setup, a rocky planet environment likely filmed in a quarry and many scenes of Kirk punching alien baddies in the face. Any state-of-the-art, whizz-bang special effects work is placed at either end of the picture, to serve as bookends for the main narrative thrust. When the shooting starts up again in the gob-smacking finale, the ship-to-ship spectacle is outrageously entertaining, and I doubt we’ll find a more brilliantly grin-inducing use of music in a blockbuster this year. Michael Giacchino’s score, alternately twinkly and brash, is as magical as ever, and a consistent visual aesthetic is maintained by cinematographer Stephen Windon evoking the swooping style of previous DoP Dan Mindel, but with minimal smearing of lens flares.

With the Kirk and Spock relationship fleshed out considerably in Trek and Into Darkness, Beyond focuses on the unity of the crew as a whole, something that proves Lin’s experience with the latter-day, family-centric Fast movies indispensable. We get to see more interaction between Kirk and Chekov (the late Anton Yelchin is frantically engaging as he has ever been), Uhura and Sulu are placed shoulder-to-shoulder, whilst Spock and Bones are left alone together for a large chunk of the narrative, allowing for some lovely old-married-couple bickering: Quinto and Urban really have their respective characters down to a tee. Simon Pegg (as co-writer this time around) gives Scotty an awful lot more to do, but when the curmudgeonly engineer’s bemused interactions with Boutella’s no-nonsense Jaylah (a new female Trek character not introduced as a love interest, whatever next?) are so endearing, there’s little room for complaint. 

Though, while we’re on the subject, I do have a niggle or two: for all its visual invention (the orb city of Yorktown is easily the best spaceward treat for the eyes since Gravity) and vigour, the finale stretches on past breaking point, while Krall’s motivations are revealed far too late to hold any true significance: his insistance on tearing the crew apart to demonstrate their reliance on unity was far more involving than his eventual justification for destruction.

However, a film that can have me smiling ear-to-ear from start-to-finish just by re-introducing characters, spaceships, musical cues and even sound effects that I genuinely love is so difficult to dislike. Sure, I may be blinded by nostalgia (bizarre, considering that only five years ago I wouldn’t touch Trek with a ten foot pole), but in a summer blockbuster season that has so consistently failed to deliver thrills of any kind, nostalgic or otherwise, I’ll be boldly going back to this one. Thataway!

Following on from the original hit 2011 movie, Horrible Bosses 2 sees Dale (Charlie Day), Kurt (Jason Bateman) and Nick (Jason Sudeikis) decide to jump-start their own business to avoid ever having to answer to authority again. Things go awry when a scheming investor and his son (Chris Pine and Christoph Waltz respectively) disrupt the trio’s plan, leading them to attempt a madcap kidnapping in the hope of recouping their losses.

Having not seen the original nor read any reviews of it, I had almost no expectations going into Horrible Bosses 2, so while they were somewhat exceeded, I can’t find it within myself to praise it too much for one simple reason: there’s a limit to how much leery, laddy humour I can take, even as a member of the straight white male audience. It’s the same problem I had with The Inbetweeners 2, but to a much larger extent because the latter had characters I’d gotten to know and even like a little.

The problem with the movie is not that it isn’t funny at all, because the opening twenty minutes are raucously funny, as are a number of moments towards the end. The issue is with the remaining 80 minutes, which range from laugh-free to gratingly irritating. Jokes about genitalia will get you so far, but once those in question are those of fourteen year-olds, you’ve lost me, as you have with the Jennifer Aniston character, of whom we shall hear more later.

Where the cast is concerned, Charlie Day is easily the funniest thing in the film, while Jason Sudeikis does the usual ‘shouting it makes it funnier’ campaign much to the visible annoyance of Bateman, who for all the world looks like someone praying for it all to be over so he can buy something nice with the hefty pay-check he no doubt received. Now we come to the crux of the problem: Jennifer Aniston as Julia; a dominating, sex-addicted boss who desperately seeks intimacy with Dale (Day), who constantly refuses her advances. This is a character that  - I think – is intended to revert the sexually predatory stereotypes, but in this case it doesn’t work because no man in his right mind would turn down Aniston’s character because, in the eye of the camera, she is everything the target audience is supposed to want.

Asides from Aniston as the walking bottom, the only other female characters are crazy, annoying or promptly thrown aside while the three leads continue with their lewd and crude conversations about ‘who you’d rather do’. The usually amiable Chris Pine plays the whole thing as drunk Captain Kirk and is frankly embarrassing, and one even wonders why they brought in the magisterial of Christoph Waltz for what is essentially a walk-on role.

While it may pass the laugh test for many, and the 110 minutes zip by surprisingly quickly, Horrible Bosses 2 is not one for the history books: the occasionally sharp script is hampered by an over-reliance on crude humour and misogyny, while the impressive cast swan about in their finery looking merely happy to be working, bored, or occasionally half asleep. Not horrible, just uneven and ultimately empty.