Film Shapes

I was expecting a celluloid headache from this 'content venture' but only the rainbow Bifrost was an optical assault, the rest was simply bright animation. It should be noted that the content creators have shoe-horned the word 'movie' into the title. I've been trying to avoid any reference to it being a 'film' but that's perhaps a little unfair. Let's face it, this is a cash grab that will most likely succeed, where the live action version from 1993, starring Bob Hoskins, didn't. The target market - children - will gobble it up, if the audience I saw it with is anything to go by. Now, if you're familiar with the Mario Bros. Nintendo game or any derivation thereof, you'll recognise elements from those irritating seizure-events. There are many of the characters from the games, so my kids tell me, such as Bowser, Toad, Princess Peach and Donkey Kong (even I know that last one). These big-eyed attempts at cuteness are voiced by (in order) Jac...

Coming at this film from a non-gamer perspective, I was (and am) only superficially aware of the base IP that spawned it. Probably, this freed me from any quibbles others might have about casting or characterisation or dialogue or anything else that particular subculture could get exercised about. But, that's a double edged sword, in that I had to google some stuff like; who that dude on the beach was; what Pilou Asbæk's doing at the end; and is that character supposed to be Aussie or Kiwi or Pom, or some kind of Commonwealth amalgam? Answers on the back of a postcard. As a palate cleanser of sheer dumb-arsed frippery, Uncharted ticks all the boxes. It's reasonably short for this kind of blockbuster (at a touch under 2 hours), the leads, Tom Holland and Marky Mark Wahlberg, seem to be having a right old giggle, there are some passable parkour snatches (making use of Holland's Spidery fleet-footedness), and the final helicopter/ship transport sequence is pretty mint. An...