Comedy

The slapstick tech support based sitcom written by Father Ted creator Graham Linehan returns to Channel 4 tomorrow night. If you’ve not seen The IT Crowd, now is the perfect time to get acquainted with Moss, Jen and Roy, who make up the entire IT department of the London-based Reynholm Industries, a company which once turned over “eighteen hundred billion billion,” in profits.

Moss and Roy are, in the words of Denholm Reynholm (the CEO, played by Chris Morris), just a pair of “standard nerds” who are outcast by the rest of the firm despite their reliance on their technical expertise.

The glamorous and ambitious Jen is appointed their manager after blagging her way into the job, even though it’s clear she knows next to squat about computers.

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After the successful fusion of uninhibited bawdiness and showbiz satire in The 40 Year Old Virgin and pregnancy-centric rom-com Knocked Up, current chieftain of Hollywood comedy Judd Apatow looks to have scored another hit with Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Once again he takes a situation that really shouldn’t be funny – in this case the break-down of a long-term relationship – and sucks from it every last drop of laughs.

When Peter Bretter (Jason Segel), a genial underachiever who composes incidental music for American TV shows, is dumped by his beautiful actress girlfriend, Sarah Marhall (Kristen Bell), he is devastated. Standing stark naked in his kitchen and weeping buckets, he begs her to stay, but to no avail – her success has outstripped his and she has bigger fish to fry. He seeks solace in one-night stands but is haunted by Sarah’s memory. Tired of womanising, he takes advice from his step-brother Brian (Bill Hader) and escapes to Hawaii, only to discover that Sarah and her rock star boyfriend Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) are staying in the same hotel. The set up is textbook farce. Fortunately, help is at hand in the form of Rachel (Mila Kunis), the pretty hotel receptionist with whom Peter strikes up a relationship.

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Like slipping into a pair of old shoes, 27 Dresses is the epitome of comforting predictability, following the rom-com rulebook to the letter.

Jane (Katherine Heigl) is a serial bridesmaid, with 27 gaudy hideous dresses hanging in her cupboard to prove it, who spends so much of her time caring for other people that she’s neglected to find a husband for herself. She is a wedding obsessive, subscribing to bridal magazines and cutting out wedding stories from newspapers in spite of the fact that she’s single. Jane is secretly pining after her dull boss, the obligatory romantic red-herring in the tale, who is cruelly snatched from her by her sexy younger sister. Meanwhile she remains oblivious to the attentions of Kevin, a dashing, cynical wedding reporter from the local rag, who has found himself a scoop with Jane’s story.

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Having been maligned by many reviewers upon its release a few weeks ago, the DVD Rental crew weren’t expecting much from Hancock, the latest Will Smith sci-fi action outing, but we left our local cinema pleasantly surprised.

Vigilante superhero crimefighter John Hancock (Smith) can fly, pick up cars, stop trains with an outstretched hand, is impervious to bullets, beatings, rocket propelled grenades, but is unloved by his public, who repeatedly refer to him as ‘asshole’, as his actions invariably cause more damage to his adopted hometown of LA than the criminals he sets out to apprehend – think the first five minutes of Team America: World Police and you’re kind of on the right lines. He is also an alcoholic smartarse.  ‘I can smell the liquor on your breath,’ snaps one irate rescuee. ‘Well, that’s ’cause I’ve been drinking, bitch.’

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More light-hearted than French director Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind nonetheless shares its surreal assumptions. Set in retrograde Passiac, New Jersey, sweet-natured Mike (Mos Def) works in a video store run by kindly Mr Fletcher (Danny Glover), an old-timer who still exclusively rents out dusty old VHS tapes, fitting for the dreary backwater in which the store is situated. When Mr Fletcher takes a trip out of town, he leaves his store in the capable hands of Mike, giving him just one piece of advice: not to let Mike’s quirky friend Jerry (Jack Black) anywhere near the store. However, Jerry, whose body has been completely electro-magnetised after breaking into the local power plant, does visit the store and inadvertently wipes every single tape. Only one option is left to the pair: armed with a video camera, they start with a biopic of Fats Waller, going on to film their own versions of classics such as Rush Hour 2 and Ghostbusters Pretty soon the home-made films achieve cult status and the money won’t stop rolling in.

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Directed by Tom Shadyac (Ace Ventura, The Nutty Professor), this sequel to Bruce Almighty at $135 million dollars is purportedly the most expensive comedy ever filmed. Steve Carell plays a newscaster turned politician who has uprooted to Virginia, dragging a reluctant wife and three boys with him to support him in his ambitions. His campaign pledge to “change the world” becomes a reality when God, in the form of an avuncular Morgan Freeman, tells him to build an ark to save America from a great flood. In spite of hints at an environmental message – the flood after all followed a controversial decision to privatise a national park – Evan’s penchant for gas-guzzling 4×4s makes him an unlikely eco-warrior.

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Seasoned action man and all-round geezer Jason Statham (Collateral, Snatch) and Saffron Burrows (Frida, Deep Blue Sea) star in this comic thriller documenting the 1971 robbery of the Baker Street branch of Lloyds Bank. Oddly enough, the robbers’ walkie-talkie conversations were recorded by a radio ham, but when he reported the incident, no action was taken…

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Perhaps the ultimate Girl’s Night In movie has arrived on cinema screens, following Monday night’s premiere at the Odeon West End in Leicester Square here in London – of course we’re flattered that Carrie and the girls chose to unveil their first big screen performance here in the UK, but we can’t help feeling that perhaps their native New York would have been a more fitting choice.

At the end of the day, this isn’t a movie about geography, it’s about the two ‘L’s – Labels and Love. The girls are back with a bang four years on since the series wrapped and it doesn’t seem that much has changed. Sarah Jessica Parker has once again stepped into the Manalos of Carrie Bradshaw, Noo Yoik writer on a quest for true love – “real love… ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love…” – armed with a passion for fashion, Cosmopolitans and internal monologue. Maneater Samantha has relocated to the west coast, having shacked up with aspiring movie star Smith in LA, Miranda is having problems juggling her professional, domestic and social life, whilst Charlotte, seems to be the only one enjoying marital bliss.

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Bit of film fact trivia known to every Star Wars fan worth their spice; Blue Harvest was the codename for Return of the Jedi used by the production team when filming in order to avoid excessive attention from members of the press and fans alike – the cover was eventually blown despite numerous t-shirts and baseball caps being made help support the ruse.

And so, in order to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of one the best loved movie franchises of the 20th Century (the last two do not count) Seth MacFarlane and the Family Guy team created their own hour-long retelling of A New Hope, which in the traditional Family Guy style takes pot shots at everything from Robot Chicken which stars both of the Seths, (Green and MacFarlane) in their own Star Wars Special, Pimp My Ride (with a souped-up TIE fighter) and the War on Terror, by way of having the Death Star blow up a planet suspected of hoarding WMDs.

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