catholiclefty

Seven Pounds is a film that doesn't really succeed in holding the interest for the entire film, or in delivering a coherent or consistent message, and is undermined by an almost cheesy ending that seems to be supposed to be a surprise but isn't. Nevertheless it is sustained by some reasonable performances, and a theme of redemption that is quite well-handled even though it falls off the rails eventually.

If you're supposed to view this film as a mystery, it is quite a failure, not least because the very first scene reveals most of the mystery before we've even got going. If however it is viewed as an exploration of redemption and justice, as I did, it doesn't do too badly at all. The conclusion won't be to everyone's taste, in fact most probably not mine, but it does raise interesting questions about morality and intent. Unfortunately there are a number of ham-fisted attempts to undercut the goodwill the film builds up - most notably the final scene, which is no doubt supposed to be uplifting but comes across as plain silly, especially the blind man who can now see. These mis-steps are significant weaknesses in the film and diminish the impact significantly.

Will Smith was decent in this, at least most of the time. Sometimes his swings seemed a bit too random and a bit out-of-the-blue, and his moping around got a bit tiring eventually, but there's quite a bit of good work here. Roasario Dawson was ok from time to time in an underwhelming part. Woody Harrelson is wasted in a part which could have been a lot more interesting.

An alternative name for this movie could be 'see what incredibly intrusive powers being an IRS agent gives you', which would at least make more sense than 'Seven Pounds', which is never properly explained (there are explanations flying around the internet, but nothing that is official). Oh well. It's not great, but it isn't as bad as the critics have made out either. As long as you don't think it is a mystery, that is, because it isn't much of one of those at all. 6 out of 10.

The first of *three* kids films in just the next month featuring dogs (!), Beverly Hills Chihuahua looked to be a very strong candidate for one of the worst films of the year, so it is to its limited credit that it manages to be just a little better than that, albeit with a completely cookie-cutter Disney narrative and an odd lack of remotely likable characters. It almost feels like someone decided to greenlight a project that took ideas from Lady And The Tramp and the recent Roadside Romeo (my review), mashed them together, and took out most of the interesting bits. Which is quite an odd thing to do. Much of the film takes place in Mexico, which manages to combine being somewhat offensive about the Mexicans (dog-fighting?!) with giving a rather more sympathetic look than we got in say Julia (my review) - not that that's difficult! There's a few obvious nods to embrace diversity and to avoid the tendancy to look down on others not like us, but I'm not sure it's enough.

The basic conceit is straightforward enough - the dogs talk, but humans can't understand them. So far, so standard. Our 'heroine' is a spoilt stuck-up dog, but unlike Lady (or Romeo, for that matter) she doesn't exactly endear ourselves to us as she goes along and learns the obligatory lessons, not to mention that by the end of the film she seems to have forgotten or laid aside much of what she ought to have learnt anyway. Perhaps this is partly an aesthetic issue on my part - I don't think chihuahuas are particularly good-looking dogs at the best of times, and the one chosen here is particularly displeasing to the eye. When there's almost nothing to like about your heroine in a Disney film, you're in trouble. The role of Tramp here is taken by an old dog who our heroine befriends, but thanks to the massive age-gap this can't possibly become a romantic relationship, but also fails to become a father-daughter surrogate relationship, so ends up not going anywhere much at all. There's an evil dog who is reasonably evil and not remotely nuanced, an actual love interest for our heroine who is out of the picture for most of the film, and a rat and lizard combination who are 'funny'. The rat feels like a very miserable example of how Pip from Enchanted (my review) could have turned out if the people making Enchanted hadn't actually been trying hard to make a good film.

As for the humans, we have Jamie Lee Curtis who shouldn't really have bothered coming in to make her brief and pointless appearances as an irritating Hollywood type who pampers her pooch to a ludicrous extent, and Piper Perabo who really does try to bring some life to the film and almost succeeds - her character is horrible, and acting 90% of the time with dogs can't have been an especially enjoyable job, but she's quite good-looking and brings a certain amount of energy that the film severely lacks elsewhere.

A plot that doesn't make much sense, with outrageous coincidence (all the business with the collar is interminable and non-sensical), things done merely for the furtherance of the plot (you realise you want to ransom the dog only *after* you've tried to get it killed in a dogfight and *after* it has miraculously escaped???), and bizarre location choices (the finale, for goodness only knows what reason, takes place in some sort of Aztec-esque pyramid that looks like it was left over from National Treasure 2 (my review) (!)) combined with characters who engender zero sympathy (either the humans or the dogs) results in a standard but especially lazy Disney plot coupled to very weak Disney characters. This isn't quite one of the worst films of the year, but it is pretty bad. 3.5 out of 10.