I, Frankenstein (2014)

God damn, this film is stupidly bad. There's so much stupidity, I don't even know where to start, so I'm just going to jump straight in. 

The plot is an unimaginative "evil forces plan to destroy mankind, and only one person can stop them" kind of story. That one person is Frankenstein's monster, or Adam as he's called in this film. ("Get it? Like the first man god created? It's like mankind is playing God! Do you see what we did there?"). 

Why has this poster been photoshopped so lazily? Two of those gargoyles have clearly just been copied and pasted. The same lack of effort went into every other aspect of the film, so I guess it works well in the marketing too.

The main character in this film had no personality whatsoever. Not only that, but he has no motivations to justify any of his actions. Why does he decide to start hunting demons after 200 years of being alone? He clearly doesn't like the company of others, so why not just stay isolated? Similarly, later in the film, why does he suddenly start caring about the people? He seriously said: "My circumstances have changed. I have someone with me now. A human. A scientist. I have to protect her." Why do you have to protect her? There's no motivation for it, other than "it's where the writer wants the story to go".

The film was written terribly. Putting aside the hilariously cheesy dialogue, it's as if the film couldn't make up it's mind if we're supposed to be supporting the angels, or Adam, or maybe both? He constantly flips between fighting with them and fighting against them, to the point where I stopped rooting for anyone to be victorious. 

Because I didn't care about the characters, there was no tension in any of the action scenes, since I couldn't care about the outcome. If the action was decent in this film, it might have made it bearable, but it wasn't. The fight choreography was standard, the CGI was poor, and the make up made the demons look like something out of some old Star Trek movie.

There are loads of small things that pissed me off about this film. We're supposed to believe this 30 year old doctor woman is one of the world's most respected electrophysiologists? Even if that were true, why is she the ONLY person who is able to make sense of Frankenstein's journal? It doesn't make any sense. Blonde doctor also declares that she'd rather die than help the demons reanimate an army... except if they kill a work colleague. At that point, it's worth raising an army of monsters to kill all of mankind, just in the vain hope that she'll also revive some old dude she works with. 

I think the thing that annoyed me the most about this film was how incapable the army of angels/gargoyles were. So you've been defending the Earth from demons for hundreds of years, and yet you still couldn't figure out that their (enormous) base was a quarter of a mile from yours? How useless are you people? They also lock Adam up at one point for not being secretive enough when he killed a demon in an alley, but later we see the gargoyles flying around, roaring loudly, smashing up buildings, crushing cars, causing huge fires and being a general nuisance. Bit hypocritical aren't we? Also, are there no humans in this city whatsoever? The entire city was deserted for the majority of the film. 

These kind of films are often good for just switching off your brain and enjoying some mindless fun for a while. Not this film, however. This film really didn't entertain me in any way.

Overall, I rate I, Frankenstein 0/10.

On no level did I enjoy this film. It's worthless. 

Horrible Bosses 2 (2014)

The first Horrible Bosses wasn't bad. I mean, obviously it was nothing groundbreaking, but there was a good cast playing some hilarious characters, with a decent amount of laugh-out-loud moments scattered throughout it.

Horrible Bosses 2 is everything that's wrong with comedy sequels. The producers wheel out the same cast and tell them to do the exact same thing again (but with a much worse script). Due to the success of the first film, they know this one will likely make a profit. For this reason, they don't bother putting in the effort to make this film as good as the first, because what's the point? Schmucks like us will go and see it either way. 

I notice that Kevin Spacey isn't on this poster. He made a wise decision distancing himself from this piece of crap movie.

There are virtually no funny moments in the whole movie, because the entire thing is just 1 hour 48 minutes of Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day talking over each other. 90% of the dialogue between the three main characters is completely incomprehensible. 

Fortunately for the sake of the story, a load of the secondary characters from the first film (angry boss, slutty boss, weird gangsta), as well as a couple of new ones, were also crowbarred into this movie to carry the plot on behalf of the main characters who were essentially passengers in their own movie. Unfortunately, my favourite character from the first film, the hilarious douchebag son played by Colin Farrell, was killed off in the last movie, so he couldn't even make an appearance in the sequel and redeem it a little bit. 

At the end of the day, a comedy movie is supposed to make you laugh. As long as you're laughing, who cares? Well that's just the thing. There was barely any of it that I found funny. Most of it is stuff that we've seen before. Remember that bit at the beginning where it looks like Charlie Day is wanking off Jason Sudeikis, because of the audience's perspective? Wasn't that a hilarious, original joke? It's not as if that gag has been done to death in a million other movies... 

Most of the "humour" was just the characters arguing indecipherably. It was kind of funny for the first few minutes, but it got stale very quickly. Similarly, I very rapidly got bored of Kevin Spacey, who was just there to be angry, and Jennifer Aniston, who was just there to say vulgar sexual things. I mean, a film which can make you begin to resent actors you've always liked has to be doing something very wrong.

To be honest, this film was so empty that I'm struggling to write much more about it. There's nothing to talk about. There was a good cast and a standard wacky plot for a comedy movie, but the film itself was just so void of anything worthwhile, that it made the whole thing pointless. It's not worth the time spent watching it.

Overall, I rate Horrible Bosses 2 2/10.

I laughed once or twice, but apart from that, this film was a lazy cash-grab that isn't worth watching.

Frozen (2013)

Earning almost $1.3 billion dollars at the box office worldwide, Frozen is the highest grossing animated film of all time by quite a significant margin. Before I saw it, I'd only heard good things about it.

When I did watch it, I was left with a feeling of indifference. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't amazing either. What's the big deal about this movie? I couldn't really get emotionally invested in Elsa, the irritating ice bitch. She was deceptively marketed as the main character, but the film wasn't really about her. It was much more about her sister. Not only that, but I didn't laugh like I usually do at these kind of movies. In fact, at least one of the jokes was totally ripped off. The "we finish each other's... sandwiches" gag has been done before in both The Simpsons and Arrested Development. Probably elsewhere as well, come to think of it. That's just a minor thing, but it's still a testament to how unoriginal this film is, which I'll talk about a bit further down.

From L to R, "Dog-Horse-Reindeer", "Will they? Won't they? Romantic interest", "Annoying comic relief", "Ice witch bitch", "The more likeable sister", "Surprise surprise, I'm actually a villain".

Before I go any further, I will say that it was an interesting angle to have the whole "act of true love" being the love between two sisters, rather than a token handsome prince coming to save the day. Additionally, with Elsa running off and refusing to be a "perfect girl", there was some cool feminist vibes in Frozen, which is good for the millions of young girls who do love this movie. However, it was a bit heavy-handed with the girl-power message, which made it a little bit cringeworthy. Disney's Tangled (2010) is a much, much better version of this movie. It had a very likeable female lead. Anna felt like a cheap imitation of Rapunzel, and Elsa is just a miserable, self-centered bitch for most of Frozen. I really didn't care what happened to her. Not only that, but the feminist message was a lot less ham-fisted in Tangled. It showed how Rapunzel and Flynn were equals who worked well as a team, and their relationship came about very naturally in the setting of the story. Frozen's message is pretty much, "like this if you're a strong independent ice queen who don't need no man", and the story seemed to be secondary to this statement.

Frozen really is just a lazy copy of the vastly superior Tangled.

For me, Frozen is worth less than the sum of its parts. It's incredibly derivative. It felt as if the producers had a checklist of kid's movie cliches to fill out this film.

• Goofy comic relief sidekick
• Horse (or in this case, reindeer) which acts kind of like a person and kind of like a dog
• Romantic subplot
• Shut-in princess
• Quirky magical creatures
• Parent-less main character(s)
• Prophecy of some kind of looming danger
• Random outbursts into song

Despite managing to squeeze all of this in to make a film with the oh-so-familiar Disney style, there still wasn't enough to produce anything more than a generic, cookie-cutter kids film that we've seen a hundred times before. I would also add that these cliches were poorly executed in this movie. For example, Olaf was purely annoying, as were the stupid little troll things. They were blatant attempts at marketing some cute little characters to sell merchandise.

Not only that, but I found that barely any of the songs were in any way memorable. Most of them sounded like terrible show-tunes, rather than the catchy music Disney has made in the past. I will admit that Let It Go is the one catchy song in the entire film. I'd hoped for a reprise of it at some point later in the movie, but it never returned. We just got more of the boring songs. Don't ask me how any of them go, because I don't have a clue.

"It's just a kid's movie. You need to lower your expectations."

This is the defence I hear most often when I complain about the film and, in my opinion, it's an infuriatingly weak one. There are so many animated kid's movies which I adore, both old and new. I actually spent a while listing them all, but ended up changing my mind, because the list went on forever and was really boring to read. Just know this: there were a truck load. Frozen just didn't live up to any of its predecessors. There are a load of kids films which are a lot more entertaining. In fact, the main thing Frozen has going for it (the feminist icons for young girls), has been done even better in previous films (Mulan, Brave, and, of course, Tangled are great for this). This film felt like it was made due to a load of executive marketing calculations, rather than a passion to tell a particular story.

Overall, I rate Frozen 4/10.

A below average score for a below average movie. It got the job done, but it didn't excel in anything whatsoever. It has no rewatchability.