Gurinder Chadha | 96 mins | DVD | 15 / R
The debut feature from director Gurinder Chadha (of Bend It Like Beckham, Bride & Prejudice and Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Perfect Snogging fame) and screenwriter Meera Syal (of Goodness Gracious Me, Anita and Me and Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee fame) focuses on the experiences of a group of British Indian women. One might add “unsurprisingly”, considering the other works on their CVs, but I feel that would just open a can of worms, so moving on…
One gets the sense that, in 1993, Bhaji on the Beach was a break-out film that uncovered an area of British society and culture that had been largely concealed from the wider media landscape. It was no doubt bitingly relevant, showcasing a different set of cultural rules and expectations, not to mention the casual racism that I’m sure was as prevalent as it’s depicted. That’s not to say everything is healed and we no longer need to understand these things, but, viewed today, the film feels less “this is how things are” and more “this is how things were then”, emphasised by the ever-so-’90s costumes, cars, locations… It feels as much a period piece as, say, Ashes to Ashes.
The perspective is definitively female — no bad thing for a medium where, almost 20 years later, there are still few female directors, and those that garner the widest recognition tend to do so in typically male genres. This also arguably helps it transcend a potentially exclusive cultural specificity: topics like unwanted pregnancy, abusive husbands and parental expectations are certainly relevant to a wider audience. 
Indeed, there’s certainly evidence that the film was constructed with such an audience in mind: when the women settle down for a traditionally British ‘picnic on the beach’, we’re given a close-up to show they’re eating samosas and bhajis instead of sandwiches and what-have-you. If all the talk of pregnancies, abuse and racism sounds a bit serious, there’s also a good degree of humour and an appropriate lashing of sentiment.
The low budget occasionally adds an unfortunately amateurish feel to the film’s construction. Chadha clearly has vision and skill — the numerous daydream/nightmare sequences show this off in spades — but some dialogue scenes are either unimaginatively shot, or in some instances plain flat. Just a pinch of the talent applied elsewhere would serve to give them a necessary kick. Similarly, a few of the performances err on the weak side, to exactly the degree where some viewers won’t even be bothered while others may be frequently irritated.
As a very low budget, very indie, very ’90s film, Bhaji on the Beach has aged rather; yet for that it’s still an enjoyable, informative and affecting feature. It’s no surprise both Chadha and Syal have gone on to bigger things.
On Film4 tonight, Sunday 27th July 2014, at 1:10am.
I don’t imagine Bride & Prejudice is going to convert many people who aren’t already predisposed to liking it in some way. That’s not to say it’s not good or doesn’t have potential crossover appeal, but it still has a whole list of things that will put certain viewers off.
not to mention the numerous adaptations predating either of those, but Bride brings plenty that’s vastly different to the table. It converts the novel very accurately (as best I can tell, having only seen screen versions), retaining both the characterisation and the majority of the plot in a similar sequence of events.
Little of the plot requires such modification, perhaps thanks to the culture it’s been grafted onto — the predominance of arranged marriages wouldn’t really work in a ’00s British setting — and those bits which are changed are relatively minor. Lydia (here, Lakhi) runs off with Wickham for an afternoon at the London Eye, rather than eloping; Georgiana (here, the slightly more modern Georgina) was impregnated at 16, less legally complicated than the novel’s 15.
Matchstick Men ends with a twist. One of those great big changes-everything-you’ve-just-seen numbers that have a habit of making a film notorious. Yet I’m almost loath to mention it, because I’ve never read a review, preview, summary or what-have-you of the film that mentions there’s a twist. Maybe I’ve just been reading the wrong pieces; maybe no one cares; maybe they’re all just playing along trying to keep it secret. But not me, because I bloody hated it.
Twists are fine. Twists can be great. As I said, you can guess a twist is coming and it can still work. A really good twist works even when you know for certain it’s coming; its existence raises what you’ve seen, makes it all work even on repeated viewings when the element of surprise is obviously gone. Matchstick Men doesn’t have that kind of twist. It has the kind of twist that undermines everything you’ve just seen. Not because it’s illogical — it isn’t in the slightest — but because it tramples over the film’s emotional resonance, in my opinion.
Alison Lohman is also exceptionally good as a 14-year-old girl. It took a scene or two to convince me, but after that I was plenty on board with it. It occasionally takes some effort to remind yourself she was 24. As the third lead, Sam Rockwell plays a typical Sam Rockwell part. He does it very well, naturally, and there’s nothing to fault him on, but he’s been better elsewhere. The rest of the cast are absolutely fine but not exactly called on much — this is Cage’s film, and to a lesser extent Lohman’s. They have the emotional journey, the film’s heart-and-soul around its long(-ish) con ‘plot’ (which could just be lifted from any episode of Hustle… except it’s not even that complex). 
Matchstick Men was a lot better than I’d expected, because most of the coverage I remember shoved it aside as a middle-of-the-road side project for Scott. It’s definitely better than that, if still not the “sweep the Oscars” success 
Quite how I’ve not got round to seeing True Lies until now is a little beyond me. Perhaps — no, definitely — if they’d re-released a better edition on DVD I’d’ve bought it and seen it then; but they never did, and so it’s taken ’til now to reach the top of my rental queue (not that my rental service works that way) and ‘force my hand’, as it were (because it’s certainly been on TV enough over the years).
audacious things that might get laughed out in a straight actioner. The demise of the villain, for instance, is a great idea and great fun, but would be a step too far normally; but here that’s OK, because it’s allowed to be funny as well as cool.
to do everything themselves (and even if they don’t their face gets CG’d on).
If you happen to remember my (first) 
Elements and moments in this vein permeate the film: Nic Cage employing an Adam West Batman voice for Big Daddy; the black eyeliner required to complete his mask; the 
This, I suppose, could be seen as where it takes on 
and the humour keeps rolling too — so the (arguably) topsy-turvy themes of the tale ultimately serve as a “downbeat good-for-nothing makes good” story arc.
trying to lump himself in with those unfortunate souls who’ve suffered the emotional consequences of genuine internet bullying). I fall between the two camps on this one — that is to say, Tookey’s probably not a paedophile, but nor does the film set out to entice them. Vaughn said he cast Hit-Girl young to avoid sexualising her; if he’d cast a more physically developed 15-year-old, she would’ve been more suspect.
But, unlike their characters, they don’t tear it down with a baseball bat around the audiences’ head; by which I mean, they don’t spell it out in big idiot-friendly letters — “do you see why this is wrong? Do you see? Let me tell you again…” Instead, they let what occurs speak for itself. OK, the good guys do win in the end, and in a rather cool way — but would it be a more complete moral message if the grown man killed the little girl; if the hero got blown up by the bazooka? Perhaps it would; I don’t know; personally, I like it the way it is.
are deliberately extreme and provocative (but for a reason) — and the potential for audiences to misread the whole thing as “just cool”, and so have misread it themselves, as “just perverse”. I think that does the film a disservice.
or be wary that every viewer might be a paedophile or violent psycho?
Get Smart, as you likely know, was a TV series in the ’60s, which makes one wonder how it’s taken so long to get to the big screen. I guess it didn’t have the same fanbase or perceived relaunchability that led to an endless array of big-screen versions of ’60s/’70s series in the last decade or two — 
there’s a few action sequences that are surprisingly decent too, considering this is still primarily a comedy.
to be the smarmy big shot who either ignores or specifically brings down a character like Carrell’s, but instead he’s one of his biggest supporters. (That he turns out to have been A Bad Guy All Along, Gasp! is beside the point.) The office bullies don’t actually have any power at all and are frequently brought down to size. It makes a nice change from the stock sitcom clumsy-hero-who-eventually-comes-good with irritating-and-condescending-higher-ups on the side, the pedestrian and unenjoyable fallback of too many comedy writers.
but it’s asking a little too much from not necessarily sympathetic viewers.
Is Anybody There? has been described as “lightweight” in some reviews. Tosh and piffle — I don’t think that’s true in the slightest, and it’s left this rather excellent film to be distinctly underrated.
initially antagonistic relationship merges seamlessly into a deep friendship and respect; one that doesn’t go unchallenged, but survives it all to make them both better people.
It’s a well-balanced film that hits that genuinely realistic note: life is rarely all comedy or all tragedy, and more often than not the most hilarious moments are locked up inside the most unbearable. It’s a truth a few more drama writers could productively learn, instead of remaining so insufferably po-faced because they’re creating a Serious And Meaningful Dramatic Work.
Readers may remember that I opened my 
Mac and Kutcher play the roles they always play— No, actually, in fairness, I can’t say that: I think I’ve only seen Mac in the 
It’s as recognisable from TV sitcoms — 
Although Disney have recently treated (I use the word loosely) us to a glut of films based on theme park attractions, movies adapted from good old board games seem a lot rarer. This is probably for good reason — even more so than Disney rides, the majority have no kind of useable narrative. Cluedo (aka Clue in the US) is one of the few that does, and consequently is one of the few (only?) board games that has reached the silver screen. So far, anyway.
Other than the board game connection, Clue is best known for its three different endings, all of which were released, with each screening having just one attached. On TV the film shows with all three consecutively, and they perhaps work best this way — there’s a rising scale of ridiculousness, and the varied repetition of a couple of gags underlines rather than steals their amusement value. My personal favourite variant was the first, incidentally.
In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, a white girl falls in love with a black man and brings him home to meet the parents. You can almost imagine this premise still being launched today, as one of those dreadful ‘comedies’ Hollywood pumps out every year, in which the parents are outrageous racists — played by some ageing stars who should really know better — and one of the young couple is a bit accident-prone and played by someone like Ben Stiller or Adam Sandler.
It could easily have been a simplistic message movie — these people are liberal, these people are racist, etc — but instead there’s complexity at every turn. There’s the liberal white parents who never expected to find themselves in this situation, and suddenly are struggling with their own ideologies; or the black characters, who you might think would be eager to move ‘up in the world’ but actually react even worse to the idea; or the Catholic priest being one of the few characters unwaveringly in favour of the union. And even then, these characters could just become ciphers for the arguments and debates; but they’re not, they’re characters, having believable reactions, and from this comes the debate.
100Films.co.uk 