NEW THIS WEEK: Sparkle, The Knot, Some Guy Who Kills People

 
5 October 2012

Sparkle

Cert 12A, 116 mins

**

“Was my life not a cautionary tale for you?” Whitney Houston’s Emma asks her three daughters, who plan to make it as a girl group in Salim Akil’s update of the Seventies musical. Houston died shortly after the completion of the film, and the line will raise hairs on the backs of a few necks.

Set this time in the Sixties, Sparkle’s slim if melodramatic storyline is really an excuse for the pseudo-Motown songs, sung in lively fashion by Jordin Sparks and Carmen Ejogo. Houston has her moments too and, though her voice is not at its best, her charisma as a stern, church-going mum with a difficult history is intact. No one could make a case for this being other than fairly ordinary, but it is at least enjoyable.

The Knot

Cert 15, 92 mins

*

I CAN’T remember a more dispiriting British comedy than Jesse Lawrence’s debut, co-written by Noel Clarke, who also acts in it. It’s about the run-up to the wedding of a young London couple (Matthew McNulty and Talulah Riley). The other characters involved are so awful than one fears for the marriage long before the clergyman blesses it.

The men seem to be grouped into those who urinate without lifting the lavatory seat and those who manage to do the right thing. The women just giggle and ogle and titter about, as sexually predatory as their male counterparts. Almost everything is reduced to gross-out moments that are about as funny as a yak’s poo so that when love conquers all in the end you don’t believe it for a moment.

Sparkle

Cert 12A, 116 mins

**

“Was my life not a cautionary tale for you?” Whitney Houston’s Emma asks her three daughters, who plan to make it as a girl group in Salim Akil’s update of the Seventies musical. Houston died shortly after the completion of the film, and the line will raise hairs on the backs of a few necks.

Set this time in the Sixties, Sparkle’s slim if melodramatic storyline is really an excuse for the pseudo-Motown songs, sung in lively fashion by Jordin Sparks and Carmen Ejogo. Houston has her moments too and, though her voice is not at its best, her charisma as a stern, church-going mum with a difficult history is intact. No one could make a case for this being other than fairly ordinary, but it is at least enjoyable.

Some Guy Who Kills People

Cert 15, 97 mins

***

It’s difficult to decide whether Jack Perez’s film is a black comedy or a slasher movie with jokes. But it has a good cast, some funny lines and a tone that’s more original than most. Ken (Kevin Corrigan) is a small-town loner, permanently suffering from the cruel torture of high-school basketball jocks and just out of the local mental institution, who decides to kill his tormentors one by one. His long-suffering mother (Karen Black) has no idea of his plans and nor has Barry Bostwick’s gruff town sheriff. An English girl in town for a spell (Lucy Davis of The Office) looks like she will help him come out of himself. Uneven as it is, Some Guy Who Kills People is an original take on the sort of movies some of us would rather not see.

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