Downhill. (15.)
Directed by Nat Faxon, Jim Rash.
Starring Will Ferrell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Miranda Otto, Zach Woods, Zoe Chao and Kristofer Hivju. 86 mins.
It may be heresy in these post-Parasite times, but subtitles are a pain and I wouldn't blame anyone for avoiding them, even if that means missing out on great films like Force Majeure. The 2014 Swedish black comedy (the film Ruben Ostlund made directly before Canz Barn Door winner The Square) about a family skiing holiday in the Alps where the father scarpers and leaves the rest of his family to die when it momentarily looks like they are going to be killed in an avalanche, is one of the best films of the last decade.
This American version isn't anywhere near that level, but it's good enough. It doesn't have the visual precision of the original or its sense of menace, and it has been shaped into something more conventionally comedic, but it has retained much of what made the original special. The two leads are perfect. Louis-Dreyfus, tired of waiting for a movie part to match the quality of her small screen vehicles (Seinfeld, Veep), is a producer on this and her performance is funny and rounded. Ferrell has made a speciality of acting out the frustrations of American manbabies and he might have been born to play the scene where he has to return to his snow-covered family and pretend like nothing much has happened.
Downhill is a funny film and there's nothing wrong with that. Force Midge Ure (as it stupidly amuses me to call it) was funny too and though the humour here has been adapted to American concerns and idioms, it hasn't been softened. You dread the moment when it will cop out on you, but it never comes. It may even be a little harder on its characters than the original. If it wasn't a remake, I can't see how this wouldn't be getting at least respectful reviews rather than a kneejerk critical battering. Nobody likes the idea of remakes but Downhill's negative reaction seems motivated by snobbery or laziness. Desubtitling a classic film and trying to rework it for a wider audience seems to me a worthwhile exercise, better surely than the relentless churn of live-action remakes of animated classics.
Directed by Nat Faxon, Jim Rash.
Starring Will Ferrell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Miranda Otto, Zach Woods, Zoe Chao and Kristofer Hivju. 86 mins.
It may be heresy in these post-Parasite times, but subtitles are a pain and I wouldn't blame anyone for avoiding them, even if that means missing out on great films like Force Majeure. The 2014 Swedish black comedy (the film Ruben Ostlund made directly before Canz Barn Door winner The Square) about a family skiing holiday in the Alps where the father scarpers and leaves the rest of his family to die when it momentarily looks like they are going to be killed in an avalanche, is one of the best films of the last decade.
This American version isn't anywhere near that level, but it's good enough. It doesn't have the visual precision of the original or its sense of menace, and it has been shaped into something more conventionally comedic, but it has retained much of what made the original special. The two leads are perfect. Louis-Dreyfus, tired of waiting for a movie part to match the quality of her small screen vehicles (Seinfeld, Veep), is a producer on this and her performance is funny and rounded. Ferrell has made a speciality of acting out the frustrations of American manbabies and he might have been born to play the scene where he has to return to his snow-covered family and pretend like nothing much has happened.
Downhill is a funny film and there's nothing wrong with that. Force Midge Ure (as it stupidly amuses me to call it) was funny too and though the humour here has been adapted to American concerns and idioms, it hasn't been softened. You dread the moment when it will cop out on you, but it never comes. It may even be a little harder on its characters than the original. If it wasn't a remake, I can't see how this wouldn't be getting at least respectful reviews rather than a kneejerk critical battering. Nobody likes the idea of remakes but Downhill's negative reaction seems motivated by snobbery or laziness. Desubtitling a classic film and trying to rework it for a wider audience seems to me a worthwhile exercise, better surely than the relentless churn of live-action remakes of animated classics.
