Tag: Diana Hardcastle

The Boy? Didn’t I already review this one? About the kid who lived with his dad at a motel stop in the mountains who then was all evil and stuff?

Oh, right right right, that was an indie horror movie, so very few people saw it. So it doesn’t matter that two films came out so close together with the same exact name, because the second one was in a lot of theaters and is thus now more well known. The first The Boy I heard wanted to do sequels too. That could be even more potentially confusing if those sequels become popular.

The good news is that the actual movies have virtually nothing in common.

It’s okay when they beat their kids in this film. It is just a doll!

Greta (Lauren Cohan) needs to get away from her life, so she accepts a job as a nanny in Merrie Old England. She has some stuff she wants to just get away from, and moving to another country for a few months might do the job.

When she gets to the place, she finds it to basically be a mansion and surprised that the tenants are an old couple (Diana Hardcastle, Jim Norton). Like really old. So the fact that they have a kid that needs a nanny seems surprising.

Of course, more surprising is that this kid is actually a porcelain doll. But they say he is unique and have a list of strict rules despite his non-aliveness. And also they are totally leaving like, right away for a vacation. If she has more questions, they have a delivery man, Malcolm (Rupert Evans), who is around from time to time. But as long as she sticks to the rules then everything should be fine.

And you know the doll starts moving around and doing things. Also things go missing. Also Greta gets scared.

Featuring James Russell and Ben Robson as well.

Please don’t make love to the doll. I don’t care what the rules say!

I actually went into The Boy knowing nothing at all. No idea it was about a doll that might be alive. I just assumed a creepy little boy being driven by Satan, like most films about kids. But then hey, a doll. Sure. Doll films haven’t had a good track record recently. After all, did you watch Annabelle? I know you didn’t.

The Boy somehow manages to be a horror film that doesn’t want to do a lot of scary scenes. Outside of the last 20 minutes, it feels like a strange drama. We get the doll being in different places! And items getting moved around. And doors getting locked. But never when our leads are watching him, so it is just odd and never scary.

The ending does a nice job of explaining all of the events of the film, but it doesn’t mean the explanation is worth the first hour or so. It is dull and a bit boring. I am glad that it makes sense, it just isn’t an exciting explanation. It unfortunately doesn’t fully explain why everything happened in the film, which is my biggest question after watching it. Instead we get an open ending to a story that should easily have finished already.

The Boy isn’t great, it is barely a horror, and you instead should watch basically anything else.

I have been actively stalling watching The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It used to be so easy, all I had to do was say, “Oh sorry Cathy. I haven’t seen the first one yet, that would be improper!” Cathy isn’t a real person, but the point is real. I was golden.

And then I fucking did it. I watched The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Part of me was feeling sentimental and I wanted to see Dev Patel since The Newsroom was over. And since Chappie disappointed, that was my easiest solution.

You may not remember, but both Chappie and TSBEMH came out to theaters on the exact same date, both featuring Patel. So logically, one would assume there is no way both of his movies on the same day would be a disappointment. Right?

At least the dancing is already better in this one than Chappie.

Since the last film, there are two major updates worth noting.

One, Sonny (Patel) is finally getting married to Sunaina (Tina Desai), yay!

Two, the hotel wants to expand! They want to make a second hotel, they just need investors. Muriel (Maggie Smith) is basically co-running the hotel at this point too, so she is involved with that. The main investor is going to send an undercover guest to see how the run their ship before bringing the cash, so they have to be on guard and make sure everything runs swell. What’s that? Two people randomly coming to stay out of nowhere (Richard Gere, Tamsin Greig). Gee, I wonder who could be the undercover person!

Back to the marriage plot, because Sonny is apparently a spastic piece of shit, he is way too over hyped to make the new guest feel amazing, to get the deal, that he ignores his wife and wedding preparations. Even worse, he lashes out on Kushal (Shazad Latif), who is back in town, because he thinks Kushal sucks and actually thinks he is trying to take his fiance away from him. Not that he does a damn thing about it but mope uncontrollably.

Ahem, we also have a bunch of returning people as well. We have Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Celia Imrie, Ronald Pickup, and Diana Hardcastle. I could tell you their plots as well, but then you would be drowned in information and well, not everything should be explained.

Including Gere probably doubled the entire movie budget.

Now that I have the nifty stars on top of the review, you can already tell I am disappointed in this movie. Which is a shame, because I gave an average rating to the first film and definitely believed in my head that the second movie would do better. It was like an origins story for a superhero. A lot of times the second film can be better, because we don’t have to deal with the character before they are a hero, they can be a hero the whole film!

No instead we got a couple main plot lines that just were not good. As I already mentioned, I hated Sonny in this film. In the first, he was a stubborn, lovable, idiot. In this film, he is obsessed, jealous, and a fool. He almost does nothing right. I have to say almost, because by the end of the film he does a few right things, because is the type of film to end on a happy note, not one that will end in failure and defeat. It is obvious going into it.

However these plot lines are just so dull, outside of Sonny’s character ruining it. As for the other stars, none of their plots are compelling either. Someone cheating, someone deciding on who to love, someone who can’t remember scripts, and someone who wants to make sure he doesn’t accidentally hire an assassin. Okay, that last bit was a little bit amusing, but that was it.

TSBEMH was a completely forgettable movie. I hope they don’t make a third, and I hope Patel gets better movies soon.