TheRetroCritic

Horror films are a funny thing. Very often, their ability to influence the overall genre overpowers the quality of the films themselves. The Blair Witch Project may have been an uneven effort but it paved the way for a variety of other films and franchises to this day. Similarly, Halloween reinvented the slasher genre but how does the original film itself fare today? It's fine. Honestly nothing special. Now I'm a big John Carpenter fan myself and the likes of Christine , The Thing , They Live , Starman and countless others are all-time favourites of mine but I really feel like Halloween hasn't dated well at all and is actually one of Carpenter's films I feel least drawn to. It's a decent enough slasher with a terrific concept and a great killer but it really fails to be anything more than watchable. The film is consistently slow which, were the payoffs satisfying, wouldn't be so bad but a lot of the time we either get a loud and confusing kill or a false

I wonder how many kids growing up reading Dr Seuss' Cat In The Hat ever pictured an overweight Alec Baldwin holding a six-pack of beer in the story let alone Mike Myers in cat drag! Oh well... Initially the film looks appropriately quirky and cartoonish but soon we realise that the story mostly takes place in a living room so goodbye slick CGI suburbia, hello boring pastel-coloured...indoors. Because that's what kids enjoy: Indoors. Anyway, you remember everything that didn't work in Ron Howard's The Grinch ? The noisy, chaotic direction, the messy musical numbers, the intrusive score, the erratic editing, the overacting... Yeah that's all back. The Grinch could be forgiven for being a Christmas movie and for having an ever entertaining Jim Carrey as the titular green grump. Here, however, we're given a rushed, dumb, predictable mess of a kids film with Mike Myers desperately trying to insert some jokes here and there and there's really no re

Following a popular franchise like Austin Powers was never going to be easy so it's no big surprise that The Love Guru tanked upon its release. What is surprising though is the general hate the film generated from critics. I mean, ok, I'm not gonna pretend this is any good but there are far worse films out there. One only needs to look to Myers' buddy Dana Carvey and his little nugget Master Of Disguise , a film so unfunny it's actually sad. Admittedly The Love Guru does a lot of things wrong: Justin Timberlake and Jessica Alba are both typically awful, Ben Kingsley as a cross-eyed Indian guru is disturbing, the whole thing is a sports movie (*puke*) and the central romance is about as interesting as Fat Bastard's ass. Oh, and a lot of the jokes just don't work. Then again, Mike Myers is genuinely fun even if he does turn into Dr Evil or Austin Powers occasionally, there are some good jokes here and there and the whole thing is pretty entertaining. Sure