Robert Tanitch reviews the latest DVDs
UPSTART CROW (BBC). Bernard Shaw, Clemence Dane, Edward Bond, John Mortimer, Peter Whelan and Tom Stoppard have all written plays about Shakespeare. Now it’s Ben Elton’s turn and as you would expect from the man who wrote Black Adder his 6 episode sit-com is a broad and crude undergraduate mix of clichés, anachronisms and cod-Shakespeare. The double entendres never stop. It’s well-researched; the more you know about Shakespeare and his plays the more jokes there are. David Mitchell has the wit and intelligence for the lead role. Tim Downie as Kit Marlowe (who gets Will to do all the writing so Kit can take all the credit) has panache. Rob Rouse is droll and Gemma Whelan speaks up for women. It was the jealous rival playwright Sir Robert Greene (played as a pantomime villain by Mark Heap) who called Will an upstart crow.
ALL NIGHT LONG (Network) is a 1961 British jazz film directed by Basil Dearden. Dave Bruebeck, Johnny Dankworth and lots of other musicians put in an appearance and play themselves. The jazz gets in the way of the story and the story (loosely based on Shakespeare’s Othello) gets in the way of the jazz. The two never gel. Disgruntled drummer (Patrick McGoohan) persuades a popular black musician (Paul Harris) that his white wife (Marti Stevens) is having an affair (with Keith Michell). The sexual and racial jealousy is not addressed in any way. Shakespeare asked for his name to be removed from the credits
GRIMSBY (Sony). Can Sasha Baron Cohen do for Grimsby what he did for Kazakhstan? Cohen used to be outrageous and very funny. Now he is only outrageous. The film, a relentlessly vulgar action spy movie, has flopped in the UK and USA. He has only himself to blame. He wrote and produced it and he plays an unappealing dim-wit who is reunited with his long lost brother (Mark Strong) who is a secret agent. Together they try to stop the spread of disease among football hooligans. Fourth form boys may be amused by all anal and spermatic jokes. But Elephants worldwide are disgusted and have complained to the UN.
I AM BELFAST (BFI). Mark Cousins writes and directs this poetic and impressionistic portrait of the city in a refreshing, quirky and non-cliché, non-tourist way. It takes a “salt and sweet” approach and is pictorially always interesting. I should have preferred a commentary from Cousins alone. Instead there is a mystical 10,000-year-old old Irish woman (actress Helena Bereen with Irish shawl), wandering the streets, personifying Belfast and chatting (in a voice-over) with Cousins. Some viewers will like this. Others will be irritated. Two foul-mouthed biddies, life-long friends, one Catholic, the other Protestant, upstage everybody and could go on the comedy circuit
HIGHLANDER (StudioCanal). In 1987 Russell Mulcahy directed this absurd swashbuckling thriller with panache, switching back and forth from the brutal highlands of 16th century Scotland to 20thcentury New York and a bravura fight in an underground garage beneath Madison Square Gardens. Christopher Lambert, dead behind the eyes, plays a shaggy immortal highlander who was killed in battle and goes round decapitating rivals with a magnificent Japanese sword. Sean Connery, tongue-in-cheek, appears briefly as a camp Spanish peacock who had been born 2437 years earlier. The amazing OTT visual pyrotechnics become tiresome. But there are beautiful shots of Glen Nevis, Glencoe and Loch Shiel.
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