Sam Downing

Instagram filters in the Yemen

You know, the lack of a hyphen between “salmon” and “fishing” kind of indicates that this film’s about salmon that fish in the Yemen, not salmon that are fished in the Yemen. Aren’t ambiguities like that just the worst?

Anyway. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen‘s title maybe isn’t grammatical, but it is literal: the film is really actually about salmon-fishing in the Yemen. You think of fishing as either a quietly compelling hobby or an inoffensive but dull way to pass the time, and I reckon audiences will in turn  think of Salmon Fishing as either quietly compelling or inoffensively dull. It’s a sweet, pleasant movie – but it’s so nothing. You walk away feeling like you’ve spent all afternoon standing waist-deep in a river without catching a fish.

If you’ve seen the trailer you know what to expect. There aren’t any surprises in the plot: Ewan McGregor is Fred, a public servant and fishing enthusiast (a total riot, in other words) who’s forced to help out on the Sheikh of Yemen’s (Amr Waked) so-stupid-it-just-might-work dream to introduce salmon to his country. Yemen, oh by the way, is mostly desert. This doesn’t faze the Sheikh’s chipper financial consultant Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Emily Blunt, who’s both delightful and just one stomach flu away from her goal weight), who connects with Fred as the project begins to become a reality.

It’s not Salmon Fishing‘s polite predictability that’s the problem.  It’s the plot’s super-low stakes. The strongest emotion the Sheikh’s epic ambition ever arouses is: “Oh. That’s nice.” You know something’s amiss when Fred drinking cold water from a well in Yemen is a key moment in the plot.

(Some minor spoilers ahead.)

The screenplay throws up a few hurdles. The Sheikh’s plans are opposed by rebels. Harriet has a soldier boyfriend (Tom Mison) who goes missing-in-action in Afghanistan and resurfaces just in time to thwart her burgeoning romance with Fred. Kristin Scott Thomas plays a press secretary who’s preposterously manipulative even by the preposterously manipulative standards of real-life spin doctors.

But there’s still never much sense everything won’t work out okay in the end: the rebels’ motives aren’t defined beyond “We hate the Sheikh because he hates God or something!”; Harriet and her soldier boy only dated for three weeks before he was posted so remind me why we’re meant to care about their relationship?; and Scott Thomas drops in every now and then to say something zany then choofs off again.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen probably would’ve been better if it was about salmon that fish in the Yemen. It could’ve been animated. There could’ve been songs!

Remember those silly, campy, lots-of-zany-”boing!”-sound-effects bits near the start of Moulin Rouge? Mirror Mirror is basically an entire movie of that.

This is Snow White, but not as you “snow” (ha) it: Mirror Mirror takes the classic fairy tale, shatters it, puts it back together with the dexterity of a blind street urchin on a sugar high. The story’s most familiar elements remain mostly intact. A wicked queen (Julia Roberts, who’s having FUN) terrorises her fairest-of-them-all stepdaughter Snow White (Lily Collins, who’s got EYEBROWS. Lord, has this girl got eyebrows), casting her into a spooky forest where she’s adopted by seven dwarves¹ who each embody a different quirky character trait, like Fat, or Frowny, or Short.

The notable departure from that original is, now that we’ve solved sexism, you can’t just have a handsome prince sweeping in to save the helpless pure maiden from an evil older woman who symbolises icky female sexuality. Mirror Mirror gets around this by making its handsome prince, Alcott (Armie Hammer), a buffoon who’s rescued by Snow White as much as she rescues him. (He remains, however, extremely handsome. And frequently shirtless!) Handily, Snow White gains both skills with a sword and a chic haircut (presumably given to her by the Fashionable dwarf), allowing her to fight alongside her prince and defeat the queen together.

You need to be in a certain frame of mind to enjoy this movie. Approach it one way, it’s fluffy fun. Approach it another way, there’s a desperation to convince you that everyone onscreen is having such fun (nowhere is this more obvious than the inexplicable, wildly off-key, isn’t-this-so-such-fun Bollywood dance sequence that plays over the closing credits. No, really).

Eyebrows eyebrows, on the face/You're really distracting, like whoa

In the film’s favour, Roberts gets off some good one-liners (even if she does say them in an accent she apparently learned watching high-schoolers perform Shakespeare), while Hammer throws himself into the thing with admirable energy (and handsomeness. Though it’s a shame his identical twin brother couldn’t star in this one too). The weak link is Collins, a sweet lick of nothing who never makes much of an impression… aside from those eyebrows of hers.

Given it’s directed by Tarsem Singh, Mirror Mirror isn’t as visually over-the-top as I expected. There’s a smallness to the look of the film – I swear that isn’t a coded dwarf joke – which focuses the sense this is a ultimately a children’s film that adults might enjoy.

1. Tolkein spelling, yeah! [↩]

I read Suzanne Collins’ novel The Hunger Games two years ago (way before it was cool, may I smugly point out), and since then I’ve loudly insisted the movie adaptation will be way better than the book. I enjoy being right!

But it’s a pretty good book, with a simple and disturbing idea at its core. By now The Hunger Games (more accurately, The Hunger Games‘ marketing team) has penetrated pop culture deep enough that everyone knows the plot basics, but here they are again: the overlords of a cruel post-apocalyptic dystopia force teenage “tributes” to battle to the death in an annual spectacle called the Hunger Games.

It’s a story that demands to be told visually, and it becomes much more powerful after its freed from the first-person-narrative trappings of Collins’ book. It’s counter-intuitive to say so but our heroine Katniss really is much more evocative, much more badass, when we only see her from the outside - which is largely down to a fuck-off-amazing performance by Jennifer Lawrence. She owns this film. Her Katniss is strong and brave and mature, and sympathetic and believable and feminine, and lots of other wonderful things.

The other great advantage of tossing aside the book’s first-person perspective is that it allows director Gary Ross to take us behind the scenes of the Hunger Games – and even in this far-flung post-global-warming post-nuclear-apocalypse future, reality TV is still heavily manipulated. Watching Head Gamemaker Seneca (Wes Bentley – who seems to have been in a lot of movies lately? Maybe he got a new agent) and his team plot so casually to destroy the Tributes for the entertainment of the Capitol’s extravagantly dressed residents makes the entire pageant even more sadistic.

The Hunger Games takes a while – at least an hour – to get to its actual Hunger Games. But the suspense and tension of that build-up is important in capturing what a monstrous event Katniss is participating in. The Games are horrible. But… also morbidly voyeuristic. I mean, c’mon: if you’ve read the book or seen the movie, you were super-impatient for the Games to get started so you could get to the killin’, right? You are as awful as everyone in the Capitol (though maybe better dressed).

Much has been made – in Australia, at least – of Liam Hemsworth’s role as Katniss’s District 12 squeeze Gale. He’s hardly in the film. The supporting cast’s shining stars are Elizabeth Banks, who’s grotesquely made-up and just terrific as Katniss’s fussy chaperone Effie, who insists on good manners as she prepares her Tributes for a battle royale; and Woody Harrelson, playing drunkard-with-a-heart-of-gold Haymitch, a former Games winner tasked with guiding Katniss and her fellow District 12-er Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) to victory.

The pace sags in the lead-up to the bloody climax, and the plot relies too heavily on sloppy exposition from Games commentators Caesar and Claudius (Stanley Tucci, who’s brilliant, FYI, and Toby Jones), who drop in every now and again to helpfully explain something to us dummies in the audience, then just eject out again.

But the bigger weakness is that The Hunger Games is too light - and I’m not talking about the teenagers-murdering-each-other violence, which is pretty skilfully handled. Plot-wise, this is an edgy film; thematically, it should have been edgier. The satire of media machinations needed more sting (sadly, Katniss’s memorable makeover scene from the book lasts barely 10 seconds in the film), and the exploration of the politics of the Capitol and the Districts needed more depth. Perhaps they will in the inevitable sequel. “It’s aimed at young adults” isn’t a convincing-enough excuse.

Previously: Book review: The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins; Book review: Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins

Ten, fifteen years ago, Dawson’s Creek was a thing on TV. Its adults-playing-adolescents cast used lots of big, wordy words, and the show captured something important in that inadvertent way teen dramas sometimes do (in their earlier seasons, at least)… but the show was, ultimately, just a teen drama.

My point is: who would ever have predicted that Dawson’s star Michelle Williams, slutty l’il Jen Lindley, she of Grams and death-by-heart-failure in the final episode, would go on to become such a critically acclaimed actress? Weird!

(The only modern-day teen drama starlet who might repeat Williams’ success is Shailene Woodley from I’m a Knocked-Up Teenage Slut, who’s pretty great in The Descendants. Emphasis on “might“, though.)

But god, Williams deserves the acclaim for My Week with Marilyn. She’s terrific. Enchanting. Transformative.

The film is ostensibly about Colin Clark (played by both Eddie Redmayne and Eddie Redmayne’s adorable smile), a chipper English lad who worms his way into Laurence Olivier’s film company in the 1950s. (By the way: this all really happened!) After Colin pretty-much-instantly becomes besties with every major British movie star of the era, he lands a job on “Larry’s” new comedy, which stars American sensation Marilyn Monroe.

Colin, inevitably, falls in love with Marilyn. It doesn’t really matter how this happens. But when it happens, it happens fast. One scene he’s gawping at her in her dressing room; the next he’s dangerously smitten. His colleagues warn him not to get tangled up in Marilyn’s Marilynness, but of course he thinks he’s in love with the true Marilyn, unlike all these other fools who fell for her public persona.

But is he really in love with the true Marilyn? I don’t think so – he’s as seduced by the persona as everyone else is. (“She makes you want to hug her, not have sex with her,” as Roger Ebert puts it.) But then so are we. The real Marilyn, whoever that was, is never fully revealed in this film, though Williams offers glimpses at her as she might have been.

And that’s a terrific achievement; probably Williams’ biggest achievement in this role. I hate to think what a campy mess a lesser performer might’ve made of it. Week‘s script isn’t deep, and on paper its Marilyn doesn’t extend beyond the bleached-blonde white-dress “Happy birthday Mr President” oh-so-vulnerable stereotype. But Williams delivers more than just impersonation. Her Marilyn has something rich and sad and raw swirling behind her “who, me?” innocence and va-va-voom sexuality.

Like its titular (no pun intended – minds out of the gutter, please) heroine, My Week with Marilyn is ethereal and unknowable – it’s light stuff, but it’s beautifully light, all sun-dappled warm tones and wistful soft focus. At times it’s frustrating: Marilyn is a pro at exploiting her strengths, while at the same time unable to appreciate them (which, the film implies, is what led to her – apparent! – death-by-drug-overdose).

The rest of the cast disappears behind Williams, but there are some solid performances: Kenneth Brannagh as Olivier, Dominic Cooper as Marilyn’s film-producing partner, Judi Dench as her co-star. The only disappointment is Emma Watson’s much-hyped role as a wardrobe assistant who catches Colin’s eye. Watson is just beautiful, but she just doesn’t bring anything to the film. When you’re starring alongside Williams, who brings everything she’s got, that’s a problem.

(That said: Watson’s line “Wait a while, crocodile” is my new catchphrase.)

Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo, aka your new favourite film stars

Before everyone saw/sees The Artist they had/will have this exact conversation: “Every film critic in the world loves it, and it’s nominated for a million Oscars, but I’m not sure I’ll like it because it’s in black and white and it’s silent and it’ll probably be horrible.”

Critically beloved, Oscar-nominates bores are standard fare, especially at this time of year, so: fair enough. But The Artist is not boring or horrible! It’s really, really, great: unique and joyful and captivating and – best of all – unpretentious. Director Michel Hazanavicius didn’t make a black-and-white silent film then shove a stick up its ass just to show stuffy film critics how much he knows about cinema. He made a black-and-white silent movie because he’s passionate about cinema. The Artist glows with that passion.

There isn’t much to the plot – silent movie star is pushed aside by talkies movie star¹ but they fall in love anyway. That’s pretty much it. With an adorable dog. Spoiler alert! – but The Artist is nevertheless super-engaging. Because the story unfolds via expressions and body language and the occasional title card, you’re forced to pay attention. And this is a pretty rare thing in an age where everyone’s attention span is about three seconds long. Succumb to the siren song of your smartphone, and you’ll miss an important plot point… or at least the adorable dog doing something adorable.

There’s also the novelty factor of watching a black-and-white film – everyone onscreen radiates that spectacular monochrome glow – with almost no dialogue – “This is how people used to watch movies? Neat!”. But the old-timey gimmick doesn’t dominate The Artist to the point where that’s all there is to it. This is mostly down to leads Jean Dujardin² (his smile!) and Bérénice Bejo (her smile!), who are marvellous terrific wonderful amazing. Their chemistry! Please cast them opposite each other in another movie, Hollywood. I want to watch them together again and again and again and again.

Sadly, like many films before it, The Artist does not feature enough Missi Pyle. But it does feature just the right amounts of James Cromwell and John Goodman. I didn’t expect any of them to be in this film!

Don’t force yourself to see The Artist just because it’s got lots of Academy Awards nominations and you want to sound smart pretending you liked it. Go see it because it’s a fun, straight-up entertaining film.

1. “Talkies”. Isn’t that a great word. “Talkies”. What a shame it fell out of fashion. Let’s all start using it again! “Hey, want to go to the talkies tonight?” “Nah, I hate 3D talkies.” [↩]
2. Which is sexy-French for John Gardener. God, English is so dull. [↩]

Young Adult is not the zany black comedy suggested by its trailer (which, by the way, basically spoils the entire movie, so you should probably avoid it. Here’s the link!). This is a dark, twisted-and-not-in-that-cute-Hollywood-way portrait of a disturbed woman, but it’s a portrait that doesn’t say enough about its subject.

(Light spoilers ahead.)

The trailer does get the basic plot right: beyond-beautiful Charlize Theron is Mavis Gary, the author of a failing series of young-adult novels who returns to her hometown to reclaim her high-school sweetheart Buddy (Patrick Wilson), who’s now married with a kid.

Soon after arriving in Mercury, a sort of Everywhere/Nowheresville that could stand in for pretty much any small town in America (or Australia, for that matter – the strip mall/fast-food landscape looks the same), Mavis encounters Matt (Patton Oswalt), a former classmate who was brutally beaten and crippled when he was at school. The two bond – who doesn’t love connecting with friends of the jocks who terrorised you as a teenager? – even as Matt tries to talk Mavis out of her ridiculous plans with Buddy.

The problem with Young Adult is that when I ask myself “What is this film about?”, I can’t really come up with an answer. “Continuing to behave like a high-schooler well into your adulthood has bleak consequences.” And… that’s it? The plot doesn’t move beyond that premise; it’s not thoughtful enough to be a character study, too sour to be a comedy.

Mavis sneers at pretty much everyone who enters her field of vision, but I didn’t dislike her because she’s so unlikeable. Unlikeable characters are fine in principle, and it’s not like I hated her: she’s best when her powerful sarcasm is turned up to 11, scoffing when a date boasts about travelling in South-East Asia and rolling her eyes at a stranger’s baby (strangers’ babies are the worst). Nor would Young Adult have been better if Mavis had experienced some vague redemption – that would’ve been way worse, actually – but unlikeable characters still need to offer some reason for us to follow them, and Mavis doesn’t.

She doesn’t feel complicated as much as she feels disparate; she’s mentally ill and an alcoholic and there’s a late reveal about an adolescent miscarriage that probably fuelled her present-day miscarriage, but none of it gels, and some her characterisations are just obvious (the bit where she looks over a chart used to teach autistic kids about emotions, then she remarks that she doesn’t feel any. CLUNK). There’s too little sense of Mavis and what her regular life is like, or how a bitchy high-school prom queen even became a writer in the first place.

(There’s a vague implication Mavis writes young-adult novels because she’s stuck in permanent adolescence herself, which I emphatically reject, and it suggests screenwriter Diablo Cody is pretty ignorant about YA as a whole. It’s not just Sweet Valley High these days.)

It’s not just Mavis who’s so oddly drawn: what is Young Adult trying to say about small-town America? Should we share Mavis’s contempt for Mercury and her classmates who stayed behind? Or come away believing that even escaping your past doesn’t guarantee you’ll escape mediocrity? I have no idea.

Director Jason Reitman offered a better portrait of a stunted adult in Up in the Air. Watch that instead.

Surely there is no one in the world who hates the Muppets. Is there anyone in the world who hates the Muppets? No one in the world hates the Muppets.

But plenty of people don’t care about the Muppets – not really care. People who know their names, and remember the gang with fondness, but don’t think about them much. People like me! The Muppets never went away, because the internet keeps everything going (all those Muppet video parodies went viral for a reason) (at least till everyone got sick of them), but they lost what I guess you’d call relevance.

This isn’t surprising: the Muppets are relics of childhood. You watched their TV show(s) and their movies (even the ones where they all played characters from classic literature for some reason) as a kid. Till recently their last (theatrically released) movie was 1999′s a-bit-of-a-hash Muppets from Space. So it’s a bit like reuniting with an old friend to see them again in The Muppets – note the definite article in the title, declaring this is the big-screen outing that will make them pop-culture fixtures again.

Leading man Jason Segal, who also co-wrote the screenplay, throws himself at the film with charming, catching energy. He plays Gary, a small-town American whose brother Walter (performed by Peter Linz), is a muppet; lower-case “m”, because although Gary is unmistakably Henson-esque he’s not one of the Muppets, though he’s been obsessed with their TV show since childhood.

Gary and Walter travel to Los Angeles to visit the famed Muppet Theatre with Mary (Amy Adams, adorable as always), who’s been dating Gary for 10 years. She’s hoping for a marriage proposal but her relationship with Gary is stuck firmly in platonic territory, thanks to his attachment to, and dependency on, his muppet brother.

Arriving in LA, the trio discovers the Theatre has become a derelict wreck, slated for demolition by oil baron Tex Richman (Chris Cooper, whose character is evil because this whole film is anti-capitalist propaganda for children). Gary tracks down Kermit, a recluse since his separation from Miss Piggy, and convinces him to reunite the Muppets and put on one last show to save the Theatre.

The story then works out exactly the way you think it does, with a lot of celebrity cameos thrown in.

But that predictability is okay, because the movie is really, actually funny. The gags are silly and warm, and it’s all so goofy and earnest, and that suits the Muppets perfectly – thank god no one thought it’d be necessary to inject any sass or irony or heavy reliance on pop-culture references. (That said, there are a couple of things that are going to date this movie bad, including a chicken-clucked rendition of Cee Lo’s ‘Fuck You’ and cameos from Selena Gomez and, randomly, the fat kid from Modern Family.)

Aside from the classic ‘The Muppet Show Theme’ – that’s a great bit of music, isn’t it? It rivals The Simpsons‘ theme tune for its chaotic energy – there’s some terrific original numbers, many of them penned by Flight of the Conchords’ Bret McKenzie. The standouts are the super-catchy ‘Life’s a Happy Song’ and ‘Man or Muppet’ (whose performance is accompanied by one of the movie’s best surprise cameos).

It’ll give you the warm and fuzzies – warm and Fozzies? – to watch Kermit and Piggy and Gonzo and the rest together again. The Muppets‘ biggest achievement is the nostalgia is arouses.

But that’s maybe its biggest problem, too: this film wants to make the Muppets relevant again, but it attempts to do so by reminding us that the Muppets used to be relevant. There’s a lot of scenes where everyone sits around reminiscing about the Muppet heyday that won’t mean much to viewers – especially really young viewers – who aren’t as enamoured with these characters as Segal is. Sure, by the time it ends there’s no question that the Muppets were awesome. But the film doesn’t do a great job convincing us they’ll be awesome again, or that they deserve to be.

But it’s not like you’ll leave with the sense that they’ll never be awesome again. It won’t be a shock if the Muppets return to TV with a new variety series in the next couple of years. And there, in a format that’s their natural heartland, where all the characters can be properly re-explored instead of trotted out for brief appearances, they might really earn their place in modern pop-culture again.

So last summer I was sleeping with the windows open and my next-door neighbour was watching Singin’ in the Rain turned up to full volume and I thought, “I should watch Singin’ in the Rain too!”, but then I thought “Sheez it’s so late turn down your TV!”

Anyway. I finally got around to watching the movie ¹. And… it’s kind of overrated. Greatest cinema musical of all time? Really?

Kinda ironic it’s about the making of a so-so Hollywood film that’s transformed into a great film with the addition of a few unrelated musical numbers, given that pretty much describes Singin’ in the Rain itself. Meta! Singin‘ isn’t as terrible as its film-within-a-film Dueling Cavalier, not by a long shot, but its best known numbers – ‘Good Morning’, ‘Make ‘Em Laugh’ and the iconic title track, which is pretty neat, I’ll admit – don’t have anything much to do with the plot, and a long, actually-pretty-snoozy chunk of the second act is given over to an extended fantasy sequence which has nothing to do with the plot.

(Wikipedia says “Singin’ in the Rain was originally conceived by MGM producer Arthur Freed, the head of the ‘Freed Unit’ responsible for turning out MGM’s lavish musicals, as a vehicle for his catalog of songs written with Nacio Herb Brown for previous MGM musical films of the 1929-39 period”. TL,DR: the songs really were just shoehorned into the plot.)

Singin’ in the Rain is plenty entertaining. It’s often hilarious (especially the disastrous “Yes! Yes! Yes” “No! No! No!” test screening of The Dueling Cavalier, and Jean Hagen as insufferable ingenue Lina Lamont). It’s not one of those “classic” films that bores the pants of everyone who isn’t a film critic. It’s a good movie. But I don’t believe it’s great.

Those aforementioned film critics aren’t much help revealing why, either. Roger Ebert and David Stratton and Margaret Pomeraz basically consider it great because it’s considered great? Yeah, okay, then.

1. To re-watching it, that is, but the first time I watched it was for uni film studies and I’ve decided that doesn’t count. [↩]

"If Voldemort doesn't have a nose, how does he smell? Terrible!"

To prepare for the recent release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2: The Lengthily Titled Sequel, my Significant Other and I spent one whole weekend watching all seven previous films. (Which is not as arduous as you’d think! Two on Friday night, three on Saturday, three on Sunday. It’s easy to be an obsessive nerd!¹)

So here are all the Harry Potter films ranked from worst to best. (Minus Deathly Hallows, Part 2. Needs time to settle before it can be given a proper rank.)

Gilderoy Lockhart was pretty good, I guess, even though it's weird that a 12-year-old girl would swoon over Kenneth Branagh

7. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Poor Chamber of Secrets, wedged between the freshness of the first instalment and the maturity of third. The best you can say about Chamber, really, is that it’s okay. (The worst you can say is merely “Dobby”.)² The book is notable because it has that “Harry destroys what later turns out to be the first of many horcruxes, and hey, isn’t it awesome how Jo Rowling included one even back then? She really did plan out the whole thing in advance! Neat!” thing going for it. Aside from that, it’s largely skippable and for completionists only – just read the Wikipedia summary.

In the film’s favour, the climax in the titular chamber has that bit where Harry clambers all over Salazar Slytherin’s face, a nice reference to the well-known scene from North by Northwest. Way to be creative and subtle, director Chris Columbus! Too bad you didn’t do that more often. (more…)

1. Of course there’ll be an extra movie to wedge in there once Part 2 is released on home-entertainment media, but you can squeeze it in! [↩]
2. This is all relative, of course; it’s only lame compared to the radness of the other books. And because it has Dobby in it. [↩]

Julia Roberts playing a woman who looks like Julia Roberts, next to George Clooney playing a man who doesn't look like George Clooney

So you’re watching Hollywood Movie, starring, say, Male Lead Played By Well-Known Actor (for simplicity’s sake, let’s say Steve Carell) and Female Lead Played By Well-Known Actress (say, Amy Adams), and Actress’s character comments on her crush on Tom Cruise, to which Actor’s character responds that Angelina Jolie is way more bangable.

What’s really going on here?

Obviously Hollywood Movie is fictional, but scenes like this happen in films all the time, where recognisable actors refer, in character, to their real-life Hollywood peers. What are we to make of these moments?

One assumption is that Hollywood Movie is, in fact, set in an alternate reality where the actors Steve Carell and Amy Adams don’t exist (or at least, where they’re not Hollywood stars); however, a couple of regular, ordinary, non-famous characters who happen to look exactly like our reality’s Steve Carell and Amy Adams do exist.

Alternatively, we can assume that Hollywood Movie is set in our reality, and is about a couple of regular, ordinary, non-famous people who happen to look exactly like the film stars Steve Carell and Amy Adams. The problem with this assumption, though, is that you then have to wonder why none of Hollywood Movie’s other characters (played, presumably, by yet more well-known actors and actresses) ever notice Male Lead and Female Lead look awfully like Steve Carell and Amy Adams. Or why Male Lead and Female Lead never notice every significant person in their lives also looks like a Hollywood actor((Steal this idea: a comedy about a town whose residents do realise they all look like Hollywood actors, and open some sort of impersonation theme park! Charlie Kaufman, are you available to write this thing?)).

The only film I can think of that explicitly addresses this conundrum is Ocean’s Twelve, which has Julia Roberts playing Tess, a woman who looks exactly like Julia Roberts and impersonates her to gain advantage. Yet this just raises more questions – why doesn’t anyone remark on Danny Ocean’s resemblance to George Clooney? Or on Rusty’s resemblance to Brad Pitt, or on Linus’s resemblance to Matt Damon, et cetera?

It seems Ocean’s Twelve is a clumsy mishmash of both of our earlier assumptions: it’s set in an alternate reality where Clooney et all don’t exist, but in which Roberts does exist.