Reviewing Movies

ROAR is a mini-series broadcast originally in the late Nineties starring a not-yet famous Heath Ledger as a summer replacement series and never finished. Set in pre-historic Ireland it purports to document the clans' resistance to the invading Romans. This series bears none of the stodginess of that introduction. In the opening episode our hero, Connor, goes from love-sick lothario to reluctant leader of his peoples' resistance movement when a rival tribe wipes out his family while he is dallying with that tribe's chief's daughter and his bodyguard, Fergus, is drunk in the wine cellar.

The series is imbued with a mystical spirit of the land given the name—Roar, rife with the sound of Uilleann Pipes, and visited by Druids and Sorcerers alike. As I have had wont to say, the fact that I find a series to be excellent is often the kiss of death to it, but mores the pity that this series didn't find longer legs, indeed 5 of its episodes were never aired on broadcast TV.

I neglected to mention that this series was shot while its hero was still in Australia and that Australia stands in for Ireland. Somehow this strains my stereotypical concept of near-desert outback. Must watch more closely to see if any roos appear in the background.

Even the greatest film makers lay the occasional egg and in The Da Vinci Code Ron Howard has created a genuine turkey. Tom Hanks as Professor Robert Langdon has the bookish professor down cold, pity the high point of his performance is the opening illustrated lecture on symbolism. Pity John Malkovich wasn't available to play Silas; Sir Ian McKellan as Sir Teabing steals the show when he finally makes his appearance. Until that point even the chase scenes seem to be boring. The screen writers should have taken warning from the reviews of Dan Brown's book and stuck less closely to that clunky text. Dialogues one can skim over in the book fall flat on their faces on screen. The location shots are magnificent, in fact they frequently upstage the actors who are often made to look like just so much more set decoration. I'll have to watch this movie once more sometime just to make sure I wasn't being too harsh when I wrote this review—but I'll have to make sure I am better rested to ensure I don't fall asleep while I'm doing it.

Pity poor Brandon Routh. Even if he is a couple years older than his Lois in Superman Returns he looks so much like her younger brother that he makes her look like a cradle robbing Cougar. He is in fact two years younger than Tom Welling who plays the teenaged Superman in waiting Clark in Smallville. Kent farm is certainly more like my conception of a dirt farmer's abode than the picture postcard perfect hobby farm on Smallville. Routh looks good in tights but he doesn't look old enough to have been Lois' love interest, worked at the Daily Planet and have spent 5 years in hiatus. In fact the movie belongs to Lex Luthor played by Kevin Spacey. By comparison Superman is just an also ran.