Bringing you your weekly DVD review goodness in a sickening double helping this week. We take a look at Mel Gibson’s latest relentless tirade, and that Seth MacFarlane cartoon about the family with the talking animal -?no, not that one, the other one.
Edge of Darkness has Mel Gibson returning to our screens as an actor for the first time since the M Night Shagalamb frighter Signs. Weathered, bitter, and definitely not?demonstrating his uncanny ability for diverse insults as much as he could, Mel isn’t?quite back in action.
What we do get is a pretty clinical conspiracy romp that has does contain a string of decent performances, shock moments and Hollywood’s most evil bastards – no, we’re not talking about Mel.
Edge of Darkness is actually something of a gratuitous movie when it comes to the action; the shooting itself that sends Mel on a path of revenge certainly makes for an early?shocking beat. It works, and Martin Campbell can handle the action, having previously reinvigorated the Bond franchise on two occasions.
But don’t mistake this for an action movie. It isn’t. There are certainly beats to the story that make for some decent spectacle, and given Mel’s age he certainly flings himself around without consideration for his hips, but it’s the conspiracy behind an evil corporation (boo!) that drives the story.
Danny Huston is the face of said company, managing to combine his ability to look like the inflated gas of a thousand cows/Gordon Brown with serpentine mannerisms that crawl under the skin. He does his duty here, again managing to become that person you want our hero to kick several shades of anything out of. There’s no real guesswork as to who the villain is, it’s clearly signposted from the off. It doesn’t make his eventual comeuppance any less joyful, thanks to Huston’s horrible persona.
Ray Winstone also brings his ‘The Daddy’ charm as a penitent assassin, a character whose motives aren’t fully revealed until the end. Yet, although the story is fairly slow, often hanging on one specific piece of the puzzle?for too long, the performances make for an overall?decent?thriller.?See, in between hilariously insulting diatribes, Mel’s a pretty decent actor.
American Dad, on the other hand, is full of hilariously insulting diatribes. Stan Smith and family are all back, delivering their usual charm and an unrelentless gag-rate that doesn’t always hit but never leaves you feeling disappointed. It also is slightly less derivative than Family Guy,?refraining from relying on random cutaway laughs.
Volume 5 – or Season 4 part 2, depending on your understanding on how series work in America – doesn’t really shake-up the formula much. The shift has focused away somewhat from Stan’s CIA escapades and his Republican sensibilities, focusing on, well, anything really. We have episodes involving Roger the Alien posing as the German fish, Klaus, to inherit some insurance money; Stan building a DeLorean and Roger?cheating on the Smiths with another family – just some of the ‘wacky’ scenarios you can expect from this outlandish series.
It is amazing to note that after four series, the show is still going strong. Why it may not have the overwhelming popularity of Family Guy, or even that of The Cleveland Show, in many ways it is far superior. It takes bigger potshots at current affairs (when it wants to) and manages to funnier than the latter in many ways. The characters, while initially seeming like they came out of the MacFarlane assembly line, are actually more rounded than those from his other shows. They have more in common with that of The Simpsons than they do the Griffins. Steve, Stan and Francine are more relatable, often touching on real problems that families face, much like The Simpsons. Also like The Simpsons, it has?an annoying activist daughter that nobody in the audience cares about.
We’d go as far to say that, while Family Guy’s quality has managed to dip of late, American Dad has flourished into one of the better animated efforts around. Sure, it’s completely puerile, sexist and occasionally racist, but it always proves one thing: Patrick Stewart is a lot funnier with a script.
‘Spray Ratings:
Edge of Darkness: 3/5
American Dad Vol. 5: 4/4
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