Movie reviews: Black comedy Deadly Cuts will tickle your funny bone
Ericka Roe in Deadly Cuts.
★★★☆☆
The female of the species is more deadly than the male, and never more so than when she’s defending her hairdressing salon against all comers. (15A) stars Angeline Ball as Michelle, the owner of a salon in the Dublin suburb of Piglinstown, which is being persecuted by a gang of thuggish parasites led by Deano (Ian Lloyd Anderson). When Deano threatens Michelle whilst demanding protection money, her stylists — Stacey (Denise McCormack), Gemma (Laura Larkin) and Chantelle (Shauna Higgins) — rally to the cause, and soon the women are swapping perms and sets for the trickier business of body disposal. Meanwhile, local councillor Darren (Aidan McArdle) has set his sights on evicting Michelle from her premises, which plays havoc with the ladies’ plans to win the prestigious annual hairdressing competition. Written and directed by Rachel Carey, is an uneven black comedy that saves its best moments for the second half and the showdown between working-class Michelle and posh Pippa (Victoria Smurfit) during the hairdressing competition, which is itself a terrific parody of TV shows such as the Great British Bake-Off et al. The movie’s early stages, however, are a little stilted and predictable, and not least because the dialogue is a little too reliant on the staples of Dublinese (Piglinstown, you won’t be surprised to learn, is ‘a bleedin’ kip’). Angeline Ball has charm to burn, however, and she gets strong support from Ericka Roe as the bolshy, ambitious Stacey, although it’s Victoria Smurfit who steals the show with an hilariously deadpan turn as the uptight, insecure Pippa. ‘No Time to Dye’ runs the tagline, and if that’s the kind of joke that tickles your funny-bone, Deadly Cuts is the movie for you. (cinema release)
★★☆☆☆
Sending the gang off on a road trip is generally a sign that a franchise is running out of steam, so it’s not a good sign that (PG) takes to the road in this sequel to the 2019 reboot. When young Wednesday Addams (voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz) starts to feel estranged from her family, her father Gomez (Oscar Isaac) decides that a family vacation is required. And so he piles Morticia (Charlize Theron), Uncle Fester (Nick Kroll) and Pugsley (Javon Walton) into their Gothic camper van and heads for Niagara Falls, the Alamo and the Grand Canyon. Meanwhile, the evil genius Cyrus Strange (Bill Hader) has designs on one of Wednesday’s brilliant inventions, and has commissioned the lawyer Mr Mustela (Wallace Shawn) to persuade Wednesday that she is his natural daughter. What follows, and despite the best efforts of two directors, two co-directors and four screenwriters, is fairly uninspired stuff, although that’s partly because the creators are confined to riffing on each character’s well-established personality (there’s not a lot of creative wiggle-room, for example, when you’re writing for a largely silent and disembodied hand called It, even if casting Snoop Dogg as the character’s voice talent is a stroke worthy of the Surrealists). The delightfully morbid Wednesday stands out as the most charming oddball of this most dysfunctional of families – an enfant terrible, with the emphasis on terrible, Wednesday is a walking emotional void who very gradually learns the importance of family. For the most part, though, The Addams Family 2 is a Halloween flick aimed squarely at the very young, who will likely revel in the its slapstick, pratfalls and cod-horror. (cinema release)
★★★★☆
(PG) revolves around the Great Gonzo (voiced by Dave Goelz) and his pal Pepe the King Prawn (Bill Barretta), who decide to spend Halloween Night at the haunted house of the Great McGuffin, a long dead magician who is Gonzo’s idol. Greeted by the Ghost Host (a guest appearance by Will Arnett), Gonzo and Pepe are issued with the ultimate challenge: to stay alive for a whole night in ‘the most haunted mansion in the world.’ What follows is the kind of offbeat lunacy that the Muppets do best, as the fearless Gonzo unwittingly escapes from numerous life-threatening scenarios on his way to the dreaded Room 999, while the amorous Pepe falls for the axe-wielding Constance Hatchaway (Taraji P. Henson). All the Muppet regulars – Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzy Bear, etc. – turn up in one form or another, and there’s plenty of fun too for the older kids in the audience (the portraits hanging in the mansion’s hall, for example, are paintings of the more obscure Muppets from the original TV series). Peppered with groan-inducing puns, inventive in its irreverent playing around with the form, and chock-a-block with gags of all kinds, Muppets Haunted Mansion is a tonic for young and old alike. (Disney+)
