“this may be God’s country, but this is my country too”

Now, I generally know better than to wade into the whole Northern Ireland thing.  Sure, I resent its impact on life in the West of Scotland where I grew up, but whichever side you take, you piss off 50% of the people  around you. 

That said, I view Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom because um, it is.  Whether it should be is a matter to be debated by more qualified people than little old me.  The fact remains that legally, it is part of our less-than-perfect Union.

Except in one particular regard that bothers me, that the 1967 Abortion Act does not apply to Northern Ireland.  Whether this is a concession to abortion  in the Republic, or simply one more battle the British government of the time didn’t feel they could take on, I’m unsure.  What is shocking that for all the trouble this annexation has caused through the centuries, the residents don’t even get the full benefits and access to healthcare that citizens are entitled to.  Ridiculous.  Let’s hope Diane Abbott and co. can get this sorted once and for all in the autumn.

“It feels like I’m shitting a knife”

Hot ladies WHO ARE FUNNY

I love you Tina Fey. But I sort of want to cheat on you with Amy Poehler, if that’s cool with you?

So we may have been too impatient to wait and see Baby Mama in the cinema. I can’t say I have any regrets, because with 30 Rock pretty much the only outright funny thing on TV these days, damned if I’m waiting when I know the interwebs can give me a Fey fix. Since her reunion with Amy was so hysterical on SNL earlier this year (“bitch is the new black“), I must admit that the word “squee” may have passed my lips as the download completed.

This is what a chick flick should be. There’s actual *gasp* intelligence at work here, but with enough spit-take funnies to make it effortless watching. We all know by now that these girls work bloody well as a comedy duo, and the zing zing timing is delightful. Sigourney Weaver is perfect as the surrogate finder, and while I dislike Greg Kinnear at the best of times, you do see him as the sort of crinkly-eyed ‘good guy’ that Tina Fey’s Kate is supposed to be interested in. Actually, a caveat to my Sigourney Weaver comments, as soon as you think of her and pregnancy there’s an automatic “ruh roh BURSTING OUT THE STOMACH” moment; don’t worry, it soon passes.

Even if it’s not your cup of tea, stick with it (or fast forward) to the eventual hospital scene. I nearly laughed myself into an aneurysm at Poehler’s delivery of um, the delivery. This film at least tries to remove itself from the conventional, but keeps a little just for the feelgood factor. That the plot actually attempts a twist or two is commendable, and what’s not to love about the dorkalicious Tina doing a DJ set? It has to be seen to be believed.

I seem to be on a girly film roll, but trust me, if you have a uterus and only enough money for one cinema ticket, splash out on this before Mamma Mia or Sex and the City.

“I’ve been cheated by you, Meryl Streep”

I love Meryl Streep.  I love ABBA.  I love musicals.  I secretly love cinema visits where singing along is positively encouraged.  In essence, I AM the target demographic for the Mamma Mia film.  So why did I walk out of Cineworld this evening like I was suffering from shell-shock?

Suspending disbelief is not an issue for me, I can happily accept people bursting into song left, right and centre.  This was just utter tripe, like a Comic Relief sketch gone on 90 minutes too long.  Darlings, I adore a bit of hamming it up as much as the next musical-loving homo, but this was like a really bad pantomime.   At one point, I snarked to Kaite that the woman pouting to Money, Money, Money was the most Oscar-nominated actress of all time.   Sure, after decades of frosty heartbreak, maybe Meryl’s entitled to blow off some acting steam but holy mother of crap I cringed so hard for the first hour that I now have cramp in my shoulders.

This wasn’t a good film, not even a ‘feelgood blockbuster’.  This was like your watching your mum (and her drunken friends) hammer the karaoke.  I hate the premise, the book is amateur crap.  I may not be any kind of a real writer, but this cliché-ridden claptrap is up there with the play I wrote at nine years old, in which ‘naughty’ teenagers get drunk on Babycham.

Not entirely without merit I suppose, Christine Baranski was underused but completely nailed ‘Does Your Mother Know’.  The ‘oops, how do we fit in Waterloo’ non-problem (by remembering it’s not about the actual Battle of Waterloo, duh) was solved by the faux-music video bit over the credits.  Had it just been the bit at the start of the credits, I might have felt it was worth the ticket price.  It might have been when you factor in Colin Firth frolicking like he was at a G-A-Y foam party, but it was really beyond redemption at that point. 

Oh I know, what kind of misery guts criticises a film which is basically a fluff piece?  It’s just that I like talented people doing stupid things for a laugh – for example the splendiferous Judi Dench doing a spoof of “I Am Sixteen, Going On Seventeen”.  This was just a waste.  Meryl almost pulled it out of the mire by attacking “The Winner Takes It All” like the pro that she is.  It wasn’t enough though, and anything that makes me question Pierce Brosnan’s sheer awesomeness is best left alone. 

Meh.