Letdown of the weekend:

Jeepers Creepers

I had been sort of looking forward to having a look at this film. I normally can't bear horror flicks, having watched far too many "the making of..." documentaries to take any of them seriously. But I'd given myself a task of at least giving the benefit of the doubt to the recent revival of the genre with films like "Urban Legend", "Scream" and the like. I quite like a few of them, even.

But this film...

I spent the whole time ranting at the screen. The leading male has a facial range equal only to Keanu Reeves - that is, one expression. The girl, while displaying some redeeming qualities is not much more than a cliche. There's the usual self referential in-jokes and something at the end that the reviewers on IMDB seem to think is a shocking twist. I was reading the titles waiting for the twist to appear. I mean, what kinda twist is this: "Buffy"-extra-monster-bloke sniffs both siblings, "buffy"-extra-monster-bloke chooses the lad, "buffy"-extra-monster-bloke flys off and kills the lad. What did I miss? It was funnily ironic that this guy's one expression was wide-eyed cartoon horror and he ends up with big gaping holes where those eyes used to be.

Although not quite as bad as Ven Helsing, this film is a terrible failiure.

Biggest Waste of Bandwidth this Weekend:

School of Rock

God I tried to like it. Anyone who's watched "Spinal Tap" is probably supposed to adore this film. Well, I didn't and I make no apologies. Jack Black, the lead singer of Tenacious D and the lead in the film comes across as nothing more than a sad loser desparately trying to "keep the dream alive" despite being - let's face it - delusional and embarrasing.

The feeble attempts at a morality tale fell thoroughly flat, the abortive semi-romance with the headmistress of the school felt like an embarrassed nod to the hollywood executives demands for "something for the chicks" and the whole central plot seemed heavily false and forced.

This is a film which simply does not satisfy. I caught myself huffing impatiently as laboured scene after laboured scene was scraped over my retinae. Like the music, it's not big and it's not clever. While I like Tenacious D's music, I do hope Jack Black doesn't get back to the silver screen again.