…somewhere along the way, the all-too-familiar story among all-too-familiar characters loses sight of what children can do and what they probably won’t. That’s a damage the film never recovers from, as its grasp of children is the best thing going for Hamilton and Jenkin.

When snow meets hypothermia meets electricity in The Age of Adaline, it always results in miracles. One such chance encounter leaves Adaline (Lively) with the gift of never ageing. However, that’s not the problem with The Age of Adaline — not at all. For explanation for the science of it has been conveniently left for “2035”

Almost entirely a copy, and with hardly any improvement over the old Poltergeist, this is a film where nothing appears new. Except for the use of 3D and a strategically used camera-mounted drone. The first is pointless, the second ridiculous.

Yes, out-of-work NASA engineers do breed daughters brimming with insatiable curiosity (Interstellar). Tomorrowland also seeks to imagine parallel universes, time-space conundrums, and ecologically worn end-of-world scenarios. However, that’s where the similarity ends. Where Interstellar is about man’s quest for answers and the price it takes, Tomorrowland is a more run-of-the-mill affair about two worlds that is least interersted in the in-betweens.

Danny Collins reveals itself right at the beginning — “Kind of based on a true story a little bit.”
They had to try, so hard. And sound like it, so hard.
For when the John Lennon (the emphasis theirs) is the fulcrum — or more precisely an actual letter written by him — you can’t be flippant about anything while still making a film about an ageing rock star who has lived flippantly.

Starts and ends as a tame love story…

Charming and absolutely tragic…

Early on a condom gone literally wayward, explaining the pregnancy, promises a more adventurous film than it eventually turns out to be.
But what do we know? It is Valentine’s Day weekend after all.

There is murder and surprising amount of gore, car crashes and knife-wielding, but none of the brewing sexual tension or fraying tempers that could have made this film different.

The story is predictable, the jokes flat, and the action put there because, well, you can’t very well have a heist otherwise. But more than anything else what Koepp (who has not written this film unlike his other work) invests in are the characters.