One Word Movie

Renaissance

One night a short while ago, I had a chat with a colleague who happened to mention that a particular horse in a particular horse race (6:10 at Newmarket) was the very image of good value. Coincidentally, I had just bought some cheapo French rail tickets. And when the good karma sunrays beam down into a man's life he must not cower in the shade. To this end, I invested £20 in said nag with the hope of paying for said rail tickets, and then took myself off to the pictures to watch Renaissance. It cost £9.50 to get into the Odeon Covent Garden, and when I emerged blinking into the sunlight at the end of the film, I scurried back home for news from the turf.

For some reason, when I checked the BBC website, the horse was not listed as the winner. There must be some mistake, I thought, and checked the Racing Post site instead. When I paged down to the race, I saw what had happened. My favoured steed had finished dead last. I had picked the one with three legs yet again. Bollocks.

However, I must admit that I felt that paying £9.50 to see Renaissance represented a far more disappointing loss, given that the film was actually a pile of shit, and I never would have won £100 if it been good. I was seduced into seeing it because it looked like a French version of Sin City, but while it looked great, it had none of the offensive gusto of Robert Rodriguez's film. The plot is mongo-headed and obvious, the script is derivative, and all the voices are too posh - while I can accept a French bloke saying "I sleep with my secretary, I sleep with my wife, I even sleep with my sister-in-law, but I never sleep with my researchers", you simply can't believe that Jonathan Pryce would say such a thing. But he does.

Even if you are a particularly putty-brained comics fan I could not recommend it. Sorry. Maybe if you sniffed some glue before going to the cinema you could get yourself into the right frame of mind but I doubt it.

posted by Chairman Peyote @ 2:16 PM