Mike McCahill 

The Unbeatables review – decidedly midtable

Haphazard CG animation telling a tale of gentrification, property developers, and live-action table-footballers, writes Mike McCahill
  
  

THE UNBEATABLEs
The Unbeatables… table-football anti-gentrification yarn. Photograph: Allstar Picture Library Photograph: Allstar Picture Library

By 2018, everybody will have completed at least one CG animation: your mum, the postie, 80s funnyman Duncan Norvelle. This dubbed timewaster seems an unlikely way for Juan José Campanella to follow his Oscar-winning The Secret in Their Eyes, though it's almost as tangled: a gentrification parable – with sentient table footballers rallying a developer-threatened community – that betrays a marked uncertainty over how best to integrate its human and toy stories. Ping-ponging camera moves temporarily distract from the haphazard structuring and translation, and there's one smart line, care of a shady agent who insists, "Trust me – I've worked at Fifa." The rest is decidedly midtable.

 

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