Scooby-Doo *
Dir: Raja Gosnell
With: Freddie Prinze Jr, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Matthew Lillard, Rowan Atkinson, Neil Fanning, Linda Cardellini
87 mins, cert PG
www.scooby-doo.co.uk
The corpse of a vastly overrated 1970s cartoon - tolerated in an age before multi-channel choice and before The Simpsons - is very much not revived in this incredibly leaden and unutterably boring live action version, with a 3D computer animation of the not very adorable Scooby.
Star Freddie Prinze Jr has all the charisma and comic presence of a piece of cheese; he plays Fred, leader of Mystery Inc, the crime-busting gang. With steel-blond hair and a cravat, he is very homosexual indeed, a 21st-century gag hinted at with remarks about Fred knowing how to "accessorise", but not pushed further.
Sarah Michelle Gellar gives Daphne that Buffy-ish earnestness that somehow in this context kills any fun stone dead. Matthew Lillard is the crusty-ish, hippy-ish Shaggy, and he can certainly do the voice. As the sinister Mr Mondavarious, Rowan Atkinson goes through the motions, speaking the lines with the air of a man calculating how many classic cars he can buy with the fee. And, oh yes, there's a pointless and entirely unfunny cameo from Pamela Anderson at the beginning.
The film perks up a tiny bit with a finale slightly more sprightly than the boring hour-and-a-half that's gone before, but that's really not saying much. It's not so much a question of Scooby-Dooby-Doo, Where Are You - but Why ?
· Peter Bradshaw
Tape ***
Dir: Richard Linklater
With: Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, Uma Thurman
86 mins, cert 15
www.tapethemovie.com
Critics and film-makers are thrilled about the new possibilities of digital video. Do audiences feel the same way? It's a question that arises from this three-hander from Richard Linklater entirely set in a cheesy motel room; a drug dealer, played by Ethan Hawke, engineers for his own sinister purposes a reunion of high-school contemporaries: indie film-maker Robert Sean Leonard and lawyer Uma Thurman. It's shot on DV for a zillionth of the price of what something like this would cost five years ago, and edited with the miraculously accessible and inexpensive Final Cut Pro software - nerdishly name-checked, complete with Apple logo, in the final credits.
It's got strong performances and intelligent dialogue, but somehow Tape looks like a filmed theatre piece (Stephen Belber did in fact adapt his original stage-play for the script), rather than something that entirely takes wing as a movie. In the neo-rotoscope animation Waking Life, Linklater and his art director Bob Sabiston showed how something really jaw-dropping could result from the new digital technology. What this shows is how excitingly possible it is to make a feature-length movie on a credit-card-sized budget. (I'm assuming that the stars are working for scale.) But what's actually up on the screen looks conventional.
· Peter Bradshaw
Nine Queens ***
Dir: Fabian Bielinsky
With: Gaston Pauls, Ricardo Darin, Leticia Brédice, Tomas Fonzi
114 mins, cert 15
www.sonyclassics.com/ninequeens
The recipient of seven Argentinian critics awards, including best film, this black comedy thriller was made before that country's economy collapsed and can thus claim to be extraordinarily prophetic. It presents us with a corrupt and collapsing society where everyone cons everyone else for the money which may not be everyone's due, but is at least what they each think they deserve. It's like a Latin-American version of The Sting crossed with David Mamet's House of Games.
Even a summary of the plot would require double the number of words available. Suffice to say the two central characters are both petty conmen who not only try to con each other but practically everyone else they meet. The nine queens of the title are a set of Weimar Republic stamps that are worth a fortune, presuming they are not fakes. What is unusual about the film, played out by a cast that includes the excellent Ricardo Darin as the senior crook and Gaston Pauls as his younger helpmeet, is the way it cons its audience too - you never quite know who is going to do what to whom next. It's a clever, entertaining and amusing piece of film-making which will almost certainly be remade - and probably much worse - by Hollywood.
· Derek Malcolm
Devdas **
Dir: Sanjay Leela Bhansali
With: Shahrukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit, Aishwarya Rai, Jackie Shroff
165 mins, cert PG
www.devdasfilm.com
This is the first Bollywood film presented in the competition section at Cannes, and one of the most expensive Hindi epics ever made. Not, however, one of the best, since the glitz, glamour and slightly tacky luxury on display almost strangles the life out of its relatively simple story of a high-caste family ruining the life of their favoured son by refusing to let him marry the girl who was his childhood sweetheart.
Bimal Roy made the best version of Saratchandra Chatterjee's much-loved novel in the 1950s with the great Dilip Kumar in the lead as Devdas, the lovelorn tragic hero. That at least attempted to show India as it was at the time the story was written. This adaptation has the whole thing on garishly luxurious sets that may dazzle the eye, but have very little to do with the much more intimate psychology of the story.
The film, made with an interval, plays much better that way, since its second half proves that the story still has some force, even in these circumstances, as Devdas becomes an alcoholic and takes up with his prostitute for some kind of emotional comfort. But those who think Bollywood is always like this should reflect that some of the greatest of Indian film-makers worked there and cut through the cliches considerably better than this.
· Derek Malcolm
Resident Evil *
Dir: Paul Anderson
With: Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Eric Mabius, James Purefoy
104 mins, cert 15
www.residentevilthemovie.co.uk
The sight of Milla Jovovich kick-boxing a posse of rabid dogs in a mini-skirt is one of this contemporary B-movie's more memorable moments. Based on the popular video game, it was to have been directed by George Romero, which might have been better. As it is, this ever so slightly tall tale about a corporation called Umbrella apparently making DNA samples (they lock the doors of their underground fortress and gas their employees when one of them drops a specimen) gets increasingly absurd the longer it progresses. Jovovich, assisted by Michelle Rodriguez, is one of seven intrepids who try to find out what happened, only to discover that the dead workers are now zombies adept, like the dogs, at tearing human flesh. Someone should have eaten script and director as well.
· Derek Malcolm
Bad Company *
Dir: Joel Schumacher
With: Anthony Hopkins, Chris Rock, Matthew Marsh, Kerry Washington
116 mins, cert 12
badcompany.movies.com
The combination of Jerry Bruckheimer and Joel Schumacher always looked more likely to stir the testosterone than disturb the brain cells and Bad Company, postponed from its autumn release by the events of September 11, hardly belies its title. It's the kind of action movie that tries to be amusing - not quite what the doctor ordered at the time of its intended release, or indeed now, since it's about a plot to blow up New York with a stolen nuclear device. Chris Rock is a CIA agent who gets killed early on. But he has a twin (Rock again, of course) who is an unreliable hustler and, within nine days, has to be trained up by bossman Anthony Hopkins to replace his brother. The film is hopelessly uncertain in tone, mixing quasi-smart dialogue with copious chase scenes of no great account. And the end result suggests that Rock doesn't quite know which tone to adopt and Hopkins is just eager to take the money and run. Hard on the heels of The Sum of All Fears, the whole doesn't even begin to cut the mustard.
· Derek Malcolm
Actress ***
Dir: Stanley Kwan
With: Maggie Cheung, Han Chin, Carina Lau, Waise Lee, Tony Leung Ka Fai
167 mins, no cert
This opener for the intriguing Hong Kong Festival at the ICA was made by Stanley Kwan in the early 1990s about Ruan Lingyu, the 1930s Chinese screen goddess, rescued from poverty to become a star but in the end destroyed by the process of celebrity and a hypocritical patriarchal society. She committed suicide at the age of 25. Kwan unearths copious clips from her films and interviews the veterans who knew her, as well as telling her story in dramatic form. This was the film that brought Maggie Cheung into prominence and, though she doesn't look much like the dead star, she contributes as affecting a performance as the late Smita Patel in Shyam Benegal's Bhumika, the equally tragic story of Hansa Wadkar, the Indian star of the 1940s.
· Derek Malcolm
