‘Movie 43’ is not Halle Berry’s greatest acting achievement
FILM FOCUS
By Austin Lynch
HALLE Berry is without question one of the most beautiful actresses working in Hollywood today.
She is also a very accomplished and talented actress, when the right movie part comes her way.
In her career to date Ms Berry has won a Golden Globe and an Oscar (for Monster’s Ball) but she also has the dubious honour of winning a Razzie – or Golden Raspberry award, which are spoof awards given for worst performance at the movies in a given year.
She has also been a Bond girl, and has played everything from a mutant (X-men) to catwoman as well as starring in dramas, comedies and action thrillers.
When in form there seems to be very little Halle Berry can’t do. But as her latex covered experience of Catwoman seems to confirm she can also get herself involved in the odd stinker – which appears to be exactly what she has done with her role in the newly released ‘Movie 43’.
Directed and produced by Peter Farrelly ‘Movie 43’ features 12 different storylines, each one done by a different director – which might be part of the problem with this film.
Somehow Farrelly has managed to assemble one of the biggest number of top name stars including Halle Berry, Gerard Butler, Anna Faris, Hugh Jackman, Johnny Knoxville, , Seann William Scott, Emma Stone, and Kate Winslet.
The film is composed of several comedy shorts presented in a segment called ‘The Pitch’ in which Charlie Wessler (Denis Quaid) is a mad screenwriter attempting to push his idea to film executive played by Greg Kinnear.
When Kinnear is less than impressed with some of the stories Wessler pulls out a gun and forces the shaken executive to listen to the rest of his ideas before forcing him to buy into the movie.
The comedy shorts (and I think the word comedy is used fairly loosely here) have titled such as The Catch, Homeschooled, The Proposition, Veronica, iBabe and Happy Birthday.
Johnny Knoxville turns up in this movie. Uma Thurman turns up in this film as does Noami Watts and even Richard Gere for heaven’s sake.
The short which features Ms Berry is called ‘Truth or Dare’ and sees her star alongside Stephen Merchant as a couple on a date in a Mexican restaurant.
Emily (Berry) has become bored with normal dating so decides to challenge Donal (Merchant) to a game of truth or dare.
She dares him to grab a male customer’s ass, and he dares her to blow out the candles on a blind boy’s birthday cake. The game escalates to extremes of them both getting tatoos, surgery and generally making fools out of themselves.
This gives a little glimpse of what’s in store if you were to watch ‘Movie 43’ in the cinema.
Think, I suppose, of a book of short stories. Some crude, some funny, some down right bizarre but all strung together. And while this might work for a book – where you might dip in and out of – I don’t think it’s gonna work for a movie.
Since this film was released in the States late last year it has been getting some pretty bad reviews. Of course these aren’t all directed at our friend Ms Berry but more the overall concept of the film.
Whether the director got all these actors on a quiet day, or whether he paid them incredibly well it’s unheard of to have so many famous names attached to one project.
The fact that it seems to be a failure will probably mean we’ll never see as many getting involved in anything similar again.
