It is often said that half the job of directing is getting the casting right. Filmmaker Jay Roach has shown a stunning facility for putting the right actors into the right comedy vehicles, ingeniously throwing Ben Stiller’s wonderful awkwardness against Robert De Niro’s brusque bluster in Meet The Parents and Meet The Fockers, and working with Mike Myers on the seminal Austin Powers films. He gets the mix absolutely right once again with Dinner For Schmucks, a winning comedy which walks a fine line between wit and silliness, cruelty and warmth, and absurdity and humanism.
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140 minutes. That’s how long it took me to fly to Spain this summer. The sun, sea and sand made the wobbly airborne trip in a tin tube worthwhile, despite the inevitable radioactive lobster tan, subsequent skin-peeling and rumours of a frantic visit to a genito-urinary clinic.
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I wasn’t sure what to expect from the unorthodox pairing of Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg but it turns out they make a likeable comedic duo. They’ve teamed up in The Other Guys to play two goofball police officers.

Ferrell plays Allen Gamble, a forensic accountant who loves to sit at his desk and fill out pointless paperwork. He’s a nerd, pure and simple. Wahlberg plays Terry Hoitz, an action-loving detective who was demoted after accidentally shooting a big-name baseball player. He has serious anger management issues.
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Often uproariously funny, this cross-cultural comedy brims with sharp dialogue and its ideas are sensitive and intelligent without being heavy-handed.

The beauty of this comedy is that it takes a rather farcical premise, and then plays it more or less straight, thus enabling us to suspend our disbelief. It creates a microcosm of heightened reality, but reality nonetheless. The result is very enjoyable, culturally literate, and often uproariously funny.
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Going the Distance may not exactly rock the conventions of the rom-com, but it is a refreshingly vibrant addition to the genre. So while the meet-cute, montages and requisite emotional rollercoaster (or are dodgem cars a better metaphor?) follow a route as familiar as the one our couple criss-cross between New York and San Francisco, the saving grace is chemistry.
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