TheRetroCritic

Review available on the new website .

Review available on the new website .

Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, RV was a family comedy released in 2006 about a father's Hawaii holiday plans falling through due to work being dumped on him at the last minute and his messy attempt at a backup holiday as he loads his family in a cheap RV and heads for the Rockies. Road trip movies about people being forced to jump in a clunky vehicle before facing various goofy adventures aren't exactly a rarity: from the National Lampoon's Vacation films to About Schmidt , Little Miss Sunshin e , an entire season of Weeds , Dumb & Dumber and many others, it's something of a comedy tradition so finding a new take on it isn't exactly easy. It's a weird challenge for a talented director like Sonnenfeld to take up but if someone could make it work, it would be him. Robin Williams is Bob Munro, the father who leads his family into a predictably disastrous holiday that's really just an excuse to secretly attend a work meeting, and he brings just the rig

The 90's were a great decade for action films. Simple premises with dumb yet memorable concepts and loads of explosions being the key factor for many of them. Also Dennis Hopper turning in increasingly hammy performances as awesome, if cartoonish, villains. Speed , of course, stars a young Keanu Reeves as a cop who becomes the target of a madman's dastardly plan to blow up a city bus in exchange for a silly (and oddly specific) amount of money. He is told the bus can't slow down below 50 mph or it'll blow so the plan becomes to try and outsmart Hopper's cola-drinking baddie by trying to stay one step ahead somehow, despite the fact that he is keeping track of everything that's happening with his finger firmly placed on the detonator. You wouldn't think that a film about a city bus would be this entertaining and relentless but it certainly lives up to its title and we're given little time to rest in this intense race against time. Sandra Bullock

The Squid And The Whale was Noah Baumbach's first big hit as director and put him on the map as one of the new indie filmmakers to look out for. The film, which was co-produced by Wes Anderson, was a short-and-sweet look at a dysfunctional family in the 80's. This was obviously a personal story for Baumbach to tell and he puts the awkwardness of having your parents go through a divorce and having to grow-up during that time across extremely well. These characters are, in part, cruel and selfish and, in part, likeable and naive so you can't help but identify with them a little bit, even when they're at their worst. As the pretentious loser father Bernard, Jeff Daniels is spot-on: the character's sheer inability to not think about himself for one second, the fact everything he says to his kids is wholly inappropriate, that he doesn't even treat his son's new girlfriend to lunch and his questionable relationship with Anna Paquin's student makes him pr

Who knew that 20 years and one sub-par prequel later, Dumb And Dumber would actually receive its long talked-about sequel starring one-off hit comedy duo Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels? Suck me sideways... Somehow, the Farrelly Brothers made it happen and this year we were treated to more dumb in the cartoonishly-titled Dumb And Dumber To . The film was a box-office hit in the U.S. and has been doing surprisingly well all over but was it truly worth the wait? Is Harry and Lloyd's comeback a glorious one or an Icelandic Snow Owl-style catastrophe? Being a die hard Dumb And Dumber fan since childhood myself, the bar was raised pretty high in terms of expectations but, admittedly, the idea of seeing a sequel with these guys alone was enough of a treat that I could forgive a heck of a lot. And so I did of a sequel boasting some great jokes and energetic, ridiculously fun performances from the two leads but also an unfocused, uneven script, a lazy storyline and a whole string of

Finally we have a Dumb And Dumber To trailer! Guess what? It's pretty dumb! Can't complain, look pretty fun :)

So there's a new Dumb & Dumber film coming soon (or "dumbing" soon) and a couple of teaser posters have finally been released. Not exactly too revealing or exciting but hey, it's only the dumbinning. More substantial  Dumb And Dumber To news will pop up soon, I'm sure. In the meantime...