WHAM BAM thank you MA’AM!
Wonder Woman packs a punch — and a punchline — in her long-awaited, big-screen debut
Wonder Woman (12A) Verdict: Great fun Baywatch (15) Verdict: Don’t watch
SPIDER-MAN’S webbing has sagged and the Batmobile has failed its MOT in the time it has taken the superhero genre to produce a female lead. But at least the long wait has been worthwhile.
Wonder Woman, just the second feature by Patty Jenkins after her acclaimed 2003 film Monster, is an exhilarating joyride of a movie.
Most of the first act takes place on the lush island of Themyscira, a kind of alpha-female resort where there’s no call for yoga by the pool, but a heavy demand for teaching in kickboxing, swordplay and hanging sideways off galloping horses.
This is the home of the formidable Amazons, ruled by Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) and her warrior sister, Antiope, played by robin Wright, who also happens to be back on our TV screens this week as the icy First Lady Claire Underwood in Netflix’s House Of Cards and thus has the female empowerment market cornered.
Antiope wants to train Hippolyta’s daughter Diana in the art of fighting. ‘A scorpion must sting, a wolf must hunt,’ she says. Very Claire Underwood. Whatever, by the time Diana grows up to be Gal Gadot, the striking Israeli actress already glimpsed as Wonder Woman in last year’s Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice, she is a match for anyone.
We are back in the time of the mythological gods, indeed Zeus himself is the nearest thing Diana has to a father. BUT
superhero films never were constrained by historical discipline, and suddenly a World War I biplane comes spiralling out of the sky. It is piloted by Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), a dishy American spy in a German uniform.
Half the German navy is on his tail, evidently because Steve has pinched, from a mad scientist known as Dr Poison (Elena Anaya), a manual containing top- secret formulae for deadly gases. Naturally, Diana saves Steve’s life and then helps see off the beach- storming Boche, giving her time to appraise the first man she has ever met.
‘Would you say you were a typical example of your sex?’ she asks, guilelessly, as he rises, gorgeously, from one of the island’s natural steam pools.
This, I’m sorry to say, prompted a knowing giggle from the woman next to me in the cinema. But then knowing giggles are what Wonder Woman and its male screenwriter, Allan Heinberg, are gunning for. The film’s occasional feminist flourishes, its playful references to gender politics, all come with a welcome light wit.
It’s also extremely refreshing to find a superhero who has only external devils to fight, not inner demons. In a way Wonder Woman is the anti-Wolverine, the anti-Batman. Her only preoccupation is to put a stop to all armed conflict, which she thinks she can do by eliminating the God of War, her bloodthirsty half-brother Ares.
He’s the cause of this terrible four-year slaughter, she thinks, and for those of us who can never quite remember how the assassination of Franz Ferdinand kicked off World War I, maybe that’s as good an explanation as any.
But in what human guise will Ares appear? Is he the ironfisted German General Ludendorff (Danny Huston)? I won’t let on, though you don’t need a doctorate in narrative twists to work it out. By now, our heroic pair are in London, where Diana, to her consternation, has to swap her killer outfit for something a little more seemly.
The filmmakers miss a trick by not having a sinister Zeppelin floating overhead, but there is the immeasurable consolation of the glorious Lucy Davis playing Steve’s assistant, Etta, a goofy Moneypenny to his James Bond.
A meeting of the lavishly moustachioed War Cabinet, headed by Sir Patrick Morgan (David Thewlis), facilitates a few more
‘this is no place for a woman’ harrumphs. But, of course, the message is that it’s only a woman who can save humankind from its own follies. Theresa May should take heed. if she can get to grips with the Lasso of Truth, she’ll be unstoppable.
armed with the lasso, her mighty sword and impenetrable shield, Wonder Woman duly arrives on the Western Front, where, for someone who abhors violence, she doesn’t half lay into the Hun.
all this goes on a bit, and there’s a clunky attempt to shoehorn some comedy into the film’s latter scenes, by way of a motley collection of mercenaries including Ewen Bremner as a Scottish marksman who can’t shoot. nevertheless, Gadot and Pine are both splendid, the action scenes are terrific, and the plot surprisingly easy to follow.
With their fourth film, the movers and shakers in the socalled DC extended universe can look across at their Marvel rivals and shake a triumphant, gauntleted fist.
On the whole, Wonder Woman gets everything right.
n and then there is Baywatch, which gets everything dismally wrong, up to and including the ‘bloopers’ shown over the credits — always a sign of desperation. Seth Gordon’s film is a crassly misconceived attempt to cash in on the dimly- remembered charms of the TV series, to which end he brings in its stars, Pamela anderson and david Hasselhoff, for fleeting cameos.
Clearly, Gordon is well aware that the muscle-bound, cleavage-heavy formula that (in some
households) made Baywatch a must-watch needs a dollop of irony if it is to work on today’s big screen. Gordon’s mistake is in dishing out that irony with a spatula rather than a shovel.
His film pokes gentle fun at the breast- bouncing slow- mo pioneered by the TV series, but is not nearly enough of a sendup. By trying to take itself even slightly seriously, it quickly looks ridiculous.
Still, if you want leading men with smiles visible from space and bodies to make Charles atlas look like Charles Hawtrey, dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron fit the bill.
The former plays Mitch Buchannon, the godlike head lifeguard on an unnamed Californian beach. Efron is Matt Brody, an obnoxious newcomer who has two Olympic swimming golds but also a reputation for not being a tteam player and an unwanted nickname, the ‘Vomit Comet’, for having thrown up during the Olympic relay.
Gradually, inevitably, the film charts Brody’ s rehabilitation. Will fellow lifeguard Summer (alexandra Daddario) eventually quiver in his manly presence, after initially deeming him an arrogant jerk? is the surf wet?
What makes this candyfloss even less digestible is a secondary plot involving a glamour-puss crime boss and corrupt local politicians that even Baywatch in its TV incarnation might have rejected for its flimsiness.
There are a handful of redeeming virtues. Johnson is an affable presence throughout, and raises a few smiles by repeatedly and disdainfully giving Efron’s character boy-band names.
But if ever a film deserved to flounder and drown at the boxoffice, Baywatch is it.