Oh Dear, Keira

Over the last couple of weeks we've been blessed with some perfect, open-air movie viewing weather, but the movies themselves have been mixed. It really is strange talking about a movie like Bend It Like Beckham (which you've seen a while back) beforehand as a preview, and then afterwards as a review. Given how much we want to like the movies we pick for Film Club, we often suffer from the puncturing of our high expectations and rose-colored memories. Like I said before, Bend It Like Beckham really isn't a movie about soccer, it's a movie about Indians living in the UK which happens to have soccer in it. All the good humour (and there is plenty) comes not just from the clashing of cultures, but mainly from the adopted and adapted behaviours of Indian families trying to maintain their traditions in the northwest suburbs of London. The most jarring aspect of the movie was the, well, dreadful perfomance of Keira Knightley. I forgot quite how bad she was, overacting like a posh English school girl who only got into her end-of-year Sixth Form play because she knows the cool girls in the Drama Society. I'm quite sure her subsequent success was not based on her performance here.

Our "special edition" showing of Happy Feet on behalf of the Hopewell Valley Youth Chorale was much better. We moved the screen out into the middle of the yard, which made for a more expansive experience. And the movie lived up to the broader scale. There are a decreasing number of opportunities for Robin Williams to play...well, Robin Williams, but animated penguins doing wisecracks is a gimme for him, and he delivers.

The music is terrific, there are some brilliant Glee-like mashups and the dialogue is as snappy as an episode of The West Wing. Thoroughly enjoyed this one, the only downside is my increasing annoyance at the cracked prism inside the projector lens which kept putting a greenish cloud of fog over the vast, snow-white Antartic landscape (impressive even as animation). Time for a whip-round as they say in England...