The Man from Uncle (movie)

[Weetabix]

I saw this with my daughter last night. I really enjoyed it. It seems to be a light-handed, slightly tongue in cheek take off on 60's spy movies.

The characters developed a bit. The twists weren't all that predictable (to me). The comedy wasn't too slap stick. The soundtrack was great.

All in all, I'd see it again. Next time dinner will be smaller so I have room for popcorn.

ETA: I never saw the TV show, so I don't know how it compares.

[Aesop]

YMMV.
I guess I'm harder to please, since I did see the TV show.

The name and the main characters are the same as the TV show.
The backstory is totally upgefucht by contrast.
They obviously had fun doing a rather half-assed retro look at the 1960s, with about 1/10th of the production value expended on any episode of Mad Men.
The movie wasn't annoying, or annoyingly bad, just predictably mediocre; it was so exciting I fell asleep in the middle somewhere. No, really. Sound asleep.
It didn't seem to matter, even though I missed a twist or two before I woke up. So the soundtrack was good for something.
It helps (NOT!) that every time they thought they did something clever in the movie, they go back and beat you over the head with it in slow-mo flashbacks, which to me has all the cinematic charm of being clubbed over the head with a frozen salmon.
It would have been a short step from there to break the fourth wall, and have the characters wink at the camera, mug faces, and mouth the words "Watch THIS trick!" right before every pseudo-important plot twist.
Which was kind of like how whenever they thought the soundtrack was telling the story better than the dialogue - and don't get me started on that - they would simply turn the music up and drop the dialogue track. Which has all the cinematic charm of being clubbed over the head with another frozen salmon.
Producer/director: Word to your mother - "talkies" became a thing back in the '20s. Maybe hire better writers, rather than a louder soundtrack. Just saying.
And they accomplished their real mission well: they set up the inevitable sequel.
By the time the credits rolled, I expected them to do another slow-mo flashback of the entire set-up for the sequel.
Then I realized, that was the entire movie.

While it's nice to know that Armie Hammer will have a job again despite The Lone Ranger debacle, and he did okay as Napoleon Solo, the Illya Kuryakin character mostly just pissed me off the entire movie. Like in a Jar-Jar Binks, can't-we-please-just-kill-him-off-now-and-get-it-over-with way, so they could go back to the drawing board and bring in his twin brother or something, after a massive re-write and charm injections, with even 10% of the wit that David McCallum brought to the part back in the day. Or just let Hugh Grant take off the sunglasses he wore in most every scene, because he'd out-dazzle the rest of this lackluster flick, and move into the role of sidekick with Hammer instead. Or go for actual comedy, and pair Grant with someone like Hugh Laurie. That might actually be a show worth seeing.

My rating: B-movie spy schlock. In other words, it captured the true essence of the TV show, without really meaning to.
And my head hurts, and I smell like fish.
I can't decide if the director was making a movie, or like my cat, just dropping off half of a dead mouse on the back porch just to let me know he was doing his job.
Either way, they spent far too much on this movie, and not nearly enough. And the writers were vastly overpaid, even if they worked for free.
But at least next time I'll bring a pillow.
The most damning thing I can say about it was it was still better than most (70 or so) of the other 80 movies out already so far this calendar year.


Just like back in the day, neither James Bond nor the Mission:Impossible team will have to worry about hearing footsteps behind them from The Man From UNCLE series. And if the next one is no better than this, the by-then-inevitable third one is going straight to video. If they're going to shoot these in France, could someone fer cripes sake call up Luc Besson?



And an especially annoying "treat" before the movie began was being subjected to 2-3 minutes of trailer (if those are the good 3 minutes, this one will stink so bad they'll give it an Oscar for Best Picture, judging by recent experience) for the I-can't-wait-to-miss-it-forever story of the fierce struggle to be gay in NYFC in the 1960s, which might have been apropos to plop in front of Magic Mike 2 or a marathon of homo soft porn flicks, but for before an action thriller wannabe flick like Man From UNCLE, probably not so much. Unless the studio meant to telegraph that Solo and Kuryakin become The Brokeback Men From UNCLE in the gay lovers plot twist sequel. But it's okay, I didn't really want to digest all that popcorn I ate first, they'll probably get the vomit out of those seats before the weekend, and it won't be so bad once the smell fades away.

Worse was seeing the trailer for The Intern, and wishing someone would have written a sequel to Ronin, which comparatively was only about a 2000% better spy movie, before Robert DeNiro really turned 70. F@%#!

[Weetabix]

I guess I'm harder to please, since I did see the TV show.

And I couldn't be happier!

[blackeagle603]

i dozed off too for a while.