Bad boys and naked girls

Bad Boys 2
Stars Martin Lawrence, Will Smith, Jordi Molla. Rated MA.
Reviewer: PTE Simone Heyer

Gunning for action ... Marcus, syd and Mike in Bad Boys 2 are ready to take on the bad guys.

When you rock up to see a Bad Boys film, you know there’ll be action and action there is. But, is it possible to have too much action? In the case of Bad Boys 2, yes it is.

There is too much shooting, too much driving through buildings, in fact there’s too much crazy driving altogether. Mike (Smith) and Marcus (Lawrence) are on the trail of a huge drug shipment hitting the streets in dribs and drabs via all sorts of unsavoury means. Unusually, this task takes the full two hours of the film, which seems more like three.

There are a few good parts, like the bad boys searching a morgue for drugs in corpses and Marcus accidentally takes a few Es. Keep alook out, too, for the rat extermination scenes (they do it just like us) and the very amusing scenes in the TV shop.

Just when you think the film is wrapping up and nothing more could possibly happen, it does. Maybe that’s when it grows tiring. The drug lord escapes to Cuba, and a few dodgy strings are pulled that have the different US security agencies joining forces and combining assets to pursue him and save the girl.

Same old story. Films give so much and ask so little, and Bad Boys 2 gives a little too much.

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Calendar Girls
Stars Helen Mirren, Julie Walters. Rated PG.
Reviewer: PTE Simone Heyer

A movie about a nude calendar should be enough to draw all sorts of crowds in – particularly the male-folk. This one, though, is a movie with a difference.

A group of middle-aged women take the idea of a nude calendar and put their own special touch on it. Angela and Chris are best friends in Rylstone, Yorkshire. When Angela’s husband is diagnosed with cancer, they try to get their Country Women’s Institute to support them making a calendar.

Every year the calendars involve country gardens, country churches, country jams – but a nude calendar would raise more money to donate to the hospital’s relatives’ room.

The ladies have a few problems persuading everyone to go along with the plan. But before long they hit the big time and each lady is reminded what is important to her – and what is not. This is a story of friendship, the kind that women with the weight of the world experience when they band together.

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