aims to put a big, daft grin on your face....succeeds !

Rating: 8/10 (22 July 2005)

The studio have obviously looked at Spiderman, Hulk, X-men and Daredevil, and despite the varying degrees of popularity there, I think it was wise of them to make this a much lighter jaunt.
This film is pure undemanding entertainment, it has nothing more on its mind than "lets have some fun", and dark superhero movies are getting to be a bit of a pill. I can appreciate how a big fan of the comic, would take issue with the changes that have been made, bottom line folks, your a film studio, your spending $100 million dollars making a piece of "entertainment", it has to play to 10 yr olds, it has to play to 30 year olds, or even 60 year olds, so what do you do? Well you can ensure your film has got some jokes, some action, some romance, some eye popping special effects, and mix in the main staples of the comic book, hey presto ! Or you can slavishly stick to every plot twist , every nuance, and every back story ever printed in the comics to please the percentage of your audience who are hard core fans of the comics. I love films ,all films, all types, but this is a business, look at Batman Begins, what a great film, but its taken it 1 month to make over $180 million in the U.S, thats not amazing business, this doesn't mean its a bad film, I thought it was amazing, but obviously a large portion of the films potential audience have shied away from it, why?, well I didn't feel it was suitable for a kid under 12 and cant imagine a large number of the fairer sex found much to their taste in there. The studios just wont pump mega bucks into something which only appeals to a limited number of punters. "Jaws" the book ,changes substantially, as "jaws" the film,there's a lot missing, didn't effect it much,in fact if you have read the book and seen the film, I think most would agree the changes were right for the film. I do hate changes to source material, one film in the pipeline (for a long time now) is "The A Team", words cannot express the love i have for that show, but the movie will be barely recognisable, and you've just got to swallow it. I think what you can really say is, if your adapting a book, comic, TV show, whatever, its not how close you stick to the source material that will win you the biggest audience, but how well you identify what type of film the material dictates it to be, and then make the best film you can of the type you decided on , then cross your fingers !