Hugh Laurie

  • The Borrowers (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) Somehow, I hadn’t seen special-effects 1990s kids adventure The Borrowers until now, and while I’m not going to claim that it was a missing piece of my culture, there are a few good moments in there. Drunk on the power of burgeoning CGI, this is a film that clearly has more fun playing with its premise (of small people living in the walls of a house “borrowing” items from normal-sized humans) than making sense of it. The usual kid’s movie clichés are there, from adventurous youths, a venal lawyer seeking inheritance money, and action sequences designed around special effect. It has striking similarities to the near-contemporary Mouse Hunt, even if it’s not as enjoyable as that other film. Viewers may have fun spotting Jim Broadbent, Tom Felton and Hugh Laurie in younger roles. An adaptation of a celebrated series of children’s books, this 1997 version of The Borrowers wasn’t the first nor the last time the story was brought on-screen, and we’ll bet it’s not over yet.

  • The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019)

    The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) Writer-director Armando Iannucci seldom does the expected, and so his take on Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield is very much its own thing. Race-shifting the lead role to be played by the always entertaining Dev Patel, Iannucci goes for a very expressive, stylish presentation of the material distilled to a feel-good essence. There’s a framing device of sorts in having the narrator of the story address a theatrical audience and flashing back to the tale being told; there are interludes that break with conventional representation; and a silent fast-forward sequence. But such stylistic flourishes seem appropriate in a film when colours and actors such as Peter Capaldi, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Benedict Wong and others seem intent on upstaging each other. (To the benefit of the film, of course.)  It’s all fun to watch, utterly divorced from the intention of delivering a strictly historical take on the story. Despite not being all that familiar with the source material, I appreciated the big happy ending (the biggest surprise of the film being Iannucci being happy with happiness) and the playfulness through which it approached a literary classic. Yes, we could use a few more movies like The Personal History of David Copperfield. But not exactly like it.

  • 101 Dalmatians (1996)

    101 Dalmatians (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on-Demand, November 2019) Long before the recent spate of Disney live-action remakes, there was 101 Dalmatians, reprising the animation film with actors such as Glenn Close, Jeff Daniels and Hugh Laurie. While Disney will argue to this day that the box-office receipts justified the film, us non-shareholders will instead point to Close’s performance as one of the few reasons to watch it. She is deliciously evil playing the cruel Cruella, and some of the special effect work is rather amusing now that the state of the art has evolved far beyond what’s in the film. The rest of the film skews heavily to young audiences, with much of the shenanigans being handled by bumbling associates of Cruella. The remake simply doesn’t bring enough to the original to displace it, although we can count our blessings that it’s better that the sequel 102 Dalmatians. It’s rather amusing to read 1990s reviewers complain about the pointlessness of the remake—they clearly hadn’t seen what was yet to come.