When Charlie Sheen was very publically fired earlier in the year, all eyes were on Two and a Half Men to see what would happen next. Could the show really go on without Charlie Sheen?

The answer, as the first episode of season nine demonstrates with confidence, is a resounding, ‘Damn right, it can!’ With Ashton Kutcher replacing Sheen’s presence in the form of newly-introduced character, Walden Schmidt, its future is already looking secure straight off the bat.

The opening to the ninth season of the show, entitled ‘Nice To Meet You, Walden Schmidt’, begins with Charlie’s funeral, after having fallen in front of a Metro train in Paris, making it a closed-casket service with no need to show us a body, and thus readily and immediately moving forwards following Sheen’s expulsion from the show. A group of ex-girlfriend mourners attending the service lament the parting gifts they’d received from Charlie from a number of trysts more than the death of the man himself, and only his brother Alan (Jon Cryer) seems to be genuinely sad to see him go.

I personally thought the first half of the show spent a little too much time attacking Charlie’s memory more than anything, and as such, some of the jokes fell a little flat in my mind. But its second half, when Ashton Kutcher’s Walden Schmidt comes in, was absolutely terrific. Schmidt’s entrance into the show was perfect, an excellently timed comedic introduction to his character with a nice set-piece to boot. Ordinarily, I’m not a huge fan of physical comedy, but this was a good one.

Schmidt and Alan find themselves in mutual sadness – Schmidt having been dumped by his girlfriend earlier that day – and so they head out to drown their sorrows at the nearby bar. It’s here where things start to fall into place, and we see how Schmidt’s going to be incorporated into the show in Charlie’s role. Alan had been on the brink of moving back in with his mother, unable to afford to live in Charlie’s house that is the staple of the show, and it naturally transpires that Schmidt has more money than Alan can talk about without stuttering with joy.

It’s a neat way of wrapping up the problem of introducing the third of the three male lead characters into the show fairly seamlessly, and the writers and creators have done well to make it happen with such a sense of ease. Alan and Walden’s chemistry is immediately as affable and enjoyable as watching Two and a Half Men with Sheen, and the show has clearly had no trouble at all in finding its feet after what could have been a fatal decision to fire Sheen this year.

Schmidt is already filling Charlie’s shoes nicely, with his charm easily coming across in this first episode, which has a number of entertaining pixelated moments of nudity in just the first twenty minutes of the season. If you have twenty minutes to spare, and you’ve ever been a fan of Two and a Half Men, I highly recommend that you take the time to meet Walden Schmidt yourself. You’re going to love him.

Almost 30 million people tuned in over in the States to watch the season premiere, the highest rating yet for the show, and it will be interesting to see the percentage that stick with it in the coming weeks as the season progresses.

The first episode is available to download now via iTunes, and each episode will be up the day after it airs in the States. Check back in to catch up on my review of the season, episode-by-episode. It should be a lot of fun.

****~ (4/5)

Initiate Productions have released the first trailer and poster for their new comedy which has pooled together a rather impressive cast called Stay Cool. The film is directed by Michael Polish and as well as Polish, also stars Hilary Duff, Winona Ryder, Sean Astin, Josgh Holloway, and Ashley Bell with some cameos from Chevy Chase and Jon Cryer.

After 20 years, a successful author Henry McCarthy (Polish) returns to his home town to give a commencement speech, only to fall in love with his old crush Scarlet Smith (Ryder) but is asked to the prom by a sexy high school senior Shasta ONeil (Duff). Henry faces tough decisions which cause him to consider his love for Scarlet whos the perfect girlfriend, but when Principle Marshall (Chase) give advise on love things start to become hilariously entertaining.

No sign of a UK release date as yet but we’ll keep you posted.

Alan (Jon Cryer), a broke chiropractor, lives with his brother Charlie (Charlie Sheen), a hedonistic, narcissistic, wealthy, jingle composer. Alan’s son Jake (Angus T Jones) stays over at the weekends (he’s the half) and we flit between shenanigans involving Charlie’s boozing and whoring and Alan’s fairly pathetic attempts at, well, most stuff.

*****

It is difficult to review this, or anything else involving Charlie Sheen, without considering his relatively recent meltdown (or whatever one might call what happened to him earlier in the year). He blew his top at Chuck Lorre, the producer and creator of this show, he fussed about his salary (c. $2m per episode), he consumed a lot of drink, he admitted to what seems to be a fairly lively coke habit and he made much of his tiger blood and winning. He embarked on a tour, hung out with shapely women and got sacked from this show.

What is interesting is that although the real-life Charlie now seems to be a lot like the onscreen Charlie, the onscreen Charlie is a lot happier, a lot more care-free, a comic rather than tragic figure. But enough of the psycho-analysis, what’s the show like, given that this is Charlie’s last season? Well, I had not seen a single episode, or indeed second of Two And A Half Men before embarking on my viewing of the sixteen episodes of season 8. My first thought was, how on earth has this lasted so long? It seemed smutty, puerile, obvious and unimaginative. Even without having sat through the previous seven seasons, it seemed clear where each scenario was headed and I wondered why audiences had stuck with it.

But then something funny happened. It started to grow on me. Sure, it remained crude, vulgar and crass and of course in a show like this no-one really has a meaningful character arc of any description, but I did at least warm to the scenarios and crack the occasional smile at the hi-jinks they got into. Alan and Charlie are of course the classic comedy duo – the uptight dweeb and the anarchic, cool, funny guy – and although it is played very broadly and superficially, they are presented as essentially good, likeable characters. Jake remains a bit-player throughout the season, never really given any room to shine, which is a shame, but well-judged and very funny cameos from Jane Lynch, Ryan Stiles and Judd Nelson help break up the at times repetitive and derivative interplay between the leads.

The season opener is a pretty bland stand-alone, but after that a series of plots lines are introduced which play out over a number of episodes, which proves much more satisfying. Most enjoyable are the episodes that involve Alan’s developing relationship with Lyndsey, the mother of one of Jake’s class-mates. It is one of those situations that is not milked to death, but is allowed to become at times desperately painful and embarrassing, but also very funny and enjoyable. The season seems to end awfully abruptly with the collapse of Alan’s Ponzi scheme and the various loose ends of Charlie’s relationship with his stalker will have to be brushed aside for the new Ashton Kutcher-starring season 9 without so much as a “here’s what happened”. But that’s what happens when your star starts winning.

If you already know and love this show, I’m sure you’re already planning to pick this up. If you’ve never tried it, there are worse ways to spend an evening and if you can look past the crude tone and content, you might find much to laugh at.  You can get hold of Two And A Half Men Season 8 right now at LoveFilm.

***~~ (3/5)

For six seasons, womanising Charlie Harper, his anal retentive failure of a brother Alan, and Alan’s problem child son Jake have entertained us with a selection of pee, fart and masturbation jokes. In every man’s life, however, the time comes to grow up. At the end of season six, Charlie had hooked up with the woman of his dreams, and popped the question. Does season seven, then, see the drunken playboy reformed?

The biggest problem that faces any sitcom that extend beyond three or four seasons is that of development. There is only so long that the same dynamics, relationships and personality traits can carry a show before it becomes repetitive. In the past we’ve seen comedy shows like Friends and Fraser forced to bring foreshadowed relationships to fruition. With Two and a Half men, the title is the sum of its principal cast, so whilst the sentiment is the same, they’ve had to ship the characters in.

Maybe this is why the relationship between Charlie and fiance Chelsea just doesn’t sit right. Without the years of character development and story arch behind the character, Chelsea comes across as very much the interloper that Alan must feel she is. Appearing out of the blue, she has captured the central character’s heart. A difficult sell for any series, but when it is serial shagger Charlie Harper, you can’t help but feel it would take someone special to tie him down. The biggest problem with the opening third of Two and a Half Men is that Chelsea isn’t it, or at least doesn’t come across as such.

For someone with the history of Charlie, the woman he finally falls for has to have a certain spark, and unfortunatley Chelsea not only lacks this, she doesn’t even come across as a particularly charismatic or even likeable character. This makes it hard to easily accept Charlie’s new outlook on life. The caring, committed Charlie is like a neutered dog. Robbed of his potency, half of the joke of the entire series is lost. Whilst this could be a good opportunity to freshen up the show, and use their relationship as a way to explore different life issues, it ends up being an avenue for slightly different puerile humour.

Two and a Half Men does not have the ambition or sophistication of the aforementioned Fraser. When Charlie has a Colonoscopy, it is used not as a way to explore mortality, or facing the loss of true love when you have spent so long looking for it, but as five minute gag when he uses the procedure as an excuse not to spend time with Chelsea’s family.

This probably sounds overly harsh. The foundation of the show, the pee, fart and masturbation jokes are still there, and are still funny. The strength of the show is in the dysfunctional relationship between Charlie and hapless brother Alan, and it is the character moments and banter between these two that are the best parts of the show. Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer are very good at what they do, and bounce off of each other wonderfully. Angus T Jones as Jake does a decent job of a very one-note character, having lost his second note with the weight that has been jettisoned over the last few seasons. Thankfully, the character has reached such an age that the eating jokes have found a ready replacement with the inevitable dating jokes. Yes, the tubby little kid from season one has become a hormonal teenager, and with two male role models with relationship histories at either end of the pole, it looks like being a bumpy ride.

As the season progresses, and Charlies forthcoming nuptials become inevitably uncertain, the season begins to lose its way. We witness a wedding, a couple of arrests, and more than a few break-ups. Having lost its purpose, season seven meanders somewhat to the end, with the highpoint of the climax the introduction of a new love interest for Alan. Courtney Thorne-Smith’s Lyndsey, a poster child for bad mothers, is a breath of fresh air. Outrageously dismissive of her son’s emotional wellbeing, a great performance by Thorne-Smith shows that it is possible to introduce new female characters, with personality, successfully.

A strange season really. Beginning with great purpose, but fizzling out towards the end storywise, the bedrock of laughs is nevertheless still there, and Two and a Half Men continues to be one of the best conventional sitcoms on television. With Charlie Sheen’s continued involvement looking increasingly unlikely with each subsequent season, it could well be that Two and a Half Men’s days will soon be numbered. No bad thing really. It is a very entertaining show, but without the great ambition of a show like Fraser, it is hard to see how the same contained little world of Charlie, Alan and Jake can continue to exist in its current form. With Jake now coming of age, if it isn’t careful the show could find itself being rename Three Men before the plug is pulled. And as we’ve seen so many times, a spin-off can only ever shame its parent show. (That last line would have been so much more effective if i hadn’t used Fraser as an example several times…)

Two and a Half Men – Season 7 is out now.

Bazmann

Today I was sent a screener of ‘SHORTS’, the new Robert Rodriguez film, and was lucky enough to go feed my inner child and watch it.

Shorts is another children’s movie by the versatile director who made such violent classics as Planet Terror, Dusk till Dawn, Desperado and Sin City and also the creator of well regarded children’s movies Spy Kids 1-3 and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl.

I haven’t seen any of Rodriguez’s children films but I have always wanted to have an excuse to see one, and this was my chance to see what this brilliant director can do with this genre.

I didn’t know what to expect from Shorts, Desperado for kids? or a regular childish story with kiddie humour and lots of fart jokes? Obviously it was no Desperado but gladly it wasn’t entirely a regular kiddie film either.

The description for the film reads ” A young boy’s discovery of a colorful, wish-granting rock causes chaos in the suburban town of Black Falls when jealous kids and scheming adults alike set out to get their hands on it” Sounds pretty simple, but the film was a lot more.

The film sets off showing Part Zero, the first short story about two young kids, a brother and a sister, having a ‘no-blinking stare out’ competition which is really amusing as they carry out their daily lives not taking their eyes of each other no matter what, these two keep appearing throughout Shorts in background scenes and their expressions are hilarious.

The movie then goes to the main story set in a town called Black Falls where all the houses look the same and everyone works for Mr Black (James Spader) who owns Black Box Inc. that make the Black Box, a communication and do-it-all gadget that is sweeping the nation, everyone has one and everyone’s lives are ruled by it.

Our hero and narrator, a young boy called Toe Thompson who has no friends, played excellently by Jimmy Bennet (young Kirk in the New Star Trek), he wears braces and gets bullied at school until one day the bullies corner him and throw a magical rainbow coloured rock that hits him in the head, Toe is then encouraged by the rock to make a wish and he wishes for friends and is joined by little aliens who help him get revenge of the bullies.

The film suddenly fast-forwards quickly through rest of film showing glimpses of things to come then pauses on a baby surrounded by destroyed debris and a large alligator flying through the air about to eat her, our narrator explains the story needs to be explained from the start, and so in a form of ‘Shorts’ we are taken through short little stories out of sync about the adventure of the wishing rock passing from person to person in Black Falls and of the wishes they make.

Each little story is a fantastic chance for Robert Rodriguez to be able to let anything happen due to the wishing rock and it’s endless possibilities. One story is of three kids who want an adventure, and kids being kids dream of crazy things like pterodactyls endless supplies of chocolate bars and castles surrounded by snakes and alligators, but when one of the alligators eats the rock it makes a wish, naturally, and when the alligators start standing up on two legs and chase the kids, enough is enough and they get rid of the wishing rock where it finds it’s next owner.

Other stories are of paranoid germ hating scientist, played by the excellent William H Macy, and his son creating a big Bogey monster. Toe’s parents becoming joined together like conjoined twins at a fancy dress party, and Mr.Black getting hold of the one thing that can do more than his Black Box and using the wishing stone for evil.

Each little story is well told and quickly concluded, but all have a nice little morale to them and the underlying tale of a boy who wants friends is endearing when in the end he makes the best friends he could possibly want through the adventures of the wishing stone.

I did enjoy the film and could see why kids will be excited when they watch it. It was exciting, funny, imaginative and like a Pixar film un-patronising which made it a more adult friendly movie than i thought it would have been but there were a few fart jokes, but it wouldn’t be a kids film without a few would it?!

Robert Rodriguez is a truly wonderful director, he knows what he want to show on screen and knows his audience. He makes the sort of film he wants to watch with his kids and has an imagination that probably comes from his kids minds as well as his own which is why this works so well, the story is great and doesn’t slow down to bore even the shortest of attention spans.

Buy this DVD for your kids or watch it as an adult by yourselves if you fancy 86 minutes to fly by during a highly entertaining family friendly movie.

Shorts is available on both DVD December 7th. You can pre-order it now. Check out the trailer here.