DEVS
★★★
OUT NOW (FOX SHOWCASE)
EPISODES VIEWED 2 OF 8
CREATOR ALEX GARLAND
CAST SONOYA MIZUNO, NICK OFFERMAN, JIN HADevs takes a while to fi nd its feet, but
Garland’s slow-burning tale of a quasi-
religious science cult, a sinister high-tech
project and industrial espionage will have
you hooked by the end of ep two. Sergei
(Karl Glusman) and Lily (Mizuno) are lovers
employed by mysterious company Amaya.
Sergei is personally headhunted by owner
Forest (Offerman) to work on a top-secret
project. But when he vanishes on his fi rst
day, Lily suspects the worst; her concerns
grow after she uncovers Sergei’s shocking
double-life. Lily’s search for the truth faces
opposition from Forest – who looks
disconcertingly like Zach Galifianakis and
talks like a cross between a self-help guru
and a kindly uncle – and his thuggish
right-hand man Kenton (Zach Grenier).DLLIKE A BOSS
★★
OUT 6 MAY (DVD/BR) / CERT M / 83 MINS
DIRECTOR Miguel Arteta
CAST Tiffany Haddish, Rose Byrne, Billy
Porter, Salma Hayek, Jennifer CoolidgeTiffany Haddish and Rose Byrne play
BFFs and business partners in this
female-focused comedy that tries hard to
cash in on the commercial success of its
groundbreaking peers. Homing in on the
leads’ abilities to blend bawdy humour
with sentiment, the script lands Mia
(Tiffany Haddish) and Mel (Rose Byrne)
in a series of overused predicaments
(food-based sabotage, weaponised
karaoke), and pits them against Salma
Hayek’s cosmetics titan in an outdated
case of female rivalry. An established cast
is here at director Miguel Arteta’s disposal
but Like A Boss falls foul of formulaic
writing and a mistrust of the genre’s full
potential. It’s no longer enough to simply
market a fi lm as feminist and funny. BWHere: Elf siblings Ian (Tom Holland)
and Barley (Chris Pratt) fi re up
Guinevere to begin their quest.
Right: Attempting the ‘visitation
spell’ for the fi rst time. Below right:
“We have a problem, bro...”
to take in the quiet power of one foot gently
touching another, or pulling off a bizarre
dance scene that starts silly and ends up
sweetly poignant. Even the ‘death’ of an
inanimate object in the second half has an
unexpected pathos underneath the humour.
The result is a ripping yarn, heartfelt and
wholly entertaining as it zips from frenetic,
fairy-fi ghting freeway chase, to a tomb-raiding
set piece that pays tribute to the Indiana Jones
franchise (Last Crusade, in particular, comes
to mind here with the father-and-son theme).
And it’s not just the boys who get to go
questing — their mother Laurel (Julia
Louis-Dreyfus) teaming up with Octavia
Spencer’s formerly ferocious manticore
(a winged lion-scorpion creature who has
since settled down to run a family restaurant)
as she tries to track down her sons, going full
sword-swinging action hero in the fi nal reel.
With an admittedly brief but welcome bit of
LGBTQ+ representation, there’s something
for everyone here. It’s a major step up for
director Dan Scanlon, who last delivered
the middling Monsters University.
Pixar’s take on the tale-as-old-as-time
fantasy genre is, in many ways, traditional —
a magic-fuelled (deceased) father-and-son
story that eventually becomes a tribute to
brotherly love. While it doesn’t break new
ground for the studio, it’s a joyous reminder
of just how brilliant Pixar is when working
at full capacity. Like the greatest heroes of
legends past, Onward is pure of heart, stalwart,
and true.BEN TRAVISVERDICT Pixar returns with a great big
power-chord of a movie — heart-pumping,
resonant and positively harmonious.as planned, leaving the brothers with an all-new
problem and only 24 hours to re-attempt the
incantation, lest they never get to see their dad
again. Cue a thoroughly modern mythical mission
— inspired by Barley’s beloved D&D-alike tabletop
RPG ‘Quests Of Yore’ — that bags a ritual-
dependent MacGuffi n, a crowd-pleasing mix of
odd-couple buddy comedy, ye olde road movie
and coming-of-age milestones (the fi lm accurately
depicts the sheer terror of merging onto a dual
carriageway for the fi rst time, for example).
If the beats are familiar, it’s a strong framework
for some of Pixar’s most elegant storytelling of
recent years — the occasionally clanking narrative
gears of Toy Story 4 and even Coco replaced with a
satisfying hum of adventure plotting, emotional
arcs and comedy that all remain perfectly in sync.
It’s pacier and more energetic than its near-two-
hour runtime suggests, dovetailing into a wholly
satisfying, beautifully handled fi nale that puts
everything in its right place.
It’s also one of Pixar’s outright funniest fi lms
— once the second act kicks in, the exact nature
of Ian and Barley’s failed spell delivers a string
of giddy sight gags, a none-more-Pixar
combination of the slapstick and the surreal.
Add in the easy charm and charismatic riffi ng of
Holland and Pratt, with top-tier visual comedy
right through to the curse-battling climax, and
it might be the studio’s wittiest movie since
Monsters, Inc. or The Incredibles. For all the
lightness, it’s remarkably tender, too — pausing