30 ARTS
THE WEEK 9 April 2022Film
Sexual intercourse began in 1963, wrote Philip
Larkin, “and so, by absolutely no coincidence,
did the 30-year campaigning career of Mary
Whitehouse” – which is the subject of this “even-
handed” two-part documentary on BBC2, said
Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. Banned! The Mary
Whitehouse Story looks at how and why the
former art teacher from the West Midlands began
her battle to stem what she saw as Britain’s moral
decline, and evaluates her crusade against the
norms of her day and ours. Troubled above all by
nudity and obscenity in the media, Whitehouse
founded the National Viewers’ and Listeners’
Association in an effort to get the voices of “the
non-metropolitan and non-elite” heard. Her bête
noire was the BBC and its progressive directorgeneral Sir Hugh Greene – “the devil incarnate”, as
she called him – and for several years she was a
real “thorn in his side”.
Through “handsome” use of archive footage,
we are treated to Whitehouse “in full flight”, said
Chris Bennion in The Daily Telegraph. With her old-
fashioned specs and twin sets, she often comes
across as “out-of-touch” and “comically
repressed”. But on some issues, she had a point.
Her concern about the impact of pornography
sounds prescient today, said James Jackson in
The Times. And she was undoubtedly a “pioneer”- “the first culture warrior”. But footage of her
Festival of Light rally also shows her for the
“bigot” that she was. Such were her excesses,
“any argument she might have had was nullified”.
Banned! The Mary Whitehouse Story
Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped animation, set in 1969, is a low-key but “evocative” story of
childhood loosely inspired by the writer-director’s own, said John Nugent in Empire. It is narrated by
Jack Black as the adult version of protagonist Stanley (Milo Coy), a dreamer who lives in the suburbs
of Houston, and whose father is employed in an admin job at Nasa. Like everyone else, Stanley is
obsessed with the forthcoming Apollo 11 Moon mission, but in his account of that year, there was
another, secret Moon landing days before it, a test run for which Nasa agents recruited him as the
astronaut. The reason: they’d “built the lunar module a little too small”, meaning that only a child
could fit inside it. The rotoscope technique involves tracing over live-action film footage, and results
in a “strange, hyperreal aesthetic” which is well suited to this film’s blending of reality and fantasy.
With “shrewd storytelling judgement”, Linklater makes Stanley’s “lucid dream” only a small part
of what is otherwise an “overwhelmingly real”, but more or less plotless, account of a 1960s
childhood, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. His memories of the era are “curated with
passionate connoisseurship” – “the ice-cream flavours, the TV shows, the drive-in movies, the
schoolyard games, the parents, the eccentric grandparents, the theme park rides, the neighbours, the
prank phone calls”. Linklater has made some “dire” films since Boyhood, his 2014 “masterpiece”,
said Kevin Maher in The Times, but Apollo 10½ is a triumphant return to form. Rich with
observational detail and saturated in “loving” references to the music, movies and television of
the period, “it feels as significant an American memoir as Little House on the Prairie”.Apollo 10½
1hr 37mins (12A)A dreamy memoir
of a space-mad
1960s childhood
★★★★The British writer-director Harry Wootliff’s “well-liked” 2018 debut Only You centred on a couple
experiencing fertility problems, said Leslie Felperin in the FT. Her second feature, the “woozy,
intoxicating” True Things, adapted from a novel by Deborah Kay Davies, charts a rather more
troubled relationship, involving a “destructive erotic obsession”. Kate (Ruth Wilson) is a middle-class
benefits officer with “a barely hidden wild streak”. She is dissatisfied with life and already in trouble
for persistent lateness at Margate’s job centre when one of her clients, a “sexy bit of rough” with
a prison record (Tom Burke) asks her out for lunch. Within hours, they’re having sex in a car park.
She refers to this nameless man as “the Blond”, and is soon mad about him. But it seems the hunger
is all hers and, with terrible inevitability, he starts taking advantage of her infatuation.
For Kate, the romance is a “delusion” and an “addiction”, and there is an “element of insanity
about it – “nightmares, hallucinations, clawing open an abyss”, said Tim Robey in The Daily
Telegraph. “The cinematography nudges us boldly to the brink with rain on the lens”, and the
editing becomes “fragmentary”. But throughout, what really “rivets” is Wilson’s performance. Kate
is a mess, yet Wilson succeeds in making her peculiarly relatable. Burke is good too, skilfully lending
the Blond an air of “old-world romanticism”, said Clarisse Loughrey on The Independent. But the
problem with the film is that he is still too obviously a cad, making it hard for us to identify with
Kate. And though there are intriguing hints that her obsession is a rebellion against the social
expectations she faces as a woman in her 30s, this idea remains underexplored.True Things
1hr 42mins (15)A dark tale of erotic
obsession in a British
seaside town
★★★A “swish, animated yarn” about a gang of criminal animals in LA, DreamWorks’ latest is like a
“U-rated Reservoir Dogs” with a bit of Ocean’s Eleven and a twist of Dostoevsky thrown in, said
Ed Potton in The Times. Adapted from Aaron Blabey’s graphic novels, it features a voice cast
including Sam Rockwell, channelling George Clooney as the gang’s suave leader Mr Wolf, the
comedian Marc Maron as the “sardonic, safe-cracking” Mr Snake, and Awkwafina as expert hacker
Ms Tarantula (aka “Mata Hairy”). At first, the gangsters provide “a great advertisement for criminal
misbehaviour”, pulling off show-stopping heists and making effortless getaways “while nodding
along in unison to Daniel Pemberton’s ghetto-fabulous soundtrack”. But when they are caught red-
handed during a particularly daring raid, they must submit to a rehabilitation scheme run by guinea-
pig philanthropist Professor Marmalade (Richard Ayoade). Then Mr Wolf “discovers the lure of the
straight and narrow” while doing a good deed for an old lady, and the real trouble begins.
The Bad Guys is “cheery and diverting”, said Guy Lodge in Variety. But its villains, “while fun to
hang out with”, are not “all that easy to care about”, and the dialogue isn’t as “nifty” as it could be.
Screenwriter Etan Cohen resorts to “easy single-generation laughs”, said Robbie Collin in The Daily
Telegraph: “Clooney jokes for the parents, green clouds of flatulence for the kids”. But on the plus
side, The Bad Guys is appealing to look at, with a more cartoonish, hand-drawn feel than is
customary in digitally animated feature films. “As easy Easter holiday fun, it meets the brief.”The Bad Guys
1hr 40mins (U)Attractively animated crime
caper for children
★★★“The first culture warrior”