Movie Reviews: Tron: Legacy, Burlesque, Fred: The Movie

Dec 15 2010 By Graham Young and Roz Laws

BURLESQUE * * *
Cert 12A, 118mins
It’s a familiar story, one that’s been well-trodden in films like Coyote Ugly and Showgirls. A young girl with ambitions to perform arrives in the big city and ends up dancing and singing while standing on a bar, or stripping in Vegas.

Orphan Ali (Christina Aguilera) moves from Iowa to LA to become a singer and finds herself dazzled by the bright lights and glamorous costumes of the girls in the Burlesque Lounge on Sunset Strip, a club run by Tess (Cher).

No wonder she wants to work here – it must be the only burlesque show where no-one ends up naked. It is only a 12A certificate, after all. They may be wearing scanty underwear, but there’s not much sizzling sexiness going on.

Working her way up from waitress to chorus girl, she inevitably gets the chance to show off her singing talent and become the star of the show, though she does have to contend with rival Nikki (Kristen Bell, being refreshingly nasty for a change).

The love intrigue (which isn’t the slightest bit intriguing, just entirely predictable) has Ali having to choose between struggling barman songwriter Cam Gigandet, who has a fiancée, and rich, charming businessman Eric Dane, who buys her fabulous Louis Vuitton shoes.

Aguilera certainly has a good pair of lungs on her and is mesmerising on stage in the well-produced musical numbers.

She’s not quite so hot off it, just about pulling off her leading role debut but hardly troubling any awards judges.

We know Cher can act, but she somehow forgets how to here. And looks rather too much like a drag artist while performing.

Thank goodness for Stanley Tucci as her right hand man Sean. Alan Cumming, meanwhile, is completely wasted in the role of a doorman who’s allowed on stage for all of a minute, and if you blink you might well miss Glee star Dianna Agron.

The dialogue is mostly clichéd, though occasionally amusing.

Expect sequins, sparkle and camp fun, just don’t go looking for sensual thrills.  RL

TRON: LEGACY * * * *
Cert PG, 125mins
It has been a very good year for Jeff Bridges – and things could soon be even better for the veteran star.

Fresh from winning the best actor Oscar this spring for Crazy Heart, we’ll see him in the Coen Brothers’ remake of John Wayne’s True Grit in mid-Februrary.

In the meantime, we now get two Jeffs for the price of one in Disney’s latest family blockbuster – a “stand-alone follow-up” to the studio’s original Tron.

A US release in July 1982 just days after Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, this was such an incredibly-groundbreaking film in its day that it predated the internet by 20 years.

By mixing computer graphics, virtual sets, backlit effects and hand-drawn animation, Tron signalled a new approach to special effects (though its only Oscar nods were for costume and sound).

At its heart, Bridges played a hacker called Kevin Flynn who was sucked into an unfamiliar computer world.