Bernard and the Genie ( TV Film)

 "If you need anything, you just call and I'll be up there faster than a poker up a pervert."

For those of us who are of a certain age- and yes, it causes me a certain amount of distress to type those words- this excellent TV special is a hilarious memory of that telly Christmas of 1991 after Only Fools and Horses had finished. (Wasn't that the year in Miami?) Yet, in hindsight, this is a fascinating halfway house: a TV film by a recently post-Blackadder Richard Curtis, in a period when Blackadder was a justly worshipped recent memory, that would pave the way for his film career, which would prove to be at once increasingly successful and increasingly successful.

There's some sentiment here too. The bromance between Bernard and Josephus is deeper and more full of feeling than anything which the hilariously cynical Blackadder would have tolerated. Yet the opening scenes, where Bernard Bottle's high-flying life falls apart, are played purely for Blackadder-type laughs. As for Rowan Atkinson's delicious baddie... well, hiss ye, hiss ye. Oh, and nice beard,

Bernard is a sympatheic character- nice, naive, more than a little uncool, and portrayed with real comic charisma by an appallingly young Alan Cumming. And Lenny Henry really steals the show as Josephus, a characyer that could easily have been a stereotype but turns out to be a witty commentator on modern society- modern society being so very, very 1991, with even bloody Leonardo turning up, and I mean the chelonian kind.

But while this is, perhaps, plot-widse, a precursor to the sort of stuff Richard Curtis would go on to do. it's every bit as funny as Blackadder and absolutely the same sort of humour. This is a very, very good thing.

Anyway, Merry Christmas. Unless you're the sort of person who whinges that "we're not allowed to say Merry Christmas these days because of wokery and that", in which case, Happy Holidays.

Never Say Never Again (1983)

"Now you're on this, I hope we're going to have some gratuitous sex and violence."

And so we come to the second Bond film of 1983, and a very unofficial one. It has a sparkling Sean Connery who, though 53, is still younger than Roger Moore, and it also has the sole rights to Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Unfortunately it lacks the rights to an awful lot of things, including the rights to do anything other than a remake of Thunderball, the only Bond film up to this point that ice actively not enjoyed. So is it any good?

Well, actually, yes. It's certainly more humorous than any other Bond film but not, I think, to an excessive degree; it's a proper Bond film, not a spoof. Connery is on particularly fine form and the script has a lot of witty fun with what turns out to be a very loose remake.

The film takes advantage of having to recast roles, with Edward Fox giving us a grumpy new M while the new Q, "Algy", is a chirpy cockney whose department is much reduced. No fancy gadgets here. Kim Basinger makes a splendid Bond girl and it would have been quite, quite wrong if Max Von Sydow had never got to play Blofeld.

It's a very different Bond film and yes, the computer game sequence is dated and weird, but this is a perfectly fine Bond film.

Scooby-Doo (2002)

"I'm so over this damsel in distress nonsense."

Let's admit it: a live action Scooby-Doo film was never on my peoples' wish list, especially not one starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, an actress who has loads of natural talent but, sadly, is rather prone to phoning in her performance, as she has done ever since halfway through Buffy. This is no exception but, annoyingly, she has just enough natural talent to pull it off. Just. Still, we have the consolation that this film is rather excellent, mainly due to a splendid script from James Gunn, now famous for helming Guardians of the Galaxy.

This film is great because it's funny, and it's funny because it nods and winks,in a delightfully metatextual way, at all those drunken/stoned conversations about Scooby-Doo that we all had as students. You know, the ones about how Shaggy was a massive stoner who always has the munchies. I mean, he's so stoned he thinks his dog can talk. And that's the only reason why this film gives us a little snippet of Pass the Dutchie. 

There is also, of course, the spectacle of seeing cartoonish running in live action an thus incredibly expensive. And the deconstruction of the gang's personalities- Fred is vain, Daphne superficial and Velma the only clever one and, bizarrely, not gay. And Rowan Atkinson. Rowan Atkinson is always a good thing.  

Best of all, though, is the twist with Scrappy. This is a witty and enjoyable bit of metatextual fun and a cut above most similar films.