Elephant Juice

Elephant Juice comes from the pen of Amy Jenkins, creator of television series This Life, and while it isn't good, it's not all-bad.

It is a longstanding cliché that British television writers can't write for the big screen and think small. Jenkins, unfortunately, does nothing to refute this. There are even pointless headings for different sections of the film, like it has been split into seven episodes.

While there are lots of interesting locations, it cannot disguise the fact that it's still just people talking. The dialogue might be very good, but there's rarely anything important at stake.

This is less due to the poor plotting than the poor characterisation. And that in turn is due to Jenkins decision to have eight major characters. You simply can't have that many in a movie as there isn't as much time to find out about them as there is in a television series. There are two characters who are almost adequately drawn but the motivations for the others is barely there - if at all.

There is an incident in the last act that is a surprise but not in a good way. There is no reason given for the character to do what they did, so rather than being moved we simply don't care.

Two of the characters lose partners they cared about and react as if they'd lost a five-pound note. While it seemed bizarre and confusing at the time, in retrospect it was just so those characters could get together at the end with fewer hassles. It's not a feel good ending if everything that enabled it is totally unbelievable.

To be honest I preferred all the other This Life writers to Amy Jenkins but she does know how to write and there's the makings of a good film here as she clearly knows her world but it needed another couple of drafts at least.

The irony is the script was rushed into production before it was ready to cash in on the This Life success but because it was rushed both the co-investors, Miramax and Film Four, refused to distribute it. In fact Miramax subsequently closed down their UK subsidiary that produced this due to "creative differences".

This won't be in theatres for long but make up your own mind about it when it's on free television, where it belongs.

There`s nothing heavy about this film, its a nice easy going film about relationships in the real world and how cheating on each other has become a part of life, but in this case it also allows people who have become the greatest of friends to let their feelings go and see what there looking for is really right in front of them. So many films have been made with much larger budgets but don`t have the realistic feelings that are here. You will not regret watching it and may well be able to relate real life with this film.

What were they thinking of? I assume they thought, oh she's in the Sunday papers, she must be good. It's not true of mail order trousers and it isn't true about film makers either. People say that what's wrong with British filmmakers is that they shoot the first draft. This time they seem to have shot the first fart.

The bit I liked about this was that it was completely different from the rest of the movies where there's a group of friends which the movie revolves around.

In movies like Notting Hill and others everyone in the group is a wonderful person with little or no flaws, not to mention wise and sage. I like in Elephant Juice that some of the people are unpleasant, but not completely unpleasant, but have more human characteristics than the average soft focus, warm fuzzy rubbish that we usually get served up by movie makers.

The concept was good (relationships amongst 20-30 year olds in London), the script posed some good questions (`How do you choose your friends?'; `Can you tell someone you love them?'), and the settings were a refreshing view of a side of London that most of us don't see. There were flashes of interesting dialogue that had me waiting to see if eventually something worthwhile might happen. It didn't. What disappointed was that none of the good questions asked were answered (some weren't even addressed) and the not one of the characters was believable or likable. If that wasn't bad enough, the music was undoubtedly the worst I have ever heard. Intrusive, jarring, inappropriate, in poor taste and masked a good 30% of what may have been interesting dialogue. What a waste of a good concept and viewer's time