This Is 40 * * *
Cert 15, 133 mins

Adult comedy film-maker Judd Apatow has spent much of his career producing hits like Anchorman, Pineapple Express, Superbad, Walk Hard, Bridesmaids and The Five-Year Engagement.

But he’s also a writer-director who was behind the camera on The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005), Knocked Up (2007) and the less than Funny People (2009).

Now the Judd-ernaut is back to make you shudder with another comedy that sometimes aims below the belt... but which survives on fair degrees of charm and hilarity, too.

This Is 40 sees Apatow taking advantage of the familiarity of some of his regular stars to sometimes attack the hypocrisies of modern family life – ie parents who wonder why their children are the way they are when their own behaviour is arguably worse.

Once again the production is a family affair, with Judd the only person missing from the central unit.

In what can loosely be described as a sequel of sorts to Knocked Up, Apatow’s actress wife Leslie Mann returns as the beefed-up character Debbie, with the couple’s real-life daughters Iris and Maude, again playing her children Charlotte and Sadie.

Paul Rudd also returns – as Debbie’s husband, Pete.

No longer supporting characters, they are now the main feast.

The action begins with a no-nonsense Viagra gag and an act of denial about a looming 40th birthday.

Punctuated by some lovely moments where the children are seen to be just themselves, we’re then plunged into mini whirlpools of self-doubt, ridiculous brashness and people at loggerheads.

It’s adolescence all over again... with adult knobs on.

Thereafter, the running time makes this feel more like a series of sketches than a single, dynamic story but at least there’s (a) no sign of Adam Sandler and (b) its best comedy moments are more like mountain peaks than rolling hills.

The sparring between Debbie and Pete is gloves-off stuff at times, leading to altercations elsewhere.

Debbie, for example, tears a strip off a goofy young boy who has been communicating online with her daughter.

“You look like a mini Tom Petty... and as if you’ve got your Justin Bieber wig on back to front,” she screams.

“Next time you think about writing something nasty on my daughter’s Facebook page, I will come down here and (beat) you up.”

The boy’s mother Catherine (Melissa McCarthy, who played Megan in Bridesmaids) is another lady not to be messed with.

Her rants, both with Debbie and a school mediator (Joanne Baron) are equally priceless.

And quite likely to be mimicked, if not in real life playgrounds, then certainly in other future movies.

They reappear in the end-credits sequence in an extended outtake which is pointlessly delayed. People standing up to leave could ruin this moment for the many people who, like me, often enjoy sitting through the closing titles.

There’s a bicycle sequence that’s better than anything in last year’s two-wheeled courier thriller, Premium Rush.

Look out, too, for Hollywood’s de rigueur use of a Midlands-built, black Range Rover, which makes the kind of silver screen appearance not normally associated with this ubiquitous luxury car.

Cameo performances from Megan Fox, Graham Parker, Chris O’Dowd, Albert Brooks, John Lithgow and even Tatum O’Neal as an estate agent all add extra little bits to the mix. GY

Beautiful Creatures * * *
Cert 12A, 124 mins

Forget vampires, because witches are the new cinematic black. Storming in to take the space created by Twilight’s demise is this fantasy film, based up on the first novel in the Caster Chronicles series.

Like Twilight, it features a new teenage arrival in a small American town. This time it’s Gatlin in South Carolina, to which 15-year-old Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert) moves to live with her reclusive uncle Macon Ravenwood (Jeremy Irons).

His family founded the town and he lives in a creepy old mansion but, against his advice, Lena wants to mix with the locals and go to school.

It’s not easy, though, when she can’t properly control her powers. Yep, the whole family are witches, or casters as they prefer to be called.

Lena’s powers seem mainly confined to conjuring up extreme weather, like storms, rain and snow. When she’s the subject of catty jibes by a classmate, she blows the school’s windows out.

That doesn’t put off Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich), or the disapproval of Macon who tells Lena “that boy is a danger to you”. Too late, they’re falling in love.

What Ethan doesn’t quite appreciate is that Lena is counting down to her 16th birthday when she faces ‘the claiming’, when she turns good or bad. Is it predetermined fate or can she choose?

There’s a lot of silly supernatural gobbledegook and discussions about curses, plus flashbacks to their ancestors in Civil War times, but the cast just about manage to carry off a somewhat lumbering plot.

Flamboyantly dressed Irons is charmingly caustic, while look out too for Eileen Aitkins as Lena’s granny.

Emma Thompson plays a devout pillar of the community whose body is taken over by Lena’s evil mother, while Viola Davis is orphan Ethan’s guardian who happens to have witchy powers too.

Beautiful Creatures is pretty stylish, what with the Ravenwood home’s constantly changing interior decor and the red sports car which sexy siren cousin Ridley (Emmy Rossum) drives around in.

It has quite a few good lines and laugh-out-loud moments, while it’s atmospherically shot.

I actually enjoyed it more than Twilight – it’s better written, funnier and better acted.

So for any Twihards missing their fix, head to the cinema for this spellbinding tale. RL

Warm Bodies * * *
Cert 12A, 98 mins

Eight years after a plague has turned the majority of people into zombies or skeletal ‘Bonies’, the rest of humanity is hiding behind a giant wall.

Nicholas Hoult plays an unusual zombie who’s pale and shuffling but isn’t quite as dead as you might think. He may not be able to speak well – he can only remember his name starts with R and isn’t sure how he died – but he can think, as his intelligent and drily witty narration proves.

He’s suitably quirky, hanging out on an abandoned plane and collecting vinyl records.

Julie (Palmer) is the daughter of John Malkovich, the ruthless widower leading the fight against the corpses he describes as “uncaring, unfeeling, incapable of remorse”.

R cares, though – it’s love at first sight when he meets Julie, though she stabs him in the chest. Well, he has just killed her boyfriend Perry (Dave Franco, younger brother of James) and eaten his brains.

“I don’t like hurting people but this is the world now,” he points out.

He saves her from the zombies and a bond develops, partly due to the fact that he takes on Perry’s memories along with his brains.

Soon it’s a real story of Romeo and Juliet star-crossed lovers – there’s even an amusing balcony scene.

The zombie genre has been done to, well, death but this has some originality and funny lines, as well as clever make-up.

British actor Hoult is great and there’s a good sound-track, but I wish it had kept up the sardonic humour of the first part and not descended into rather daft sentimentality towards the end.

Still, teenagers especially will enjoy it and it would make an entertaining Valentine’s date movie. RL