Tinā review – a feelgood choir drama that follows a winning formula

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A huge hit in Aotearoa New Zealand, this film follows a teacher who transforms an elite private school with music, played beautifully by Anapela Polataivao Ah yes: the inspirational high school movie! This formula is an oldie but a goodie: a thinking-outside-the-box teacher profoundly inspires their students while restoring something broken inside themselves. Such narratives view education as a “school of life” in which everybody – irrespective of age and circumstance – is always in a state of learning and growing. The teacher’s unconventional methods are inevitably questioned; various triumphs and tragedies ensue. And in musically themed productions such as the Aotearoa New Zealand drama Tinā, momentum builds towards a rousing final performance. Tonally, Miki Magasiva’s film is less School of Rock than Mr Holland’s Opus: middle-of-the-road stylistically and not so much tugging the heartstrings as giving them a right royal yank. There’s no ambiguity in his script, which puts its emot...
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Old Dads review – Bill Burr’s angry, unfunny Netflix comedy

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The comedian makes his directorial debut with a bitter misfire about three older fathers railing against political correctness

Judd Apatow has spent much of the twenty-first century showing America how dudes become men, his films built coming-of-age-like narratives for overgrown juveniles well into legal adulthood. In Knocked Up, Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd respectively modeled irresponsibility for twenty and thirtysomethings, and with This is 40, Rudd’s character stared down the barrel of middle age; in all cases, they arrived at the crucial realization that they need to stop clinging to vestiges of immaturity so they can provide for the people they care about. For these schlubs, the desire to stay young forever meant smoking weed during the daytime, bumping Wu-Tang with your friends and going to rock shows without getting your wife’s permission. For an ensemble in their 50s, however, rejecting the onward march of time becomes a far dicier proposition.

In Bill Burr’s dire directorial debut Old Dads, our boys Jack (Burr), Connor (Bobby Cannavale), and Mike (Bokeem Woodbine) mostly pine for the past as a golden age when they could get away with anything, before wokeness came in and started pussifying all the alpha males. They literally deal in masculine nostalgia, as the cofounders of a throwback jersey retailer they’ve just sold to a dweeby millennial CEO (Miles Robbins) who will soon use cancel culture to oust them after they’re caught on a mic deadnaming Caitlyn Jenner. Fresh out of a job and each saddled with the duties of a different stage of parenthood, they must adapt or face the prospect of a long, cold and lonely future, a greying Apatovian rehash right down to the wake-up-call Vegas road trip nicked from Knocked Up’s second act. Of course they’ll get their collective act together, but they will not be happy about it, and as they continue to rail against a tolerant present they eventually succumb to rather than accept, neither will we.

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