You've Had Some Bad Ideas, But This Really Snaffles The Custard Cream

At the urging of certain Pauls who will remain nameless, I saw THE LITTLEST SAMURAI (a.k.a DANCES WITH NINJAS) last night.

Now, I've seen some ponderous, pretentious, predictable and above all wincingly cheesy films in my time, but this has really got to be up there with the worst of them.

Imagine, if you will, a story of an African warrior who travels to mediaeval England and gets involved in an over-long fish-out-of-water-finds-redemption scenario with self-satisfied visual twirls every so often. And lots of slow-motion close-ups.

Initially, he falls in with a group of well-to-do burghers who want to institute some kind of parliament or something. But then he gets captured by some noble knights who are all very nice, not to mention spiritually pure. He sees the ideal social system -- feudalism -- at work, and resolves to fight the influence of modern.... oh, forget it. Enough with the analogies. The point is that BLADES OF THUNDER is terrible. The only good thing is Timothy Spall saying "Oh, capital!" I may well expound more properly on why it's so awful in future, but right now it's just giving me a headache.

And we all know what happens when I get my headaches.