“Cowboys & Aliens” — Jon Favreau

Cow­boys, and Aliens! Ged­it?! What a fan­tas­tic idea for a film! You take two of Hollywood’s most suc­cess­ful gen­res and mash them up! On the one hand, you have one of the old­est and most icon­ic of Hol­ly­wood gen­res, the west­ern. And on the oth­er, the clas­sic means of reflect­ing the present by pro­ject­ing into the future; sci­ence fic­tion. What’s more, both gen­res take them­selves fan­tas­ti­cal­ly seri­ous­ly, so mix­ing them up like this makes the inevitable humour that’s sure to fol­low all the more deli­cious! But here’s the killer; they’ve writ­ten all the jokes out!!! How fan­tas­tic is that?! They’ve tak­en the whole premise for the film, the very idea for mak­ing it in the first place, and turned it on its head! Instead of play­ing it for laughs, they play the whole thing com­plete­ly straight! Brilliant!

I don’t like to go out on a limb here, but I con­fi­dent­ly pre­dict the birth of a whole new genre; the Sur­prise Pack­age, or the Miss-match. After all, why stop with an unfun­ny com­e­dy? What about an un-scary hor­ror film? So instead of all that bor­ing gore and any of that irri­tat­ing ten­sion, we spend the whole film focus­ing in on the teenage romance? Or alter­na­tive­ly, we con­cen­trate on what it would actu­al­ly be like, if you real­ly did have to come to terms with the fact that your teenage girl­friend had been decap­i­tat­ed by a homi­ci­dal, axe-wield­ing man­ic in a Hal­loween mask. You’d end up in ther­a­py for weeks, and as for your end of term exams, for­get about it. Almost cer­tain­ly, you’d have to repeat the whole year, which would be an absolute dis­as­ter.

Or what about a sex-free porn film, where every­body keeps their clothes on? When the plumber arrives in the first scene, we spend the rest of the film find­ing out pre­cise­ly how it is that he fix­es the plumb­ing. So when it comes to him thrust­ing his plunger deep into her hole and spray­ing for all he’s worth, we’ll get a detailed shot of her sink and his actu­al toolbox.

I’m not quite sure exact­ly why, but I haven’t as yet got around to actu­al­ly head­ing out to my local mul­ti­plex and watch­ing Cow­boys and Aliens. But believe you me, I can’t wait! An hilar­i­ous, side-split­ting com­e­dy, but with­out the jokes! Genius!