‘Hey, have any of you guys ever seen a super speed backflip that turns into a flying glider loop the loop?’
‘What has the BBC ever done for me?’ asks Weakest Link presenter Romesh Ranganathan in his new cinema ad, which sees him chased by Daleks and Traitors alike as he questions the worth of the TV Licence fee. Perhaps if the quizmaster and radio host was aware of the ‘hit’ new show Talking Tom Heroes: Suddenly Super, which you can find right on BBC iPlayer, he would rethink his stance on the matter. Then again, maybe not.
We’ve come to a strange weekend in the summer blockbuster schedule. Studios seemed well aware that The Odyssey would simply blow anything they could offer out of the water like a rock hurled by a cyclops, and have thusly given Nolan a wide berth. As far as mainstream releases are concerned, there’s only really Andy Serkis’ Animal Farm on offer, a film that’s effectively being mercifully put out to pasture after flopping on every front in its US release two months ago.
Make no mistake, this isn’t a drought – there are some fantastic films out in cinemas at the moment, from Nolan’s Greek epic to The Invite, Olivia Wilde’s single-set and breakneck adult comedy. Parents in need of a cinema outing with the kids are sure to get a lot out of Minions & Monsters, and if you like your islands muddier and your colour palette grimmer, there’s even the live action Moana remake available, too.
If you’ve caught all those and are still chomping at the bit for more, though, then you may find yourself scraping the very bottom of the barrel. You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile, driving at super speed to catch the breezily titled Talking Tom Heroes: Suddenly Super on the Big Screen. And when the lights go down and a QR code with a link to all kinds of CGI superpowered cat/dog merchandise stays on screen for at least a solid minute before the film even starts, you may ask yourself…’How did I get here?’.
This may be news to you – it certainly was to me – but Talking Tom, the star of those awkward, slightly creepy early iPad apps that would answer back to your voice now has a whole gang and show of his own. Several shows, in fact. This one, however is all about him and his three Awesome FriendsTM – fellow cat, Angela and dogs Hank and Ben – who drive a big party truck around and make a living through their underground car wash. Okay.
Soon enough, they come into contact with a huge multicoloured egg which sucks them up and spits them back out, now with superpowers. One has super strength, another super speed, one’s a hacker and Hank can bring his imagination to life. It’s mentioned that they only have the powers while they’re wearing their suits, which does bring Tony Stark’s words from Spider-Man: Homecoming to mind – that if you need the suit to be super, you’ve got a problem – but the team seem to do a bang-up job of defending their hometown, Peak City, from foes like Gor-don the Great and Professor Kranium.
The film doesn’t fare nearly as well as its heroes’ escapades. For starters, while it would love to call itself a film, it’s really not – it’s another of these television events that wind up in cinemas, compiling old episodes and throwing some new bits and bobs in for some extra cash. Obviously, I’m not the target audience – this is meant for very young kids who are fans of the show – but from what I could see, quite aside from the beat-by-beat moments of the three episodes included here, this was about as rushed as these ‘special showings’ can get.
The feature here is just over an hour long – long being the operative word. Half of that runtime stems from the three chosen stories – each one about ten minutes long, all available on YouTube or iPlayer; take your pick – and the other half-hour sees Tom and Angela awkwardly fling massive amounts of eggs-position at the parents to try and catch them up to speed. If your kids are so into this show (which only came to the BBC last year) that you’ve brought them out to see this, though, then I’d imagine you’d have gathered all this backstory from countless hours of hearing it on your telly in the front room.
I know I sound like the very model of a misery-guts critic coming in to pick apart something designed for toddlers, but I actually felt a little bad for the film. To its credit, it encourages the young audience to yell and shout and cheer and boo – proper panto stuff – and there are some slapdash interactive segments that feel like they were cobbled together two hours before the product was set to ship. The thing is, though, nobody else was there in the room with me – absolutely no-one. I’d effectively treated myself to a private screening just by way of coming along, and there was a sad surreality in these audience participation moments playing to an empty screening; just me, myself and the tumbleweeds.
The complete lack of an audience kind of speaks volumes as to this film taking up valuable space in a cinema. Why is it here? I gave Jackass: Best and Last a right kicking for being a glorified clip show, but even that had some new content made just for the occasion. These kinds of events can be good fun even as an outsider when done right – it sounds silly to cite Peppa Pig as the gold standard of anything, but last year saw her and the family take to the silver screen for a big celebration of their new arrival, baby Evie, which was announced on Good Morning Britain like a royal engagement.
I went along to that (I must say, at the behest of my partner, who’s rather a fan) and was glad to see that the team had actually gone to the effort of putting together something new and exciting for their audience, with an overarching plot that developed throughout the handful of episodes we saw on the big screen. It was fun, we laughed and we were glad to have come along and seen it because it at least offered something valuable. This, on the other hand, just felt like a half-baked collage of an uncanny and overly explanatory show. They’re superheroes – it’s surely just a two word pitch?
BBFC: Rated U for very mild threat, violence, rude humour.
Talking Tom Heroes: Suddenly Super on the Big Screen is in cinemas now.
