Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 23 July

The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls (Pooley, 2009)

Back in April 2009, I felt good pre­dict­ing box office tri­umph for this pic­ture and I was not wrong.

I’m not nor­mally one to make box office pre­dic­tions but I have a gut feel­ing that The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls is going to be massive. It’s an inspir­ing New Zealand story, well told with plenty of humour and music, and the lit­er­ally irre­press­ible Topps’ lust for life shines like a beacon through­out. Using plenty of archiv­al foot­age and pho­tos, Leanne Pooley’s doc­u­ment­ary fol­lows the Twins from idyll­ic rur­al Calf Club Days, through the rough and tumble protests of the 80s, to their cur­rent status as liv­ing legends.

I recom­mend you take your kids so they can see how much of what’s good about New Zealand (that we take for gran­ted) was fought for by these strong and prin­cipled women, who also just hap­pen to be beloved fam­ily entertainers.

Also in that Capital Times column: Monsters Vs. Aliens (“More a premise than an actu­al movie …”), super­nat­ur­al hor­ror The Uninvited (“This review­er is nor­mally the annoy­ing per­son who shushes the talk­ers in movies, but early on I decided to leave my neigh­bours alone as what they had to say was infin­itely more inter­est­ing than any­thing on the screen …”), my first exper­i­ence of wrest­ler John Cena on the big screen in 12 Rounds, The Pink Panther 2 (“… a situ­ation­ist prank rather than a genu­ine attempt at enter­tain­ment”), and mar­tial arts franchise-starter Ip Man: “The Japanese in this film are so awful they make the Germans in Schindler’s List look like The Wiggles – it’s an ugly, ste­reo­typ­ic­al rep­res­ent­a­tion which leaves a sour taste.”

Where to watch The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls

Aotearoa and Australia: Streaming on DocPlay and Beamafilm (free with some lib­rary cards)

Rest of the world: Not cur­rently avail­able online which is a bit sad

Comment of the day

Subscriber AD wrote to thank me for help­ing find the doc­u­ment­ary Brats which is stream­ing on Disney+ so, to save me a job, here’s his review of it:

Brats is meta, because they’re all in anoth­er film togeth­er. Like last time you saw him, Andrew McCarthy is troubled. There’s hand-wringing about what being grouped in the Brat Pack did to his emer­ging sense of self, liv­er, or career. McCarthy’s wife warns him that this film will be good for his humil­ity. Molly sends notice that she is look­ing for­ward, not back. But Emilio, Rob Lowe, and Demi are avail­able to sprinkle star­dust. McCarthy con­fesses his 80s crush to Ally Sheedy. ‘Ducky’ (Jon Cryer) gets recog­ni­tion as a cul­tur­al touch­stone, even if you wouldn’t recog­nise Cryer any­more. We also meet Pretty in Pink’s pro­du­cer, dir­ect­or, cast­ing agent, and cam­era per­son. Finally McCarthy con­fronts the quip­ping journ­al­ist who coined the term. Did the Brat Pack change cul­ture? Could F.r.i.e.n.d.s have exis­ted without them? Much like the group ther­apy of the Breakfast Club it’s by com­mun­ing, that McCarthy can bloom.