The Wedding Singer (M)
Director: Frank Coraci
Bug rating out of five: 3 Bugs

TWO questions loom large after watching The Wedding Singer.
1. Would it have been as funny if it wasn't set in the 80?; and
2. Would I have come out as satisfied if I had been a mere mortal instead of The Bug's junior development fillum reviewer and had to shell out 90s style bucks to see it?
In the leadup to the millennium retro-rush, I have been wondering if the 80s would resurface in time to be repackaged and flogged.
It seems the answer is yes.
The year 2000 is rapidly approaching – a brick wall we can readily see but cannot see past.
Or maybe more correctly a waterfall?
In about 18 months or so, we will all hit that wall. Or face that fall.
Will we crash through or crash? Will we be cast headlong to the four cyber winds in a rave new world totally out of our hands?
Batten down the hatches, indeed!
When the curtain is drawn on what has been a make-or break century for humankind, who knows what ballast may have to be abandoned?
No surprise, then, that faced with an uncomfortably uncertain future, we will, no doubt, wring every last musty drop of nostalgia from our 20th Century pasts.
We can all find comfort with past history - after all, familiarity breeds contentment - but is the 80s a little too close for comfort?
The Wedding Singer makes much of its setting. For a large proportion of Generation W – the one before X – the thought of the 80s being recycled is like opening up a fresh wound.
Too soon, too soon!!! The scar tissue is still a tender hypercolour pink.
Besides, the 70s, like a good wine, were at given a good 15 years or so before they were plundered.
We've hardly had time to digest the 80s but it seems the relentlessly churning retro machine is insatiable.
It has exhausted its nourishment further afield, and now must feed closer to home.
Hence, here comes the 80s again. (Once more, with feeling!)
You don't go to the movies to think – well, not to a romantic comedy, anyway – so as an exercise in pure entertainment, The Wedding Singer is a success.
People too young for a reliable memory of the decade may well not enjoy the film as much as those who have the t-shirts (oh, the t-shirts!) to prove it. For it soon becomes clear that the cringe factor is definitely one of the stars of the show.
Adam Sandler (Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison) and Drew Barrymore (Decolletage, Peachfuzz) carry a stock and mushy plotline through to its inevitable conclusion.
Soon -to-be-wed boy meets soon- to-be-wed girl. Instant chemistry. Boy is stood up at the alter. Girl begins to see that her own fiance is a dud. Etc etc etc. and that's about the size of it.
Forgettable, yet saved by the ongoing visual laughtrack of 1985 recreated: Red Thriller jackets? Whoa!
And dig those wet-ringlet male perms. Woo-weee! Hot stuff.
Sandler (Robbie Hart) and Barrymore (Julia) are likeable and competent enough to breeze through these McRoles with aplomb, so it is up to the supports to exhibit the movie's funnier jewels.
There's Robbie's best mate, Sammy (Allen Covert) a limo-driving 80s hipster of the first degree, who believes his own press.
Steve Buscemi is a great drunk, and Alexia Arquette (George) shines as a keyboard-playing Boy George clone in Robbie's band. Yok, yok, yok!
So back to those two burning questions at the start of this review.
The answer to the first question is: probably not.
And to the second: probably not again.
But suss out the nearest $5 Tuesday movie night and have yourself a few cheap 80s laughs.
-Because the joke's on us...

Ewen Yamates

Mortal Kombat Annihilation (M)
Director: John R. Leonetti
Bug rating out of five: Two Bugs

This is a film about the battle between good and evil, with good winning in the end.

- Christopher Gordon-Brown

(Editor's Note: Nice try, son, but don't get your hopes up waiting for a review payment)

The Big Lebowski (M)
Director/Writers: Brothers Coen Joel and Ethan (not necessarily in that order)
Bug rating out of five: Three Bugs

Over the years, those Coen brothers have made some pretty memorable films - the comic lunacy of Raising Arizona (1987) and the much lauded Fargo (1996) spring to mind.
Unfortunately, Joel and Ethan’s latest offering, The Big Lebowski, is not one of their best.
It does have some great moments, some great scenes and the typical Coen weirdness that fans have come to expect. But, overall, it misses the mark.
The plot, if you can call it that, centres around Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski (the always good Jeff Bridges).
The Dude is clearly out of his time - an aging hippy who has obviously smoked way too much pot and dropped LSD a thousand times too many.
Then again, perhaps he needs to be out of it most of the time when you've got friends like Walter (John Goodman), an unstable Vietnam Vet, and the pathetic little Donnie (Steve Buscemi) who never gets to finish a sentence.
The Dude comes home from bowling one night and is confronted by two thugs who proceed to soil his beloved rug.
They've mistaken the Dude for another Lebowski (David Huddlestom), a wealthy old man who lives in a huge mansion.
The Dude goes see the older Lebowski about acquiring a new rug and while there meets the rich Lewbowski’s young wife, Bunny.
What follows is all-out mayhem.
Bunny is later kidnapped, the Dude and his misfit mates are pursued by irate porn producers, German nihilists (including Peter Stromare, from Fargo) and a private eye (John Polito) before everything is resolved. Sort of resolved.
A talented ensemble of performers help flesh out the bones of this rather skeletal storyline, including Julianne Moore (Maude Lebowski, the rich Lebowski’s daughter) as an erotic artist and The Stranger (Sam Elliot).
Also doing his best to rescue the project, John Turturro is hilariously terrific in a way too brief role as Jesus, a purple jumpsuit-wearing paedophile bowler. Come to think of it, we probably saw about as much of Jesus as you'd want.
The Big Lebowski has some terrific scenes, including one from the perspective of a bowling bowl as it careers down the lane and two wonderfully weird sequences where The Dude flies off on his rug and is later involved in a dream where he is in a porn movie featuring, what else, bowling.
Coen is stamped all over The Big Lebowski.
It is evident in the camera angles, the dialogue, the cast where every single face seems so darn familiar.
It is even about (sort of) a kidnapping, which the Coen brothers used more successfully in Raising Arizona and Fargo.
While The Big Lebowski is not as good as either of those two films, it is still reasonably funny and well acted and, for what there is, well enough written.
Just don’t expect much in the way of plot and don’t expect another Fargo.
And especially don't expect to think about this movie too much.
'Cos it certainly wouldn’t take long.

- Michael Gordon-Brown