Book review: It's only a movie

It's Only a Movie, Mark Kermode, Random House, $38.99

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Mark Kermode, for those who don't know, is the usually entertaining, always certain and occasionally ranting film critic for BBC Radio Five Live.

As his sizeable group of online NZ fans know, he shares his cinematic pulpit with the host, Simon Mayo, as he has done in various programme incarnations, for over a decade. They bicker like an old couple, about Kermode's pomaded quiff, his surprisingly large hands, his affection for Basic Instinct 2.

But he's a serious critic, in that he devotes much time on air to explaining why he likes or loathes a film, has a real PhD, and has written proper books. And he reviews all genres, from dogme to shaggy dog tales to doggone awful. And I enjoy his reviews because he's right 98% of the time, and even when he's not right he is either persuasive or amusing in the attempt.

He's deluded in thinking The Exorcist is the best film of all time, of course, or that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is actually watchable, let alone good. Otherwise, he's pretty much on the money. Jaws is better than Schindler's List, Mamma Mia was so bad it was good.

The good thing about It's Only a Movie – its central conceit is deciding, if Kermode's life were a film, who would play him and his friends – is that it's just like his radio show: opinions, anecdotes, digressions. It begins with director Werner Herzog being shot at while Kermode was interviewing him, through his Marxist university days, into his "shambles" of an early career, to today: a radio, TV and print/web star famous enough to be handbagged by Helen Mirren.

I did laugh out loud three times. The weakness of the book is that he over-shares. I didn't quite need to know so much about Piranha Women or some of his personal predicaments. A few more commas and slightly sharper editing would have made his energetic prose a bit less breathless. And the cover made the normally besuited Kermode look like a Southern redneck lumberjack with his chainsaw.

But he's still the best "woolly-headed English halfwit" critic around.

- © Fairfax NZ News