Moderately Confused

This review contains minor spoilers.

Imagine this: you have just escaped from jail for attempting to rob a bank, and you desperately need to keep low for a while. What do you next? If your answer is "foolishly attempt to steal a sixty million dollar gem", Moderately Confused is for you. But whatever you do, DON'T expect this to be like Slightly Confused. Put it this way, Slightly Confused only really revolved around one character, the Bank Robber, along with a couple of other side characters. Moderately Confused focuses on ten characters, and the jokes heavily rely on their personalities. However, do not let this faze you. If you let yourself get engrossed into it, the outcome will be what you expect.

The experience at the First City Bank has obviously made the Bank Robber more wise. The first thing he works out is that he needs a team and so the first quarter of the movie naturally introduces the five characters who are involved in the heist alongside the Bank Robber. Although the movie does not set off from the best of starts, being slow-paced, it does build a great foundation for the rest of the movie, the second half in particular. From the sleepy Martin to the cunning Shady to the hardcore hacker Codec, you are bound to warm up to one of them, which makes the heist all the more enjoyable. For me, it has got to be Martin, as I found myself laughing at him a fair bit. If you are expecting Moderately Confused to be based around just one group of robbers, you are wrong there. James Quicksell also gives big parts to the two policemen, Oliver and Joe. And if you want another fresh character, look no further than Karen. There really is plenty of unique characters to watch and, backed up with some very impressive voice acting (especially from Dustin Guest and Jaymond) these personalities can compete with those found in SATANIK. Awesome stuff.

Once you get to know the characters, you should find yourself in fits of laughter frequently, and there really were some memorable moments, most notably the cameo (well, kinda) from Daniel Martin. What I unfortunately didn't like much was the slowness of some of the scenes, for example, the slowness when Queen was played in the background. I felt Moderately Confused was also slightly let down by a couple of anti-clamatic scenes, such as the conclusion of the heist of the gem in the museum, which was so wonderfully built up with a perfectly chosen backing tune, and the conclusion to the whole robbery itself when the police finally catch up. I guess I was expecting TOO much from Moderately Confused.

But back to the many good points, and James Quicksell has obviously improved dramatically as a director with better scenery and animations. He also deserves credit for picking out some greatly suitable music, probably one of the biggest improvements compared to Slightly Confused. And the dialogue too is wonderful; much time has clearly been spent trying to make it as good as possible, and boy was it worth it! Yet if someone came up to me and asked "would this be one of the contenders for your favourite movie of the year" I would say "no". Alas, its inconsistency in pace bugged me a little too much at times, and the movie seemed to drag on for longer than the actual runtime of eighty-four minutes.

If, however, you can adapt to this, and if you have an hour and a half to spare, I would defintely recommend Moderately Confused. It only just misses out to be called a classic in my books. I suppose it did let me down slightly, considering I loved the teasers and the trailer and the fact that it was at the top of my wanted list. But don't let that stop you from seeing a great movie. It certainly was not a waste of time, worthy of the eighty-four minutes of my life.

Score: 89/100