We asked four specialists to review current films which touch on their areas of expertise. Would real rats eat ratatouille? Should you leave your kids at Daddy Day Camp?
THE MOVIES
The Nanny Diaries stars Scarlett Johansson as a New York nanny and Laura Linney as the child's neglectful mother
Daddy Day Camp stars Cuba Gooding Jr as the overseer of a children's summer camp where his own son is a pupil/inmate
THE REVIEWER
David Coleman, psychologist and presenter of the RTÉ TV series Families in Trouble
These are both pretty dreadful films. The more enjoyable of the two is The Nanny Diaries, which is just about passable. Annie (Scarlett Johansson) is a recent graduate who should be heading off to a job in a bank but accidentally falls into nannying.
Deceit runs through the film: Annie lies to her mother about her job; Annie's employer, known only as Mrs X (Laura Linney) lies to her child; Mrs X's husband is having an affair; Annie the nanny advises the child to keep secrets from his parents, such as encouraging him to eat peanut butter straight from the jar and not tell his mother.
In a real childcare situation, it's never a good idea to knowingly set up a deceit. In terms of child protection, it's never good to talk about keeping secrets, as that's where a lot of badness and problems can come from.
The film is not a good ad for parents who choose nannies. Its message is that parents are selfish and self-interested and just want lots of "me time". There are mothers like that, of course, but essentially this is a stereotype, as most parents take great care choosing a good nanny and have little choice about doing so.
The Nanny Diaries captures quite well the power of attachment. The little boy becomes more attached to the nanny than to his mother. A child can build up a primary attachment to a carer, and there is always an onus on any parent to build up a relationship with their child. It's also a fair description of how some nannies are treated, ie as mothers' personal assistants who are forced to do all the crappy jobs for them.
As for Daddy Day Camp, it doesn't show any kind of decent childcare situations and its portrayal of dads is just scary. The film opens with kids running wild and fathers sitting by, smiling beatifically. It feeds the myth that dads will let kids do whatever they want, which of course is unfair on fathers.
I wouldn't look for any childcare tips in this film, although there is one valid theme. The father played by Cuba Gooding Jr is too protective of his child, always telling him not to do things, not to climb trees, etc because it's dangerous. This can disempower a child. There has to be a balance between letting kids try things and make mistakes, and stopping them doing stuff that is dangerous.
THE MOVIE
Ratatouille, Pixar's animated comedy, is set in the kitchen of a Parisian restaurant. The hero is a rat named Remy
THE REVIEWER
Tom Doorley, restaurant critic with The Irish Times Magazine
I enjoyed every moment of Ratatouille, which is more than can be said of some of the younger members of the audience. This is fast-paced, funny animation but the story is quite grown-up. I think under-10s will be underwhelmed.
One of my favourite themes within the film is the redemption of vain, vindictive restaurant critic Anton Ego, which is achieved largely through good, unpretentious bistro food as against Michelin-starred pictures on plates.
Ego (voiced by Peter O'Toole) is everybody's caricature of a restaurant critic: spoilt, self-regarding, power-mad, Oxbridge-toned and vindictive. The problem (although not in the context of the movie) is that such critics don't exist in the modern world. At least, not with all those flaws rolled into one amazingly slender human being.
As someone with a deep-seated rat phobia, I have to say that the Pixar animators capture perfectly the sinuous and sinister movements of these rodents. In one scene, set in a rubbish bin, one of rats looks uncannily like the average resident of my compost bin (which I always approach with a great deal of noise).
The kitchen scenes are largely accurate, right down to the paucity of females and the villainous head chef's manner of addressing his underlings, but I don't think any head waiter in a famous restaurant would be quite as laid-back as the one at Gusteau's. A sous-chef with a startling resemblance to Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck is a bonus, although I doubt it's intentional.
The key message of Ratatouille is refreshing - that anyone can cook. Anton Ego's ultimate acceptance of this is part of his redemption. But there's also an acknowledgement that good cooking takes time, effort and experience.
I'm not one to speak up in defence of rats, but they are depicted in Ratatouille as loving garbage (Remy, our hero, being the only exception in this respect). Rats are actually very picky eaters and always prefer fresh food to rubbish. This is one of the many characteristics that they don't share with the average Irish or American human being.
THE MOVIE
Sicko, Michael Moore's documentary on the US health-care system.
THE REVIEWER
Mark Hamilton, an Irish A&E doctor based in Manchester. He presents the RTÉ TV series How Long Will You Live?
Prior to starting university, I spent some time with the paramedic service in the States and saw, first hand, how deadly it could be to be poor with no insurance. This film deepened my disgust by showing that even having insurance may still not be enough to guarantee the treatment you need.
I was appalled to see the common practice of health insurance companies actively seeking to deny necessary treatments in order to increase profits. I've seen that happen with car or house insurance but, although that may be distressing and financially devastating, no-one dies because of it.
Moore is a slick documentary maker - I've seen most of his work - so I watched this a few times to see if I was being too drawn in by the sentimentality he uses to such great effect. I still came away with the feeling that the film is a fair depiction of what goes on in the "Land of the Free".
It seems that there is a great fear of socialised medicine in the US, so Michael then visits several other countries to see for himself how things work, including Canada, France, Cuba and the UK. Having worked in the NHS in the UK for many years, I think his depiction was pretty honest. He did, however, only cover the best bits and left out the downsides, such as long waiting lists. Saying that, though, every system has its problems and when compared to healthcare in America, these nationalised systems seem reassuringly excellent on many levels.
Healthcare costs a lot of money. This film, I think, quite clearly shows that whoever pays and how they pay, it should never interfere with the fundamental right of every citizen to the treatment they need, when they need it.
So many cases are shown in Sicko, of greed coming before need, that I find it impossible to argue that Moore is manipulating a few extreme examples for his own agenda. When a system allows, for example, a 22-year-old woman to be denied treatment for cancer because she's too young, or a child dies because she has to be transferred to a hospital run by her insurance company, then that system is wrong.
THE MOVIE
Rendition charts the CIA's kidnap and torture of an Egyptian-American businessman, and his wife's search for him
THE REVIEWER
Tom Clonan, Irish Times security analyst and a media lecturer at the Dublin Institute of Technology. He has visited Guantanamo Bay on behalf of The Irish Times
Anwar El-Ibrahimi is "rendered" or "disappeared" when his plane touches down at Washington. From there, he enters a sinister underworld inhabited by, among others, a CIA analyst (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) and the agency's anti-terrorism chief (Meryl Streep).
The Orwellian parallel universe that Ibrahimi enters - through a simple airport doorway - is well depicted. The secret "airport within an airport" recreated in Rendition mirrors those used by the CIA at airports such as Fort Lauderdale International to ferry detainees and shadowy VIPs to Guantanamo Bay. As portrayed in the film, "rendition" can be achieved in seconds even in a busy, crowded public space.
El-Ibrahimi is later "un-personed" in 21st-century fashion when the CIA confiscate his passport and have his details erased from the airline's database. He is hooded, manacled and ferried by jet to an un-named north African country, where he is tortured by electric shock and simulated drowning or "waterboarding" - specific forms of torture that have been reported by real victims of the rendition process.
Rendition also captures the look and atmosphere of a Middle Eastern torture chamber. Irish soldiers have seen plenty of them in Syria, Lebanon and Israeli-occupied territories.
What Rendition does not portray is the number of victims of the process who die during torture. Nor does it portray the rape of detainees - men, women and children - a practice routinely used by intelligence services in the Middle East to brutalise and traumatise their charges.
The film occasionally strays from the reality of 21st-century espionage. In one scene, Streep's character calls Gyllenhaal's on his mobile for a discussion on torture. Such a conversation would have taken place over secure means and using code.
El-Ibrahimi is eventually released because the CIA analyst suffers a crisis of conscience and because of the lobbying of his American wife (Reese Witherspoon). In reality, few torturers seem to have crises of conscience and few victims of rendition have a well-connected, white American spouse. Many simply stay "disappeared" and many, presumably, do not survive torture.
