What We Did On Our Holiday (12A, 95 mins)

What We Did On Our Holiday (12A, 95 mins)

Directors: Guy Jenkin, Andy Hamilton

4 stars

Veteran comedy writers Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton have been responsible for some much-loved TV comedy over the years, including creating Drop the Dead Donkey.

Their most recent hit was the domestic sitcom Outnumbered, which their wonderful film debut What We Did On Our Holiday owes more than a passing debt to.

Indeed, the initial worry is that it's going to be little more than Outnumbered: The Movie, just with a change of families.

The similarities are immediately obvious, as we meet a suburban London family comprised of mum and dad Abi and Doug (Rosamund Pike and David Tennant) and their three young children, typically precocious types.

Doug and Abi have been arguing a lot recently and are thinking of separating, but for now they're packing up the family for a trip to Scotland for grandad's 75th birthday celebrations.

This is where the film picks up considerably with the entrance of Billy Connolly as Doug's father, Gordy.

Gordy hasn't been well, something made all the more poignant by Connolly's own recent health troubles, but he bonds with the kids as they get into adventures and get away from their bickering parents.

The title suggests a story written by a 10-year old on their return to school, and the focus is very much on the kids here.

The three young actors playing them (Emilia Jones, Bobby Smalldridge and Harriet Turnbull) are a treat, and their sometimes-scripted, sometimes off the cuff remarks are the source of consistent laughs.

Their interactions with Connolly are often at the heart of it and there's a warm-hearted approach that's hard to resist.

Some of the jokes are silly, some of them come from the adults being shown up by the kids, respectfully but irreverently, and light and playful chuckles abound.

It may not always manage to escape its televisual feel, and to be honest Pike is about the only thing resembling a proper movie star in the whole thing, but everyone is worth watching, especially the magnetic and effortlessly funny Connolly.

It's not really saying much, but it's the best role Tennant has yet found in a movie, playing more than just a stooge for a change, and Ben Miller does a very creditable Scottish accent as Doug's upwardly mobile brother.

In many ways it's not at all what it looks like it's going to be, and has the guts to follow through on most of its set-ups.

And with not very much going on plot-wise it has room to breathe, even if it's more or less a big sitcom episode than necessarily belonging on the big screen, but that becomes much less of a consideration when it's so funny and touching.

See it if you liked: The Way Way Back, Local Hero, The Inbetweeners

The Equalizer (15, 132 mins)

Director: Antoine Fuqua

3 stars

Shave half an hour off this sporadically fun but often flabby thriller and you might well have the lean and mean action machine it ought to be, instead of the overegged, cheese-inflected pudding that it sometimes is.

Based loosely on the old Edward Woodward TV show, Denzel Washington is Robert McCall, a seemingly saintly loner who works in a hardware store, never sleeps, and likes to help anyone and everyone.

But it's clear he's hiding a mysterious past, and the catalyst for stirring this up is when a young girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) is beaten up by her pimp, taking McCall into a world of Russian mobsters who want him dead.

A measured, deliberate opening is stretched to the point where we're itching for the vengeance we know is coming, and when it does it's certainly visceral and fleetingly satisfying.

We're signing up to see Washington battering everyone in sight, and even if too often all we see is the aftermath, he's a monumental presence, dead-calm and dangerous as the silent protector.

But there's an awful lot of movie padded around these bones, and The Equalizer lumbers when it should sizzle and the finale, though at times exciting, borders on the interminable.

See it if you liked: Man on Fire, Taken, Death Wish

Maps to the Stars (18, 112 mins)

Director: David Cronenberg

3 stars

Harking back to the likes of Mommie Dearest or a much darker Postcards from the Edge, this pungent Hollywood satire takes a vicious look at the town's diseased underbelly.

Delving into the miserable lives of various interconnected characters, their neuroses, problems and madness, it seems like fish-in-a-barrel stuff for a while.

There's Mia Wasikowska as a young woman wanting to work in the movie business, Julianne Moore as a washed-up actress trying to land her dream role, and a child star with a drug problem.

It becomes significantly more interesting when it starts treating them as actual people rather than the archness and name-dropping that takes up much of first third, and though you're of course never supposed to remotely care for them, it attains a certain car crash allure as it grows increasingly twisted and overblown.

See it if you liked: Cosmopolis, Magnolia, The Player

I Origins (15, 106 mins)

Director: Mike Cahill

2 stars

Michael Pitt is a scientist doing research into the evolution of the human eye with the aid of his lab assistant, Brit Marling, in this mildly sci-fi indie drama.

For a while all we're doing is watching people in white coats doing their thing in labs or listening to their philosophical conversations about science versus spirituality, and it's deathly dull and somewhat emotionless.

After any number of false starts in which the story isn't able to reveal itself, the woolly goal of what anyone actually wants is still not in sight, and Pitt doesn't quite convince as a molecular biologist.

It picks up a good deal with an intriguing development that comes well after the hour mark, but it takes so long to get to the point you might be beyond caring.

See it if you liked: Another Earth, Cold Souls, Birth