Hold on a cotton-pickin' minute.
Roman Polanski? How can he have directed a movie in New York?
Surely, that would have led to the NYPD swooping on the film set.
Ah, he didn't. It was all done in Paris. The set was a phoney - much like the characters in this adaption of the French play Le Dieu De Carnage.
Funny, isn't it, how we are meant to watch this and think of Polanksi the genius, as opposed to Polanski the child molester.
True, the offence against a 13-year-old was 34 years ago but he has been on the run from the American legal system ever since and most right-minded people would think he should be snubbed by the studios until he has his moment in court.
Polanski is now 78 so it would appear that is never likely to happen.
Yet, he is feted by the likes of Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet who star in this comedy drama about two sets of parents who agree to meet after their children have been in an outside-of-school fracas.
Carnage is strange in that it is superbly directed, brilliantly acted and cleverly scripted but didn't make Mrs W or myself laugh out loud once.
This has left me wondering whether we are just low-brow.
After all, we giggled like hyenas at The Muppets.
I guess it is the fact that all of the characters are so utterly full of themselves which is off-putting, not to mention the longest vomit scene of the year so far.
Winslet and the superb Christoph Waltz (the Austrian's English is just staggering) are parents of an 11-year-old who has thwacked a schoolmate in the face with a stick.
The victim's parents are played by Foster and John C Reilly.
It all starts of amiably enough with fault agreed and a further meeting being arranged but once cake and drink are offered the get-together degenerates.
Interestingly, the allies and enemies aren't always in the teams they started.
When the pressure is on, it is intriguing how the genders gravitate towards each other.
As said, these are top line actors giving it their best - although I wondered that Foster was overdoing her comedy wide-eyedness (at one point I thought she had been taking lessons from Eddie Murphy).
The problem was that while we appreciated it we just didn't laugh.
Laughs: as said, none. I'd reckon other guffawing audiences must have been on a different intellectual plane.
Jumps: none
Vomit: An extended scene in which chunks are projected.
Nudity: none
Rating: 5/10
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