Are you a lobotomised teenager? Then Need for Speed is for you

OK, Need for Speed, if we must, and we must because I sat through it (running time: 130 minutes) and do not see why you should be spared.

Need for Speed is based on a video game and here is the plot synopsis: ‘Vroooooooooom! Vroooooooooom! Vrm, vrm, vrm…VROOOOOOOOOOM!’ And it’s the sort of ‘Vroooooooooom!’ which vibrates behind your forehead, making it feel as if it may blow it off, while also making it hard to doze or zone out mentally, which is a pain. And here is the plot in more detail, from which you will also not be spared: Aaron Paul plays a good guy who drives customised cars very fast, while Dominic Cooper plays the bad guy who drives customised cars very fast and in the end the good guy who drives very fast must race the bad guy who drives very fast, like the outcome is in any doubt, or we care. The totty? That’s Imogen Poots wearing Katie Price-style blonde hair extensions — this film does womankind no favours — and as for its moral compass, it does not point in any direction you or I might recognise. We are still, for example, meant to think of the good guy as the good guy even though he drag races through busy streets and drives into oncoming traffic and pushes school buses off the road and basically endangers life without a care wherever he goes. Ask yourself this question: am I a lobotomised teenage boy? If not, I’m thinking there is nothing in this film for you. I’ve worked out it probably took you only a minute, at most, to get from the top of this review to here, as it’s not like I use big words or anything, so that’s 129 minutes you now owe me, just so you know.

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Julie Burchill

Will I ever pee again?

OK, having dealt with Need For Speed, we can move on to The Rocket, which is not based on a video game and which does not feature souped-up Mustangs and which does not come with a violently thumping sound-track or any ‘Vrooooooooms’, although there is an ox, who sometimes goes ‘moo’.