Rango

2011 animated Western comedy

Rating: 16/20 (Emma: ?/20; Abbey: 13/20)

Plot: A Chameleon with No Name (well, actually he does have a name) is accidentally abandoned by his human family. The desert he winds up in is not the safest of places, and the Wild West style animal town called Dirt he eventually stumbles into is probably even less safe. He exaggerates his prowess, lucks his way through a fight with a troublesome bird, and ends up the new sheriff of Dirt. He tries to get to the bottom of the town's lack of water.

Well, I like quirky animated movies with talking animals and spaghetti Westerns, and I seem to like a lot of what Gore Verbinski does (the underrated Mousehunt, The Weather Man featuring our summer star Nicolas Cage, that first Pirate movie). Previews for this made it look really good, too. So I wasn't entirely surprised that this is actually really good. It's really got the whole spaghetti vibe down with the wonderfully withered town of Dirt and the ugliest collection of characters you're likely to see. Some grizzled voice work (Ned Beatty should be in every animated movie; it should be a new law or something) gives them personality and color, and although there's not really all that much character development with any of them other than the titular chameleon, they work really well to give the setting the texture it needs. I really like the animation in this. There's a great blend of natural and realistic settings with these strange looking cartoonish animals, and the action scenes have this frenetic energy but still somehow make sense. There are lots of nods, predictably, to Western greats, but this also has a Hunter S. Thompson spotting which I thought was an awesome touch. That, and the protagonist is supposedly modeled after Don Knotts, probably meaning that I should go ahead and give this a Don Knotts bonus point. Oh, and similar to the movie Keoma that I just reviewed, there's an owl mariachi band in this that sings a bunch of songs about what's going on with the plot and how Rango is probably going to die. They work a lot better than the drunken pair in Keoma though. This works as an action movie, a kids movie (actually, maybe not), a Western, a comedy. It's not flawless--the plot's a little sloppy--but it's a wonderful hour-and-a-half of entertainment and definitely something I'd not mind watching over and over if any of my kids had actually liked it. My rating would probably go up, too.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

1977 mass murderer animated biopic

Rating: 16/20

Plot: All his neighbors said that he seemed so normal, but young Christopher Robin had more than his share of dark secrets. It all started with an unhealthy attachment to a stuffed bear which he called Pooh. Pooh was purchased with pants, but Christopher Robin, one afternoon when playtime got a little out of hand, removed and set them on fire along with his own. That should have served as the first warning for his parents. Classmates would laugh at Robin and his "silly old bear," and his elementary school teachers would say, "Christopher Robin, I've told you before to keep your Pooh out of here!" His peers would laugh and point, and eventually something inside of young Christopher snapped. He assembled a small army of deadly stuffed animals and embarked on a murderous rampage of revenge during which many of the classmates who ridiculed him would wind up eviscerated. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh chronicles his early life.

Disney does English kiddie lit really well, previously evidenced by their extremely erotic version of Mary Poppins. Now there's a movie that makes me horny just thinking about it. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh fails to make me horny (at least not anymore), but I still think it's an underrated Disney classic. It's obviously animated with a limited budget, but I think that adds to the charm. It's simple and extremely innocent, just like its source material. A.A. Milne's stories are great on their own, so Disney didn't really need to sprinkle too much of its magic all over this and overly complicate things (see the cgi Winnie the Pooh animated television series). The voice work is wonderful, especially Sterling Holloway as the titular bear and Paul Winchell as Tigger. After the feature, there was a little documentary where you get to see Winchell doing the Tigger voice. I'll admit that that footage DID make me a little horny. I really like how Tigger says rubber. "Their legs are made out of rubba!" Oh, and Ron Howard's brother Clint does the voice of Roo in this. I also like Sebastian Cabot's playful narration. The narrator and characters talk to one another which, even as a kid, I thought was kind of neat. This movie also frequently reminds the viewer that it's from a book, using turning animated pages and words cleverly. You get to see Pooh hopping on words or flying on a balloon from one page to the next. There's some music, simple childish music that kind of gets stuck in your head. I'm not sure how I feel about the Pink Huffalumps on Parade sequence that was straight out of drunk Dumbo's subconscious or the added gopher character who just seems extraneous. I asked Jen, "Why's that thing in this? He's not in the book." As if on cue, the character said, "I'm not in the book." I guess that's kind of funny.

Dang it. Why did I have to mention Mary Poppins? Now I won't be able to get anything done all day.

Lilo and Stitch

2002 Disney flick

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A destructive extraterrestrial escapes a death sentence and winds up in Hawaii. He hides at a dog pound where he's adopted by Lilo, a lonely girl living a troubled life with her older sister. As they try to prove to a social worker (an African American!) that their living conditions are acceptable, strange alien thugs try to figure out a way to capture Stitch.

I never loved this one despite appreciating Disney's efforts to work outside of the folklore canon and come up with an original story like with the dreadful Treasure Planet, The Emperor's New Groove (or is this based on a folk tale?), the dreadful Home on the Range, and the dreadfully dull Brother Bear. Oh, and the dreadful Atlantis. Maybe they should have just stuck to princess movies. Or finally adapt Baba Yaga to the big screen! The humor in this doesn't work for me, and the music, instead of going for their flashy theatrical musical thing they'd been unleashing with inconsistent results, seems to be written in to pander to tweens. I'm not sure I've ever actually seen a Hawaiian. If they look like these characters, I'd probably remember. I like the Stitch character fine, probably because he reminds me of my penis for reasons I won't get into here. I've got to keep this PG-13 after all. This hammers a message about acceptance and unconditional love and family into your noggin until you're ready to puke blood, but the story and characters are colorful and fun enough to keep it entertaining. It's not upper-echelon Disney, but the kids will probably like it. Unfortunately, it might have the undesired residual effect of causing youngsters to jump on the furniture, chew on banisters, and tear out the pages of library books.

If I start a "Do a version of Baba Yaga, Disney!" petition, will you sign it? If I can get everybody on this blog to sign, I can mail that son of a bitch off with five and a half names on it!

Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie #13: The Ant Bully

2006 animated ant movie

Rating: 9/20 (Emma: 9/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Poor Lucas is a bullied little kid who takes out his frustrations on a colony of ants in his front yard, squirt-gunning the hell out of them and being generally menacing. Nicolas Cage ant uses a potion to shrink Lucas down to ant size so that he can learn a lesson about teamwork and being nice. As he adapts to ant culture, he has to figure out a way to save the anthill from an exterminator he hired a few days before he started living in it. Oh, snap!

Nicolas Cage, Bruce Campbell, and Ricardo Montalban? And the movie still is barely half as good as the other two CGI-ant movies? Nothing grabs you in this one. The animation is mediocre, the story is predictable, and the protagonist isn't easy to root for. He's really, probably like all children, unlikable. Like so many modern animated classics, this very clumsily attempts to appeal to adults and children, and I don't really see how it would be completely satisfying to either. There are a lot of big little action sequences with a thwomping score that was probably lifted from another animated movie, but all they managed to do was make my eyes hurt a little bit. I got bored with this very quickly. Cage, as expected, does fine voice work, but it was a waste of his time as he could have been working on a sequel to Vampire's Kiss--Vampire's Kiss II: Watch Out, Roaches, Because There's a New Vampire in Town. This is a completely soulless, headache-inducing affair that actually made me want to either a) get the old magnifying glass out and kill some ants myself or b) give the kid a few doors down an atomic wedgie and make him eat grass. Ricardo Montalban, by the way, needs more work. I think I'd rather watch those commercials where he talks about soft Corinthean leather over and over again than watch this movie again.

Happy Feet

2006 Best Animated Feature

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Mumble is a retarded penguin because his father, Elvis the Penguin, dropped him when he was in the egg. And before you start, I'm well aware that "retarded" is considered politically incorrect, and I apologize for its use here. I don't like the word much either, and I almost never use it. I'm doing my best to get some blog traffic, so maybe throwing the R-word around will get some people involved in those advocacy groups who are always ticked off with Lady Gaga or Lebron James to accidentally find their way to my humble little blog. And I'm going to do my very best to make this one of my best-written reviews ever so that once the advocates for people like Lady Gaga and Lebron James get here, they'll read this and be hooked. And then, boom! Readers! Anyway, back to Mumble. While all the other penguins use their singing voices and over-produced pop songs to find the perfect mate, something that Morgan Freeman told me is actual legitimate scientific information, Mumble can only tap dance. He's an outcast, and some of the other penguins, each inexplicably with different accents, blame him for the lack of fish. Mumble runs off with some Hispanic penguins to find some aliens who might be responsible for the famine.

First off, who's the audience for a PG-rated movie like this? I can't imagine this appealing to most adults despite the modernization of some pop tunes from their childhood (like the Artist Who's Now Known As Prince Again) to make them sound like annoying modern pop tunes. And I'd think the plot would be too confusing for children, and there are some pretty intense scenes that might make it inappropriate for younger viewers. I did watch it with Sophie, however, and she seemed to fall asleep just fine during it. Plus, I don't normally think about Prince as a good soundtrack choice for a kiddie flick. It wouldn't surprise me if the Dreamworks people decided to throw "Darling Nikki" in their next feature though.

Secondly, I'm just going to say it: I'm sick of penguins. I've seen them marching while Morgan Freeman tells me all about it. I've seen those annoying little guys in Madagascar and in the television spin-off that my girls used to annoy me with all the time. And although it's extremely unlikely that somebody will force me to watch the upcoming Jim Carrey Mr. Popper's Penguins movie, its existence still makes me tremble and weep. Don't get me wrong. If I'm at a zoo, I enjoy seeing the sad little penguins in their glass box as much as the next guy, mostly because it makes me feel superior as a human being and gives me a chance to wallow in my awesomeness, so to speak. I'm the guy at the penguin exhibit who's torn his shirt off like Hulk Hogan and flaunts his stuff, flexing and beating my chest and trash-talking the birds. "Emperor, my ass! Check out these nipples! Do you birds even HAVE nipples? Booyah!" And to answer your question: Yes, I have been forcefully removed from zoos. Unfairly, I might add. I've seen a giant turtle having an orgasm at that same zoo, and you're tell me that my nipples are inappropriate for children's eyes? What's wrong with this world? Back to the penguins--these animals are animated very well (more on that below), but all penguins kind of look the same (I know. . .borderline penguin racism there!) and there's not enough variety in their movements to make them interesting for the duration of this too-long movie.

The animation is second to none. The Antarctic setting and all of the animals look terrific. There's a great realism to these characters and their surroundings, and if they weren't talking in weird accents and performing choreographed dance routines, you'd almost mistake them for the real thing. But really, what's the point? I think I like my animated movies to look animated. I'm not sure cute penguins would have made this a better movie but it might have made the characters more likable. I didn't like a single one of these penguins--not the three or four voiced by Robin Williams, not the protagonist voiced by one of those Hobbits, especially not his parents, not his girlfriend. None of them. They just aren't likable, and the disjointed adventure that Mumble goes on is predictable and bland. A few of those aforementioned intense action sequences make little sense scientifically and only work to clash with the realistic look of the movie.

Cars actually should have beat this for Best Animated Picture. Or Monster House. There are things that annoy me about both of those movies, but the onslaught of pop music and black and white dance choreography drove me bonkers. It was like a more-polished Dreamworks movie with a story that I couldn't care about. And very very loud. There's a nice message in this movie that's hammered into you like you're a baby seal being clubbed to death by whoever hilariously clubs baby seals to death (again, the right search might bring anti-seal-clubbing advocates this way), but after so many penguin movies, I'm not sure I'm ready to keep this particular bird alive anyway.

Baby seal and retarded people advocates, Lady Gaga fans, and anti-racism and anti-nipple people: Don't forget to subscribe/follow my blog for more brilliantly-written reviews just like this one! Boom!

Heavy Traffic

1973 cartoon for adults

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Michael Corleone (why does that name seem familiar?) lives in a too-tiny apartment in New York City with his parents. When he's not working on his pinball wizard skills, he spends his time huddled over a desk sketching the humans he's interacted with on the city streets, including his parents. He's an underground comic, and that's what they do. He befriends an African American prostitute.

I don't know. I definitely felt a little dirty after watching this. Heavy Traffic is the kind of cartoon you have to wash off yourself if you see it. I guess that's an appropriate feeling when you watch an X-rated cartoon though. This is Ralph Bakshi, the guy who did Fritz the Cat, those Lord of the Rings cartoons, and the terribly boring Wizards. It's more similar to the raunchiness of Fritz than the fantasy stuff though unless there's some scene in Lord of the Rings where Frodo exposes himself to a goblin that I'm forgetting about. It really makes Bakshi seem misanthropic. He draws all these oddly-proportioned grotesque exaggerations of pimps, hookers, bums, and con artists. It's those seedy characters you can't really find in a metropolitan area unless you find a rock and flip it over. The animation style's straight from the unsavory 1970s for the most part, characters who move around like they're a member of Fat Albert's posse or are on their way to sing a School House Rocks type song instructing children on how to dispose of a prostitute's corpse, how to know when you're a dope fiend, or where to hide your pornography. There's also a fair amount of experimentation with a mix of live action and the animation. Seeing Bakshi's completely unnatural characters walking against photographs of the city streets does look pretty cool actually, and I liked some of that 70's funkadelica when the animator's shapes and colors go completely nuts. This is a little uneven and wears out its welcome before its seventy-six minutes or so are up, but it's not a bad little cult cartoon flick.

Heavy Metal

1981 science fiction cartoon

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A space sphere of throbbing green light disintegrates an astronaut and then tells his daughter a few stories. It rocks pretty hard!

I'm not the audience for this. A white suburban teenager who is angry with his parents for no real reason and who can't wait to bust out of his pants, a guy with a goat's head in his closet and a bunch of missing socks--he's the audience. This is an episodic collection of animated sci-fi shenanigans, definitely a hit 'n' miss affair, but at least half of them contain the imagery you'd expect to see in a fantasy geek's wettest dream. All the cartoon women are gifted mammararily and plot developments give plenty of excuses to allow the nipples to make appearances. There's even a scene with robot-on-human sex if you're into that sort of thing. I know you are which is why I'm mentioning it. I'm not a fan of the music although it was good to hear Devo and even see a really cool alien depiction of them. I liked the weird-looking creatures that inhabited these stories, almost like cast-offs from the Mos Eisley cantina, and I really liked the opening shots of an astronaut driving his hot rod home after a hard day's work. Air Force zombies, a Hulkish figure with the great name of Hanover Fiste, a bit of sci-fi noir with ugly animation to match an ugly Robert Crumb-esque New York, and chunks of the otherwise-dull climactic story featured on the above poster are high points. The stories are animated in slightly different styles which gives it some variety, but after a while, enough's enough. You get frustrated that it doesn't make a lot of sense, and you don't even care about seeing any more animated nudity because you've already shot your wad. So to speak. There's enough here to make a teenage boy say the word badass multiple times by whatever the middle schooler equivalent of a water cooler, so I guess you almost have to look at it as a success.

The Little Mermaid

1989 Disney cartoon

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: 18/20; Abbey: 19/20; Sophie: ?/20)

Plot: Spoiled, whiny, horny teenage mermaid Ariel has an obsession with the human world, especially after saving the life of a hunky but otherwise nondescript prince, a guy who could very well be the same prince who's in all the other Disney prince and princess movies. And frankly, that makes him a womanizer. Boy, don't try to front. I-I know just-just what you are-are-are. Lollipop, must mistake me--you're the sucker to think I would be a victim not another. But I digress. Ariel's mad at her dad, the king of the ocean, and against the wishes of her Jiminy Lobster, she gets some bippity-boppity-boo help from a maleficent but extremely hot sea witch. She's given temporary legs and has three days to get a smooch from the nondescript prince or the sea witch gets to turn her into a withered piece of poop with eyes. The catch? She doesn't get to use her voice! Oh, snap!

I believe this is regarded as a Disney modern classic, but it's really pretty. . .what's the word? Meeee-diiiii-ocre. It's the Disney people going through the motions. The animation is. . .what's the word? Reeeeeeally flaaaaaat. A possible exception might be the "Under the Sea" sequence, but that musical number really should have been a lot better than it was. I'm not sure there's a single lovable character in this. In fact, they're all kind of. . .how do you say it? Annoyyyyying stock cardboard cut-ooooooouuuuuuts. Ariel is just a cute little bundle of irresponsibility and a really dangerous role-model for little girls. Like most folk tales, the ending of this would have been more satisfying if Ariel was punished for her stupidity. A final scene with Ursula pointing and laughing and the lobster saying, "I tried to warn her, King Triton, but she just wouldn't listen to me, probably because I'm a lobster!" with Ariel turned into a really sorrowful piece of poop with eyes would have been perfect. Ariel was irritating, and I definitely liked the character more after they decided to shut her up for about a half hour. Also irritating: all the sex in this one. I believe this is the movie where Disney animators gave one of the human characters an erection. That's disturbing if you notice it, but the thinly-veiled references to sex are especially bothersome. This is really a movie about the sexual awakening of a young girl. Phallic sharks attack her, and it's hard to ignore the subtext there. Then she falls in love with Prince Handsome. Why? Well, she sees him, first from far off and then up close. It's all physical with Ariel. I can't remember if the line "I want to jump his bones, Scuttle" is actually in the movie or not, but it might as well have been. She loses her fins, gets herself a vagina (not sure if mermaids have those), and longs for sexy time with her man. There's some weird sexual tension going on with Ursula and Triton, too, and I'm not sure what that's all about. I'm sure if a Little Mermaid prequel was ever made (No, Disney people, I am not asking for this!), you'd find out that Triton and Ursula used to be an item back in fish college or something. Ursula is one of Disney's lamer baddies, by the way, but she does get the best song in the movie. Ariel's "What's the Word?" song makes me sick to my stomach. I've not thought about this from a feminist perspective, but it seems they'd have a problem with one of the movie's messages--women should just shut up and be there to look pretty. It's really a shame that the great Buddy Hackett ended his movie career voicing Scuttle, actually in the sequel to this, a movie that I can almost guarantee will never be on this blog.

Saucy!

Despicable Me

2010 cartoon

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: 16/20; Dylan: 14/20; Emma: 16/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Oddly-shaped supervillain Gru is losing his touch. He's finding it increasingly difficult to get funding through the Bank of Evil for his evil-doings, and the neophyte criminal mastermind Vector, a guy who managed to steal the a pyramid of Giza, is stealing his thunder. Gru decides to use a shrink ray gun to shrink and then steal the moon. Unfortunately, Vector snags his shrink gun and Gru is having a difficult time retrieving it. When he finds out that his nemesis has a weakness for cookies sold by a triad of orphans, he decides to adopt the children and use them to get his shrink gun back.

Newcomer Illumination Studios combines a hilarious script, some wonderful visual humor, lovable characters, great voice talents, and some good old-fashioned cartoony funk to create a very good first full-length feature. It's strange because I really didn't think I was enjoying this very much, but the characters and story grew on me quickly. I wasn't sure what Steve Carell was doing with his voice, but that grew on me, too. Without the central character working, this wouldn't have succeeded at all, but Gru has the right combination of dim-witted and criminal genius, submerged emotional stuff and genuine mean-spiritedness. I enjoyed watching him do his evil thang throughout the story and bought his predictable transformation. The narrative is paced well with the right amounts of action, humor, and emotion, but there were some moments that seemed extraneous and unnecessary. The music's a little hit or miss, too. My biggest gripe would be with the Minions, the yellow pill-shaped guys. They're there, I suppose, to add to the cuteness and general hilarity, but a lot of the time, they're just kind of obnoxious. Overall, however, this is some fun animation, and everybody in my family enjoyed it. Their exact words, when asked:

Jen: It was fun.
Emma: It was fun.
Abbey: It was funny.
Dylan: It was fun.

They're helpful.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

1937 cartoon

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A lunatic flees from another lunatic, breaks into the home of some mentally-challenged little people, throws a party with a bunch of filthy animals, and finally attacks the owners of the home with soap. The other lunatic locates her and tricks her into eating a poisoned apple by cleverly saying, "Here, eat this apple." She dies. [Spoiler Alert!] Luckily, the antidote seems to be the saliva of the notorious philanderer Prince Charming, a cat known for his sloppy smooches and wandering hands.

I don't want to trash a classic, but I really don't like this movie very much at all. When you compare it with other early Disney animated features (Pinocchio, Fantasia, even Dumbo), it just doesn't seem as good. Yeah, I know this was the first, and I know when you compare Snow White to modern cheapo straight-to-video animated crappings, it's way ahead of its time and very impressive for 19-freakin'-37. But with about thirty-five years of Disney animated features under my belt, I think the animation in this is hard to watch. The characters in the foreground (and they're always in the foreground) don't mesh with the backgrounds. The backgrounds look completely flat and lifeless. Snow White has unnatural physical features and almost no chest. I want breasts on my Disney princesses. I do like how the dwarves are animated; they've got character and move in a lively way. The dwarf (Wait a second--do they actually like being called that? Is that as politically incorrect as using the dreaded M-word?) movements combined with their individual personalities are where the Disney creative spirit is most evident. I always like how Disney animates animals, but the good animal stuff in this is merely foreshadowing for better stuff that would come later. I also really don't like some of the voices, especially the titular princess. The witch is fine though. The songs? "Someday My Prince Will Come" is a classic although the randy double entendre is uncalled for. The "Heigh Ho" song (Ho? C'mon, Disney!) has always been one of my favorites. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, for me at least, will always be one of those classics that is more important than it is fun to watch. In my likely blasphemous opinion, I think the Disney people should animate a remake. Snow White could look almost identical (with boobs), the dwarves and witch(es) could look exactly the same, and modern technology and better voice work could help make the story live up to the classic status.

Another idea--Disney should hire me as a creative consultant. I wouldn't even demand an outrageous salary or anything. Walt's head--if you're reading this, give me a call.

Megamind

2010 Dreamworks movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: The titular big-blue-headed supervillain, after a life living in the shadow of his heroic arch-nemesis Metro Man, finally defeats his foe and wins control over Metro City. But the criminal mastermind, despite also sort of getting the girl, soon gets bored without the yin to his yang and creates a new superhero to fight against. When the new superhero turns out to be corrupt, Megamind, for the first time, has to try to save the city instead of destroy it.

I never look forward to animated features from the Dreamworks people and wasn't all that excited when somebody at school picked this for our students to watch on their party day. However, the onslaught of pop culture references and terrible modern music [Why can't the Dreamworks people just hire themselves a Randy Newman?] didn't distract too much from a cute little story that turned superhero/supervillain conventions on their heads and toyed with some of the genre's cliches. I liked the characters and thought the voice talents brought some vibrancy to them. I'm not Will Ferrell's biggest fan, but he's good with this sort of thing and shows some voice versatility as the dynamic protagonist runs through a range of emotions and takes some time to poke fun at Marlon Brando. I liked Jonah Hill and David Cross, too, although the former's got that voice that makes me think, "Who is that guy? I know that voice!" without really knowing that voice and the latter just makes me wish he was making Arrested Development instead of messing around with this kind of thing. Tina Fey is also in this, and you know that Tina Fey wouldn't waste her time with something that wasn't intelligently written. I do like the premise, and although it doesn't quite pack an emotional punch, the adult humor works pretty well without ever being nasty. And I liked the whole good-needing-evil thematic thing and the change our "hero" undergoes, something that wouldn't have worked if his character wasn't so well drawn out. I was most impressed with the animation. The people aren't animated in a way that improves on what Pixar did with The Incredibles years ago, but there's a lot of neat, creative details in the settings. The animators were really showing off with textures and reflections in this one, and I liked how they used color motifs for the central characters. This isn't a movie I'd care to watch over and over again, but I'm actually kind of glad I did see it once.

Still, it amazes me that the people at my school aren't asking for my opinion on what movies the youth of America should be watching. I have my own blog! But for whatever reason, when I bring up classic 1920's comedies that the students would enjoy, I'm ignored. Maybe it's because they know I gave Beauty and the Beast a 14/20. I wonder if it would help if replaced the soundtracks to the silent comedies with some Lady Gogol or Justin Beamer hits?

Planet 51

2009 pedestrian cartoon

Rating: 9/20 (Dylan: 6/20; Emma: 8/20; Abbey: 15/20)

Plot: It's an alien invasion! Only instead of the little green guys invading our world, it's Earthlings doing the invading. American Chuck Baker, a less-than-heroic astronaut hero, comes in peace, but he isn't exactly given a welcoming reception and has to find a way to retrieve his confiscated space ship and escape the titular planet.

OK, I'm officially tired of these CGI things that try to appeal to both children and adults and end up failing to appeal to either. The forced pop culture references in this (Thanks, Shrek) are cringe worthy, and the characters are as flat or personality-free as characters can get. The aliens, not helped by the fact that they all looked the same (apologies if that sounds racist), were indistinguishable, and the 1950's Americana influence for the setting was an idea that probably worked on paper a lot better than it ended up on the screen. It didn't take very long at all for me to completely lose interest in everything that was going on here. But my biggest problem, something that bothered me on multiple levels--a penis joke. "That's a funny place for an antenna." C'mon, Ilion Animation Studios. That's not necessary and unfunny on any planet.

A Town Called Panic

2009 animated chaos

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 15/20; Dylan: 12/20; Emma: 16/20; Abbey: 10/20)

Plot: Cowboy and Indian have forgotten to get Horse a birthday present and decide to build him a barbecue. A computer (user) error causes them to order fifty million bricks instead of fifty. This sets off a chain of cause-and-effects that involve what I think are sea monkeys, a stolen tractor, a falsely arrested farmer, missed music classes, a giant robot penguin, and a trip to the center of the earth.

Quick whining: Why couldn't this have been dubbed? I'm not stupid. I don't need all foreign movies that I watch to be dubbed. I don't mind reading. But there was so much happening on the screen, and I wanted to pay attention to it all.

If you love Gumby even half as much as I do, you need to check this out immediately. The humor's quirky, the stop-motion is clever but rudimentary, and the plot makes virtually no sense. This is a kiddie flick for the kiddies with ADHD, and these characters go all over the place during these misadventures. Gotta love the imaginative spirit of the writer/directors (Stephanie Aubier and Vincent Patar), a couple filmmakers who either have a good grasp on how the average child's mind works or are wacky on the junk. Don't watch this if you're looking for something with depth or heart. This ain't Pixar. This is simply a breezy bit of insanity with some fun characters and lots of very humorous episodes. I imagine it's the sort of thing that could irritate or even infuriate about the same amount of people that it could amuse. There are a few episodes of the television show on Youtube if you're interested. In fact, at about 80 minutes, this would probably be a test for the average adult's endurance like a lot of shorts blown up into features. But seriously--Gumby fans would love this.

Toy Story

1995 movie

Rating: 20/20 (Jen: 20/20; Abbey: 19/20)

Plot: Cowboy Woody is Andy's favorite toy. Andy goes everywhere and does everything with Woody--helps him stop antagonistic potato heads with diabolical schemes, throws him around, repeatedly smacks his groin on a stair railing. Woody and the other toys are happy. Until the threatening arrival of a new spaceman toy, Buzz Lightyear. Wait a second. The characters' names are Woody and Buzz? That seems kind of dirty.

Go ahead and try to argue with me that this isn't a 20/20. Go ahead. I dare you, readers. An impressive start to Pixar's reign of delight with terrific "new" animation (Jen and I saw this in the theater without the one child we had; I was mesmerized) and wonderful characters. The Pixar peeps hit a home run right away with a story that has their unique brand of humor and heart and creative spirit and depth. The often funny and exciting and occasionally touching and (surprisingly) human story's aided by a lively score from the ubiquitous Randy Newman. The voice talent, especially stars Tom Hanks and Tim Allen who were not Pixar's first choices, are great, adding real personalities to the characters. This is not my favorite Pixar movie, and when you've watched it over a thousand times (bad parents that we are, we let Dylan watch it over and over again after it came out on video), you notice some flaws, mostly continuity errors. For example, Andy must live in a tower or something because I'm pretty sure he's got windows on every wall in his room at some point in the movie. The "You're flying!" moment still gives me chills almost every time. Movie magic!

Note: If you care to read it, I do have an alternate "Andy is psychotic" reading of the movie. In it, the toys are of course not actually alive, Sid is actually Andy, Andy's mother is chopped up and stuffed in a toy box, and Pizza Planet is the cafeteria at an asylum.

My Neighbor Totoro

1988 animated feature

Rating: 18/20 (Emma: 14/20; Abbey: 15/20)

Plot: A professor and his two daughters move into an old country house to be close to the hospital where the matriarch of the family is convalescing after a long illness. A neighbor boy warns that the house is haunted, and the girls do spot some creepy dust mite-ish spirits before they quickly scurry away. Once the girls feel more at home, they aren't seen anymore. They also meet a big fluffy bunny thing named Totoro, their neighbor, and a bus/cat hybrid. The girls try to adapt to a house without a mother in it.

Delightful! This has got to be one of the most accurate depictions of children's feelings that I've ever seen. Or maybe it's an accurate look at difficult moments from the point of view of children. My favorite thing about this is how it doesn't focus on the negative stuff that's going on, but on the details that take the characters away from that negative stuff. The titular Totoro is simple but iconic, and I can't imagine anybody watching this movie without wanting to go for a ride in the cat-bus. The animation is beautiful, and the story, although honestly there's not much of a story here, drifts along so softly that you just want to cuddle up with it. There's the best adjective I can use to describe My Neighbor Totoro actually--cuddly. I love everything about this movie, including the songs used for the credits. Cuddly and delightful!

$9.99

2008 stop-animated feature

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A bunch of clay people living in an apartment building in Sydney contemplate their lives.

I suppose I wanted to like this more than I actually did. The characters and their experiences scratch the surface of philosophical ideas but refuse to penetrate, and I demand penetration in my animated movies. Speaking of penetration, there is a clay figure sex scene and some nudity if that's your bag. Who we kidding? We both know it is! This flashes from character to character pretty rapidly, too quickly for me to really connect with or care about what's going on with any of them. The animation's really good although the characters are at times so unattractive that they don't even look human. They also move funny. But there are some nifty effects with bottlecaps, water, and other movements that make this visually interesting. Some quirky imaginative moments including the angel on the cover and some very tiny people as well as a couple surprises at the end make this narratively interesting as well, but it's not really enough to make me completely thrilled that I spent about ninety minutes with these characters. The philosophical jabs failed to knock me out.

Stuart Little

1999 creepy CGI-animal movie

Rating: 10/20 (Emma: 13/20 [She watched only the last half.]; Abbey: 18/20; Sophie: ?/20)

Plot: The Little family decide that the annoying son they have isn't enough and that they need another. So they head over to the adoption agency and adopt a talking mouse. Big brother isn't happy, and their cat is even less happy. They plot Stuart's doom which, unfortunately, never happens.

For whatever reason, we own a VHS copy of this, and Sophie, for whatever reasons, has been carrying it around with her. So I popped it in for her. Here's what she has to say:

l; ,kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk xckmm u ybta,/.d //sl 3.3m .swaaaaEERTRTGGTFFFR 6 6,,,,,,,,M,M,M,MMMMM,

i'M NOT SURE i HAVE A LOT TO ADD TO THAT, BUT i WAS SURPRISED BY A COUPLE THINGS i EITHER DIDN'T REMEMBER OR NEVER KNEW. oNE, dR. hOUSE IS IN THIS MOVIE. hE PLAYS THE DAD AND USES TOO MANY FACIAL EXPRESSIONS. tWO, DO YOU KNOW WHO WROTE THE SCREENPLAY TO sTUART lITTLE? m. nIGHT sHYAMALAN! wHAT THE HECK? sO IT'S GOT A LOUSY SCREENPLAY, NATCH, BUT OTHER THAN THAT, IT SUFFERS FROM A BAD CHILD ACTOR (jONATHAN lIPNICKI WHO LOOKS IDENTICAL TO THE KID IN a cHRISTMAS sTORY) AND THE GENERALLY-INTOLERABLE nATHAN lANE WHO VOICES A CAT THAT LOOKS LIKE A GIRL. mICHAEL j. fOX IS ok IN AS THE TITULAR MOUSE, BUT THE CHARACTER ITSELF IS WAY TOO ANIMATED. i HATE WHEN ANIMATED CHARACTERS OVERACT, AND sTUART lITTLE IS DEFINITELY GUILTY OF THAT. bUT MY MAIN PROBLEM WITH THIS MOVIE IS THE CAR THAT sTUART lITTLE DRIVES AROUND. i CAN DEAL WITH THE MOUSE DRIVING THE CAR AROUND, AND i CAN EVEN ACCEPT THE WORKING HEADLIGHTS. bUT A WORKING RADIO? cOME ON!

aDD THIS TO THE LIST OF m. nIGHT sHYAMALAN SHENANIGANS.

Mary and Max

2009 cartoon

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 16/20)

Plot: Lonely 8-year-old Australian Mary befriends lonely autistic Jewish New Yorker Max after randomly pointing to his name in a directory and writing him a letter. They have the Noblets and a love of chocolate in common, and apparently, that's enough. They're pen pals for twenty years.

So there's a glut of animated movies these days--the traditionally-animated, the computer-generated stuff, other styles like that disturbing rotoscope stuff used in The Waking Life and those commercials. My favorite, without a doubt, is claymation, and since Mary and Max is a beautiful example of that technique, you're probably going to wonder if there's some bias. Probably. However, I did watch this twice just to make sure. What I noticed the second time--there certainly is a lot of farting in this movie. So if you're a fan of both claymation and farting (I consider myself an aficionado of gassy emissions humor), you'll probably love this. It's more than just farting though. This is one of those types of animated flicks that captures humanity much better than actual actors can. Max tells us that humans are "complicated souls," and I just love how simply Adam Elliot's little movie describes the key to surviving in a really ugly world with some really ugly people--find somebody beautiful to cling to. The claymation is stunning and enhances the storytelling. The settings are stark, bringing the focus to the two characters. Mary's Australia is colorful but bleak, littered and scabbed and occasionally dangerous. Max's is bleaker because it's mostly without color, just splashes of red to interrupt the grays and darker grays. His New York is as grotesque as the big city in The Triplets of Belleville and humorously almost vacant. There's a homeless guy, a woman who zips by on a scooter a few times, and a punk rocker who reappears, but the New York streets are otherwise empty. Their worlds have ugly and mean in common, but their relationship, although borderline creepy/inappropriate, makes them livable. Mary and Max is insanely funny, filled with ideas that seem torn from Roald Dahl's notebooks and quirky Amelie-esque narration and tangents. Watching this a second time, I noticed a lot of funny little details. The movie is also very touching. There are holes in each of the characters' biographies, but you really get to know them in this intensely intimate way, and you feel their ups and downs deeply. I also appreciated the very realistic and touching portrayal of Aspergers. This is a beautiful looking and beautifully-constructed little movie that further supports my belief that 2009 was the best year for animated movies. As always, I've put almost no thought into that belief. I don't have to put much thought into whether I love this movie or not though.

My favorite scene has a mime in it.

One more 2009 animated feature to watch, the French A Town Called Panic that looks like it could be a religious experience.

A Bug's Life

1998 Seven Samurai remake

Rating: 16/20 (Abbey: 19/20)

Plot: Mean grasshoppers threaten a colony of ants after clumsy Flik dumps the food they collected to keep the bullies happy. The lead grasshopper, the cleverly-named Hopper, doubles the order and gives the ants until the last leaf falls to collect. Flik is sent away to find some warrior bugs, but he brings back circus bugs instead. Together, they come up with a plan to rid themselves of their grasshopper enemies.

I love the nod to Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven here although if you count the inarticulate Tuck and Roll, you've actually got nine bugs that come to help the ants. This movie has a little trouble getting started since few of the ants really have any character. The exception would be the protagonist voiced by Kid in the Hall Dave Foley, but even Flik has to grow on you a little bit. Once Flik gets to the big city, the story, as well as the animation and the action, picks up. The circus bugs and P.T. Flea (The Empire Strikes Back's John Ratzenberger, Pixar regular) give the film funk and flavor, and as soon as they're introduced, the puns, some of them very bad, start flying so rapidly that you'll wish you had a fly swatter. There are three terrific action sequences in this although the climactic battle scene that takes place at night might be a little too intense. A Bug's Life is a funny movie, but, uncharacteristically for Pixar movies, a few of the jokes are a little on the cheap side. Still, A Bug's Life is stuffed with creative ideas, fun characters (Kevin Spacey's Hopper is a great villain), lively Randy Newman (of "Short People" fame) music, and terrific animation. I also really appreciate the messages behind the cute little bug story. There are lessons about noncomformity, the power of the imagination, facing up to bullies, and reaching goals despite your size. I'll always have enough of a sweet spot for Toy Story to love it a little more than this one, but it's hard to watch this and not think of it as a step up for Pixar.

Ponyo

2008 fairy tale

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 14/20; Dylan: 5/20; Emma: 12/20; Abbey: 15/20)

Plot: An animated version of the trippiest episode of The Golden Girls. Dorothy, Blanche, Sophia, and Rose are caught shoplifting make-up from a Walgreens and spend the night in prison. They meet a drug dealer named Ponyo behind bars, and once they're all back on the outside, the girls after paying a small fine and promising to never do it again and Ponyo on a technicality, the girls score some hallucinogens which they ingest by a dumpster. Ponyo says, "Enjoy the dope, ya old bags," before riding off on a scooter. Dorothy, Blanche, Sophia, and Rose begin to hallucinate. Blanche mistakes Rose for a scorpion and stabs her seventy-four times, later claiming that it was in self-defense. Dorothy walks into the sea, mistaking herself for a mermaid, and, because she's not really a mermaid, drowns. Sophia flees, eventually winding up in Tokyo. Ponyo is never heard from again.

I just don't get the logic of Miyazaki's worlds. The world these characters inhabit doesn't obey any of the laws that hold the real world together, and the narrative progression doesn't always make complete sense. Plot holes? More like plot canyons. You'll walk away from Ponyo with something that almost looks like a completed puzzle, but then you'll check your pockets and find fifteen (maybe sixteen) more pieces that you didn't realize you had. And how did the puzzle pieces get in your pocket anyway? You didn't put them there. It must have been an evil wizard, you figure, and then you laugh at yourself because there's no such thing as evil wizards. I don't try to completely understand any of these Ghibli studio movies, at least the first time I watch them. I just let the evil wizards in through the crevices and permit them to tickle me. As with other Miyazaki cartoons, there are some environmental themes, lovely animation, and surreal touches. And like the others, it seems to be told from the perspective of a child, almost to the point where you feel like you're missing things as an adult or even peeking in on a world you're not necessarily supposed to peek in on. The settings are beautiful, especially the unnatural underwater scenes filled with creatures (and colors) that don't really exist. I also liked most of the characters although I was never sure what was going on with Ponyo's father or the grumpy old woman. And I really like the anthropomorphizing of the water during the tsunami scene. I have to go now because an evil wizard is going to try to hide my car keys.