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.

Mr. Robinson Crusoe

1932 silliness

Rating: 10/20 (Dylan: 7/20)

Plot: A tough guy bets his buddies a thousand dollars that he and his dog can survive on a deserted island. He befriends a monkey, a parrot, and at least one goat and uses his ingenuity to make his short stay as comfortable as possible.

Ever want to see a monkey milk a goat? This is the movie for you! Want to see Douglas Fairbanks bounce around like an idiot juiced up on caffeine pills? This is also the movie for you! This was on some non-profit cable channel while I was at my parents, and it made Dylan and I laugh for all the wrong reasons. You get an overly enthusiastic Douglas Fairbanks (did he really transition to the talky era this poorly?) talking to all of these animals and building these sometimes-clever contraptions with unrealistic speed. You see him spend twenty minutes building a hammer, and then twenty-six island days later (that's how many days are in June, by the way, if you go by his character's calendar), he's got this entire city built. The references to Robinson Crusoe got tiresome, and this has a really lame depiction of tribe life that looks like a cross between Hawaii and Africa. Also, I'm not sure if it's because this thing hasn't been cleaned up or if the technology made it difficult to film on an island back in the early-30s, but this looked and sounded terrible. The actors all sounded like they were speaking their lines into a can while standing in a cave. I think the script must look something like this:

Douglas Fairbanks' character: Mmubua hayaba vvummbar!
Saturday: Mwey hrtung phungby.
Douglas: Phungby? Ha ha ha! Mmum pood mroth yort!

I know what the parrot was saying though. He said, "OK!" About a dozen times. Couldn't they have found a parrot with a larger vocabulary? This movie also has a scene with bananas that might be the single dumbest scene involving bananas that I've ever seen. Favorite line, spoken by Douglas Fairbanks' friends as stand on their yacht and use binoculars to watch some natives: "Oh. Mama spank." At least I think that's what the guy said.

Gooby

2009 children's horror film/possible sequel to The Shining

Rating: 5/20 (Emma: 2/20; Abbey: 1/20)

Plot: Poor little Willy's got no friends, his parents don't really pay attention to him, and to make his life even more miserable, his family is moving to a new place. And he's seeing monsters. Luckily, his childhood stuffed toy comes to life and septuples in size to hang out with him.

Biggest laugh I've had in a while: When looking up information for this movie, I saw it described on several websites as being about a boy and the bear from The Shining. And Gooby does like like the man in a bear suit in my favorite scene in The Shining which might make this the greatest movie of all time. Then again, it might represent the main problem with Gooby as a children's movie--that it's terrifying. Unless you happen to think that the main problem is that the name of the movie is Gooby. It's one of those titles I can't imagine people wanting to ask about for at a ticket window. "Two tickets to, umm, Gooby please?" I thought for sure there'd be a twist ending where it's revealed that Willy is schizophrenic. I assumed this was like an after-school special about mental illness. It's really the only way this could have made any sense at all. I figured the whole time that he would be the only person to ever see Gooby, but it didn't turn out to be that way at all. Toward the beginning of the story, he does see a CGI monster thing, the reason Gooby shows up in the first place, I think. But the man-in-a-suit Gooby and th CGI monster never interact, so I'm not real sure why that CGI monster was in this thing at all. Maybe they intended to have Gooby do battle with the CGI monster but realized that a CGI monster and a guy in a suit would look ridiculous. I couldn't believe it when I saw that this movie came out in 2009, probably because it's got the sentimentality of an 80's kiddie flick and everything it rips off comes from that era. The story's dopey, the dialogue is embarrassingly awful, and the way this plot develops would make even the men with the most cinematic intestinal fortitude lose their cookies. Gooby, by the way, eats a lot of cookies in this, sort of like E.T. with the Reese's Pieces minus the distasteful product placement. That would put Gooby a notch above E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, but at least there's not a scene in the latter where E.T. farts and then starts fanning his crotch to waft the smell in Elliot's direction. Gooby does that because that's the type of friend Gooby is. And that's the type of movie Gooby is.

And for your amusement, here's a picture of the bear from The Shining (best scene in that movie, by the way) and a picture of Gooby from Gooby (there is no best scene in that movie, by the way):

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.

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.

The Five Deadly Venoms

1978 kung-fu movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A kung-fu master laments that his former pupils of the Poison Clan have all gone bad. What do you expect when you call yourself Poison Clan though? He sends his last pupil out to find and dispose of them. Unfortunately, they're anonymous and all have unique powers. The student ventures out to find the Centipede, Snake, Lizard, Scorpion, and Toad.

A classic according to most kung-fu aficionados, this is known more for its rich, serpentine story rather than its kick-em-up thrills. When there's action, it's fun. The animal styles give you a lot of variety, and the fighting's frantically and creative. I like the characters, especially in an awesome prelude that describes their special powers--lightning quickness that makes it appear as if there are a hundred hands and feet, snake-like agility, wall climbing, invincibility, and whatever the scorpion does--but I just think there could have been so much more done with them. Still, it's a cool kung-fu flick that most fans of the genre will appreciate, and the story's solid enough to make it worth revisiting.

Alice in Wonderland

2010 movie

Rating: 13/20 (Jen: 16/20; Abbey: 15/20)

Plot: Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. Alice, now a young woman who isn't too happy about the pressures she's feeling to marry a goofy redheaded guy, returns to Wonderland and is told that she's the chosen one and will have to slay something called a Jabberwocky with a vorpal blade that goes snicker-snack. She gets help from an assortment of odd characters (a disappearing kitty, a mad hatter, a dormouse, tubby twins, a stoned caterpillar) who she should remember but doesn't. Meanwhile, Wonderland's completely gone to hell with the Red Queen making everybody's life miserable. As the frabjous day approaches, Alice is needed more and more, but she first needs to be convinced that she's the right Alice and get back to her normal size.

Maybe I should have seen this in 3-D. Maybe I should just see everything in 3-D actually. I did really like the look of Tim Burton's Wonderland, as artificial and computer-generated as it was. Even without 3-D, there was a depth to the setting with endless swirling grays in the sky, gnarled trees, cartoonish mushrooms. The computer-animated creatures--the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, et. al--were very well done, even when being ridden on. In fact, the special effects were great all around, working to keep things visually interesting even if they weren't anywhere near realistic. Unfortunately, I don't think Tim Burton adds anything of real value to the Wonderland canon. The dialogue, the characters, and the goings-on seem a bit rehashed, and the story never feels fully realized to me, just an excuse to throw some trippy visuals and nifty special effects on the screen. I really wish there would have been more playfulness in the dialogue. A lot of the whimsy and fun of the Disney cartoon and Lewis Carroll's novels is from the wordplay, and that's pushed aside to focus on a bunch of jerky action sequences and the aforementioned imagery. From the halfway point on, I lost interest more and more. I didn't like Alice very much, not even enough to look up the name of the gal who played her, but Johnny Depp does his usual fine job and Crispin Glover's also got a major part. There's a lot to like in Burton's Wonderland, but it suffers from the same problems as most of his movies, especially the remakes--it's just too much and almost disrespects the originals.

I can't believe I missed the opportunity to see Crispin Glover in 3-D, by the way.

Toy Story 3

2010 cartoon

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 17/20; Dylan: 15/20; Emma: 20/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: The mouse is getting behind on his payments to keep Walt Disney's head cryogenically frozen, and after a failed attempt at a bakesale--failed because of pre-sale rumors abounding involving Goofy and perverse activity and cupcakes--they decide it's time to wheel out Woody and Buzz and the other toys and make another Toy Story movie. They struggle to find a plot and eventually decide to just redo the one from Toy Story 2 with a few twists and a whole bunch of new characters because then they can make a lot more money with action figures, etc. "Because kids," the mouse said, "will even want toys based on characters who were only in the movie for a few seconds."

Don't get me wrong though. I loved seeing a brand new Toy Story movie, and this has to be considered one of the most successful and maybe even the best trilogy of all time. Most of the success comes from the audience already knowing and loving all these characters. Parents and their children have seen the other two Toy Stories dozens of times, so you go into this third one with Woody, Buzz, et. al. already feeling like you grew up with these toys or that they're your best friends. If they are your best friends, however, you really should go out and meet some actual people. So there's no wasted time or need for a lengthy exposition, and the previously-developed characters just slide right into the newish story. Newish instead of new, by the way, because there are quite a few parallels between this and its predecessor. The story is a little tidier than number two, and the animation is a lot better than either of the others although the toys thankfully haven't been given any kind of technological upgrade to make them look better than the very first installment of their story. But the human characters look a lot better and move a lot more naturally than in the other movies. The parts of Toy Story 3 with humans (good to see Sid again!) really couldn't have been done when the first movie came out. And the atmosphere and backgrounds are also vastly improved, creating a ton more depth than we had the first time we met these guys. When the characters are in peril in this movie, like in a genuinely frightening and intense scene where they are about to die, the background textures add to the mood. Compare that with the most frightening scene in Toy Story when Woody and Buzz are trapped in Sid's scary room, and the atmospheres in this new one blow the old stuff away. There were a lot of allusions to the first two movies, including a lot of repeated lines which sort of annoyed me, and there was also a continuation of the references to the original Star Wars trilogy. I also appreciated the references to prison escape movies with the toys' busting out of a daycare center. There was also something going on in that scene that I couldn't stop laughing at, so much that I really started feeling like a fool after a while. There are a ton of funny moments in this, but there are some pop culture references that seemed a little too easy, and I got to the point where I'd cringe whenever Barbie and Ken were on the screen. With over three hundred characters, including a nod to the wonderful My Neighbor Totoro, the screen is just filled with stuff to look at. It's a feast for the eyes. As a parent, this was a strangely emotional experience for me, but a lot of the tears seemed a little more forced in this one than in other Pixar features like Up. Very good movie, and like most Pixar movies, I look forward to seeing it again.

He Was a Quiet Man

2007 garbage

Rating: 3/20

Plot: A disgruntled, bullied office worker named Bob, egged on by his talking goldfish, tries to muster up the courage to shoot five of his co-workers and himself. Another co-worker beats him to the trigger, however, and when Bob manages to shoot him and save a life, he becomes a hero. Jack Bauer's daughter is somehow involved.

This is the type of movie where during the end credits, you realize just how much it disagreed with you and begin vomiting up the movie so that you have He Was a Quiet Man all over the floor, walls, and even the ceiling. Projectile. So not only did I have to go to all the trouble of taking this dvd out of a case, putting it in the player, hitting a button, and spending ninety minutes with this terrible piece of crap, but now I have to clean little wet chunks of Christian Slater, William H. Macy, and Elisha Cuthbert up. And William H. Macy stains! I'll probably have to repaint the entire bedroom now. And, like Pavlov's dog, I probably won't be able to walk into my bedroom without thinking of Christian Slater yelling, "I am not a spoon!" and get nauseous again. That's right. Because of He Was a Quiet Man, I will no longer be able to enjoy sexual intercourse in my bedroom. Let's look at the sins of this movie. It's got some of the worst acting I've seen in a long time. Christian Slater just sucks anyway, but at least he's not channeling Jack Nicholson in this one. This has to be the worst that William H. Macy has ever been. There's a guy who's made some solid career choices. I don't recognize any other names on the cast list and I'm trying to forget character names, but this is just stuffed with bad actors playing predictable and/or unbelievable characters. This has some really gimmicky effects (sped-up vehicles, talking fish) including the worst CGI in the history of cinema. It's a scene where Bob is imagining blowing up the building he works, and the computer effect is so bad that it really could have been "animated" using Microsoft Paint without much difference. You wouldn't believe how bad it is. There's some cheesy songs, including some written and performed by director Frank Cappello. Cappello wrote Suburban Commando (starring Hulk Hogan) and Constantine, a movie recently written about on reader Kairow's comic book movie blog. Throw in a lame montage, a goofball sexual scene with Slater and a quadriplegic, dialogue that Ed Wood probably would refuse to take credit for writing, and a twist that I'm not even sure was a twist and you've got yourself a film-school project gone embarrassingly wrong. Black comedy, Lynchian nightmare fantasy, straight drama? I don't know what the hell this is, and I really hope nobody reminds me that it exists within an hour after I've eaten.

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.

The Princess and the Frog

2009 Disney cartoon

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 16/20; Abbey: 17/20; Dylan: 10/20; Emma: 15/20)

Plot: All Tiana wants is to start her own restaurant to honor her father's dream and share her culinary talents with the people of New Orleans. She's been saving for years, coins and wadded-up bills in tin cans. Finally, she's able to purchase the property and bring her dreams to life, but the deal falls through at a masquerade party thrown by her childhood friend's family. Oh, snap! Meanwhile, a penniless prince has arrived in town and, tricked by a voodoo trickster Shadow Man with connections to the other side, has been turned into a frog. Tiana, a gal who knows her fairy tales, kisses him and immediately transforms into a frog herself. Oh, double snap! They journey in search of a way to reverse the curse while the Shadow Man tries to take over the city of New Orleans.

It's unfortunate that we didn't check this out in the theater. There was an amazing amount of color, color that just exploded on my tiny television screen, and I really wish I could have seen them bigger. Color is really what The Princess and the Frog is all about. There's a great local color with vibrant New Orleans and the surrounding bayou as the backdrops. And there are really colorful characters including a bunch of Cajan fireflies, a trumpet-blowing alligator, a blind old witchy woman, and others. The main characters are also lively, both with their personality and their movements. At times, it does seem like the characters are detached from the background, but for the most part, I like how they mingle with the setting, especially during the musical numbers. Lots of musical numbers, mostly, of course, penned by the ubiquitous Randy Newman. But really, who else could have done the soundtrack for this one? It's great work, too. The characters leap off the screen during the song and dance numbers, all engulfed with swirling kaleidoscopic imagery. Black princess Tiana is a worthy addition to the Disney princess canon, and her prince, though bordering on obnoxious at times, is a great dynamic character. And John Goodman's in it, and even yells out "This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!" a few times. But my favorite character is the bad guy, the flamboyantly evil Dr. Facilier, aka the Shadow Man. I love how his shadow has a mind of its own, and when he conjures up the evil spirits, who also appear as shadows, the animation gets wonderfully surreal. My expectations weren't incredibly high for this, probably a combination of me not being a princess and Disney not making things happen lately. But even though a lot of the ideas seem borrowed from other Disney animated features, it's all so beautifully executed and becomes something fresh, a jazzy fairy tale that's a feast for the eyes and ears.