Arthur Christmas

Posted on November 22, 2011 at 6:12 pm

A sleigh pulled by reindeer? That’s so five decades ago. With the population topping seven billion and the Duggars getting ready to welcome baby number 20, Santa (Jim Broadbent) needs all the support modern technology can provide. He may not be on Facebook or Twitter, but he has swapped the sleigh for a state-of-the-art spaceship with a cloaking device, and he has a battalion of elves with the precision technology of Seal Team Six and nifty hand-held devices with naughty/nice indicators. Santa’s head of ops is his burly son, Steve (Hugh Laurie), who barks orders from mission control in camo fatigues and a high and tight haircut. Meanwhile, his bumbling but kind-hearted brother, Arthur Christmas (James McAvoy), sits by himself and answers letters from children old school-style, one at a time by hand, wearing a fuzzy Christmas sweater decorated with candy canes and reindeer-faced slippers.

The British Aardman studio is beloved for claymation films like the “Wallace and Gromit” series, characterized by off-beat characters literally showing the fingerprints of the humans who created them and a refreshing unwillingness to focus-group their stories to make them bland and culturally non-specific. While this one has some accommodation to American sensibilities — surely a little girl from Cornwall would address her letter to Father Christmas rather than Santa — the Aardman sensibility has thankfully been transferred to the digital world without looking sterile or boringly hyper-real. Steve’s goatee is shaped like a Christmas tree, an elf has a pierced eyebrow, and a reindeer has a plastic cone on his head. The settings, especially on the North Pole, are deliciously intricate and the characters understatedly quirky. I longed for a pause button to explore the witty details, especially the Enigma code-inspired analog machines Arthur and his grandfather use to send messages.

Santa’s family is endearingly flawed and familiarly dysfunctional. He loves his sons and knows he should retire, but he just cannot give up the spotlight, even in playing a Christmas board game with his family. His father, Grandsanta (Bill Nighy) longs for a chance to show he can still take the starring role. I was especially taken with Mrs. Christmas (Imelda Staunton), whose comfy demeanor hides some unexpected skills. Steve is a numbers guy who is comfortable with a delivery record that is almost perfect and he is angry and frustrated at not being promoted to become the new Santa. Clumsy, anxious Arthur knows that no child should be disappointed on Christmas morning. So when one gift is mistakenly left behind, it will be up to Arthur to save the day. With Santa and Steve in bed and mission control shut down, Grandsanta, Arthur, and a spirited stowaway wrapping elf (Ashley Jenson as Bryony) set off in the sleigh to deliver that last gift, a pink twinkle bicycle, to a little girl in Cornwall before sunrise.

From the brisk Justin Bieber video that opens the story to the warm-hearted happy ending, this is a holiday charmer that shows us how imperfect families can still feel just right.

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3D Animation Holidays

Happy Feet 2

Posted on November 19, 2011 at 6:23 pm

I loved the original Happy Feet, but five years later only liked this sequel. It’s still a lot of fun to see dancing, singing penguins, but the meandering storyline never catches hold.

In the original, a small Emperor penguin named Mumbles (Elijah Wood) could not sing like the others but loved to dance and ultimately found a way to be true to himself and be a part of the community. Toward the end, the movie took a darker turn by acknowledging the impact of climate change on the Antarctic’s pristine world. This movie seems to have adopted the same template with a few random variations. Once again, there is a mash-up of music from a variety of genres (now a more familiar idea in this post “Glee”-era) and a small penguin who does not fit in, but this movie begins with the environmental crisis as the penguins see something — and a color — that is new to their black and white world. The ice is beginning to melt and underneath is green grass.

Wood returns as Mumbles, with rock star Pink replacing the late Brittany Murphy as his spouse, Gloria. Their son son Erik (Ava Acres) is a misfit like his father. He cannot sing or dance and after a humiliating failure in front of the whole penguin tribe, he runs away from home, followed by two of his friends, Atticus and Boadicia (charmingly voiced by Benjamin Flores Jr. and Meibh Campbell). As Mumbles did in the first film, they meet up with some Adelies penguins led by the wild, sweater-wearing Lovelace (Robin Williams), who has a new friend, Sven (voice superstar Hank Azaria), a penguin with the ability to fly — and a secret about his identity. Mumbles goes after the penguin chicks, but on the way home, they find that the ice has broken apart so that their community is cut off. They cannot get back and their friends and family cannot get food. They will need the help of the Andelies and some other friends to rescue the Emperor penguins and find a new home. Meanwhile, though the penguins have no idea, a couple of microscopic krill named Will and Bill (voices of Brad Pitt and Matt Damon) are on an adventure of their own, trying to move beyond the hive mind of their species to evolve into something more independent.

The music choices are delightful but too often just frustrating snippets. The relationship between Mumbles and Erik never comes to life. The segments about Will and Bill are far more engaging (the movie I’d really like to see is the Pitt/Damon recording studio riffs), but they are not integrated enough to the rest of the storyline until a Cindy Lou Who moment at the end. It’s nice to make a movie about how everything is connected but in this movie, it does not really hold together.

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A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

Posted on November 5, 2011 at 6:56 pm

I was pretty sure that the line between being lame and making fun of being lame was fairly distinct but in this film Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) push it so hard it almost dissolves. We’ve all come a long way since the original film came out in 2004 and charmed everyone with the unpretentiousness of its protagonists’ aspirations (they just wanted some of those scrumptious square burgers from White Castle) and its own (silly stoner fun). The sequel in 2008 brought in a politics by taking our heroes to Guantanamo prison and a meeting with the President. And now they’re back.

Harold has moved on. He is married to the beautiful Maria (Paula Garces) and has a beautiful home and a fancy job on Wall Street. He even has an obsequious assistant.

What he doesn’t have is the respect of his father-in-law (the scary Danny Trejo) or his old friend. Harold hangs out with a dweeby new friend, now, and his name is Todd (Tom Lennon). He and Kumar have gone their separate ways and never see each other.

Kumar has been kicked out of med school for failing a drug test. His girlfriend has left him. All he has left is a weed habit and a dweeby new friend, Adrian (Amir Blumenfeld). He and Harold have nothing in common anymore. But when he brings Harold a package that was delivered to their old apartment and accidentally sets Harold’s father-in-law’s prize Christmas tree on fire, they team up again to find a replacement and go on a journey that will include drugs, nudity, a claymation interlude, a song and dance from Neil Patrick Harris (worth the price of admission as a demented version of himself, singing and dancing and explaining that the gay thing is just a ruse to help him get more girls), more drugs including marijuana smoke in 3D that floats out into the theater, 3D jokes, hot nude nuns, Russian gangsters, and a drug-taking baby.

It hasn’t quite jumped the doobie yet, but the shtick is getting tired. Things that were funny in a college kid are not so funny when they get older and Kumar’s pudgy slacker-hood just seems sad. It’s as though they made a check-list of ways to be outrageous instead of letting the humor come naturally from the situations. When they and their characters were new to us we enjoyed the sense of discovery. But when they make jokes about Penn’s service in the White House and Harris is no longer a has-been but, thanks in part to the first movie, an Entertainment Weekly cover/J.J. Abrams musical-starring success, it feels phoned in and phony.

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3D Comedy Series/Sequel

Puss In Boots

Posted on October 27, 2011 at 6:00 pm

The popular feline bandit of the “Shrek” series gets his own feature film, one that is less of a fractured fairy tale and more of a swashbuckler. Antonio Banderas returns as the voice of Puss in Boots, the cat with the heart of a lion — and the eyes of a cute little kitty.

This is a prequel, set in a fanciful Spanish countryside, showing us Puss’ life as an orphan, his early friendship with Humpty Dumpty, the betrayal that led him to become an outlaw, and his efforts to find redemption.

“What can I say? I was a bad kitty,” he tells us as he bids farewell to a pretty feline whose name he can’t quite remember. He is “a fugitive from the law, searching for a way to clear my name.” He walks into a bar and silences the snickering caballeros, telling them, “You don’t want to make the cat angry.” He is looking for a way to score but he has his own set of values: no stealing from churches or orphans.

Magic beans, on the other hand, are another story, especially if they have already been stolen. And it turns out that the magic beans have special significance to Puss and to his old friend.

Puss makes a new friend, too, a hooded fellow thief who wants the same beans. At first, in a charmingly designed cat hide-out, they compete against each other with an hilarious dance-off. But then the thief removes the hood and is revealed to be the notorious Softpaw, a brilliant and beautiful female thief (voice of Banderas’ “Desperado” co-star Salma Heyek). And they are joined by Humpty, though their history makes it difficult for Puss to trust him.

The beans are magic, and the beanstalk takes them to a cloud-land where they find the goose that lays golden eggs. Or, as Softpaw puts it, “It’s a gold pooper; we’re taking it.” Will this be a chance for Puss to right past wrongs? Or will it just make him an even badder kitty?

Less visually striking, less funny, and less heart-warming than the Shrek movies and with completely unnecessary 3D, it is a step down for the series. The kitty hide-out and dance-off are well handled and there are some funny moments, but the death of a major character is too jarring for younger children. Puss is a better supporting player than a star.

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More Disney/Pixar Classics Coming to Theaters in 3D

Posted on October 4, 2011 at 8:00 pm

The success of “Lion King 3D” has led Disney/Pixar to move forward with theatrical 3D releases for some of its other family favorites. Look for Beauty and the Beast in 3D, finally, in theaters January 13th, 2012. My favorite Pixar film, Finding Nemo, will be out on September 14th, 2012, and Pixar’s Monsters Inc. in theaters on January 18th, 2013, which is just 6 months before the release of the forthcoming prequel “Monsters University,” that summer. And The Little Mermaid is also getting a 3D release on September 13th, 2013.

Is there a Disney classic you’d like to see in 3D?

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3D For the Whole Family