Mr. Peabody & Sherman

Posted on March 6, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Jay Ward’s irresistibly daffy cartoons of the early 1960’s were charming and witty, with a post-modern meta wink at the fourth wall, wacky puns, and jokes that kids would suddenly remember and understand years later. This reboot is smarmy, overblown, dumbed down, and off-kilter. Who thinks it is a good idea to have a movie for children about time travel begin with a trip to the French revolution and the guillotine?

Cartoonist Ted Key, best known for the Hazel character played by Shirley Booth in the television sitcom, came up with the super-genius dog, Mr. Peabody, inventor of the WABAC machine, and his boy Sherman, for Ward’s “Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.” In each episode, the duo would go back in time and somehow help a historical character solve a problem. In this computer-animated, 3D, full-length feature version, the wit of the original devolves into bathroom humor and slapstick. If the poster slogan is a doggie potty joke (“He makes his mark on history”), it is not a good sign.

As in the original, Mr. Peabody (“Modern Family’s” Ty Burrell) knows everything. He’s a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who advises world leaders and makes a mean cocktail. In one of the movie’s highlights, he is challenged to play musical instruments ranging from a flamenco guitar to a didgeridoo, and performs flawlessly. He has invented a WABAC machine to take Sherman back in time, where they have encountered a cake-loving Marie Antoinette, with Mr. P led to the guillotine, and an unhappy Mona Lisa (Lake Bell), refusing to smile for Leonardo da Vinci (Stanley Tucci).

He has an adopted son, Sherman (Max Charles), who attends a fancy private school, where a girl named Penny (“Modern Family’s” Ariel Winter) gets angry when Sherman corrects her answer about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, explaining that it never really happened. After a sloppy misuse of the term “sarcastic,” she insults Sherman in the lunchroom, calling him a dog because he has a dog for a father. They get into a fight, and Sherman bites her arm. Mr. Peabody is called to the principal’s office, where Ms. Grunion (Allison Janney), a representative from Child Protective Services, tells him Sherman will be removed from the home if he is not an appropriate parent.

Mr. Peabody invites Penny and her parents and Ms. Grunion over for dinner to straighten things out. Sherman shows Penny the WABAC machine that Mr. Peabody invented to take them back in time, and soon the two kids find themselves in ancient Egypt, where Penny becomes engaged to the young King Tut, until she finds out what that entrails, I mean entails (the bad pun thing is contagious–parents be warned). Soon they are zipping around through history, meeting up with Agamemnon (Patrick Warburton, hilarious as always, despite an Oedipus joke) and soaring over Renaissance Florence in one of da Vinci’s flying machines.

The time travel plot gets bogged down in time-space continuum anomaly mumbo jumbo. Then there are the father-son issues. Mr. Peabody, who wants his son to call him Mr. Peabody, has a problem with the l-word. Ms. Grunion’s blustery bullying and threats to remove Sherman from his home will make some families uncomfortable. It should also make them uncomfortable that the movie appears to portray kidnapping a woman as a romantic gesture that should make her instantly fall in love. Jokes about Oedipus and Bill Clinton are particularly disappointing. Warburton’s dry delivery and some good scenery and action sequences can’t make up for the fact that this movie is a disappointing come-down that completely misses the charm and humor of the original.

Parents should know that this movie has a lot of potty humor, some crude jokes, cartoon-style peril and action including a guillotine and a taser, a character is presumed dead but later shown to have survived, a woman is captured as a romantic gesture, and child protection services challenges an adoption and attempts to remove a child from his home.

Family discussion: If you could go back to any time in history, what would it be? Who would you want to meet? Why was Penny so mean?

If you like this, try: The original series and the other Jay Ward classics like “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” “Fractured Fairy Tales,” and “Dudley Do-right.”

Trailer–Transformers: Age of Extinction with Mark Wahlberg

Posted on March 5, 2014 at 11:05 pm

300: Rise of an Empire

Posted on March 5, 2014 at 10:52 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong sustained sequences of stylized bloody violence throughout, a sex scene, nudity and some language
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Wine
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant very graphic peril and war-time violence with many graphic and disturbing images and sad deaths
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	March 7, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00BEJL6Q8

eva-green-as-artemisia-in-300-rise-of-an-empire — Copyright Warner Brothers 2014

Here’s a new term: this movie is neither a sequel nor a prequel to 300, the story of the 300 Spartans who died battling the vastly greater army of the Persians. This is a “side-quel,” a “meanwhile” story about what was going on in a sea battle led by Spartan’s rivals, the Athenians. While “300” was based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller, itself based on historic events in ancient Greece, this side-quel was written at the same time as Miller’s still-uncompleted follow-up, to be called “Xerxes.”

We get a bit more backstory this time, too. In a previous battle, Athens’ great warrior Themistokles (hunky Sullivan Stapleton) killed the Persian king. His furious son, Xerxes (returning Rodrigo Santoro) traded his humanity for godlike powers to get his revenge by invading Greece. The leader of the Persian forces is the even-more-furious Artemisia (Eva Green), who can kiss the lips on the head she has just severed, enjoying the kiss just slightly less than the kill. She is tougher than any of her generals, more lethal than any of her soldiers, and even hungrier for inflicting desolation on Greece than her king. And she has the kind of fearlessness only found in those who have nothing left to lose and who will never win enough to feel that they have succeeded.

Themistokles needs to get the support of the resolutely independent city-states if they are to hold off the far greater Persian forces. He knows that his men have heart and dedication, but they are not trained warriors like the Spartans. I could say more about the story, but let’s face it — like the first film, this is about abs, swords, and lots of blood spurting in artistic slo-mo, drenching the screen.

The primary differences are the absence of Gerard Butler and the shift from battles on land to battles on water. We feel Butler’s loss, as he brought a bit more to the original in terms of acting and managed to give his character some depth and personality in the midst of the carnage. But that works for the story, as the death of his character Leonidas is felt deeply in Sparta. The only thing that stands out from the carnage, though, is Green, whose Artemisia cranks up the cray-cray as one of the most evil-relishing villainesses since Cruella De Vil. There’s a sizzling sex-and-fight scene (hmmm, Green did something very similar in “Dark Shadows“) that is way over the top of whatever point over the top used to be. Green has a blast striding around casting laser beams of hatred at everyone, and wipes everyone else in the cast off the screen more thoroughly than her character does to to the “farmers, sculptors, and poets”-turned soldiers of Athens.

Parents should know that this film has constant very intense, graphic, and bloody violence with many battles, swords, fire, drowning, executions, rapes, disturbing images, nudity, sexual references and situations, and some strong language.

Family discussion: What are the biggest differences between the Greeks and the Persians? Do we think about war differently today?

If you like this, try: “300” and “Gladiator”

Non-Stop

Posted on February 27, 2014 at 6:00 pm

I’ve got nothing against action movies that are dumb fun (see last week’s review of 3 Days to Kill). My bar is pretty low. I don’t ask them to make sense. But “Non-Stop” sinks to a level of ridiculousness that harshes the buzz from even a top-notch cast and engaging set-up. I never thought I’d say this, but if Liam Neeson wants to appear in an yearly middle-aged action movie to combat the doldrums of winter, maybe he should consider “Taken 3.” Or “Snakes on a Plane 2.”

Neeson plays Bill Marks, an ex-cop-turned air marshall with issues. We meet him in the airport parking lot, taking a drink, arguing with his boss, and looking seedy and shaky. Outside the airport taking a last smoke, he is distracted, not hearing a request for a light, and inside the airport he is curt with other travelers. Once on board the plane to London, he admits to his seatmate, Jen (Julianne Moore), that he is very tense during take-off, but fine once the plane is in the air. Once they air airborne, he goes into the lavatory and puts duct tape on the smoke detector so he can have another cigarette.

Back in his seat, he receives a text on the secure federal network. It says that if $150 million is not transferred to a bank account, every twenty minutes someone on the plane will die. The sender seems to know all about him. Bill has to figure out if the threat is real and who it is coming from.

Thankfully, the movie avoids the obvious “if you don’t know why that well-known actor is in this movie, he’s the bad guy” syndrome. There’s a lot of bench strength in the “that guy looks familiar” non-star supporting cast, with outstanding character performers and up-and-coming actors like Scoot McNairy (“12 Years a Slave,” “Argo”), Corey Stoll (“Midnight in Paris,” “House of Cards”), Nate Parker (“Arbitrage”), Michelle Dockery (“Downton Abbey”), Luptia Nyong’o (“12 Years a Slave”), Linus Roache (“Law and Order: SVU”), and Omar Metwally (“Harry’s Law”). Every one of them takes the unforgiving material of the storyline further than it could possibly be expected to go, most of them giving us reasons to doubt/believe/doubt/believe whatever they are saying so nicely that they almost make it possible for us to ignore the increasingly dumber twists of what I will loosely refer to as the plot. They make the shifting alliances hold our interest even as the storyline veers out of control. The twists and turns of the who-dun-it and what-did-he-or-she-do-and-how are not as dumb as the decision to have Marks, for example, stop in the middle of a dire, every-second-counts moment to tell everyone on the plan a sad story about why he is so tortured. And then there’s the moment when the cabin loses air pressure just in time to float a gun into Marks’ hand.

An airplane movie should take advantage of its locked-room setting and inherent danger. But this one seems to miss the point. Constricted space and the limits on getting dangerous materials through the TSA checkpoint should make the fight scenes more interesting, but they are unimaginatively staged by director Jaume Collet-Serra. Marks’ instability is another limitation should also add an additional layer of uncertainty, but it is handled so inconsistently that it breaks the tension. Finally, so much is piled into the last fifteen minutes that it feels like an unsuccessful attempt to get us to forget how little sense it makes. We don’t ask for much from movies like this but the minimum is that you should get all the way to the car before you start saying, “Wait a minute….” This one depends on such a pile-up of preposterousness that even these actors can’t land it safely.

Parents should know that this movie’s themes concern terrorism and hijacking, fights, guns, bomb, intense peril. Some characters are injured and killed, and the movie includes a sexual situation, brief strong language including gay slur, drugs, and alcohol abuse.

Family discussion: What was the villain’s real motive? If you suspected the wrong person, how did the movie mislead you?

If you like this, try: “Air Force One” and “Red Eye”

Related Tags:

Action/Adventure Drama Thriller

3 Days to Kill

Posted on February 20, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Kevin Costner is back, big time, with five scheduled releases this year. It’s only February, and this is his second big spies-and-shoot-outs action film of 2014, following Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. This one, from writer Luc Besson and director McG (“Charlie’s Angels”) seems inspired by Liam Neeson’s annual series of middle-aged action films (“Taken,” “Taken 2,” next week’s “Non-Stop”). This will not go down as an especially memorable entry in the filmography of Costner or Besson, but it is a big improvement over Besson’s previous middle-aged star action film, From Paris With Love, with John Travolta, also set in Paris. Costner reminds us why he is a movie star with ease and likability that is a perfect on-screen match for Besson’s trademark mash-up of intense action, gooey sentiment, and goofy comedy.

Costner plays Ethan Renner, a long-time CIA operative. He is not a spy. He is an assassin. He is sent in to kill people, presumably bad guys, and he is very good at it. But when we meet him chasing after a bad guy known as “the albino” and clearly not feeling well. It turns out he has cancer. A doctor tells him to get his affairs in order and crisply thanks him for his service to the CIA.

Ethan returns to his apartment, where a large family of sweet-natured squatters from Africa have moved in and repainted his bedroom. Under the law, squatters cannot be evicted until spring, plus one of them is a young pregnant woman, so he lets them stay. Ethan contacts his estranged-but-n0t-divorced wife, Christine (Connie Nielsen) and his teenaged daughter, Zoey (Halliee Steinfeld) to spend time with them while he can. And then Vivi (Amber Heard), a CIA operative who dresses like Lady Gaga, makes him an offer he can’t refuse. If Ethan will take one last job, she will give him an experimental drug that could cure his cancer and give him more time.

Ethan races around Paris, alternately torturing the director of a high-end limo service to get information about the whereabouts of The Albino’s accountant and asking him for parenting tips, giving his daughter lessons in bike-riding and, with the help of that accountant, a recipe for spaghetti sauce, hallucinating due to the effects of the experimental drug and swigging vodka as an antidote, and doing some very bad things to some very bad guys. A lot of it makes no sense, but let’s face it, that’s not why we’re here.

Parents should know that this film has extensive spy-style action peril and violence. A character is an assassin and many other characters are injured and killed with guns, chases, explosions, fights, some disturbing images, mortal illness, drinking, smoking, drugs, some nudity and suggestive dancing, non-explicit childbirth scene, and some strong language.

Family discussion: Is Ethan a good dad? How did the theme of fatherhood come up in different ways throughout this film?

If you like this, try: “The Professional” and “The Transporter”

Related Tags:

Action/Adventure Spies Thriller