Rise of the Guardians

Posted on November 20, 2012 at 9:48 pm

The daughter of writer/illustrator William Joyce (“Dinosaur Bob,” “Robots”) once asked him whether the Easter bunny knew Santa Claus and that inspired him to create a series of stories about the characters of fantasy and folklore who care for children. They come together in an Avengers or X-Men-style team known as The Guardians in this visually rich but cluttered film.

Those characters are a Slavic-accented, scimitar-wielding Santa (Alec Baldwin) with “naughty” and “nice” tattooed on his burly arms, an Easter bunny with an Aussie accent and a lot of attitude (Hugh Jackman), a silent sandman who communicates with dreamy designs made from glistening specks, and the feathered Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher), who presides over a battalion of hummingbird-sized minions who collect baby teeth and leave coins while children sleep. When the happiness and comfort of the children of the world is threatened by the Boogeyman (Jude Law), they need more help and so they invite Jack Frost (Chris Pine) to join them, explaining that they are responsible for making sure the children of the earth have “wonder, hope, and dreams.”

Jack is a loner, haunted by not being able to remember anything before he woke one day in the ice, somehow knowing that his job was to bring the fun of winter to children. At first he has no interest in joining the others. But when he makes things worse, he has to help make them better.

It’s a sweet idea and there are witty and charming moments and some lovely visuals, especially the sandman, the elves, and the iridescent little tooth fairies. Like all great villains, Law has an English accent and sounds nicely sneery. But the storyline gets lost in a whirlwind of locations and plot twists. Each of the characters has its own mythology and home base and alliances. The goal of the Guardians is for children to have faith in them, so it makes no sense that they accomplish that only by showing themselves, which is proof, not faith. There is no suggestion that some of the world’s children may not have these characters as a part of their traditions or faiths. While the movie asks its characters and its audience to find their centers, the story itself is oddly hollow.

Parents should know that this fim has a scary villain, characters in peril, a sword-wielding Santa, a character who sacrifices himself to save a sibling, and issues of believing in fantasy characters.

Family discussion: How are the characters different from what you expected? What do they have in common? Which is your favorite and why?

If you like this, try: the book, Guardians of Childhood by William Joyce and the movie “Robots”

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3D Animation Fantasy

A Liar’s Autobiography

Posted on November 10, 2012 at 10:50 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Adult
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong and crude sexual content including graphic animated sequences, strong language and some violent images
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and alcoholism
Violence/ Scariness:	Violent images including severed limbs, sad death
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	November 9, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00A3A3SRE

Graham Chapman was the Monty Python troupe member most often referred to by the others as “the dead one.” This affectionate tribute, narrated by Chapman himself in excerpts from the audio version of the memoir he wrote before he died of throat cancer in 1989. Like the Python movies, it is is made up of skit-like segments, but it only briefly reaches anywhere near their level of sublime comic anarchy. Even with a quick moment of lunacy with Cameron Diaz providing the voice of Sigmund Freud.

The segments are animated by a widely varied group of artists, occasionally recalling Terry Gilliam’s inspired paper cut-out interstitials but more often just needlessly crude and sometimes downright dull. But the real problem is that Chapman may have been an interesting person and certainly led an interesting live but he clearly had neither the interest nor the ability to share very much with anyone. Instead we get a tedious litany of too much sex, too much alcohol, and the emptiness of the life of a celebrity. He comes across as superficial, bitter, selfish, and dull.

Chapman tells us he was born during a German bombing attack and we see a possibly fictitious incident where he was traumatized by the severed limbs of the people who were injured and killed. Then he goes to school and his parents don’t understand or fully appreciate him and he has sex with women but really wants to have sex with men, and then he has sex with men, and then some sex with women again but mostly with men. In one of the segments we get to see from his perspective as he continues to smoke his pipe through some joyless sexual encounters. He has contempt for just about everyone, especially those who are overly impressed with celebrities (including himself).

The movie comes to life only at the very end, when we see footage from Chapman’s funeral, with the eulogy from John Cleese. As the other Pythonites look on, Cleese says, “I guess that we’re all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, of such capability for kindness, of such unusual intelligence, should now so suddenly be spirited away at the age of only 48, before he’d achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he’d had enough fun. Well, I feel that I should say: nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard, I hope he fries. And the reason I feel I should say this is he would never forgive me if I didn’t, if I threw away this glorious opportunity to shock you all on his behalf. Anything for him, but mindless good taste.” I’d add, anything for him but this dull and sour tribute. Much better to watch the parrot sketch again.

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Animation Biography Movies -- format

Wreck-It Ralph

Posted on November 1, 2012 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some rude humor and mild action/violence
Profanity:	Some schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Cartoon-style action violence and peril, guns, explosions
Diversity Issues:	Strong female and disabled character
Date Released to Theaters:	November 2, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	March 4, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00A7OIXW6

No one wants to be the bad guy anymore. In “Despicable Me,” Gru’s delightfully dastardly plans were no match for the overpowering adorableness of three little girls. “Megamind” found that being the bad guy was no fun after he vanquished the hero. Even the sharks in “Finding Nemo” became vegetarians, with support group meetings to chant, “Fish are friends, not food.”

And now there’s Ralph (John C. Reilly), having something of an existential crisis. Back in the 80’s era of arcade video games, before people had home computers and game stations and televisions that were part computer and part game station to play on, if you wanted to play a game you had to go to an arcade and get a roll of quarters. The primitive 8-bit games had a charm of their own, in part from the novelty of games on a screen instead of being based on mechanical balls and levers, and in part because their very simplicity left a lot of room for the player to fill in the details from his or her own imagination. The brilliant documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters explains that in some ways these older games still provide more of a challenge — they continue to fascinate competitive players.

This is a marvelous environment for a story, whether you grew up with these games and recognize the in-jokes or haven’t played a game since Pong and Tetris, even those who do not know a Wii from a Playstation. Wreck-It Ralph is so persuasively authentic it seems to be entirely at home with what has been referred to as “the Roger Rabbit of video games.” Ralph keeps knocking down the building inhabited by the Webelo-like residents of Niceville, and the relentlessly cheerful Fixit Felix, Jr. (“30 Rock’s” Jack McBrayer), with the help of the quarter-loading player, rebuilds so fast that Ralph gets thrown off the roof of the building and everyone in Niceville has a party. Ralph doesn’t break things to be mean. It’s just his job. It’s in his code. He feels that he is as much a part of the game as Frank and the building inhabitants. Ralph shares his conflicts with an adorable villain support group (love the zombie with axes attached to his hands). But he wants more.

Ralph is just lonely. He wants to go to the party. He wants to make friends. He wants people to like him. But just as he is coded to break things, the Niceville residents are coded to be scared of him. Just to get rid of him, one of them tells him that if he can win a hero’s medal, he can be their friend. So Ralph leaves his game to find a place where he can be a hero.

Ralph visits an intense and violent military game called Hero’s Duty with a tough female commanding officer named Calhoun (Jane Lynch). She is “programmed with the most tragic backstory ever” and probably inspired by video game voice star Jennifer Hale, the combination Meryl Streep and Angelina Jolie of the video game world. Everything seems to go according to plan until he somehow ends up in Sugar Rush, a game for children that looks like NASCAR if it was designed by Katy Perry. Adorable little children race cars made out of candy and cookies.

Maybe not so adorable. Just as Ralph is not so bad, the cute little kids of Sugar Rush are not so sweet. He is annoyed by Vanellope (Sara Silverman), a bratty little girl, but then joins forces with her to help her build a race car. And then he meets the “heroes” of Sugar Rush and finds that the line between good guy and bad guy is not what he thought it was.

The witty and vibrant worlds are gorgeously imagined (and of course now available in game form themselves), with a satisfying balance of heart and humor. The story nimbly mixes existential questions of identity, purpose, and destiny with a sweet friendship and knowing humor about the world of games and gamers and even some Joseph Schumpeter-style creative destruction. I loved the Mentos jokes and the detour to the car-building site. And I loved the constant playing with almost Pirandello-esque notions of the way we create our worlds and the assumptions that underly them.

Parents should know that this movie includes video game violence with guns and explosions, some mildly disturbing images, characters in peril, and some potty humor.

Family discussion: How do you know what is “in your code” and what you can change? Can a bad guy become a hero? What did Ralph learn from Vanellope? Why did Vanellope love her car?

If you like this, try: Two more movies with bad guy-good guys, “Despicable Me” and “Megamind,” as well as “King of Kong,” the brilliant documentary about a video game competition.

Zoinks! A Halloween Tribute to Scooby-Doo

Posted on October 31, 2012 at 8:00 am

“And I would have gotten away with it if not for you meddling kids!”

Scooby-Doo and his pals are the ultimate in funny-scary. Created for television by Hanna-Barbera in 1969, the stories of investigations of haunted amusement parks and mysterious monsters. In early episodes they all turned out to be hoaxes designed to keep people from discovering some sort of skullduggery but later on there were some real paranormal encounters. The characters were inspired by the popular “Dobie Gillis” television series based on the stores by Max Schulman, with Fred an amiable everyman, Velma the brain, Daphne the rich girl, and Shaggy the goofy one. The dog breed was unsettled in the planning stages, and sheepdog and German Shepherd were considered before they settled on a Great Dane. He was originally called “Too Much” and the name Scooby-Doo was inspired by the “doo be doo be doo” part of the Frank Sinatra song, “Strangers in the Night.” Celebrate Halloween with some tricks and treats from Scooby-Doo.

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Animation Comedy Horror

Secret of the Wings

Posted on October 19, 2012 at 9:32 am

Where do fairies come from? When a baby laughs, a fairy is born. And Tinker Bell (Mae Whitman) learns in this sweet animated tale that the baby’s laugh that gave her life must have been extra merry because two fairies appeared. The Secret of the Wings is that Tink has a sister she never knew she had in a place she has never been.

Tinker Bell is a summer fairy who lives happily with her friends. But she is curious about the adjoining land of the winter fairies. Summer fairies send baskets of food across the bridge where the frost fairies live in a land covered with ice and snow. Animals can cross over, too, but fairies are forbidden from entering each other’s lands by order of Lord Milori (Timothy Dalton), who is the ruler of the winter fairies. Tinkerbell disobeys the rules and discovers a fairy named Periwinkle (Lucy Hale), who turns out to be her twin. They instantly bond and are delighted to get to know one another. “You collect lost things, too?” “I call them found things!”

But summer fairies can be injured by the cold temperatures. And when Periwinkle comes to visit Tinker Bell, even Tink’s clever contraption for keeping Peri cool is not enough to protect her from the damage caused by the warm climate.

The Disney artists have created two enchanting lands with pause-button-worthy details and swooping 3D effects. The sweet story is unfortunately marred by brief boy-girl silliness, but Tink herself is an independent, resourceful, and loyal heroine. She is respectful but willing to question authority, she is curious — I liked seeing her go to the library to do research — and she is skilled with tools and good at solving problems. The sparkly twins will delight children and the grown-up voice talent like Dalton and Angelica Houston and imaginative visuals will give parents something to enjoy as well.

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3D Animation Fantasy Series/Sequel