In the early days of animation, Disney’s biggest rival was the studio run by the Fleischer brothers, whose Betty Boop, Popeye, and Out of the Inkwell cartoons were very popular. Their first feature, released in 1939, was “Gulliver’s Travels.” While it was not as innovative or successful as Disney’s “Snow White,” which came out two years earlier, it is still a charming and delightful film with comedy, romance, drama, and music. The release this week of the new Gulliver film starring Jack Black, has prompted a new DVD release of the film in An Ultimate Gulliver Collection.
In the book, Jonathan Swift’s satiric take on the political squabbles had his tiny characters fighting over the best way to crack an egg. In this version, the plans of the rulers of the adjoining kingdoms to untie their children and their lands in marriage is disrupted because of an equally silly dispute. Which of the two countries’ national anthems will play at the wedding?
“Gulliver’s Travels” is available online. I also have one copy of the new Ultimate Gulliver Collection DVD release to give away and it is truly special because it includes not only Fleischer’s Gulliver and seven more Fleischer studio cartoons but also the early anime film, “Gulliver’s Travels Beyond the Moon” and the adorable four-minute Gulliver movie from George Melies, the magician who invented movie special effects back in the early days of the silent era. Send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with “Gulliver” in the title, and I will pick a random winner on Boxing Day (that’s December 26).
Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg make an inspired buddy cop pairing in “The Other Guys,” a rare comedy based on something other than snark or irony or insults or humiliation or high concept. This is that rarest of comedies — kept aloft by a delirious, surreal, irrepressibly sunny randomness, delivered with sincere conviction and all the funnier for it. In an early exchange destined to be memorized and repeated endlessly by fans, Detective Hoitz (Wahlberg), frustrated by being assigned to desk duty, tells off his new partner, Detective Gamble (Ferrell), who prefers the paperwork, using the metaphor of a lion devouring a tuna. Gamble comes back at him with a deliciously loopy monologue, taking the comment literally, and then, when Hoitz comes right back in on the same level, it reaches for the sublime.
Hoitz and Gamble work in a police precinct where two cops (Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) get all the excitement, all the glory, and all the girls. That’s fine with Gamble, recently transferred from forensic accounting. But Hoitz, who likes to describe himself as “a peacock who needs to FLY!” is smoldering, furiously playing solitaire at his desk while other cops go out on all the exciting assignments. At a support group for officers who fired their weapons on duty, we find out why he was reassigned. Let’s just say he shot the wrongest guy imaginable.
When the two hero cops are out of the picture, Hoitz and Gamble step in, despite the competition from another team (Rob Riggle playing the frat boy part he always plays and Damon Wayans, Jr. looking like his dad) and the directions from their Chief (Michael Keaton). Of course, as in any buddy cop movie, there are detours to resolve some problems with the ladies (“You’re not a cop until your woman has thrown you out,” says Hoitz). And of course they will discover that they have more in common than they thought, including some anger management issues and interest in Gamble’s wife (a luscious and also very funny Eva Mendes).
There are some dull patches and misfires, especially a backstory about Gamble’s college years. But the action scenes are surprisingly dynamic and a sleazy Wall Street billionaire is played by the always-welcome Steve Coogan. (A brief, unbilled appearance by Ann Heche as another Wall Street type suggests there may be some good extras on the DVD.) And any movie with a police chief who does not realize he is constantly quoting TLC, a trip to “Jersey Boys,” a succession of hot women including Brooke Shields finding Ferrell’s character irresistible, a CD playing “Reminiscing” by the Little River Band, narration by Ice-T, and Wahlberg doing pirouettes qualifies as the funniest movie of the summer.
Emma Stone finally gets the breakthrough role her fans have been waiting for in “Easy A.” This is the moment that takes her into the front rank of movie stars, sub-category: America’s sweetheart.
Stone has an immediately appealing presence on screen, unpretentious but utterly charming. Here she plays Olive, a girl who doesn’t yet realize that all of the things that make her feel invisible in high school are going to make her wildly beloved for decades after. She is impatient to be “interesting” and so after a thrill-less weekend highlighted by singing along to a greeting card she impulsively tells her best friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka) that she had sex with her college student boyfriend. Problem #1: the sex and the boyfriend are both imaginary. This is the kind of mistake a teenager would make. Problem #2: this confession occurs in the ladies’ room at the high school, with no checking the stalls. This is not the kind of mistake anyone would make after 7th grade, but we have to kick that plot into gear, now, don’t we?
And so the whole school immediately knows and believes this scandalous news. Which is why Olive’s closeted gay friend tired of getting picked on comes to her with a proposition. Not that kind. He wants her to have noisy public pretend sex with him so that he can be definitively proven manly. And since her reputation is already shot, what can it hurt? And why not do the same favor for some other needy souls? And then, when it seems the whole school is judging her (conveniently, her class is reading The Scarlet Letter), she decides to sew a big red A on a bustier and see what it feels like to go from invisible to un-missable.
Stone is such an effortless charmer that she keeps the story aloft, even when Olive inexplicably turns her little adventure into a for-pay enterprise, insisting on gift cards(!) in exchange for making the reputation of the guys involved at the cost of her own. A side story involving Olive’s favorite teacher (Thomas Hayden Church) and his wife, the school guidance counselor (Lisa Kudrow) is also unnecessarily tawdry. Far better are the encounters with the always delectable (and just about always underused) Amanda Bynes as the school holier-than-thou abstinence proponent and the always ultra-watchable Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive’s deliciously off-kilter parents. Their scenes are warm, witty, and surprising, and livelier than Olive’s romantic ups and downs. In every way, it is Stone who is the heart of this movie, and she wins our hearts as well.
Cartoon violence including explosions, shark, crashes, peril, but no one hurt
Diversity Issues:
None
Date Released to Theaters:
July 9, 2010
Date Released to DVD:
December 14, 2010
Amazon.com ASIN:
B0042U94UQ
We usually just take it for granted that the villain wants to rule the world without worrying too much about why. But one of the many charms of this utterly delightful film is that we get a glimpse that is both funny and satisfying of what it is that makes not one but two super-villains so intent on being despicable.
We even get a flashback of our anti-hero, Gru (voice of Steve Carell with a Boris Badenov accent) as a child, confiding his dreams of being an astronaut to his mother (voice of Julie Andrews as Natasha!). She crushes his hopes with a cruel insult. So decades later, he is still trying to earn her respect, now as a super-thief. No matter how audacious his capers, however, she is still unimpressed. He has stolen the Jumbotron from Times Square and the Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty (okay, those last two are the replicas from Vegas). But he still needs to make that one heist that will show her he can earn her respect. He could not be an astronaut and fly to the moon. So, maybe he could steal it.
And then there’s the anti-anti-hero, who has just adopted the villain name Vector. He may have a nifty name and even niftier equipment, his lair guarded by everything from heat-seeking missiles to buzz saws and a shark, and he may have just pulled off the theft of one of the Seven Wonders of the World, but it turns out he has some trouble pleasing his parent, too.
So it’s a race between Gru and Vector to see who can steal the moon, which first involves stealing the shrink ray they need to make it small enough to carry home. And, adorably, this requires the involvement of dozens of little yellow “minions” who look like oompa-loompas made out of marshmallow peeps and three little orphan girls who live with a Miss Hannigan-style harridan as they hope someone will give them a real home. Maybe made of gummi bears.
The resilience of the three girls (the oldest voiced by Miranda Cosgrove of “iCarly” and “School of Rock”) is a sublime counterpart to the unhappiness and insecurity of Gru and his arch-rival Vector (voice of Jason Segal), showing us that even the rottenest of circumstances does not have to make you overly vulnerable or mean. When Gru brings them home as a way of getting into Vector’s compound (his security system features missiles and a shark but he can’t resist the girls’ cookies), he is so clueless he puts out candy in a dog bowl and newspapers on the floor. But as we have glimpsed in his interaction with the minions (I loved the matter-of-fact way he knows all the names of the almost-identical horde), he is susceptible to being liked and trusted. And he slowly begins to learn that it wasn’t that he didn’t want to care; he was scared to.
Brilliant production design contrasts Gru’s goth with a touch of steampunk lair in the middle of a street of identical homes with Vector’s sleek, Apple-eseque, creamsicle-colored high-tech headquarters. The expert pacing keeps things fresh, funny, and exciting. And a twist on the usual race-to-the-big-event-to-show-your-new-found-values reminds us all that the great thing about families is you can always have a second chance.
It looks like 2010 will go down in history as the year 3D animation kicked the stuffing out of all the live-action releases. Pixar opened the door and it is a thrill to see studios like Illumination showing what they have to bring to audiences ready to accept animation as art and as heart-warming family entertainment.
And here’s a special glimpse of one of the extras on the new DVD release:
Talk about happily ever after! “Shrek Forever After” is the best Shrek since the first one.
After a third episode that proved they couldn’t take it much further by going forward, they’ve found a clever way to reboot the story with an “It’s a Wonderful Life”-style look at what Shrek’s life would be like if none of the events in the first movie ever happened.
As the movie begins, Shrek the big green ogre (voice of Mike Myers) is feeling a little suffocated with his fairy tale ending in the land of Far Far Away. He loves Fiona (voice of Cameron Diaz) and their triplets but the daily grind of caring for them and the constant scrutiny of being a celebrity is making him feel uncomfortably domesticated. His most fearsome roar is turned into a party trick. He longs for “just one day to feel like a real ogre again,” to go back to a time “when I could do what I wanted…when the world made sense.”
And that is just the opening that Rumpelstiltskin (voice of writer Walt Dohrn) has been waiting for. Rump wants to be King and came very close once before when Fiona’s parents, the King (voice of John Cleese) and Queen (voice of Julie Andrews) have come to Rumpelstiltskin as a desperate last resort. He can break the curse that condemns their daughter Fiona to be human by day and an ogre at night. But he always insists on something of value in exchange. They are just about to sign over their kingdom when they get word that the spell has been broken.
Rumpy gets his revenge when Shrek impulsively agrees to an exchange — if he can have just one more day as an unencumbered ogre, he will give up a day of his life in return, any day of Rumpy’s choice. But just as in real life, people in fairy tales never read the fine print. After about an hour of fun scaring villagers (to the cheery accompaniment of The Carpenters’ “Top of the World”), Shrek begins to feel lonely, especially when he starts to understand that his best friend Donkey (voice of Eddie Murphy) and Fiona have never met him. And then he begins to feel dread when he realizes that it will be much harder than he thought to find his way back home.
The first Shrek was a wonderful surprise, a post-modern fairy tale. Shrek 2 was a lot of fun but a bit noisy and crowded. Shrek 3 was over-clever, self-referential, and snarky. This one restores the balance between humor and heart. And it gives Fiona a chance at center stage as the confident and courageous leader of a rebel band of outlaw ogres. Shrek falls in love with her all over again, and we do, too.
We meet up with some great new characters, especially ogres Cookie (voice of Craig Robinson of “The Office”) and Gretched (voice of “Glee’s” Jane Lynch). Our giant green hero enjoys being with his own kind but is nonplussed to find himself something of a runt among his fellow ogres. The bounty hunter Rumpy sends to round up Shrek and Fiona is the legendary Pied Piper. It turns out his famous pipe has a special ogre setting that has the huge green folk helplessly shaking their groove things as they boogie off to the dungeon. And there are some big changes in those we already know. Speaking of big, Puss is far, far away from the dashing swashbuckler; here he is Fiona’s ultra-pampered pet.
The film makes superb use of the 3D effects with action sequences that involve a huge pendulum swinging through Rumpelstiltskin’s palace. There’s also a 3D diaper joke, though thankfully not what you’d think. The spit take, on the other hand, is. Dorhn is a bit of a weak spot in the voice talent but the film’s expert balance of humor, heart, and excitement is real movie magic.
