Eragon

Posted on December 12, 2006 at 12:07 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for fantasy violence, intense battle sequences and some frightening images.
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Fanstasy-style peril and violence, bows and arrows, spears, swords, fire, torture, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Strong minority and female characters
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2007
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000NA28I4

The fact that the CGI dragon gives the best performance in this film is not going to impede the enjoyment of its intended audience, which is 9-12 year olds. It may, however, make it a bit of a long haul for accompanying family members.

This story has all the strengths and weaknesses of its origin as a best-selling book written by then-15-year old Christopher Paolini. The strength comes from the author’s conviction and enthusiasm for the story but the weakeness comes from its key elements being renamed rather then re-imagined.

Like all classic adventure sagas, it relies strongly on those Joseph Campbell archetypes — the reluctant “chosen one” hero (newcomer
Edward Speleers in the title role), who has no parents but does have (1) a wise mentor/teacher giving Shakespearean line readings to dialogue de(in this case, Jeremy Irons as Brom, a sort of cross between Obi-wan Kenobi and Yoda) and (2) a special force-like innate talent that competes with an impetuous nature, or, as they say in this film, “one part brave and three parts fool.” We have the meanies, lead by John Malcovich as evil King Galbatorix and Robert Carlyle, unrecognizeable under scrofulous make-up, as his even more evil henchman Durza. And we have the rebel forces, led by Djimon Honsou, and the brave but beautiful girl (Sienna Guillory). And we have a whole new vocabulary of not just words but of properties, principles, powers (including a grok-like draco-vision) and limits, which always has a lot of appeal for those young enough to have the brain space to absorb and store it without worrying about whether it will displace the few things they are already struggling to remember. And, of course, we have dragons, or at least one dragon, a devoted mind-melding, blue-eyed sweetheart of a flying dragon with the lovely voice of Rachel Weisz.

Even at 100 minutes, it drags, taking a long time to get going and relying on too much jaw-breaking exposition that even Iron’s velvet tones and Honsou’s quiet dignity cannot bring to life. The perfume-ad settings are lovely but static and the same could be said about the teen-dream cast. Speleers’ idea of acting is a slightly knit brow, an attempted hard stare, neither of which work very well. It was a big mistake to cast pop star Joss Stone as the blind fortune-teller. It isn’t just that she doesn’t make a believeable blind fortune-teller or even a believable middle ages character. She doesn’t make a believeable human being. Garrett Hedlund as Murtagh seems to be able to hold the screen, but it is hard to tell under the meticulously arranged bangs that hang over his eyes, unforunately making him look like a Pokemon bad guy.

Parents should know that this movie has a great deal of fantasy violence and peril with some sad deaths. Characters fight with arrows, swords, fire, and magic.

Families who see this movie should talk about what it means to be one part brave and three parts foolish. What decisions did Eragon later regret? What decisions did Brom later regret, and why? When characters say they expect someone who was more…what were they expecting? Would you believe Murtagh? Why?

Families who enjoy this film will also enjoy reading the books. They will also enjoy Ladyhawke, Dragonslayer, and The Lord of the Rings – The Motion Picture Trilogy.

The Pursuit of Happyness

Posted on December 11, 2006 at 12:20 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some language.
Profanity:	Some mild language, f-word visible in graffiti
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Sad and disturbing situations, character hit by car
Diversity Issues:	An unstated theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	May 27, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000N6U0E2

This week’s release of “After Earth,” starring Will Smith and his son Jaden, is a good time to take another look at their first co-starring film, based on a real-life father and son:

If a man goes from homeless single dad to multi-millionaire stockbroker, you know there has to be a movie. This one has the good sense to star Will Smith and his real-life son Jaden.
Their natural chemistry and Smith’s natural charisma help this story work.
The story does not have the usual feel-good arc. Even though it omits some of the real-life obstacles and setbacks faced by its main character, it is still more grounded in what happened than in the established beats of narrative and the conventions of story. So even the considerable charms of both Smith and the personable character he plays may not be enough to keep audiences from growing impatient to get to the good stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcZTtlGweQ

Chris Gardner (Smith) is a Navy vet, first in his high school class and good with numbers. But his decision to invest everything he had in a portable bone density scanner “that takes a slightly better picture for twice the money” has left his family in a financial position that teeters between precarious and dire. His wife (Thandie Newton) is tired of pulling double shifts and bitter about the way their dream of the future seems to be impossible. She loves their son, but feels overwhelmed. Gardner has to sell two of the heavy machines a month to be able to pay the rent. He is determined to sell them all, but for both of them, the machines he lugs around are like anchors or leg irons.
Chris has one dream that is even more important to him than selling the scanners. He wants to be the father he never had. And he is devoted to his son, endlessly patient and involved. But when his wife leaves, everything begins to slip away. He loses his apartment. And there’s no panic as deep as the fear of not being able to care for your children.
Chris sees a man with a great car and asks what he does. When the man says he is a stockbroker, Chris decides to apply for an internship at Dean Witter.
There are a few obstacles. Chris does not have a college degree. He has no background in the stock market. The internship is six months of intense, demanding, and unpaid work, competing with dozens of others who have more time and better educations. And at the end, only one may be offered a job. Oh, and Chris shows up for the interview covered with paint, in a t-shirt and battered pants. Why? Because he spent the night in jail due to unpaid parking tickets and didn’t have time to change.
His unpretentious charm — and mastery of the then-brand new Rubik’s Cube — gets him the job. And then things get really tough as Chris and his son become homeless and have to spend nights in a shelter or riding public transportation. Chris is handed two near-impossible tasks — to master the fine points of securities analysis and to make cold calls to a list of prospects and turn them into clients. He has a supervisor who keeps sending him for coffee. And while the other interns work late, he has to be at the shelter by 5:00 to make sure he gets in.
Smith has the courage to turn the pilot light down on his powerful movie star charisma and let us see that despite Chris’ intelligence, optimism, and drive, he is vulnerable and scared.

Parents should know that the movie has some tense and unhappy moments that may be disturbing for some audience members, including the break-up of a marriage. A character gets hit by a car.
Families who see this movie should talk about why the word “happiness” is misspelled in the title, when spelling it correctly was so imporant to Chris. What do you learn about him from the way he pursued the stolen scanners? From his decision to sell the scanners in the first place? From the way he handled the job interview? Why did he tell his son not to dream of playing basketball? What was the most important factor in his success? They should talk about how Chris was constantly teaching his son. And they should talk about the insensitivity people showed Chris because they had no idea of his situation; one of the movie’s most important lessons is that we should always remember that we do not know what anyone else is dealing with when we form our expectations.
Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Erin Brockovich (some mature material) and Rudy (some strong language).

Unaccompanied Minors

Posted on December 7, 2006 at 12:44 pm

C+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for mild rude humor and language.
Profanity:	Mild schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Brief references to alcohol, hangover
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic peril and violence, no one hurt
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2007
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000QXDEG8

In “Unaccompanied Minors,” a group of young travelers are stranded in Chicago’s fictional Hoover Airport on Christmas Eve. Lead to a room full of other children but decidedly empty of Christmas spirit, five break away from the chaotic “rec room,” holding pen, prompting an airport-wide chase that fuels the rest of the film.

The kids all run for different reasons, some deeper and more touching than others (although that’s not saying much, as one youngster bolts in search of a bathroom). There’s even the rebel who resents the “rich kid” but turns out to be sticking around not because she has to, but because she wants to.

If this last part sounds at all familiar, it’s a safe bet the rest of the film will, too. It’s The Breakfast Club for middle schoolers with slightly lower-grade angst and a less memorable soundtrack.

It’s forgettable mutliplex fodder, but it does have occasional and even endearing moments of originality. Although “Minors” characters never really break from the teen-dramedy stereotypes, the likeable cast kicks the Home Alone-in-an-airport script up a notch. As a veteran writer for television’s cult favorite “Arrested Development” as well as “The Office,” director Paul Feig boosts a comedic pedigree the leaves the film with a few genuine laughs.

Parents should know that that while this film is a fairly harmless holiday comedy, it’s content at times is more appropriate for the middle-school crowd than for younger children. The children explore family dynamics and their own experiences with divorce. One character says of her parents: “They just don’t seem to like it when I’m around,” a conflict that is never quite resolved. Family is a major theme of the film, and although the characters remain optimistic, Feig’s overriding cynicism keeps the film from ever getting too emotionally satisfying.

An airline employee (Zach Van Bourke, played by Wilmer Valderrama), is clearly conflicted about letting the children be children while also enforcing the discipline his supervisor pressures him to enforce. Families who see this film might talk about the decisions Van Bourke makes, and how he negotiates is personal beliefs with his professional duties. Families should also discuss the roles of the parents in the film — what traits are portrayed as “good” in parents? What traits are presented as representative of “bad” parents? What prompts the children to talk about their feelings, and how do they become closer to each other by doing so? How might things change if the kids were to open up to their own families?

Families who enjoy this film will also enjoy the holiday classic Home Alone, which is intended for roughly the same age group but contains more violence and more potentially scary scenes. Families might also appreciate 1993’s The Sandlot and 1985’s tale of adolescent teamwork and bonding, The Goonies.

Related Tags:

Comedy Family Issues Movies -- format

Charlotte’s Web

Posted on November 30, 2006 at 4:27 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	Rated G
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Mild peril, theme of protecting the main character from slaughter, sad death
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2007
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000NA6CPE

E.B. White’s book, Charlotte’s Web, is a genuine classic for readers of any age, a beautifully written literary novel about loyalty and loss, friendship and the importance of a perfectly chosen word.

The book began with a little girl named Fern rescuing a runt of a pig her father intended to kill. She names him Wilbur and bottle feeds him until he is too big to live at home and then brings him to her uncle’s farm. At this point, at the end of Chapter One, she pretty much exits the story, and the primary characters for the rest of the book are Wilbur and his best friend, a spider named Charlotte.

The movie follows this story with a couple of changes geared to marketing, not story-telling. First, if a studio is lucky enough to grab the number one box office actress in the country, she cannot disappear from the movie after the first fifteen minutes, so Fern, played by Dakota Fanning, gets an expanded role. Second, the focus-group types at the studio decided that E.B. White somehow overlooked the importance of and boy-girl romance (gently inserted) and potty humor (not-so-gently inserted).

The voice talent seems selected for marquee value rather than the ability to create a character on voice alone. Julia Roberts is fine as Charlotte, Steve Buscemi is just right as Templeton the Rat, but the standout is Thomas Hayden Church as a crow. Most of the others are flat or distracting. But the power of the story retains its genuine magic and, like Fern, audiences will find this barnyard a place they want to stay.

Parents should know that the theme of the movie concerns pigs getting slaughtered. This issue is presented gently, but it may be disturbing for some children. There is also a very sad death of a major character. There is some potty humor and some slapstick peril.

Families who see this movie should talk about why Wilbur was important to Fern and why Charlotte wanted to be his friend. Why was Wilbur friendlier than the other animals? Families should also talk about why Charlotte’s work made people think it was the pig who was special, while no one paid any attention to the spider.

Families who enjoy this movie might also enjoy the earlier animated version, with the voice of Debbie Reynolds as Charlotte. And every family should read the wonderful book. Families will also enjoy Babe.

The Nativity Story

Posted on November 28, 2006 at 4:37 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some violent content.
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Characters in peril
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2007
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000MGBM1I

Jean Kerr once wrote of school Christmas pageant with a moving depiction of the nativity that consisted of two young children crossing a bare stage. They stopped briefly. Joseph said, “Mary, ’tis a cold, cold night.” “‘Tis,” she replied. And they walked on.

Anyone who wants to try to tell the story of the birth of Jesus faces a daunting challenge. The two advantages of the version Kerr described were that it immediately captured the goodwill of the audience by casting not only children, but children of their community, and that its pared-down simplicity let the audience project their own ideas and feelings about the story onto what they saw.

This sincere and respectful version tries to do what it can with a different set of tools, and it admirably attempts to meet the needs of those who will come to it, whether they are looking for worship, for history, or for narrative. It is more successful in the first category than the other two.

Director Catherine Hardwicke’s two great strengths are in having the location help to tell the story (she was originally a production designer) and a sensitivity to the portrayal of teenagers (her two previous films as director are thirteen and The Lords of Dogtown). So here she makes good use of the settings (Italy and Morocco standing in for Biblical locations) and makes its young central figures very appealing. Whale Rider’s Keisha Castle-Hughes has a shy but dignified and resolute air. She glows believably as the very young woman who is selected as the mother of Jesus. And newcomer Oliver Isaac effectively conveys tenderness, doubt, courage, and transcendence as Joseph.

It is a daunting challenge to try to make icons into dramatic characters who feel human enough to be real but heroic enough to fit our notions of greatness. The movie’s commitment to reverence gives it a certain stiffness, as though it is an animatronics display, and the international cast does not always mesh into a consistent ensemble. Those who are already intimately familiar with the story are most likely to be satisfied, but those who are not may be confused at who the characters are and how they come together. An attempt at making the three kings into comic relief falters. But there are moments, as the star guides the characters on the journey to Bethlehem, when audiences may get that same feeling Kerr had in watching the scuffed stage at her children’s school, or when the harmonies of carols play as that star seems to shine brighter in the sky.

Parents should know that in a low-key way this movie raises the question of whether Joseph believes Mary’s story of the virgin birth. There is discussion of persecution and murder, including murder of babies.

Families who see this movie should talk about how it fits with their ideas of the story. Why is the part of the story about the three kings important? What does the star signify? Why was Jesus born in a stable? They may want to talk about their favorite Christmas carols and how those songs and hymns pay tribute to different parts of this story.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the Italian film, The Gospel According to St. Matthew and the The Gospel of John. My interview with Oscar Isaac, who plays Joseph, is here. And my interview with director Catherine Hardwicke is here.

Related Tags:

Drama Family Issues Movies -- format