Bedtime Stories

Posted on April 10, 2009 at 8:00 am

Once upon a time there was a movie studio that thought it could produce a hit with a performer best known for raunchy slacker comedies and a lot of money for special effects. This story does not turn out very happily ever after.

Adam Sandler plays Skeeter, a hotel handyman who dreams of being the manager. His sister Wendy (Courtney Cox) asks him to stay with her children while she interviews for a new job. He tells them a bedtime story which they embellish and the next day some of its most outlandish details start to come true, even a shower of gumballs. As Skeeter competes with the obsequious Kendall (Guy Pearce) who is the boyfriend of the hotel owner, for the position of manager of a fancy new facility, he tries to direct the bedtime stories to help him succeed. Each night’s story — whether about a knight, a cowboy, an outer space adventurer, or a gladiator — influences the next day’s events.

The children in the audience laughed a lot at some of the silly details and schoolyard humor. And they enjoyed figuring out before Skeeter did that it was not the details he added to the story but the children’s ideas that shaped the real-world events. There are some marvelous special effects in the depiction of the stories, too. But anyone over the age of seven is unlikely to be more than mildly entertained by the film because of Sandler’s pudgy, barely-interested performance and a present-day storyline that is lackluster in contrast with the wild adventures of the bedtime sagas. Wendy’s “funny” restrictions on the children’s food and activities and a subplot intended to be suspenseful about whether her school will be torn down are distracting, especially when near the end there is a big waste of time when the film has to step up the pressure by putting children in senseless peril and dragging out the suspense. Keri Russell is radiant as always as Wendy’s friend and Skeeter’s love interest. Her brief appearance in the fantasy stories are as dazzling as the most elaborate special effects. The other characters are never as interesting as the time allotted to them means them to be. British bad boy Russell Brand is completely out of place as Skeeter’s friend and Guy Pearce is fighting at way below his weight class as Skeeter’s nemesis. We would all have done better if the children wrote the story.

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Comedy Fantasy

Pinocchio

Posted on March 9, 2009 at 2:00 pm

A+

Lowest Recommended Age:	All Ages
MPAA Rating:	G
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Children smoke cigars
Violence/ Scariness:	Tense and scary scenes including characters being swallowed by a whale and apparent death
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	1940
Date Released to DVD:	January 30, 2017
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01M105H8W

This week Disney is releasing a glorious new edition of its most most gorgeous, splendid, and fully realized of all of its hand-drawn animation classics before the use of photocopiers and computers. Every detail is brilliantly executed, from the intricate clocks in Geppetto’s workshop to the foam on the waves as the enormous whale Monstro thrashes the water. It also has one of Disney’s finest scores, featuring “When You Wish Upon a Star,” which has become the Disney theme song. “I’ve Got No Strings,” “Give a Little Whistle,” and “An Actor’s Life for Me” are also memorable. It is the classic story about the wooden puppet whose nose grows when he tells a lie and has to almost turn into a donkey before he can become a real boy, told with endless imagination and beauty, a must-see for all families.

This new edition has some great behind-the-scenes extras.

“Pinocchio” is a natural for the first discussions with kids about telling the truth (especially admitting a mistake) and not talking to strangers. Talk to them, too, about how to find their own conscience and listen to it as if it were Jiminy Cricket. The trip to Pleasure Island may also lead to a discussion of why things that feel like fun may be harmful, and the difference between fun and happiness.

The Uninvited (1944)

Posted on February 11, 2009 at 7:35 am

The new release called “The Uninvited,” based on a Korean horror film, reminded me of the unrelated (but very spooky) 1944 movie of the same name, starring one of my favorites, Ray Milland.
The original The Uninvited is the story of a brother and sister (Milland and “The Philadelphia Story’s” Ruth Hussey) who move into a mysterious house on the English coast. A series of eerie clues lead them to a story involving a woman who once lived in the house and her young daughter Stella (Gail Russell), now grown up, who still lives nearby.
This is not a horror film but a psychological drama with mystery, romance, and ghosts. When I first saw it as a teenager, I was especially intrigued because it had a rare screen appearance by stage actress Cornelia Otis Skinner, co-author of a book I loved, Our Hearts Were Young And Gay: An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s. It also introduced a song that has become a standard, “Stella by Starlight.”
I watched it again recently and found it still one of my very favorite ghost stories, with appealing characters and very satisfying conclusions to both the romance and the mystery. Fans of “Rebecca” will love this one, so if you’re looking for a good, old-fashioned, non-gory ghost story, this is one of the best.

Watchmen Extras!

Posted on February 6, 2009 at 4:00 pm

The best news since the settlement of the lawsuit that permits “The Watchmen” to open as scheduled on March 6 is the availability of these new extras and goodies.

Check out the Watchmen’s YouTube channel, too.

Push

Posted on February 5, 2009 at 6:00 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, brief strong language, smoking and a scene of teen drinking
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Teen drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense peril and violence
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	February 6, 2009

If you add up all the recent movies about ordinary-looking people who walk among us with special hidden powers, you might conclude that there are no normal people left. The accountant next door might be a secret mutant, time traveler, mythological character or cyborg, but he is rarely just an accountant.

“Push” is the latest in this genre, and director Paul McGuigan has learned from and built upon many of the films that have gone before. “Push” offers a whole bestiary of people born with special talents, including Movers, Shifters, Pushers, Sniffers, Bleeders and Watchers. Some of their talents are familiar– Watchers, for example, seem to be your standard clairvoyants. But others, such as Bleeders, are a little further off the beaten track: they scream at an ear shattering, brain-pulping pitch.

The mutants in Push are pursued by a nefarious government agency called “The Division” which wants to harness their powers and exploit them for military purposes. Those who are fortunate enough to avoid being locked up in a prison hospital and subjected to horrendous medical experiments go underground in remote locations in an effort to escape detection by the authorities. The movie opens as Nick Gant, a young boy with the telekinetic powers of a “Mover,” watches his father being murdered by agents of the Division. Gant’s father’s last desperate words to his son are a prediction that some day a girl in need of help will come to him with a flower. Years later, our hero has grown into a young man (Chris Evans) who is hiding out in Hong Kong to stay one step ahead of the agents who killed his father. Lo and behold, he is approached by a young girl with a flower, Cassie Holmes (Dakota Fanning) who is another type of mutant– a “Watcher” who draws pictures of the future, and the two are off and running on an adventure to find the secret suitcase and bring down the evil “Division.”

This movie is a fast moving, erratic combination of clever and cliche, of imaginative visuals and unbearably corny dialogue. There are innovative moments, such as a shoot-out in a restaurant between telekinetically manipulated guns hovering in the air, or a chase through a Hong Kong shop filled with huge fish tanks where the screams of “Bleeders” cause the fish in the tanks to burst into red blossoms. On the other hand, sometimes the lines of dialogue are so awful that the screaming of the Bleeders seems like a welcome relief.

One of the best parts is the backdrop of Hong Kong — old shops and winding streets with ancient musicians playing traditional instruments and house boats on the dock — which proves more interesting than some imaginary alien planet. It may be better than the average mutant-next-door movie, even if it doesn’t have any hidden special powers.