Trolls

Posted on November 3, 2016 at 5:26 pm

“Trolls” is pure delight, lots of jokes, great music, and a surprisingly wise take on the elusive quest for happiness. Plus, it has that Justin Timberlake song that’s like pure sunshine.

It is tricky to make self-consciously adorable characters happy without being sugary, but it works because they understand the difference between happiness based on generosity, honesty, and courage and pleasure, based on sensation.

The characters are inspired by the so-ugly-they’re-cute troll dolls with the colorful poufs of hair invented by Danish sculptor Thomas Dam (DreamWorks has now bought the company, making the film something of an infomercial for the toys). The trolls all about sunshine, parties, singing, dancing, cupcakes, glitter, scrapbooks, and scrapbooks frosted with glitter. They have fitbit-style wrist bands reminding them every half hour that it is hugging time. The trolls are led by benevolent King Peppy (Jeffrey Tambor), who saved the trolls from the monstrous Bergens twenty years before, and his irrepressibly cheery daughter Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick).

The Bergens are as naturally unhappy as the trolls are happy. The only way the Bergens have ever found to feel happy is to eat the trolls. Once a year, they would raid the troll tree and gobble down as many as they could. King Peppy led them to a secret place where the Bergens could not find them, courageously risking his own life to make sure there was “no troll left behind.”

Poppy decides to have a party to celebrate 20 happy and peaceful years since the trolls escaped from the Bergens. Branch (Justin Timberlake), the one pessimistic troll, warns her that a loud celebration might attract the attention of the Bergens, but Poppy insists. Branch is right — the Bergen chef (Christine Baranski) has been searching for the trolls for 20 years, and the party fireworks lead her to their new home. She captures some of the trolls and Poppy, mindful of her father’s example, goes off to rescue them. Branch, who had predicted the Bergen threat and spent all his time creating a shelter while the other trolls were hugging and singing, had planned to wait out the invasion alone. But Poppy invites the other trolls to hide out there, and Branch agrees to go with her.

And so there is a journey and (literally) colorful characters along the way and once in Bergen-land, where the rescue effort is complicated but ultimately aided by the trolls friendship with a Bergen scullery-maid with a crush on the young king. Her name is Bridget (Zooey Deschanel) and she agrees to help the trolls if they will help her get the attention of the king. There’s a makeover that is half mice in “Cinderella” and half Cyrano de Bergerac. I worried that the film was buying into old-school notions that a girl has to be made over to attract and please a man, but the film is clear that Bridget that she may get a confidence boost from the makeover but she needs to be honest with her crush about who and what she is. And it was very good to see the movie’s honest engagement with the idea of happiness. Even with daunting and scary challenges, a positive attitude can inspire you and those around you. Even the saddest loss does not mean that you lose happiness forever. And the greatest happiness comes from being close to those we love. Hugs and music and dancing always help, too.

Parents should know that this film includes fantasy/action peril. Some trolls are eaten by the Bergens, with one especially sad loss of a character’s grandmother.

Family discussion: What do the trolls know about happiness that the Bergens don’t? What is the difference between pleasure and happiness? What is the hardest part of trying to be happy?

If you like this, try: “Megamind” and “Despicable Me”

Exclusive Clip: Breaking a Monster

Posted on October 7, 2016 at 7:00 am

Bonding over their love of music, three grade schoolers from Brooklyn spend their weekends playing heavy metal/speed punk in Times Square as “Unlocking the Truth.” When the band’s internet fame explodes and the music industry comes calling, Alec Atkins, Malcolm Brickhouse, and Jarad Dawkins feel like anything is possible, but are soon confronted with the realities that come with being rockstars. Breaking a Monster chronicles the first year as the band goes from three kids just playing the music they love to the very adult world of touring, managers and a $1.8 million record contract – all in pursuit of living out their heavy metal dreams. “Breaking a Monster” chronicles the break-out year of the band, and follows 14-year-old members as they first encounter stardom and the music industry, transcending childhood to become the rock stars they always dreamed of being.

It will be released on digital, VOD and DVD on Oct. 11, 2016. We are delighted to present an exclusive clip.

Florence Foster Jenkins

Posted on August 11, 2016 at 5:29 pm

The charm of the popular “Lip Synch Battle” series is the way that the contestants, all very talented and successful performers, transcend the limits of race and gender — and other limits, too, like vocal range. In her way, real-life heiress Florence Foster Jenkins was doing the same thing a century ago. Her dedication to music was monumental. So was her lack of talent. But she lived a blissful life with a devoted husband, staging elaborate tableaux and concerts. Like the emperor with the non-existent and therefore invisible new clothes, she was surrounded by people who never told her that her singing was a disaster in every category, from hitting the right note to staying in any single key from measure to measure.

In the second film of 2016 based on the life of Ms. Jenkins, Meryl Streep gives (of course) a performance of exquisite humanity and precision. (Earlier this year, the French film, “Marguerite,” was also inspired by Jenkins.) You have to know how to sing well (see “Mamma Mia,” “Postcards from the Edge,” and “Ricki and the Flash”) to sing this badly and you have to be an actor of sublime perfection to make terrible singing funny and brave and poignant. Hugh Grant is also superb as the magnificently named St. Clair Bayfield, Jenkins’ consort, a failed Shakespearean actor who shares Jenkins’ passion for performance and almost envies her complete freedom from self-awareness.

There are lovely performances from Nina Arianda as a brassy showgirl who married a wealthy man, Rebecca Ferguson (“Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation”) as Bayfield’s girlfriend, and “Big Bang Theory’s” Simon Helberg as Jenkins’ long-suffering accompanist, the equally magnificently named Cosmé McMoon. Jenkins is the ultimate exemplar of the Dunning-Kruger syndrome: those who are least able are also worst at assessing their own ability. The fun of this film, far more than laughing smugly at Jenkins’ cluelessness, is the fantasy of having endless resources to create our own fantasies of stardom.

Parents should know that this film includes drinking, smoking, sexual references and non-explicit situation, and a sad death.

Family discussion: Was St. Clair right to hide the truth from Florence? What do we learn from her visit to Cosme?

If you like this, try: The documentary “Florence Foster Jenkins: A World Of Her Own”

1776 — The Declaration of Independence

Posted on July 4, 2016 at 2:55 pm

From the great movie “1776” — the signing of the Declaration of Independence!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNOTozVp_i4

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Great Movie Moments Musical

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

Posted on June 2, 2016 at 5:37 pm

Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone are masters of the music video parody, and their SNL shorts “D*** in a Box,” “Jack Sparrow,” and “I’m on a Boat,” all featuring genuine music stars, followed the first true viral video, the classic “Lazy Sunday.” They are gifted at composing catchy hooks, writing silly lyrics, and nailing the music and look of genres from rap to pop to R&B. With appealing targets and a three-minute running time, they did very well. Now they’ve produced, written, and starred in a feature length parody of music documentaries with “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.” So, instead of comparing them to the performers they take on with their video shorts, they are going up against films like “This is Spinal Tap” and “Walk Hard,” both of which managed the daunting challenge of being more over-the-top than the acts they were parodying. “Popstar” is pleasant enough, but does not quite meet that challenge, getting most of its energy and most of its laughs from an endless parade of celebrity cameos, mostly winking at the audience.

Samberg plays Conner, once part of a popular band called Style Boyz with his childhood friends Owen (Taccone) and Lawrence (Schaffer), and now a hugely successful solo performer known as Conner4Real. Owen is now reduced to serving as DJ. Taccone provides the film’s rare subtle charms, making Owen so endearing he deserves his own movie. On stage, he sits behind an impressive high-tech set-up, but as he explains in one of the film’s comic high points, everything is set up on his iPod, which also has room for the audio books he listens to on the road. He makes the best of his relegation to the sidelines, even when Conner decides that he should have to wear a huge, heavy electro helmet/mask that shoots a zillion-watt light beam out of the top, so powerful it could probably disrupt the navigation system of the space station.

Lawrence is furious with Conner for stealing the credit he felt he deserved for one of his biggest hits. He has retreated to a farm in Colorado, where he makes terrible wood carvings and broods about the unfairness of it all. That hit, by the way, in a shrewd jab at the recording industry and its fans, turns out to be a brief rap segment in a song by a superstar (a blink-and-you’ll-miss her Emma Stone). Connor tells us that most rap artists do catchphrases, but his innovation (actually Lawrence’s) was to do a lot of catchphrases.

Conner is, of course, dating a starlet (Imogen Poots) and decides to distract the press from the terrible reviews of his new album by proposing to her in a stunt that goes terribly wrong. When ticket sales for his tour lag, he brings on an opening act, an up-and-coming rapper (Chris Redd) who “All About Eve”-style begins as a fan and then starts to take over the show.

The trio gets able support from SNL veterans Tim Meadows, Maya Rudolph, and Joan Cusack, and there are some funny cutaways to a TMZ-style sleazy “news” organization, but at a brisk under-90 minute running time no one is on screen for very long. The musical numbers are hilarious and the film is never mean-spirited about its characters or the real-life celebrities it is parodying. And by the time you figure out a joke isn’t working, two more have gone by, the pace itself enough things bouncing along. It tries so hard to entertain you, it would be hard-hearted not to give in.

Parents should know that this film includes very explicit nudity, very strong and crude language, sexual references, some comic violence, drinking, and drugs.

Family discussion: What celebrities does this remind you of? Why did Conner decide he wanted someone to be honest with him?

If you like this, try: “This is Spinal Tap,” “Walk Hard,” “Gentle and Soft” (the brilliant Bill Hader/Fred Armison mockumentary about a 70’s soft rock duo) and the Lonely Island videos

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Comedy Musical Satire