The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Posted on December 1, 2008 at 8:00 am

prince%20caspian.jpg The Pevensie children are back in London and contemporary life seems pale and uninvolving compared to their adventures in the magical land of Narnia. As they wait for the Tube, a wall opens up and just as happened when they went through the wardrobe, they stand before the entryway to Narnia again. This time, they know immediately where they are. What they don’t know is when they are. Everything is different. “I don’t remember any ruins in Narnia,” one says. Lucy (Georgie Henley) confidently approaches a bear, introducing herself as though she was inviting him to tea. But he growls and charges. “I don’t think he could talk at all,” she says with surprise. “If treated like a wild animal long enough, that’s what you become,” explains Trumpkin (Peter Dinklage in heavy gnomish make-up). “You may find Narnia a more savage place than you remember.”
“Everything you know is about to change,” says one character and that serves as a warning and a prediction that applies to all of the great adventures before the Pevensies — the battle for Narnia, the challenges of growing up, and the struggles of leadership, faith, and principle.
As the Pevensies explore, they find that 1300 years have passed in Narnia since they helped Aslan the lion (voice of Liam Neeson) defeat the White Witch (Tilda Swinton) and end the tyranny of Narnia’s perpetual winter. It is summer, but there is no peace and prosperity in Narnia. The nearby Telmarines have done their best to wipe out all of Narnia. Those creatures who are left are in hiding, without a leader. Aslan, who seemed the answer to all questions in their first visit may have been glimpsed by Lucy, but the others are not willing to believe her. And they meet up with Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes), the rightful heir to the throne of the Telemarines, usurped by his evil uncle. Wary of each other at first, Caspian and the Pevensies join forces to battle for the freedom of the Narnians.
Like the first film, this is a grand and visually stunning epic with thrilling battle scenes and powerful themes. This one has more violence but also more humor, especially from the most welcome new character, a mouse with the heart of a lion and the voice of Eddie Izzard. Like the book, one of the less compelling of the seven-volume series, it is not as involving as the first. Barnes has a nice screen presence (though his accent sounds like he is trying out for a road show version of “West Side Story” as one of the Sharks). The pacing is strong, the effects are superb, and the battles are exciting. The themes are presented with a subtlety that encourages thoughtful consideration, with a range of possible interpretations.
Don’t let the PG rating fool you. This is a long, intense, violent epic with the deaths of both good guys and bad guys, and it is not suitable for young children. The earlier film had some difficult and troubling material, including the shearing and apparent death of Aslan and the emotional corruption of one of the Pevensie children by the White Witch. But this one has a childbirth scene (with the mother in evident distress) and a retreat from battle that involves the loss of Narnians that is the fault of one of the Pevensies. The disturbing material may be darker than the first for some viewers.

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Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2

Posted on November 18, 2008 at 8:00 am

When the first five minutes of a film show us a wedding, a graduation, a pregnancy, some kisses, and two grave sites, followed by a reunion scene involving shrieking and hugging, we know we are in for an irresistible saga of friendship through love, loss, risk, and clothes. What older sisters get in Sex and the City and their moms find in Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood and Steel Magnolias, middle and high schoolers find in the “Traveling Pants” movies.
In the first “Traveling Pants” summer, the four BFFs used a magical pair of blue jeans that somehow fit them all perfectly as a sort of proto-Facebook for staying in touch. They sent the pants back and forth, embroidering status updates with mementos from their adventures.
Three years have gone by and now cynical Tibby (“Joan of Arcadia’s” Amber Tamblyn), athlete Bridget (“Gossip Girl’s” Blake Lively), shy Lena (“Gilmore Girls'” Alexis Bledel), and writer Carmen (“Ugly Betty’s” America Ferrara) are all in college, meaning they now have the kind of problems that raise the rating from the PG for the 2005 original to a PG-13.
The pants are about to get some serious mileage. Tibby is in New York, working at a DVD store and trying to finish a screenplay assignment. “Romantic comedy is an oxymoron,” she complains. Lena is in Rhode Island, blushing through a figure drawing class and trying to forget her first love, Costas. That nude male model she is drawing has a great…smile. Bridget has gone on an archeological dig in Turkey where a sympathetic scholar (Shohreh Aghdashloo) reminds her that it is not only the bones and artifacts we study but the people and their stories. And Carmen finds herself unexpectedly cast in a Shakespeare production in Vermont while at home her recently re-married mother is about to have a baby. As they face a pregnancy scare, repair an estranged family relationship and struggle with romance, the girls must find new resolve and confidence in themselves and in their connection to each other.
The real love story that is the heart of the movie is the friendship of the girls. They wonder at times if they are still able to communicate but they are always there for each other when needed. Like the first film, the sequel is refreshingly honest about complicated and messy problems and it avoids tidy resolutions. The girls learn that sometimes even with the best of intentions, people — and life — let us down but that courage, sincere kindness, and friends can help even when they cannot fix what is wrong. Even more appealing is the girls’ endearingly tender support for each other’s differences of personality and interests and the matter-of-fact mix of racial and ethnic pairings. The movie makes it clear that, as Eleanor Roosevelt said, no one can make you feel inadequate without your permission and it is one movie that does not imply that a girl has to have a boyfriend to be successful, happy, or complete.
A character in “Steel Magnolias” summarizes the female friendship genre: “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.” The talented young actresses and a quartet of appealing swain make this story’s travels between laughter and tears a journey worth taking.

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Hellboy 2: the Golden Army

Posted on November 9, 2008 at 6:00 pm

“Hellboy” is the “US Weekly” of comic book sagas. Superheroes are just like us! They squabble with their loved ones! They smoke cigars! They take pregnancy tests! When their hearts are broken they get drunk and sing along to Barry Manilow!
And then there are the other things they do, like confronting a kitten-eating a bag lady who is really a troll and battling a building-sized elemental plant guy who is trying to eat everything. And bursting into flames. And shooting people with very, very big guns and punching people very, very hard with a really, really big hand.
Hellboy (“Red” to his friends) is the big devil-looking red guy with one very large brick-like hand, two sawed-off horns, and a tail. Bad guys do not fluster him. He chews on a cigar, pulls out a gun with bullets bigger than a breadbox, lets out a sigh or a wisecrack, and goes after whatever it is, from a thousand bone-munching spidery-looking little creature to a large, slobbering, boar-shaped monster, and that plant guy. When Hellboy showers, clutching a beer can, we hear the Eels’ “Beautiful Freak,” and the warm acceptance of that song, similar to the “just like us” moments, is a nicely understated theme of the movie.
The creatures and CGI effects are a wonderfully inventive, with the exception of the flames that engulf Hellboy’s true love, Liz (Selma Blair), as lackluster as the “when will she tell him the real reason she is so upset” plotline they’ve given her. She needs to get some flame on pointers from Johnny Storm. But this is not a movie that takes females or their powers very seriously. The other leading lady is Princess Nuala (Anna Walton), a typically Stevie Nicks-type of ethereal beauty with intuitive palm-sensing ability who pretty much stands around when all the fighting is going on.
And what fighting it is. The visuals are sensationally imaginative. Director Guillermo del Toro is every bit as excited about the creatures in this comic-book saga as he was in his grown-up fairy tale “Pan’s Labyrinth.” Wonderfully imagined and intricately constructed, they often reflect the sensibility of a steampunk cracked version of “Lord of the Rings.” Hellboy’s new boss, reported to have an “open face,” turns out to be a clanking robot with a glass dome who speaks through an apparatus that looks like the workings of a Victorian typewriter. The clash and contrast of styles adds a lot of visual flair. A bad guy Prince has long blonde hair and seamed cheeks that make him look like the spawn of Legolas from “Lord of the Rings” and Sally from “A Nightmare Before Christmas.”
The fight scenes are inventively set up and staged. As Hellboy battles the plant guy he has to have one arm around a swaddled infant he is in the process of rescuing. He takes on Victorian typewriter-guy at one point and finds himself battling a barrage of swinging locker doors. When he fights the Prince, he has to be careful to defeat him without hurting him because of the psychic connection that imposes any injuries to him on his twin sister as well. The plot may not be much and the Golden Army of the title is the least interesting of his foes, but even the silly stuff is so imaginatively realized that Hellboy has a bit of a touch of comic book movie heaven.

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Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Posted on November 9, 2008 at 6:00 pm

Oh, George Lucas. Please stop diluting the franchise.

This latest all-animated iteration of “Star Wars” has a relationship to the original somewhere along the lines of the relationship of a homeopathic ingredient to the ultimate concoction. It has been diluted so that its atoms are barely detectable. The saga suffers in part because so many have taken what Lucas did in the 1970’s and 80’s and taken it further in terms of technology as well as story. All that remains here is from the weakest part of the original trilogy, especially the cardboard dialogue, without the screen charisma and acting ability of Harrison Ford and some of the others to make it work. The animation is below the level of most video games.

Worst of all, the movie diminishes the story arc of the original trilogies by taking the key character of Anakin Skywalker in a direction unrelated to everything we knew about him. What should enrich and expand on the stories just erodes further our sense of the original characters.

High School Musical

Posted on October 20, 2008 at 8:00 am

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	All Ages
MPAA Rating:	G
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2006
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000F2BNW2

This week, as the powerhouse franchise that is known as “HSM” moves from television to CD (top-seller of the year), DVD, stage show, video game, ice show, birthday party decoration theme, and now feature film theatrical release, it’s time to take another look at the original that became the unstoppable hit of 2006, the original Disney Channel movie, “High School Musical.”

When Troy (Zac Efron) and Gabriella (Vanessa Anne Hudgens) find themselves singing karaoke together at a resort on New Year’s Eve, they feel a connection. But then it turns out she has transferred to his school. Vacation is one thing, but at school people tend to stick to clearly defined roles. He’s a basketball star. She’s a math whiz. Their friends all think anyone outside their group is not worth talking to, and the idea of liking anything different is not tolerated.

But they still have music in common — and a lot of chemistry (Efron and Hudgens became a real-life couple). Despite the best, or perhaps I should say worst efforts of bother-sister scene-stealers Ryan and Sharpay Evans (Lucas Grabeel and Ashley Tisdale as HSM’s version of Team Rocket) to hold onto the lead roles in the…high school musical, talent and integrity win the day.

My favorite number in the show is the joyous salute to being yourself, “Stick to the Status Quo.” Can’t wait to see HSM3. Go Wildcats!