Rio

Posted on April 14, 2011 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	G
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Mild peril
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	April 15, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	August 1, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B004HO6I4M

A South American setting and striking animation lend freshness to “Rio’s” otherwise much-traveled storyline about a pampered pet who has to learn to survive in the wild. We’ve seen this tale many times — “Madagascar,” “Bolt,” “The Wild,” “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,”and more. But this version is buoyed by local color — literally, with a vibrantly sun-drenched palette, along with a sensationally festive Carnival parade, and a slinky samba-liscious soundtrack overseen by Rio’s most enduringly popular musical export, Sergio Mendes.

Blu (voice of “The Social Network’s” Jesse Eisenberg) is a rare blue macaw who was captured by animal smugglers in Brazil as a tiny chick. His crate falls out of a truck in snowy Minnesota (identified onscreen simply as “Not Rio”) and is rescued by a little girl named Linda. He grows up blissfully domesticated and never bothers to learn to fly. Everything he wants is within reach. He brings Linda her glasses when she wakes up and she makes sure he has just the right number of marshmallows in his hot chocolate. As he explains, he is not a pet; he is a companion. And Linda says he is her best friend.

They are visited by an ornithologist named Tulio (voice of Rodrigo Santoro), who tells Linda (voice of Leslie Mann) there is just one last surviving female blue macaw (voice of Anne Hathaway as Jewel). Unless they mate, it will be the end of their species. Linda reluctantly agrees to take Blu to Brazil. But smugglers show up again to steal Blu and Jewel. Blu has to learn some survival skills and make some new friends to find his way back to Linda.

Blue Sky is the studio that produced the “Ice Age” series and it is obvious that they are glad to be done with the endless blues and grays of the ice, snow, and rock settings. Brazilian-born director Carlos Saldanha (director of “Ice Age” and co-director of the underrated “Robots”) takes evident pride and delight in bringing his home town to the screen, taking full advantage of 3D CGI so that we can swoop around the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue atop the Corcovado Mountain and hang-glide over miles of beaches. He has fun with Brazilian culture, too. When Carnival revelers cross in front of their car, Linda asks Tulio if a woman in a gold-spangled costume is a performer. “No,” he replies, “she’s my dentist.” As the woman in the spangles happily runs off to the celebration, she reminds Tulio to floss. And Blu provides a critique of samba music that will sound familiar to its fans.

Eisenberg’s tremulous voice is just right for Blu, giving him a neurotic, urban, understated wit. “You know how people say ‘it’s a jungle out there?'” he complains to Jewel when they find themselves in the middle of a rainforest. “Not a good thing.” He gets strong support from Tracy Morgan as a bulldog, George Lopez as a toucan, and Will.i.Am and Jamie Foxx as friendly birds. The story may not be new, but in fairness it is a theme that is very appealing to children, whose entire lives are about finding themselves outside their safe, domestic environment and trying to navigate the wild and sometimes scary unpredictability of real life.

The star of the show in every respect is a cockatoo named Nigel (voice of Jermaine Clement of HBO’s “Flight of the Conchords”), one of the most masterfully animated characters in movie history. Blue Sky Studios created a remarkable bird villain named Vlad three years ago in “Horton Hears a Who.” It was a daunting mechanical challenge to animate the infinite complexities of dozens of wing joints and thousands of feathers but Vlad was on screen only briefly. Here the Blue Sky animators take what they learned from Vlad much further. Nigel is a key figure with an even more complicated structure, at once menacing and shambling, who sings, dances, menaces, and fights, all in character. The algorithms necessary for what can only be called Nigel’s performance could probably have programmed a moon shot, and yet he seems completely natural and fluidly expressive. Clement’s voice work is a perfect balance of mean and funny, and Nigel’s musical tribute to his own villainy is pure pleasure.

Saldanha is at his best when there are dozens of characters on screen. Whether they are dancing or fighting, they are colorful, joyous, and meticulously choreographed. A battle between the birds and the monkeys is exciting and funny and the opening dance number is a kaleidoscopic treat. The climax, in the middle of a Carnival parade with massive floats and crowds of thousands is brilliantly imagined. Blu spends most of the movie trying to get off the ground, but with Nigel and these big, showy scenes, Saldanha makes the movie soar.

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The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Posted on April 5, 2011 at 8:11 am

A gallant warrior mouse and a dragon with a secret join the two youngest Pevensie children for a voyage and a quest in the third and best so far in the Narnia series. War has come to England and Edmund (Skandar Keynes) tries to enlist, protesting “I’ve fought wars and led armies,” when he is rejected for not being old enough to join. Peter (William Moseley) and Susan (Anna Popplewell) are on the brink of the adult world. But the younger children, Lucy (Georgie Henley) and Edmund are packed off to live with relatives, including their arrogant meanie of a cousin, Eustace (“Son of Rambow’s” Will Poulter), a young man who believes that he (with the help of science and logic) has all the answers. Time for a trip to Narnia, this time via a magic painting of a ship at sea, which suddenly floods the bedroom and washes them away.

They are picked up by a ship called the Dawn Treader, led by their old friend King Caspian (Ben Barnes). And soon they are on a quest to find seven banished lords and their seven swords.

They will face daunting challenges, some of the most terrifying coming from themselves, sometimes amplified by malevolent magic and sometimes just a reflection of their own youth, inexperience, and insecurities. They accuse each other of not being up to the tasks as they wonder themselves whether they are. They are drawn to worldly prizes. Lucy is so eager to be as pretty and grown up as her big sister that she steals a spell from a book of incantations. Eustace keeps stoutly insisting that he wants them to get the British consulate to sort things out and tries to stuff treasure into his pockets. Edmund sees a vision of the White Queen, still tempting him to betray the others. In one moment reminiscent of “Ghostbusters,” “Harry Potter,” and “1984,” an evil force brings into life whatever is most feared by the people it is attacking.

The movie succeeds most as a visual treat. The title vessel is genuinely enchanting, exactly what you would want a fairy tale ship to look like. The series moves smoothly into 3D, designed more to draw you into the world of Narnia than to make you swat away distracting objects seemingly suspended in front of your nose. It also achieves a nice balance, accessible to those who are not familiar with the books and the first two movies or interested in the Christian allegory but satisfying for those who are.

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Yogi Bear

Posted on March 22, 2011 at 7:38 pm

Yogi Bear (voice of Dan Aykroyd) is genuinely perplexed by the suggestion that he might want to forage for food and catch fish with his paws. “Isn’t that kind of unsanitary?”

He may live in the woods, but for Yogi, star of the 1960’s series of cartoons from Hanna-Barbera, that does not mean his life has to be bereft of civilization. He has a best friend named Boo Boo with a natty bow tie (voice of Justin Timberlake!). His cave is equipped with a soda machine. He is never seen without his hat, collar, and tie. And he is a well-known aficionado of fine dining. His preferred cuisine is the contents of picnic baskets brought by visitors to Jellystone Park, the campground and nature preserve that is his home. He loves picnic baskets so much, he’s given them an extra syllable, to hold onto the word just a little longer. He calls them “pick-a-nic baskets,” and they are to him what the grail was to Galahad, the whale was to Ahab, and the Road Runner is to Wile E. Coyote.

But to the frustrated Ranger Smith (the always-likable Tom Cavanagh), Yogi’s antics make it impossible for him to have the nice, peaceful, orderly park he dreams of. “There’s no better place on earth,” he sighs, “except without him.” And Smith can’t figure out how to talk to the pretty nature nerd who has arrived to make a documentary about the talking bear in Jellystone Park (the always-adorable Anna Faris as Rachel).

Soon, though, Smith has a bigger problem. The Mayor (slimy Andrew Daly) and his aide (elfin Nathan Corddry) want rescue the city’s budget by privatizing the park and selling off the logging rights. Ranger Smith has just one week to get enough money from increased admissions to the park to save the day.

Yogi Bear began as one segment of the 1958 animated series “Huckleberry Hound.” He quickly eclipsed the other characters, who are all but forgotten (I don’t see “Pixie, Trixie, and Mr. Jinks: The Movie” coming to a multiplex any time soon), and soon became a headliner with his own series. Yogi’s adventures were filled with the same silly slapstick, but he had a special quality that endeared him to kids. They identified with his place midway between the animal world of the forest and Smith’s ultra-civilized world of a uniformed, rule-enforcing (but always-forgiving) grown-up.

Yogi often brags that he is “smarter than the average bear,” but he often outsmarts himself, allowing kids to feel that they are a step ahead of him. As often in comedy, especially for kids, a lot of the humor in cartoons comes from ineptitude and foolishness. Children, who are constantly surrounded by things they do not understand love to see characters who are even more confounded by the world around them. In this film, Yogi may be smart enough to design a flying contraption. But his efforts to persuade Ranger Smith that it is not intended for stealing picnic baskets fails when the Ranger points out that printed across its stern is “Baskitnabber 2000.”

Moments like these are classic Yogi, but it is still an uneven transition to a live-action feature film from the very simplified story-line and animation of a seven-minute hand-drawn cartoon. The running time, computer graphics, and 3D effects overwhelm the slightness of the material, especially when it departs from the core relationship of Yogi and Ranger Smith. The story drags in the middle, when the junior ranger (T.J. Miller), chafing because Ranger Smith won’t let him do anything but sort maps, agrees to sabotage the efforts to keep the park going in exchange for a promotion. Smith’s inept efforts to romance the pretty film-maker are weak and it hardly helps when Yogi offers his advice to Smith about, ahem, marking his territory.

These are what I call “lunchbox movies.” We’ve had a string of big-budget multiplex fodder featuring whatever character was on some studio executive’s second grade lunchbox (Garfield, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Inspector Gadget). They toss in some potty humor for the little kids and some boombox oldies to amuse the parents (Sir Mix-a-Lot will be cashing yet another royalty check). But Yogi and his pic-a-nic basket — and the kids and parents looking for a holiday treat — deserve better.

Rango

Posted on March 3, 2011 at 5:37 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for rude humor, language, action, and smoking
Profanity:	Some crude schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Western-style violence with shoot-outs, characters in peril, injured and killed with some graphic images, snake
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	March 4, 2011

“Rango” is a deliciously demented and slyly satiric take on westerns, which means it takes on America’s deepest myths about our identity. It is wild and strange and blessedly idiosyncratic, with a witty and heartfelt performance by Johnny Depp in the title role.

Don’t let the PG rating fool you. This is not a movie for kids. This is a movie for cool, sophisticated, highly discerning teenagers and adults. Children who see it will have the pleasure of decades of “Ah, that’s what that reference in Rango was about” moments as they expand their knowledge of classic film and American history and folklore. But older audiences will be able to appreciate the way the movie salutes, tweaks, and repurposes western traditions, with shout-outs to a cornucopia of films and icons, from Hunter Thompson to Clint Eastwood and joyously cracked dialogue about conflict, irony, power, heroes, and destiny. And a brave girl lizard named Beans (voice of Isla Fisher), a mayor who is a turtle in a wheelchair (voice of Ned Beatty), a scary snake (voice of Bill Nighy), and some mangy varmints who are actual mangy varmints. And an adorable bird mariachi band to comment on the story.

It begins with an actor, a literal and metaphoric chameleon in a literal and metaphoric glass cage, sealed off from the world, his only co-stars a plastic fish and a headless Barbie torso. He is so existentially changeable that he can hardly tell reality from performance and like his cinematic western forebear, he has no name.

When a highway accident tosses his lizard tank on to the desert highway, it shatters and our hero for the first time must find a destiny and an identity. A mythic armadillo directs him toward a town called Dirt so he can find water. Once there, he picks a name for himself: Rango. And soon he is made sheriff. But it takes a bit longer for him to understand what that really means and what it will take for him to protect the town.

It’s all about water. The town needs it. But “the immutable law of the desert is — control the water and you control everything.” Rango will have to become more than a chameleon — he will have to become a hero.

There is so much going on it will require a second and third viewing, each more enjoyable than the last. Just watch Rango’s attire adapt as he gets in touch with his inner hero. There are hundreds of clever details and imaginative flourishes to make this film worthy of being put into the same category as the films to which it so charmingly pays tribute.

Alpha and Omega

Posted on January 11, 2011 at 8:00 am

Two young Canadian wolves representing the extremes of the social scale join forces in the animated “Alpha and Omega,” which keeps them stuck in the bland middle. Though the visuals are in 3D, the film barely manages to register in one. “Alpha and Omega” gives us an episodic story with an uneasy mix of slapstick and peril that drains the momentum, along with lackluster art direction that saps the visual interest.

Kate (the voice of Hayden Panettiere) was born to be an alpha wolf, daughter of the pack leader and trained to hunt caribou. Humphrey (Justin Long) is the happy-go-lucky omega.

Caribou are getting scarce, and the uneasy truce between the wolves led by Tony (Dennis Hopper, in his penultimate role) and the wolves led by Kate’s father, Winston (Danny Glover), is fraying. There’s also some nattering about eastern vs. western wolves that makes them sound like rival college football teams or gangsta rappers.

Tony proposes that the packs join forces, with a marriage between Kate and his jock-like son to bring the two groups together. But American forest rangers capture Kate and Humphrey and carry them off to Idaho, hoping they will repopulate the area.

With some guidance from a golf-playing goose (even the wildly funny Larry Miller can’t give that character any vitality) Kate and Humphrey (an “African Queen” reference?) start for home. Their adventures on the way back include being shot at by a man who thinks Humphrey has rabies and being chased by bears who mistake Humphrey’s playful snowball for an attack on their cub.

Tony threatens war unless Kate shows up in time to marry his son and unite the packs. But Kate is not the only one to discover that alphas and omegas can make a good team.

Kate is an appealing heroine, and so it’s a relief to see an all-ages movie that does not require the responsible, capable character to “loosen up” and get in touch with her silly side or the fun-loving character to become serious to find love and happiness. But the script fails to give Kate and Humphrey some other purpose to propel the story forward. Despite a perilous road trip and an imminent feud between wolf factions, we do not see Kate and Humphrey learn or change in any way that seems to matter. The result is a story with all of the dramatic tension of a dial tone.

The movie depends on the difference between the two kinds of wolves, but it is oddly reluctant to decide what that means. The alphas act like, well, alphas: strong, brave, smart and kind of bossy. They are not unkind to the omegas but they are dismissive and condescending. There’s a half-hearted attempt to make the contribution of the omegas appear equivalent because they remind everyone to have fun and “keep the peace.” It seems forced and insincere, especially when the genuine contributions made by Humphrey come from being brave and smart, not funny and playful.

The background animation has some lovely touches but the character design is poor. It’s not accurate enough to make the wolves seem like animals and not expressive enough to make them seem like characters we can care about. The characters’ expressions during vertiginous drops on a hollow log sledding down a mountain are so flat that the 3-D effects just don’t matter.

We’ve been spoiled this year by two top-quality 3-D animated films, “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Despicable Me,” and one that qualifies as a masterpiece, “Toy Story 3.” Those films are the alphas that make this one seem like a Saturday morning cartoon show.