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Posted on November 10, 2009 at 8:00 am

Pixar movies are beautiful to look at, but what takes your breath away is the story. They don’t rely on fairy tales or best-selling books with pre-sold stories and characters we are already attached to. And, as if challenging themselves to make it even harder, they take on increasingly unlikely protagonists — a gourmet rat, an almost-wordless robot, and now a cranky old man, and somehow they make us fall in love with them.

In some ways, this is the oldest and most enduring of tales, the story of a journey. And this is one that started a long time ago. A brief prologue introduces us to Carl and Ellie, a boy and girl who dream of adventure. They pledge to follow their hero, explorer Charles Muntz, to see Paradise Falls in South America.

Then they grow up and get married and life intervenes. He sells balloons and she works with birds. They save for their trip but keep having to use the money for un-adventuresome expenses like repairing the roof. Then Ellie dies, and Carl (voice of Ed Asner) is left alone. Developers are closing in on his little house. He just can’t bear to lose anything more. And so he takes the one thing he has and the one thing he knows and ties so many balloons to his house that it lifts, yes, up into the sky, so he can follow Muntz to Paradise Falls at last.

But he does not realize he has an inadvertent stowaway. Russell (voice of Jordan Nagai), a pudgy, trusting, and irrepressibly cheerful little Wilderness Adventure scout who needs to assist an elderly person so that he can get a badge. They arrive in South America and as they pull the house, still aloft, toward Paradise Falls, they meet an exotic bird, talking dogs, and several kinds of danger, and have to rethink some of what they thought they knew and some of what they thought was most important to them.

The visuals are splendid, making subtle but powerful use of the 3D technology to make some scenes feel spacious and some claustrophobic. Carl and his world are all rectangles, Russell all curves. The Tabletop Mountains-inspired landscapes are stunning and the balloons are buoyant marvels, thousands of them, each moving separately but affecting all of the others, the shiny crayon dots of pure color amid the dusty rock and the earth tones of Carl’s wrinkles, gray hair, and old clothes. The other glowing colors on screen are the iridescent feathers of the bird, inspired by the monal pheasant.

There are a couple of logical and chronological inconsistencies that are distracting. But the dogs, with special collars that allow them to give voice to the canine purity of their feelings, are utterly charming — and there is a clever twist to keep the scariest one from being too scary. Another pleasure of the film comes from the way the precision of the graphic design is matched by some welcome and very human messiness in the story. Everything is not resolved too neatly but everything is resolved with a tenderness and spirit that is like helium for the heart.

The Wizard of Oz

Posted on September 29, 2009 at 8:00 am

The 70th anniversary of this all-time classic is being celebrated with a beautiful new DVD release, a great chance for the family to sit down and watch what is probably the all-time greatest family film again.
Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) lives in Kansas with her aunt and uncle and her dog, Toto. Mean Miss Gulch (Margaret Hamilton) swears she will have Toto taken away. Auntie Em and Uncle Henry support Dorothy, but they are too distracted by the coming tornado to pay much attention to her. Dorothy dreams of a place “over the rainbow” where everything is beautiful, “troubles melt like lemon drops” and “the dreams that you dream really do come true.” She starts to run away to protect Toto, but is sent back home by the kindly Professor Marvel (Frank Morgan), a traveling fortune-teller.

When the tornado arrives, Dorothy is outside the shelter. She goes to her room, where she is hit on the head by a piece of wood torn loose by the wind. The whole house rises, and is carried away by the tornado.

The house lands with a crash, and when she opens the door, she finds she has landed in the colorful world of Oz (the movie, black and white until this point, becomes technicolor). Her house has landed on the Wicked Witch of the East, killing her, and the tiny Munchkins celebrate Dorothy as a great heroine. Their friend Glinda the good witch (Billie Burke) arrives and gives her the Wicked Witch’s magic ruby slippers, just as the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) arrives to take them. The Wicked Witch of the East was her sister. Furious, she swears revenge. Dorothy wants to go home and is told to seek out the Wizard of Oz, who lives in the Emerald City, for help.

On the way to the Emerald City, she meets a talking Scarecrow (Ray Bolger) who wants a brain, a Tin Woodsman (Jack Haley) who longs for a heart, and a cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr) who wants courage. They all join her, to seek the help of the Wizard. At the Emerald City, the Wizard at first refuses to see them, then finally tells them they must earn their wishes by bringing him the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West. They are captured by the Witch’s flying monkeys, and just as she is about to kill them, Dorothy douses her with water, trying to protect the Scarecrow from fire, and the witch melts.

They return to the Emerald City only to find that the Wizard cannot help them. He is a fraud, just “the man behind the curtain” whose terrifying displays of smoke and light hid a “humbug” who had no magical powers at all. But he is able to show the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman, and Lion that they really did have what they were seeking all the time, and he promises to take Dorothy back to Kansas in his hot air balloon.

Toto jumps out of the balloon’s basket. Dorothy runs after him and misses the balloon launch. But, just as Dorothy despairs of ever going home, Glinda arrives and shows Dorothy that she had the means of getting home all the time. Back in Kansas, Dorothy wakes up to find her aunt and uncle, the farmhands, and Professor Marvel (who strongly resemble the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, Lion, and Wizard), and tells them that “there’s no place like home.”

This movie is an ideal family film, superb in every aspect, with outstanding art direction, music, and performances. It is still as fresh and engrossing as it was in 1939, and improves with every viewing. If you ever have a chance to see it in on a big screen, in a theater with a good sound system, you will enjoy it even more.

It is hard to imagine what it would have been like with the original intended cast, including Shirley Temple as Dorothy and Buddy Ebsen as the Tin Woodsman. But 20th Century Fox would not loan its top star, and Ebsen was hospitalized when he inhaled the aluminum dust in the Tin Woodsman’s make-up. Judy Garland is a perfect Dorothy — vulnerable, sensitive, completely believable. On the brink of leaving childhood, her dreams of a place “over the rainbow” are in part a yearning to escape the concerns of adulthood.

There is something especially satisfying about the way that the main characters find what they need within themselves. Talk with children about the way that the Scarecrow demonstrates his intelligence, the Tin Woodman demonstrates his heart, and the Lion demonstrates his courage. Even the humbug Wizard finds that he had the means to go home all the time. Dorothy, who in the first part of the movie runs away from home to try to solve her problems, spends the rest of the movie trying to get back. Even if the story is just a dream (in the book, it is a real adventure), this makes a great deal of emotional sense, a way of working through her inner conflicts.

It is also worth talking about the scene in which Dorothy and her friends disregard the Wizard’s plea to “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” and discover that he is really just an ordinary man. This can be a touchstone or metaphor for many kinds of challenges children face. It can help them recognize that the overpowering figures in their lives (parents, teachers, adults, sports figures) are just imperfect human beings. And it can also help them recognize attempts, by themselves as well as others, to distract people in hopes of hiding our imperfection and vulnerability.

NOTE: There are a number of different scenes in this movie that may be scary for children. Many adults still remember the flying monkeys or Dorothy looking into the crystal ball and seeing her aunt turn into the witch. Parents should talk to children about the story before seeing the movie, and watch with them to gauge their reactions.

G-Force

Posted on July 23, 2009 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some mild action and rude humor
Profanity:	Some schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Characters in peril, violence, scary dog with big teeth, scary robot, reference to parental abandonment
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	July 24, 2009

Top voice talent and good 3D computer graphics cannot make up for the fact that this film is utterly synthetic as well as crass, loud, and vulgar. Even at a brief running time of under 90 minutes, it overstays its welcome.

A team of super-agent guinea pigs, assisted by a reconnaissance fly and a computer whiz mole (Nicolas Cage), fail in a mission to find out what weapons-dealer-turned-consumer-electronics mogul Saber (Bill Nighy) is up to. So, over the protests of their human leader, Ben (Zach Galifianakis), the program is shut down by the FBI’s Kip Killian (Will Arnett). The guinea pigs and mole have to escape from a pet shop — and from children who abuse them — to prevent Saber’s diabolical plot from being executed.

The script is predictable and derivative. References to other movies like “Die Hard” and “Scarface” may amuse parents and potty jokes may amuse children but they contribute to a crass and lazy feel to the film. The 3D effects are mostly used to make the audience duck flying glass shards and spraying water. If they’re smart, they’ll just duck the movie.

Coraline

Posted on July 21, 2009 at 8:00 am

In the grand tradition of Alice, Dorothy, Milo, and the Pevensie children, Coraline enters a portal to a magical world that is both thrilling and terrifying, one that will both enchant her and demand her greatest resources of courage and integrity. And it will teach her that she does being given whatever she wants is not what she thought — that what she thinks she wants may not be what she wants after all.

Coraline (voice of Dakota Fanning) is bored and lonely. She and her parents have just moved into a new home and she does not know anyone. Her mother (voice of Teri Hatcher) and father (voice of John Hodgman, who plays the PC in the Mac commercials) are distracted and busy with work. While they type away furiously on their computers about gardening, they never actually go outside and plant anything. Coraline meets her neighbors, a pair of one-time performers (voices of Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French), a man training singing mice (voice of Ian McShane), and a boy her age named Wybie (voice of Robert Bailey Jr.), to whom she takes an immediate dislike.

She explores her surroundings and finds a mysterious locked door. Her mother tells her since the house was converted to make apartments it only opens onto a brick wall. But when she tries it herself, it opens into a tube-shaped corridor that leads to a place very like but also very unlike her own home and neighborhood. Everything is brighter and more colorful. The mother and father tell her that they are her Other parents. They sound just like her real parents and they look like them, too, except that they are utterly devoted and attentive and generous, and except for their eyes, which are sewn-on black buttons.

The Other world is enchanting for a while, with all kinds of diversions and performances. Many, like the Other parents, echo the places and characters from home. But then it begins to feel too synthetic and a little creepy. When the Other mother asks her sweetly to replace her eyes with buttons, Coraline goes home. But home is not the same. Something has happened and she will have to return to the Other place for an adventure that will require all of her courage, perseverance, and some growing up, too.

Coraline must follow the storyline and grow disenchanted with the Other place but we have the luxury of reveling in it. The creepier it gets, the more mesmerizing the visuals, ravishingly grotesque and dazzlingly inventive when the Other Mother suddenly elongates, her cheekbones sticking out like flying buttresses and her arms and legs getting spider-y. This is the first stereoscopic 3D film made in the painstakingly meticulous stop-motion system in which no more than 2-4 seconds can be completed each day because every frame requires as many as a thousand tiny adjustments. The 3D effect is all-encompassing and utterly entrancing as we feel as though we are inside the Other world as its uneasy false cheeriness slides away and we discover what is really going on. Like her parents, Coraline has been separated from authenticity of experience, in her case because she is a child. But the journey to the Other world shows her that she has what she needs to become more fully herself and to find a more vivid and vibrant life in the place she once thought of as drab and uninvolving.

A Bug’s Life

Posted on May 27, 2009 at 4:00 am

A+

Lowest Recommended Age:	All Ages
MPAA Rating:	G
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Mild
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	1998
Date Released to DVD:	1998
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00007LVCM

Pixar is the must successful studio in movie history, with every single one of its releases earning over $100 million. Even more impressive, every one of them is entirely original, not based on a book or classic fairy tale. I have a special affection for “A Bug’s Life,” and so chose it as this week’s DVD pick, in honor of its newest cinematic sibling, “Up.”
“A Bug’s Life” did not get the attention it deserved when it was first released was because it was the second computer-animated movie about ants within a few months. The difference between the two animated ant movies is exemplified by their lead characters. “Antz” had Z, voiced by Woody Allen as — well — Woody Allen, angst-ridden, in analysis, searching for individual identity in a world of conformity. “A Bug’s Life” has “News Radio’s” Dave Foley providing his voice as Flik, an All-American ant-next-door type, inventive, brave, and loyal.

When Flik inadvertently loses the food tribute set out by the ants for the predatory grasshoppers, he must find a way to protect his community. In the spirit of “The Magnificent Seven,” he goes off in search of warrior bugs to fight the grasshoppers. He mistakenly hires a group of unsuccessful vaudevillians from (of course) a flea circus, who think they are being booked for a performance and have no idea he expects them to fight. But they turn out to have just the right stuff to help the ants fight the grasshoppers after all. And Flick gets to prove that he is a hero at heart. The result is a delightful movie that is great fun for all but the smallest kids, who may be frightened by the scary grasshoppers and by some intense action sequences that put the lead characters into danger.

Helped by outstanding voice talent, the characters are quirky and endearing enough to make you forget they are computer-animated. “Seinfeld’s” Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays the ant princess, learning about the responsibilities of leadership. Phyllis Diller lends her raspy voice to the ant queen. Kevin Spacey is smoothly menacing as Hopper, the leader of the grasshopper bad guys, and “Spin City’s” Richard Kind plays his not-so-bad-guy brother. The flea circus performers include the voices of “Frasier’s” David Hyde Pierce, and John Ratzenberger of “Cheers.”

“Antz” was largely brown, but this ant movie uses a paintbox of color to produce stunning images with luminous tones. You’ll need to see it twice to appreciate the scope of the movie’s visual wit and technological mastery. It also has the funniest credit sequence I have ever seen — be sure to watch all the way to the end to enjoy it.

Subjects for family discussion include bullies, and how to deal with them (note Hopper’s view that their power depends more on the ants’ perception than on reality), what makes a leader, the obligations of responsibility, and responding to challenges — including failure.