Wall•E

Posted on November 18, 2008 at 11:06 am

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	All Ages
MPAA Rating:	G
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Tension and peril, themes of environmental degredation and toxic waste
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	June 27, 2008
Date Released to DVD:	November 18, 2008
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0013FSL3E

700 years after the last humans left the planet they had made uninhabitable through environmental degradation, one small robot is still continuing to crunch the mountains of trash. He is a Waste Allocation Load-Lifter Earth-Class, or Wall•E. His eyes are binoculars, his legs are treads, and his torso is a garbage compacter. But somehow, somewhere, he has developed the heart of a true romantic hero. His speech may be made up of beeps and squeaks but he thinks about the trash he picks up, puzzling (as well he might) over a spork and a Rubik’s Cube. He feels affection for the only life form he sees, a friendly brown cockroach. And every night he comes back to his little home and puts on an old video tape of “Hello Dolly,” watching the big dance numbers and dreaming robotic dreams of having a hand to hold, just like the characters in the movie. Just as we always suspected, after total annihilation of everything else on the planet, the only survivors will be cockroaches, Broadway show tunes, and Twinkies (okay, the lawyers made them call it something else on the package, but trust me, it’s a Twinkie). The genius of Pixar, the most successful movie studio in history, the only one ever to make more than $100 million with every one of its releases, is that they may spend blockbuster money on a film (reportedly $180 million for this one) but hold on to the soul of an independent movie made on a microscopic budget. They are happy to take on the consumerist culture that has made their corporate owner, Disney, a world power larger and more influential than most countries. They don’t rely on pre-sold characters (fairy tales, television shows) or focus-grouped storylines with all of the risk and quirkiness squeezed out of them — along with all of the authenticity and character. Like the humble little hero of this film, they hold onto their dreams. If that makes the films more challenging, less easily accessible, good for them and good for us, too.Indeed, that is one of the themes of this film, whose robot characters have much more wisdom, courage, intelligence, and personality than the humans. After 700 years away from Earth, humans have devolved into a sort of perpetual infancy, their minds and bodies all but atrophied. They float through their space station in hover chairs, mesmerized by media screens before their eyes that block their ability to see anything else. Food and drink are constantly brought to them by robot drones and they, like their space station, are on automatic pilot. One of the lovely ironies of this story is that the machine who watches “Hello Dolly” on a broken-down videotape is inspired by it to seek companionship and intimacy while the humans’ media immersion puts them in a constant state of dazed isolation. Wall•E’s life is changed when an egg-shaped space probe named Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator (EVE) arrives. At first, they seem like opposites. He is scuffed and rusty and she is sleek and pristine. He is a romantic and she is all business. But like all great screen romances, their initial disconnections spark their affection. In this case literally. Their kiss is electrifying.Wall•E and EVE end up on EVE’s space station where her mission is revealed — and then imperiled. It is the misfit robots and one brave human who discovers that he can think for himself who must find a way to bring the humans and their home planet back to life. Just as the first courageous little tendril of a plant is willing to give Earth another chance, so the first tender stirrings of empathy, affection, curiosity, and honor in the small robots and the oversize humans inspire each other — and us. (more…)

Role Models

Posted on November 6, 2008 at 6:00 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for crude and sexual content, strong language and nudity.
Profanity:	Extremely strong and crude language used by adults and child
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drugs, character is a recovering drug abuser
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic violence, fantasy battles, swords
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	November 7, 2008

It takes some brains to make a good dumb comedy. Paul Rudd, who has been the best thing in too many films that ranged from dumb, to awful, to wildly uneven, has co-created a film that manages to insult the intelligence of its characters without insulting the intelligence of its audience too badly.

I could have done with less emphasis on the inherent hilarity of hearing an angry little kid use bad language and make sexually precocious comments. And some of the double entendres were so nudge-nudge obvious they were closer to single and a fraction. But some good lines and sharply observed characters make it above average for its genre.

Rudd and Seann William Scott play Danny and Wheeler, who work for a company that sells a soft drink called Minotaur by visiting schools for a phony “don’t do drugs” talk that is really just a way to push their soda. Wheeler wears a Minotaur suit and Danny half-heartedly tells the kids to drink Minotaur instead of doing drugs and then they drive off in their Minotaur-obile. This is all just fine with Wheeler, a walking id who just wants to get high and have sex. But Danny once wanted more from life and when his increasing bitterness causes his lawyer girlfriend to leave him, seeing the Minotaur-obile towed away is just one indignity too many. He objects, leading to arrests, leading to community service at Sturdy Wings, a Big Brother-style place run by a former drug addict (Jane Lynch). Each is assigned a “Little.” Wheeler gets a precocious kid (Bobb’e J. Thompson) who swears all the time and accuses everyone of racism and child abuse. He is also way too fascinated with feminine anatomy, a trait they manage to bond over. And Danny gets Augie (“Superbad” McLovin’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse), a cape-wearing nerd whose life revolves around a Medieval-ish role-playing game

Director David Wain manages the tricky balance between having some fun with the conventions of the genre without getting mean about it. Yes, everyone learns a few lessons about self-respect and relationships (and sword-fighting) but when they do it in medieval role-playing gear inspired by a rock band, it’s a lot of fun to watch. Note, however, that a child actor’s bad language and sexual obsessions are more disturbing than funny and raise serious questions about whether the laws protecting child performers are adequate and adequately enforced.

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Kit Kittredge: An American Girl

Posted on October 26, 2008 at 8:00 am

“Kit Kittredge” is remarkable for what it is and just as remarkable for what it is not. It is wholesome but it is not sugary. It is family-friendly but it does not gloss over economic realities and family stress. It is true to the spirit of the 1930’s but respectful of all we have learned since that era about respect and tolerance for differences of race and gender. And it is a good movie with important lessons but it is not one bit dull or preachy. Three cheers for Kit and for producer Julia Roberts for making this movie everything the devoted fans of the American Girls series hope for.

Abigail Breslin (of Little Miss Sunshine) plays Kit, a 1930’s heroine very much in the spirit of spunky 1930’s and 40’s female journalists like Dorothy Thomson and those portrayed in films by Rosalind Russell (His Girl Friday) and Jean Arthur (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). In a nod to those classic movies, this one begins with Kit striding into a Cincinnati newspaper office to ask the editor to print her story. And the editor (Wallace Shawn) is every bit as choleric as newspaper editors in 1930’s movies always are.

But Kit will soon have bigger challenges than being underestimated by a grumpy newspaper editor. All around her, families are struggling because of the economic problems. Fathers are losing their jobs and her friends are losing their homes. Kit’s own beloved daddy (Chris O’Donnell) has to leave to try to find work in Chicago. And she and her mother (Julia Ormond) have to open up their home to boarders to make ends meet.

Some of the people around her become fearful and suspicious but Kit and her mother maintain their sense of optimism and generosity, sharing what little they have. A courageous pair of young hobos insist on working for the food they get from Kit’s mother and they introduce Kit to a community of homeless people who help each other any way they can.

Kit enjoys the boarders, especially a lively dancer (“30 Rock’s” Jane Krakowski), and a friendly magician (Stanley Tucci). She takes comfort in some small distinctions — unlike her friends, she has not lost her house or had to sell eggs or wear dresses made from a flour sack. And her father has promised to keep writing. But then things get tougher. And they get toughest of all when every penny her family has is stolen and it looks like the thief is her friend.

Jumper

Posted on June 9, 2008 at 8:00 am

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action violence, some language and brief sexuality.
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	A lot of action violence, characters injured and killed, character gutted
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	February 14, 2008
Date Released to DVD:	June 10, 2008

The movie “Jumper” is 88 minutes on a pogo stick, hopping from teenage cliche to teenage cliche. You like the story about the high school nerd who pines for the class beauty and is tormented by her bully boyfriend? You’re in luck. Or do you like the one about the perpetual victim who suddenly discovers that he has his own super powers and is better than everyone else? Then this is your movie. How about the cliche of a teenager trapped in an unloving home with a gruff and unsympathetic father, suddenly liberated from all parental dependence — and isn’t that heartless old dad sorry now?

Here’s another one that should sound familiar to you: “what would you do if you had the power to walk into banks, stores, or women’s lives and simply take anything you want?” Every angst-filled teenage fantasy is covered in this movie for just about as long as it takes a pogo stick to touch down. Then we’re off to the next one: the sadder but wiser beauty who realizes how foolish she was to let the nerd go, years before.

A group of evil authoritarian figures who don’t believe that kids should be having fun with their super powers (the cornered hero’s plaintive wail, “but I didn’t do anything wrong!” will resonate with every teenager ever caught painting the cat or dismantling the lawnmower).
The virtues of this movie, slender though they may be, are really peripatetic virtues. You get a rapid-fire tour of exotic locations around the world, as jumpers race from the Egyptian Desert to downtown Tokyo to London to Rome. You jump from fight to fight, from character to character. With this pace, the fun and clever moments never last too long, but then again, you never have to confront the lack of depth or substance either. Just as you are beginning to think, “say… this acting is pretty superficial…” WHOOOOSH you are sitting on top of the Sphinx in Egypt, and isn’t it a lovely view?

There are lots of other cliches of teenage wish fulfillment– archetypal stories about mothers and friends– but I don’t want to give away too much of the feather-light plot. Suffice it to say that that no adolescent wish-list item is left unrecognized. The problem is that it is never long enough or interesting enough to be satisfying. This movie is paced for an audience that grew up multi-tasking and its aesthetic sensibility and depth of story-telling is equivalent to a beer commercial. Even at under 90 minutes, too much money has been stuffed into too little script.

At one point, a character says that jumping enables you to skip the boring parts. If that were true, he would have jumped out of this movie. Nor will you find much satisfaction in the acting by stars Hayden Christensen or Rachel Bilson, in the useless role of love interest/damsel in distress, who keeps asking Christensen’s character to tell her what is going on as he is dodging assassins. Samuel L. Jackson, wearing a hairpiece that resembles a Krispy Kreme powdered sugar donut, turns in a calamitous performance as a hit man for the authoritarian “paladins” who for centuries have lived only to squelch the fun of “jumpers,” because only God should have that power. He uses something between an electric lasso and a “don’t tase me, bro” cattle prod to subdue them and it does not seem to occur to him that God might not approve of murder. Christensen, Jackson, Bilson, and
“Billy Elliot‘s” Jamie Bell all seem to be in different movies, and none of them are worth watching.

Parents should know that this film includes a lot of “action violence” (not much blood) and peril. A character is gutted and other characters injured and killed. There are non-explicit sexual situations, drinking, and smoking, and characters use some strong language.

Families who see this movie should talk about whether the ending was a surprise. If you had the power to be a jumper, what would you do?

Families who enjoy this film will enjoy Clockstoppers and the X-Men movies.

The Jane Austen Book Club

Posted on October 4, 2007 at 12:49 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material, sexual content, brief strong language and some drug use
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	Accident involving minor injuries, tense confrontations
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	October 4, 2007
Date Released to DVD:	2008
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000ZS8GW6

I’m pretty sure that Jane Austen never thought of including a lesbian jumping out of an airplane in any of her books, and yet somehow that scene fits in just fine in this story of six people who get together to read all six of Austen’s novels. Austen did manage to cover, in six books all taking place almost entirely in the quiet British countryside of the late 18th century, many variations on the themes of love and learning, and this film shows us how her stories continue to inspire and connect people who realize that very little has changed in the last 200 plus years.
The book club starts as a way to cheer up Sylvia (Amy Brenneman), just dumped by her husband (Jimmy Smits). Sylvia’s friends, the free-spirited Bernadette (Kathy Baker) and the dog-breeding loner Jocelyn (Maria Bello), invite Sylvia’s daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace), an impetuous, extreme sport-loving lesbian. Bernadette impulsively invites Prudie (Emily Blunt), a prim high school French teacher who has never been to France. And Jocelyn even more impulsively invites a man — Hugh Dancy as Grig, a sci-fi loving techie who asks if some of the six Austen books are sequels.
Once a month, they meet to talk about the books, each of them taking turns to host and present. And the themes of the book — from the patient hoping of Mansfield Park and Persuasion to the jump-to-the-wrong conclusions of Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma, to Sense and Sensibility, which has both, each book seems to resonate to one or more of the characters and their own paths to love.
The movie is a big improvement over the wispy novel, which teetered between being cutesy and being cloying. One reason is a brilliant cast, each of whom adds tremendous heart and vibrancy to the story. It also benefits from lively direction and high spirits provided by screenwriter Robin Swicord. The opening credit sequence sets the stage with a collection of scenes showing the frustrations of modern life. And the pacing keeps things light and bubbly, making it clear that, like Austen’s heroines, a happy ending will be in store.
Parents should know that this movie includes explicit sexual references and situations, gay and straight. A character commits adultery and another considers having sex with a very inappropriate partner. The movie includes brief strong language, alcohol, and drug use.
Families who see this movie should talk about how the stories of the characters parallel the novels by Jane Austen. What are some other examples of “the humbling of the know-it-all pretty girl?” Do you agree that “high school is never over?”
Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “In Her Shoes,” and the movies based on and inspired by Jane Austen’s novels, including “Sense and Sensibility,” “Emma,” “Pride and Prejudice,” “Bride and Prejudice,” “Clueless,” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary.”