TITLE & REVIEW
This was written (but not directed) by
John Hughes
, based on the novel by
Dodie Smith
. Despite the American influence and stars,
it is sent in London and features English locations and supporting cast.
Roger (Jeff Daniels - ) and Anita ( Joely Richardson ) are thirty-somethings who live in London. They meet up because their pet dalmatian dogs have a liking for each other. Luckily this is not a simple Rom-Com, so the romance is dealt with in the First Act and the story is allowed to move on.
The dalmatians produce a litter of puppies. These come to the attention of Anita's boss Cruella deVill ( Glenn Close ) - a sadistic narcissist who is obsessed with fur coats. Naturally the good guys refuse to sell her the puppies. She deploys her minions, a well-cast group of British comedy actors - Tim McInnerny ( Dr Who ), Hugh Laurie ( Stuart Little ) and Mark Williams ( Red Dwarf ). There is also a new character, a scary fellow aptly named Mister Skinner (John Shrapnel - ).
The story is established through the eyes of the human characters. However, after the puppies get abducted the viewpoint switches to the dogs. This is true to the original book, but the portrayal is slightly off. The twilight barking, when dogs transmit messages over long distances, is shown. Of course, unlike in the books we do not hear the dogs talking, or even see subtitles of their words. Instead everything has to be gained from the context.
Not only are the dogs able to communicate with each other, but entirely different species as well. For example, despite being in rural England there are American animals like playful racoons and a stench-squirting skunk.
The animals manage to rescue the puppies. Naturally the human villains come after them. Luckily, the animals are able to coordinate a series of messy ambushes that lead to a lot of slapstick scenes. Amazing to think that the actors involved have established a serious award-winning pedigree for themselves.
Meanwhile, the humans' only real response is to call the police. Amazingly, the cops manage to take the time to investigate the dog-napping. On the word of the distraught dog-owners they get multiple squad-cars and conduct searches (presumably with the required legal warrants) and arrests.
Cruella deVill (
Glenn Close
) is released from prison.
She has apparently been cured.
This is a Feminazi rom-com version of
A Christmas Carol
. Matthew McConaghey wants to avoid being trapped in a bad relationship,
so he is painted as a villain.
Jennifer Garner
and her friends (a gang of smutty bridesmaids) sleep around,
and are therefore role-models of female empowerment.
Hypocritical crap!
This is a remake of a 1960s Jerry Lewis comedy.
Basically it is an excuse for Eddie Murphy to wear a selection of fat-suits.
Professor Sherman Klump (Eddie Murphy - The Golden Child ) is an amiable, grossly obese scientist who works in an American University. He seems happy enough, teaching classes and working on a research project to discover a way to shut off the obesity genes. In other words, he is making a secret formula to make people skinny.
Sherman meets Jada Pinkett (Smith) , and assumes that he is too fat for her. Basically he thinks she is out of his league. After a particularly bad case of fat-shaming by a stand-up comedian (Dave Chapelle - Con Air), Sherman decides to test his formula on himself.
The formula works, and Sherman loses half his bodyweight almost instantly. Since nobody will recognise him in his new form, Sherman decides to call himself Buddy Love. Somehow, the slimmer version of Sherman turns out to be a completely different personality. As a result, he develops a terrible case of split-personality syndrome.
This was made in 1993, starring Roy "Chubby" Brown.
He is abducted by Captain
Sarah Stockbridge
and her Feminazis from the future.
Kenny Baker (
Time Bandits
) has a cameo as Casanova!
The result is a poor story, but it gives excuse to some shockingly funny (or just shocking) jokes.
Walter Mitty (Danny Kaye -
Wonder Man (1945)
) works as a proof-reader for a pulp fiction magazine publisher.
This seems to influence his vivid imagination,
as he spends his time lost in day-dreams
that often turn into a platform for Danny Kaye's musical theatre talents.
The humour comes from slapstick when
Mitty's real-life skillset fails to match up to those of his fantasies.
In a twist that is even stranger than his daydreams, Mitty gets involved with helping Rosalind Van Hoorn ( Virginia Mayo ) - a glamourous blonde beauty who insists on wearing a very unflattering hat. She is involved in a real-life conspiracy, involving organised crime and secretive murders. The mysterious Dr Hollingshead (Boris Karloff - The Raven ) lurks around, a sinister presence. However, nobody in Mitty's regular life manages to see any of the characters in his conspiracy storyline.
Since Mitty is in his thirties - apparently considered middle-aged - and still living with his mother, his private life is also a subplot. Somehow he is in the run-up to a sort of arranged marriage to Gertrude Griswold ( Ann Rutherford ), a woman with whom he seems to have zero compatibility. Since he does not want to undermine this marriage plan, he tries to keep his encounters with Rosalind secret from his mother. However, this means that nobody will believe him if he tells them that Rosalind exists. Is he a victim of the Untruthful Narrator, or of a classic gaslighting?
This is a remake of the classic American film from the 1940s.
The visuals are well-directed by Stiller,
but the script is a bit predictable.
Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller - Zoolander ) is a daydreamer trapped in a dead-end job. He wants to impress a female co-worker ( Kristen Wiig ) and follow in the footsteps of his idol, photo-journalist Sean Penn ( Gangster Squad ). This involves going on an epic trek to Iceland, where he fails to realise that a volcano is about to erupt.
Wiig is an established comedy performer in her own right. Unfortunately she does not get the chance to show this off, although she does get to sing a song.
No, this is nothing to do with the DC Comic-book character
Wonder Woman
, who was created around the same time
as a propaganda character in the fight against the Nazis.
This is a musical starring in two roles - as a musical theatre performer and his nerdish brother.
The performer is murdered, and returns as a ghost (which only his twin brother can see) to take vengeance upon his killers.
Light-hearted vengeance, of course,
because this was made in the days of the Hayes Code and had to be family-friendly.
Many of the elements of this little-known story seem to have been recycled in the well-known Hollywood hit Some Like It Hot. The protagonist is hunted by murderous gangsters because he is a witness to a killing. One of the Prohibition-era gangsters even has a hearing aid!
The movie starts with a generic save-the-cat scene.
Cody Banks (Frankie Muniz -
The Black String
) shows off his skills as a teenage skateboard prodigy
while saving a child in an out-of-control car.
The kind of thing start started every episode of
The Champions
.
A well-intentioned scientist, Dr Connors, has developed nanobot technology that he wants to use to clean up oil spills. Unfortunately when he looks for funding he comes to the attention of some villains. Brinkman (Ian McShane - Death Race ) and his henchman Molay (Arnold Vosloo - The Mummy ) want to weaponise the technology, using it to neutralise the USA's nuclear deterrent. A bit out-of-place in the post-9/11 era, but this is a parody of Cold War spy movies.
The CIA Director (Keith David - The Thing ) has been running a secret Spy Kids training programme. He activates Cody Banks and teams him with a handler, super-agent Ronica Miles ( Angie Harmon ), and her support staff (Chris Gautier - Eureka ).
Cody's mission is to get close to Dr Connors' daughter, Natalie Connors ( Hilary Duff ). The good news is that they are about the same age, so the CIA is able to have Cody transferred into her class at school. The bad news is that she is a high-status girl who hangs around with Mean Girl friends like Jessica Harmon . She is out of Cody's league, so this becomes a comedy-of-errors as he tries to win her heart. Of course, this is not easy because he is a nerdy loser - not a smooth seducer like James Bond.
As the save-the-cat intro would suggest, the climax follows the action genre pretty slavishly. Cody gets suspended, and must single-handedly break into the villains' fortress inside a hollow mountain, save the girl and defeat the villains' plan.
With the success of the Spy Kids franchise, then-superstar child-actor Frankie Muniz got his own film in the spy-parody genre. Duff is a good love interest, and the main supporting cast are accomplished players. A few familiar faces stand out as being Canadian TV actors, a giveaway that this was shot in Vancouver to save money.
Cody Banks (Frankie Muniz -
The Black String
) is at the Summer camp which doubles as the CIA
Spy Kids
training facility.
One night a SWAT team raids the place.
Victor Diaz (Keith Allen -
Robin Hood
) tells the kids it is a training exercise,
and gets them to hold off the invaders while he escapes.
The CIA Director (Keith David - The Thing ) briefs Cody personally. Diaz was working on a mind-control system, and when it was shut down Diaz made off with it. Now Cody is sent to London to recover the system before it can be weaponised by hostiles.
Cody's new handler (Anthony Anderson - Kangaroo Jack ) briefs him on the top of the London Eye, making best use of the fancy locations. Well, the use of Keith Allen was a giveaway that this was shot in the UK. But the saying is that a British Spy movie will have a scene shot in the back of a taxi, while the American equivalent will be on the deck of a ferry sailing across Lake Geneva. This movie certainly embraces the American aesthetic, taking full advantage of the amazing locations available in London. If there is one British film it can be compared to, it would be Who Dares Wins.
Cody is sent undercover in a kids' music group. The others, like Emily Sommers ( Hannah Spearitt ) and Johan Berger (Alfie Allen - John Wick ), are all prodigies. They are staying in the mansion of a crooked millionaire who is funding experiments based on Diaz's work, and the kids' orchestra is due to play at Buckingham Palace.
The world leaders are meeting in London for a G7 summit. The villains' plan is to brainwash a number of VIPs, including the CIA Director, and have them hand over the access to works power. That said, they mostly just use the mind control for slapstick.
Carmen and Juni are back.
The OSS has started a new official Spy Kids department,
and our heroes are the top agents.
Unfortunately they have rivals - Garry and Gerty Giggles.
A gang of villainous henchmen steal the main plot device, a magical mcguffin called the Transmooker. The OSS traces the villains to a bermuda triangle type area near Madagascar. They send in the Giggles siblings, so Carmen and Juni go along uninvited.
The island has the topography of southern California, and is filled with all sorts of CGI monsters. What sets this apart from the SyFy channel's tongue-in-cheek efforts is the visual flair of the director ( Robert Rodriguez ). Also, the budget allows for an amazing all-star cast. For example, Doctor Romero the Mad Scientist is played by Steve Buscemi ( Armageddon ).
The kids parents come to the rescue. Father (Antonio Banderas - Mark of Zorro ) has to put up with his in-laws when Mother ( Carla Gugino ) brings her father (Ricardo Montalban - Star Trek 2: Wrath Of Khan ) along on the mission.
Video-Journalist and Spy-Hunter Joel McHale (
X-Files: Season 10
) is a widower, but luckily gets married to
Jessica Alba
. But his kids discover that their new step-mother is a secret agent in the OSS!
The OSS has changed. Its staff of Spy Kids all grew up and are now Spy Adults. Junie went solo, Carmen is still around but Danger D'Amo (Jeremy Piven - Grosse Point Blank ) is now running things.
This was written and directed by
Robert Rodriguez
, the creator of the
Spy Kids
Franchise.
It came out a couple of years after
Spy Kids 3-D
, and has many of the same hall-marks of that film.
The main difference is that this one is a stand-alone that sank from memory.
The storyline is basically The Neverending Story . A young boy, bullied at school, retreats into a fantastical story. This story features the title characters, Shark Boy (Taylor Lautner - Twilight ) and Lava Girl ( ). The protagonist joins them on a quest across a CGI 3-D landscape.
It has been ten years since the last movie in the series.
Andy is off to College.
His toys are packed up and sent off to a school,
where the toy community is run by a teddy-bear named Lotso (Ned Beatty -
Deliverance
).
Woody the Cowboy (Tom Hanks - Cloud Atlas ) gets separated from the others, so Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen - Santa Clause ) takes charge of the gang. Does this not happen EVERY time?
The prologue is set in the old days, when the toys all lived with Andy.
Woody the Cowboy (Tom Hanks -
Cloud Atlas
) had a love interest, Bo Peep (
Annie Potts
), who was given away in a clear-out.
The main story takes place seven years later, when the toys are now property of a little girl named Bonnie. She is a very shy child, and is very lonely on her first day at kindergarten. Until she makes a new toy named Forkie, made from a plastic spork someone threw in the trash. Forkie is her favourite toy, while the rest of the toys are neglected.
Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen - Santa Clause ) stands quietly in the background a lot, and even gets a couple of lines in one or two brief scenes. It stands to reason that a spaceman would not necessarily be a little girl's favourite toy, although it is unfortunate to see him relegated so far behind a talking spork. When Woody finally goes off and leaves Buzz in charge, for some strange reason Buzz is weak and indecisive. While relying on the advice of his inbuilt sound recordings, Buzz abandons the other toys and goes off in search of Woody. All completely out of chraacter.
The story is really about Woody. He goes off to save Forkie, then goes in search of his lost love Bo Peep. This leads him to encounter the story's antagonist, Gabby ( Christina Hendricks ), who is actually more well-rounded than the usual forthing-at-the-mouth bad guys. Anyway, Bo Peep and her allies like Duke Crashem (Keanu Reeves - John Wick ) help save the day.
This movie series is not exactly solid on its portrayal of the toys and their relationship with their human owners. Forkie starts as an inanimate object, but comes alive when Bonnie turns him into a toy. Every toy we have see so far desires to be played with by a human owner, although Bo Peep's time without an owner has convinced her that she should go out and explore the world for herself. Basically, their very existence is generally defined by their relationship with the humans who play with them - a bit like the robot hosts in Westworld (2016) .
This starts with an intro scene parodying
2001: A Space Odyssey
, with young girls instead of ape-men
and a massive Barbie doll instead of a monolith.
The voiceover explains the social impact that Barbie had,
as a role model that allowed young girls to forget
female-centric careers like home manager
and instead to transition into male-identified jobs
like fireman, policeman and spaceman.
Then we switch to the main story,
starting with a musical number in a fictional world ... like
The Lego Movie
. Yes, in Barbieland everything is awesome!
Barbie ( Margot Robbie ) lives in a magical land peopled by fellow Barbie dolls. A Black Barbie is President, something that neither Kamala Harris nor Hilary Clinton ever achieved. Please note, this is not a civilised Parliamentary system but an American-style Presidency ... basically an Eighteeenth-Century absolute monarchy with the slim justification of the occasional election. That said, this President has no policies and there is no Opposition party, so she can pretty much do whatever she likes.
Barbie has a Malibu Dreamhouse, and all the other accessories. The least of all the accessories is Ken, who is basically the equivalent of an unwanted dog that she is thinking about abandoning in the wild rather than simply take him to the pound to be rehomed.
Barbie discovers her feet are becoming flat and her mental state now has impending thoughts of death. She visits Weird Barbie ( Kate McKinnon ), who has been exiled because of her involuntary nonconformity. Despite being the wisest of all the Barbies, nobody would ever consider making her President.
Barbie follows WB's advice, and travels to the Real World to find the girl who played with her. Ken tags along, because he literally has nothing better too do. He wanders off and discovers the theory of the Patriarchy, a weird concept of equality which gives males dignity. Meanwhile, Barbie dodges the Mattel CEO (Will Ferrell - Land of the Lost ) and his weirdly all-male board. In reality, the Mattel board was female-dominated but this movie prefers to boost the concept of Patriarchy.
Barbie meets the girl she thinks is her owner. The girl calls Barbie a fascist, which brings Barbie to the classic response But I don't control the railways or the means of production! This works on several levels, since it is a fantastic reference to the saying that in Mussolini's Italy the trains ran on time. However, in Barbie's case it is hypocritical and untrue. The whole point of Barbieland is that the female-identifying Barbies control literally everything.
When Barbie gets back home, she discovers that Ken has upended society. The males are now in charge, and the females are their willing concubines. Well, everyone seems happy. Definitely an improvement on the stifling matriarchy.
Ken's revolution seems unwarranted. However, the male-identifying dolls actually create a world where everyone has a place. The Kens might be seen to have subjugated the Barbies, but the Barbies still have a place in Kendom. The reverse is not true for Barbieland. Kendom's structure is a male power structure, the pyramid, while Barbieland's is a female-centric circle. Even second-class citizens have a place in the pyramid, but Kens are non-citizens excluded from the circle.
America Ferrara has a literally mind-bendingly cynical monologue, whining on about how bad societal pressure is ... conveniently ignoring that it is Matriarchal pressure, AKA women oppressing other women. Although this is clearly not the fault of the Kens, it is enough to make the Barbies miserable and reject the happiness they have achieved in Kendom.
How can Barbie revert her world to the status quo? She could always use democratic means, empowering the Barbies to vote. The Kens would vote for Kendom, and the Barbies would match their vote. This would leave Alan as the one dissenting male, and his vote would tip the balance - like Boomer in Battlestar Galactica (2003) . Of course, this implies that every single Barbie would reject the chance to live as a TradWife. So much for free will!
The story itself is not original - it is basically the plot from
The Matrix
, which itself is straight out of Hero of a Thousand Faces.
The cameos are too many to list.
It is a family-friendly film that works on a number of levels:
After the events of the previous movie,
the Lego city is invaded by aliens from the planet Duplo.
Although the invaders are driven off,
the city becomes a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
The Lego people are scared that the prophecy of Armamageddon is coming true. By incredible coincidence, the leaders of the Lego community meet some aliens who claim to be friendly. The alien Queen wants to conduct a bizzare inter-species marriage ceremony. But will this really prevent Armamageddon - or start it?
The protagonist tries to rescue his friends. He teams up with a familiar-looking rugged loner who is a combination of Chris Pratt's characters - the starship pilot from Guardians of the Galaxy and the velociraptor trainer from Jurassic World .
Just as the original movie got meta in the climax, and introduced the kids' father (Will Ferrell - Zoolander ), this one introduces their mother ( Maya Rudolph ).
This is set in a world where pokemon creatures are real,
and humans domesticated them instead of dogs.
A billionaire philanthropist (Bill Nighy -
Shaun of the Dead
) has created a city where pokemon and humans can live together as equals,
although in the rest of the world the creatures are basically enslaved.
The protagonist's father, a police detective, dies in mysterious circumstances. This leaves the protagonist to team up with his father's partner - a talking Pikachu (Ryan Reynolds - Deadpool ) with amnesia - and solve the murder. They also get help from a young female journalist ( Kathryn Newton ).
The killer seems to be involved with a plot to distribute a substance that drives pokemon murderously insane. If this sounds familiar, that is because it was previously used in Zootopia .
Sonic is an animated hedgehog from an alien planet.
He hides out on Earth, near small-town USA.
Unfortunately one day he accidentally creates an electro-magnetic pulse.
The US Military send their best man, Doctor Robotnik (Jim Carey -
Kick Ass 2
), to investigate the incident.
Sonic teams up with the local Sheriff (Matthew Marsden - X-Men ). They go on the run together, pursued by the mad scientist and his flying drones.
Dr Robotnik (Jim Carey -
The Mask
) has spent over two hundred days marooned on a planet infested with mushrooms.
That said, if anyone can engineer a solution
to interplanetary travel it is Robotnik.
His attempt to escape is stalled
when he meets Knuckles (Idris Elba -
Cats
), a red cartoon character who has a back-story with Sonic.
Back on Earth, Sonic hangs out in Seattle USA. His hobby is helping the local cops chase bank robbers. Yes, just like in Ambulance this is a piece of copaganda. There is a lot of slapstick humour, focusing on the danger that innocent people might get hurt.
Back in small-town USA, the Sheriff (Matthew Marsden - X-Men ) is doing his best to cover for Sonic. This is not easy when Sonic is so high-profile.
The Sheriff and his girlfriend go to on vacation to Oahu for a couple of days. They leave Sonic in charge of their home, a very bad idea. Luckily Sonic's trail of destruction is followed by Tails, a little orange flying fox.
The Oahu trip is for the wedding of Rachel, sister of the sheriff's girlfriend. She is engaged to Shemar Moore ( Birds of Prey ), a macho man who seems strangely out of her league. He refers to his groomsmen as his squad, another red flag. It is all reminiscent of the copaganda show SWAT .
Sonic and Tails must beat Robotnik and Knuckles to the Master Emerald, a fabulous treasure that is the key to ultimate power. Yes, this is a typical Treasure Hunt plot-line. Luckily, it turns out that the treasure is somewhere on Earth. Yes, they have retconned the idea that Sonic was sent to Earth on purpose.
Robotnik's minion Stone is now a local coffee-shop employee. However, the minion is still loyal … and has access to the controls of a satellite with a secret stash of Robotnik's drones. Also, Robotnik is happy to make an alliance with Knuckles. Yes, Knuckles is happy to say that he and Robotnik are even. Later, when Robotnik makes his inevitable double-cross, Knuckles gets upset.
Sonic and Tails hide out in eastern Siberia. There are lots of red flags, metaphorically speaking, when they get to a Siberian tavern. Of course, the alternative is to die in a blizzard so they just ignore the warning signs. Luckily, this is a kids movie peopled by comedy characters so the worst the Russians can do is challenge them to a dance-off.
The Sheriff gets his teleportation ring mixed up with the wedding rings. Yes, we get a whole slapstick subplot about the wedding.
The bad news is that Robotnik plans to use the source of ultimate power as the energy source for a giant robot straight out of Pacific Rim . The good news is that, after the destruction of downtown San Francisco in the first movie, the United Nations have set up an agency to fight alien invaders.
This movie learned from the mistakes of the original,
thirty years previously.
This time it is all animation,
rather than humans in costumes with a bluescreen background.
It starts with a prologue reminiscent of
Kung Fu Panda
, which shows the intended audience.
Bowser (Jack Black -
Tenacious D
) and his evil army besisge the fortress of the Penguin King (Khary Payton -
The Walking Dead
).
In Brooklyn, USA, Mario (Chris Pratt - Passengers ) and his brother Luigi (Charlie Day - Pacific Rim ) have opened a plumbing business. They try to save the city from a mysterious flood, and end up sucked into a different realm. Luigi gets trapped in the realm ruled by Bowser, so Mario has to save him.
Mario has to seek help from Princess Peach ( Anya Taylor-Joy ). Yes, she pretty much has to save him rather than it be the other way around. Well, this reduces her to a supporting character rather than a love interest or any other kind of person of interest.
Peach tries to teach Mario the skills he will need, but he is a comedy character and she is a girl-boss so she will always have better skills than him. That said, she does not do much fighting until she is forced into it. However, Mario gets lucky in a duel with Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen - ). Together, the two Nintendo stars have to take on Bowser and his army.
This is an animation set in France, circa 1876.
An orphaned girl wants to follow her dreams.
She runs away from the orphanage,
and seeks her fortune in Paris.
The good news is, she gets a chance to join a prestigious ballet school.
Unfortunately there is a Mean Girl who becomes her rival.
The pre-teen protagonist discovers he suddenly has a younger brother.
What his parents are oblivious to
is the fact that the baby can talk.
It is voiced by Alec Baldwin,
and is basically an extension of his well-known parody of Donald Trump.
The protagonist sets out to undermine his unwanted sibling, who has the brain of a grown man in the body of a tiny infant. The result is an incredible parody of Hollywood car chases, which illustrates (no pun intended) how animated films are far superior to live-action ones in terms of cinematography.
There is an overall plot to the story. Babies are about to be replaced with robot puppies. If this happens, the Boss Baby will be out of business and will be trapped in the family forever. The two unwilling siblings must learn to work together.
This is set over a decade after the original film.
The protagonist has grown up to become a house-husband.
He actually likes the role of home-maker,
since he gets to raise his daughters as a hands-on father,
and his wife (
Eva Longoria
) has no complaints at being the sole breadwinner.
It turns out that the baby daughter is working for BabyCorp, so she is the new Boss Baby. She pulls her father and uncle out of retirement, and gives them a pill that returns their bodies to the same age they were in the original movie. The duo are sent undercover in the elder daughter's school. It is a privately-run establishment owned by a friendly billionaire (Jeff Goldblum - Jurassic Park ). He turns out to have a plan to conquer the world.
The first two Acts follow the usual template, as the duo split up to follow their own quests until they are embittered and quit the mission. However, the third Act places undue emphasis on the two sisters - insofar as they did not interact much in the first two Acts, so there is not as much setup for this.
The protagonist is a smiley face icon who lives in a utopian town of Emoji people
inside a teenage American boy's smartphone.
Ironically, his particular expression is Meh,
which sums up the entire film quite well.
The sentient icons live in a dystopian society run by a villainous matriarch, the original smiley face. This makes her more like Ms Pacman than the actual Pacman, but dystopian matriarchies are a trope these days so we should overlook it.
The protagonist flees, and teams up with a couple of other characters - a love interest and a comedy relief. If the plot seems familiar, that is because this film is quite similar to The Lego Movie . The main difference is that Lego will still be used in ten years time while before we know it the smart-phone Emojis will become as extinct as command-line interface. At the end of the day, this is the kind of derivative and unoriginal story that was so expertly mocked in the R-rated comedy Sausage Party .
This is a cartoon with musical interludes.
It came out around the same time as the live-action TV show
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
, but beyond using the same ancient Greek legend they are not connected.
Hercules (Tate Donovan) is the son of Zeus, but he must prove himself before he inherits his godhood. He is trained by a satyr (Danny DeVito - Batman Returns ) and assisted by his animal sidekick, Pegasus the flying horse.
Hades (James Woods - Videodrome ) is plotting a takeover of Olympus.
A woman is abducted by aliens from Mars.
Her young son (Seth Green -
Austin Powers
) stows away on the spaceship to save her.
The Martians imprison him in their city,
which sits above a huge cavern which they dump their trash into.
At least it is recycled,
because they melt down the trash and re-cast it as new products.
A human astronaut named Gribble (Dan Fogler - Walking Dead ) provides the necessary exposition. The Martian females have created a matriarchy, and expelled the males from the city to live in the trash heap. Unfortunately since the females are focused on their pointless careers they have lost their maternal instincts, and thus abduct human mothers from Earth to provide it.
The two humans find another ally, a renegade Martian ( Elizabeth Harnois ) who has become obsessed with Earth culture. They must find a way to save the boy's mother before she is killed by the Martian scientists.
The end credits sequence reveal that this was all shot as a motion capture movie, and the animation was added in post-production. This process resulted in some amazing visuals, and the budget must have been incredible.
This is the introduction of one of the first Disney Princesses of Colour,
and she is presented in the context of her own heritage and culture.
Somehow Disney managed to avoid accusations of cultural appropriation,
possibly because many of the cast are of polynesian descent.
The story starts in Polynesian legend. A demi-god named Maui (Dwayne Johnson - GI Joe: Retaliation ) stole a magic mcguffin from the mother-goddess. Now Moana, the Polynesian Disney princess, must return it to its rightful place.
Moana is raised in a matriarchal society. She learns the ancient wisdom from her grandmother (Rachel House), the mentor she is due to replace as the tribe's next great leader. Moana's father (Temuera Morrison - Barb Wire ) brings home the bacon (or fish, in this case), but this is scut-work and he is afraid to go beyond the island's protective reef. The other men include a weakling who can barely endure the pain of getting a tribal tattoo, and for some reason it is positioned in the small of his back (like a ho-tag).
The island is best with ill luck, and the tribe's food supply begins to die off. The cowardly men of the tribe refuse to do antything, so Moana follows the call to adventure. Unlike most female protagonists these days she does not manage to figure it all out by herself, and she needs to train with a Yoda figure.
Moana teams up with Maui, a hilarous ego-maniac who steals the show and becomes a reluctant hero. They set off on a musical comedy adventure together, fighting piratical coconut people, a giant crab-monster and an enormous demon-king.
This is an animated feature, aimed at a young audience.
The plot is not terribly original - it is basically a reverse of
E.T.
. However, it is the style rather than the substance that is particularly noteworthy.
There are enough jokes and homages to keep a more mature audience interested,
This is a great piece of CGI animation.
It has the best cinematography in animation since
Happy Feet
. Gore Verbinski directs, with his
Pirates of the Caribbean
cohorts Johnny Depp and Hans Zimmer in the roles of lead actor and music composer.
The storyline is a basic western plot - there are lots of references,
so it works for adult viewers as well as for kids.
Rango is an anthropomorphosised lizard who gets lost in the Nevada desert. He ends up as sheriff in a town peopled by other talking animals. There is a big dispute over water access (like in Chinatown). The town Mayor (Ned Beatty - Deliverance) and a thieving gopher (Harry Dean Stanton - Alien ) are involved.
This is set in a world peopled by Robots, but which mirrors contemporary America.
Just like
Monsters Inc
, really, but without the originality.
Robin Williams (
Disney's Aladdin
) provides a voiceover as a zany comic relief character.
He keeps the entire film going,
but this is not exactly the first animation he stole the show in either!
This is an animated film about inanimate objects,
but it is certainly NOT for children!
These objects are foodstuffs that include sausages and buns,
so the constant sexual references should not be a surprise.
The happy foodstuffs go on a trek across the supermarket. All the usual cliches are parodied ceaselessly.
The pre-teen protagonist discovers he suddenly has a brother.
Pre-teen?
Sorry, the setup is the same as for
Boss Baby
- but instead of babies talking when the adult humans are not around,
it is pet dogs and cats.
A young woman in New York City buys two mis-matched dogs as pets. They bicker and fight, and end up getting lost on the streets of New York. The dog catcher is after them, and they do not have their collars on. Eventually they end up in a sausage factory, which may have inspired the parody film Sausage Party .
Max the terrier gets taken to a farm in the countryside.
Not to be abandoned or as a euphemism for being put to sleep,
but just to stay for a few days.
However, he has trouble fitting in with the farm's Top Dog.
This is an animated story about anthropomorphicised animals,
voiced by a number of big-name celebrities.
Moon (Matthew McConaghey - Kubo and the Two Strings ) is a koala bear who runs a failing theatre. His scripted shows have failed, so his next business venture is a singing contest.
The contenders include a teenage hedge-hog girl ( Scarlett Johansson ) and a teenage gorilla boy (Taron Egerton - Kingsman ).
The story is quite predictable, with a believe in yourself moral in the end. What really sets it apart is the fact that animated films are far superior to live-action ones in terms of cinematography.
Moon (Matthew McConaghey -
Kubo and the Two Strings
) has a spectacularly successful stage show.
However, this is not enough for him.
He gets his cast together,
and takes them to another city.
The good news is that he manages to get them an audition
so they can take things to the next level career-wise.
The bad news is that it involves working with a music moghul,
who is a cross between Simon Cowell and a U-rated Harvey Weinstein.
This is an enjoyable, groundbreaking wildlife documentary about talking wildfowl
that create human babies by means of a machine that clones them from letters.
Well, it is actually the kind of film that
Sausage Party
parodied so well.
A young boy in suburban USA is lonely because he does not get enough of his parents' attention. The parents (including Jennifer Aniston ) are self-employed and work from home, unlike the vast majority of parents in the world, so he really does not have much to complain about. However, he writes a letter to the Storks and requests to have a baby brother delivered.
The protagonist (Andy Samberg - Brooklyn 99) must deliver the baby to its parents before the boss (Kelsey Grammer - Transformers 4 ) finds out and fires him.
The Storks have a token human, Tulip. She is portrayed as a heroine who can do no wrong, even though she is incompetent and everything she does ends in disaster. Disaster for everyone except her, that is. She never has to take responsibility for her failures. Tulip's policy is Diversity for the sake of diversity. The business already employs Pigeons as office drones and Penguins as nannies. However, she wants to take the flightless birds and put them on delivery duties (for which they are fundamentally unsuitable). That said, with the enormous back-log created at the end it might be necessary to lower standards and hire a few new staff outside of traditional recruiting zones.
This is an animation set in a world where animals have evolved into humanoid creatures.
The predators have set aside their natural instincts,
and become vegetarian so they can live in peace with the herbivores.
A rabbit named Judy Hopper ( Ginnifer Goodwin ) wants to be a police officer. She is accepted into the Police Force, but ends up as a meter maid. After all, she is the first bunny on the force so they are reluctant to throw her in the deep end.
Judy manages to get a case. Citizens have been disappearing. The only thing they have in common is that they are predators.
Judy teams up with the only one she can find to help her. He is a fox with a knowledge of the city's underworld. It turns out that there is a lot of prejudice against predators, and that they form something of an underclass.
Cruella deVill (
