Kung-Fu Panda 3

I thought they didn't have this film on my flight, though it was on my outbound journey, but actually it was hidden away in the 'for kids' section. Not sure why it wasn't in 'family movies' this time. 

Anyway, I found it and watched it as a final relaxing film, and it fit the bill just fine. Light entertainment with some smiles, if not the big laughs of the first films, and impressive action. 

This time around, Po has to face an undead bull voiced by JK Simmons who was once the close comrade of the old turtle master Oogway. He uses Chi to enslave the various animal masters around China, turning them into chi zombies made of jade. Because Chinese-y, I guess.

Po goes on a quest to understand himself after meeting his birth father, intending to master Chi to fight this new threat. But he only learns to be a panda, obviously neglecting that being raised by a duck, that's not fully who he is. 

There's a nice big satisfying fight at the end, where for some reason the baddie doesn't use the instant-inslaving technique that worked on everyone else, There's some spectacular animation in the fights and in Po's clever idea for dealing with the baddie, and everything gets wrapped up neatly. 

The stakes just about work, though perhaps a larger scale would have been more moving. There's a very sweet gesture of help at the end, and overall the film ends as satisfying but not quite as grandiose as its predecessors - which were of course very silly in any case. 

It's obvious why this franchise worked out so well, able to encompass silliness and awesomeness together, And of course China likes it. A trilogy is neat and the idea might get tedious after too many more iterations, but I could stomach at least a couple more. 

The Boss Baby

This happens quite a lot with movies I only watch on a plane - they don't look good enough to see on release but actually end up being really good. I honestly thought this looked terrible from trailers, especially with such an ugly baby, and basically only watched it because the main character Tim was adorable.

In fact this was a clever, sweet and well-made animation that probably deserves more recognition than it got...though I did see quite a few reaction images of the triplets online. 

One of the best factors here is that the premise gives a strong message to kids with new siblings - the whole premise stems from how 7-year-old Tim reacts to the new baby of his family getting more love from his parents. That jealousy is a good thing for kids in that position to get to discuss. 

There's a lot that surprised me here. Funny jokes and pop culture references to everything from Indiana Jones (brilliantly combined with Mouse Trap) to Glengarry Glen Ross. Poignant moments mostly marked by 'Blackbird' by the Beatles. Strong performances and fast-paced animation. There's a few adult jokes that raise a smile, like references to the things that can go on at work retreats, though in light of the recent scandals from Hollywood, I'm not sure having Alec Baldwin and a child actor have an exchange along the lines of 'Suck it!' 'I'm not gonna suck that, I don't know where it's been.' 'You want to find out where babies come from, don't you?' was probably not the best idea. And they almost cast Kevin Spacey in the movie too… 

Tim is one of the most adorable kids in CG - being younger than most of the kids in these films, he's adorable, needing his hand held on the plane and not knowing how to ride a bike. Ralph Bakshi’s grandson Miles gives a pretty adorable performance, too, playing younger than his age during recording. Perhaps the best element having such a young protagonist is that being so concerned with the imagination of a child, there are lots of sequences that experiment with changes of animation style or weird character designs, which really take advantage of the medium. 

I doubt that many people will give this film a chance, but that's a shame because it's much better than I'd anticipated. 

Rio

Much as I love Rio de Janeiro, I was averse to Rio. I didn’t like the trailer. I didn’t like the ugly design of the main birds, or the rather whitewashed, Hollywood vision of Brazil where everyone is a party animal and nobody is geeky or awkward.

Well, the birds are ugly and this Brazil can still be called somewhat whitewashed, there are geeky Brazilians here, and much to recommend the film. Yes, probably I would have preferred the Pixar project with the blue-footed newts that was cancelled when they realised their plot was too similar to this one – and didn’t want to be the Dreamworks of Antz, Shark Tale and the rest. But in its own right, Rio has much to recommend it – not least of which being the awesome soundtrack.

This is a classic fish-out-of-water romance, but with birds. Blue is a rare Blue Macaw – the last male of his species. As a chick, he was taken from the Brazilian forest by smugglers and was to be sold as a pet – but fell off the back of a truck and was taken in by a nice geeky girl who runs a bookshop. When a Brazilian scientist comes to whisk the two of them to Brazil to meet the last female of the species, but smugglers once again get in the way, and the birds end up not only chained together, but out in the wild with an evil cockatoo on their feathery tails.

Once again, though, just as with Bolt the film doesn’t feel like it really has the capacity to move the audience. Though the stakes are the future of a species, that never feels like it’s in question. There’s no real sense of danger, nor of triumph. And the way Blue having to learn to fly is signposted so heavily all through the film just feels incredibly clumsy.

But there are a few scenes that make the whole thing worthwhile – when the birds all burst into song and Jewel has a solo verse, the way Carnaval itself is rendered, and some of the shots of Rio.

But it certainly could have been better – and more satisfying. And there’s something deeply amusing about how they tried to render two birds with hooked beaks kissing.  

Mr Peabody & Sherman

Despite quite a prominent advertising campaign – including dominating the Regent Street lights – nobody I know went to see Mr Peabody & Sherman. Honestly, I’m not surprised – if the characters are popularly known in the States from their old cartoon appearance (I think in Rocky and Bullwinkle?), they never made it over to the UK, and honestly they’re very hard to like. A know-it-all dog with incredible physical dexterity and a seven-year-old who is a long way from cute. There’s nothing about their adventures travelling through time that comes over as appealing or likely to strike a personal chord, and other than a few rather excellent moments near the end when different versions of the main characters end up in the same place at the same time, the film bears that out. It’s not very interesting, has very few laughs, doesn’t have appealing characters or designs, and overall is certainly one of the least impressive of Dreamworks’ films.

The story follows a dog who just happens to be a super-genius named Mr Peabody. Despite having invented a great many things – including some very silly ones – what he wants most is a family, and a home. So he adopts a young boy. Seeking to educate young Sherman, he begins to take him to different periods in a ‘wayback machine’ to show him first-hand some of the most significant events in history. Of course, this is all loose and slapdash for the sake of comedy – Sherman points out that the George Washington story with the cherry tree is apocryphal, yet we have the French Revolution depicted as having started as a direct result of Marie Antoinette saying ‘Let them eat cake’.

On his first day of school – wow, American kids start their education late – Sherman’s grounding in history is evident as he can answer all the questions, upsetting a girl called Penny by correcting her. She is a really nasty piece of work – something the film’s redemption arc for her never comes close to satisfactorily undoing, even if she’s seven – and bullies Sherman in a more literal ‘racism’ than that of real life. He was adopted by a dog, so he must be a dog too, she reasons.

The two of them end up fighting and Sherman bites Penny. This leads to trouble – because a large bullish woman who is a pleasing mix of Miss Trunchbull and the Queen of Hearts who works for child services wants to take Sherman away. Now, since when we meet them, Mr Peabody is putting Sherman in mortal danger during the Bloody Revolution and escapes only by igniting a sewer full of methane which really should have killed the people pursuing them, she may have a point. Nonetheless, Mr Peabody arranges for Penny’s family to be there on the night of the inspection of his suitability as a parent, so that the kids can make up. And of course, the kids end up getting into the time machine.

The adventure takes them to Ancient Egypt, where Penny almost marries Tutankhamen, then to Renaissance Italy for frivolities with Da Vinci to recharge, and then after a mishap with a wormhole back to Ancient Greece and into the Trojan Horse. Of course all of these time periods are replete with stereotypes, though not all of them national: witness Agamemnon as a big beefy jock. There’s not much that is very funny or engaging here – through mortal peril and too many poop jokes, Sherman and Penny get closer and puppy love is soon very evident.

Things get better once an emergency leads the kids to go back to shortly before they left, resulting in the classic two-in-the-same-timeline matter-antimatter paradox and the best joke in the film being a decidedly non-kid-friendly one about what Mr Peabody must stop Sherman doing in this situation. Soon the film’s big climax explodes into silliness with space-time collapsing and going very fast somehow providing an equal and opposite gravitational reaction to a tear in the continuum, and Agamemnon saying ‘Don’t taze me bro’, which I can’t see anyone getting in twenty years’ time.

This film just doesn’t have the heart it needs. It’s fundamentally a story about a father who loves his son, but it never really realises that, or makes it touching. It quite often comes close but it doesn’t quite get there. So all the snappy dialogue and impressive action sequences and silly minor characters can’t come together in something that can move the audience. So that is why it falls short – and why I’m convinced that Dreamworks are much better-off doing films with a serious fantasy premise and inserting humour than silly films and trying to insert sentiment.  

I seriously doubt Rob Minkoff will ever do anything again that comes even close to what he accomplished with The Lion King. 

How to Train Your Dragon 2

There were several things I wanted to do before watching How to Train Your Dragon 2. Rewatch the original. Watch the Riders of Berk spin-off, and the series that followed it. Perhaps even read the books, even though it’s clear that the films are going to take little or no further inspiration from them. I didn’t actually get around to doing any of that – but I have no regrets about going to tonight’s preview screening of the film, because How to Train Your Dragon 2 is probably my favourite animated film of the decade, above its predecessor, and certainly my favourite animated sequel of all, including such fare as Toy Story 3 and Puss in Boots. I regard those highly, but this film captivated and delighted me. If the first film was a pleasant surprise based on low expectations, this one was a pleasant surprise based on high expectations, and it doesn’t get much better than that.

I was a little worried when it was announced that Chris Sanders wasn’t directing this film, working instead on The Croods, which managed to also be better than expected yet doesn’t resonate all that deeply. But his Lilo & Stitch co-director Dean DeBlois stayed on from the first film, and showed that perhaps he was the real rock of their successes. DeBlois has said that, along with the human-animal bond of Totoro, one of his main inspirations here was The Empire Strikes Back, something which many major reviews have picked up on – just as that film took the Star Wars premise and made everything bigger and more serious, so does How to Train Your Dragon 2. Usually this is the territory of anime, to start from the rather silly and charming premise and turn it into something big, dark and epic, but DeBlois has pulled it off spectacularly.

Five years after the original film, the kids have grown up and Viking society has changed. Everyone is a dragon-rider now, more or less, and the kids are now teens and hone their skills through competitive games. Hiccup, now 20, has lost the goofy, cute look and become quite handsome – if painfully skinny – and loves to explore the wider world with Toothless. His father wants him to become the chief of Berk, however, which would curtail his freedom, so he is looking for an escape.

Of course, the exploration leads to some conveniently-timed meetings. First Hiccup meets some dragon-trappers, led by Eret, voiced by the ubiquitous Kit Harington. His character is initially an antagonist, but by first being cut down a peg or two and made the butt of some pretty funny jokes, and then redeeming himself with some rescues, actually becomes not only sympathetic but likeable, which I was quite surprised by. After them, Hiccup meets – slight spoiler for anyone who hasn’t seen the trailer – his mother, who is living amongst the dragons, including a vast old ‘Alpha’ with impressive ice powers. Together, they have to face Drago Bludvist, the enslaver of dragons, who has caught wind of others riding dragons, as well as the alpha, and moves against them. Drago, voiced by Djimon Hounsou, is a little problematic for being an evil foreigner character, but pretty awesome in battle and in his boasts. Gerard Butler as Hiccup’s dad Stoick and Cate Blanchett as his mother Valka do a wonderful job, especially in a little naturalistic musical moment with lyrics, bizarrely, by Shane Macgowan of the Pogues, who presumably can be relied upon for something that sounds authentically Celtic-y.

The film does a lot, but it does it well. It has the classic story of the hero resisting responsibility but ultimately having to take it. It has the best depiction of enduring love I’ve ever seen in animation. It has a subtle depiction of the mixed feelings of a son whose mother wasn’t there when he was growing up. It has genuinely funny humour, be it the amusing over-enthusiastic flirting of several of the teens, poor long-suffering Gobber or the dragons getting up to Pets do the Funniest Things antics in the backgrounds. It has an incredibly sad scene, just skirting looking insincerely inserted for some easy emotion-jerking, with some lovely eulogies. It has triumph with fireworks and a lovely ‘standing together’ moment. And it has goddamn huge dragons 

fighting like two Final Fantasy VII Weapons going at it. Marvellous!

Also, this is the first time I’ve seen a film in a DBox seat and felt it added something. Well, my only other experience has been with The Hobbit where it largely just tilted annoyingly to follow a sweeping camera, which didn’t work. An animation that frequently centres on flight, however? Ideal. By no means essential, but a nice little enhancement.

I’m very pleased there’s another sequel coming. This is a great world that’s being built, and How to Train Your Dragon has after all transformed Dreamworks into  studio that isn’t afraid of being serious and epic with its animations – even if Rise of the Guardians is really the only other film in this mode just yet. I’ll definitely be going to see how the story continues, and very probably will be buying the trilogy on Blu-Ray. 

Monsters vs Aliens

Monsters vs Aliens was largely well-reviewed, made good money – primarily in North America – and ticked most of the boxes for a lighthearted animated comedy. On the other hand, it was one of the most instantly forgettable of the animated features of the first decade of the millennium, and is nobody’s favourite, largely because it does just what it says on the tin – it has monsters fighting aliens in a light-hearted comedy based on B-movie clichés, and for that reason it will likely entertain for the duration, but break no hearts, jerk no tears and lead to no calls for a sequel (though sure, why not a spin-off series?). Because while boxes get ticked, there’s no sense of human connection, and with the point being that the monsters are nice guys all along, you don’t get the same chance at growth and affection in the likes of Despicable Me.

I didn’t bother with Monsters vs Aliens at the cinema. At the time, I have to say that I largely ignored DreamWorks animated features. Antz I can hardly remember, the first Shrek I didn’t like, I missed Madagascar and found the trailers annoying, and though I liked the look of Kung-fu Panda, I didn’t see it until 2010, two years after its release and a year after this film. Soon after, of course, there was a bit of a turning-point for DreamWorks with the lovely How to Train Your Dragon, followed by the enjoyable follow-ups Kung-fu Panda 2 and Puss in Boots, then the strange hit-with-edgy-kids-despite-not-quite-being-on-the-wider-cultural-radar that is Rise of the Guardians, and even if The Croods and Turbo have taken DreamWorks back towards the goofy, somewhat superficial side that used to define them, they remain in a good place.

But for Monsters vs Aliens, my only contact with it was a random Happy Meal toy my friends and I found at a convention in 2009 and decided was our silly mascot, especially since its inexplicable gimmick function was, upon being wound up, to vibrate and travel slowly, jerkily backwards. We named him Stig after something some random junkie/drunkard passing by said, and Stig he has remained to me until today, when we spotted the film on iPlayer and decided to watch: his real name is Link.

The first thing that struck us about the animation here was that the humans are ugly. They are designed very weirdly in the face and their movements are clunky and ungainly, save perhaps for the main character, Susan. Thankfully, this is only a problem for the opening scenes, because Susan is really the only human who has significant screen-time except for the President of the United States – played with rather too much conviction of his own funniness by Steven Colbert – and much of that is in tandem with techniques to make her look huge. For after a meteor containing ‘quantonium’ crushes her on her wedding day, she grows huge, bursting out of a building with more gusto than Alice ever managed in Wonderland, until she is a 50-foot woman. Whisked away to Area 51, she joins the government’s other classified monsters – Link, first names ‘The Missing’, who is a strange amphibian convinced of his own strength but somewhat out of shape now and the most human and approachable of the bunch as essentially an airheaded jock; cackling mad scientist Dr Cockroach, who has merged his DNA with that of the eponymous creepy-crawly, voiced by Hugh Laurie at the height of his House fame; B.O.B. the amorphous blob who lacks a brain but is stretchy and indestructible; and Insectosaurus, a bestial but loyal monstrosity seven times as tall as Susan, who I think was developed when someone joked about what Mothra must have looked like before metamorphosis.

The arrival of the aliens is neatly tied to Susan’s developing powers, for their goal is the quantonium that was behind her transformation. When no force in America can answer the threat of the initial robot invasion from the hostile aliens, it’s left to the monsters to save the day, and things start to get fun – and Susan starts to realise that maybe the life she left behind wasn’t as great as she thought it was before this life-changing event.
 

And ultimately, the film is good, but only good. It has some horrible misfires – like the Presiden’t poop joke (‘Brown alert’) and a string of homages to the likes of Close Encounters and E.T. that just feel like someone ticking off boxes on a list – but the humorous quirks of the main cast keeps then funny and likeable, the computer’s thoughts on its countdown got a genuine belly laugh from me and it was quite refreshing to see the reversal of gender stereotypes in the Renée Zellweger cameo scene. Oh, and I loved the kid from the DreamWorks logo getting abducted. 

There’s good reason for me not to rush to see this. There’s good reason I wouldn’t have been sad to miss it altogether, and looking slightly dated now, I’m sure that in 20 years it will be very seldom-revisited. But if there’s a chance to give it the hour and a half it needs with little to no inconvenience, I wouldn’t hesitate to tell someone to go for it, because while it lacks real emotional punch or any human touch, it also does what it sets out to do well. And sometimes that’s enough. 

Turbo

If there’s a trend that has emerged as the grand tradition of the American CG feature, it’s that of the unlikely underdog transcending his nature. Little cleaning robots can alter the fate of humanity. An ant can shine as an individual. The evil mastermind can become a pleasant family man. So it’s probably not a huge surprise to anyone that eventually, a film was going to come out about a snail being able to go really, really, really fast.

This is probably the most babyish of all the films made by Dreamworks Animation, who post-Shrek have tended to go for vaguely subversive and hip (Shark Tale, Monsters vs Aliens) or – my personal preferences – relatively epic and serious (How to Train Your Dragon, Rise of the Guardians). They probably need to veer towards the latter to finally shake off the Pixar-derivative tag, with this film having a whiff of A-Bug’s-Life-Meets-Cars about it. But there’s always a different flavour to the Dreamworks comedies that is a bit cheekier than anything from Pixar and less timeless and universal. And it’s in this frame of reference that Turbo succeeds – in being something a little by-the-numbers and uninspired, but very silly and very enjoyable.

Ordinary garden snail Theo is unhappy. Though he works loyally in the tomato patch with the other snails – where death by crow is a sad everyday occurrence – at nights he watches videos of championship car racing and dreams of going fast. After a particularly bad day, he goes to watch the cars at the freeway and ends up managing to fall into the engine of a souped-up car during a street race. He is quite literally turbo-charged as he is caught by a flooding of nitrous oxide, which in an origin story worthy of Stan Lee for being half-baked and preposterous, this makes him not only able to travel at the speeds of a race car, but to gain other car features as well, like a radio, headlamp eyes and even a reversing beep.

When his brother Chet is taken by the crows, Theo chases after them and rescues him. However, he is caught by a portly Mexican who enters him into a snail race outside his run-down taco stand. When he witnesses the absurd speed of Theo – now wanting to be known as ‘Turbo’ – Tito the cuddly Mexican realises that Turbo could be the key to revitalising their business. Theo himself, though, he has grander plans than a tourist attraction, and just might be able to convince Tito to get him entered into the Indianapolis 500, where he can meet his heroes.

A very classic underdog story, there’s a lot about Turbo that is very obvious storytelling, but for me one big qualm at the centre. It seems strange for me that the film goes from ‘let’s enter a snail into the Indy 500 to get publicity for our taco stand’ to ‘Turbo must win or the whole thing is meaningless.’ Let’s face it, they got a snail into a major car race. There’s a montage depicting how Turbo goes viral online that’s crucial to the rest of the plot, which even includes a pastiche of Autotune the News-style Youtube compositions, which the composer must have had a whole lot of fun putting together. Surely that’s enough to make the taco stand incredibly famous? I can cope with the usual cartoon questions of ‘why isn’t the entire world wanting to experiment on/reproduce/analyse this incredible phenomenon? Doesn’t the way the snails are so obviously sapient change every human being’s outlook on other life on Earth?’ and suchlike, but that moral heart of the film, that the hero must actually win rather than just participating and perhaps more importantly that the unworthy rival must lose…that doesn’t sit well.

There’s not much to say technically. Obviously, a huge amount of work went into Turbo, but it’s the same animation we are constantly seeing in CG animations these days. They’ve done a lot of work making such an unappealing creature as a snail look like a friendly cartoon character, with hints at chins in the shapes of the bodies, but these aren’t the first cute snails we’ve ever seen. Ryan Reynolds and Paul Giamatti are a spirited duo, and there’s no doubt that it’s a strange thrill to hear Samuel L. Jackson and Snoop Dogg collaborating as – of all things – a couple of badass snails, though it certainly feeds the notion that those two will do any roles these days.

It probably won’t surprise or particularly delight anybody, but Turbo will entertain enough for it to be worthwhile giving it a try. As for the spin-off series…can’t say I feel much inclined to watch that any time soon. 

Shrek 4-D

If I’m going to write reports on whatever short I see at the Ghibli museum – and I fully intend to – it only makes sense to write about the Shrek short seen as part of the ‘Far Far Away’ world at Universal Studios, Singapore (also screened in every other Universal park. After cute theming based on the puns and deadpan delivery of silly fairytail ideas that characterise the Shrek films and go entirely over the heads of most of the audience at Singapore, the audience is shown into a pre-show featuring the set-up of several minor characters having been captured by the ghost of Lord Farquaad – which largely involved people who don’t speak English, or don’t speak English well enough to understand the exaggerated accents of Shrek, to shuffle, walk out, or in the case of large groups of mainland Chinese, elbow their way forward when they realised they would be going through some doors to the movie theatre proper. There, a surprisingly long, rollicking tale of Shrek and Donkey once again rescuing Fiona from Farquaad (whose voice made me crave Third Rock from the Sun episodes), and somehow ghosts being susceptible to a puff of dragonfire (eh, with fantasy you can make up the rules), it is inelegant but likeable enough. An update with Puss in Boots and other characters from the sequels might be welcome.

Being ‘4-D’, the film came with the usual gimmicks that justify claiming that step above 3D – sneezes and droplets of a waterfall being rendered by little sprays of water, chairs clunkily thundering along in a way that made me miss the comforts of D-Box technology, ghosts causing a little chill of cold air about the nape…and rather better than those, a silly little prop fairy crash-landed into a speaker and thick air about the ankles for creepy spiders. Having been released back in 2003, before the 3-D gimmick went into full swing, this seems to have been a little ahead of its time in terms of polarizing for each eye and avoiding too much ghosting, but now suffers from the oversaturation of the effects and the obvious use of its gimmicks – no longer special enough to warrant having attention drawn to them in such a way.

The film has apparently been released on DVD, both in 3-D and 2-D, but both would seem to me likely to suffer from how blatantly several moments exist purely to make use of the gimmicks of the 4-D theatre. It unashamedly exaggerates these moments, and without the accompanying effect, I can see them coming over as pointless or even bewildering.

There have now been numerous Shrek shorts and if I ever write impressions of them, it’ll probably be all together. But purely for being in the context of the park, I felt this one should have an entry. 

The Croods

What a tangled production history The Croods went through. With its roots in an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Twits by John Cleese and the director of this picture Kirk DeMicco, it was announced way back in 2005 as Crood Awakening (which they should have stuck with) and was originally to be an Aardman clay animation project, which would have suited it rather well and probably have been better than The Pirates!

Cleese and DeMicco apparently wrote an early draft or two, chiselling out an odd-couple buddy movie script about two cavemen – an inventor and a luddite. The bare bones of that can be seen here, but the final result is rather different, with a family focus that takes that premise and makes it something quite different. Aardman’s association with Dreamworks came to an end, and Lilo & Stitch creator Chris Sanders, who joined as co-creator, wisely prioritised the brilliant How to Train Your Dragon, so production on The Croods slowed to a crawl and only now, in 2013, did the film finally surface.

It’s a little unfortunate, but the fact is that The Croods just gives an immediate impression of mediocrity, a bit like Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs did. It doesn’t look like its irreverence has a bit of an edge like Shrek, nor like it might just make you cry like Wall-E or Up. It feels too much like a painful attempt to make a very simple fable into an epic feature film as we join a family of cavemen who live by very strict rules that allow them to survive but never really live – until they are forced out into the open with a slightly unhinged young innovator who knows how to make fire and learn what it really is to push themselves. Its exaggerated but not very appealing designs also simply invite shrugs and indifference on a scale that seems set to be outdone only by the incredibly bland-looking Epic.

But that’s a shame, because The Croods is well worth the watch, and has a lot going for it under the surface. It’s all too polished, yes, and a bit manipulative, but it’s also smart, sweet, wholesome and has some wonderful visuals. It’s not brilliant, but it’s certainly a fair bit above average. It manages to have it all – silly slapstick, character-driven humour, teen romance that works, a positive family message, and even a rather brilliant scene of self-sacrifice that would have been an incredibly moving end to the movie, in a braver world where traumatising children didn’t matter. And so triumphant is what follows that the film gets away with having its cake and eating it.

It’s hard to pin down exactly what prevents the film really hitting the right emotional notes as a whole, but the fact is that it feels too small-scale despite being about characters who believe the end of the world is coming and see destruction that matches it. I thought at first it was that the effects only seem to be affecting so few people, but actually, I think that it’s that the story is so insular. There’s an impression that the feats of the Croods ought to at least bring them to another community, but they are their own little circle, and there is nothing more than that. Thus everything feels limited.

But this is not to say the film is not enjoyable, because it has a whole lot to commend it. Kind acts within a family sometimes are reward enough, and the imaginative creatures that populate the Croodacious period are wonderful – even if I suspect they would have somehow had more impact made of clay than of polygons.  

Rise of the Guardians

Rise of the Guardians – not to be confused with the strigine Legend of the Guardians – had an awkward marketing campaign that I have to say had an adverse effect on me. Someone, somewhere, decided it was a good idea to preface most of the season’s animated films with an extended preview for this feature, prefaced by an extremely awkward introduction by Hugh Jackman, looking uncomfortable as he talked about his role as the Easter Bunny for an audience of kids who couldn’t be expected to understand the irony. This gave way to an overlong sequence taken from the film’s first act, which despite good humour, lovely visuals and a very strong premise had little going for it in terms of originality.

But that premise, those interesting characters, the cute design of Jack Frost and the promise of spectacular action held quite some appeal, plus I heard crew from the brilliant How to Train Your Dragon were involved, so I was keen to go see it. 

Arguably a follow-up to that previous Dreamworks film and bringing with it the same treatment of a comedic premise with a serious, epic sort of a narrative and a protagonist a couple of years into adolescence rather than a little child. In short, going for the young adult crowd rather than the littluns or the knowing adults who like Shrek.

The idea of an ass-whupping, fighting Santa Claus is hardly original – it’s where South Park began, after all – but the hook here is that the happy optimism of the children around the world is maintained by four guardians. Santa has his spring counterpart in The Easter Bunny, while the Tooth Fairy takes care of not only milk teeth but the happy memories of childhood. Then there is The Sandman, whose happy dreams are key to contented nights worldwide. But the Boogieman, the sinister Pitch Black, has made a move to tip the balance towards fear, and the guardians are no enough to stop him, so the God-like Man in the Moon appoints a new guardian, the fun-loving but deeply lonely Jack Frost, who remembers nothing of the time back when he was human, before he was chosen.

The designs of the small but iconic cast are great, as are the performances that give them life. Santa is portrayed as a patriarchal but merry Russian in a performance Alec Baldwin clearly enjoyed very much. Jack Frost, who after seeing Star Trek I never would have expected Chris Pine to voice with such vulnerability – only for him to be perfect – has an inspired design, simple and yet complex, with skinny jeans and a hoodie to put him bang up-to-date with the modern crowd and a strangely compelling face that isn’t what you would call handsome or pretty or idealised yet makes him very cute and expressive. Jackman going against type makes for some of the bigger laughs in the show, especially when he goes through a transformation towards the end of the film, and the mute Sandman is a classic cartoon character. There’s a touch of tokenism about the Tooth Fairy as the only female guardian, so that she’s soon awkwardly flirting and her little fairies become a mass of damsels in distress, and Isla Fisher phones in the same likeable but forgettable performance from Rango, but it works and she’s got a pretty scaled design. Then there’s Jude Law as the Boogieman, something that sounds slightly odd in a British accent (where the term is ‘bogeyman’). He’s simplistic and slightly too often made a buffoon, but when he’s manipulating or in command, he’s quite brilliant – and I suspect many a teen girl will be producing fanart and fanfic of him with Jack. There’s a touch of Scar about his mixture of malevolence, gloating and cowardice, though he’s not quite on that level of charisma. There are also a gang of credulous little kids who are written with the tough roles of being fickle enough to believe and stop believing in the guardians over the course of just an hour or two, but especially with the addition of the expectation-inverting Cupcake, a memorable, briefly-sketched little gang.

The plot is simple but neatly-done. Jack is only given his motivation – finding his memories – because he is brought into contact with the guardians, which is neat, and also sets him up for his downfall and guilt later on. Pitch’s downfall comes because he throws balance out, and one neat thing about having a story about Jack Frost and Santa in a story based around Easter time is that it will be appropriate for airing on TV networks at multiple times during the year.

It won’t go down as one of the great classics of animation, of that I’m sure – there’s too much of an emotional barrier between supernatural beings and the audience. It needed to be heartfelt through some great emotional moment, and never quite gets there – it’s more a superhero film without having the coolness to appeal to adult superhero fans. But just because it’s not destined to be a classic, doesn’t mean it wasn’t excellently-done – it was, and now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get a Rise of the Guardians Happy Meal. Did I mention that the marketing wasn’t exactly subtle?

Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted

I hadn’t actually seen any of the other Madagascar films before seeing this. They never had any particular appeal – the art style struck me as a very expensive and laborious way of making creatures look ugly and plastic, and it all seemed a bit of an Ice Age mark 2, without any unique Dreamworks spin. Not that I have ever been particularly interested in Ice Age.

But I had a bit of interest in Madagascar 3. Perhaps it was in part thanks to the viral power of the silly ‘Afro Circus’ song – especially mashed up with things like Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’ – which was probably all a forced marketing campaign but still worked neatly. It looked entertaining, if mindless and stereotype-driven.

And it was mindless and stereotype-driven, but that was no big issue. It was fun, and the ending was both more spectacular and cleverer than I had ever expected. I loved the overblown circus spectaculars and I loved the way once the main characters got what they wanted, they realized it really wasn’t what they imagined, or worth leaving behind what they had. The new characters got the bare minimum of development – except maybe the brilliant sea lion Stefano – but it was expertly done so that they were likeable and I cared about them, while the rapport between the central characters – well, I don’t know if it was that way from the start or something that developed, but the rapport between them was great. It’s an unlikely collection of voice actors – is it the only thing David Schwimmer is doing these days? – but sometimes throwing a group of unlikely companions together is exactly what works best.

As for what I said about the aesthetic being a very expensive way to look ugly, that’s really limited to character designs, and though they’re generic and not especially appealing, they do also manage the feat of imprinting themselves incredibly quickly and indelibly on the consciousness, and once there are unforgettable.

There’s not a lot at stake here, and the storyline written on paper is pretty dull, relying on the bouncing between two plots – the animals try to pass as circus performers while a crazy animal control officer hunts them – but the two are juggled deftly and the combination of acrobatics, bright colours and attractive locales including Monaco and London keep the piece engaging until the end. In short, nothing that will change lives or stun audiences by being wildly different from expectations, but well-written, funny and pleasant to look at. I would not be averse to checking out the previous films now, nor to spin-offs…though this would be a very neat way to end the main series, with the zoo animals finding their way back home and realizing that everything they’ve experienced on their journey means they no longer need it. 

Shrek 2

Another animated movie screened during the Christmas period, I thought it worthwhile to put down a few thoughts, since I neglected to do so when I saw it back in 2004. This seems a bit of an oversight, as it was my favourite for the four main Shrek films, and indeed had a soundtrack I loved – I got Frou Frou and Butterfly Boucher’s albums as a direct result of it, and it contains one of my favourite Tom Waits tracks, ‘A Little Drop of Poison’ – a new arrangement of a song he’d written for a different film. And, of course, a fantastic belter delivered at the film’s climax by Jennifer Saunders.

After Shrek rescues Fiona at the end of the first film, it is revealed that ‘love’s true form’ turns her into an ogre too. The obvious question at the end of that story is what will happen when the couple have to go back to the wider world – and here, we find out. Fiona’s parents are the king and queen of Far, Far Away, and quite brilliantly cast, being played by the unlikely but inspired coupling of John Cleese and Julie Andrews. However, the Fairy Godmother, a powerful figure in the city, has a plan to get her own son Prince Charming into the picture in place of Shrek. So not only must the new couple deal with the insecurities that come from not looking like the expected beautiful fairytale prince and princess, but they must contend with potions that can force a person to fall in love or change their appearance altogether, and a conniving woman who knows how to use – and misuse – them.

I didn’t particularly like the first Shrek film. I felt its humour was forced, its aesthetic underwhelming and its world somewhat dull. This film brought with it more inventive and clever performances, fantastic music and a neat plot that left enough loose ends for a further sequel – even if that one was something of a disappointment. The Shrek films may be Dreamworks’ flagship, but they’re certainly not my favourites. Of them, though, and not counting the excellent Puss in Boots, this one was the most worthy of praise. Even the annoying side characters like Pinocchio are genuinely funny here – and of course, it was where Puss had his debut; much of the humour of his subsequent appearances was simply repetition or slight variation of the funny moments he has here, one of the best gags in Shrek the 3rd being when he tries to look cute while in Donkey’s body. Certainly one of the better animated sequels out there.

Even if in the wake of Game of Thrones I can’t look at Prince Charming for a moment without seeing Jaime Lannister.

Puss in Boots

The second animated film with this title I’ve reviewed, and rather different from the lovely classic Toei film with Miyazaki on key animation, though that one is more properly called Nagagutsu-o Haita Neko. This one, of course, is not a take on the original Perrault tale but a spin-off of Dreamworks’ successful Shrek franchise. While I was quite happy to see Shrek come to a moderately dignified end, this spin-off never struck me as a bad idea – Puss was a likeable and funny character, less annoying than Shrek or Donkey, and just peripheral enough to make his own side-story seem like something wholly new.

And, honestly, this turned out to be better than any of the Shrek films. It’s far less irreverent, less knowing and less self-consciously zany, which actually makes it far more likeable. Rather than going for subversion by putting the ugly ogre centre-stage, now they have the cat, and what is lost in everyman qualities is more than made up for by cuteness.

Conceived as a prequel so that it could be developed in tandem with Shrek films without contradicting any continuity, it is refreshingly free of cast members from the original franchise. Indeed, supposedly it was originally to be direct-to-video, and I’m glad it not only got upgraded to theatrical feature but was converted to 3D – some of the best I’ve seen during the whole fad. It played things safe plot-wise, but the little details were often inspired and the humour was superb. It was also refreshing that the pop culture references were mostly limited to general pastiches of westerns and one reference to Fight Club – too many of those outstay their welcome. Even hints at the controversy around declawing (barely heard of in this country) seemed a bit heavy-handed!

Back before he met Shrek and Donkey in Shrek 2, Puss in Boots was a wanted cat. In a seedy saloon he learns that the burly outlaws Jack and Jill have come into possession of three magic beans. That strikes a chord with Puss, and he resolves to steal them. Unfortunately, the attempt is foiled because another feline has eyes on the prize – notorious cat burglar Kitty Softpaws. After a brilliantly funny confrontation, it turns out that Kitty is in league with Humpty Dumpty, a figure from Puss’s past and linked to some painful memories. Humpty grew up with Puss, until the two of them grew apart because Humpty was too drawn to a life of crime – climaxing in a bank heist that went wrong and disgrace for them both. Eventually, Puss is convinced, the new team manages to steal the beans from the grotesque redneck-Bavarian hybrids Jack and Jill, go up the beanstalk and bring back the gosling that lays the golden eggs. But all is not as it seems, and at the very least getting the gosling down from the giant’s castle doesn’t mean you’re home safe.

It’s a neat and well worked-out plot, helped by a strong backstory, and if the twist makes you doubt it could quite work when at so many points the quest could have failed and everybody could have ended up dead, you allow it because it’s far from the silliest thing that happens. But what really makes the film work is the little touches and the clever witty jokes. Most of the humour is very much character-based, and there’s much to be drawn from the fact that two main characters are cats – adorable, proud and prone to chase after spots of light – and one is an egg. Add to that jokes based on Spanish and Mexican culture, inherently silly birds and some simple classic comedy of being in the wrong place at the wrong time or trying to show off and it going wrong, and you get by far the funniest of the series, especially because it mostly doesn’t seem to be trying too hard – and, crucially, has warmth, with much of the comedy about Latin culture more affectionate homage than caricature. They even get Guillermo del Toro, executive producer, to voice the comandate.

Funny, clever, cute and giving the impression that all involved genuinely likes the film they’re making, it is by far the best thing to come out of the Shrek franchise and my second-favourite Dreamworks film, after How to Train your Dragon.

Shrek the 3rd

While there are good things to be said for the third Shrek film, which I certainly enjoyed more than the first despite the relative dearth of original thinking, it really should have been the end of the franchise and may well be the weakest of the films. On the other hand, it was successful enough for the fourth film to be made, and we’re soon to get a Puss in Boots spin-off as well.

Shrek is horrified to hear that he is next in line to the throne. However, there is another heir he can persuade to rule, young Prince Arthur. However, Arthur has to be retrieved from his boarding school and kept safe, while other less worthy pretenders vie to capture the throne for themselves.

References to Rosemary’s Baby and Live or Let Die, as well as some amusingly over-the-top performances from two Pythons don’t disguise tired Disney gags and the fact that they’ve recycled a weak villain from the last film and introduced the blandest young hero ever seen. The second film had a much stronger plot and an excellent turn from Jennifer Saunders to keep it aloft, but here the plot is simply too weak to carry the comedy.

What results is a mess that lacks the spark that Shrek films need to work.

I’d sit through Shrek 2 again happily. Not sure about this one.

Shrek IV: Shrek Forever After

Going to see the fourth Shrek film, three years after seeing what I had thought would be the final part of a trilogy, I expected a limp and inconsequential milking of the cash-cow, but in fact it was actually an affectionate and entertaining final adventure for what have become well-loved characters. Indeed, they were well-loved even for one such as me, who disliked the first film. It was a neatly-crafted concept for getting another story out of a franchise that, really, had ended – spinoff prequels aside – and a satisfying mixture of action, comedy and sentiment peppered with great visual gags.

Now enjoying marital stability and a certain celebrity, part of Shrek will always yearn for the old days, when he was an ogre to be feared and respected, with independence and no responsibilities. But nasty little Rumpelstiltskin, who has a grudge against Shrek, is in a position to take advantage of this midlife crisis, and soon Shrek finds himself in an alternate world where nobody knows him, and none of the people whose lives he affected have lived quite the same lives. In true fairy tale fashion, the solution is true love’s kiss – but that’s not so easy to get from someone who never met you because you were never born.

Not a film I’d feel the need to buy and rewatch, nor, in truth, what you would call necessary, but enjoyable nonetheless.

(expanded from impressions, September 2010)

Kung Fu Panda - short impressions

I enjoyed watching Kung Fu Panda, pleased to see that beyond the very Tenacious D opening sequence, safely packaged as a dream, the film didn’t stray too close to being a knowing, postmodern parody. Instead, it was an affectionate homage to kung fu films, therefore able to take itself very seriously despite all the cutesy characters. The plot was nothing new, but that wasn’t the point of the animation – it was meant to be light entertainment with the irresistible visual twist of animal characters, and did not disappoint.

(Originally written 22.2.10. Kung Fu Panda 2 impressions here)

How to Train Your Dragon

I initially dismissed How to Train Your Dragon, unimpressed by the trailer, but exceptional word-of-mouth made me reconsider, and I'm very pleased that I did, because this is an excellent film. For once the 3D worked well for me, and the effects blew the obviously tacked-on post-production 3D of Clash of the Titans away. The water in particular looked magnificent. It was great to see an animated character acting in a naturalistic way, and I ended up very fond of Hiccup, as well as the adorably feline Toothless.

I don’t know why cartoon Vikings are always Scottish, except when they’re young and attractive, when they become Americans, but it worked. I loved the society, the different designs, the fun of it and the emotional ups and downs. Where I was willing Hiccup to make a grand gesture or come up with a story, only for him not to, it made perfect sense because of his character. And the ending was satisfying, though I hope it spawns a sequel, and find it great that it looked likely to be a failure, only to gradually pick up a wider and wider audience.

A simple story of an outcast of society choosing his own way and eventually winning over his detractors, with a little help from a dragon, it is one of the better animated films of recent years, and certainly my favourite from Dreamworks.

(originally written April 16, 2010. Two sequels have since been announced.)

Kung Fu Panda 2

The first Kung Fu Panda was a fun send-up of Hong Kong kung fu films, with sharp but likeable humour and an unlikely cast of animals that made for a lot of visual gags.

The second manages to avoid most of the pitfalls of comedy sequels, while not being quite striking or memorable enough to really be essential viewing. It was, however, a very entertaining and compelling animation and full of great ideas, sight gags and likeable, interesting characters.

The first problem to overcome was the fact that the identifiable character from the first film, the big fat lazy panda who was pretty hopeless at everything, ended the story as a capable warrior and respected kung fu artist. Fortunately, the right balance is struck between him not having lost his skills and him being unfit and clumsy.

A new threat has arisen, and in typical kung fu fashion, it’s gunpowder vs hand-to-hand combat. A peacock prince (gleefully played by Gary Oldman hamming it up) has been banished for responding to a prophecy that he will be defeated by a black-and-white warrior by slaughtering all the pandas in China. Now he has his own army and a new, unstoppable weapon, and it will fall to the Dragon Warrior and his partners to stop him – but fortunately, somehow the peacock prince doesn’t know about the famous Dragon Warrior being a panda. He must be stopped before he takes his weapon to sea, and of course, during the conflict, Po will end up finding out what happened to his parents and how he came to be the only one of his kind in his village, perhaps in all of China.

Normally I object to stories driven by prophecies, which tend to be a lazy excuse for character motivation, but since the majority of the humour of Kung Fu Panda derives from a fresh and irreverent take on old clichés, that doesn’t apply here. The whole concept revolves around retelling a familiar story in a unique and silly way, not just with animals but with a knowing, modern angle delivered by the cynical yet also hapless main character. And this is what it does well – very well. With the fantastic animation and the inventive action scenes, and some nice changes in media, simulated in CG – shadow puppets and cel-style flash animation. Kung Fu Panda 2 is visually at the top of its game, Dreamworks now able to match Pixar with every picture. However, they still haven’t quite learned the lesson made How To Train Your Dragon so much more resonant than the likes of Shrek, and puts Pixar on the top of their game: everyman characters who can be identified with easily - which Po is not, being a clownish friend figure, but not a point of immediate contact. Two things could have improved Kung Fu Panda 2: more emotional clout and a stronger, more compelling story. But these are difficult things to build on the story of the first film, as well as keeping things as a light-hearted comedy.

It is worth remembering that this is the comedy sequel to a comedy film. Not every film has to be full of heart and warmth to work – and this one after all delivers more kicking of butt than the average.