The ten-minute introduction to the movie Hugo, before the title card even reminds you what you’re at the cinema to see, is an absolute popcorn-gobbling delight of special effects. As we follow the titular hero through the labyrinthine pathways that make up the landscape of his home—living behind the walls at a Parisian train station—we pass through cogs and pendulums and down slides and up rickety stairs, all merging seamlessly together to create an entirely new and beautiful world. Seeing this in 3D is even more incredible, and is an immediate way to engage your audience so that they’re staring slack-jawed with glee within moments.
The world of young boy Hugo (Asa Butterfield) himself is not so lovely. It’s 1931, and, orphaned after the death of his clockmaker father (Jude Law) in a museum fire and sent to live with his alcoholic uncle, his life goes from quiet contentment to ruination. Unable to go to school, running the station’s clocks is his only job, but one he must do perfectly in case anyone notices that as the movie begins, he is now alone, his uncle having abandoned him. Apart from the clocks, Hugo spends his time tending to a broken automaton his father found in a museum, trying to find parts for it—or to steal them from the station’s toymaker, Papa Georges (Ben Kingsley) out of view of the orphan-catching Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen). After an altercation with Georges that sees him lose his father’s notebook, a precious memento that also holds the clues to fixing the writing-robot that is his father’s only legacy, he thinks all is doomed. But wait! Because it’s an adventure story (and a self-referential one at that), an effervescent girl named Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz, adorable) is waiting in the wings to befriend him, even though her guardian is Georges himself. And between them, they may just hold the not entirely metaphorical key to everyone’s angst—Hugo’s emotional and mechanical problems, and the secret her godfather has been keeping for years.
Hugo is a love letter to cinema itself: not only in its visuals, but in the subject matter and in the characters themselves. Hugo’s father adored cinema and took his son to films, whereas Georges has never let Isabelle see a movie in her life. There is a glorious line to make all movie-lovers sigh, as Hugo tells Isabelle about the first time his father had seen a movie: “He said it was like seeing his dreams in the middle of the day.” The history of film is touched on as well, as the first one shown—a train pulling into a station—causes the entire audience to shriek and run as the train barrels towards the camera. Connected to it all is cinematic genius Georges Melies, whom you might remember from a particularly referenced and adored film scene where the moon cops a rocket to the eye. Any movie about movies is one that floats my boat, and this is lovingly rendered in every way, where the recreations of hundred-year-old special effects still have the power to amaze, and the loss of film can cause the loss of much more personally.
Quirky French touches abound, as the station’s other occupants—flower-seller Lisette (Emily Mortimer), the object of the Station Inspector’s awkward affections; cafe owner Madame Emile (Frances de la Tour, one of three Harry Potter actors in the film—she played the French giantess); and newspaperman Monsieur Frick (Richard Griffiths, second Potter-person, Uncle Vernon) dance around each other and create a lightness and sweetness that the movie’s occasionally sad moments need. Moretz is a delight as an enthusiastic counterpart to Butterfield’s quiet grimness, and Cohen does a wonderful job making the initially dastardly Inspector a sympathetic character (it does take a while to warm to the man, though. What kind of jerk throws orphans in a cage?)
However I couldn’t really bond with Hugo himself, a character with a genuinely sorrowful backstory but who in Butterfield was unable to sell me on any of his emotions or the reasoning behind some of his actions. Sadly, this made him one of the least interesting characters in the movie for me. Papa Georges’ backstory, while interesting and visually entrancing, is not quite enough payoff for the build-up surrounding it—so I enjoyed the movie but still left the theatre feeling slightly unfulfilled. I do recall feeling the same way when I read the book as well: that I was hoping for a dramatic reveal and was underwhelmed. Characters frequently did the frustrating trope where they don’t explain their actions, choosing silence over logical discussion and making the movie stretch out into devastation when it could have been remedied by a nice chat over a cup of tea.
But it’s still a fun film, and kudos to director Martin Scorsese for doing to 3D what the mechanically brilliant young Hugo does to a mechanical mouse—injecting it with something new and wonderful. I give it eight out of twelve o’clock.
In Australia, Hugo is released January 12.
Just as I was old enough to go to the movies without my folks, Jim Carrey and his rubbery face were in the most quotable movies around: Mask, Ace Ventura. “Smokin’.” “Somebody stop me.” “All righty then”. (And don’t pretend you haven’t said those out loud, readership.) Shortly after those films came Liar Liar, starring Carrey as Fletcher Reede, a man who, as a lawyer, lies for a living, and as a man, has disappointed his estranged wife and fluffy-haired by numerous lies. The disappointed son, angry at his father, one day wishes that his dad could never tell a lie. And it comes true, Fletcher can’t lie, an hour and a half later we’ve all learned a lesson about being a good person and father and how even in the workplace honesty is the best policy and so on.
In Mr Popper’s Penguins, Carrey plays Tom Popper, a man who manipulates people into selling real estate, and who has disappointed his estranged wife and two children by being a PG-level schmuck. After the death of his father, he finds himself in ownership of six penguins, and lies to his son about being able to keep them. Thus, he has to deal with six wacky penguins, and an hour and a half later we’ve all learned a lesson about being a good person and father and how even in the workplace honesty is the best policy and so on.
But hey, I liked Liar Liar, and I enjoyed Mr Popper’s Penguins. It’s exactly what you’d expect from the poster. Popper’s life is turned upside-down by taking care of these penguins, little special-effects stars he starts off hating but inevitably becomes attached to. His precise and perfect home becomes an icy palace. His kids, who previously found him boring, want to hang out. His wife sees a new side to him. But his work life suffers, especially when he’s inches from a promotion and all he needs to do is get a certain piece of property owned by the shrewd Mrs Van Gundy (Angela Lansbury). Helping his career is his assistant, Pippi (Ophelia Lovibond), who speaks alliteratively in Ps throughout the entire movie, which is somehow positively precious instead of painful.
It’s a pretty ridiculous movie, not helped by the fact that the villain is a man who works at the zoo and has the entirely reasonable view that penguins would be safer and better cared for by professionals in a penguin enclosure than a businessman in a high-rise apartment. While it makes sense in a kids movie—someone wants to take away the hero’s illegal pets that he loves!—as an adult it’s ridiculous that he even gets himself in this situation in the first place by keeping them more than one day, and that his spouse Amanda (Carla Gugino) encourages it, unless she does it to be vindictive.
Despite all that, and all the poop/fart jokes, it was an entertaining hour and a half and I didn’t regret my time in the cinema at all. The stacks of kids in the theatre were very well behaved and took their cues well (“uh oh” said the girl behind me at one pertinent moment) and, you know what, Carrey is still very funny, even when he is being more Carrey than the character (doing a slow-motion run into the final scene, for example.) There were some good lines, I laughed, I had fun, I would take kids there—especially when there is never any violent danger, just the wholesome kidnapping kind. There’s lots of slipping and falling and Carrey gets hit in the nuts with a soccer ball. It’s not mature. But it’s not supposed to be. And it’s perfectly serviceable fare for all involved.
Pixar, let’s face it, are wonderful. I dare you to find a better superhero movie than The Incredibles, or a more moving ten minutes of film than the intro to Up, or a better and braver hero than Wall-E. Then I double dare you to think of the first Cars movie as the best of anything. Maybe the best at making Pixar’s board a huge merchandising fortune so they can fill their Lightning McQueen-shaped swimming pool with Cristal or whatever it is rich people drink. Probably imported Dr Pepper.
I went to see Cars 2 when the Rotten Tomatoes rating had been going downhill faster than a relevant racing pun. I’ll see anything, though, and as I’ve seen everything Pixar has done (including Ratatouille, which is the first movie I’ve fallen asleep during) there was no way I could stop myself. Armed with 3D glasses and enough popcorn to float a shipwreck, I bravely went to see the first Pixar movie the masses appeared to be dreading.
And they shouldn’t be. Actually, Cars 2 is pretty good.
Perhaps it was my low expectations. I’m not interested in racing or in arrogant race cars voiced by Owen Wilson. (Though I am interested in Owen Wilson when he plays humans.) I own a bunch of movie paraphernalia but cars aren’t my thing. For me, Cars 2 was lifted from horror by ditching the races—there are only three, and the last one you only see for about five seconds—and instead following an adventurous spy thriller storyline when Lightning McQueen’s best pal, country bumpkin tow-truck Tow Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), accidentally happens upon some highly secretive information in a Japanese bathroom. (Yes, there is a scene in one of those convoluted Japanese toilets. Yes, it’s funny. Yes, I wish I also had buttons on my otherwise dull toilet at home.) Mater then becomes the target of the bad guys—headed by a monocle-side-mirror-wearing car who answers to a faceless villain I picked from miles away—but is thankfully found first by British Intelligence officers Holley (Emily Mortimer) and the moustachioed Bond car Finn McMissile (Michael Caine, totally and utterly excellent.) A misinterpretation of events leads Holley and Finn to believe Mater is a spy under deep, stupid cover, and together they must save the day.
Interestingly, the plotline McQueen follows is about a competition started by Sir Miles Axelrod (Eddie Izzard) to best show off the new alternative fuel source he has come up with. While it’s a topic that is currently quite relevant, it’s not elaborated upon too much (fair enough too, the target market really couldn’t give a toss about petrol prices no matter how much we moan about them) but was a pretty interesting angle to take. It’s discovered during the first races that the cars running on the new fuel are prone to go boom, and Axelrod’s new fuel and race appear to be the end of his career.
Along with that drama, McQueen and Mater have a falling out, basically because Mater is stupid and annoying and ruins everything. Which is what stops Cars 2 from attaining the heights of Pixar’s excellence. While Lightning McQueen is smarmy and arrogant, Tow Mater is not street-smart, doesn’t listen, and makes terrible puns. (Okay. And some good ones which should be terrible, like when someone says, “tout suite!” and he says, “I’ll have two sweets too!”) You can forgive him a lot, because he’s never really left his quiet hometown of Radiator Springs before, but the incident that gets him out of favour with Lightning during the first race is actually appalling behaviour on his part as both a friend and a team member. So while I appreciated getting away from McQueen, Mater is still a very imperfect character. You get so little of everyone else that I don’t know who I’d prefer it to be about. Maybe Finn McMissile.
Cars 2 is a beautiful looking movie, which is hardly a surprise. The action is thrilling, Finn McMissile is an amazing addition—he’s a car! He’s on skis! He’s a submarine! He’s got guns! Etc!—and there are a lot of little jokes you could miss if you weren’t paying attention, like that there’s a Popemobile that has its own Popemobile, and the ads on the side of the racetrack that say “Lassetire”. For Australian audiences, V8 Supercar driver Mark Winterbottom voices a car in one scene; in other countries, the paint job and voice is changed. Some jokes are flat-out hilarious. Some will induce a smile. It’s a movie you shouldn’t mind taking your niece to go see.
One flaw that bothered me was the excessive use of stereotypes. It starts with the cringeworthy hillbilly that is the bucktoothed Tow Mater, goes off to Japan where all the female cars appear to be geishas (in my three week experience of Japan, I did not see a single geisha anywhere), then heads over to Italy where everyone is making out and McQueen is told he needs to be fattened up. The only “non-white” characters in Radiator Springs are Flo (Jenifer Lewis), who speaks fluent sass, and her panelbeater husband Ramone (Cheech Marin). My problem is that these kind of stereotypes should be avoided, and pushing them on kids when they’re young and impressionable—“it’s okay to think that other countries are made of a homogenous people!”—is something I’d wish my kids would avoid seeing.
Also, while I’m totally okay with the fact that cars talk in these films, it absolutely pushes my credibility when you see what they have built. HOW DO THEY DO THIS? THEY DO NOT HAVE HANDS. A scene with an army of miniature robots would fix this. Or, you know, I could get over it. After all, there’s one scene in this where the a bunch of cars play guitar in an Italian plaza. HOW DO THEY STRING THE GUITARS THOUGH? I cannot buy it. Also, while I can be okay with teeth (I can buy that they’re actually grills, or whatever), why do cars have tongues? WHYYYYY
So it exceeded my expectations, made me laugh, and I had a good time. And, thrillingly, there’s a Toy Story short before it called Hawaiian Vacation that rocked my socks. There are worse movies out there to see this holiday season, like Kung Fu Panda 2 (which I may review later). And if anyone asks you if it’s better than Cars 1, you can even quote it: “Is the Popemobile Catholic?”
There’s something about initials in kids books. When I was a kidlet, all the best books were by people hiding behind initials – along with Point Horror writers Caroline B Cooney and D E Athkins, R L Stine is of course a good example, and I was so in love with him and his initialled compatriots that for a while all of my (numerous and terrible) stories were mostly me thinking up dramatic titles, writing the name F E Hardy in bold, then running immediately out of ideas. The trend continues with the Zac Power books, written by H I Larry, a pen name for a variety of excellent authors who have contributed to the series. H J Harper is no pseudonym, but an actual (and quite lovely) person named Holly, and her new Star League series starts as much fun.
Book one opens with movie star Jay Casey heroically stopping some bank robbers in a commercial for the drink Fizz Force. As the filming wraps up, we learn more about Jay: he does his own stunts, swinging down from the ceiling and kicking a burglar’s legs out from underneath him; he’s kind, showing concern for the actors he’s just beaten up; and he’s a lonely kid, orphaned and with only his uncle/agent Jefferson as a friend. Then Jay finds out he’s up for an audition with the famous director Ben Beaumont—but it’s not an audition for a movie, but to join a new bunch of kids with the ability to save the world. There’s robot S.A.M., animancer Leigh, zombie Roger (full name Roger Romero, which is why I love Holly right there), werewolf Connor and ninja Asuka, and the first book shows the team meeting for the first time, and thrown right in the deep end with a dramatic kidnapping as the evil and awesomely named Professor Pestilence tries to use Jay’s fame to his advantage.
I like early reader chapter books because I can knock them out in a short period of time and feel like a Successful Bookseller. It’s also great when I like them and then have some proper advice to offer those who want to buy a book for the eightish-plusish market. (Younger kids will probably like having it read to them and older kids, like for example twenty-nine-year-old ones, might also like to snare themselves a copy.)
Having male, female and androgynous-robot characters means that all types of kids can see that anyone can be powerful and courageous, and makes the series good for kids who think reading about the opposite sex is gross/smelly/weird/boring or the parents that assume their kids think that way. Though to be honest, in many ways the children’s book industry mops the floor with adult books, sexism-wise, because there are female spies and agents and adventurers all over the place in the kids section but not as much in the adult fiction section. Hopefully kids who grow up reading books like Star League: Lights, Camera, Action Hero will end up writing books like Star League: Equal Pay, Equal Badassness. Or perhaps they’ll think of better titles. Probably.
Lights, Camera, Action Hero is fun, adventurous, a bit different, and manages to tackle the serious issues of being ostracised and feeling lonely while throwing in terrifying evil professors, killbots (my favourite kind of bot!) and jokes. Basically, it’s all you could want in a kids adventure book, with the added bonus of originality and warmth. Nahum Ziersch’s manga-ish illustrations are excellent, energetic, edgy and other e-words too: it makes for a good-looking read to go with the clear but not patronising language. And if you/your kid/your grandma likes it, there’s five more books in the series. You know what, you should probably just go buy them all at once.
I don’t know when it happened—or if it has always been so—but kids movies always have to have a singing and dancing scene. Inevitably, the fuddy-duddy-est of the characters will do the silliest dance and all the under-fives will fall over themselves laughing. I for one am waiting for the one kids movie that doesn’t require a song or a dance to get its point across. After all, life doesn’t work that way, and apparently I am a miserly old cynic who wants to strip all young children of fun in their flicks so that I don’t have to cross my arms and sigh pointedly when everyone bursts into song. So it’s probably not a surprise to you that there’s singing and dancing in Gnomeo & Juliet. Worse still, it’s Elton John—and while he’s a multi-kazillionaire and well-loved, I don’t actually enjoy his music at all. It’s fun enough for a kids movie, and the glitziness that goes alongside his work helps too (you will see glitter sunglasses, fear not), but he is executive producer and thus it seems like a blatant bit of self-promotion. If I liked Sir Elton perhaps I wouldn’t be so ranty right now—and one of my co-watchers loves him and had a dirty great smile on her face whenever his songs came on—but I don’t.
In happier news, I did quite like Gnomeo & Juliet. Aimed squarely at the kidlet market, though still pretty endearing for the old folks (read: twelve-plus), it’s a story we’ve all heard before, but perhaps not in this style. Gnomeo (James McAvoy) is a rough-n-tumble ceramic garden gnome from the blue Montague house, a bit of a larrikin with a podgy gnome belly. Juliet (Emily Blunt) is held literally on a pedestal by her father over the fence in the red Capulet house. Along with the crotchety home owners, the red and the blue gnomes have been enemies for as long as anyone can remember, but when Gnomeo and Juliet bump into each other in another property across the alley, they spark a forbidden romance that causes much drama as their relationship accidentally brings neighbourhood tensions to the fore. Will it follow the same storyline, with a double suicide at the end? I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say “no”, not when it’s a kids movie, though the smirking statue of Shakespeare (voiced by Patrick Stewart) at the gnomes’ local park insisted with a smirk it would end as he originally wrote it.
Frankly, gnomes just take a while to get used to. We know via the Toy Story trilogy that we can fall totally in love with otherwise inanimate objects, but watching gnomes clunk around the place, tending to their garden, repeatedly fishing for one bored fish, and so on—it’s tricky to connect with them, but you really do. The sound design is wonderful in this film, with the ceramic clacking of gnomes against themselves, each other and the environment completely spot-on and natural. They are less fragile than you’d expect but still can’t fall from great heights, and they will freeze as soon as a human is nearby into all manner of hilarious positions. I’m not sure how sold I was until Gnomeo and Juliet meet at a disused glasshouse where Juliet is hunting for the perfect flower, and the introduction of the two characters is one of the sweetest and most entertaining I have seen as the two—both in disguise—swing around the greenhouse in a nifty little action sequence. Once they fall into a pond and discover—to their mutual horror—that they are from opposing houses, their attraction doesn’t wane but things get a bit trickier when it comes to meeting up.
As in all good kids flicks, the main characters’ pals count for a lot. Gnomeo’s main man is actually a clay mushroom that, despite having no face (seriously, it’s just a mushroom) sniffs around the place like a dog and somehow makes barking noises. (What, THIS is what I can’t suspend disbelief for?) Juliet has an Irish pond frog as her helper, one who spurts jets of water out of the hose in her mouth and is happy to leap about singing, “Doooooomed!” after she discovers the dangerous romance. The most emotionally devastating character is, bizarrely, a plastic pink flamingo named Featherstone that Gnomeo and Juliet accidentally let out of a shed, who attacks everyone with love, knows no boundaries, has a strange Latin accent and, after recounting what led to him being trapped in a shed for twenty years, will make you want to bawl your eyes out and ruin your 3D glasses. (Not to mention, he’s voiced by Jim Cummings, who had a similarly devastating storyline in the substandard The Princess and the Frog. I hope his human life is much happier.) Add to that a bad guy in arrogant red gnome Tybalt—voiced, awesomely, by Jason Statham—and the ultra-competitive lawnmower fights the two groups of gnomes get into, and you’ve got yourself total entertainment.
It’s a bit cheesy, the ending is wrapped up far too quickly and with a bit of a vague hand-wave to some loose ends. There is a big stupid dance finale, if you’re bothered by such things. The 3D is absolutely fine—but underused. While it’s a good-looking movie, it’s restricted to two backyards, one neighbouring lot, and a brief foray into a park. It’s nothing that couldn’t have been done with live action, or puppets—there’s no sweeping panoramic shots, and limited action scenes, mostly lawnmower-related. I understand that the gnomes live a sheltered life, and that I’m overthinking this movie, but I’m not sure why they bothered sticking in a third dimension while keeping it so limited.
However, it’s super cute, pretty funny, and there’s lots of bright colours to keep the kids entertained. It’s not too childish for adults, and grown-ups get to play find-the-Shakespeare-in-joke—the houses are on Verona Drive, and when Juliet tries to stop a huge, drooling dog from entering her yard, she pushes a door against him yelling, “Out! Out! Damned Spot.” The computer having a banana as its logo was also a funny (though done before) touch.
In Summary: Meets Expectations. It’s all you could want from a kid’s movie—laughter, tears, and genuine desire for the couple to get together and live happily ever after with purple babies. (NB: This does not happen in the movie, but if I’d written it I would have made it happen. Maybe when I pitch my sequel to Elton at our next coffee meeting.) Gnomeo & Juliet is just plain good standard animation fare.
After the last Disney animated film, The Princess and the Frog, did such a good job of putting me off Disney Princesses forever, I had low expectations for Tangled—the studio’s update of the Rapunzel story and its 50th animated feature. Would it be as horrible as what they did to Tiana, giving her hopes and dreams, making her a hard worker, and then surrounding her with a cast of characters who spend the film shouting at her to throw it all away for love? Uh, well, maybe a little, but Tangled surpassed this, along with my expectations, and was roundly excellent.
Hanging out in the top five of Quentin Tarantino’s twenty best movies of 2010, Tangled tells the story of a lovely blonde-haired green-eyed princess named Rapunzel who has about a fifty metres of glowing magical hair that can heal if you sing the right words to it. Kidnapped as a baby by an old woman determined to use Rapunzel’s hair to keep herself young and pretty, the girl grows up stuck in a tall tower, frightened out of escaping by the woman’s mixed affections—touting herself as a mild caring mother protecting her magical sprog from the horrors of the world, but full of rage when the subject of leaving the tower comes up. Seemingly trapped forever with only charming chameleon Pascal for a friend, it takes handsome young thief—Flynn Rider—climbing into her tower to hide from the authorities to change her life.
In that respect, it does take a man to save the princess—but only after she coshes him on the head repeatedly with a frying pan and strikes a deal for him to help her go outside, and you could just as easily see her do this with a woman. The journey of the rogue, helping Rapunzel only for monetary gain, and the young woman, conflicted between escaping her prison and going against the word of her mother, is utterly entertaining, and a love story that felt very fairytale and Disney but had enough quirks and gorgeous characters to elevate to a worthy movie for the infamous Disney Vault.
Assisting Rapunzel and Flynn are Pascal and palace horse Max, both so ridiculously wonderful that I wanted immediately to own toy versions of them (in life size if possible, thanks Disney if you want to send me some for this glowing review). Max seems to be part human, part dog, and part dragon— pulling levers, wagging his tail when Rapunzel scratches him under the chin, flaring his nostrils in rage. Every time they are on screen it is a delight, as they support our heroine, trip up bad guys and punch arrogant thieves—like our hero Flynn—in the chest. Along with these are the utterly entertaining and gruff tavern-goers, terrifying Rapunzel and cinema-goers at first before breaking into song and listing their most dearly held dreams—from being a concert pianist to collecting ceramic unicorns.
To segue smoothly, the songs do let Tangled down just a touch. While the tavern song is righteous fun, all of the other sappy songs involving Rapunzel wailing about love and dreams sound half-Disney, half-eeuugghh. With Mandy Moore voicing Rapunzel, she has the pipes to carry it off, but the songs are dull, top-forty pop, and sometimes completely destroyed the movie’s ambience. In one beautiful scene where Rapunzel and Flynn are in a rowboat in the water, watching the evening sky as lanterns fall around them, a Miley Cyrus-type ballad just detracted from the moment and I was left disappointed.
The 3D was used to full effect and the film itself is beautiful; the scenery is immersive, the characters themselves animated in an agreeably flat style that worked because the characterisation shone through. I cried, surprising no one, and became totally desperate for Rapunzel’s well-being. She did a lot of saving, bopping people with pans and swinging around the place with her hair—really, she was quite tough and admirable, especially for someone who had been hidden away from everyone else for nearly twenty years. My only real gripe, apart from the sound, and this is ridiculous in a movie where I am fine with someone having magical hair, were the distances people were able to fall yet recover from immediately. I also worry about Flynn’s change of heart, from thief to hero, and whether it was purely because the amount of head injuries sustained at Rapunzel’s hands had given him some cerebral damage.
In summary: Above Expectations—this is a great kids movie, fun enough for the grown-ups, a toymaker’s delight and I kind of want to see it again.
When the fifth Wimpy Kid book came out, I was a bad representation of its readership. The day is was released I skipped into work, made a beeline for the kids’ section, then asked my nearest co-worker: “Where’s The Ugly Truth?” “Not here yet,” said they, “but maybe on its way from the warehouse.” When the first delivery from the warehouse came, I almost leapt onto the trolley being pushed, yelling, “Is it in here? Is it in one of these boxes?” Then I tore them open, couldn’t find it, and sulked. HARD.
Finally I opened a box and there was a flash of purple. There they were, Jeff Kinney’s newest Wimpy Kid. And there was me, with hours left at work. I thought long and hard about leaving work early, or just hiding myself out in a quiet corner upstairs to read it, hoping no one would notice I was there. Instead I did the slightly more mature thing: I worked diligently the rest of the day, and shrieked about how excited I was to read the book to anyone who provoked me into conversation with something like “Hi, I’ll take this history book please.”
The Ugly Truth starts with our hero Greg about to start back at school but lamenting a fight with his best friend, Rowley. Greg is a little jerk to Rowley at the best of times, so you can’t help but feel glad Rowley has escaped—and has started hanging out with parent-hired mentor types to be a good influence on him. But Greg needs to find a new best friend, and no one’s quite up for the job. (For example: “Tyson is nice enough, and we like the same video games. But he pulls his pants all the way down when he uses the urinal, and I don’t know if I can ever get past that.”)
And Greg really needs a friend right now, because he is starting to grow up. There’s boy/girl parties to be had, instructional videos to watch at school (“Rowley didn’t even make it through the whole video. He passed out at the two-minute mark when they said the word ‘perspiration’.”) and awkward conversations with his family to avoid. So Greg does his best to reclaim his childhood by wanting to go to the pediatric dentist (slogan: “We cater to cowards!”)and trying out for ice cream ads only small children are required for, while simultaneously trying hard to come across as mature to the cool kids and pretty girls at school. Basically, it’s hard hitting puberty, especially when your ex-best friend still thinks it’s contagious and avoids older kids because of it.
The Ugly Truth is just as hilarious as you’d expect, but without Rowley for Greg to torment, and a surprise lack of Greg’s father around to do embarrassing things, it maybe wasn’t as good as last book Dog Days. It’s still better than a lot of other books I’ve read—grown-up ones included—and the pictures (at least one on each page) remain a perfect accompaniment to the text. It’s a great read for kids who are overwhelmed by a lot of writing but still like the idea of books, and it’s such a laugh that you’d be hard pushed finding a kid that doesn’t love it. The characters are all great—from Greg’s Gammie who quietly pranks her unloving family, to his uncle Gary whose fourth wedding Greg finds himself the “assistant” flower boy for. While there’s heaps of jokes that made me giggle uncontrollably, there also is a mildly discomfiting subplot involving a maid named Isabella who doesn’t do any work, too.
In summary: Meets Expectations, but almost Below, because I thought it would Exceed. Here, have a page from it to smile about goofily.
In turn of the (twenty-first) century New York City, a bright ten-year-old boy called Dave is doing his best to impress a girl on a school trip. In a cute little moment, he passes a note for her with two checkboxes, asking to tick which box applies to her—friend, or girlfriend? She ticks something, and leaves the note for him. But the wind, and fate, have other plans for his note, and it ends up across the city in a strange little shop, staffed by a thousand-year-old slightly batty actor called Nicolas Cage. Sorry, I mean, a thousand-year-old slightly batty sorcerer called Balthazar Blake. There, he and Blake discover that Dave is not only a ladies’ man/boy but actually a descendent of Merlin, and someone very important to the fate of the world. Then, because he’s a goofy kid, he accidentally unleashes an ancient evil in Alfred Molina’s Maxim Horvath, and subsequently leads both Horvath and Blake to be trapped in a vase for ten years, which Dave spends trying to believe what he saw in the shop that day was hallucinations brought on by a glucose deficiency.
In 2010 New York City, a bright twenty-year-old called Dave (Jay Baruchel) is a physics student building a Tesla coil and pining after Becky Barnes, the girl he loved in fourth grade. His youthful shenanigans are long past, but the ring he received from Blake that day still hides in his sock drawer. And now that ten years have passed, a certain vase is now about to unleash Blake and Horvath back into the world, and Dave is going to have to step up and become a sorcerer’s apprentice to stop Horvath’s ultimate plan—to free the trapped Morgana Le Fay and have her destroy the world.
By the time I was at the box office this afternoon, I realised I’d exhausted all the blockbuster films I desperately needed to see. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice looked kind of corny, I was sick of Jay Baruchel this year (see How to Train Your Dragon and She’s Out of My League), and going to a kids movie during the school holidays always ends up with me expecting to be pelted with M&Ms throughout the viewing. But I just plain love going to the movies, so I buttered up my beloved until we decided that this was the movie that looked the least terrible out of rivals Charlie St Cloud (the previews of which explained the whole movie), Cats & Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (talking/barfing/pooping animals, ugh) or The Last Airbender (apparently about as much fun as watching The Happening for a second time). But as we watched this, after I broke out into a grin for the twentieth time, I decided: this is actually a pretty decent and fun movie.
It’s a bit cheesy, of course, and follows a fairly well-worn path of magical movies: person denies skill, caves and picks up some skills, makes an error, declares themselves rid of magic and runs away, realises using their power for good is actually helpful, returns to take on The Big Bad. But formulaic can still be fun, and this movie was. The casting had a lot to do with it, from young Dave (Jake Cherry), who is a dead ringer for Jay Baruchel, to Nicolas Cage, toning down the batshit to be a palatable sorcerer as Blake. Alfred Molina has the facial hair to be properly evil and looks ominous in a top hat, and Dave’s love interest, Australian Teresa Palmer, plays a flattered/interested/confused pretty lady really quite well, all the while looking like a twenty-year-old Naomi Watts. Feeling a little tacked on but entertaining all the same was Drake Stone, famous magician and secret sorcerer, requisitioned by Horvath to be his sidekick in the quest for evil, and played by RocknRolla’s Toby Kebbell. He’s over-the-top, and the idea of a real magician making a living as an, er, “pretend” magician isn’t touched on, but he is as flamboyant and playful as Russell Brand and adds good comic relief to the darker, deadly moments.
I realised almost straight away just how odd it is to see a kids movie in two dimensions and not three. I worried that the film would be flat, but the effects are quite extraordinary, from a steel gargoyle eagle prying itself off the side of a building to fly away to the Fantasia-like cleaning sequence with mops and brooms doing their best to clean Dave’s messy (and improbably large) physics lab. When Dave woos Becky with his Tesla coils it’s a genuinely good-looking moment, not to mention heartfelt, and you’re pleased for him because he is just so. damned. awkward. You could team him up with Michael Cera in a movie and cause some kind of mass death though excessive audience cringing. He spends a large portion of the film saying, “W-what’s h-happening?” or similar and looking embarrassed. He is basically playing the same person as he was in How to Train Your Dragon, including flying around on giant winged creatures and scoring with cute blondes, except that he has to do the physical acting as well as the voice acting.
It’s kid-friendly in that the worst swear you’ll hear is Dave saying, “What the heck?”, but involves a lot of carnage too (including someone being shot in the head) even if it is bloodless. Some scenes can get quite serious and upsetting, then are alleviated with such classy things as Dave’s dog farting or peeing. Choosing a college-aged man as a protagonist for a Disney movie aimed at children seems odd, but it works well because Dave doesn’t do other college-type things like spend every moment drunk and running around with knickers on his head. Instead he is a diligent student and the most he gets up to with Becky is (mild spoiler) a little smooching.
I don’t know enough English mythology to stand by the movie’s version of Merlin and Morgana Le Fay’s history, but it skips over it fairly lightly. There’s a few glossed over moments towards the end, like when Hovarth goes to all Dark Side and releases, amongst others, an evil little witch who is fairly frightening yet only onscreen for about twelve seconds. It also followed that movie rule where apparently whenever a character goes to Chinatown, it’s Chinese New Year and there’s a huge parade involving a dragon and a crowd for the bad guy to get lost in. I can’t dodge the fact it was a pretty clichéd film, but all the same, I had a genuinely good time watching it and would recommend it, even though it has flown a little under the radar and when I say, “I saw The Sorcerer’s Apprentice!” my friends will probably say, “What? Is that the American version of The Philosopher’s Stone?”
In summary: Exceeds Expectations. Also, stick around until after the credits, and you’ll get a little teaser.
I’ll drop everything to go and see an animated feature, especially if it’s in three entire dimensions AND there is a first-person point of view rollercoaster scene in the ad. So there were preview screenings on during the weekend, and I was there, frantically booking online, assuming the movie would be sold out (in reality, there were only about thirty people in the gigantic cinema, which just meant there were less people to make fun of me when I started squeaking uncontrollably during said rollercoaster scene and flapped my arms about.)
The movie opens with the most unexpected and daring theft known to man—someone has stolen the Great Pyramid of Giza and replaced it with an inflatable replica. Watching this on the news is Gru (Steve Carrell), our villain (er, I mean hero) and someone who is incredibly jealous of this large-scale bit of stealing. Gru gathers his minions, a stack of yellow, pint-sized, unintelligible beings kitted out in permanent goggles and blue overalls, and declares that they will steal something even bigger and more amazing than some measly pyramid. When his plan doesn’t exactly work out—thanks to new villain on the block, Vector (Jason Segel)—the only way to remedy the situation involves Gru adopting three little orphan girls who sell irresistible cookies.
Gru’s lack of parenting ability means that Margo, Edith and Agnes are not welcomed with open arms in his house, but instead served with pet bowls of lollies and water, offered some newspaper for wee-wee and poop, and told not to touch anything. Of course, they’re precocious and adorable, so they ignore his wishes, get in his way, smash up his experiments, befriend all the minions, and, unsurprisingly, steal Gru’s heart.
Now, after some consideration, I’ve realised that I should be rating movies. Not by stars, because reviews are opinions and stars try to make it an exact science, but, stealing from school reports, these three options: Below Expectations, Meets Expectations, Exceeds Expectations. Because the reason I’ll pan a critically acclaimed work of art but then act like The A-Team is a masterpiece of modern cinema is because I have certain expectations for what I’m going to see, and that heavily influences my opinion. And Despicable Me did an easy job of getting my first rating: Meets Expectations. Because it’s fun, and funny, and was utterly predictable but that’s okay, because it’s a kid’s movie, and you don’t want the surprise twist to have everyone living unhappily ever after or maimed in the over-the-top explosions, scarring your small child (or inner child) for life. Despicable Me is very much aimed at children, but still entertaining for adults. Some of the jokes almost made me pee my pants, and the 3D was excellent, and any scenes involving too much parent-related love had me shuffling through my handbag for tissues because I’m a big sook. It was good, you should see it.
But it didn’t exceed my expectations. The leap from Gru intent on abandoning the girls at a theme park to reading them bedtime stories and ignoring his devious plans to play with them was basically played out in a couple of minutes of montage that didn’t really explain why someone who had previously popped a kid’s balloon for the lulz was suddenly up for Father of the Year. I knew it was going to happen, that Gru would adore the children, but I couldn’t follow his train of thought. Gru had some flashbacks to his own childhood, with his cold mother (Julie Andrews) breaking his heart consistently; he was also heavily influenced by father-figure/elderly batty scientist Dr Nefario (Russell Brand), who did not like the disruption the children caused and campaigned for them to go. These did add some depth to Gru’s emotions towards family, but still, not enough. It also consistently frustrates me that big-name celebrities continue to be cast for voice work in movies when a) kids don’t give a toss about them most of the time—how many five-year-olds could point out Russell Brand in a line-up?—and b) they’re not actually voice actors. Steve Carell wasn’t completely terrible as Russian-accented Gru, but instead of having him trying so hard to not be Ah-merican that he sounded like he was literally chewing on the words sometimes, why didn’t they, I don’t know, hire a) an actor who specialises in accents or b) an actual Russian actor, god forbid. Russell Brand was fine, though not much of a stretch, as a British scientist, and serial nudist Jason Segel was also passable yet bland as pyjama-wearing villain Vector. And while it was pretty funny, is it entirely necessary to include a dance scene at the end of every animated movie just to watch all the characters dance in an amusing fashion? It’s been done and I am clearly an old fuddy-duddy who is sick of it.
But it was all a good laugh, with some fantastic scenes (Agnes winning a unicorn and screaming, “IT’S SO FLUFFY!” will make you fall off your chair, Gru laboriously reading the book “Sleepy Kittens” is wonderful, and the minions are always a hoot) and a lovely happy realistic moral which is something like “family should come before destroying the world”.
In summary: Meets Expectations
(Please note I had trouble finding an accurate movie poster for this review—it’s actually out September 9 here in Australia. And also, there’s nothing at the end of the credits, though as the cinema kindly didn’t turn on the house lights I did discover it gets very dark in a theatre once the movie has ended and there’s no lights to guide you down the stairs.)
While I’m mostly a sucker for a tearjearker—otherwise I’d never go see Pixar films—sometimes I just flat-out refuse to see things that I know are going to send me spiralling into weeks of hysteria, lamenting the death/lost love/actually happy ending of some fictional person/lion/robot or other. It’s why I’ve never seen/read Whale Rider, The Notebook, and, topically, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas author John Boyne has a shiny new release called Noah Barleywater Runs Away. Now, as I haven’t read Boy, I can’t do much in the way of comparing. But I do know that Boy was one of those books that worked for children and adults—that it was set in the world of children, but in a way that adults could understand it differently. Noah Barleywater Runs Away is, I feel, aimed more at children, though I’m a big proponent of Everyone Should Read Whatever The Hell They Want And No One Should Ever Make Them Feel Bad About It, so adults could (and undoubtedly will) read this too. Because while Noah has talking donkeys and magical doors, it also has a tinge of sadness that made me stop reading at one point on the train, lest I burst into tears and cause everyone to move into another carriage at speed.
Noah Barleywater is eight years old, and, upon reflection, doesn’t feel he’s done enough with his life. Sure, he came third in the 500 metres at Sports Day the year before, and he knows the capital of Portugal (it’s Lisbon), but it’s about time he really went out and achieved something. So he runs away from home early one morning to do so. And on the way he encounters many extraordinary places and people, as eight-year-olds are wont to do in books about running away (because a more realistic book would be something short like “he ran away and then hid in a bus stop until someone saw him, called the police and he was sent home.”)
More than a little influenced by the likes of Enid Blyton and glorious old fairytales, he meets a talking tree in the first village who pleads with him not to steal its apples; by the next village, shortly afterwards, Noah’s apple theft has made front-page news and he is considered a menace to society. Luckily for him, the third village is a lot more welcoming, and there he meets a kindly old toyshop owner, whittling away at a piece of wood and ready to share the story of his life with Noah. This old man was a runner so fast he’d be back from the edge of the city by the end of your sentence, and met the King and Queen, amongst other celebrities; but he was also a man filled with regrets. By sharing the story of his life, he causes Noah too to reflect on the real, heartbreaking reason why he’s run away from the family he loves so dearly.
Well I’ve made that sound all very serious, but I think it’s because of Noah’s straight and fairly dignified way of speaking (“Goodness!” he will say, unlike the sweary eight-year-olds I’ve encountered.) Noah does have a sense of humour, and the whole book is very entertaining, filled as it is with great adventures and talking animals and flashbacks of Noah’s recent, real-life adventures with his suddenly very animated mother. It’s definitely aimed at children—but, as it’s a secret little sequel to something much-loved by adults, anyone who likes to have a bit of fairytale fun when they read will have a ball. And then a bawl. (How do I not have a book contract yet with this startling wit?)Of note also is the fact that the cover is illustrated by the fabulous Oliver Jeffers, who not only wrote Lost and Found and 
The Book-Eating Boy (amongst others), but is so visually cool that he recently appeared on The Sartorialist, looking dashing and upsetting people everywhere who don’t own blue shoes. I sent an email with a question to Oliver once, and he replied personally and in a friendly manner, so know that good people were involved in creating this work, and you should make a cup of cocoa, and curl up with a lovely little book. Except not until October, when it’s released. Sorry.
Dear Pixar,
Aw, you guys, why are you always so gosh darn reliable? I knew Toy Story 3 was going to be good—everything you’ve done has been, bar Cars (but then perhaps I wasn’t the target market there). But I didn’t realise it was going to be quite so completely heart-wrenching, though after bawling through the entirety of Wall-E and for hours after Up, you’d think I’d learn. My mother reports that she took my nephews to see Toy Story 3 and the youngest crawled into her lap at the sad part—you know, the sad part—and said, “I want to go home.” Do you have a specific member of staff whose job it is exclusively to tug at heartstrings? Does he have an anatomical heart he tries it on? (*yank* “What if I killed off Carl’s wife before the first ten minutes were up? Oh, there we go, the tear ducts are working just fine!”)
It’s good you went back to Andy’s life. Now that he’s older, it’s clear the toys aren’t played with any more, but it’s nice to see them still hanging out and reminiscing about The Good Old Days. And with him off to college, it was interesting to see what he was going to do with his beloved Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Bullseye and friends, his name still etched onto their feet. When Andy’s mother accidentally sent his box of attic-bound toys to the day care centre, I knew we were in for some hijinks. But lordy, that Lots O Huggin Bear, the one who’s in charge of the toys at the centre, is one grim dude. And you’re marketing him as a giant plush huggable fun toy? He’s awful! Only the meanest of parents would give that to their children. Anyway. It was interesting how you made him out to be so wonderful and benevolent, only to have him turn on our pals and put them in an age-inappropriate room with kids who stick them up their noses and paint with Jessie’s head. What a rascal! Though I can’t deny it’s an awful lot like Toy Story 2, when Stinky Pete the Prospector came across as wise and all-knowing before turning into a giant bastard. Just sayin’. Also, Jessie’s voice is insufferable. Sorry.
But thanks, Unkrich, Lasseter and co., for a great watch. When Mr Potato Head sticks all of his features onto a piece of flatbread and flops about the screen attempting to save the day, I was almost hysterical with laughter. Buzz’s Spanish mode is something I wish all my talking toys had (and I hope the new release Buzz Lightyears will have a hip-twitching new feature.) I approve heartily of the cameo appearances from Barbie and Ken (who have never been so entertaining, even back when I was the one in charge of their comings and goings) to the plush, smiling Totoro. The drama at the end was absolutely nail-biting and I was openly weeping. Chris even held off speculating on how they were going to get out of this one until the last minute. (And then told me about it, what a surprise.) And I wasn’t sure if they were. We know you don’t hold back on the heartbreak. I can’t remember the last time I was that upset. Like reality isn’t awful enough at times, then you go putting poor innocent figurines in mortal fiery danger? You just have no shame, do you? Children everywhere will be having nightmares about Big Baby too with his creepy rotating head, lazy eye and ominous giggle.
Clever move, also, not pulling a Dreamworks and calling it Toy Story 3: The Final Chapter like they named the new Shrek. I like to think there’s going to be life in this franchise for all eternity. The idea that toys come to life when you’re not there—well, to this day, I still like to think that’s true. I mean, I know it’s not, because I’m a grownup with all my faculties, but it’s pretty adorable to think of. I imagine my three Wall-E figurines (four if you include the Pez dispenser) all rolling around filling their compactors with stray hair clips. (Which would explain where they all go.) Or my small robot collection saying, “Roger Roger” to each other and shooting lasers out of their eyes at my moneybox pig. Now, the people who saw the first two Toy Story movies in primary school or, like me, high school, are getting old enough to have their own children to take to see it, and in turn, they’ll take theirs. So how about it, dudes? Toy Story 4: The Devastation. Come on, I’d see it.
In conclusion, thanks a bunch. Keep up the good work. Love you!
Regards,
Fiona
P.S. “That’s Mr Evil Dr Porkchop to you!” Ha. Classic.
If you’ve got an everyday kind of name, you’ve probably seen a film where the main character has the same name as you. There are probably other movie Fionas out there, but this was the first one I ever saw, and everyone started calling me “Princess Fiona” as soon as the film came out. The Fiona in this film is an ogre. An ogre! I’m not even that green. Since then, my enthusiasm for the Shrek films has waned, as it became an advertising blitzkrieg and spawned three sequels. However, thanks to the lovely people at OPI, who have released a new lacquer range to tie in with Shrek (yes, including two ogre-greens), I scored two free tickets to a preview screening of Shrek Forever After: The Final Chapter in 3D and went along to see it on the weekend.
Shrek himself shares a fair few things in common with Messrs. Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin. All three are family men, with devoted wives and three children of varying lovability, and each seem to spend all of their screen time doing something unbelievably stupid that destroys their family, and then trying to remedy the situation. In this, Shrek’s fourth existential crisis, he is tiring of the repetition of life; waking up to the noise of his three kids, burping (and farting, this is a kids’ movie after all) and feeding them, doing chores, being part of a tour coach’s route, and his loud, always visiting friends, Donkey (and family) and Puss in Boots. He doesn’t have a job, everyone loves him; it doesn’t really sound that traumatic, does it? Apparently it is. Shrek yearns for his old life back, where everyone was terrified of him instead of wanting to be his friend, and he didn’t have any responsibilities. If only it were possible.
But it’s a movie set in a magical universe, so of course it is! Cue teeny bewigged bad guy Rumpelstiltskin, a man who loves to strike a deal. He’s mad at Shrek, whose timing in regards to saving Fiona cost Rumpel a sweet deal with the King and Queen, who were about to sign a deal with him releasing Fiona in exchange for their kingdom. Now down and out, Rumpel sees Shrek upset at his life, and offers him a deal: one day of freedom from responsibilities, in exchange for one “random” day out of Shrek’s life. Because he is dense and we need the plot to move along, Shrek signs the deal, and bam! He is transported into an alternate universe, where he isn’t a family man, just a free ogre able to terrify at will. Sounds great, and it’s fun for a while but there’s a catch. With the kingdom now signed over to Rumpel, life isn’t all fun and games for the inhabitants, ogres are even more victimised than before, Fiona—tough, powerful and now in charge of the ogres—doesn’t know or love him, and, worse still, Shrek has only a day to find a way out of his contract or lose everything—not just his cherished family, but also his life. Because the day Rumpelstiltskin took was a very, very important one.
I wasn’t expecting much—I’d enjoyed the first movie, but not been enthusiastic about the second two, not purposely watching them but kind of absorbing them by zeitgeist osmosis/Saturday evening channel-flicking. Still, I’ll never pass up a free movie and the opportunity for popcorn, and was utterly pleased to find the whole movie was great fun. The characters were all a blast, from Rumpelstiltskin’s devilish grin and mood-appropriate wiggery (“Get me my angry wig!”) to alternate-universe Puss in Boots (now a tad overfed) and Donkey (much the same, though less annoying than previously). While Rumpel’s cohorts—the Oz-like green witches—are a bit colourless, everyone else is great, the voice actors (from old hats Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas and Eddie Murphy to newish hats Walt Dohrn, Jon Hamm and Jane Lynch) doing a brilliant job at injecting the animations with life. It’s funny and entertaining, and even quite emotional—I got something in my eye at the end but, um, it definitely wasn’t tears; that would make the 3D blurry, after all. Similar to the others, there’s a lot of contemporary music in there, and singing, with bounty hunter Pied Piper laying down some Beastie Boys and so on with his flute and making for some unrestrained dancing.
Once you forgive Shrek for being completely daft, and decide not to think too hard about the time-travel aspects of the plot, Shrek Forever After makes for a pretty agreeable outing. The 3D is good, not always painfully obvious, and not that necessary if you don’t want to fork out the ridiculous excess prices for them and the special glasses (of which we now have six pairs around the house.) Good for kids who want to see mud baths, roaring ogres, and fights on broomsticks; good for parents who would secretly crave any way to get their old lives back (hint: it won’t go well.)
Because I am a martyr to the cause, I stayed until the end of the credits. Now you don’t have to—there’s no final animation. (Also, when it takes three songs to finish the credits, you know they are getting far too long.)
Shrek Forever After is in cinemas on June 17.
Sometimes you decide to go to the movies and you head up the stairs to the cinema and it occurs to you: this is not my finest idea. When I went to see Team America: World Police on a Saturday night in the suburbs and the crowd was about 75% drunk sixteen-year-olds, I should have gone home, made a pot of tea and quietly read a book. Instead, I spent the film witnessing fights and ducking as people threw beer bottles at the screen, interspersed with occasional giggles (no lie, that vomiting scene almost made me pee my pants.) And the same feeling of apprehension washed over me when I went to see How to Train Your Dragon at 10:20am on the first Tuesday of the school holidays and the queue was made up of seven parents and ten million eight-year-olds.
Alas, not much will stop me from going to the movies when my heart is set on a Jumbo Combo (one large Coke, one large frozen Coke, one box of popcorn probably aimed for whole families but which ends up entirely in my belly) and something to write a scathing review about later. So me, Chris and our friend Emma took our seats four rows from the front and I prepared to have popcorn pegged at my head and kids screaming MUUUUM HE’S TOUCHING MY ARMREST and NO THAT IS MY CHOCTOP YOURS IS BANANA WAIT I WANT THE BANANA ONE for the entire film. Turns out, I should not be so cynical about the youth of today. All the kidlets were impeccably behaved and the only time they were noticeable was when they were totally adorable: during the generic skit at the start which tells you to put on your 3D glasses and shows a robot puppy chasing a ball, the little girl in our row reached out to hug the puppy. (Aww, right?) And once the movie had finished and we were sitting in our chairs waiting for Fiona to watch the credits for some exciting thing at the ending (there is none), about fifty kids barrelled down to the floor in front of the cinema, spread their arms out and proceeded to run happily around being dragons with each other. (AWWW, right?)
Anyway, now that my cinematic experience has been shared fully, you’d probably like to know about the movie itself. It has to be said that I was surprised to find that the best action movie I’ve seen so far this year is this by a mile. The dragon fight scenes, especially at the end, had my heart beating faster and I was clinging to Chris’s hand with all the nervous tension I was not really expecting. I don’t think it was necessarily the 3D—though it was good—as much as just great direction. It’s heartstopping stuff.
The film, based on Cressida Cowell’s novel, tells the story of young Viking Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), a spindly thing who doesn’t fit in with the oversized other members of the island he lives on. Hiccup wants desperately to be a dragon killer like his father, played with as much of Scotland as Gerard Butler could muster. Alas, he is a bit weedy—comparatively speaking—which means he is unable to lift anything to fling or stab at a dragon, and is thus made to hang out with the blacksmith and make the weapons for the big boys and girls to use. But he’s a smart one, and he comes up with his own contraption to fight the dragons...which both fails when it brings further ruin to Hiccup’s village, but succeeds when he does, in fact, net one of the creatures.
Enter Toothless: a big adorable and now broken dragon, looking like a cat who fell out of an icanhascheezburger.com image and hit its head on a Lilo and Stitch DVD on the way down. He purrs, he flaps his lizardy frill around like kitty radar ears, and you just want to hug him and squeeze him. Hiccup sees in Toothless not an enemy, but someone else who’s just trying to survive. How can he convince his bloodthirsty tribe that the way to defeat the dragons is not with weapons but with some good old-fashioned Disney Dreamworks love?
Not helping is his crush on ponytail-flipping fighter Astrid, and Hiccup’s demoralising relationship with his father. (The line “I have no son!” is uttered, so you can tick that box in your Movie Bingo sheet.) Familial pain aside, the movie veers from serious to slapstick when called for. Hiccup’s fellow youths, a bunch of sexily-named sidekicks (examples: Snotlout, Fishlegs, Tuffnut and Ruffnut) who, along with Astrid, are completing dragon training along with him but don’t really like him, are there to mess things up and cause general hijinks.
Some of the Viking warriors don’t come home from the expeditions to find the dragons’ nest, but actual death is kept mostly off-screen. The finale, which inevitably has a moment where you think anxiously, “Will my heroes die?” as if you’re watching The Departed instead of a kid’s movie, actually does surprise with a slight twist on the happy ending that makes it seem more, er, realistic. It seemed potentially scary to me, especially in a genuinely creepy scene where the dragons’ nest is discovered by Hiccup, but the kids in the cinema with me weren’t crying, so perhaps I’m just a bigger ’fraidy-cat than your average six-year-old.
It’s a gorgeous film visually, has enough gags for everyone and the dragons will totally steal your heart. (The first thing I said when the credits rolled was “we are going to the toy store RIGHT NOW.” Though they’d already sold out of all the Toothless figurines, which means I’m also a slower runner than your average six-year-old.) I did think the movie dragged a little while Hiccup and Toothless established their relationship, but it picked up when the dragon training started and, well, never let off from there. The voice acting from the likes of America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and my secret boyfriend David Tennant is all fine, despite the fact that as in the awesomely terrible 300, everyone just used their normal accents, meaning Vikings were apparently just Scottish or American. (They had boats, maybe it’s true.) But despite that, the movie’s a whole lot of fun, the 3D never overdone and occasionally beautiful, and if you don’t also want to go out and buy a Toothless figurine at the end of it, then we clearly aren’t on the same page.
So I hear we have a major fox problem in Australia. I personally have only ever seen one single fox, as it dashed across a road on my way up to the Dandenongs one day about seven years ago. This interaction with a blurry vulpes vulpes means that, for all I know, Fantastic Mr Fox is a documentary and that foxes do actually wear sharp little suits and flowery housedresses. I really hope I never see a fox again so I can cultivate this delusion forever, because I really quite enjoyed it.
Fantastic Mr Fox is a pairing between premier pen-wielder Roald Dahl and directing/writing maestro Wes Anderson (I’m just going to ignore the disappointing Darjeeling Limited here, okay?) Anderson has slipped adorable little animated parts into his movies before, as with the beautiful underwater scene in The Life Aquatic, so it isn’t too strange that he chose to tackle an entirely animated movie. And now I am amazed at how well his directing style—little written asides, meticulous set design, extreme close-ups, pregnant pauses—suits the medium of animation, and I hope he does more of them. The stop-motion work in Fox is gorgeous, with the animals’ fur moving about breezily, their expressions convincing and priceless, and their tears genuinely moving. The humans look just as wonderful as their befurred counterparts, and Britain’s countryside and underground perfectly sculpted. The whole thing looked so good, that as the credits rolled, I had a big stupid smile on my face.
Mr Fox is cockily narrated by George Clooney, who lends his animal counterpart the right amounts of arrogance and charm. His wife Felicity is played sharp-tongued and agreeable by Meryl Streep; his son Ash by pinnacle of floppy hair Jason Schwartzman. It’s a stellar supporting cast, with Michael Gambon, Willem Dafoe, and Anderson old-boys Owen Wilson and Bill Murray helping the characters come alive without overwhelming them with their own star power. This last point is possibly not an accurate description of Clooney’s Mr Fox, who often smacks of Danny Ocean or similar and whose pipes are so recognisable that it is impossible to see Fox as separate from the actor. Still, if it was notorious actors or no one, Anderson and co. made the right choice in their casting.
As anyone who’s read Dahl’s book will know, the basic story is that the fantastic Mr Fox wants what farmers Boggins, Bunce and Bean have: food. Then we have a battle of wits between Mr Fox—and the family and friends he unwittingly involves in his fight—and the respectively short, fat and lean men who don’t appreciate having their poultry and cider nicked by something that by all rights doesn’t even have opposable thumbs. The film embellishes the book, by making everything to a larger scale; the mens’ farms, the animals’ tunnels, the revenge of the farmers, and then the payback by the angry wildlife. When Mr Fox’s badger pal (also a lawyer) offers his assistance as a demolitions expert in their scheme, you know it’s going to be a bit more Michael Bay than you originally expected. Except with, you know, a plot and character development and stuff.
With the scrapping of a few of the foxes’ literary offspring and the addition of a cinematic cousin, Mr Fox’s son, Ash, gets the opportunity to be suitably emo, upset at the arrival of his tall, talented cousin Kristofferson who trumps him at everything (including the hilariously baffling sport of Whackbat, as explained by Ash’s coach: “Basically, there’s three grabbers, three taggers, five twig runners, and a player at Whackbat. Center tagger lights a pine cone and chucks it over the basket and the whack-batter tries to hit the cedar stick off the cross rock. Then the twig runners dash back and forth until the pine cone burns out and the umpire calls hotbox. Finally, you count up however many score-downs it adds up to and divide that by nine.”) Mr Fox, who can be a bit of a complete bastard in the father stakes, swoons over Kristofferson and neglects his own son, who, in a shocking revelation, is not well pleased. Kristofferson resists cliché by being fairly affable despite his cousin’s tetchiness, and Ash himself isn’t completely awful either because you do feel genuinely bad for him. Mr Fox is so wrapped up in his own self absorption that it is almost doubtful he will ever realise the needs of those around him.
There’s a few questions raised: do the humans realise that the foxes wear clothes? Why do the dogs in the film not talk? Can humans understand when Mr Fox speaks to them? These aren’t really flaws, because I didn’t really care until I was at home in a thunderstorm trying to think up negative things about the movie so I didn’t sound like I was fawning too much. Alas, I can’t think of much negative at all. Perhaps the bad guys could have a bit more time to develop, though again, I didn’t really mind at the time, as we get enough of lead bully Bean and his overwhelming need for vengeance and—as shown in an audience-pleasing scene with musician Petey, played perfectly by Jarvis Cocker—proper songwriting.
It’s not much of a morality tale; I think the moral could be, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, even if it endangers everyone around you, because you’re George Clooney Mr Fox and it’s okay.” But go see it; it’s great fun, and I’m ready to forgive Wes Anderson anything because of it.
For years now I’ve been asked—nay, HARRASSED—by various friends to pick up a Neil Gaiman book. Author of such famed books as comic Sandman, novel American Gods (amongst many others), and kid’s books coming out the wazoo, he’s a prolific writer of many talents, a man of good looks, great to his fans (get a tattoo, post it online, he’ll love you forever and tell you so) and an all-round fantastic guy who supports important political views and charities.
The readership of The Graveyard Book probably doesn’t give a toss about his politics, however. Aimed squarely at the nine-plus market, but, as with the rest of his books, undeniably readable for grown-ups, this book was where I started finally reading Neil Gaiman. If you’re going to start somewhere with a new author, may as well make it something you can finish in a couple of hours, so if it’s terrible you haven’t wasted to much of your precious life. Good news: it ain’t terrible! His enormous fan base is probaby unsurprised to hear this.
The book begins in a very gloomy way, as a man makes his way through an English home with a blood-soaked knife by his side. He has come to this house to kill a family, and has succeeded, mostly—except for one member, a young baby who toddles his way out of the house to the graveyard on the hill. There, aware of the horrors his family endured, the occupants of the graveyard take him into their care. One such occupant, the mysterious Silas, distracts the boy’s would-be murder who leaves, confused about why he was there in the first place. Thus starts the boy’s new life in his skewed new world.
And what happens over the course of the book is a series of fantastic vignettes that introduce you to characters as Bod—short for Nobody—grows up and meets new people. From the real-life Scarlett, who stops by to play in the park and becomes Bod’s first real-life pal; to the so-called witch Liza Hempstock, tucked away in the unhallowed ground at the end of the graveyard, who is mostly ignored by the other ghosts. Bod goes through all the shenanigans you’d expect of a child, travelling through ghoul gates and avoiding someone intent on murdering him. I remember when I had to deal with the same ballyhoo during my own childhood, and it’s wearing
Bod stays good-natured throughout, and is an appealing character. During his brief stay at school, he can’t help his goodness coming through, despite it bringing about more problems for him. When Silas, his guardian and teacher, leaves him in the care of another woman who, in a terrifying turn of events, feeds him beets—BEETS, seriously, this is the stuff of nightmares—he starts off an arrogant child who you would advocate the return of corporal punishment for and then, after a rollicking and unnerving adventure, sees the error of his ways. He’s a good kid, in all, and you don’t want him to die in a horrible stabby way like his poor family did.
The ending is a little sad, but mostly hopeful; everything is neatly tied up and my opinion of Neil Gaiman raised. Perhaps I will try to finally read all the books I have of his dotted around my home: the graphic novel Marvel 1602, and American Gods. Why do I have these around? Dude, I can’t remember how I accumulated all this stuff either. I can only assume, now, that it’s ghosts.
(I would also be interested to hear if anyone else was confused about what the cover shows apart from a beat-up gravestone. It took me two weeks of it lying about the couch area before tonight, when I yelled unexpectedly, “Oh, it’s his face in profile!” This is why I am not a designer.)
I must be one of, oh, three kids who did not read Maurice Sendak’s book Where the Wild Things Are as a kid. (I do, however, remember reading his picture book In the Night Kitchen repeatedly, mostly because there was an illustration of the young boy falling naked into a pile of dough and as one of three sisters the picture was an entirely surprising revelation.) So I headed into the cinema not expecting my memories to be ruined or anything of the sort. And my evening was ruined instead.
Okay, perhaps I made that dramatic statement for pun value. Still, I wasn’t as enamoured with Where the Wild Things Are as I’d hoped to be. It’s a relentlessly depressing film, plagued by sadness and dark and the horrors of childhood. Perhaps I should nod appreciatively and make declarations about how it deals with the same problems facing many of the kids out there today: loneliness, brattiness, the inability to be heard, discovering you’re not the centre of everyone’s world, having a hot mother like Catherine Keener. It’s true, the movie does discuss these things, but it doesn’t give you enough of a break to laugh and ground yourself. The film’s never-ending barrage of all that’s wrong with the world and how hopeless it is to try and fix it is, well, awful.
Youngster Max, played by the alarmingly-named Max Records, is living an everychild existence: his father isn’t around, his sister doesn’t have time for him, his mother has a new boyfriend (portrayed as the asshole in one simple sentence), friends are nowhere to be seen. He acts out against his mother, who shouts at him; in terror, he flees to the bush, which like a Narnia wardrobe, leads to a lake and a boat where he paddles off and is eventually washed up in Flinders, I mean, the island of the Wild Things. There, he spies the Things mid-fight, with one Thing acting out and the rest tsk-tsking around him. Max runs into the fracas, and in an effort to dissuade the Things from their new mission of munching on his bones, proclaims himself king and promises to fix all their problems. Of course, he can’t, because a) he’s, like, ten and b) it’s pretty much impossible even if you are three-score-and-ten. Thus follows brief, dirty moments of happiness until it all goes to pot ten seconds in. Rinse, repeat.
I wish I could say the scenery was enough of a break with its natural, haunting beauty and otherworldliness; after all, it was filmed here in ol’ Melbourne Town and surrounds, and I should get all puffed-up and patriotic. But it couldn’t get a reaction out of me. Perhaps the fact that I was used to it, that the dead leaves looked like those near my sister’s place, was the problem. Perhaps the real problem is that I’m not eight, and I like some brightness and humour to alleviate the suffering in movies. I know not to presume it in everything—I won’t be expecting much knee-slapping in The Road, for example—but in a kid’s movie, of all, a light touch here and there wouldn’t have gone astray.
The few moments of humour are swift and unsettling. At one point, a character commits an appalling act of violence against another; I actually cried out in horror, but later the damage is used for comedy value. I felt like standing up on my soapbox/chair and telling everyone that violence is not funny. I would also lecture them on what happened after the downbeat ending that I did not like, Black Books-style: “And they all drank lemonade. The End!”
I’m probably missing something, or everything, here. Chris liked it fine, and most reviews have been glowing. The last thing I want to do is agree with ineffectual haircut Richard Wilkins on his take on the film, but alas, I do. Perhaps I am too much of a delicate flower, not enjoying dirt-clod fights and clucking over Max’s suit going all damp and giving him colds. I did appreciate the CG, which was amazing; and the soundtrack, which I’d already been listening to for weeks; and the fact that it is bringing up issues close to the heart of kids. I think it’s aimed squarely at the eight-plus kid market—no younger, my own nephews would burst into tears—and I hope they enjoy it. Whatever has happened with this film, and my usual loves Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers, is just not for me. I’ll illustrate it here:
the point
my head
If you’re not a tween, the parent of a tween, or a person who sells to/teaches/otherwise interacts with tweens, then you may have missed the global frenzy that is the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Dog Days is the fourth (or fourth-and-a-half) book in the series, which has stayed on the New York Times Bestseller List for 41 weeks as of the start of this month. And frankly, I’m not surprised.
I picked up book one at the start of this year, wondering what all the fuss is about. The books are the diaries of seventh grader Greg Heffley, and are told through both the written word and a heavy amount of simple illustration. (The cover of the book gives you a fair indication.) Greg has an embarrassing mother, a father who wants him to man up, a little brother who is unfairly doted upon and a big brother who never gets in trouble for tormenting Greg. So far so clichéd, right? Well, yes and no. Greg suffers from being completely deluded about his own intelligence and sex appeal, and spends most of the books chasing girls and trying to make it rich while playing as many video games as possible. Somehow, he’s freaking hilarious. I sped through book one, followed it with the next two and then the Do-It-Yourself book, which had lots of spaces to fill out your own diary, draw your own pictures, think up practical jokes, and so on. It was also a third new material, and just as funny as the rest of the books. Also, they’ve all been un-Americanned, so to speak, and Mom is now Mum, and so on.
Greg’s best friend is the dopey Rowley, who is coerced by Greg (who is basically a bully) into participating in his schemes. In this book, Greg decides to make it rich by starting a gardening company and sends out fliers with their heads photoshopped onto muscular bodies. When they are hired, they are horrified to find out that they need to supply their own lawnmower and other necessities, but badger the poor client into stopping by Greg’s nan’s house to borrow her mower. When finally let loose on the woman’s yard, Greg mows away, leaving big grassy patches where her dog has pooped. As Greg says, “The VIP Lawn Service has a very strict policy when it comes to dog poop, which is that we won’t go anywhere near it.” She refuses to pay and he is aghast. So clearly this isn’t the most mature of all reads, but it’s not trying to be. It’s just funny and trashy in a market of kid’s books which, to be honest, is leaning towards the serious and depressing more than anything lately. Reading something stupid can be relaxing and fun, and for a lot of kids, normal. Siblings who tell you that if you eat watermelon the seeds will grow them in your belly. (Cue picture of Greg turning up to school in a maternity dress with a belly distended by melon.) A mother who starts a “Reading-Is-Fun-Club” but bans all his neighbourhood friends’ books (“Xtreme Pop-Up Sharks”, “Ultimate Video Game Cheats”, “Green Wasp”) for important literature (“Anne of Green Gables”, “Little Women”) and is surprised when everyone quits after the first meeting. A father who gets an admission from his own dad during a visit to his retirement home that his childhood dog, Nutty, did not “run away to a butterfly farm” as he was originally told. (Cue picture of dog in butterfly farm.)
Greg watches a grown-up horror film and spends the rest of the book expecting to be attacked by a muddy detached hand. Greg and Rowley have a falling out. Greg flirts with a lifeguard at the pool. All that goes on isn’t particularly wacky, but Greg’s honesty and interpretations make everything a hoot. When his mother makes him read “Charlotte’s Web” for the Reading-Is-Fun-Club, he observes, “Just from looking at the cover, I guarantee either the girl or the pig doesn’t make it to the end of the book.” The amusing reality of life is really the book’s greatest appeal; finding the funny in the banal. Not that your ten-plus readership gives a toss about those kinds of statements; they’re just waiting for gags like Greg’s mum signing him up for modelling as a youth, and the one place his picture ends up—on the cover of the book “Your Child and Constipation”.
The movie version’s out next April, starring Steve Zahn, Chloe Moretz (from 500 Days of Summer) and Zachary Gordon as Greg. And I’ll be there, front row, big bucket of popcorn, waiting to snort flat Coke out of my nose. Don’t let the fact it’s a kid’s book turn you off. Just read the damn thing. With enough effort, you too can be wimpy.
