WINNIE THE POOH- Review

What's the measure of a film? In recent years, we've seen Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, Roland Emmerich's 2012 and some arsehole's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen over-run by a vast margin, and given how bored I was by each of them, it would be difficult to say that I felt I got my money's worth from those lengthy films. So it's baffling to see the negative reviews of Winnie the Pooh, which runs to 54 minutes long.

Not that the short length of the main feature is the only criticism that certain grumpy bastards are levelling at this return to the Hundred Acre Wood, but it's a criticism that is paradoxical. Winnie the Pooh is not hugely story-driven, nor has it ever been. Indeed, the Disney features usually consist of episodes, which in this case include Eeyore losing his tail and Pooh Bear being unable to get some eats no matter what he tries. And it's pretty much a perfectly pitched film.

It's not a film that invites paragraphs upon paragraphs of deep analysis, but the response to the length seems worth mentioning. At 54 minutes, the film doesn't outstay its welcome- brevity is the soul of wit, and I find myself wishing that other kids' films would be as concise. Take Rio- a film I like, but one which has 20 minutes in the middle where an army of capuchin monkeys come and go, seemingly to bulk out the running time to 95 minutes.

Winnie the Pooh isn't filling a 90 minute quota which, if we're honest, people use less as a barometer of a satisfying length for family films and more as the optimum amount of time to distract their kids. Perhaps it explains Disney's lack of marketing for what's easily going to be the most satisfying film they release this year. There's no false economy in a programme that lasts 73 minutes overall, and it's a weird attitude to have. And even if your tastes are more grown up, this film's certainly more worthy of your money than Your Highness (102 minutes) or Red Riding Hood (100 minutes).

As to the film itself, it's beautifully rendered in the storybook fashion of the older Disney animations, and it either brings back or emulates all of the original vocal performances. In a weird way then, it compares to Scream 4, seeing as how it updates what we know rather than rebooting. Imagine a reboot that was a live action and CG-hybrid, in the vein of that bloody Smurfs movie that's coming out. Wisely, Disney opted for the nostalgic route, with a film that took me back to my childhood like no other in recent memory.

The characters are there as you know and love them. The gloomy and depressed Eeyore comes to the fore on account of his missing tail and Pooh roams from house to house, bugging his friends for honey so he can get a fix and at various points demonstrating his serious addiction issues. Jings, this is sounding like a Mike Leigh film- told you it doesn't invite deep analysis. It's just lovely, really. Older critics have taken issue with the usual divergence from the source material, but personally, I grew up with the cartoons, not the book.

There's no condescending to the material on my part here- Winnie the Pooh is an outright good film. I can't hope to sway more mature audiences to buy tickets if they don't have kids or young relatives, but hell, it looks good and it's the only film in a long time to put a big smile on my face from start to finish. It's good humoured, it's not ticking the same old boxes as every other CG-animation out there, and it's a real nostalgic treat.

Winnie the Pooh is now playing in cinemas nationwide.

Just as Jake and the Neverland Pirates and The Ballad of Nessie bulk out the programme, my brief reviews will bulk out this short review. The Ballad of Nessie, centring around the Loch Ness Monster after she's turfed out of her original home by developers and featuring the vocals of Billy Connolly, is a perfect appetiser for the main attraction.

Poetic and lovely stuff, which, by contrast, Jake and the Neverland Pirates really isn't. Apparently a teaser for a Disney Channel show based around Disney's rendition of Peter Pan, it sells a show that's gonna be unimaginative and just generally cheesy. A damning indictment for an animation aimed at 4 year olds? Yes, because it was followed by TWO perfectly enjoyable animations aimed at 4 year olds...

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I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

RIO- Review

Can we change the name of Orange's "Gold Spot", in which a 20th Century Fox film gets some rampant phone-related plugging for about six months at a time before every single film in the multiplex? Thus far, we've had The A-Team and Gulliver's Travels there, so I was lobbying for the "Brown Spot". However, as annoying as the ads for Rio have been before every single film, it turns out they just indicate how shit Orange are at making cinema ads nowadays. Where did Mr. Dresden go anyhoo?

The film itself follows Blu, a rare blue macaw who lives in Minnesota with his owner Linda. It turns out he's so rare that he's actually the last male of his species, and he must go to sweltering Rio de Janeiro to mate with Jewel, the last female blue macaw. Unfortunately, the two birds barely even get on with one another, much less wanting to actually get it on, even to save their species.

This is a plot that was apparently central in last year's Alpha and Omega, but more prominently, Pixar were developing an almost identical film in Newt, which got cancelled last year. So Orange has been trailering the film for what feels like years, and it's also usurped whatever the genius minds at Pixar were getting up to. That was more than enough to lower my expectations to subterranean levels, so it's pleasing that Rio actually turned out to be quite entertaining.

Contrary to the poorly dubbed Gold Spot ads, there's some good voice acting to be had, which is always a good start for a CG animation. Jesse Eisenberg and Anne Hathaway effectively do Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in their vocal roles as Blu and Jewel. Eisenberg reprises his pre-Social Network nervy schtick rather than his cold and superior Mark Zuckerburg, but it's Hathaway who manages better with the musical numbers.

Yep, musical numbers. Happily, they're not like Dreamworks musical numbers, that just deploy whatever song is cleared for the soundtrack, but actually a fair few original numbers mixed in amongst the obligatory covers. The highlight is the great villain song, performed by Jemaine Clement's rather brilliantly voiced villain, a psychotic cockatoo called Nigel. As a fan of good villain songs, it worked for me as both a parody and an iteration of the old trope.

The story itself is not revolutionary, falling somewhere between the Buzz subplot in Toy Story and the relocation gubbins in Madagascar, but then what can you expect from a story that was independently thunk up by three different animation companies? I can tell you though it's sweetly executed though, with amusing characters and enjoyable visuals.

The cartoonish vistas of Blue Sky's Ice Age movies give way to slightly more realistic-looking forestry here, but there's still room for big colourful backdrops and nicely designed characters. That said, two lazily characterised supporting characters, voiced by Jamie Foxx and will.i.am, really grated on me, and there's a weird bit in the middle where we briefly get an army of Capuchin monkeys for reasons that don't particularly serve the plot. It's like the film lost all self-confidence for about 20 minutes and said "Hey, monkeys are funny, right?"

Let's always remember that studios compile trailers and marketing, not the filmmakers, and there are often films that are a lot better than their trailers would suggest. Rio is one of those films where all the stuff that looks bad about the trailer is, at the very least, more bearable when seen in context. It's no masterpiece, but it's colourful, it's vibrant, and it's simple, accessible animation, just in time for the Easter holidays.

Rio is now showing in 2D and 3D at cinemas nationwide.
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I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

The DC Animated Universe

Believe it or not, this post has been planned for a while now, and it's only serendipitous that it comes shortly after Warner Brothers announced that the live-action Justice League movie is on the cards. I'm not going to weigh in on the Batman reboot (though they really should wait until they get The Dark Knight Rises out into the world first) or the optimistic 2013 target date- I'm going to talk about some animated DC movies.

DC Universe Animated Original Movies are direct-to-DVD features, borne out of collaboration between DC Comics and Warner Bros. Animation. There've been ten thus far, with another Green Lantern film and an adaptation of Frank Miller's Batman: Year One to come, and seeing as how I've been keeping track of their output, I've been meaning to sample some of their films here on the blog.

Their most recent release, still yet to be released in the UK, is All-Star Superman, based on the Grant Morrison-penned comic series and adapted for animation by the late Dwayne McDuffie. Superman has a brush with death that makes him more powerful than ever before, but also suddenly aware of his own mortality. He makes things right with the love of his life, Lois Lane, but he must also fend off the machinations of his enemies- most of all, Lex Luthor.

There are sequences in All-Star Superman that would be perfect in any live-action Superman film. The indisputable highlight of the film comes when Clark Kent interviews Lex Luthor in prison, and his presence allows Parasite to break out of his cell to go on the rampage. It poses an actual challenge to the Man of Steel- Clark has to protect everyone without revealing his identity to them, especially not his arch-nemesis. It's a fantastic idea, very well executed on-screen, but the pitfall is that it features in a film that also has some very ridiculous stuff.

I suppose if you subscribe to the notion that Zack Snyder should have kept the giant squid ending in his Watchmen film, you'll find some of the weirder stuff in All-Star Superman easier to swallow. Research shows that it's very faithful to the comic, but to me at least, that made it seem far too busy. There are too many opponents in this film, often introduced and written out all too  brusquely, for it to flow very well. The anime-influenced style of animation looks gorgeous, but the story could have been more focused.

It's only in comparison to this particular Superman story that a Batman story could look light by comparison, but that's not entirely what you get with Batman: Under The Red Hood. It's mired in continuity, but the basics of the story are as follows- it's been several years since Jason Todd, Dick Grayson's successor as Robin, was murdered by the Joker. Batman is still reluctant to work with members of the extended Bat-family, but he may need all the help he can get as the mysterious Red Hood begins to corral Gotham's terrorised criminals to his own end.

On the surface, this one looks like everything a Batman fan could want- a moody and atmospheric tale that's faithful to the comic it's based on, to the letter. The reason why Christopher Nolan is doing so well with his take on Batman is because he's being faithful to the comics but tempering that with new stuff. You can still be surprised by the plot of a Nolan Batman film, but it somewhat undercuts the detective story of something like Under The Red Hood if you figure out what's what before Batman does. That's certainly got something to do with the fact that I had already read Under The Red Hood before watching this adaptation, but that doesn't make it a bad film, by any stretch.

There's a stellar voice cast that includes Bruce Greenwood and Jason Isaacs, there's some very clever treatment of villains we don't see an awful lot of, like Ra's al Ghul and Black Mask, and the animation looks fantastic, as ever. However, it's like Nolan's films in the wrong ways. It imitates the style and the storytelling of The Dark Knight when you need look no further than the animated series from the 90s, or its movie spin-off Mask of the Phantasm to see that the animated adventures of the caped crusader do much better in their own niche than they do when they mainly target an older audience.

And finally, for this post anyway, we come to Wonder Woman, which is arguably everything an actual film about Wonder Woman should be. Goodness knows it's better than the Super Ally McBeal TV series rendition sounds. It tells the origin story of the Amazon princess as related in a reboot story arc in the 1980s. The mighty Diana has her first brush with the world of man when US Air Force pilot Steve Trevor crash-lands on the usually concealed island of Themyscira. The crash coincides with the release of god of war Ares, who has been kept prisoner on the island for centuries, and now wreaks a terrible vengeance against the Earth.

As with Under The Red Hood, I got the feeling that this could really have been a live-action film if Warner Bros. wanted to take it in that direction. Unlike Under The Red Hood, this has no continuity baggage- it's an origin story. It's a damn good one too, and although it's not above certain clunky bits of expositional dialogue and the jarring introduction of Wonder Woman's invisible jet, I struggle to imagine how a different live-action origin story could do it better. Especially as the voice acting is superb, with big names like Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Alfred Molina and Rosario Dawson being just as perfectly cast for their vocals as they would be if they made this script in live-action.

The animation is great, and the action is surprisingly brutal without ever exceeding the 12A barrier. It balances the action with a good-natured sense of humour- I quite enjoyed one scene where Fillion's Steve Trevor tries to loosen Diana up on a boozy night out, only to discover that she's not as susceptible to tequila as he is. But best of all, it's not only the action or the well-judged comedy that lends it maturity- it also manages to adapt the character without gentrifying either gender, males or females. Diana might be a bit of a Disney princess while hanging around on Themyscira, but she's more like one of the kickass ones.

Wonder Woman is easily the best of the DC Animated Universe efforts I've seen to date. It introduces the character in an exciting way, and prominently broaches the topic of gender inequality, but it's never one-sided or simplistic. I know Batman, and I know Superman, and despite knowing nothing about Wonder Woman, this film surpassed everything with those other characters that I've seen from this studio.

Batman: Under The Red Hood and Wonder Woman are now available on DVD. All-Star Superman will arrive on DVD in the UK later in 2011.
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If you've been watching what comes out of the DC animated universe, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

RANGO- Review

After three Pirates of the Caribbean films, you could be forgiven for feeling all Gore Verbinski-ed out. It's the surreal tendences of At World's End, which were totally out of place in that film, that the director leans towards with much greater success in his new animated spaghetti Western, Rango. He reunites with Johnny Depp to do... well, something strange.

Our hero is a domesticated chameleon who spends most of his time acting out melodramas in his tank, and winds up lost in the Mojave desert. He then sets off across the desert and finds himself in a town full of critters, called Dirt, which is suffering from a water shortage. The chameleon then adopts the name Rango and ingratiates himself as the sheriff of Dirt, little realising that anyone calling himself sheriff in this town can't be long for this world...

Verbinski has gone as far from the high seas as it's possible to get, and in the process, created his best film since The Curse of the Black Pearl. He can't take all the credit, because Rango is the union of many different fantastical collaborators. For starters, it's the first animated film by the special effects wizards at Industrial Light and Magic, scored by Hans Zimmer, and shot by Roger Deakins. I shit you not- Roger Deakins is the DP on that Nickelodeon lizard film you've been seeing adverts for all over the place.

I suppose this is the trade-off, for a studio like Paramount to greenlight something as unfriendly and weird as this film. They're marketing it the only way they can, because if the screaming and frightened young kids in the screening I saw are any indicator, word of mouth is going to kill this film amongst the family audience. Pay heed to the PG certificate, because this is absolutely not a film for very young children. Although I can imagine kids over 8 years old enjoying it is absolutely a film that can only be completely appreciated by an older audience.

I'm aware of the elephant in the room, so I'm going to address it directly- Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox still sucks, in my opinion. Yes, it's another film that pitches above the heads of the young audience, but the essential difference is that it's not based upon beloved source material from an author who does have a younger target audience. Roald Dahl might not have been afraid to create ugly characters to entertain children, but this film is something else. This is a film that features a toad with tits, and the character design is just as unique for every other misshapen critter we see.

In contrast to the ugliness of the characters, the animation itself is astonishingly good. It's all the better for not being a 3D presentation, and it seems bewildering to think that ILM have never come out with an animated film before now, when this one looks so good. The crown jewel is a glorious action setpiece set to a strigiform mariachi band's rendition of Ride of the Valkyries- without exaggeration or rhetoric, I can honestly say my jaw dropped. And happily, it's not merely the visuals that are jaw-dropping.

Around 10 minutes in, you get a hint of what you're in for with an astonishing non-sequitur that references one of Johnny Depp's most iconic roles. Even braver, the thrust of the narrative is a homage to Chinatown, with the ongoing intrigue over the water shortage in Dirt. But on the whole, it's a spaghetti Western, and it's influenced by Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah while equally sticking with Verbinski's own vision.

It doesn't always pay off- Depp playing a dork works much better in animation than it did in The Tourist, but it's a slippery performance nonetheless, and Verbinski isn't known for reining Depp in during their collaborations on the Pirates films. Also, let's not forget that the main character arc essentially mirrors that of Gulliver's Travels and many other kids movies like it- the protagonist pretends to be something he's not, but learns something about himself in the process. Yawn. For the most part though, it's such a unique and unexpected joy that I was swept up in it for the duration.

Rango is so different that it astonishes me to know it even exists under a studio banner. Paramount might have played a little dirty in marketing the film for younger kids, who have surely been confused and frightened by this film all weekend, but the film plays dirty too. It's a film that takes risks despite sticking with the established tropes of its genre, representing characters who are distinctively un-cute and ramping up the death toll to levels that would even have Pixar tearing their hair out. It's certainly a strange little curiosity, but this perverted cheese-dream will hopefully find an audience as appreciative as I was.

Rango is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

GNOMEO & JULIET- Review

As high concepts go, a retelling of a Shakespearean tragedy with garden ornaments is going to take the gold for this week's new releases. Still, with the next big 3D pop star pet project coming next week, I'd estimate that Elton John has done far better for his involvement in Gnomeo & Juliet than that fucking Bieber monster thing will do with his premature biopic.

The story, for the uninitiated, involves the romance of two starstruck lovers- in this case, the intrepid blue-hatted Gnomeo and the curious red-hatted Juliet, who live in adjoining gardens owned by a Mrs. Capulet and a Mr. Montague respectively. The two neighbours quarrel, and so the gnomes and ornaments in each garden follow suit, feuding over who has the best garden and indulging in the occasional high-speed lawnmower race. As a narrator gnome establishes in the opening scene, "this is a story that has been told before, many times, and we're going to tell it again, but different."

All of my problems with Dreamworks Animation lie within their inconsistency. The pop culture references could be a lot more bearable if focused on a recurring theme, as with the medieval branding in Shrek 2. Their soundtracks, usually sourced from wildly eclectic but still recognisable songs, might sell CDs but doesn't suit the tone of the movie. This is why Dreamworks' only truly good films since the first Shrek are How to Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda. In Gnomeo & Juliet, we have a no-brand animated film that keeps consistency in both its musical choices and its irreverent referencing, while carrying right on with being absolutely crackers.

In terms of the soundtrack, executive producer Elton John's back-catalogue accompanies much of the action, and yet doesn't stretch the film to the Herculean efforts of synchronising music as seen in Mamma Mia! and the like. And the visual references are largely Shakespearean, culminating in a fourth wall-crawling setpiece where the relative merits of a tragic ending are discussed in advance of this adaptation's ending. In the case of the references, it's the first indicator that the film is something more than I could have reasonably expected.

It's no masterpiece, and it's certainly not above borrowing certain story beats from other, more popular animated films. Most flagrantly, an apparently emotional sequence midway through the film has diminished impact when you remember a very similar and more memorable sequence from Toy Story 2. Also from Toy Story, we get the idea that these characters are inanimate objects that come to life.

That makes them very breakable, and this imbues the entire film with a bizarre sense of jeopardy that's lacking in certain other animated family films. You may assume that this won't end in the same way as the source material, but a niggling doubt may manifest itself as the film goes on. It's presumably this eccentricity, uniquely British, that attracted the starry cast of British talent. While James McAvoy and Emily Blunt are competent but fairly interchangeable with other bright young stars, there's some nice work from Michael Caine, Matt Lucas and Ashley Jensen. Oh, and Jason Statham playing a gnome is everything I ever hoped it would be.

Gnomeo & Juliet wound up being a lot more fun than I had expected- a cheerful little curiosity with more invention and imagination than you'd know from just glancing at it. I'm sure it will be overshadowed by Tangled and (God forbid) Yogi Bear during the half-term scramble by parents looking to keep their young'uns entertained, but it's worth a watch. It's camp and colourful, which makes it better suited to 2D than to the dimmed and darkened 3D, which just gets more boring with every successive release. It's not always predictable, and for the most part, it kept a smile on my face too.

Gnomeo & Juliet is now showing in 2D and 3D at cinemas nationwide.
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I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

TANGLED- Review

I make no secret of the fact that I heartily enjoyed last year's very traditional Disney outing The Princess and the Frog. I think it's great that John Lasseter is steering the company back towards its roots after Dreamworks and Shrek took up residence in the fairytale movie market. Adding more to the weight of my own anticipation for their new feature Tangled, it's Disney's 50th animated movie, and apparently the second most expensive movie ever made, somehow.

Anyhoo, this $260 million animation (no, really) is essentially the story of Rapunzel, as seen through the lens of the charismatic fugitive Flynn Rider. Flynn is wanted, dead or alive, and he hides out in Rapunzel's tower in order to escape the law. He doesn't count on the long-haired teen being so determined to get out of the tower for a while, and solve the mystery of the floating lanterns that fill the sky every year on her birthday.

Again, I really liked The Princess and the Frog, so this one is going to suffer slightly by comparison. As ever, this is my own opinion on the film, and so you could argue that it's for a much younger audience, my inclusion in which I've long since outgrown. I just don't think that Tangled measures up, especially after the promising reinvigoration seen in Disney's 49th feature. That film has a timeless quality that made it reminiscent of Disney's best. Aside from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, how many other films made in 1937 would your kids sit through just as happily as if it had been made today?

What Tangled goes for is more in the vein of the modern spin on fairytales, which Dreamworks has conflated to the millionth degree in their Shrek canon. For starters, it's trying to get boys as excited to see it as girls, hence the slightly ambiguous title. This attention to including its audience is probably more to do with the fact that it cost $260 million than any real desire to entertain young boys who are otherwise distracted by their XBoxes. If Cinderella had cost that much, they might have called it The Magic Pumpkin. A $260 million Sleeping Beauty might be The Dragon Witch. A hyper-expensive Bambi might have been Deers Get Shot, Ha Ha Ha Ha. And so on.

In the actual film, there are occasionally points where the all-inclusive approach actually does work. From a studio whose most profitable franchise features pirates, figures renowned for their raping, pillaging and stealing, it's not surprising that they have a roguish criminal like Flynn as a leading man, but slightly more surprising that he's so unlikeable. Audiences are more likely to be entertained by Maximus, a palace steed with more detective skills than any of the humans. This Inspector Horse figure is the best reason to see Tangled, and injects most of the film's humour whenever he appears. Similarly, I enjoyed the caricatured ruffians in the film, voiced by the likes of Ron Perlman, Richard Kiel and Brad Garrett.

I'd also give kudos for the villain, even if she doesn't get a badass Disney villain song in the tradition of her predecessors. Mother Gothel is a character with proper motivations, and when you get the villain right in a Disney fairytale, half the battle is already won. My disappointment at the lack of a good old villainous sing-song extends to the rest of Alan Menken's soundtrack too. Aside from the rather brilliant "I Have A Dream", which simultaneously subverts and conforms with the traditional Disney "here are my objectives" song, it's all very generic and poppy. It could come from any 90s Disney film, and with one particular song, I'm not convinced it wasn't from another film. It's a real comedown after Randy Newman's jazz-themed work on The Princess and the Frog.

From the perspective of a Disney fan who had every reason to really enjoy this one after last year's effort, I was slightly disappointed by Tangled. I can't help but think it might have charmed me more if it were a hand-drawn 2D feature rather than a polished CG piece that's closer to Dreamworks' output than anything else. The CG stuff looks nice and there are some very artful shots in here, but it somehow has less character than hand-drawn animation. That said, the family audience is under-served by January's releases, and this is never less than fun and cheerful. I'm sure those much touted younger audiences will lap it up, and all of my persnickety quibbles aside, I didn't dislike it either.

Tangled is now showing in 3D at cinemas nationwide, and at selected cinemas in 2D.
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I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Never Mind- MEGAMIND Review

This year, Dreamworks has pumped out three animated films. Of Shrek Forever After, there's really nothing more to say than how samey it was, but the real triumph has been How To Train Your Dragon. The first outright excellent film to come from the company since Shrek, it probably would have won the Best Animated Picture Oscar away from Pixar if it had only come out in the year where they offered Cars 2 instead of the superb Toy Story 3. Somewhere in between Shrek and the dragons, falls Megamind.

The titular blue-bonced supervillain comes from the Superman origin story, jettisoned from an exploding galaxy to Earth by loving parents when he was just a baby. The same applies to his arch-nemesis Metroman, with whom he engages in elaborate battles. He never wins, except for the day that he accidentally does. With Metroman dead, Megamind reevaluates his career in evil and realises that something has to be done to restore the old status quo.

When the origin of your main character is a reference to Superman, you know you're probably in the vicinity of a Dreamworks film. Let's be very clear in stating that the chief difference between the superb How To Train Your Dragon and this more middling effort is that the former was a film made by Dreamworks, and the latter is a Dreamworks film. All of the studio's old tropes are back, and en masse. That same bloody expression with the cocked eyebrow, celebrity voice talents and a faux-Disney "it's what's inside that counts" moral message.

More than that, if you're Dreamworks, it's not the best choice to make a film about the politics of superpowered rivalry, post-Incredibles. Especially when your protagonist is constantly trying to measure up to an enemy who's similar in method and origin and always falls short of beating them. It would seem like a manifestation of the studio's short man syndrome with the almighty Pixar, doing "superheroes" as a theme with more bombast and bravado, but with none of the subtlety or resonance of The Incredibles. It's like making Shark Tale after Finding Nemo. Oh, hang about...

All of this said though, Megamind is far from a waste of time. In the year when Hiccup and Toothless flying through the skies made jaws drop, this one has some incredible action spectacle that really uses the medium to its fullest advantage. There are genuinely creative battles and disasters on show here that would be impossible to realise in live action, even with the greatest special effects available at the moment. You wouldn't want to see them in live-action either, because that's how things like 2012 happen. But in animation, the real highlights of this film are in visual delights such as a huge skyscraper crashing down a street after two characters like an unstoppable locomotive.

I predicted a while back that this film and Despicable Me would turn out as proportionately the exact same story. I was wrong, but the films did level out at around the same level of quality. Both films had fun playing with the technological innovations their hyper-intelligent antiheroes could muster, but both films ended up borrowing a lot from other sources. In the case of Megamind, aside from the Superman allegory that peaks with Will Ferrell doing a killer impression of Marlon Brando as Jor-El, there are a ton of oblique references that go over kids' heads and won't impress adults that much. The post-modern superhero film has actually become hackneyed in itself, over the last year or so, especially when it was clearly done best by Brad Bird, in 2004.

As to the script, it could have used some work. Even without the compulsively spoilerish trailers and clips that have been floating around, the plot is astonishingly predictable. More than that, it's not really that funny. If the film's meant to be a comedy, and it's certainly been marketed as such, it should have made me laugh more. As it was, I found the teaser trailer for Kung Fu Panda 2 to be a funnier watch, before the main feature began. It's more diverting than it is humourous, which is fine if you don't go in expecting a comedy.

On balance, Megamind is more of the same from Dreamworks, and such a mechanical feature that I could probably tell you exactly what the plot of Megamind 2 will be if the numbers add up correctly for Jeffrey Katzenberg to greenlight a sequel. With some promising creative developments at the studio, hopefully this film and next year's trifecta of sequels will be the last of their kind before Dreamworks goes into a period of renaissance. Maybe they'll learn how to animate new facial expressions along the way. But crucially, they just might inject some sense of fun that's sorely been lacking in their last few similar efforts.

Megamind is now showing in 2D and 3D, at cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Megamind, why not share your comments below? If you're wondering what next year's trifecta is, it's Kung Fu Panda 2, Madagascar 3 and Puss In Boots. And all Pixar is offering up is Cars 2. Boy, next year is gonna suck. Except Kung Fu Panda, natch.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

The Stoner's Van- LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS Review

Enough time spent watching a nature channel like Discovery or Animal Planet will show you that there's far more to owls than the plushy-friendly post carriers they're depicted as in Harry Potter. They're vicious flying bastards who rain death down on any number of smaller animals. Zack Snyder's reclaiming their fearsome image with Legend of the Guardians- The Owls of Ga'Hoole.

It seems to be set in a world where owls are the dominant species instead of humans, with dynamics reminiscent of Watership Down or The Secret of NIMH. Our hero is Soren, an earnest young owl who's grown up with bedtime stories about the Guardians, the bold owl warriors who protect the world. His belief is put to the ultimate test when he and his brother Kludd are abducted and forced into an owlish brand of child soldiery by the self-proclaimed Pure Ones. It's down to Soren to find and alert the Guardians to the plight of owlkind.

As mentioned, there's a precedent for the lives of rabbits and mice being dramatised, so to all the detractors, I can only ask, why not owls? Funnily enough, the trailers have pushed this as coming "from the production studio that brought you Happy Feet" rather than "from the director of 300 and Watchmen." But it remains still a Zack Snyder film, so all credit to him for correctly thinking that owls fighting each other would make an engaging and enjoyable fantasy action film.

Animal Logic's work on the animation is fantastic, but it's also filled with Snyder's visual tics. It's not unmistakably one of his, but there's an appreciable amount of the slow motion that made 300 distinctive and which brought his version of Watchmen to over two and a half hours. It's good to see him doing something that's not laden with baggage like those films or his Dawn of the Dead remake, and it's a good sign for his upcoming Superman reboot.

Yes, Legend of the Guardians is just a film about owls fighting, but it's a film about owls fighting! Come on, you have to be a little curious, especially as I can report that it all looks magnificent. It looks as good as 3D possibly can, and the slow motion complements the excellent fight choreography, allowing your eyes to drink in every realistic flourish and nuanced visual detail. On the vocal side of things, we have some terrific Australian actors like Hugo Weaving, Sam Neill and David Wenham lending their wise and austere tones to feathered counterparts, while Jim Sturgess does a passable Aussie Frodo turn.

I say Aussie Frodo because The Lord of the Rings is just one of the influences that the film wears on its sleeve. It's Joseph Campbell's narrative structure down to a tee, and more pertinent to younger viewers, it's basically Star Wars, right down to the climactic scenes. The imperious bad guy, Metalbeak, is oddly reminiscent of Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now in places, but the plot's basically making him out as Owl Hitler. Sorry, but if you're not booking tickets now you know it's a film about warrior owls fighting some white supremacist owls, I don't know how else to sell it to you.

Even though the story is formulaic, there are only a couple of beats where I cringed. For one thing, there's a montage in the middle, filled with the kind of visual world-building that James Cameron drew out to its fullest length in Avatar. That's fine, but it's set to a pop song by Owl City. Aside from jarring with David Hirschfelder's sweeping score through the rest of the film, it's a little too on the nose (or beak)- it's like setting a montage about a chattering guinea pig finding fame and fortune to a Justin Bieber song.

In mentioning Avatar though, I should mention that Legend of the Guardians is basically this year's answer to that film. Its sumptuous and fantastic visuals, straight from the side of a stoner's van, are worth the price of admission alone, but story-wise, it's nothing we haven't seen a million times before. That said, I think it's more impressive than this half-term's other unoriginal animated offering, Despicable Me and it's not doing as well as James Cameron's film at the box office, but then Snyder will be busier with the Man of Steel anyway. The concept is so out there that I think they had to make the story more ordinary to make it the serviceable family fantasy that it is.

Legend of the Guardians- The Owls of Ga'Hoole is now showing in 2D and 3D at cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Legend of the Guardians- The Owls of Ga'Hoole, why not share your comments below? More than just owls fighting, this also has bats with knife-tipped wings. Even Batman never thought to give knives to bats... and he's Batman!

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Deja Gru- DESPICABLE ME Review

The autumn half term is fast approaching, and as The Film Distributors Association points out before every film you see in the cinema, there are some family films incoming. One of the most promising is Despicable Me, despite how its plot is basically identical to Megamind. It's proven a big hit in the States, and it arrives in the UK with Universal trying to consolidate the foundations of their new animation studio.

It's all about Gru, a supervillain who has fallen behind as he's grown older, and younger, more eager rogues jump into the fray. With an army of genetically engineered chattering yellow Minions, Gru launches his greatest plan yet- to steal the Moon and hold it to ransom. To achieve this, he has to best his rival, Vector, and plans to do so by adopting three young orphaned girls to work undercover.

I went in hoping for something on par with the excellent Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and though it's not quite as memorable or massively enjoyable as that film, it's got a similar brand of imagination and sense of humour, and I liked Despicable Me quite a bit. The problem is, the similarities don't stop with Flint Lockwood's adventures. While I did like Despicable Me, I liked it a lot better when I saw most of it in other animated hits.

There's a grumpy and cantankerous protagonist who learns to let people in, just like in Up. There's a huge number of diminutive alien-looking things that are always getting into trouble, just like in Toy Story. There is- no, really- a dance number, just like Shrek. The latter is the worst offender, to be honest, because it feels like directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud didn't know how else to end the thing. While it looks unique, it's certainly not original.

Oddly, it also feels a lot shorter than it actually is, which I suppose should be a sign that it went by quickly and I wish there'd been more. But instead, it feels like the premise wasn't big enough to support a 95 minute film. The plot moves quickly with the aid of a couple of musical montages that just come across as a bit lazy. So really, I don't want to see Despicable Me 2 (Me Too?) all that much, because I feel it'd stretch my patience a bit.

Steve Carell does a fine job of voicing Gru, with a cadence that falls between Ricardo Montalban and Bela Lugosi. It's still recognisably his voice if you listen hard enough, but it's always great to hear a relatively big-name actor bothering to create a character in their performance. So often in films like these, you have Angelina Jolie droning into a microphone and waiting to pick up a cheque, or pandas who might as well say "Hey kids, it's me, Jack Black!"

There are films far more original than Despicable Me that have still wound up being less engaging and entertaining. Cute is the order of the day, and even at its most saccharine, it's a charming film. It never really outstays its welcome, even with a slim premise. I strongly suspect that the French have done this premise better here than Dreamworks will manage in Megamind, but in the year that How To Train Your Dragon came out, let's keep our fingers crossed for a surprise. In the meantime, Gru and his minions provide predictable and inoffensive fun that will definitely keep the kids occupied if Legend of the Guardians just looks too weird for them.

Despicable Me is now showing in 2D and 3D at cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Despicable Me, why not share your comments below? If you think Legend of the Guardians looks weird enough to actually be looking forward to it, that makes two of us. Just two of us, as far as I've seen. Aww.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Now You See Him... - THE ILLUSIONIST Review

Sylvain Chomet's latest animation, The Illusionist is all about a stage magician in the early 60s, whose act is being supplanted by rock stars in the hearts and minds of audiences. With no one interested as much, he decides to try and find employment in Scotland, heading for Edinburgh. Along the way he picks up a young girl who believes he really is a magician, granting him a new responsibility.

This one is the fulfilment of a long unproduced script by French writer and director Jacques Tati. It's believed Tati wrote the script with his estranged daughter in mind for the lead role, and his aspirations to reconcile set the tone for this one, in a way. The relationship between the illusionist and the girl is paramount to the film's central theme.

Because bigger than that, this is essentially a film about the end of innocence, and the death of illusion. It's wrapped up in charm and whimsy, but it's impossible to not feel the final emotional sucker punch. Watching it is like being enveloped in a warm hug for an hour, only to realise you've been stabbed in the heart by the hugger at some point or other.

The death of the music hall and old-timey entertainment is prominent, and more stirring than it really has any right to be- I'm only 20 years old, and have no nostalgia for that era because I wasn't alive. It's one of a number of ways Chomet appeals to younger audiences, also transcending the language barrier by keeping the dialogue to a minimum. The dynamics of the comedy are similar to Mr. Bean, or the first twenty minutes of WALL·E- there is inflection, but the storytelling is largely visual.

It all looks very nice. It's of the same unpolished and slightly scratchy aesthetic as that period where Disney animations looked like 101 Dalmatians or The Aristocats, but it's still very well drawn. More than I was at the time, I was saddened that I didn't get to see this at the Edinburgh Film Festival earlier in the year, because the way the city is realised in the film could only have been more atmospheric if I'd actually seen it there.

I was honestly surprised by how accessible The Illusionist is. Lots of families were in the screening I caught, and they all seemed to enjoy it immensely. Like the best animations, it has deeper connotations for the adult viewer but it's funny and whimsical enough that kids will adore it too.

The Illusionist is still playing in selected cinemas around the country, and will arrive on DVD in 2011.
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If you've seen The Illusionist, why not leave a comment on the film and/or my review? I'd have mentioned that this isn't to be confused with the Edward Norton film, but that film already isn't to be confused with The Prestige. It was fine, but both Nolan and Chomet are leagues beyond that film.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Hand Relief

In this most inappropriately monikered post for a long time (you have to go way back to the Brüno/Public Enemies two-fer for worse), I'm taking a look at the return of hand-drawn animation to the big screen- Studio Ghibli's Ponyo is Hayao Miyazaki's re-telling of The Little Mermaid and Disney have recently dusted off their lightboards to bring us The Princess and the Frog. As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.

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Ponyo is the sweet and decidedly fishy star of Studio Ghibli's latest, the daughter of a powerful underwater wizard called Fujimoto, who wants to redress the balance of nature so that the ocean-raping humans are wiped out. While this marine coup is going on, Ponyo explores the shallows of the sea, close to the shore of a small island. There she's found by Sosuke, a young boy who loves the sea and adopts Ponyo, mistaking her for a goldfish. By taking her on land, Ponyo is imbued with the ability to become human, which leads Fujimoto to advance his plans against humanity. As bitter old lady Yoshie warns Sosuke, fish with faces coming out of the sea will cause a tsunami...

As a caveat to this review, I should say I saw the English dubbed version of Ponyo, which features the dubious voice talents of Frankie Jonas and Noah Cyrus, siblings of their respective horrid family phenomena. Needless to say, this ruined the film. I get the feeling that watching the film in Japanese with English subtitles, or even just muted, would vastly improve it. It's a shame to see Disney drop the ball on the dub with this when they made masterstrokes like Michael Keaton as Porco Rosso, or basically everyone who did a voice in the dubbed Howl's Moving Castle. Compared to those, the casting of Jonas and Cyrus just makes the film shrill. Horribly shrill.

I said in my Percy Jackson review that a certain crass quality creeps into a lot of American features, but it's never so irksome in any other Ghibli audio retooling as it is here. The song playing over the credits is just ear poison, like Disney is pulling off some Claudian attack to leave the worst taste possible as you race from the cinema. But even for the shrill stuff, there is a lot to enjoy here, as with all Ghibli efforts. Its flights of fancy are bolstered by a beautiful visual sensibility, from landmarks to character design. The story goes through the motions and is almost anti-climactic, but the target audience is children, and I bet they'll adore it. It's leisurely paced, and you'd be hard pressed to hear the understated vocals of Liam Neeson and Tina Fey when you're on the Cyrus wavelength, but this is a film that will appeal to kids without patronising them and it looks dazzling to boot.

The dubbed version of Ponyo is irresistibly cute just so long as nobody's speaking. I'd be very interested to see the Japanese version, because the English dub exacerbates the slightly saccharine aspects of the plot development and Miyazaki's body of work has already shown us that his stories transcend language and culture. Dubbing aside, the very worst you can say about it is that it's the least good Ghibli film- it's too good to be the worst, but not even close to as good as my personal favourite, Porco Rosso. Hayao Miyazaki continues to pioneer new techniques in hand-drawn animation and storytelling, which is no mean feat for an art form that's been around for almost a century.


Studio Ghibli have consistently championed hand-drawn animation in the wake of Disney's abandonment of the craft, but in an ironic twist of fate, John Lasseter, who pioneered the shift that made computer animation viable in the first place while at Pixar, has now brought Disney back to its roots. The Princess and the Frog is a more unconventional adaptation of a fairy tale than fans of Disney animation will be used to- set in 1920s New Orleans, the heroine is Tiana, a waitress who works night and day in pursuit of her dream of opening a restaurant. Elsewhere, the arrogant Prince Naveen falls afoul of the manipulative witch doctor Facilier during a visit to Louisiana, transforming him into a frog. Tiana and Naveen soon collide and end up being thrown together in a fight for survival to become human once more.

The synopsis sounds similar, I'll grant you, but it's easy to underestimate the value of handdrawn animation and its craft here. Disney's New Orleans is a vibrant place that actually embeds proper characters as opposed to American-accented clones- note how the only one who looks Middle-Eastern in Aladdin is the bad guy Jafar, with the hero instead being modelled on Tom Cruise, of all people. Tiana's story is central, but in the beginning it's almost as an adjunct to the "real princess" in the film, who's portrayed as spoilt, dependent on men and generally immature, whereas Tiana works hard and knows there's no marriage-related shortcut to the life she wants. It's a departure from Disney's usual, to be sure. At the same time it has immense nostalgia value for people my age and older. For today's kids, the Shrek films will be nostalgia material in the future. But while I'm sure there's a lot of work put into the animation of those digitally animated films, there's nothing like the meticulous attention to detail in this film and films like it to dazzle audiences.

It's every bit as good a story and as good-looking as anything from Pixar and Dreamworks, and bucks various Disney tropes without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. For instance, there's a "Disney death" (see Snow White as opposed to Mufasa) at the end that actually isn't a Disney death. It's just a death! The character in question stays dead! It's a wonderful departure and I haven't ruined it for you by mentioning it- the beauty is in how it's executed. On more familar ground, we have a terrific jazz-centric soundtrack and Dr. Facilier, a villain in the best tradition of Disney villains, who is voiced magnificently by Keith David. He brings exactly the right amount of malice to make young kids shit themselves and delight older viewers with his villainy. It's a superb balancing act from old-school Disney scribes/directors Ron Clements and John Musker, and the whole film passes muster as well.

If there's a fault with The Princess and the Frog, it's that it doesn't quite match up to the best of the Disney animated films of the 90s. It's not as funny as The Lion King, and its songs aren't as catchy as those in Aladdin. But it succeeds on many levels as a statement of intent for Disney under John Lasseter. A few years ago, this might have been closely followed by a sub-par DVD sequel called something like "Louis' Grand Adventure", but Lasseter has the studio revering its rich history rather than pillaging it for lame spin-offs. Hand-drawn animation is back in a big way at Disney, and The Princess and the Frog is a really rather delightful spearhead for that revival.

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Of the two animated films, The Princess and the Frog is the more likable and generally more accomplished, though I'm sure that any of my problems with the dubbed version of Ponyo are more than compensated for in the absence of any Disney bred tweens in the original Japanese version. Why not share your comments on the films and/or my reviews below?

I fear the end may be approaching, my friends. I'm approaching a cinema outing this Wednesday with the same trepidation with which David Tennant's Tenth Doctor approached death on New Year's Day. Not to pre-suppose anything, but I'm so scared that Valentine's Day might actually finish me off. I could do so much more! So! Much! More!

Ahem.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.