Copyright: Disney
Sunday is movie night in our household. This week we had Lemonade Mouth on the DVR, so we all sat down to watch it. If you have not seen the movie yet, turn back now as there will be spoilers included this review. I figured it would be a typical Disney made-for-TV musical in the mold of High School Musical. Boy, was I wrong. I thought the movie was very well made and not as predictable as most made-for-TV movies are.
Last week I talked about how Robert Zemeckis has changed to all digital films like Mars Needs Moms since Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I thought it would be appropriate to discuss the greatness of that film, to show how much things have changed.
If you are not familiar with Roger Rabbit, you should stop reading this now and go watch it. The film, released in 1988, was a revolutionary piece of work. The story tracks Eddie Valiant, a private detective in Los Angeles during the 1940s, who is hired to find out whether a famous cartoon character’s wife is cheating on him. As per most detective stories, Valiant ends up in a far different case with murder, treachery and politics involved. The twist is that the whole story deals with the world of animated characters and how they interact with humans as normal parts of the real world, including the title character, Roger Rabbit.
Copyright: Disney
I wasn’t sure what to think when I heard about the movie Secretariat. The movie wasn’t highly marketed, which I now believe was a mistake by Disney. My mom called me one afternoon and said that she and my dad had gone to see it and loved it. That still didn’t really motivate me to run to the theater. No pun intended. I knew that I would catch it on DVD at some point. As soon as I saw that Netflix had it in their system, I put it at the top of my queue, receiving it the day that it was released on video.
What to say about Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2? To quote a phrase heard often in my household, “No más.” No more Chihuahua movies, Disney. My delicate sensibilities cannot take it. I have no problem with movies of this sort if they are made well. Unfortunately this was not one of those.
If you saw the first movie and liked it, you’ll have no trouble picking this up. If not, you don’t need to have done so to watch this new direct-to-Blu-ray sequel. In fact, it was my opinion that Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 was better than the original, for a variety of reasons. That should tell you what I thought of the original film.
There is a tradition in science fiction to make a film that takes some scientific fact about the world or the universe around us and then extrapolate that to its extreme end. It’s a well known tradition, and one that science fiction does well. For Wall-E, it’s the ever increasing amount of garbage that is surrounding us here on Earth.
If you do a simple search on floating garbage masses or garbage in space, you’ll see where the inspiration for Wall-E may have come from. All around us there are masses of waste just like the ones seen in the exquisitely animated opening of this film. Though we may not see them every day, they are there.
After Disney’s brief return to “classic” animation with The Princess and the Frog, they have again returned to their roots with their latest fairy-tale production, Tangled. It has been a while since Disney has revamped a non-original story for an animated feature film (correct me if I am wrong, but the last one was either Treasure Planet or Tarzan depending on your definition of original). While this film may not become the Disney-defining classic like many of the others in the princess genre, it is a fun family film and one worth seeing for any Disney fan.
As this is my first blog entry I’ll start with a short introduction. I am a twenty-two year old soon-to-be graduate of Northwestern University. Like most males in their twenties I love friends, sports and movies. However, unlike most males in their twenties, I also love Disney, especially Walt Disney World and the Disney’s motion picture productions (I am actually going on a graduation trip to the World!).