New Movies: The Pirates: Band of Misfits

By now we've come to expect a certain (high) level of quality from Aardman Animation—after all, these were the animated movies we started watching back in the 1990s, well before we had kids, when the company was dominating the animated short category at the Oscars. With rare exceptions, though, we've also come to expect Wallace and Gromit, and films like Chicken Run that defied that expectations, while perfectly well executed, always seemed to me to be missing that little spark of wacky Brit inspiration that puts the W&G oeuvre over the top. (Perhaps it's unfair to hold a studio to the standard of its very highest work, when that standard is rarely matched by anyone else either—but I do the same thing to Pixar, too. So I'm consistent!)

So when I saw the previews for The Pirates: Band of Misfits—a movie whose visual style was so clearly Aardman's that the credit was unnecessary—I wasn't so sure about it. My kids, however, had no such qualms—the preview had them at "Ghost ship—ooooooooh!"—and so we marched off to see it at the first opportunity. (We are not yet familiar with the book series by Gideon Defoe upon which the movie is based, though I'm thinking now we ought to become so shortly!)

The boys—veteran W&G fans themselves, I should add—could hardly have had a better time. And, grudgingly at first, neither could we, really: The story of the titular barely competent buccaneers and their captain—actually named the Pirate Captain and voiced by Hugh Grant in his best polite-English-discomfort mode—as they try to win the coveted Pirate of the Year trophy is silly, sure, but only in the manner of Aardman tradition. (After all, it's not like Wallace and Gromit's battle against the Were-Rabbit was exactly free of silliness.)

And, like the studio's previous work, all sorts of cleverness for parents is baked into the silly, including the inclusion of a young, corruptible Charles Darwin (voiced by David Tennant) and a supervillainous Queen Victoria (the always marvelous Imelda Staunton) as major characters. For those of us missing the Buster Keaton-ish silent expressiveness of Gromit, there's even a similarly put-upon monkey named Mister Bobo that's been trained by Darwin as a butler (see above re: silly), whose deadpan communications via beautifully scripted written cards are hysterically funny.

Do I worry that I will need to clear up someday with my sons that Queen Victoria did not, as far as we are aware, chair an evil secret society that enjoyed capturing and eating endangered species? (Or, for that matter, that Darwin was not, as far as we know, romantically infatuated with that queen?) Yes. But will that be worth the rolling giggles I saw both my sons helplessly indulging in as they watched the film, some of which my wife and I were indulging in ourselves? I'd have to say yes as well.

[Image courtesy of Aardman Animation/Paramount Pictures]

New Movies: The Adventures of Tintin

There were two movie adaptations in the latter part of 2011 that our family was particularly excited about. The first, Hugo, based on Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret, was a lot of fun and has just garnered a bunch of well-deserved Oscar nominations. But we finally saw the second—the Steven Spielberg–Peter Jackson collaboration to bring Hergé's boy reporter Tintin to the screen—and it’s even more fun, and captures the feel of its source material better, too.

The film takes its plot mainly from two sequential Tintin books from the 1940s, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure, in which our hero helps his comrade Captain Haddock discover and recover a bountiful inheritance from a 17th-century ancestor. It also takes bits and pieces from other books in the series, most notably swiping the extended first encounter between Tintin and Haddock from The Crab with the Golden Claws (in the books, the pair are old chums by the time of The Secret of the Unicorn). Some characters who aren't in the Unicorn storyline at all show up here (Bianca Castafiore), while others who are in these books are kept up the filmmakers' sleeves, presumably for further cinematic adventures (Professor Calculus).

By now it's probably clear that I was obsessed with the Tintin canon as a child, reading the whole series over and over endlessly; it's been heartwarming to see my older son have much the same reaction. But naturally, this lent a bit of anxiety to our anticipation of the film—would they screw it up? Hollywood's track record on top children's books is mixed at best, after all. (Exhibit A: The Golden Compass.) And even in today's age of technical wizardry, adapting graphic novels of any kind well seems to be particularly tricky. (Exhibit B: Any Alan Moore adaptation.)

Then again, this project was produced by Jackson, whose creation of the onscreen Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies via motion-capture with the actor Andy Serkis (who plays Haddock in Tintin) was nothing short of revelatory. Plus, that same motion-capture technology was used for all the characters in the Tintin film, with the surroundings computer-generated around them. And the film's director was Spielberg, whose career has obviously cut a much broader swath in the years since, but who first made his name as one of the greatest action-adventure moviemakers of all time. So the adaptation was in good hands, at least.

It shows. My first impression was that the filmmakers are long-standing Tintin fans who get, deep-down, what the books' fans love about them. Like them, the movie is an old-fashioned adventure story, in which we follow a likable, determinedly optimistic hero through a series of thrilling perils. (Hitchcock's The 39 Steps isn't a bad comparison, if you're looking for live-action ones, but it's a type they definitely don't make much anymore.) Also like the books, Tintin moves fast, from exotic locale to exotic locale and from action sequence to frenetic action sequence.

Here, you can almost feel Spielberg's joy at the chance to satisfy with technology any lingering cravings he didn't get out of his system in the Indiana Jones movies (for fear of killing Harrison Ford's stunt doubles). The extended sequences are as breathtaking, somehow, as any live-action ones I can remember, perhaps because Spielberg keeps pushing the envelope on how outlandish they can be. They are also, I must say, by far the best use of the faddish 3-D technology I've seen yet. (I found the 3-D in Hugo mostly either distracting or forgettable; here it adds to every action sequence, in an entirely integrated way.)

Surprisingly, the many alterations from the plot of the two books didn't bother me at all, even though many are significant—Tintin and Haddock's not knowing each other at the start; the transposition of the antagonist's role from the nefarious Bird brothers (nowhere to be seen in the film) to the collector Sakharine (a completely innocent fellow victim of the Birds in the books). I think it's because Spielberg and the screenwriters establish so well that they get the source material that you're willing to go with the changes. Also, the changes work structurally; in some cases even I had to go back to the books to figure out exactly what they were.

Before seeing it, I read some reviews of The Adventures of Tintin that complained about its impersonal nature and lack of depth (of the metaphorical, not 3-D, variety). Now, I find myself bewildered by those criticisms. There is a separation from the hyper-real in the film, certainly, but it's not as if the books' illustrations were exactly Gray's Anatomy either—just look at Tintin's iconic cowlick, for starters. And while there remains, even amid the increasingly lifelike qualities of cutting-edge CGI, an occasionally creepy sense that the "people" onscreen are, simply put, not living beings, I forgot about it pretty quickly once the story got going and pulled me in.

Another complaint I read was from critics who wanted to know more of what these characters are about, what Tintin wants. Yes, Tintin is something of a cipher, on the page and onscreen as well, despite Jamie Bell's strong motion-capture and voice work. He's completely asexual—credit or blame the times of his creation if you like>—and his only "drive" seems to be to do good deeds and seek exciting new adventures. But certain kinds of stories aren't really about character, and I'm downright grateful that Spielberg didn't try to add new layers to the boy reporter. Backstory for Tintin would be as absurd as it would be for Rufus T. Firefly in Duck Soup.

It's the supporting characters that have always been the lifeblood of the Tintin books, in terms of added dimension. And here they're fleshed out quite well by their creators, especially Serkis as Haddock (whom I'd never thought of as a Scot, but it works) and Daniel Craig, who portrays the bad guy with a versatility—there's an effete quality I certainly never associate with Craig's physical presence—I didn't know he was capable of.

I can certainly see why someone who has always been able to take or leave the Tintin books might feel much the same way about the movie. But I think fans of the books will grin wildly all the way through it, as Dash and I did, and less partisan moviegoers (if my wife and our three-year-old are any indication) will have a pretty exhilarating time, too.

And it is one of those movies to see on the big screen if you can—try to catch it while it's still on one!)

[Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures]

New Movies: Hugo

As huge fans of Brian Selznick's book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, our family was very interested in the film version. Its director, Martin Scorsese, seemed a great fit for a story so steeped in the early days of moviemaking, so my usual low expectations for adaptations of beloved books were not quite so tempered. We rushed out to see it the day after Thanksgiving. (The boys, of course, were thrilled beyond belief, as they continue to be every time we actually go to a movie theater. It's one of those lovely things to watch that I know won't last forever, or perhaps even much longer.)

The film version of Hugo Cabret, as its shortened title—just Hugo—might imply, has had its story pared down and streamlined. Lovers of the book should be prepared for less depth, complexity, and just plain time given to its main storyline of a orphaned boy who lives in the walls of a Paris train station between the world wars, continuing his vanished uncle's job of keeping the station's many clocks running, and meanwhile trying to repair a complicated mechanical toy that represents, to him, his deceased father.

The movie zips through most of this—Jude Law, as Hugo's father, and Ray Winstone, as the uncle, have essentially just a scene apiece, though both manage to make remarkably strong impressions—to get to the part that, I imagine, is what drew Scorsese to direct the film: Hugo's interactions with the proprietor of a toy shop in the train station. This man turns out to be Georges Méliès, one of the first great directors of movies that told stories (as opposed to merely capturing true-life events on film).

And while it's fair to say that Hugo, perhaps inevitably, falls a bit short of its source material in terms of its main character's own story, when it comes to the Méliès stuff, it is able to exceed it. What were just images in Selznick's book—a still from Harold Lloyd's classic Safety Last!, as well as many from Méliès' own charmingly trippy films—come to life in the film as the full-blown cinema they are. And we couldn't be in better hands for this kind of thing. Scorsese has always been fond of magically capturing real historical events and references in his films—his re-creation of a famous Jacob Riis photograph in Gangs of New York comes to mind—and in Hugo, with the history of film itself to draw on, his excitement is contagious; when Scorsese portrays the excitement and the energy of Méliès's original shoots, we share in Scorsese's (and Méliès's) delight.

Of course, such excitement requires knowledge of the history itself, which means this aspect of the film—probably its best—is more or less lost on the kids. (Though I think Dash, our seven-year-old, got some of the wonder—Méliès' films are pretty magical, after all, outside of any historical context, or they wouldn't have been as popular as they were in their own time.) Happily, even the cut-down version of Selznick's story is engaging enough to keep most youngsters fully engaged; I’d say any child who’s able to fully process the book should have a great time. (In other words, as we should have realized it would be, the two-hour length was a bit much for our three-year-old.)

A great deal of the credit must be given to the actors, who fill out a screenplay that occasionally feels thin—particularly the two leads. Ben Kingsley is ideal as Méliès, able to convey the emotion of this wounded old man with a glance, and Asa Butterfield is a revelation (at least to those, like me, who didn't see him in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, I guess), capturing Hugo's desperation movingly. We found the rest of the cast equally admirable, mostly in roles that the film has built up significantly from the book, presumably in an attempt to lighten things up a bit. (The lone exception, surprisingly, was the ubiquitous Chloë Moretz in the key role of Méliès's niece, Isabelle, whose performance we found forced and even irritating at times.)

So no, Hugo doesn't deliver all the same joys the book did, falling well short of it in some ways. But it also manages to exceed its source in others, and that makes it a very enjoyable family movie. (I think many adults without young children will even find it so; I’m also very curious to know what those without prior exposure to Selznick's book think of the film.)

One last thing: 3D. Like so many movies these days, Hugo was shot in it. While I can see Scorsese figuring that Georges Méliès himself would have found modern 3D film technology pretty damn cool, I have to say that in the end, I didn't really see the point. The effect is certainly remarkable, a vast improvement on earlier, more primitive attempts at 3D moviemaking. But after the first five or ten minutes of "OK, that's pretty amazing," I found that I alternated between forgetting about it and, worse, finding it a distraction from the story. Maybe it’s yet another sign I’m getting old, but I think I'd opt for the 2D version—in fact, I’m seriously considering going back for a second screening in less-distracting 2D.

[Image © 2011 Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.]

New Movies: Rango

I've written before about how new Hollywood kids' movies are probably not the best use of my time here: There's no shortage of perfectly good reviewers out there already, and these big-budget films have big advertising budgets as well—it's not like anyone is unlikely to have heard about them. (In fact, most of us parents are likely to get dragged to even the worst-reviewed of these movies.)

But sometimes enthusiasm overwhelms logic. Such is the case for me with Rango, a wonderfully odd new animated film directed by Gore Verbinski, of Pirates of the Caribbean fame, and featuring the voice of that series' star, Johnny Depp, in the lead role. With the best of the non-Pixar division of animation, you tend to hear a lot about how beautiful the film is. ("Good-looking" is in this genre the equivalent of "having a good personality," I guess.) Rango is no exception: Revered cinematographer Roger Deakins has a consulting credit on the movie, and while I have only a very vague concept of what that means, exactly, for an animated film, the western vistas against which this story plays out are often breathtaking, and several lighting effects will have you wondering if the filmmakers have surreptitiously switched to live action.

But as remarkable as its visuals are, they’re not what makes Rango truly special—to my mind, the first Hollywood animated film that competes on the same playing field with Pixar. This is a strange movie, in the best sense: one that doesn't follow the by-now-worn paths most modern animated kids' films obediently trudge along. Among its delights is that, at least until it reins things in a bit for its denouement, you're never be quite sure where it's heading next.

Depp's title character is a pet chameleon, and the film opens in his imagination. (Indeed, there's always the possibility that we're spending the whole film there, a device I admit I'm always a sucker for.) He is happily play-directing a "film" starring himself and various inanimate objects in his tank, when an unforeseen accident leaves him alone on a desolate western highway. After being briefed on the concept of mystical missions by a Don Quixote–esque armadillo, he wanders through the desert to the town of Dirt, where various locals (each a different personified, and very realistic-looking, animal—somehow the mole looks both like a real mole and like Harry Dean Stanton, who provides its voice) are struggling to survive due to a dwindling water supply.

In the tradition of many a comic western, from My Little Chickadee to Three Amigos!, our hero is mistaken for a gunslinger and immediately appointed sheriff, then tasked with solving the water problem. He soon finds that it has something to do with the town's mayor, a smooth-talking turtle (voiced by Ned Beatty, who's been cornering the market on animated villains lately) who seems to be the only one in town with a regular water supply anymore.

Rango is written with Pixar-ian cleverness, its adult-aimed references aimed coming a mile a minute, yet delivered subtly and smoothly enough that kids won't be distracted by them. Many of the subtlest are just cinematic: Between them, Verbinski and composer Hans Zimmer give a nod to just about every famous film ever set in the West, from John Ford's oeuvre to Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns (their hero gets a cameo as “the Spirit of the West,” voiced by Timothy Olyphant) to Raising Arizona (whose yodeling theme gets an homage during a chase sequence).

But even as one notices happily that Beatty's turtle is channeling the menace of John Huston's character in Chinatown—this, too, is a story about stealing water, after all—the ultimate joy is in the tale itself, as it should be. And much of the appeal, it must be said, comes down to Depp himself, who somehow manages a solely vocal star turn here; you can almost hear how much he's enjoying the freedom of acting without his superfamous face. Working with a director he's clearly comfortable with, he lets it all hang out, and his Rango is as marvelously and adorably weird as the most beloved of the Muppets—insecure, self-analytical, garrulous, and so kind and well-meaning that you, and especially your kids, will love him instantly. (In a way, what Depp and the writers have done here is reboot Kermit the Frog—those are the kinds of warm feelings this character generates.)

The other voice talent maintains the high level set by Depp, though that's no surprise—the one thing you can count on in even the worst animated films nowadays is a crack voice cast. This one includes Isla Fisher as Rango's traditionally dubious love interest, Alfred Molina as the questing armadillo, and Bill Nighy as a truly scary rattlesnake gunman with a pencil mustache.

One other thing—more than in most cases, you'll want to see this one on the big screen; Rango's visuals are that remarkable. (Okay, I suppose those of you with wall-size flat screens can perhaps wait for the Blu-ray....)  

[Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures]

New DVDs: Toy Story 3

I suspect that most parents have seen Toy Story 3 by now, either in the theater this summer or on DVD since its recent release. (In the latter case, you've doubtless seen it…countless times.) Our family is no exception—Dash went with his mom when it first came out, and we've owned the DVD since a few seconds after it was available—but I myself had missed out on actually seeing it until this past weekend.

Anyway, no surprise: It's the usual Pixar masterpiece—funny, moving, playing simultaneously to kids and parents on a bunch of levels. Or at least it shouldn't have been a surprise to me, since the animation studio has been spoiling us all into such expectations for years now. But somehow, I hadn't been expecting as much this time around. My line of thinking when I first heard about the movie went something like: A second follow-up to a 15-year-old movie? Man, I'd really rather see Pixar break new ground. I guess Disney's just cashing in on the massively successful franchise. If Pixar is ever going to disappoint, this would be the one.

Well, I was wrong. Toy Story 3 offers up the same brand of ultrasmart writing, directing, and animation we've seen recently in WALL-E and Ratatouille. Once more, live-action studios could take lessons from Pixar's brain trust in matters like exposition, here provided in slightly-dark-yet-humorous form by a grizzled Chatter Telephone (playing the Elisha Cook, Jr. role) and, for the vital villain backstory, a burnt-out toy clown named Chuckles (voiced by the always brilliant Bud Luckey). And yet the bonds among the core group of toys, and between them and their now-grown owner, are realistic enough to make the film's deeper explorations of love and loss genuinely moving; Pixar's remain the only animated films at which kids often are called upon to comfort their parents, rather than the other way around.

So, Pixar: I can't believe I ever doubted you. I am so sorry. It will never happen again. Not even with your toughest test of my expectations yet, the upcoming Cars 2.

[Image: Courtesy of © Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.]

Old School: Drive-in Movies

I'm really cheating in calling this an Old School, since I'd never been to a drive-in movie theater in my life before last week, and until recently I had no idea there were even any functioning ones left. My eyes were opened by my friends Joyce and Michael (the proprietor of the wonderful movie blog Cinema du Meep), and after some abortive attempts to attend one of the handful of options within relatively easy driving distance of NYC this summer, we wondered if there might be any drive-ins near the spot where we were vacationing in Rhode Island.

As it turned out, there is one. (Well, it's on the other side of the state from where we were--but it's a really small state!) As seems to be the general practice at many of these places nowadays, you pay an entry fee to one screen there, at which two movies play each evening, usually a child- (and not necessarily adult-) friendly option first, and something R-rated second. With young kids, obviously, you generally just go for the first one, rather than attempting to get your toddler to shut his eyes and ears for two-plus hours of Inglourious Basterds.

In this case, there were two screens that were starting out with kid flicks, and our choice was between Despicable Me and Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. Being big saps, we let our older son choose, and predictably enough, he picked the one that didn't at least have Steve Carell's voice going for it. He loves cats. And dogs. (We were going to get Kenneth the Page either way, though—he appears to have a corner on the drive-in kiddie movie this summer.)

Now, this is not a review of the Cats & Dogs movie, though I will admit it wasn't as bad as I expected. (So nice to see Nick Nolte and Bette Midler working together again, even if the last time they actually had to be in the same place at the same time. And I'm always a sucker for a Wallace Shawn voiceover.) The experience of watching a silly movie with your kids in your parked car, though: This I give two thumbs up. Many more veteran families around us came better prepared, actually, parking their SUVs backwards and essentially tailgating for the film. But for our first go, we found it delightful just being enclosed together for the experience. It blew our two-year-old away in particular—his eyes got implausibly wide when he saw that giant white wall turn into a giant video. The whole thing was the perfect summer shared family experience.

Plus, we got Sean Hayes's vocal impersonation of Hannibal Lecter. Truly something for everyone.

[Photo by Drm31, via Wikimedia Commons]