The Book of Life (2014, Jorge R. Gutiérrez)

The Book of Life has a very nice style once the story starts. Everything looks like it’s a miniature, like Life is a CG Rankin/Bass “Animagic.” Not quite as good, but there’s a charm to it. To the style. Not to the movie. Life’s oddly and relentlessly charmless.

It begins with the first bookend device: a group of behavior disorder kids arrive late for the school trip to the museum. They bully the first tour guide, but then a smoking hot lady tour guide winks at them the right way, and they’re all entranced. Life’s not going to get better about objectification of women. It’s the plot, actually.

Christina Applegate voices the tour guide. Why? No reason. She’s not good. She doesn’t have any personality. There’s not a deep “Married With Children” cut involving her character. There is a deep Labyrinth cut, so maybe someone else dropped out or turned them down. Doesn’t matter. The bookending device is just so the behavior disorder kids can mouth off. They range in age from toddler to tween, and their character design ranges from seventies theatrical Charlie Brown doofus villains to Baby Huey in drag. Also, they’re a drag.

Then Applegate starts reading to them from the Book of Life, mentioning far more interesting stories than the one we’ll watch. I foolishly thought it would be an anthology of Mexican folk tales. Instead, it’s all about how Zoe Saldana needs to marry Diego Luna or Channing Tatum so Ron Perlman can get a job transfer.

Perlman’s Xibalba, lord of the Land of the Forgotten. His lady love is La Muerte, the lord of the Land of the Remembered. Kate del Castillo voices her. Del Castillo de facto gives the second-best performance in the film. Luna’s a great lead. When he’s talking, you forget what you’re watching and think it might actually be all right. Then Saldana shows up, and that all right gets qualified. Then Tatum shows up, and that all right becomes impossible. Tatum isn’t even particularly bad—Saldana’s worse—but he’s charmless. His character is the town hero; he’s only the town hero because he has a magic tchotchke. It makes him invincible. When it looks like Saldana is going to marry Luna because of true love and all that jazz, Tatum says he’ll abandon the town and stop protecting it unless she marries him.

Luna’s the hero of the movie, but Tatum’s a good guy. Everyone trading Saldana is a good guy. She may spout off about her independence, but she’ll always immediately relinquish it. Director Gutiérrez and co-writer Doug Langdale don’t write a character capable of withstanding a gentle breeze. They’re all so thin.

Life’s got some original songs. Luna’s okay at them, but not any good. Then again, the songs aren’t good; some are better than others. All of them, much like the film itself, are tedious.

Gutiérrez’s direction peaks at middling. There are some rather poorly directed sequences; Gutiérrez’s always in a hurry like he’s convinced there’s nothing worth seeing anywhere in the film, which is funny because the production design is far more compelling than the story. Ahren Shaw’s editing doesn’t help things.

Book of Life seems like Luna’s charm will somehow carry it, but then it doesn’t. By the third act, Luna can’t hold it up anymore, not with everyone else pounding down on it.

Life’s a long ninety-five minutes.

Buddy (1997, Caroline Thompson)

Buddy is in desperate need of some contextualizing. The film takes place—roughly—between 1928 and 1933. Given that timeline, it’s a little weird the Great Depression doesn’t start, but Buddy’s also really strange about when it decides to be grown-up and when it doesn’t. The film tells the story of eccentric socialite Gertrude Lintz, who raised chimpanzees as her children. Until a zoo needed to get rid of a baby gorilla, and she raised him as a human child, too. It turns out chimps and gorillas are different, which Lintz—played by Rene Russo—completely ignores, even as her husband (Robbie Coltrane) tells her to think about it, even as her assistant (Alan Cumming) tells her to think about it.

If Buddy could talk, he’d probably tell her to think about it too.

But Russo doesn’t listen. Or when she does listen, it’s not a scene. Buddy skips almost all of the character moments for Russo, which is really strange since she narrates the movie (presumably with lines from the real Lintz’s memoir, which… could use some punching up).

Buddy’s very short—eighty-four minutes (I didn’t time the credits either)—and most of the movie involves Russo trying to get Buddy (a combination of animatronics, puppetry, and man in suit) to learn how to act more civilized while the chimps she’s ignored since four minutes into the movie have hijinks. Buddy’s bullish on training apes to perform tricks, which is a bit of a flex. Though regular science at the time—in the form of a Paul Reubens cameo—thinks apes are violent man-eaters or something. As for zoos… they don’t talk about why zoos are bad. Except lack of money. Wonder where they could get some.

The chimp hijinks are incredible, but they’re also in questionable taste. Buddy casts many of its characters as caricatures—watching Irma P. Hall fight through being the Black housekeeper to eccentric rich white folks is incredible. Not to mention once she shows she’s going to put in the effort opposite the animatronic.

The first few scenes of the film are a little concerning. Everything is for sight gags, or it’s the lackluster narration. And then Russo and the baby gorilla doll aren’t dramatically compelling. But once Buddy starts to grow, Russo shows off how well she can act opposite the practical effects. And the practical effects are great. In the awkwardly paced third act, the script reveals that the whole thing has been about the animatronic ape’s experience of the film, which he can’t communicate because—despite having an elaborate supporting cast—Buddy only exists as Russo’s accessory.

Now, she comes to that realization, too, which means there should be some fantastic character development.

Except, like all the other character development, Buddy skips it. Buddy even skips the whole point because it doesn’t want to get into the history.

Though everyone else is ready for the history. Colleen Atwood’s costumes, Daniel A. Lomino and David Nichols’s delightful art deco production design, whoever put together the elaborate World’s Fair sets they’re on for under five minutes. A lot of effort went into Buddy. Either lots ended up on the cutting room floor, or the producers (and director and screenwriter Thompson) sorely misunderstood what they were doing.

There are also some weird scenes someone fought to keep in, like Russo telling priest Philip Baker Hall (in a fantastic cameo) to get over the whole creationism bit and get with the real. All the cameos are one-sceners—Rubens, Hall, John Aylward, a delightful Mimi Kennedy, young Dane Cook doesn’t count—which doesn’t help Buddy feel less… herky-jerky.

But the main leads are all good—Russo, Coltrane (who gets very little direction but still does a bunch of work), Cumming (he’s the standout), and Hall (Irma P.).

Lovely Steve Mason photography and a good—if repetitive—Elmer Bernstein round things out. Buddy’s a bit bumpy but more than okay; it should’ve been much better.

This post is part of the Friends Fur Life Blogathon hosted by Quiggy of The Midnite Drive-In and Rachel of Hamlette’s Soliloquy.

A Whale of a Tale (1976, Ewing Miles Brown)

A Whale of a Tale is very much not a “whale” of a tale. The film’s about a little kid (Scott C. Kolden) who spends a summer working at Marineland of the Pacific. While Marineland clearly let the film production shoot on location, it also feels very much like the whole venture is Marineland-produced. At its best, Tale feels like an extended commercial for the park, complete with lengthy sequences showcasing its attractions.

It’s also not very animals’ rights. At one point, Kolden chastises Orky the Orca (a real-life Marineland attraction) for not wanting to perform even though people paid good money to see a show. Marineland’s the bestest oceanarium in the world… or at least America (inside joke you hopefully don’t get), and it’s really neat they let Kolden work there, even though his evil aunt Nancy O’Connor thinks it’s too dangerous a place. Kolden lives with aunt O’Connor and mom Abby Dalton. Dalton’s a recent-ish widow, and they’ve moved close enough Kolden can walk to the park from home, sneaking out so O’Connor doesn’t know.

For a while, the film’s biggest drama is whether or not Dalton’s going to let Kolden work at the park, but once Dalton meets handsome and single marine biologist William Shatner, the writing’s on the wall. Despite Shatner initially considering Kolden a pest, he soon comes to like the kid. And especially like the mom.

Sort of. Just like everyone else in the film, Shatner’s utterly lacking in character. All of his character’s busy work throughout is nonsense. Someone’s training the dolphins to do some kind of Navy rescue thing or something. The details don’t matter because they’re nonsense. Shatner and the other actors deliver their lines like someone’s feeding them off-screen. And then there are the times there’s obvious looping, like when Shatner and park fisherman Marty Allen are around the real animals and clearly trying not to get whacked by a killer whale. Shatner does better than Allen, which isn’t saying much, but there aren’t any good performances in Whale. Director Brown’s not capable of directing good performances or writing good parts.

Though there is an okay enough cameo from Andy Devine, who doesn’t have the lung capacity he did as a younger man, but occasionally still sounds familiar. Richard Arlen’s the other big cameo, as the park owner. Even more than Devine, Arlen’s just there for a familiar name in the credits.

The film was shot in the early seventies, then sat around for a few years. Then, in the interim, Jaws came out, and the lethargic tiger shark capture sequence—which seems to go on for ten minutes—ends with similar but not too similar music to John Williams. What’s more amusing is the first half of the sequence, when you wish they’d have some Jaws music just so it wouldn’t be boring, only for it to come in later and still be boring.

The animal showcases don’t feature composer Jonathan Cain’s songs, which are inane and from the perspective of Kolden. School and aunt O’Connor suck, and life’s so much better at Marineland. It’s also unclear why Marineland okayed the plot, which has Kolden become the most invaluable employee in the park. Literally. Can’t run without him. You go see Whale of a Tale and go to Marineland; if Kolden weren’t there, the place couldn’t run.

But then putting any thought whatsoever into Whale is way too much.

Director Brown and editor Ronald V. Ashcroft also endeavor to push the audience throughout, constantly repeating the same thirty seconds of carnival music in the park scenes.

Whale could be worse. It’s an absolute bore, but it’s just a bloated, inept industrial film with a mostly slumming cast. While Kolden’s bad—but he can’t be good with Brown’s writing and directing—he’s far from the worst kid actor in the world–or even America.

But Whale’s not even worth it for the curiosity factor. Especially not since Marineland of the Pacific showed up in lots of popular entertainment. If you want to see the park in its heyday, you might even be able to find a movie or show you can stay awake during.

Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977, Phil Roman and Bill Melendez)

There’s only one adult referenced in Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown. When the bus leaves Charlie Brown (voiced by Duncan Watson) stranded, they’ve established the driver’s silhouette. Not having any adults makes a lot of sense since, somehow, the Peanuts parents all decided to send their kids to a camp on the other side of a distant desert with no adult supervision. The camp’s name? Camp Remote.

The desert bit gives Sally (Gail Davis) a scene to threaten some local kid, which doesn’t go as expected, but since the movie’s setting it up for Sally to back down… it’s a bit of a surprise. I think the local kid is from the comic strip somewhere. She and her little brother (the anti-Browns, in a way) seem familiar, and they’re only in the one gag.

Sally prominently figures in the first act of Race for Your Life, right up until Peppermint Patty (Stuart Brotman) starts talking about running things as a democracy. The boys and girls have been split into their different tents, with Patty running for tent leader. She confuses the other girls with her version of fair voting (by secret ballot), which becomes a recurring gag, and from then on, Sally’s just got the occasional lovelorn wail for Linus.

Both the boys and girls have a similar problem in the first act—the camp bullies. There are three of them with their mean cat, and none of them have names. Two of them have the letter “R” on their shirt; it never means anything. What’s so peculiar about them is Race never tries to humanize them, never tries to redeem or even provide context for them. They’re just assholes.

Okay, now, I’m reading something into the “R.”

Anyway.

The second act of Race is all about the best tent competition. The kids do various activities, with the bullies winning by cheating. Since there are no adults and presumably the teen counselors supervising the events are paying attention to the other two dozen campers we rarely see (at least two Peanuts supporting cast members, Violet and Frieda, end up amongst them). The most important race is the raft race.

It’s more a wilderness survival race, with rafting involved. The kids have to camp at night, feed themselves, and get back on the river. It seems to be a three-day event. If it weren’t a cartoon with a dog and his best friend, a bird, riding around America on an Easy Rider chopper… it’d seem dangerous.

Though there is danger. For a fairly long section of act two, Snoopy thinks Woodstock’s dead, the kids think Snoopy’s dead, and everyone’s lost in the woods trying to find one another. So it goes on for a while, with Snoopy mourning his presumably lost friend. Oh, and then the evil cat hunting Woodstock as he tries to survive on his own.

It’s impressive how Charles M. Schulz’s script—the pacing and plotting—and then Melendez and Roman’s direction make it so intense. There’s objectively no danger to the characters, but the movie makes believe so strongly, the emotions come through. It’s a fascinating use of narrative empathy and sympathy.

The raft race takes up most of the movie. The bullies have a speedboat with a wonky motor, so the Peanuts kids can get ahead often enough for tension. Snoopy and Woodstock add a sail to their inner tube, which leads to some pastoral scenes and disasters, though maybe if Snoopy didn’t sleep while at the wheel….

The boys and girls each have a raft, with Charlie Brown’s arc for the movie involving him becoming more of a leader. Peppermint Patty’s would possibly be listening to others while leading. No one else gets a character arc. Linus (Liam Martin) gets to defend the kids from the bullies thanks to his blanket snapping, and there are some other recurring personality gags, but not arcs. The movie’s too busy and the race too severe to slow down for them.

The original songs are strange but not bad; imagine a disco Cat Stevens, and then also more pop-folk. Ed Bogas’s score is good. The animation’s beautiful, with excellent editing from Roger Donley and Chuck McCann. Race has a somewhat peculiar vibe; while there’s a lot of action, including harrowing POV shots, there’s also the tranquil nature stuff, especially for Snoopy and Woodstock. It’s a fine mix. The end credits are a hallucinogenic Charlie Brown sequence, which provides the final synthesis. It’s weird and a perfect finish for the film.

Acting-wise… Watson’s okay. He’s got some weaker moments, but the movie never leans on him too long or adjusts for it after doing so. Brotman’s good, Davis is good, Martin’s good. I was expecting a lot more from Lucy (Melanie Kohn), but she gets less than Marcie (Jimmy Ahrens), who doesn’t get much.

The filmmakers know how to get the best out of the performances. Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown’s good.

Snoopy, Come Home (1972, Bill Melendez)

Snoopy, Come Home’s parts are better than their sum. The film’s a number of vignettes, usually set to music, sometimes with songs. Sometimes there’s connective material between the vignettes, sometimes the circus shows up, and it’s time for a new scene. Also, sometimes, the vignettes have a rough cut between them. Not too rough, there’s a fade-out and a fade-in, but there’s no attempt to transition between them. Usually when the action cuts between Snoopy and Charlie Brown. As the title indicates, Snoopy has left home, and Charlie Brown wants him to come home. So the action cuts between Snoopy and Woodstock on adventures and Charlie Brown whining.

I guess it would be hard to find the right transition music for whining.

Though Charlie Brown does get a song to himself late in the movie, which is effective, but also entirely changes what the movie’s about. Sort of. The third act has a couple surprise turns, narratively speaking, and the Charlie Brown song fits one of those turns but because the film’s pushing hard to make it work. It’s a stretch, though it comes right after (and refers to) an absolutely fantastic, out-of-nowhere scene. About halfway through Come Home, director Melendez starts doing these phenomenal sequences occasionally—a hallucinogenic astral dream, for example—and they’re outstanding. The second big sequence, that third act one, it’s completely different than the dream sequence, instead relying on the characters. Though, specifically, the visuals they can all create. Come Home’s always very visual, for better or worse.

The worse is how often Charlie Brown and Snoopy use their comic strip expressions, which the film uses more in the first half than the second. The expressions are deadpan, reminding the viewer it’s an adaptation of the comic strip, which kills the momentum a little. At least until the expressions change. It’s a strange device, especially since Come Home shows off a bunch of expressions on Snoopy from multiple, not-comic-strip angles too. Come Home’s got innumerable visual flexes; they just sometimes come with distracting music.

The film runs eighty minutes, with the first twenty building to the inciting incident. Snoopy’s fed up with “No Dogs Allowed” places getting in the way of his good time. Every time Snoopy comes across such a location, there’s an accompanying song sung by Thurl Ravenscroft. It’s not a great song; it does pay off in the end, but it’s not great.

The film’s best song is easily Linda Ercoli’s one, which accompanies Ercole’s character tormenting her new pets, Snoopy and Woodstock. They went to her for help, and she just couldn’t wait to hug them and squeeze them. The duo’s just passing through; Snoopy gets a letter from his former owner, a little girl named Lila (voiced by Johanna Baer); she’s sick and in the hospital and would love a visit. So, peeved at the no dog zones as well as Charlie Brown being a jerk lately, Snoopy goes to visit her, Woodstock in tow. The incident at Ercoli’s is just one of their adventures along the way.

Performance-wise, Come Home’s got a couple significant problems. Chad Webber’s rarely good as Charlie Brown, and Baer’s usually bad as Lila. They do the most talking—both pleading their cases with Snoopy. The resulting turmoil gets the film into the third act with a firm footing and enables Melendez to mix style and narrative better. Though it gets rocky because the third act goes on way too long. Also, it’s rushed. Never a good combination.

Oddly, the charming end credits help pull Snoopy, Come Home around at the last minute; they last-minute find some humor they lost in the first act.

Besides Webber and Baer, the voice acting’s good; Robin Kohn and Stephen Shea, as Lucy and Linus, respectively, are really good. Kohn gets more range, including some good laughs.

Lovely animation, good music (Ron Ralke); it’s technically solid. Snoopy, Come Home’s fine. It’s got the chops to be better but just makes some hampering choices along the way and leans into them way too hard.

But when Melendez hits, he hits hard.

The Black Stallion (1979, Carroll Ballard)

The Black Stallion is two separate, subsequent narratives. The filmmakers utilize two different but related styles for them. The first narrative, with 1940s tween Kelly Reno, shipwrecked on a desert island off the coast of North Africa with a wild Arabian stallion. The second is after Reno’s rescue when he and the stallion have to adjust to “real” life back home in the United States. That adjustment will lead to ex-jockey and current unsuccessful farmer Mickey Rooney taking an interest in Reno and the horse, who don’t do well in town.

The first narrative takes just under an hour, starting with Reno and dad Hoyt Aston on the ship, with a bored Reno discovering the horse onboard. There’s not a lot of dialogue, with director Ballard immediately establishing the film’s distinct narrative distance to protagonist Reno. The first part of Stallion’s more visual, the second part’s more audial, but Ballard and his crew maintain techniques throughout, including this deliberate angle on Reno. Ballard focuses on Reno’s experience of events but without showing his reaction to those events. Sometimes the film will catch Reno as he reacts; it just does so while the reaction’s already in progress. The film gives Reno his privacy.

The film’s got almost a half hour without any dialogue. Reno makes some noises at the horse in attempts to ingratiate himself—to limited success—but otherwise, most of the desert island sequence is no diegetic sound, just Carmine Coppola’s score. Coppola’s score is often ethereal, moving between styles, then focusing in for exact dramatic effect. The Black Stallion is a technically precise film. It’s exquisite too, but the precision is on a whole other level. Ballard, cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, editor Robert Dalva, and composer Coppola create these sublime sequences, each distinct but building off one another. The film tracks this relationship between Reno and the horse, their developing friendship and companionship, and gives them space to separately experience their desert island plight. The only word for it is divine.

And it takes Stallion until the film’s third act (and of the second narrative) to get back to that level. The second part is technically superb and quite charming (Rooney’s adorable, Teri Garr’s extremely sympathetic as Reno’s mom, and the period production design is excellent), but it’s not the first part. It’s not about Reno and the horse as pals anymore; it’s about Reno trying to figure out how to have an Arabian stallion somewhere in Rockwellian America. Rooney and the potential of racing glory give Reno some idea, though.

Since the film started on the ship, the film never establishes Reno before his exciting and tragic adventure. He’s always quiet and reflective, even on the boat, so one can assume he’s not less exuberant than before, but once he’s home, it’s still all about the horse. They’ve just lost the context for their friendship, with Rooney becoming—if not a surrogate dad—then at least a male role model for Reno. Rooney can understand some of Reno’s relationship with the horse. Despite the intense dangers the two experienced, Reno still has boyish dreams for him and his horse.

Good thing he lives in a place where male wish-fulfillment is a cornerstone of the culture because he’ll get his chance. Though the film will let Reno verbalize his dreams, the closest is when he breaks down and tells mom Garr about his experiences, which the film showed without sharing his internal experience. It did an excellent job of conveying that experience visually, but it’s not until much later Reno finally gets to talk about them.

The film’s terse with all its actors; Axton gets a great, staring straight in the camera (Reno’s perspective) monologue at the beginning, but he doesn’t talk much otherwise. It takes until the end of the second act for Reno to get his big moment. Garr gets hers in the same scene. Both Rooney and Clarence Muse have already had their big scenes, despite coming in after Garr. And big comes with an asterisk. They’re just longer passages of dialogue, maybe monologues. Ballard’s not interested in listening to people talk, instead showing how they act and interact.

The sound editing’s the thing in the second part. The sound of the horse running, hooves now on grass and pavement. Although there were lengthy horse-riding sequences in the first part, those sequences all had Coppola’s music accompanying them, not the actual sound. Ballard and the sound editors (Todd Boekelheide, Richard Burrow, Diana Pellegrini, and Stephen Stept) very deliberately refine the sound through the second part until the exceptional finale, when the sound becomes the most important technical. Albeit amid the exceptional other technicals. Stallion’s finale is gorgeous filmmaking. The photography, the editing, the directing, all stellar. And then the sound is even more impressive.

It’s transcendent, and when Stallion ties the epical (if stylishly lyrical) second part back to that lyrical, divine first part.

The film has several phenomenal sequences (in addition to the finale). Heck, the end credits are a remarkable flashback sequence. But most of the scenes on the island are fantastic, particularly the underwater dance and riding sequence. Reno chasing the horse through town is also great. But, again, nothing compares to the finale. Well, some of the island stuff, but it literally compares, not figuratively.

The Black Stallion is exquisite and masterful, occasionally divine. It’s a magnificent film.

Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985, Jim Wheat and Ken Wheat)

Life is profoundly cheap in Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. The film’s ostensibly about little human orphan Aubree Miller’s adventure with her Ewok buddy Warwick Davis and the old man (Wilford Brimley) who takes care of them after a group of bad guys appear out of nowhere and destroy the Ewok village and pew pew away Miller’s family, who survived the previous Ewok movie. I believe that one also had Ewoks with names other than Davis’s one (who can speak English here); no names for the Ewoks anymore. Also not much Ewok action. They disappear for a large portion of the movie, when it’s apparently more fun to watch Brimley pretend to be a mean old man to newly orphaned Miller and separated from his tribe Davis.

Davis’s subplot about the missing Ewoks is kind of the important one until evil human witch Siân Phillips—who lives in bad guy Carel Struycken’s medieval castle and has never heard of spaceships before Miller tells her about them—kidnaps Miller so Miller can explain interstellar travel to Struycken. Struycken and his gang are aliens, but extremely cheap ones for a Star Wars product; apparently their species is based on some bad Ralph McQuarrie concept drawings from Empire Strikes Back.

Doesn’t matter.

The first act, ruining Miller’s life and making Davis’s rather inconvenient, is fairly bad. For whatever reason, directors Wheat are quite bad at the action sequence involving Struycken attacking the village. Some of it’s clearly budget—not sure who decided it was too expensive to do matte paintings of the Ewok village (or just use some Kenner playset backdrops)—but some of it’s just bad directing. Rather inglorious farewells to returning actors Eric Walker and Paul Gleason, though Gleason’s is much worse just for being in the movie longer.

The second act’s tedious and cloying, though Miller’s not anywhere near as obnoxious as she could be—initially it seems weird she and Davis treat being on the run from a murderous gang like being on a nature hike, but given how bad it gets when she and Brimley talk about their feelings… I mean, at least the nature walk has pretty scenery. It’ll eventually look just like the forests from Return of the Jedi, but then because they’re obviously using footage from a better movie—even if it weren’t the competent special effects or better film stock, Davis’s costume doesn’t have the weird eyes he gets in this one.

They go really cheap on the Ewok costumes, so it’s pretty impressive when the third act action sequences are actually not bad. They can’t save Battle for Endor (it’s a fairly tepid battle, though based on the variety of alien species, it’d be interesting to know how they all evolved), but once the Ewoks come back into the movie… it’s occasionally entertaining. Even if the Ewok costumes look like pajama sets with matching slippers.

Other bad elements include Peter Bernstein’s music—he’ll occasionally imply some John Williams but never followthrough (it’s a shock when they use actual Star Wars sound effects for thirteen seconds, around the time Brimley gets to pretend he’s Harrison Ford and then they drop it because it doesn’t play because Miller clearly hasn’t seen A New Hope–but then Bernstein turns around and misses an obvious Jaws reference, which reminds me Endor gets very slapstick with its violence at the end. But no less fatal.

Also real bad is Isidore Mankofsky’s photography but what he’s going to do with the Brothers Wheat directing. Eric Jenkins’s editing is fine. Joe Johnston’s production design is not, but how much can you blame on him unless he’s personally responsible for the truly terrible matte paintings.

Brimley isn’t any good but he keeps it together far better than anyone could expect. He earns his paycheck, most definitely. He, Miller, and Davis don’t really embarrass themselves… as opposed to almost everyone else involved.

Flora & Ulysses (2021, Lena Khan)

Flora & Ulysses is a perfectly functional multi-quadrant family movie. Khan’s direction is good—sometimes really good—and kid lead Matilda Lawler is good so, you know, it’s fine. I mean, it’d be better if Lawler actually got to be the lead in the movie instead of it splitting between her separated parents, blocked romance novelist Alyson Hannigan and flailing comic book creator Ben Schwartz.

Hannigan’s not good. Schwartz is fine. He’s a little helpless for a grown man, though the film’s take is parents are both equally just kind of not great; it’s unclear why they’re separated. Something about Schwartz’s comic book failing (probably because the art’s not great).

The art not being great is weird because Flora & Ulysses leverages all the Disney cousins—lots and lots of Marvel superheroes. Mentioned in conversation so much Kevin Smith would think it was a little much. They do still have some DC comics in Lawler’s stacks of bagged and boarded floppies (Lawler being a cool comics kid is pretty much only a subplot for the first act, which is a bummer) and there’s a big Man of Steel style riff at the end. But it’s a lot of Marvel Comics references, starting with the opening narration and montage sequence comparing Schwartz’s Silver Age-y unsold superhero to Fantastic Four and Wolverine and Silver Surfer.

So not just Marvel properties, but the new ones.

Oh, yeah, also did you know Titanic is Disney now? Flora & Ulysses does. And there’s a few obvious Star Wars nods for the dads.

Anyway. It’s fine. The third act saves things.

I haven’t gotten around to talking about the Ulysses in the title, a CGI super-squirrel who Lawler saves, befriends, and starts to train to become a hero. It’s supposedly a boy squirrel but if you know squirrels… it’s pretty clear it’s not a boy squirrel. The CGI is so good, it’s kind of disconcerting, like I kept expecting part of the movie to be Lawler pretending it’s a super, soulful, literal poet squirrel. But, no, I was projecting because it looks so real and there’s no emphasizing of the special effects feat it just seems like it eventually has to be a fantasy.

Nope, just a twenty-first century kids movie. Schwartz and Hannigan are a whole lot less realistic than the squirrel—also a bunch of the super-powered squirrel stuff is just a squirrel being a squirrel, which is amazing.

While Khan’s great directing the kids—Lawler especially, but also her new pal Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, who’s in town from the UK for the summer because he’s suffering hysterical blindness, which leads to some really bad jokes but also the summer thing doesn’t matter (Brad Copeland’s script is wanting)—she doesn’t do anywhere near as well with the adults. Schwartz’s blandly appealing unless you think too hard about how bad he is at adulting, Hannigan gets worse the more she has to do, and Danny Pudi is rather disappointing as the local animal control guy after the squirrel. He’s got a couple moments, but only a couple.

Anna Deavere Smith is the magical psychiatrist widow who lives in Schwartz’s complex and offers him the grown up advice he can’t figure out on his own. Smartphones don’t exist in Flora & Ulysses, so I guess he couldn’t just Google. Though, again, it’s entirely unclear why the parents are broken up other than to give it a power of family theme.

Because it’s never about Flora Lawler or CGI Ulysses, who’s awesome, adorable, and always a special effect and never a character, and it’s definitely not about Flora & Ulysses.

But, you know, it’s fine. It’s a kids’ movie. What do you want.

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992, Brian Henson), the extended version

There’s a lot great about Muppet Christmas Carol: obviously the Muppet performers (their first outing after Jim Henson died—Rowlf is silent in memorial), Brian Henson’s fine direction, Jerry Juhl’s inventive script, strong special effects, Val Strazovec’s production design, Michael Jablow’s editing, the Paul Williams songs (the repetition even helps); but what makes it so special is Michael Caine as Scrooge.

By the end of the movie it ought to be Michael Caine and the Muppets’ Christmas Carol because he’s been so spotlighted for the previous seventy-five minutes or so. Caine breaks pretty early on in the night, Scrooge-wise. The film opens with him being mean to nephew Steven Mackintosh, Bunsen and Beaker (collecting for charity), the odd cute Muppet, then Kermit (as Bob Cratchit) and the office staff.

But he’s never too mean. He’s intimidating, he’s callous, but he’s ignorant of his cruelty in some ways; he’s kind of a libertarian a bit. Like he’s a blowhard, which his peers figure out, and then Christmas Carol is just all about him realizing he needs to alleviate suffering with his fortune. Incidentally, A Christmas Carol—the source material—is really depressing in 2020 when the story is 175 years old and there’s basically never been a redeemed Scrooge in reality. The genetics of Kermit and Miss Piggy’s kids in the movie are more realistic than the core tale.

Caine’s Scrooge cracks the first time during the Christmas past sequence (though maybe not in the theatrical version) and then the rest of the film and Christmas ghosts aren’t about him realizing Christmas is good, actually, but he’s bad, actually, and his bah humbug attitude about Christmas is just a symptom.

The Tiny Tim scene where Caine just stares at the puppets and tears up is fantastic. Henson drags it out, he and Jablow changing the intervals on the reaction shots to Caine, and it’s just this great expression work from Caine. His reactions to his emotions have their own arcs, with this amazing verklempt period for the end of Christmas Present and all of Christmas Future. Henson, Juhl, and Caine turn it into a character study, with the familiar Muppets doing a lot more in the supporting cast department.

Gonzo and Rizzo narrate the film, which is hilarious and one of the film’s best “Muppet” instincts. They have the right personality clash to make their antics particularly funny. Because there aren’t many laughs in the rest of it. It’s a tragedy and all. Even the songs—which have some really funny lines—are always sincere and often solemn. Outside Gonzo and Rizzo, the playfulness is quite muted. It’s a very nimble film; Henson’s able to control the mood just right.

So the special effects should get a callout because they have so much to do with the mood. The Ghosts of Christmas aren’t traditional Muppets—well, maybe Ghost of Christmas Present but even then not exactly; the Ghosts are their own specific characters outside the Muppet movie aspect of Christmas Carol, which is all the more ambitious and all the more successful. Henson and company found the right formula here.

Though it all hinges on Caine’s performance. Including him singing. Somehow Muppet Christmas Carol makes singing Michael Caine an absolute delight.

Other highlights include Statler and Waldorf’s cameos—including young age make-up on them—Jerry Nelson as the Ghost of Christmas Present, and Meredith Braun as young Scrooge’s love interest. Braun’s only it for a scene and a half but makes a singular contribution.

Well, if you’re watching the extended version, anyway.

Muppet Christmas Carol is most assuredly sensational, inspirational, celebrational, and, indeed, Muppetational.

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019, Richard Phelan and Will Becher)

Farmageddon has so many sci-fi TV and movie references it’s hard to keep track. The whole thing feels like an homage to E.T. as far as the story—an alien (“voiced” by Amalia Vitale; voicing means making noises in Farmageddon, there’s no dialogue) gets stranded on Earth and makes friends with a local who helps them try to get home. In this case, that local is Shaun. The Sheep. He and the alien bond over pizza, which is a totally natural thing for a British sheep and a space alien to bond over, especially since the pizza allows for a lot of sight gags.

Since there’s no dialogue and since the noises the characters make rarely imply exposition—there are occasional newspaper headlines to get across the most impactful events (the nearby town, having sighted the alien spacecraft, is going alien-happy)—the film’s got to do everything visually. Yes, they get away with a lot of infographics. The opening has Shaun and the other sheep running afoul of their sheep dog, Bitzer, who has to put up signs forbidding their various modes of play. They can’t frisbee, they can’t suction cup bow and arrow, they can’t shoot each other out of cannons—Bitzer’s really pushing for no nonsense and it provides the film with its most antagonistic relationship—Bitzer is getting a little tired of Shaun.

Of course, Shaun could care less and thank goodness, because if he were worried about getting in trouble he and the alien wouldn’t set out on an odyssey to find the missing spacecraft and then the movie would be a lot less entertaining. Though, who knows. It’s entirely possible directors Phelan and Becher—and screenwriters Mark Burton and Jon Brown—could come up with enough fun around the farm, but then we wouldn’t get to go to the alien hunters’ secret base. With the exception of the boss, all of the (presumably) government alien hunters are in their yellow hazmat suits, which makes them entirely indistinguishable from one another and perfect for anonymous physical comedy. If it weren’t moving so briskly, one could slow and marvel at the artistry on display in Farmageddon’s stop-motion, but also how the filmmakers are able to so deftly toggle between popular sci-fi references and the physicality of the characters. The story itself is fairly simple. Once Shaun and the alien leave the farm, they’re simultaneously in danger from Bitzer—who’s in a middle of new mission of the Farmer (Farmer runs the farm, Bitzer is the good dog who manages the sheep, Shaun is one of the sheep, there I explained it) when he discovers his escaped charge in the wild—and the alien hunters. Only thanks to the Farmer’s scheme, which involves turning the farm into an amusement park with an alien theme (“Farmageddon,” they’re able to get away with the title because the Farmer obviously wouldn’t give it a good name), Bitzer’s in a spacesuit outfit and the alien hunters go after him too.

Burton and Brown introduce the eventual resolution about midway through the second act and keep reminding the audience. Farmageddon’s a family film without ever pandering to the kids or getting too dumb for the adults—they take such deep dives on the sci-fi references, it’s hard to imagine anyone, child or adult, getting all the references at first glance—it’s a simple narrative, smartly executed. The second act, which takes the heroes back to the alien hunters’ lair, does drag a little. The first act is all about entertaining, the third act is all about entertaining. The second act, which puts Shaun and the alien through various physical and emotional hardships—not to mention the alien hunter boss has got a very affecting origin story and one of the film’s bigger missteps is not addressing its treatment of her better. It does a little work at it, which, sure, can be enough, but there are definite missed opportunities and making the film’s only truly malevolent villain a career-minded woman has some optics to it.

Alien hunter boss has this little robot assistant who’s almost a significant supporting player then isn’t. It’s just a frequently utilized sight gag, though it does eventually serve to lighten the boss a little, which is good.

Farmageddon is always good. Even taking the difficult to describe with a pithy adjective second act and the alien hunter boss into account, it’s never like it’s not good. It’s always inventive, always imaginative. Seeing how they integrate digital effects with the stop-motion is cool; Sim Evan-Jones’s editing and Charles Copping’s photography are exquisite. They need to be to work with the stop-motion. Excellent direction.

The soundtrack could be better. It’s… too pragmatic. Likable but never charming and Shaun is nothing if not charming.

It’s a delight. Not a “insert well-chosen superlative” delight here, but a delight nonetheless. How can it not be. It’s Shaun the Sheep on an adventure with someone who cannot bleat (actually, the alien can; its mimicry power is constantly amusing), doesn’t miss a trick, doesn’t miss a beat.