Zootopia

Some films ambitions just are out of reach of their grasp. This animated offering from Disney Studios has a lot going for it, including an excellent cast, an interesting setting and some of the cutest characters you can imagine. It also has pretensions of seriousness that it just doesn't reach at times. The movie is by no stretch of the imagination a failure, but it is so obvious to see the themes and goals of the film makers and it is equally obvious that they strike out a few times. However, for every time there is something just a bit big for the movie, there are moments that make it all worth a trip, even if it is not destined to become a modern classic.

The movie starts as a light hearted story of a can do character in a world where animals all seemingly get along, but under the surface, they face the kinds of barriers that we humans do, small minded prejudice. Allegory 101, Zootopia is "Animal Farm" with jokes. The heavy handed examples of prejudice and stereotyping are likely to go over the heads of the kids watching the movie, but hit their parents and other adults watching right in the forehead. Subtlety goes out the window at times and halfway through the movie, the story gets dark and heavy. Kids will probably lose patience with it and the adults will wonder where the fun went. Just when you despair however, there is a moment that pulls us back into the spirit of things and makes us root for the film still.

Since I am generally a positive person with movies, I'll give you a few things to look at and like about the movie. It is beautifully made with a nice design for different ecosystems in the city and cleverly visualized jokes. There is a fun chase sequence through a rodent style section of the city where our main hero, Officer Judy Hopps, a bunny, chases a perp through miniature buildings and a tiny subway and some habitrals that are complex and fun to imagine as a city for hamsters, mice and other such critters. You have probably seen the joke about the DMV in the trailer and it works even though we got it months ago in the preview. For a movie that is trying to move us away from our prejudices, it makes a lot of use of what would be "ethnic" humor if the characters were human. There are elephant jokes and wolf jokes that all hit the mark when it comes to making us laugh, but if you replaced those characters with an ethnic stereotype, the special interest groups would be howling.

This is a buddy cop film with animals. Think "48 Hours", only the Nick Nolte character is a naive rookie instead of a veteran burnout. Reggie Hammond is named Nick and he's a fox. Together the two are going to solve a mystery. The good thing is these characters are terrific. Judy, the rookie bunny police officer, is a cute as can be. Ginnifer Goodwin voices the character as determined but vulnerable and the artists who visualized the character make her exactly that, with huge expressive eyes and long ears with big rabbit feet. Her "partner" jokes at one point that the the toy store has reported one of their stuffed dolls animals is missing. She may not be a Princess, but the character is marketable as all heck. I expect to see her front and center in the toy aisle at Target. Nick is voiced by Jason Bateman who seems to be the sardonic voice for parts not already taken by Bill Murray. He is a little disheveled, and slick, which is precisely the way he needs to be played. The un-tucked shirt, the sunglasses and the attitude are not Eddie Murphy stylish, but more John Candy clever. When we are focused on these two characters, the movie works. When we get to the procedural and the conspiracy plot, it just falls down a little.

Maybe this film will work better for a different audience. Some of the contemporary visuals like the apps used by some of Judy's fellow cops or the diva like concert performance with dancing tigers just seem too much of the now. It may not hold up over the years and the humor needs to be a little more universal. Fortunately, every time you get a joke based on a contemporary reference (including a "Frozen" line) there is another animal pun about wolves in sheep's clothing or the elephant in the room to make it more sustainable. I wanted it to be more effective, and while I can't always say why it was not, I can say that half of a good movie is better than a bad movie, any day of the week.

Kubo and the Two Strings

I was really impressed with this amazing film. Laika has been responsible for some wonderful films in the last few years. From "Corpse Bride" to "Pananorman" tho only one I still have not seen is "Boxtrolls". This is a studio that when it comes to quality of production is second to none. They have a track record of artistic consistency to rival Pixar. What they have not had is the box office to match. It is especially sad when so many less worthy projects have taken the field and scored big time. "The Secret Life of Pets " was fine but not great. I have no idea how "Angry Birds" came out but I'm not hopeful. This movie however knocked my socks off and it is my hope that "Zootopia" and "Finding Dory" will be satisfied with their box office glory at the end of the year, but that the Academy will see the truth, "Kubo and the Two Strings" is a real achievement.

The painfully slow and delicate process of stop motion animation  is supplemented with digital artistry to make this movie smooth and polished. While older stop motion films sometimes look a little jerky or the flaws in clothing or facial impressions sneak by, you will not find anything like that here. The art direction is lush with Japanese landscapes that look as if they came from classic watercolors of old Japan. The character design is faithful to traditional styles of story in that culture. There are sequences so breath taking as to merit being watched all on their own, even if you are not going to see the whole film.

The only reason I can think that audiences here have not embraced it as much as it deserves to be is that it has that sensibility of Japanese magic stories that often feel so unworldly, that audiences are not sure how to take it. Kubo is a boy of nearly 11, who has an amazing gift for telling stories. It is a magical trait that he has received from his mother, who after crossing part of the ocean in a fierce storm that seems directed at her, brings the infant to a cave on a peak, that is solitary and overlooks that same ocean. Kubo has grown as a boy into a creative and responsible child, but his mother seems to be slipping away. She has filled him with stories, many of which feature his grandfather as a cold and harsh deity in the heavens.  She has warned him not to be outside of their hidden cave after dark, least her cruel sisters find him and take his one remaining eye for their father. So yeah, it is a dark fairy tale filled with the spirits of the dead and the night sky.

We don't ever get any explanation for why things are the way they are, we just have to accept them. That is a daunting task for a culture that is low context and so direct. What is really unusual though is that this film is an original as far as I can tell. It is not an ancient story from Japan nor is it based on a film from the Asian market. It is grown right here but feels organically Japanese. Another barrier might be that the story is complex and there are some dark elements to it, but not any darker than "The Lion King". Kubo's adventure takes him in search of a suit of Armour that had been pursued by his father before him. The curse his family is under involves him in conflict with monsters and the elements. The gifts that Kubo has however are companions with a secret and his own ingenuity. If you suspend your disbelief long enough to watch the magic come to life, the story issues will seem unimportant. We don't need a plot summary when the emotional climax of the film arrives, we need tissues.

If you miss this movie, you are missing one of the best films of the year, much less the best animated film of the year. I'm going to include a little extra for you to push you into seeing this. If you watch the music video below and are not intrigued by the film, I don't know what to say. It is a wonderful match of music to the theme of the film.



Get out of your house right now and go see this movie.

Sing

I would be a little alarmed at the number of adults at a 10:15 am screening of what is basically a kids movie, except for the fact that the three of us who went to see it were also all adults. "Sing" delivers pretty much what it promises in all the promotional material. This is a film cobbled together around the premise of animals singing in an "Idol/Voice/X-Factor" style competition. If you like those sorts of reality competition shows, than this is likely to please you. If you just like anthropomorphized animals in cartoon form, while this should satisfy you as well.

Buster Moon is a koala bear who falls in love with the theater as a kid. Every choir singer, high school actor, or member of the glee club can identify with that. If you did dramatic interp on the speech team, worked as a stage hand on a high school play production, or you were an aspiring rock singer with a group of your friends forming a band, you have the bug. It is an infection that makes live performance so much fun and invigorating that you can get over your self consciousness and be willing to stand in front of an audience and potentially look foolish, just on the off chance that someone else might enjoy it.  "Sing" is all about that idea. While there is a little bit of that "can do" theme in the film and story, most of what makes up the movie is a cartoon version of performance.

I've got nothing against cartoons at all. I love animated movies and Bugs and Daffy filled my childhood with beloved memories. I never really looked to cartoons to give me life lessons. So the thinness of the theme in this film does not really bother me because it is really just there to help make the running time worthwhile. The story is very episodic with Buster as a Brooks-like producer trying to put together the successful show that has eluded him. His plot-line involve financial shenanigans and theatrical mishaps. Rosita is a pig mama to bacon factory of piglets, she also longs to sing. Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon reunite from the film "Mud" to voice Buster and Rosita. Rosita and her family have all the Rube Goldberg devices from a Road Runner cartoon in their segments of the story. There is also a plot about gamblers after a cheating card player and a shy talent who is literally the elephant in the room. Kids will laugh at the fart jokes and adults will enjoy sampling the wide range of music performances in the film.

This movie comes from the same studio that brought us "Despicable Me" and it's sequel, as well as the "Minions" movie. I thought last year's "Minions" was mostly an excuse to string together pop hits and fill the movie with something more interesting than the story. "Sing" solves that problem by making all the pop hits be the story and therefore freeing us the obligation to shoehorn all the songs into the movie.   I don't know that the personalities of the characters matter that much. So many voice actors get used just for atmosphere and not for any other reason. The singers are all fine but no performance stood out in a way that would make it a signature moment in the film.

The movie is lite and entertaining enough for the holiday season. Kids home for the Christmas Vacation will be able to see this with parents who will not hate watching the "let's put on a show" attitude of the characters. No one is going to have this on their list of greatest animated movies ever, but it combines the animal world of a film like "Zootopia" with singing performances that are entertaining enough for the short time that each one of them runs.