Review: Haunted Mansion

Haunted Mansion
Cert: 12A / 123 mins / Dir. Justin Simien / Trailer

And so to the House Of Mouse's second-stab at adapting their Haunted Mansion theme park attraction for the big screen. It's an ensemble tale of apparitions and adventure, of chills and chuckles, of ghoulish gags and of grief. The last of these is the cornerstone of Katie Dippold's screenplay, although it never really slows down enough to properly explore the emotions to which it refers (and for Disney that's a criminally-missed opportunity).

All of the central cast here are superbly likeable and perfectly matched to their roles, with particular standout performances from LaKeith Stanfield and Rosario Dawson. The antagonists they're up against, however, don't balance this out with any sense of credible threat. In fact we only really meet one - Jared Leto's 'Hatbox' - a supernatural villain who looks like Tim Burton has re-tooled The Grinch and sounds like a half-arsed impersonation of Darth Vader. Screen-time with this character is all but wasted, then again Leto has proved on more than one occasion that he can easily take an average movie and make it feel far worse. Although the playfully creepy visual effects are every bit as accomplished as you'd expect (given that this is catering to a family audience), the film never manages to evoke the eerie otherworldliness that even Pirates Of The Caribbean managed in its darker moments. Because of this we're never convinced that this is anything other than a ride.

The comedy is executed with more skill than the horror, even if there are plenty of chuckles but no real belly laughs. The scares aim for 'traditional' but still fall short at cliché much of the time. Justin Simien never quite matches the kookiness of Beetlejuice, the adrenaline of Goosebumps or the emotional rawness of Ghostbusters Afterlife. And that's a shame because Haunted Mansion feels like 80% of a great movie, but with its unfulfilled potential and capacity to be something more meaningful the end result is, sadly, forgettable...

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Elemental

Elemental
Cert: PG / 109 mins / Dir. Peter Sohn / Trailer

I must confess I’ve skipped on several recent animated offerings from Disney/Pixar after my lukewarm response to Inside Out, their psychological-explorational adventure which made several people I know act like a light had been switched on while I thought ‘wait, doesn’t everybody visualise their inner monologue this way?’. Don’t get me wrong, that’s enjoyable enough to watch, but I found it withered under the Battleship Curve™.

It was with some trepidation then, that I was treated to the mega-studio’s latest offering, Elemental, courtesy of my local Cineworld’s Secret Screening programme, whereby the film you’re going to watch is unveiled with the BBFC card after the ads and trailers. So the least I could do was give it a go, what with being already settled in to my favourite seat and half way through a coffee*¹.

SHORT

We open with a separate, five-minute short, Carl’s Date, which sees the elderly protagonist from Disney/Pixar’s Up asked out on a date by Ms Meyers from her nursing home. After initially panicking over the morality of his acceptance while still having his late wife’s picture on the mantlepiece, he’s convinced to follow this up by his dog, Dug.

What follows is an extended farcical montage as Carl realises he’s completely forgotten what he’s supposed to do on a date. This in itself is amusing enough, but the rock-solid heart of the piece comes from seeing the relationship between Carl and Dug (skewed of course by the fact that although Dug has a means of physically speaking to Carl, he still thinks like a dog).

The compacted run-time doesn’t allow for any slack, so writer/director Bob Peterson is incredibly focused on what he has to achieve and pulls the whole thing off masterfully. Carl’s Date also shows way more sincerity and comic inventiveness than the feature which it precedes, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves…

MERRY GO

And so onto Elemental. We open in Element City, a bustling metropolis peopled by anthropomorphised air, fire, earth and water. Each of these features the physical bonuses and drawbacks of their lineage, and we see how the ‘tribes’ come to settle into localised communities while still making up the cohesive city as a whole.

The story follows Ember Lumen (voiced by Leah Lewis), a fire elemental who dreams of taking over her elderly father’s ‘fire goods’ store once he retires. After a meet-cute with a city inspector who’s a water elemental (Wade Ripple, voiced by Mamoudou Athie), their frustrated lives become intertwined. But how can fire and water ever hope to mix?*²

With the setup firmly established, cue lots of scripted and visual puns (seriously, those character names are the tip of an iceberg), interspersed with Thomas Newman’s placeholder score and some of the blandest incidental pop-soundtrack you’ve ever wanted to stab biros into your own ears to stop listening to.

BONASERA

Elemental is, in its first act, a heavy-handed metaphor for the New York immigrant-experience of the Liberty Island-era; a tale about how cultural differences aren’t obstacles to divide us, but opportunities for partnership and collaboration. And admittedly this message is probably more relevant than ever, but for a film which is 80% metaphor, the script is remarkably linear.

It doesn’t help that the story gets bored exploring this idea and turns into a meet-the-parents comedy with added elements of class-divide and self-actualisation. Again, all of this is fine in itself, but Elemental’s screenplay was written by four people and feels like it. This is a diluted Inside Out, Zootropolis, and Onward, and as the film plays on the feeling quickly grows that you’ve seen it before.

FERRERA

Pixar’s visuals are solid of course, with backgrounds looking genuinely photo-realistic in certain lighting-states and physical textures exquisitely realised. The earth elementals (so usually looking like plants) are rendered as one would expect, but the visual over-engineering of air (so, clouds), fire and water elementals often feels more like an animation test-reel than the creation of properly memorable characters.

It’s also worth noting that the vocal performances are all over the shop here, even allowing for the random array of accents which are supposed to help the central premise along. Ember’s family are “Firish”, so half the time her apparently-first-generation father has a faintly Celtic twang, while in the rest he somehow sounds like a cross between Super Mario and Big Chief Sitting Bull. This undoubtedly undoes some of the good work that the movie’s setting out to bring.

Worse still, sadly, are the central turns from Lewis and Athie. Both are expressive enough as voice-performers, they just sound way too old for characters scripted like teenagers (even if they're probably supposed to be early twenties). Leah Lewis is 26, Mamoudou Athie is 34, and those years are written right into their voices. Neither feels cut out for the protagonist in a coming-of-age tale.

DRILLER KILLER

Don’t get me wrong, Elemental is an enjoyable enough hour and a half (note: there are no scenes during or after the credits) and means well to the point where its intention really cannot be faulted. It’s just the Disney-Mouse eating its own tail. It’s Pixar being so Pixar that the movie has next to no personality of its own.

The short film brought tears to my eyes. The long film did not. Elemental is still more technically accomplished and thoughtful than most other animation studios could produce, but when your self-set bar is this high, it’s no excuse for mediocrity…

CARL'S DATE:

ELEMENTAL:

*¹ Seriously, if it had been Gran Turismo I’d have bailed. You won’t be reading a review of that terrible-looking shite round these doors, summer-season or otherwise.
^{[ BACK ]}

*² Don’t worry, the film teases and teases and eventually goes on to answer this, and at the same time absolutely doesn’t.
^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Condorman

Condorman
Cert: U / 86 mins / Dir. Charles Jarrott / Trailer

Standing astride a cross-beam on one of the world's most prominent landmarks, Woodridge Wilkins fumbles for the activator button on his suit. Photographers wait below, disbelievingly eager for this new breed of hero to prove himself. Distant, mumbled shouts of... encouragement?... crowd his head and threaten to derail the absolute concentration needed. No. Shut them out. Silence. The time is now. Time to prove to the world that The Condor Man is indeed its saviour. That mistakes may have been made, but all in the name of progress. Of success. Of freedom.

Daring to look down for a fraction of a second, the concourse is full of gawping tourists not yet realising the importance of this moment in their lives. Activity is frantic, but Wilkins cannot discern it clearly because of the cumbersome nature of this iteration of his flight suit. He is certain it will fly this time, though. It has to fly. If Woody can't convince them of The Condor Man's significance, then his friend Harry will, he knows it. Good old Harry.

Everything which has happened has led to this point. Woody firmly thumbs the activator and leaps forward, wings unfolding into the arms of destiny.

The story begins...

One rather suspects that when Disney commissioned screenwriter Marc Stirdivant to adapt Robert Sheckley's The Game of X into a feature film, they'd expected the end-product to tap into the post-Superman zeitgeist and the ongoing Bond/Palmer/U.N.C.L.E. ethos simultaneously, giving a family-friendly entry point into action cinema. By the time director Charles Jarrot had joined the team, what they received instead was indeed this, but also one of the most brutally efficient examples of high-concept physical and psychological revenge-horror (and at several points, actual snuff-movie) of its era.

That the film owes no small amount to the likes of Scorcese's The King Of Comedy is a given (in development at the same time, writer Paul D Zimmerman was a close friend of Stirdivant) but it goes much further, surpassing subtext and suggestion, straying into territory only previously covered by Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre seven years earlier. An unlikely yet perfect casting choice, Michael Crawford channels pride, anger and ultimately fear into his performance as proto-incel Woody Wilkins, a socially introverted comic writer who escapes into his own fantasy as reality repeatedly stifles his dreams and crushes opportunities at every turn. Condorman is a blunt parable, showing us what happens when those two worlds collide. It presents its hero without judgement, but also without apology.

Damn Harry. Where was he? The man was supposed to be Woody's friend - his best friend - and now look what he'd gotten him into. A simple desk clerk at the CIA probably shouldn't have access to the information which Harry kept unearthing, but Wilkins was glad that he did. Or he had been glad at any rate. No one had been more surprised than Woody when a favour in delivering a package to a locally-based undercover cop had resulted in one of the city's largest drug busts. Woody's part in this had been hushed up of course, he was an undercover agent himself now.

And how. The hoodlum's neck hung limply in Woody's hands, snapped like a crusty baguette as his heart pumped out the last of its blood through a serrated hole in his sternum. That stain wasn't going to come out in a hurry. Four more similarly attired henchmen lay around the outside of the farmhouse. Convincing disguises - indeed, Morovich had even gone so far as recruiting a pair of old women for this gang - but the heavy villager's peasant clothes had impeded their ability to fight and The Condor Man had succeeded in this strand of his mission. "Send more, I'll kill more" he muttered. To himself.

Backup should have arrived by now, and it was a point of growing concern that there was no sign of the special ops team which Harry had assured him would be there to ease escape from a tight situation. Then again, Woody suspected that Natalia was playing her 'double agent' card a little too wildly, hedging her bets as to which side of the iron curtain to finally fall. If the 'former' spy had interfered in Harry's plans, that would put everyone in danger. This wasn't an insurmountable problem though, Woody could kill her easily enough if needs be...

Set within the extended flashback of The Condor Man's flight into the Paris skyline, Jarrott's film darts around a kaleidoscopic vision of Woody's domestic life - constantly demeaned and put-upon by an ageing but acerbic mother whom we hear but never see, causing us to wonder if she's just another figment of his imagination - and an unfolding backstory of the protagonist coming to believe he's a deep cover black-ops agent for the CIA. The reality that we're watching a man suffer a chemically-exacerbated breakdown and subsequent murder-spree is not fully clear until we see 'Harry' pleading that he barely even knows Wilkins for a third time in police custody.

But rather than use this darkly farcical setup as a prop for any sort of biting commentary (the film predates James Gunn's Super and Bobcat Goldthwait's God Bless America, both structurally and thematically similar, by almost three decades), Jarrott chooses to bring his creative vision closer to that of outright exploitation cinema, a genre which was in its death throes by the early 1980s. This was a definitively bold artistic choice at the time, and one which has ensured his film has only barely survived in terms of its notoriety alone. The fact that three stunt performers died during the intense fight-scenes ensured that there was a four year delay in Condorman coming to VHS. The fact that those scenes were somehow left in the edit ensured that it was instantly banned for another ten. Much like De Palma's Scarface, there are few characters to actually like here - even the most vulnerable are shown to be riven with moral weakness - and the key to salvaging any aesthetic satisfaction from this really lies in enjoying the majesty of a terrible thing done well.

Morovich dead. His goons dead. That lying, brazen, teasing, lying temptress... dead? Almost certainly, she couldn't have survived the blood loss. Good. And where were his thanks? Where were the parades and laudatory press columns and interview requests and Congressional Medals and just general fucking gratitude for all that he - that The Condor Man - had done? For the sacrifices he'd made in the name of freedom? Nowhere to be seen. He'd been sold out by those he'd sworn to protect. Well, so be it. It should hardly come as a surprise, yet the disappointment was no less tangible. It had been worth it, though. Those others, they needed to be stopped. Perhaps one last show of prowess was required. Perhaps the people need a super-hero, not a spy. Well okay, one last punt then.

Back midway up the Eiffel Tower we cut to a wide shot as Wilkins fumbles with his suit-activator button. We now see the reason he has been having trouble with it. 'Harry' - a man who works at the methadone clinic where Woody has been a service-user - is gagged and bound, his limbs crudely amputated, in a device which appears to be half-sack/half-harness on Woody's front. Screaming and wide-eyed, the counter assistant's constant terrified squirming has been threatening to pull Woody out of his reverie and off the steel beam. But even now that The Condor is ready to take flight, everyone knows the glider-suit cannot possibly take the weight and imbalance of two men, let alone one. Only death awaits; glory is an illusion just out of Woody's grasp. But ever the optimist, he has to try. The mechanism engages with a satisfying *clunk*.

The Condor Man takes flight.

Cut to black.

(Yes, the vast majority of the above is a sort of sarcasm, but Condorman is surprisingly good nonetheless.)

...and if you want to listen to some words about this film which take it far less seriously, are far more sweary and have All The Drink involved, here's a podcast version you might be interested in:

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: The Spaceman and King Arthur

The Spaceman and King Arthur
Cert: U / 93 mins / Dir. Russ Mayberry / Trailer

So many stars. Incredible. Since his earliest memories began, Tommy had always been fascinated by those myriad points of light. At first they were magical, a way to hold his fear of the dark at bay. Then came reason, school and the sciences, and he learned that they were gigantic balls of gas burning away in the galaxy, just like our own sun. By the time Tommy graduated astrophysics at Harvard, they were magical again. No amount of explanation or analysis could dull their power. Quite the opposite.

And he'd never in his life seen this many before. The constellations were familiar and all in place, but there were just... more, somehow. Stars where spaces should be as the familiar ones shone more brightly than ever. When Tommy had started work at NASA this had been his dream of course, but as a calibration technician it had seemed unlikely he'd ever get any closer to the stars than prepping the topmost levels of the launch towers.

But if his mom could see him now. Actually, it would have been faintly reassuring if he'd thought that anyone could see him now. He'd always been happy in his own company, and god knows that's a boon for any astronaut, but nothing could have prepared him for... this. Because there was now precisely no idea of how long this mission was going to take - relative-time or actual - and the experimental shuttle Stardust hadn't been build with claustrophobes in mind. The ceilings were low, the cockpit was tight and the windows were small. But so many stars.

Tommy wasn't looking out of the window. He was lying on top of the shuttle, helmet off, hands behind his head and staring up at the clearest sky he'd ever seen. Zero light-pollution, he imagined. Next to no chemical-pollution, too. If the readouts on the console were correct (and he'd drank enough beer with three of the guys who worked on the tech to know that was certainly questionable), the light-drive had worked and he'd travelled back in time. Precisely how far back remained to be seen, but the lack of light-pollution (after Tommy had put out the fires from his crash landing) would suggest 'significantly'.

The technician-turned-astronaut-turned-technician-again could begin the rest of his repairs at daybreak. For now, he could at least enjoy the view. Because every wondrous point of light was a welcome distraction from the one question which wouldn't go to sleep: how the fuck was Tommy Trimble going to get back home?

Released in 1979 under Disney's Buena Vista label for more adult-fare, The Spaceman And King Arthur is a textbook example of the frenzied genre-mashing that occurred as Hollywood transitioned its modus operandi from Historical Fantasy Farce (Robin Hood, The Sword In The Stone, Zorro - all high on action and cheap to produce) to the science-fiction craved by audiences in the era of the moon landings, Star Trek and Kubrick's 2001.

Pressure was on the studios to maximise profit margins with the imagination of the latter for the price of the former. Together, director Russ Mayberry and writer Don Tait quickly found that the best way to achieve this was literally combining the two. And so a re-tooling of Mark Twain's 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was brought into being, albeit with one more key thematic ingredient which was kept out of the marketing.

This was, in fact, closer to Weird Tales alumni Robert Bloch's own twisted take on the story from 1934, Dead On Time, which received praise in the pages of that pulp journal but ruffled few feathers elsewhere. Nevertheless, Mayberry had Disney's studio staff scour second-hand bookshops and public libraries to buy, barter and often steal as many remaining copies as possible, so that the reveal occurring precisely half way through the film's 93-minute runtime would come as a surprise to audiences...

The language barrier was maddening. At times it was close to non-existent and at others - now, specifically - it was like being in a different country. Then Tommy remembered, he was in a different country. But they'd invented English for crying out loud, why did some of them have so much trouble speaking it?

"And trulie thy hae no kinge in thy lande?" Gawain looked genuinely uncomprehending, like a dog cornered with a geometry problem.

"That's right, no king. I thought we'd been through this? We've got a president, okay? Although I assure you it doesn't always feel like a better solution..."

"But how dost thy peoples pertain to lawes? Who ist to keepe charge in ye--"

"Look, it's a long story okay? Not always pleasant, but nowhere near as messy as France!"

"Sire, didst thou-- Ist thon visitor from France? A spy perchance?"

King Arhur waved his deputy down. "Fear not, Sir Gawain, there will be time for this later." He turned to Tommy. "In the meantime traveller, perhaps you would be so kind as to furnish us with an explanation of how exactly you appeared in my kingdom, on the day after the firestorm, approaching my castle unbidden in such strange tunic and bearing the severed head... of a dead-ite?"

Tommy sighed, hung his head and looked up under his brow. "Well, I was kinda hoping you could fill me in on that last part, yourself." He eyed the sack at Gawain's feet, and the seepage still oozing from it. "Looks like you need a pest-controller, and your magic-man in the dress over there doesn't seem to want to get his hands dirty. Now are you going to let me help, or are you going to let me go?"

Merlin and Gawain bristled, although King Arthur was more sanguine having already seen to the heart of the problem. Alisande stifled a smile; this stranger's insolence was breathtaking. Tommy, however, was rapidly running out of patience, not least because he knew there were hundreds more of those things shuffling their way toward the castle. And they didn't care about monarchical hierarchy either...

And surprise, it did. The opening week saw hundreds of thousands of parents take their young charges to the cinema for a wholesome romp through Arthurian legend in the company of a beloved cast of British Comedy Royalty. So when the Army Of The Dead broke their way into Camelot, beheading, disembowelling and just eating anything in their path, queues quickly formed at the box office again - this time for refunds. But the damage had been done. This next generation of filmgoers had witnessed the most visceral, adrenaline fuelled trolley-dash through historical terror that Disney would ever put their stamp on...

Recalled and banned by the MPAA and the BBFC alike, it would be another twenty years before The Spaceman And King Arthur saw a domestic release; and even this was as a region-free unofficial transfer of a recovered print on an independent Italian DVD label. By this time critical culture had hardened itself to horror-crossover fare, and Disney responded by releasing a sanitised cut of the film, claiming this had always been the director's intention.

A 2003 interview in the Radio Times with supporting actor Rodney Bewes belied this however, as he recalled "We had the best fucking time on that set! Getting paid for sliding around in pigs' innards every day, lashing it at the banquet table every night, and knowing there was no way it'd get too far out of the gate to damage our careers? I don't give a shit about Merlin, that's real magic..."

The figure limped down the stone-walled corridor, its rasps of effort fizzing in the air like a hundred bats' wings. The eyes seemed to glow as its stare fixed Tommy, although he knew this was an illusion created by the flaming sconces which lit the wall between strategic arrowslits. The remains of its jaw grated and sprayed rotting flesh, as the creature hissed air it no longer needed to breathe. Dear god, it was trying to speak...

"Trri-i-i-innn... Tri-i-innnd..." It lifted an accusing finger at the spaceman as its broadsword trailed from the other hand.

"This is what you wanted Mordred, you dumb shit!" Tommy crowed, with a swagger he didn't feel. He just knew that even now, the best way to defeat this darkest of knights was to use its own anger against it. "This is your prize! You command the Army of the Dead now! But did you seriously think they were going to let you do that while you were still alive??" Tommy almost felt sorry for Mordred. The transformation process had taken six days, and reports had come in of his screams for all of those. Merlin was the army's necromancer - in some ways its creator - but he didn't control them. Mordred, on the other hand, had been hamstrung by his own ambition. Again. Well, if he was too stupid to learn a lesson, that was hardly Tommy's fault. The least this boy could do was help out everybody by trying to teach him again.

Suddenly a sharp inhalation - again unnecessary, the last vestiges of human reflex echoing through Mordred's reanimated remains - as the former-knight and perennial-asshole snapped into a ninety degree fighting stance, sword raised in front of him in a two-handed grip. This sudden jerk had opened the rotting gash in Mordred's stomach - a wound from the last time they fought which would now never heal - and a clump of shrivelled innards flopped its way noisily onto the flagstones with a comet's trail of maggots in its wake. Mordred didn't even notice.

Shit. Merlin was controlling him now. With the wizard's guile, the warrior's reflexes and no capacity to feel pain, this was going to be trickier than before. Hand-to-hand combat was out of the question. Tommy reached around to the rear of the harness made for him by Alisande's father the saddler, retrieved his newly tar-powered flame thrower, and flipped the ignition.

Barbecue twice in one week?

Fuck it, Tommy was on holiday after all...

(Yes, the review above is mostly sarcasm. The actual film is staggeringly unfocused.)

...and if you want to listen to some words about this film which take it far less seriously, are far more sweary and have All The Drink involved, here's a podcast version you might be interested in:

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Frozen 2

Frozen 2 (Spoilers / Language warning)
Cert: U / 103 mins / Dir. Jennifer Lee & Chris Buck / Trailer



With much fanfare and much expectation comes the first, full-length, sequel to Disney's 2013 smash, Frozen. And it's fine. To be clear, compared with a lot of other animated content around at the moment, it's pretty great. But for a tentpole Disney production - it's fine. The animation is fantastic and the voice-performances are note-perfect, but the storyline is slight and more than a little fairytale-autopilot, while the songs just aren't as finely crafted this time round (although they're mercilessly over-produced all the same, and feature more key-changes than a drunk locksmith*¹).

Jennifer Lee pens the screenplay and is assisted by co-director Chris Buck with the story. But they're also joined by three other writers for that story, and that shows. Mainstay characters from the first film are relegated to supporting-status, with other smaller roles drafted in as points of familiarity. It never 'doesn't work', but feels as if it's not really putting in the effort, like a Disney writers-room trying to hit all the same notes as last time without stopping to consider what made the song so special to begin with. Olaf - the comic-relief character - has the most touching moment of the whole movie.

If you were to stack up all the amazing Disney standalone and part-one movies even from the last decade, then make a separate pile of comparable follow-ups, how close to 'even' do you think they would be? And so it proves. Coasting on charm and visual gags, this latest seat-warmer is enjoyable enough in a disposable way, but it's definitely a bolted-on sequel rather than a narrative continuation. Disney are better than this and Frozen deserves more. Either stick to spin-off shorts or just give Olaf his own feature-length adventure, you cowards.

And is the repeated (and apparently demonstrated) insistence from certain characters that "water has memory" a message to impressionable children from a US-based global media giant pertaining to the wonders of homeopathy? You can fuck right off, Bob...*²

Well, y'know, Frozen.



If you have padawans tugging your sleeve, sure.



It is.



Nah.



Likely.



There isn't but that default hawk-screech is there.



Level 1: The voices of LT-319, K-2SO, Kit Fisto and Cham Syndulla are in this.





*¹ And credit where it's due, Christoph's Peter Ceter-a-long number 'Lost In The Woods' with its accompanying power-ballad video is hilarious - one would hope intentionally so. But the bottom line is that it's not even as catchy as Cetera's songs. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Seriously, I tried to frame the homeopathy thing like a joke and it doesn't really read like a joke and the more I think about it I don't even care. That is the vibe I kept getting from the film. Repeatedly. ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: The Lion King (2019)

The Lion King (2019, 3D)
Cert: PG / 118 mins / Dir. Jon Favreau / Trailer



Here we are, just over half-way through 2019, and already Disney have given us three Marvel Cinematic Universe entries, and alongside Dumbo and Aladdin, three live-action*¹ retoolings of classic animated tales, too. Is this a sustainable rate?

GENERATIONS

To be absolutely clear, this film is a straight-up remake of 1994's The Lion King, songs and all, a piece beloved by generations and now presented in a new, shiner form. First and foremost, credit is undoubtedly due for the way the movie looks. It is flawless. And while we should be able to take that as a given with any Disney output by this point, it really can't be emphasised enough: This is an animated film and film and It. Looks. Flawless. This level of CGI was barely imaginable only a couple of decades ago, and yet here we are.

But are the visuals enough? Well it's certainly true that Jon Favreau's new rendering doesn't add anything to the original story. It even takes away some of the cartoonish, excitable charm perhaps, but audiences coming to this version as their first will still have a great time. The story and characterisation are clearly laid out*² and there's no shortage of action, spectacle and laughs. Then again, how much does this need to add to the existing mythos? Well, only as much as The Lion King ever 'needed' to be remade in the first place. Which is to say not a lot.

NEMESIS

The big draw is the return of James Earl Jones as the voice of Mufasa*³, and he does well opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor as his nemesis, Scar (although the latter often sounds distractingly like the former, particularly in later scenes where they aren't sharing the screen). Meanwhile, Big Simba is voiced by Donald Glover, with Beyoncé as lioness Nala. And it's here that the movie stumbles once again. If anything, the photorealistic nature of the visuals can't accommodate the expressive nature of the the pair's voices. While both are demonstrably great performers, their relaxed - almost street - delivery just doesn't gel with the lions they're portraying. It's not unlike like that time Favreau had Bill Murray be the voice of a bear when it clearly should have been John Goodman.

Pumba and Timon remain a highlight, voiced by Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner respectively, in a turn which echoes Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key in Toy Story 4. And I confess that I did get goosebumps during their rendition of The Lion Sleeps Tonight, if only because I'm a sucker for a capella*⁵.

OCTONAUTS ROLLERCOASTER ADVENTURE

Truth be told though, I think I'd have found a non-musical version of the film more engaging (although looking back, that's exactly what I said about the original, too). Sure, the tunes are iconic and award-winning and well-known, but their inclusion in 2019 seems to hold the whole thing back, resulting in nothing more than a pristine remake, rather than bringing anything new on a narrative or emotional level*⁶.

The Lion King is entertaining and it looks utterly amazing, but active enjoyment will hinge on your feelings toward the hand-animated version. And even then this will feel like less to some degree. The bottom line is that with visuals this lifelike overlaid with human voices, we're all in Johnny Morris's fever-dream, now.

Oh and Circle Of Life is basically The Power Of Love.
There. I said it.

...The Lion King.



For the visuals, definitely.



If you're making a point of racking-up all the new Disney retoolings, sure.



It's not, though.



That's entirely possible.



There isn't.



Level 1: So wait, Darth Vader is Lando Calrissian's dad now, and Rio Durant is telling them and Kit Fisto what to do? Okay.

But all those desert dunes with not a dewback in sight? For shame, Ian Disney, for shame…





*¹ Yeah, yeah. Let me join the chorus in saying that while The Jungle Book had a live-action Mowgli, the rest was essentially CGI, and so by extension The Lion King is a flat-out animation. But I'll get to that... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Although let's be fair, The Lion King's storyline itself has always been pretty slight. 1) Little Simba gets tricked, 2) Little Simba goes away for literally years and turns into Big Simba, 3) Big Simba comes back, 4) Big Simba has a fight, 5) That is the end thank you very much for your money. There are no extra layers or interweaving subplots in either this or the 1994 version (although Favreau has managed to make his one thirty minutes longer, all the same). It's just a very linear series of events with some basic life-lessons about not being a dick. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Look, I get that the lions talk, and I get that they still growl and roar in some places to give emphasis. But there are sections of sound-mixing here where the growling and the talking noticeably overlap each other. They're not blended, they're just running at the same time. Are these special lions with two sets of vocal cords, then?*^{4 [ BACK ]}

*⁴ Although the keen-eared among you will recall that there are scenes in the first Star Wars trilogy where Darth Vader's ventilator can be heard separately breathing in and out behind his speech. And bear in mind that when you or I talk, we're only breathing outward. This implies that Vader has a secondary set of artificial lungs to take care of this body functions, while his own damaged ones can just about handle the 'barking-orders' stuff. Perhaps Mufasa's twin-throats are an homage to Darth Vader?. I should coco... ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁵ No, not that a capella, I mean good a capella. The kind where I don't want to stab someone during or after it. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁶ But keep in mind, my main bugbear with The Jungle Book was all the promo-press touting the movie as 'a re-imagining', rather than a remake. Which could have worked until Disney just left two of the songs in for the hell of it, meaning that they were remaking their own version after all. Unless those were the original songs penned by Rudyard Kipling, of course... ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Toy Story 4

Toy Story 4 (Spoilers. No seriously, SPOILERS.)
Cert: 12A / 100 mins / Dir. Josh Cooley / Trailer



Well, the rule of sitcoms has always been that after the difficult third series, you just make a movie where you send the characters on holiday. And since the powers-that-be have started doing that for animated movies now, who are Pixar to argue?

SHORT

Toy Story 4 picks up some short amount of time after the third entry, with young Bonnie now the custodian of the toys and about to start kindergarten. When she fashions a new pal, Forky, made from pipe cleaners and a plastic spork, he's slightly neurotic although begins to fit in with Woody, Buzz and the gang. But things go awry during a road trip when Forky becomes lost, Woody goes on an adventure to rescue him, and meets an old friend in the process...

Clocking in almost a quarter of a century after the first entry, Pixar's fourth full-length chapter in the Toy Story series can hardly be accused of being a quick cash-in. The studio's quality levels are (usually) high, and they're one of the few safe bets when it comes to animated entertainment - not only working to ensure the film takes all the time it needs to be created, but also that it tells a story worth watching.

BANG

Concentrating more on high-adventure this time rather than heart-melting nostalgia, the animation here is better than ever (even if Andy still looks weird), with the photo-realistic scenery and smoothly-moving, well sculpted and weighted models*¹ you'd expect from an industry leader. The pacing is brisk, the stakes are reliably high, Andrew Stanton and Staphany Folsom's script is tight and often laugh-out-loud funny, although it's notable that those moments usually come from the newly introduced characters (Forky, Duke Caboom, Ducky & Bunny). On that subject, it's also good to see Disney/Pixar embracing the idea of more sinister dolls*², although it feels a little Goosebumps at times.

The old gang are present, correct and on-character (as far as they're used - this is very much Woody's show), but tend to bring wry smiles rather than outright guffaws. Despite the frequent action, the film doesn't have the peril of previous adventures (although Toy Story 3 really pushed that to its limit anyway), but it's still great.

Toy Story 4 is an enormous amount of fun, but is it more that that?
More to the point, does it need to be?

CASH

Although it's been asked countless times since the film was first announced, the question isn't so much 'does the Toy Story series need a new chapter?', more 'now that two Lego movies have taken the idea of sentient toys in parallel interacting realities and moved it on a notch, is there still a story to be told with Woody and Buzz?'. The Lego movies don't have the emotional punch of the Toy Story ones, but they seem more adept at making broader, more societal points.

On an entirely smaller level, it feels a bit wrong where the toys band together to control the RV in the final act, wresting control from the human driver. The Toy Story films have always played with the 'just out of sight' motif - it's not as if the toys can't move when people are just watching, they just have the discipline not to - but the tension has previously arisen from the 'OMG will they be seen?' moments. In Toy Story 4, our heroes are pretty much running around in plain sight, and by the end almost causing a fatal traffic accident. If I want that, I'll watch Gremlins, thanks.

BRAVO

There also appear to be a couple of glaring tonal mis-steps in the final moments (even though these are thoroughly cued up by the preceding film). When Woody chooses a life as a 'lost toy' with Bo Peep and is assured by Buzz and Jessie that "Bonnie will be alright", doesn't this completely undercut the final scene in Toy Story 3? Woody was going to be the one toy that Andy kept and took to college, the lone memento of his childhood. He's been Andy's action companion throughout the years who's now earned a comfortable retirement, as adulthood beckons but with one nostalgic eye on the formative past. When Andy sees Bonnie's face light up on discovering Woody at the bottom of the box, he knows that Woody's adventures can now continue in new hands, that it's okay to let his favourite cowboy go knowing he'll be fulfilling his purpose all over again. So then we fast-forward a few months and what? Woody's picking up dustballs in the closet while Bonnie plays with plastic cutlery? Is that all Woody counts for? Is that all the affection Bonnie can manage? She got these toys for free and she treats them like trash, no wonder she makes her own ones from the bin, the entitled little shit. Bonnie deserves to play in garbage. There, I said it.

But it's not just the kid who's to blame here*⁴. With Bo Peep assuring Woody that kids lose toys every day and that Bonnie will quickly get over it, not only is Bo underlining the point above about the kid's attention span, she's also ignoring the very point of the previous three films, surely? Bo abuses the goodwill of her previous relationship with Woody to get him to gainsay his own golden rule - a toy must be there for their kid. Bo's own abandonment issues have morphed into soft-spoken nihilism over the years, and now she's passing on her blithely hedonistic manifesto to any toy she encounters. As a cowboy, Woody symbolises the hardworking optimism which forged America's early days - the truth, compassion and family values which Woody has preached throughout the series. Now Disney (of all people) are showing us how easily these can be disregarded in the 21st century, and ultimately how replaceable we all are*³.

HALLOWEEN H

Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy Toy Story 4. But I’m happy to join the consensus on this one and be like “Great work guys, now stop”.

Although fair play to Pixar for making a movie showing a young black girl getting lost in a fairground at night then being reunited with her parents, and not having her wear a Michael Jackson's Thriller t-shirt. Don't think I'd have been able to resist, especially with Jordan Peele in the voice-cast...

Well, the Toy Story flicks.



It is.



It is.



It's not but let's be fair, that's a very high bar.



It's possible.



Not that I heard.



Level 1: The voices of Major Bren Derlin and BB-8 are in this, and it shares a writer with Star Wars Resistance.





*¹ And yes, I would totally buy a three-pack of 3¾"-scale Combat Carl figures in their different fatigues. Yes please. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Although on that subject, I don’t think that Gabby Gabby earns her redemption here. She spends more than half the movie wanting to disable the hero and is just one of those weird old toys to begin with. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ If you think this is harsh, don't even go near my ideas on what The Boss Baby is really about… ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ Although it is largely the kid. ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Aladdin (2019)

Aladdin (2019) (3D)
Cert: PG / 128 mins / Dir. Guy Ritchie / Trailer



Well, it’s the retooling that nobody clamoured for, but as part of Disney’s programme of self-exploitation we got it anyway. Aladdin is in live-action. Or as close to live-action as any adventure movie gets these days. To add an extra note of caution, this particular iteration is helmed by Guy Ritchie – a dynamic and talented film-maker who is also responsible for the atrocious King Arthur.

Yet somehow, Aladdin's okay. Very good in places, very ordinary in others. Distracting enough fun for a first-time audience, but the Disney magic just isn’t consistent enough.

MANIC

Naturally, there was some consternation when Will Smith was announced as the Genie previously played by Robin Williams. While some of the manic delivery still lingers in the writing of the part, the CGI animation now employed means that he actually channels Jim Carrey in The Mask more than he does Williams. That said, there appears to have been some sloppiness between filming the Genie’s scene-surrounds and interactions, and actually recording Smith’s head against a greenscreen to drop in afterwards. The problem being that the eyeline between Aladdin and the Genie doesn’t quite match up whenever Smith wears the blue makeup, so it really feels like he was in another room. The sections of the movie where Smith has his own skin-tone don’t suffer from this at all, so make of that what you will.

But the extra half hour of run-time when compared to the 1992 animation certainly allows the story to breathe more freely, slowing down the often irritating pacing of that beloved original*¹. And it’s worth noting that while the live-action version also opens with a framing device as a nod to its forebear, it also remembers to return to this at the close of the film.

WILLY

Mena Massoud is a solid lead in the title role, although there’s the feeling that he’s somehow constrained by the part. The real breakout from all of this though is Naomi Scott as Jasmine. I’m not usually one for bigging up musical numbers, but Scott’s vocals here are absolutely outstanding. She’s got a classical stage-voice which is bigger than the rest of the film. She's going to be huge and this is a great calling-card.

Ultimately, Aladdin is a very pretty and thoroughly unnecessary way to spend two hours (if you’re a punter) or $183m (if you’re Ian Disney).

It should be awful and it isn’t. I’m absolutely fine with that.

In terms of what Disney took and what they ended up giving, The Jungle Book.



For the spectacle, sure
For the feeling, not so much.



If you've got padawans who are interested, sure.



Let's not get carried away.



Entirely possible, yes.



There isn't. I mean, would it have been too much trouble to drop the Jedha Kyber Crystal Temple into one of the wide-shots? Really? How about a couple of Dewbacks, then?

Still, that poster's a complete 'homage' to The Force Awakens so that's something I guess.



Level 1: The voice of K2-SO is in this.





*¹ Full disclosure: I only watched the 1992 version for the first time a couple of nights before seeing this. No previous agenda behind that, it's just the way things worked out over the years. Anyway, the animated film feels rushed in its execution and performances, and frankly not all that. Do not 'at' me. ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.