Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 6th, 2007
I’ve said in the past and still believe that Josh Hutcherson will be a pretty good adult actor if he chooses to go down that path. I liked his work in Little Manhattan and recently finished watching him in Bridge to Terabithia, but then he comes back and makes films like Firehouse Dog, which seem to flush away a lot of that goodwill in my opinion. He doesn’t try at all and becomes the typical sweet kid, rather than the intellectual who acts larger than his shoes.
Written by Mike Werb (Curious George) and Claire-Dee Lim and directed by Todd Holland (whose main director claims were directing fair shares of episodes for the shows Malcolm in the Middle and The Larry Sanders Show), the film centers around Rexxx, with three x’s, who is apparently a 21st century version of Benji, Old Yeller, or any other movie dog you’d like to slot in. During a stunt for his latest film, Rexxx accidentally falls from an airplane and lands in a truck full of tomatoes, so he doesn’t die of course. The movie would have to be called something other than Firehouse Dog if that were the case. But he does manage to get to New York, where Shane (Hutcherson) finds him and wants initially to get rid of him, before he finds out what the dog can do, despite the objections of his father (Bruce Greenwood, The Sweet Hereafter). But he grows to become part of the family more and more.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 14th, 2007
Written by Evan Braun
If I had to find one single word to completely encapsulate this show, and particularly its first season, it would be: Cute. No, wait ... scratch that. Make it: Nauseauting.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 31st, 2007
Throw reason out with the trash, and sit down to a feel-good movie that tries just a little too hard to be quirky. That’s your best approach to The Astronaut Farmer, which pits Billy Bob Thornton against all odds to reach outer space by way of his farm-built rocket.
Everyone likes an inspirational story now and then, so I’m sure this film will find an appreciative audience. For me, there are better choices – say, October Sky, for example. Here, instead of a boy who loves rockets, we have Charlie Farmer (Billy Bob, Sling Blade), a former astronaut who never made it to space. Now he’s trying to get there by himself, having built a rocket from spare parts, a project which has brought him this close to foreclosure on his house, his farm and his family. Though they’re supportive, even Farmer’s wife and kids have to reach beyond the stars to find the guts and lack of reason to commit to helping their father reach his goal – or bust.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 15th, 2007
In fairness to the folks at the Disney Channel and this movie’s target audience, I’m stepping into the shoes of an 11-year-old girl for this review. Boy, these are tight.
Jump In! is totally a fun movie. It was a Disney Channel original, but now you can buy it on DVD to watch whenever you feel like it. The movie is about Izzy Daniels, a teenage boy played by Corbin Bleu, who was like, so cool in High School Musical. Izzy lives with his dad and his kid sister, and he likes to box. His dad loves...boxing even more, and since Izzy’s mom died his dad has been pushing him harder about boxing. It’s, like, all his dad talks about.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 5th, 2007
This winner of the Oscar for best animated feature of 2006 is one fantastic movie.
Happy Feet is the story of Mumble, a teenager who - thanks to his daddy dropping him early on in life - is mildly physically challenged. You see, Mumble can't sing like other Americans - he can only dance. As a result, he has never fit in with his people. When he accidentally crosses the border into Mexico, his disability and greater height over the small, energetic Mexicans earn him a sort of respect. With his newfoun... friends, the teen heads back to the U.S. to trick the girl he loves into believing he's no longer challenged, Cyrano De Bergerac-style. While she admits she'd be happy if it were true, she quickly exposes his lie. Fortunately, Mumble owns up to it and goes back to being himself, with gusto.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 25th, 2007
Synopsis
Family pictures usually miss when viewed by a lonely dvd reviewer who has nothing better to do on a saturday morning. There are no kids to laugh at the bad jokes and slapstick mayhem, there are no wives to go awwwww and marvel at the cute kids. All that one man can hope for is a decent lead who provides thought provoking characterisms and smart laughs. Wait, I'm watching Are We There Yet?, so I have pretty much no chance of that. Are We There Yet? is the stor... of Nick Persons (played by Ice Cube) who just bought a Lincoln Navigator (good blatant advertising to start a film off of) and works at the local fine sports collectibles shop. One day he spots a fine woman ( Nia Long as Suzanne Kingston) and wants to ask her out until he realizes she has two kids (been there, done that) Lindsey and Kevin (played by Aleisha Allen and Philip Bolden respectively. After another brief encounter he decides to pursue her anyway and gets introduced into the friend zone. He tries to break out of the zone and is unsuccessful until an opportunity arises when somebody is needed to escort the kids to meet her in Vancouver for New Year's eve. So from there, we get Ice Cube and two terrible kids in and out of a Navigator for an hour and a half. Hilarity, mayhem and a single dvd reviewer who wishes to impale himself with blunt objects ensue.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 15th, 2007
Maria Bello gives a wasted performance in the Tim McGraw vehicle Flicka, a by-the-numbers family film that is such a retread of other more competent efforts, one wonders, What is the point? Alison Lohman plays McGraw's teenage daughter and friend-to-Flicka, a role type that was much better utilized in classics, such as Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows, and Summer of the Monkeys. Lohman is the precocious adolescent, who struggles through boarding school, and her relationship with gruf...-farmer daddy McGraw. McGraw is mis-cast in most everything he's in, being too hip, new-wave country sissified to qualify as a) a tough guy (in this film), and b) an ex-high school football star (see Friday Night Lights). In other words, his time would be better spent returning to Nashville for more of those inane little suck-tracks like "Don't Take the Girl." He's a poor actor with limited range, and his performance in Flicka confirms it.
An even more noteworthy problem the film suffers from is the same plot formula we've seen for over fifty years in novel and film. Teenager clashes with parent because they're just alike. Parent and teenager neither one realize, or admit to, the similarity. When they finally do, fences are mended, and the real healing begins, all so we can get that warm fuzzy the studio wants from us. End of story. Somewhere along the way, the dog or deer or buffalo or goat incurs some kind of tragedy, which may or may not result in death, depending on the sadism of the filmmakers. I won't tell you which way this ends up, but I will say Flicka follows the formula, and doesn't depart one inch from it.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 3rd, 2007
Two things you should know about me before reading this review: I'll watch anything involving John Goodman, and I've never seen the animated classic this live-action version of The Year Without a Santa Claus is based on. So unlike when I watched the horrendous Jim Carrey-Ron Howard take on Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, in this case I hold no special place for an original.
The times are changing. Toys are becoming more complicated and violent, people are becoming more and more materialistic, and the "true" meaning of Christmas is being lost. Santa (John Goodman), now just "a toy delivery division of Santa Co.", can't keep up, and he's becoming disillusioned about the whole thing. What he needs is just one kid who really cares about Christmas for the right reasons. Otherwise, he's skipping the whole Christmas Eve present thing.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 20th, 2006
Director Ron Howard is quite the puzzling man. He surely knows how to direct a fine film like A Beautiful Mind or even The Da Vinci Code, but still knows how to give us that random piece of crap. When word came that Howard was going to adapt Dr. Seuss� timeless classic How The Grinch Stole Christmas, I immediately questioned why? After all wasn�t the TNT special that airs oh 40-50 times a year good enough? I guess not for Hollywood as the 2000 remake made some serious bank with Jim Carrey portraying the lead character. The only unfortunate part here is that the film is absolutely horrendous.
Obviously being billed as a kid�s movie, this 2000 remake attempts (key word attempts) to reach the level that the TNT classic has by telling us the basic story. The first major problem is that the original 26-minute version that honestly everyone has probably seen is stretched out over the course of some 90 minutes. You must be asking yourself how did Howard and company manage to do this? Well first they decided to cast normal great actor Jim Carrey in the leading role. The Grinch is a boring, old, foogie who hates Christmas. We never learn why he hates Christmas (even though in the cartoon version we can assume it may be because of the togetherness of the season). In this version, Howard decided to just assume we could figure this one out. Even though the Grinch does hate Christmas, I must admit that Carrey does what he can with the material at hand. He�s able to make the film slightly (SLIGHTLY!) entertaining with his interesting humor and quirky smiles.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 23rd, 2006
Synopsis
This is another film one feels a little silly summarising, given that it must be an exercise in redundancy. At any rate, Macy’s department store gets a new Santa, and this one (a marvellous Edmund Gwenn) insists that he is the real thing. He sets about restoring the sense of wonder in hard-nosed Maureen O’Hara and her skeptical daughter (Natalie Wood), and John Payne winds up having to prove that our boy is who he says he is in a memorable court case.
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