Animation
The Angry Birds Movie
Director: Clay Kaytis & Fergal Reilly (2016)
After a history of plundering plays, books, games and toys for inspiration, Hollywood has gone the whole hog and made a film based on a smartphone app.
And though The Lego Movie (2014) is a great example of how unpromising material can inspire awesome cinema, this animated effort featuring birds fighting pigs is a bird-brained bore.
It’s bright, colourful, busy and noisy but far less fun than the game ever was.
Scenes eke out their jokes with violent slapstick for the little ones and sneering sarcasm for the teens. Plus there’s snot, wee, a multitude of wriggling bums and a bizarre singing cowboy sequence.
Jason Sudeikis voices the charmless Red, a lonely bird who gets angry when his feathers are ruffled.
He lives in a colony of cute flightless birds on a tropical island.
After a disastrous attempt at delivering a birthday cake, Red is sent to anger management class.
Because kids always find therapy jokes funny.
One day a steampunk pirate ship arrives with a crew of green pigs offering the trotter of friendship.
Red is given the bird by his compatriots when he questions the pigs motives.
He is proved right when the pigs kidnap the islander’s precious unhatched eggs. The swines.
So Red must come up with a plan and save the eggs’ bacon, without making a pigs ear of it and before their goose is cooked.
The soft boiled script relies heavily on crashing action and a scrambled mix of rap, rock and disco to capture the pointless freneticism of playing the game, but the tone is aggressive point scoring rather than giddy silliness.
And it all feels underdeveloped, presumably a consequence of trying to rush the movie into cinemas before everyone moves onto the next must-have gaming app. Oh dear.
Josh Gad and Danny McBride voice Chuck and Bomb. The former has super speed and the latter explodes.
Maya Rudolph irritates as Matilda the hippy psychologist and Sean Penn growls as a menacing over sized bird involved in a weird romantic subplot.
These pigging awful birds can flock off.
★★☆☆☆
Ratchet And Clank
Director: Kevin Munroe (2016)
From Super Mario Bros. (1993) to Street Fighter (1995), Hollywood has a low scoring rate when trying to turn video games into cinema hits.
Never threatening the high score of soon to be remade Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) or Resident Evil (2002), Ratchet And Clank features a defective robot and an alien mechanic teaming up to save the universe.
Based on the game of the same name, this is a poorly assembled and malfunctioning sci-fi animated adventure.
More a sugar fuelled distraction than a coherent movie, it’s written for and possibly by attention deficit kids wide eyed on popcorn and fizzy drinks.
David Kaye voices Crank, a defective War-bot. Unlike his monstrously armoured production line robot siblings, he’s petite, prissy and pacifist.
Clank is scheduled for demolition by Paul Giamatti’s Chairman Drek. He’s employed Armin Shimerman’s evil scientist Doctor Nefarious to build an army of robot assassins to annihilate the Galactic Rangers.
The Rangers are a dim and trigger happy team of celebrity loving law enforcers, lead by the square jawed and muscle bound buffoon Captain Qwark, voiced by Jim Ward.
Crash landing on a distant world, Clank is rescued by Ratchet. Energetically voiced by James Arnold Taylor, he’s some sort of orange space fox.
A small mechanic with big dreams, Ratchet whisks his new friend away to warn the Rangers.
With the least possible attention to detail in the animation, character, plot or dialogue, it’s a manic, mirthless mash up of movie spare parts, many borrowed from the Star Wars films.
But sadly not just the good ones. There’s a planet destroying weapon and pod racing. Architecture is republican era Alderaan.
The script throws in jokes about selfies and hashtags in a futile bid to be relevant. At one point a robot henchmen chews up a smartphone as punishment.
For the intended audience it’s probably the most terrifying moment in the whole film.
The release date is presumably to capitalise on the UK Bank holiday, pitching itself at all the kids too young to see Captain America: Civil War (2016) or have already seen The Jungle Book (2016) and Zootropolis (2016).
Sylvester Stallone, Rosario Dawson and John Goodman offer recognisable names to tempt unwary parents with a mirage of quality.
It’s game over already for this wannabee franchise.
★★☆☆☆
The Jungle Book
Director: Jon Favreau (2016)
I’m the world’s foremost fan of Disney’s 1967 animated classic, so I had my claws out ready to savage this glossy remake.
But I was disarmed from my first footstep into this spectacular jungle, a terrifically realised mix of live action and state of the art CGI.
The astonishingly lifelike landscape are computer generated by the team who made sci-fi epic Avatar (2009). The animals are from The Lord Of The Rings (2001) WETA Workshop.
Next year’s Visual FX Oscar must surely be in the bag.
This warm hearted, fleet footed, big budget beast is a hybrid spliced from Rudyard Kipling’s novels, Uncle Walt’s original film and his company’s latter day smash The Lion King (1994).
It’s an exciting, funny and touching adventure, though perhaps too scary for the very little ones. Likeable characters are killed, though we never see the blood.
A confident and charming Neel Sethi plays resourceful man cub Mowgli, the only actor on screen.
Mowgli bravely chooses to leave his home and save his family from Shere Khan the tiger.
Idris Elba is tremendous as the clever and vicious villain. He’s blind in one eye and myopic in his pursuit of his prey.
Mowgli sets off to the man village accompanied by Bagheera the panther and Baloo the Bear.
Respectively played by Ben Kingsley and Bill Murray, the pair are enjoyably wise, brave and comic.
En route they encounter angry elephants, seductive snakes, stinging bees and aggressive monkeys.
As a representative of a now endangered species, from a 21st century perspective Shere Kahn almost qualifies as the good guy.
He’s a prophet of doom whose violent fate proves the accuracy of his apocalyptic predictions concerning the dangers to the jungle from the unfettered technology of man.
The script can’t bring itself to embrace the scar faced usurper despite being more far-seeing and independent minded to the allegiance pledging wolf pack. To a British ear the wolves behaviour is eerily fascistic.
Apocalypse is hinted at again in the Brando-esque introduction of the enormous King Louie, not an Orang utan but an outsized outspan Gigantopithecus. He commands an army from the ruins of a long dead civilisation.
Christopher Walken is an inspired and deranged casting choice and delivers a performance to match.
Scarlett Johansson and Lupita Nyong’o have small roles with the former’s husk put to effective use.
When Mowgli learns of the death of a loved one, he decides to return and confront his mortal enemy.
The soundtrack includes the fabulous songs The Bare Necessities and I Wan’na Be like You.
So follow the jungle drums down to the cinema for a swinging good time.
★★★★☆
Zootropolis
Director: Byron Howard, Rich Moore & Jared Bush (2016)
Spring an Easter surprise on your kids with this arresting animated tale of a crime busting bunny.
It’s a joyously bright eyed and bushy tailed adventure with a Disney heroine quite like no other.
Gone are the doll figured fairytale Princesss of old and replaced with a smart, sharp and agile doe who’s easily the equal to any buck. Or any other creature.
A small town rabbit with big time dreams, Judy Hopps goes against her cautious parents advice and enrols at Police academy before heading off to the soaring skyscrapers of Zootropolis.
It’s where animals of every stripe and hue live in mostly civilised harmony with none of that anti social eating of each other.
When Hopps’ reluctant chief gives her forty eight hours to crack the case of a missing Otter, it leads to the discovery of a plot to unleash the animal nature of every predator in the city.
She teams up with Nick Wilde, a streetwise Fox who opens her eyes to the challenges of living and working in the big city.
Far from being the dumb cute bunny she’s patronised as, Hopps is brave, hard working, and determined to be the best.
Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman are inspired casting and bring sparky humour, chemistry and the slightest hint of romance.
Idris Elba plays Chief Bogo, the buffalo chief of Police and offers a brilliantly concise and funny critique of Disney’s irritating mega smash Frozen.
J.K. Simmons plays the Lionheart the Mayor and singer Shakira is Gazelle, a famous beauty and singer of forgettable songs.
Being filled with charming invention make the laboured riffs on The Godfather and TV’s Breaking Bad all the more disappointing.
The script twists time and scale to comic effect and there’s a blue flower nod to the work of Philip K. Dick, which may well be a first for a mouse house movie.
Of course underpinning all the fun is a typical Disney message of universal tolerance and understanding, but don’t let that stop you having a thumper of a good time.
★★★★☆
Anomalisa
Director: Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson (2016)
Puppets and traditional stop motion animation are used bring this former stage play to surreal life.
It offers a bleak view of middle aged angst as it explores the different effects of the participants of a one night stand.
The puppets have an organic quality capable of great nuance, as well as being able to pee, smoke, drink and have sex.
David Thewlis and Jennifer Jason Leigh star as the voices of Michael and Lisa who meet in a hotel.
He is the principal speaker at a conference for call centre workers she is attending.
An unpleasant and practiced predator of weak and vulnerable women, Michael exploits his minor celebrity in world of customer service despite having a family at home.
The versatile Tom Noonan plays everyone else from the taxi driver to the concierge.
Beautifully lit and carefully framed, Michael moves in an isolated world of hotel rooms, bars, taxis and airports.
The frustration and mechanisation of modern life are symbolised by Michael’s purchase of an automaton from a toy shop for the discerning gentleman.
This technological dependance is pointed to as the prime cause for modern day isolation while also suggesting this is not a new phenomenon.
Using animation instead of live actors adds to the nightmarish tone but doesn’t compensate for the light plot.
And as arch observational humour slowly metamorphoses into the relentless glare of existential despair, it becomes a wearying watch.
★★★☆☆
Kung Fu Panda 3
Director: Jennifer Yuh Nelson & Alessandro Carloni (2016)
It’s re-enter the dragon warrior as martial arts most portly practitioner returns in his third animated action adventure.
Drawn on a spectacular epic canvas it combines a light hearted tone with a serious message about responsibility, family and achieving one’s potential.
There’s plenty of silly slapstick but no major laughs, relying heavily on the exuberance of Jack Black as Po, the reluctant hero panda of the title.
At home in the Valley of Peace, Po is reunited with Li Shan, his long lost biological dad, played by Bryan Cranston.
J.K. Simmons voices Kai, a giant ox like supreme warlord who’s returned from the spirit world and intent on stealing the everyone’s life force.
With his friends incapacitated, Po the former pupil must become a master and train up some wannabe karate kids to help defeat Kai.
If you enjoyed the first two then this will definitely err, panda to your taste.
The Good Dinosaur
Director: Peter Sohn (2015)
As plodding as the hero of the title, this prehistoric animated adventure is occasionally exciting, funny and sad, but never in any great measure.
Made by Pixar and released by Disney, it’s a middling effort which has made it to the screen after a difficult production.
History was changed 65 million years when an asteroid didn’t hit the earth and wipe out the dinosaurs.
They’ve evolved to speak, build houses and grow crops.
Arlo is a cowardly and dim Apatosaurus who after some reckless parenting, is lost in the wilderness.
He’s befriended by a brave caveboy nicknamed Spot and together they set off on the long trek home.
Raymond Ochoa whines and whimpers as Arlo and Jack Bright grunts and howls as Spot.
Episodic adventures follow one another and we’re invited to admire the magnificent vistas on the way. They are epic in scale, beauty and frequency.
Credited as ‘Volumetric Cloud Supervisor’, Matthew Webb does a stand up job styling the weather.
Meanwhile the sweeping herds of prehistoric wildebeests are sufficient to placate even the most intemperate guests of Torquay hoteliers.
There’s an unfortunate contrast between the stunning photo-realistic backgrounds and the cartoon cast of rubbery skinned, glass eyed dinosaurs of uncertain charm.
It’s distracting, as if Mickey Mouse popped up in a David Attenborough documentary.
The first director was sacked halfway through, the script was re-written and the cast almost completely replaced.
One character says ‘we must gather our crops before the first winter storm’ immediately after a winter storm. Just one example of a failure to iron out all the issues.
Minor characters are churned through the script before being forgotten.
With all this in mind it’s a marvel the film is as competent as it is.
Kids will love the game of whack-a-mole and adults will grin at the magic mushrooms reminiscent of Dumbo (1941).
Parenting orders are hammered home in heavy handed homilies by Jeffrey Wright‘s daddy dinosaur.
Obey your parents. Do your chores. Don’t play in the river. Do kill your enemies. Not very Disney that last one.
I felt lectured and wanted to rebel. And I’m a parent. Lord knows how children will respond to this.
There’s a strong Western vibe as the boy and his dog, sorry, dinosaur and his boy trek home to their farmstead.
As they meet cowboys along the trail, Sam Elliot adds his magnificent Texas drawl to a tall-tale telling Tyrannosaurus Rex.
He’s called Butch, a sly reference to the actor’s cameo in the classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).
The Good Dinosaur is neither brilliant or awful. Good is the operative word.
★★★☆☆
