Animation

Minions

Director: Pierre Coffin, Kyle Balda (2015)

Bask in the giggly yellow glow of the golden-hearted helpers of Despicable Me (2010) as they take centre-stage in this animated prequel.

Supremely silly from singing start to riotous finish, this fabulous fanfare of fun is your kids new favourite film.

Following their film-stealing role in Despicable Me 2 (2013) this is the third outing for the employees of wannabe super-villain Gru (Steve Carell).

Prior to working for Gru the minions have happily toiled for the most despicable figures of history; the Pharaohs, Napoleon and err, a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

But now in 1968 the minions are miserable without someone telling them what to do.

So Kevin, Stuart and Bob (all voiced by co-director Pierre Coffin) leave their brethren and set off to find a new master to serve.

A feast of frivolity follows as the innocents abroad search for a father-figure.

Kevin the tall one is the leader of the trio. Bob the youngest carries a teddy bear, Stuart plays guitar.

In Orlando the trio are employed by the world’s first female super-villain, Scarlet Overkill (Sandra Bullock).

She’s zooms about in nuclear-powered armoured dresses, lives in a castle and acts as if she’s the evil doppelganger of Lady Penelope from Thunderbirds.

Her inventor husband Herb (Jon Hamm), equips the yellow trio with a stretch suit, a hypnotising helmet and a lava lamp laser gun.

Scarlet instructs them to steal the crown of Queen Elizabeth II. The toothy monarch has nerves and fists of steel and enjoys a royal night out.

She’s voiced by Jennifer Saunders in easily her funniest comic performance.

Steve Coogan played Silas Ramsbottom in DM2, here he appears as a nutty Professor and a Tower Guard. Geoffrey Rush narrates.

Michael Keaton and Allison Janney have brief roles as Walter and Madge Nelson. Along with their baby-faced son they pick up our hitch-hiking heroes.

Elderly beefeaters, tea-drinking bobbies and fake moon-landing conspiracies bump against Arthurian legend as the jokes play fast and loose with history and geography.

Swinging London town is painted yellow to a soundtrack of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and suitably Donovan’s Mellow Yellow.

The familiar songs kick in to give oomph to the weaker action sequences suggesting a lack of confidence in certain scenes.

Although the tie-dye colours of the ’60’s make for a colourful spectacle, there’s no benefit gained from being set in 1968. Plus it makes Gru more a grandfather than a father to his adopted children.

That said the year feels like an idea abandoned halfway through production. It has no bearing on the plot and isn’t explored in depth – which is something of a relief.

Madcap chases and choreographed song and dance numbers are joyously created by the top class animation.

A hall of mirrors, the Palace of Westminster, Trafalgar Square and especially the feathering on Scarlet’s hair are all beautifully rendered.

My good-natured giggles regularly erupted into huge guffaws and if you don’t enjoy this movie, I’ll set my minions on you.

★★★★☆

Moomins On The Riviera

Director: Xavier Picard (2015)

Enjoy a well-earned staycation and avoid this slow sojourn to the sunshine of southern France.

This is the first full-length feature based on the Moomin comic strips by Tove Jansson and Lars Jansson.

The Moomins are strange, cow shaped-creatures – possibly trolls – from Finland. Moominpappa (Nathaniel Parker) wears a top-hat, Moominmamma (Tracy Ann Oberman) an apron and their son Moomin (Russell Tovey) goes without.

His sort of girlfriend Snorkmaiden (Stephanie Winiecki) wears nothing but an ankle bracelet but frets about showing off too much flesh when wearing a tiny bikini.

It’s a strange message to send – especially to kids as young as the presumed target audience. I doubt they’ll understand the mild social satire either. I’m not sure I did.

Living in the peaceful Moomin Valley they keep pets and plant potatoes. Moominpappa has worrying pyrotechnic tendencies which attracts the attentions of pirates.

After reading about the glamorous lives of celebrities, they sail to the French Riviera braving storms, sharks, sea urchins and an irritating stowaway en route.

Once there Moomin (Russell Tovey) is jealous when his girlfriend Snorkmaiden (Stephanie Winiecki) is romanced by the raffish Clark Tresco (Dave Browne).

Among the gossipy jet-set are stampeding gendarmes and starving artists. The Moomins suffer snobbery, fine art, cocktail parties, roulette and a duel.

The traditional hand-drawn animation has  a lovely innocent hand-drawn style and the music is jolly and vaguely familiar. But the weak jokes and gentle tone won’t prevent you from enjoying a decent snooze.

★☆☆☆☆

Frozen

Director: Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee (2013)

Wrapped up in sisterly love, this snow-filled Disney animated adventure is exciting, funny and even moving – but sadly never in sufficient qualities to justify it’s being nearly two hours long.

Apparently ‘inspired’ Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, it too often evades the dark icy heart of the fairytale.

Unapproachable Elsa (Idina Menzel) is the queen with the power to create snow and ice. She is a misunderstood and feared character who falls out with her sweet and ditzy sister Anna (Kristen Bell).

After Elsa accidentally uses her power, a summer instantly turns to permanent winter. She struggles to control her own magic so she is accused of being an evil sorceress and driven away into the mountains.

It is left to Anna to trek into the wilds, reconcile Elsa with her subjects and subdue the weather.

The animation is brilliant and the ice palace building sequence will send shivers down your spine. Lighthearted comic buffoonery balances the action which mostly involve being chased downhill by ice monsters and hungry wolves.

Along the way they make friends with comedy sidekicks including a mountain man called Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), his reindeer named Sven and Olaf (Josh Gad) a snowman. He’s the the most fun character on show but also the most inconsequential.

The annoying dialogue is, like, totally California teenspeak, except for Sven the reindeer, who is mute but a far from dumb animal.

The script has problems, not least the lack of a readily identifiable, hissable villain. Yes there’s a giant snow troll but the drama rests on Elsa changing her mind. A nicely dark opening chapter is followed by a long and middling middle section.

Plus Frozen has two feisty female characters but doesn’t make the most of them. We see too little of the more interesting Elsa and spend too much time with Anna contemplating her romantic interests.

 Elsa belts out the excellent song ‘Let It Go’ but two weak and unnecessary songs (yes I’m talking to you Olaf the snowman and you, tiny trolls) slow the pace and lengthen the running time.

Everything heats up for the finale and delivers the film’s heartwarming message that love is more powerful than fear. Awww.

Elements of Frozen suggests someone at Disney saw the record-breaking worldwide box office returns of the theatrical production of Wicked and decided they wanted a piece of the action.

Based on Gregory Maguire‘s novel  Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West in turn based on The Wizard of Oz by Frank L Baum. The success of Wicked the show was due to tapping into the under-exploited market serving young teenage girls. Frozen methodically sets out to exploit the same rich profit seam.

Her undoubted talent notwithstanding, it’s no coincidence Idina Menzel played the role of powerful but misunderstood witch Elpheba in Wicked before playing the powerful but misunderstood witch Elsa in Frozen. Nor is it a surprise Frozen’s signature tune Let It Go could easily be slipped into the Wicked songbook. In fact more than one song could be – as the Honest Trailer recognises.

Since this review was first penned Frozen has become a global phenomenon. A sequel is on the way and of course there’s the short film Frozen Fever being shown in cinemas before Disney’s Cinderella. Which I enjoyed more.

★★★☆☆

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water

Director: Paul Tibbitt & Mike Mitchell (2015)

With a collision of competing animated styles and live action scenes, this animated sequel is a disposable trippy adventure.

Stuffed to the gills with daft innocent fun, not all the jokes work but so many are thrown at you some are bound to make you laugh.

Having never experienced the global phenomenon of the TV series or the first SpongeBob Squarepants movie added to my bewildered enjoyment.

The story pinballs around from a fast food spat to industrial espionage, the apocalypse, inter-planetary collision and an Hawaiian beach fight.

Someone has clearly paid attention to the success and appeal of Marvel superheroes  and The Pirates of the Caribbean franchises as the finale involves a battle between superheroes and a pirate.

There’s a magic book, dinosaurs, talking seagulls and rainbow vomit. By the time the laser-sporting space Dolphin arrived I was powerless to resist the good-natured chaos.

In SpongeBob’s underwater home town of Bikini Bottom, the theft of the Krusty Krab Krabby Patty secret formula leads to a shortage of the popular fast-food, Krabby Pattys.

This results in pitchfork waving townsfolk and a reign of terror. For a moment it’s all very reminiscent of 2007’s The Simpsons Movie which also had an apocalypse theme.

Annoying voiced SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) is nauseatingly optimistic and nice, very much in the mould of Roger Rabbit.

He sets out to forge a team out of his dim, cowardly and selfish friends to regain the secret formula and restore order.

This leads him and his friends Patrick, Squidward, Mr. Krabs and Sandy Cheeks (Bill Fagerbakke, Rodger Bumpass, Clancy Brown and Carolyn Lawrence) joining with their enemy Plankton (Mr. Lawrence) to build a photo booth time machine to search through time and space.

Eventually they confront the villainous Burger-Beard (Antonio Banderas) who is using the formula to sell his own pirate burgers and plans to conquer the fast food world.

Like it’s fast food plot, this sequel is best enjoyed while its hot and fresh and will probably lose it’s appeal after more than one serving.

★★★☆☆

Wreck-It Ralph

Director: Rich Moore (2013)

Smashing its way through several levels of fun, this fun-filled blast of candy coloured, sugar flavoured confection from Disney is inspired by old video games.

Genial giant Wreck-It Ralph, voiced by John C. Reilly, is the unfairly maligned bad guy of an arcade game called Fix-It Felix Jr – a lot like the 80s gaming classic Donkey Kong.

At night after shut-down the other characters socialise in their penthouse. Ralph, left all alone, starts to ponder his lot in life and goes to a support group.

He confesses that after 30 years he doesn’t want to be the bad guy any more. Ralph decides to ‘turbo’ – arcade-speak for invading another game.

So he breaks into another machine – a violent and scary shoot-’em-up called Hero’s Duty, before landing in a racing adventure called Sugar Rush.

But Ralph going missing means Fix-It Felix Jr is considered broken – putting the lives of its other inhabitants under threat. What’s more, during his hopping around between games he inadvertently lets loose a computer virus which threatens the existence of every game in the arcade.

Teaming up with tiny, racing-obsessed Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman), Ralph begins a digitised adventure with a quest.

Combining the insane world of arcade games with the upside-down logic of Alice in Wonderland, the film generates slapstick fun as it powers its way through its own levels.

The animation is mind-blowingly good, with tremendous amounts of invention, but it is all a bit too sickly sweet and garish.

Also, Vanellope’s rival King Candy (Alan Tudyk) is more fun than von Schweetz or Ralph. But Glee’s Jane Lynch is on great form as the tough-talking, space marine commander.

Oscar-nominated Wreck-it Ralph was made by people who obviously have a deep love of arcade games.

They have great fun dropping in cameos with Pac Man, Sonic, Q*bert, Frogger and old favourites from Street Fighter all turning up. But there’s more than enough to enjoy even if you don’t get the references.

Like the title character, this film is a digital hard-nut with a soft centre. Bright and cheerful, it will keep you entertained all the way through to Game Over.

★★★★☆

Home

Director: Tim Johnson (2015)

A fugitive alien and a streetwise girl team up to save the world in this bright and busy animated adventure.

Based on Adam Rex’s 2007 children’s book The True Meaning of Smekday, it’s a technicolor blast of fun for the little ones that adults will be happy to doze through.

Proud of their cowardice, the many tentacled Boov are small, roundish and look as if moulded out of purple bubblegum.

They change colour depending on their mood; red when they’re angry, green when they lie, orange when scared and so on.

Although they seek safety in numbers, the Boov prefer to spend their time on their alien smartphones than talk to each other.

Engaged in a galactic game of cat and mouse with their angry armoured enemy, the Grog, the Boov conquer a new planet whenever they need a new home.

Lead by the blustering prevaricator Captain Smek (Steve Martin) – who’s not unlike the Wizard of Oz – they descend on Earth.

Using giant tubes attached to their flying saucers, the Boov suck up all the humans. This leaves the buildings intact to be their living spaces.

The people are deposited safely in a purpose-built, sunshine-soaked suburbia. It’s a fairground-filled, pastel coloured ghetto out of Tim Burton‘s worst nightmare – but is actually in Australia.

An optimistic but naive Boov called Oh (Jim Parsons) emails an invitation to his house-warming party but sends it to the entire galaxy by mistake – including to the Grog. As a result he becomes a fugitive.

Due to the vast galactic distance the it has to travel, the Boov have forty hours to hack Oh’s password, prevent the Grog from receiving the email and discovering where they are.

Meanwhile Oh encounters a human who accidently escaped relocation. She’s a curly haired poppet called Tip (Rihanna) and is desperate to find her mother Lucy (Jennifer Lopez). Instead of a pet dog named Toto, Tip has a cat called Pig.

Parsons riffs on his super-nerd persona of Sheldon in the TV series The Big Bang Theory. Rihanna is adequate playing a headstrong if whiny character.

In the credits I counted 6 songs by Rihanna, 1 by Jennifer Lopez and non by Parsons.

Reluctantly teaming up, Oh turns Tip’s family car into a flying mobile. Now powered by a slush drink dispenser, the car conveniently serves cinema snack food such as nachos, popcorn, hotdogs and the like.

Together they confront the Grog and discover not everything they have been told is true.

Their good-natured squabbling becomes annoying though the film achieves a reasonable emotional depth when they shut up.

With the animators allowed to work uninterrupted, they conjure up a dazzling image or two.

The script is keen on cramming in an exhausting list of life lessons; keep promises, tell the truth, appreciate art, take care of your family, be web safe, be brave, learn a foreign language, shushing people is bad..

There’s a lot of toilet jokes, a reasonably zippy pace and the movable skulls of the brainy Boov made me smile. Though not the least challenging, it is a genial good time.

★★★☆☆

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

Director: Isao Takahata (2015)

Magical and moving, this animated folktale is charming, moving and a beautifully crafted joy, bursting with humour and life.

When sent to the Earth as punishment, a young Moon spirit discovers that mortal life involves responsibility and pain as well as love.

Deservedly nominated for best animated feature at the Oscars, it’s a captivating combination of glorious pencil-work and delicate pastel colours.

Working in a secluded grove, an old Bamboo Cutter (James Caan) is startled when a bright light reveals a tiny female form inside a tree. The kindly man takes her home to his wise wife (Mary Steenburgen) where the sprite changes miraculously into a baby.

Being without children they resolve to look after the baby as if she were their own. She grows at a prodigious rate, sprouting from baby to toddler in a single crawl.

The Princess is named ‘Li’l Bamboo’ by the local children and joins the gang of Sutemaru (Darren Criss) with whom a strong emotional bond develops.

Loyal, clever, impetuous and mischievous, Li’l Bamboo accelerates through a joyous, gentle and comic childhood in a wonderful rural adventure land. It’s alive with gorgeously animated birds, frogs, spiders, pigs, snakes, squirrels, beavers, fish and deer.

Returning to the magic grove the Bamboo Cutter finds a tree filled with money, then another with swathes of fine cloth. He concludes Li’l Bamboo is a true princess and must be raised as one.

So he builds his daughter a palace in the Capital and when she turns 13 years old he moves the family there to live, away from her friends.

Stern Lady Sagami (Lucy Liu) is employed to teach Li’l Bamboo courtly social graces but the spirited girl rails against her tutoring and the subduing of her personality. She mocks the painful beauty procedures and rejects the subservient idea of womanhood.

At a three day banquet to mark her coming of age, she is given the name Princess Kaguya and to please her father tries to become an obedient, studious daughter. With her great beauty and social skills she attracts a multitude of suitors, including the greatest nobles in the land.

But the Princess isn’t impressed by their status and to her father’s consternation Kaguya issues them impossible tasks to prove their love.

However she’s aghast when one by one they return to make her keep her word and she makes a rash wish which changes her life.

It is more measured in pace and tone and lacks the delirious colours and engineered wackiness of contemporary megaplex crowd pleasers such as Disney’s excellent Big Hero 6. Plus with a running time of 137 minutes it is for older rather than younger children.

With it’s strong-willed country girl who learns of life in the city it’s similar to the story of Heidi which director Takahata adapted in 1974. It is a tale celebrating life but also reflective of grief, loss and suffering, heralding the virtues of honesty and friendship over wealth and looks, taking to task the way female identity is constructed for the benefit of men.

The animation is impressionistic in style with characters and backgrounds being drawn on the same page – unlike in traditional cel animation where characters are drawn separately and superimposed onto the background. It is a wonderfully immersive and suitably organic technique, emphasising the passion for the story in every exquisite and entertaining frame.

★★★★★

How To Train Your Dragon 2

Director: Dean DeBlois (2014)

This animated family-friendly sequel soars and roars in a fabulous flight of fantasy.

It’s a handsomely designed adventure with extraordinary animation that conjures up magical images – especially of dragons flying en masse.

The coming-of-age story of Hiccup and his fight to save his village is well-crafted and exciting but a lack of laughs is a major flaw.

Brave and resourceful viking Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is 20 and his home of Berk is living in harmony with the dragons. His dad, chief Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler) expects him to take the throne but Hiccup is unsure about ruling or his own future.

So, armed with a fiery sword, he flies off on his dragon Toothless to discover himself and explore the northern lands.

There he meets mysterious Valka (Cate Blanchett) who warns him of warlord Drago’s plan to enslave all dragons. Meanwhile Hiccup’s adventurous girlfriend Astrid (America Ferrera) and her friends are captured by Drago and his pirate fleet.

The ensuing battle between dragons, vikings, pirates and bewilderbeasts – giant alpha dragons with mind-control powers – is spectacular but ends in the death of a loved one.

Hiccup must try to defeat Drago’s army, rescue the dragons, free his village and generally live up to his father’s expectations.

Dragon 2 is good natured and tender at times but the few jokes are mostly gentle slapstick, such as people falling into snow drifts or getting their faces licked by dragons.

While weak sidekick characters fail to provide enough fun and their amorous behaviour is ill-judged in a film aimed at younger kids.

The viking village has lots of nicely designed mechanical gizmos but no-one seems to realise the bat-suit wings that Hiccup sports to glide around may one day make the dragons redundant.

But Dragon 2’s lesson – that it’s never too late to start listening to your dad – is an important one that my son may learn… one day.

★★★☆☆

The Lego Movie

Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller (2014)

Despite the astonishing Oscar snub, this is a brilliant, witty, inventive animation which kids will enjoy almost as much as their parents will.

As the opening song says, ‘Everything is Awesome!!!’. And it is. It’s stupid in a clever way, clever in a funny way and is continually exciting, hilarious and even subversive.

Assembled with huge energy and a wicked sense of fun, every brick of the plot is correctly placed to support the dizzying flights of imagination and yet more jokes.

During the ferocious chase scenes random street parts are rapidly fashioned into vehicles, destroyed and rebuilt into  succession of err, other vehicles.

Among the mayhem it even manages to visually referencing sci-fi classics such as Tron and The Matrix.

Brickburg is a modern plastic city with busy roads, extortionately priced of coffee and constant CCTC surveillance. Everyone and everything fits together and works correctly.

When construction worker Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt) has an accident, he loses his vital rule book but discovers the Piece of Resistance.

Arrested by Bad Cop (Liam Neeson) he is freed by Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) who believes him to be the prophesied ‘special’.

Only the Piece of Resistance can prevent the tyrannical President Business (Will Ferrell) from using his super-weapon called the Kragle to destroy the Lego universe.

Emmet and Wyldstyle set out to to prevent the President’s evil plan and are helped by Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) and other Master Builders.

They include famous lego–made characters who help make this the second best Batman movie and the fourth best Star Wars film.

Naturally enough the film emphasises the importance of invention and bonding but to say more will spoil the fantastic and emotional twist towards the end.

In a word, awesome.

 ★★★★★

Big Hero 6

Director: Don Hall, Chris Williams

Robots and superheroes collide in this dazzling dayglo delight from Disney.

Beautifully animated and pop bubblegum fabulous to look at, it’s hilarious, joyous and thrilling.

At heart a touching tale of friendship, it’s alive with loveable characters, great jokes, exciting battles and gizmos and gadgets galore.

In the futuristic fusion city of San Fransokyo 14 year old Hiro (Ryan Potter) is a self-taught robotics genius who lives with his older brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney) and their Aunt Cass (Maya Rudolph).

Hiro spends his time winning money in illegal backstreet robot bouts (think TV’s Robot Wars but far more exciting).

Meanwhile Tadashi’s developed an inflatable talking robot healthcare companion called Baymax (Scott Adsit).

Soft talking and slow moving, it looks like a walking marshmallow and the animators have great fun with his ungainly girth and relentlessly gentle manner.

Tadashi and the wily professor Callaghan (James Cromwell) use reverse psychology to persuade the contemptuous prodigy Hiro to apply to college.

When Hiro demonstrates his newly invented, hugely powerful microbots, smooth-talking tech-entrepreneur Alistair Krei (Alan Tudyk) wants to buy to them.

But after Hiro rejects the offer there’s a mysterious fire that kills Tadashi and Callaghan.

Obeying his programming to heal, a warm and humorous bond slowly develops between Baymax and Hiro.

Jokes are cleverly constructed with the audience laughing at the same time but for different reasons such as when Baymax’s low battery causes speech and mobility impairment. Hiro has to smuggle him home in the manner of drunk teenagers sneaking in.

As Hiro grieves, his remaining microbot mysteriously activates leading he and Baymax to discover a factory making thousands where they’re attacked by a Kabuki-wearing stranger, massively menacing in dynamic expressionless splendour.

Escaping with the help of his nerd-school friends, Hiro upgrades Baymax with fighting abilities, armour and powered flight. His sensors lead them to a quarantined island, where they find industrial espionage and military conspiracy.

With industrial espionage, military conspiracy and an epic battle, it embraces noble sacrifice, death, grief, puberty and err, fart jokes.

With Disney owning Marvel Studios it’s allowed to be all very meta.  There’s unmistakable Iron-Man references, a Stan Lee cameo and the final showdown nods at 2012’s Avengers Assemble.

Taking charge of Pixar and has given the venerable Disney Studio an insulin boost of creativity, producing a wonderfully fresh if unexpected high point. Pixar now are relegated to junior partner producing inferior sequels to the hits of yesteryear.

Mashing up East and West in the cultural melting point in the fictional San Fransokyo is not only a canny ploy aimed at capturing the important Asian market but is clearly creatively driven by a love of Japanese cinema.

Japan’s Studio Ghibli is a driving influence both in tone and style. There is more than one wink to the masterpiece My Neighbour Totoro, notably in the Fat Cat restaurant owned by Hiro’s Aunt Cass and in the end credits.

But Big Hero 6 also has sufficient strength of character and identity to be franchise in it’s own right which is certainly the aim.

Just as in a Marvel movie it’s worth staying until the very, very end – by which time I was so enamoured of the movie I wanted my own Baymax.

I guarantee your kids will too.

P.s. In the manner of Pixar the main feature is preceded by the short cartoon Feast, an enjoyable lightweight snack that will whet your appetite for the main course to follow.

★★★★★