family

SMURFS: THE LOST VILLAGE

Cert U 90mins Stars 2

The boys in blue are back for another animated adventure, but this time the girls are doing it for themselves.

Following the success of Disney’s female-led adventures such as Frozen, and Zootropolis, this latest ham-fisted Smurf reboot tries to offer a more female friendly experience.

Smurfette leads Brainy, Hefty, and Clumsy into the Forbidden Forest on a journey of self-discovery, where they find a lost village of female Smurfs.

This is an attempt to address a longstanding criticism regarding Smurfette’s status as the only girl in the village. Unfortunately the clumsy script reduces her status from a spare rib to a non-Smurf, saying she was created from a piece of clay by an evil Smurf-hating wizard.

Despite this bizarre twist, it’s generally good natured and filled with slapstick and shenanigans. However all but the youngest of kids will struggle to be entertained, and the patience of parents will be tested to the limit.

 

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (2017)

Cert PG 139mins Stars 5

Be spellbound as Emma Watson swaps the wizarding world of Harry Potter for a fairytale featuring a fantastic beast.

Having found global fame as Hogwarts schoolgirl swot, Hermione, Watson takes centre stage in Disney’s big budget, live action adventure. It’s a remake of their own musical from 1991, which was the first animated movie to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.

Surrounded by the cream of camp theatricality, and the finest CGI technology, it would be cruel and unfair to suggest Watson is the film’s least animated performer. She is faultless as the bookish, brave and beautiful, Belle.

Dan Stevens is demonically horned and hairy as then Beast. The English actor’s stock has only risen since escaping the upstairs confines of TV’s Downton Abbey.

The story is unchanged. To rescue her father from the frozen castle of the Beast, young Belle sacrifices her own freedom. The majestic monster is really a cursed Prince. He must earn her love or remain a creature forever. And time is running out.

To ensure a box office success, Disney have deployed the full creative might of their empire. There is excellence everywhere, from the superb cast, to sumptuous costumes and detailed design.

From the Oscar wining title track, to the boisterous ‘Gaston’ and the glorious ‘Be Our Guest’, the show stopping tunes are the magic which elevates this above last year’s excellent live action, Cinderella.

Competing for the limelight are old hams and grand dames of the theatre, such as Emma Thompson, Ewan McGregor and Ian McKellen. They breathe life into the castle’s other inhabitants, the talking clock, teapot, candelabra, and so on.

Bill Condon doesn’t direct the film, as much as pilot this jazz handed juggernaut safely into cinemas. It’s far from ground-breaking but it is enchanting, exciting and funny.

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THE HOUSE WITH THE CLOCK IN ITS WALLS

Cert 12A 104mins Stars 4

Jack Black stars as a warlock full of tricks in this early Halloween treat of frighteningly entertaining family fun.

With expert comic timing he conjures up plenty of crowd-pleasing magical mayhem in this charming, funny and nicely scary supernatural adventure, based on the popular children’s book by John Bellairs.

As kindly uncle Jonathan to ten-year-old orphan, Lewis, Black sees all hell breaks lose when his nephew secretly uses magic in an attempt to gain popularity at school, and inadvertently unleashes a demonic force in the form of Kyle MacLachan’s deceased evil sorcerer.

This sets the clock ticking on the end of the world, and to prevent it Jonathan and Lewis team up with their neighbour. Suitably dressed in regal purple the imperiously talented Cate Blanchett resembles Mary Poppins’ stylish older sister, and enjoys herself immensely as the brolly-wielding witch.

Blanchett and Black are an unlikely and seemingly mismatched double act but have a sparky chemistry, while Owen Vaccaro gives a bright and articulate performance as Lewis, and is never upstaged by his illustrious co-stars.

After contributing enormously to the huge success of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, early this year and having unveiled his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame this week, Black’s career is recovering it’s sparkle.

And although director Eli Roth filmed this year’s woeful remake of Death Wish starring Bruce Willis, he’s recovered strongly with this latest effort and is careful to be faithful to the tone and intention of the source material.

His film bursts with warm nostalgia for the 1950’s US small town setting, typical enough for a film co-produced by Steven Spielberg’s company, Amblin.

Populated with pet-like living furniture and self playing musical instruments, kids will love the handsomely designed house where the action takes place, and they’ll totally agree with the story’s premise that chocolate chip cookies have the power to soothe any problem.

THE GRINCH

Cert U 90mins Stars 3

Benedict Cumberbatch goes green in this colourful animated family adventure from the makers of the Despicable Me franchise.

It’s based on the 1957 children’s book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, by the genius author, Dr Seuss, and the Sherlock star voices The Grinch, a mountain dwelling creature who lives all alone except for his faithful pooch, Max.

Due to having a heart two sizes too small, the Grinch hates Christmas and plans to run it for the happy singing townsfolk of Who-ville, a village which looks like an electric rainbow of Swiss chalets.

Meanwhile a pigtailed poppet called Cindy Lou lives with her hard working single mum and twin baby brothers, and she intends to trap Santa Claus so she can ask him for a very personal Christmas wish.

Cindy Lou is voiced by Cameron Seely, best known as Hugh Jackman’s daughter in the smash hit musical, The Greatest Showman.

As The Narrator, singer Pharrell Williams has nearly as many lines as Cumberbatch, though sadly too many of them have been written especially for the film, while veteran actress Angela Lansbury can be heard in a minor role of as the voice of The Mayor of Who-ville.

Home to everyone’s favourite yellow idiots, the Minions, the Illumination Studio are the same company who produced the 2012 adaptation of Seuss’s masterpiece, The Lorax.

Although it captured Seuss’s unique illustrative style while souping it up with state-of-the-art animation, it included too little of his wonderful whimsical charm and the childish delights of his verse. And this is no different.

Giving the Grinch a hard-luck backstory helps the scriptwriters flesh out the slim source material to a full 90 minutes, and encourages us to sympathise with him.

Mind you, it’s more than possible not to have been raised in an orphanage and hate Christmas songs playing on the radio with the same passion The Grinch does.

Equally under-served is the velvet voiced Cumberbatch who struggles with a strangulated US accent while striving manfully with some of the weakest material of his career, and is often reduced to  just providing yips, yowls and yelps.

However there’s plenty of slapstick and sentiment among the cute animals and crazy contraptions, plus all the fur and clothes look reassuringly warm and cosy in the frozen landscape.

More appealing than Jim Carey’s laboured live-action adaption which appeared 18 years ago, little kids will enjoy this version for its zippy pace, bold colours and daft humour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

DUMBO

Cert PG 112mins Stars 3

Disney’s mission to remake their classic animated films with a blend of live-action and CGI loses hard-earned goodwill with this disappointingly tame and heavy-footed fantasy adventure.

Competent but rarely endearing or involving, the story again treads the path of a young big-eared circus elephant, called Dumbo, who longs to be reunited with his mother.

When a chance encounter with a feather reveals a talent for flying, it makes him a star of the show, and brings him to the attention of an villainous impresario.

1941’s much loved original is a charmingly brief tale drunk on trippy invention and which won an Oscar for its musical score.

This is a very different beast and though it offers an all-star cast and some spectacle, it’s nearly twice as long with a barely a song of note, and lacks sufficient warmth and humour.

The performing pachyderm himself is a leathery lump of CGI who is sidelined in his own film in favour of the likeable Irishman, Colin Farrell.

He plays a one-armed single parent who after military service returns to work in the circus, where he struggles to reconnect with his kids.

With a long standing fascination with the circus and a track record in creating big budget mainstream fantasies such as Disney’s 2010 billion dollar box office smash, Alice In Wonderland, Tim Burton is a safe and predictable but far from inspired choice as director.

He’s recruited regular collaborators to help out, but Danny DeVito’s struggling circus owner isn’t as funny as the film thinks he is, Eva Green is stilted as a trapeze artiste, and Michael Keaton lacks his familiar fiendish energy.

Circus acts such as jugglers and contortionists are often busy in the background of scenes, and are possibly there to compensate for the lack of magic and excitement in the big ring, which fails to capture all the fun of the fair.

WONDER PARK

Cert PG 85mins Stars 3

This bright and breezy animated adventure is a rollercoaster of fun for younger kids which will keep them entertained while it lasts but probably won’t have them pestering you for a second ride.

June is fearless young inventor who emotionally withdraws when her mother is taken ill, but running into a magical forest she encounters the Wonderland theme park which previously existed only in her imagination.

It’s strangely overgrown and deserted except for five talking animals trying to save the park being destroyed by a swarm of zombie monkey toys, who are a lot cuter and less scary than they sound.

YouTube stars Joe Sugg and Caspar Lee join an impressive voice cast of Jennifer Garner, Matthew Broderick and Mila Kunis, but they’re all outshone by my favourite Dr Who, Tom Baker, who’s enjoying himself immensely as a big blue bear.

Although not as ‘splendiferous’ as characters repeatedly insist, any film which encourages children to value their dads is OK with me.

 

PAW PATROL: MIGHTY PUPS

Cert U 70mins Stars 2

Super powered puppies bounce into action with boundless enthusiasm in this eager-to-please animation aimed at pre-schoolers.

A spin-off from the Nickelodeon TV series with no discernible increase in quality, it’s a mercifully brief adventure full of harmless buffoonery, bad puns and robot dancing from an err, giant robot.

A moon rocket belonging to the blundering mayor Humdinger and his nefarious nephew causes cartoon canine chaos among the inhabitants of Adventure Bay when it collides with a meteor which crashes to Earth.

Seeing it bestows super powers of speed, strength, flight and so on, on our plucky puppy heroes, the baddies steal the meteorite to gain its powers for themselves and kidnap the Paw Patrol’s human leader for good measure.

So the pups to launch an audacious rescue from the villains’ flying lair and attempt to save the day.

There are sufficient uncomplicated, colourful, and cheap looking capers to occupy the little ones, while parents do their best to have a catnap.

A DOG’S JOURNEY

Cert PG 108mins Stars 3

Friendship wears a furry face in this live action family fable full of love and loyalty which will have dog lovers wagging their tails.

A sequel to 2017’s A Dog’s Purpose it follows the many lives of the eager-to-please and  excitable pooch, Bailey, whose thoughts we hear thanks to the comic voice-over of Josh Gad.

Each time Bailey dies and reincarnates in a variety of breeds in different locations, he remembers his masters command to protect his granddaughter, CJ.

Bailey turns up to help her at moments of crises but they’re all bark and no bite and balanced with lots of bum-sniffing comedy to entertain your pups.

CJ is winningly played as an adult by former TV Skins star, Kathryn Prescott, with veterans Dennis Quaid and Marg Helgenberger going full pelt to pour on the treacle.

Despite being an avowed cat person, even I could feel this soppy shaggy dog story pulling on my heartstrings. Doggone it.

THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS 2

Cert U 85mins Stars 3

A tiger comes to tea in this super-cute animated adventure sequel to 2016’s monster hit and serves up the lions share of holiday family fun for your very little ones.

Max and Duke are confirmed New York City dogs who have a fish out of water experience when taken by their owners on a countryside holiday.

Meanwhile back home Max’s poodle friend has to rescue a prized toy from a litter of feral felines, and their bunny neighbour dreams of being a carrot munching crime fighter.

They’re brought back together in a looney tunes-style caper which results in our heroes on board a circus train chased by a pack of wolves in order to save a tiger cub from it’s cruel owner.

It often feels more a loose collection of jokes and sketches than a fully fleshed-out feature, but the quality of the animation is top dog and Harrison Ford delivers a droll turn as the voice of a Welsh Sheepdog.

 

ALADDIN (2019)

Cert PG 128 mins Stars 4

Will Smith unleashes his magic charm in Disney’s confident, colourful and crowd-pleasing live action remake of their 1992 classic Oscar winning musical animation.

Hollywood’s once biggest star delivers a larger than life performance as the giant magic genie of the lamp, and burns charisma, warmth and heartfelt maturity in the role originally played by the comic, Robin Williams.

The story very closely follows the original, with street thief Aladdin teaming up with a genie to win the heart of the princess Jasmine and help save the desert kingdom of Agrabah from the unfettered ambition of Marwan Kenzari’s villainous vizier, Jafar.

Unlike Tim Burton’s lumbering Dumbo remake, this is full of fun, excitement and of course glorious songs, with fresh sparkle given to the diamond tunes of ‘Friend Like Me’ and ‘A Whole New World’, with ‘Prince Ali’ is delivered in grand show-stopping style.

Mena Massoud is an earnest and endearing romantic lead as Aladdin, and is game for the thankless task of playing the straight man to not just Smith and the rest of the human cast, but a flying carpet and the adorable monkey, Abu.

I wish his opposite number Naomi Scott, had more to do as Jasmine, but she makes the most of her screen time with constant bridling at the constraints of her gilded cage existence in a star-making performance.

She has enjoyable chemistry with Nasim Pedrad’s handmaiden and knocks her solo song out of the park. ‘Speechless’ is one of two new numbers, and is an assertive anthem about challenging authority which Scott delivers with impressively fierce defiance.

Director Guy Ritchie desperate for a hit as his last box office success was nearly a decade ago, with the second of his and Robert Downey, Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes adventures, so it’s  a canny movie to style the climax in the CGI manner of a Marvel superhero film.

This rarely feels like a Ritchie movie and whether you consider that a good thing, he’s certainly put a shift in with this huge production, which sees him successfully negotiate the different demands of action, romance, comedy, special effects and big song and dance numbers.

The two eight year olds I took to the screening had a great time even though they aren’t familiar with the original animated version, or with Smith’s lengthy TV, music or movie career, and he’s certainly won two new fans of the next generation.

And as Smith swaggers into silver screen musical theatre, it’s great to see the Fresh Prince discover a whole new jam.