It’s almost time for the end of the year awards show (before the beginning of next year) so the reviews are going to come fast and furious now. Here’s four more for your reading pleasure.

Made in Daganham

You can’t blame the Full Monty for creating such an easily copied formula (bunch of working class English people who’ve never had much responsibility suddenly forced to take on drastic measures to save themselves, their town, their gender etc) but you can openly wonder if anything new can really be wrung from the concept. With Made in Daganham, which tells the true story of a group of female auto workers in working class england who fight for equal pay for woman, you get a film that, while well-meaning, is totally unnecessary. I do understand the concept of the formula, but with this film it feels more like someone arriving late to a party and telling a joke you heard three hours ago. No matter how well they tell it, you know where it’s heading.

How do you know?

A friend of mine asked me to tell him what this film was about. And in the telling I realized the films problem. Yes, it’s loaded with good actors and yes, it’s got some very funny scenes, but this romantic comedy from the maker of Terms of Endearment isn’t really about much. You’ve got a girl who can’t choose between a douche bag baseball player and a really nice guy who happens to be under legal investigation for some undisclosed form of insider trading. The title doesn’t really have much to do with the movie and seems to have been randomly plucked from one of its scenes.  None of the romances seem to be all that convincing, even the one your supposed to believe in. Yes some of the dialogue is very crisp (Jack Nicholson play’s Paul Rudd’s father and their exchanges are golden) but nothing in this film amounts to anything. I admire the effort but whatever they were trying, they failed.

Tron Legacy

I wen’t into this film with a bit of a bias. I know at least three people who worked on this movie and all of them hated it with every fiber of their being. Not because it was hard but because the director seemingly had no clue what he was doing. One key P.A. I know even went so far as to leave brochures for Vancouver film School on the directors chair, just to give him a hint. But this can be a good thing. After all, when I went into this movie I had very low expectations.

And it didn’t even meet those.

I could go off on what the original meant to me as a child of the eighties and how this failed to capture even a smidgen of that spirit but, instead, I will point to one scene which I feel illustrates the problems with the film.

Our hero (the son of the hero from the original film) is involved in one of those cool cycle races a la the first Tron. A girl rescues him in some sort of all terrain vehicle. She takes him off of the grid and on a road that goes to our hero’s father, the creator of the whole system.  When he asks why it is that the bad guys aren’t following them she explains “they don’t have any vehicles that can operate on this terrain.”  What she’s referring to is the fact that they are driving on a dirt road.

Now let me make this clear, the hero’s father holds the key to destroying humanity. The villain (a dark mirror image of him) has been looking for him for ages as he wants to break out of the computer world and destroy earth. So what has stopped him from searching?

A dirt Road.

I would like to take this time to point out that the villain has flying machines.

A…Dirt…Road.

And no, it’s not because his power doesn’t extend past the grid. Later on the villain finds his Nemesis’s house and trashes it.

It’s lazy writing like this that turns great visuals into crap story telling. Would it have been so hard to have them outsmart the villains while they were driving away? Or create some bullshit cloaking device? I would have been fine with that. But nope, they wrote themselves into a corner, then didn’t even worry about how bad it would look if they half assed their way out. The result is a lazy, phoned in, and totally forgettable movie that isn’t even inspiring enough to hate.

Yogi Bear

Furry Vengeance, Marmaduke, Cats and Dogs: the revenge of Kitty Galore, and now Yogi Bear. The four worst films of the year. Period.

Next up is Little Fockers followed by True Grit, plus an E.T.A. on when The Seffies will be up.

Cheers.

Sef.

And now the answer to the big question. What will happen to Seeeveryfilm in the new year? I had, earlier, announced that I was going to give it up, stating that I would just see all of the films at one theatre instead. Then that theatre went and changed owners (and any hopes of it being like it used to be have been dashed as there’s been no sign of the small independent films it used to show on a weekly basis). This left me in the lurch a bit.  Suddenly I had to make a decision.

And I have.

Ahem.

Fuck it, one more year.

Why the change of heart? Well, two reasons.

One: My biggest fear about doing it another year was that I would, quite simply, fail. I’m as amazed as anybody that I made it this long  and I only missed two Canadian movies that played for less than a week and One bollywood that played for two. That’s kind of insane. It’s also impressed people a lot more than I thought it would (though granted, people being impressed and people thinking your bug fuck crazy tend to have similar facial expressions) so I didn’t want to go into it because I didn’t want to disappoint. I didn’t want to have people ask me half way through the year “How’s that going?” and I say “Oh I gave that up”. And then they nod politely, as if they are not surprised. I decided this is not a good reason not to do it because it states very simply that I’m not trying something because I’m scared  I won’t succeed. This is more often than not the worst reason not to try something (or in this case, try something again).

Second: Because doing this meant I wasn’t doing something else.

Let me explain.

when you are doing something. You have to do that one thing. When you are doing nothing, you have the potential to be doing anything. And it makes life feel like it has a hell of a lot more options. Or…more simply…I was scared to commit that much of my time to one thing when there were so many other things to do.

But…no matter what you do there’s always something else to do. And, modesty aside, I think I’m pretty good at this film comment thing and I should give it another go to see what happens.

Now expect some changes to the blog. I will, more than likely, be doing all film reviews in the weekly round up style that has become common during weeks that I fall behind. This is for selfish reasons (takes less time) as well as more artistic ones. I’d like to write articles for this blog, not just reviews, and that requires more time during the week for research, editing and publishing, much more so than a review does. In short, I’d like to try some new stuff with seeeveryfilm and I hope you’re willing to come along.

It’s going to be hairy for the next few weeks. I’ll be seeing all the new January releases while putting together an awards show for the 2010 films so expect short reviews and long gaps in between. also, I have to be honest with myself, many of you may lose interest in this blog and that is totally understandable. When I told my friends and family about this it was always a one year thing.  I hope some of you stay constant readers, I accept that many of you won’t, it’s all the same in the end I suppose.

Thanks for reading this far and I’m looking forward to seeing some of you in the new year.

Merry Christmas everyone, and here’s to what’s coming in 2011.

Cheers.

Sef.

Okay, getting near the end of the year. I’m…like…a day away from announcing what I’m doing next year. For now it’s time to catch up on all the movies I still need to review. Here goes.

The Tourist: Short answer, just rent North by Northwest.

Slightly less short answer, a beautifully shot but uninspiring spy drama that comes equipped with a twist ending that is both inexplicable and unispiring. No amount of good actors or beautiful backdrops can save this thing from being totally forgettable.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader: This is the first Narnia movie I’ve seen and I can officially say…yeah…it’s pretty much a lot like The Tourist in that I got the feeling that even those making it kind of knew it wasn’t going to have much of a footprint. Now granted, there are some pretty cool special effects and lots of things seem more intelligent when they’re discussed with english accents, but this film is an epic like two three year olds standing on each other shoulders and wearing an overcoat are their father. If I were you I wouldn’t bother.

the King’s Speech: The cinematic equivalent of a hot bath. Just a cozy good time at the movies with some smart people in a mildly manipulative but ultimately successful tale of the last King of England and how he over came a speech impediment during a time when his people needed to hear his voice the most. I have to admit I’m a little surprised that it’s the odds on favourite to win best picture at the Oscars (I would have thought it more deserving of the Full Monty award for small British films that get nominated without a hope in hell of winning) but just because it’s being a little over praised doesn’t mean it’s undeserving of praise. Take the folks, take the kids, an inspiring and heartwarming film.

Black Swan: One of the best films of the year. It’s amazing how much Darren Aronofsky (the films visionary director) can do without overdoing it. This dark fantasy about a ballerina who may or may not be going insane as she rehearses for a production of Swan Lake has that simplistic feel of a short story from a horror anthology.  Not the one in the front of the book that’s just there to catch your eye, but the kind they put near the end, the traditional location for intellectual mind fucks.  But there’s more to it than that. Even without the fantasy element (something I would never want to lose) the dialog is so real and the way they can establish characters with so few words said is truly awesome. I already know I’m seeing this one again.

The Figher: This movie is most comparable to The Town, Ben Affleck’s crime thriller about bank robbers in Boston. No, it’s not comparable because it’s about small towns and people beating each other up, but because it has the feeling of a formula movie that, while made well, doesn’t really seem to make any effort to transend it’s own predictability. Now, make no mistake, I actually really like the film. But if they had just taken a few more risks I could have loved it. Otherwise, this simple tale about an aging boxer getting one last shot at stardom while his brother, a drug addicts, tries to help his brother’s career while staying in denial about what a deep whole he’s fallen into,  is a predictable but still admittedly affective tale.

Okay. Coming up tomorrow, I finally make the announcement about where see every film goes in 2011.

Cheers.

Sef.

Star: Vik Muniz

Directed by: Lucy Walker, Karen Hurley

A simple documentary about an experimental artist making paintings in one of the most horrible places on earth, what’s remarkable about this film is that it manages to tell a story without imposing a moral. Given the subject matter that’s a pretty massive achievement.

Vik Muniz is a Brazilian artist who makes art out of trash. No, he’s not a pretentious douche bag, he actually makes truly beautiful art out of refuse, discarded material, etc. He made the decision to go back to his home country of Brazil to the largest landfill on the planet. There, it is considered a viable job to spend your days in the landfill, sorting out reusable material and selling it to recycling plants.

To say it is a dirty job doesn’t begin to describe it. It’s possibly one of the worst jobs on the planet. You spend the entire day in a land fill, up to your knees in refuse, hauling bags and barrels full of tin cans or plastic bottles in the hopes of making enough to feed your family. Those that do the job are surprisingly up beat. They have to be, otherwise they would never stop crying.

What the artist does is choose several “Pickers” that he finds the most striking (usually due to their personalities) and uses them as models. He has rented a warehouse where, using large amounts of trash from the landfill, he creates massive (hundred foot by hundred foot at least) depictions of the pickers in poses from classic paintings. In addition, he employs the pickers as workers to assist in the creation of the pieces.

It sounds like it could be amazing, it also sounds like it could be exploitive. What’s remarkable is that the documentary shows both sides. At first we see a people who, while they live in filth, don’t seem to want or need anyone’s help. Then, when they start working for the artist, they become more honest about how much they hate their jobs and how little they ever want to go back. You feel for them, but you don’t pity them and I credit the filmmakers for knowing the difference.

I kept on waiting for the preachy moment when they hammered home an environmental message. Or, worse, for the subjects of the documentary to start dying of various diseases or violent acts. Instead I got a simple documentary about a group of people who’s lives go from being horrible to slightly better thanks to one artist. It’s not a doom and gloom story about how we are destroying the world, nor is it an inspirational “just one person can change everything” film. It’s just an intimate portrayal of some very interesting people living in a truly horrible place, and it lets us take from that what we will.

Final thoughts: The rarest kind of documentary, the kind that is really just documenting something. Worth your time.

Next up is The Tourist, followed by the latest Narnia film and Black Swan.

See ya soon.

Sef.

Starring: James Franco, Jon Hamm, David Strathairn

Written and directed by: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman

Okay, I am so fucking loving how crowded my best of the year list is getting. And I’m so pleasantly surprised that it just got another entry.

Howl is the story of legendary beat poet Allen Ginsberg (Franco) and the trial surrounding his once controversial and now classic poem of the same name. The poem was considered obscene by some for its sexual imagery and, apparently, the publisher of it nearly went to prison for publishing “obscene material”. This entire film is about that trial, and about Ginsberg’s head space when he wrote the poem.

When I went into this movie, what I expected was a run of the mill biopic about Ginsberg, with the poem as a backdrop. I expected to admire the film more than I liked it and I expected to have to give something along the lines of a “thanks but no thanks” write up for it. Little did I know that the writer/director team of Rob Epstein and jeffrey Friedman were doing something truly remarkable. They took three sources. One: the trial of the publisher and the transcripts of that. Two: an interview with Ginsberg about the poem and the transcripts of that. And three: the poem itself, and used those three sources as the entire text of the film. That’s right. What we’ve got here is one of them  darn experimental films. But in this case the experiment works, and how.

I was in a play a while back called Gross Indecency about the three trials of Oscar Wilde. The entire play was compiled, with a couple of exceptions, of transcripts from his trials. It sounded kind of dry but, filtered through a good playwright who knew exactly which excerpts to use, the play worked perfectly and told a sad story of a man who was outed as gay back when being outed as gay meant going to prison.

This film reminded me of that play on so many levels. it was very much the same type of material. Mainly, the outing of a homosexual poet and the possibility of someone (in this case the publisher and not the writer) going to prison for it.  And the fact that the story was all found text. usually I’m a big critic of found text mostly because when it’s used it’s usually used by some wanky writer who doesn’t want to write but wants to create a patchwork of other writers and call it a story (I also hate Andy Warhol for completely unrelated reasons) but in the case of journalism I think there is a difference. There is something about finding the heart in a series of heartless texts (court documents, random old interviews etc) that is just so revealing. It’s like the magic of cinema finds a slightly more beautiful truth than usual.

It’s such a simple film but it just stayed with me for so long. Some of the things Allen Ginsberg said in the interview are just so reassuring for those of us that sometimes feel like life has drawn a target sign on our privates. And it becomes even more reassuring when we remember that these are Allen Ginsberg’s actual words. It doesn’t hurt that the film ends with a song Ginsberg wrote called Father Death which is one of those “how the fuck did I not hear this until now” kind of songs that leaves you in tears.  The perfect way to end an amazing experience watching a true story about a great man.

final thoughts: Apparently other critics aren’t liking this as much but, as the great man Gene Siskel once said, I am right, the other critics are wrong.

Next up is Waste Land.

Cheers.

Sef.

Starring: Cher, Christina Aguilera

Written and directed by: Steve Antin

Ouch. Oh ouch. Oh…okay. I’m just going to walk this one off for a couple of seconds, then I’ll come back.

…

Nope still hurts.

Burlesque is a star vehicle for Christina Aguilera.  I’m really not sure what those that made it were thinking. Part of me thinks they were intentionally making a camp film but I can’t see any drag queens picking this as the story they most want to retell dressed as either of the main characters, especially in a world that has created such amazing camp masterpieces as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. It doesn’t even really seem that the premise would appeal to Aguilera’s base. I mean, what young girl interested in pop songs and dance music wants to see a PG-13 version of Showgirls?

Quickly, the premise is that Aguilera’s character, Ali,  is a waitress from a small town who decides to move to L.A. to try to make it as a singer. After going through three auditions in the paper and failing to land any of them (talk about paying your dues) she happens on a small underground club called Burlesque where girls dance to old classics of the forties and fifties. The club is losing money and it’s owner (played by Cher) is on the verge of having to sell to an amoral real estate developer but her fortunes turn when she discovers that Ali, that humble young waitress, has a hell of a voice and might just turn this whole thing around.

So that’s the idea. Could go a lot of ways at this point. Could be a fun romp that makes no apologies for its simple premise. Could be a train wreck that you can’t turn away from. Could be surprisingly good considering the low expectations. Could be a lot of things.

Unfortunately, it chose to be nothing.

I don’t say that lightly. This film barely exists. What works in it is passable, what doesn’t is painful, and the most important part, the songs, are completely forgettable. Watching it in the theatre is like when you go into a video store and see a box cover for a movie you’ve never heard of but it has really big stars in it and you’re like “holy crap, how did that get made? I’ve never even heard of that.” but instead of putting said box cover back on the shelf you have to stare at it for over an hour and a half. The stakes never raise in this film, your sympathy with the characters never goes up in this film. The only thing I can say in its favour is that the scenes are in some sort of order but I would like to think, for tens of millions of dollars, you could have accomplished more than just realizing that B follows A.

I could go on but why? You don’t need to hear my criticism of the acting or the directing or the dialogue or the…well, insert your aspect of cinema and I’ll tell you it didn’t work (save costumes, those are kind of nice) all you need to know is that this ranks right up there with Welcome to Mooseport as a film that will be erased from the collective memory of the western world without a single note of protest. No one wins, no one loses, no one does anything. This film is not a game over for anyone as it exists outside of the cultural awareness. For that, the filmmakers should be thankful.

Final thoughts: A failure on every level, even as a guilty pleasure.

Next up is the surprising and truly fantastic Howl followed by the moving Waste land.

Plus I’ll finally tell everyone my plans for next year.

Cheers.

Sef.

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hatheway

Written by: Charles Randolph Edward, Edward Zwick, Marshal Herskovitz

Directed by: Edward Zwick

The best romantic comedy of the year.

I know the year isn’t over but no romantic comedy is topping this.

I loved this movie. I loved this movie ten times more than I thought I would. It’s not totally perfect but there’s just so much to love in it.

Now here’s why.

It follows every single signpost that is in your usual Romantic Comedy. the meet cute (two people meet in a stupid way that implies they should hate each other when they will end up loving each other) the fun and games as they get to know each other, the falling in love, the all is lost when they fall apart, and the get back together. It does all of this. But it puts in real characters, adds some serious problems (I’ll get into that later) and ends up making you feel like you are really and truly part of the story. It makes you sympathetic with characters you never thought you’d like.

Take Jake Gyllenhaal as Jamie Randall. He plays a salesman for Pfizer, a drug company that is known best for bringing Viagra to the world. He is an absolute douche bag, in the first scene he steals a man’s girlfriend while the man is selling stereos in the other room. I hated the guy. I wanted him to die in a horrible way.

The movie made me like him.

He meets a girl at a doctors office. He’s posing as an intern so that he can better sell his product when the young woman in question exposes her breast for a routine exam. The womanizer falls in love.

Only guess why she was at the doctor? She has early onset Parkinson’s disease. Yup. That’s the stumbling block. That’s also why she’s willing to date such a horrible human being. Because she’s at stage one of the disease and she knows in the next couple stages things will get much much worse. She doesn’t want to fall in love, she wants to feel something that she knows she can throw away with no guilt whatsoever. So when she discovers that there is good in him, and that he is in love, it’s horrible and beautiful for her at the exact same time. And, more importantly, it’s believable.

As far as the whole Viagra thing goes, it’s the selling of Viagra that makes Jamie a superstar but it’s the background of the movie, not the forefront. And that’s where I will display my biggest beef with the film. Not with the film itself but with the ad campaign. You see, the film is about a relationship in which one person is ill with a disease that will not kill her, but will in fact take her away piece by piece from the other person, and how both of them deal with that. The ad campaign is about a slick salesman falling for a wild girl (no disease mentioned) with Viagra as the primary plot device. The studio did this because they, apparently, know what sells movie tickets. Perhaps they knew they had something good so they decided to get people in the theatre by any means necessary. Or perhaps they didn’t know how to sell what they had so they decided to lie. It doesn’t really matter because the ad campaign isn’t the movie. The movie is a story about love conquering hardship. No more nor less.

Before I end I need to point out the performance of Anne Hatheway. I’ve already mentioned Jake Gyllenhaal but Anne Hatheway is a young actor that seems incapable of giving a bad performance. In this film, though, she turns it up even more and manages to play a borderline suicidal character in a way that makes you feel like you met her at a family function. You can see why a girl like this would turn an egotistical womanizer around. She’d turn anyone around. I’m sure the writing had a great deal to do with it but a lot of credit must be given to the actor.

Final thoughts: A Romantic comedy with the guts to take things past the point of safety. Bravo.

Next up is Burlesque. Or, if you want to do your own review of Burlesque you could just look at what I wrote above and imagine the exact opposite in all respects. Seriously. We could make it like a game.

Sef.

It’s the end of an era.

Or at least it was about six days ago.

Cinemark Tinseltown, easily my favourite theatre in all of Vancouver, the formerly American owned multiplex has been taken over by the Canadian masters of the megamegaplex, Cineplex Odeon. What does this mean? Why am I nostalgic about a massive American company giving up a theatre to a massive Canadian company. Why…in short…do I care?

Well it’s like this. Cinemark Tinsletown had two things going for it. One, it was cheap. Crazy cheap. For a theatre that size it’s price was crazy. And two, it had the best selection in the city. foreign movies, independent movies, and blockbusters all in the same roof. A friend of mine explained to me that this was because the theatre, remarkably, charged the same rent to everyone showing a film, whether it be a tiny independent distributor or a massive studio. I wasn’t able to find out why it was they did this but I wonder if it’s because they are an American company, and thus not beholden to whatever Canadian companies take the football that is American Cinema and run it to our projection rooms. I don’t know if this is why, if anyone knows the truth please let me know.

But it doesn’t matter because Cinemark Tinseltown, as of Nov. 26th, is no more. Now it is Cineplex Odeon  at International Village (seriously, that’s the full name). Not it is owned by the same people who own Scotiabank theatre and all the Silver Cities.

Already things have taken a turn for the worse. Before, Tinseltown was the only multiplex not to show commercials before the films. Now, it’s showing those torturous Telus adds (the one where a dolphin does math)  and that tedious little El Tabadour guy from the Koodo commercials. Is this the first step? Will the next one be doing away with independent, and, perhaps more importantly, local films? This hit me like a fist in the stomach and it’s not just because I’m a fan of the theatre.

No, my man reason for being unhappy is much more personal. You see, it has to do with the future of See Every Film.

I knew long ago that I couldn’t do this two years in a row. It’s just too much running around. But I thought I had the solution. The plan was, next year, instead of seeing every film I would instead see every film…that played at Cinemark Tinseltown. It seemed like the safest bet. twelve theatres showing everything from Toy Story 3 to the Vancouver Asian Film Festival to Christian Recruitment films. It’s centrally located, affordable, god damned it it’s perfect.

And now it’s gone. Now I don’t know what I’m going to do next year and that really pisses me off.

but…on the other hand…I’m glad in its last year in our city I spent so much time there. I always felt comfortable there. A lot of movie theatres in our great city become douchebag magnets but that was never the case with Cinemark Tinsletown. It was a theatre for nice, quiet, film lovers like myself.

God Damned it I’m depressed. I don’t want to lose my favourite theatre. Yes, it was a massive stadium style theatre and not some small ma and pop theatre on the corner. Yes, the only reason it showed such great shows may very well have been because it’s owners were so far away they had no idea what was going on. But dammit it was mine!

For eleven years we had it all. A massive theatre, showing a varied array of films with no commercials. I guess it couldn’t last forever.

R.I.P. tinseltown. You will be missed.

Sef.

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton

Written by: Tony and Joe Gayton

Directed by: George Tillman Jr.

Within the first fifteen minutes I was hooked. Unfortunately, the film is ninety minutes long.

Faster is, depending on how you look at it, either a loose remake or an homage to the classic (and damned near flawless) western The Good the Bad and the Ugly. Not that it follows the plot, but it follows the basic set up. There are three main characters, one good, one bad, one ugly, each gets a freeze frame introduction with their names flashing beside them and each is on a mission that, in one way or the other, involves going through the other two. Only instead of a gunslinger collecting bounties then stealing back his prisoner so he can collect the bounty in another nearby town, the film centres around a getaway driver out to avenge the murder of his brother by a gang of thugs.

Like I said, for the first fifteen minutes I was hooked. The tension it sets up is outstanding. The look of the film is crisp. Dwayne Johnson, in his first action role since…well…since a damned long time, paces back and forth like an animal looking to rip apart anything in his way. He fills up the screen with a menace that proves that he’s not just another muscle shirt.

But here’s the problem, once the premise is set up it just kind of…well…does it’s thing. It becomes a series of scenes in which Dwayne Johnson (or “Driver” as he is known to the audience) exacts revenge. Any attempt to stray from that feels forced and out-of-place.  It doesn’t help much that the whole thing is building to a twist that was so obvious that I started to wonder if it was even supposed to be a twist at all. Like maybe the audience was just supposed to know it. This proves not the case as when the evidence is revealed it’s done in a “see!? Didn’t see that coming didja!” way that made me want to clap sarcastically.

For me, this movie was an excellent lesson in pacing. I’m noticing more and more through the year that films I love tend to introduce a premise, make it seem like that’s all the movie is, then turn the premise on its ear. This film introduces a premise and then, well, that’s it. Yes there are moments when they try to make it a redemption tale but the film doesn’t commit to these moments enough to make them work. The only place where it seems to promise anything more than the trailer implies is with Billy Bob Thornton. If we keep going with the Good the Bad and the Ugly comparison, he’s the Ugly.  A down and out cop, addicted to Heroin, doing anything he can to get through the next ten days since he’s that close to retirement. here is a character we can really sympathize with. He’s got a family falling apart, a shit pot of personal issues he’s dealing with but, for some reason, we find ourselves rooting for him. If it wasn’t for the fact that the aforementioned overly predictable twist involves him he might have saved the film. As it is, he just offers a few scenes of substance in what is over all a pretty forgettable entry into the revenge sub genre.

Final thoughts:  All the right ingredients but no spice make for an uneven and uneventful experience.

All that remains for this week is Love and other Drugs, Burlesque, and Wasteland. Plus a little note on the future of see every film.

Cheers.

Sef.

Starring: Mandy Moore, Zachery Levi

Written by: Dan Fogelman

Directed by: nathan Greno, Byron Howard

Kind of fun.  Lots of well executed comedy bits, but there’s really nothing here that will stand out in the crowded field of children’s animation.

Tangled is Disney’s take on the classic fairy tale Rapunzel. I had never actually read the original tale but a quick trip over to Wikipedia has let me know that, for those at Disney, staying true to the source material was never a high priority. There’s a girl stuck in a tower and she has really long hair. They know that’s all most people are aware of so that’s all they worried about keeping.

In this version, Rapunzel’s hair is magical and can help reverse aging. That’s why an evil sorceress stole Rapunzel from her real Parents (who are King and Queen of the land, natch) and has kept her hidden away. But when a dashing thief escapes to her tower with a stolen artifact, he finds himself tricked into helping her get out so that she can see the world she’s always wanted to see.

It’s a very phoned in story. The best word to describe it would be “soulless” but, credit where credit is due, Disney hasn’t made fifty of these things without learning how to get a good laugh out of a cheap gag. There’s two real sources of laughter in this film. One is the animals (while Rapunzel’s best friend, a Chameleon, is featured heavily in the commercials, my favourite is the Horse that thinks it’s a dog that thinks it’s a police officer) the other is a gang of thugs that hang out in a dark and dingy tavern, all of which have dreams of giving up their lives of crime and fighting for things like Mime and ceramic unicorns.

But just having little gags isn’t enough. For me, how I tell if I love a Disney movie (and don’t just kind of like it) is in the quiet moments. When a character’s heart is breaking or two people are falling in love. It’s in these that you can tell if you really sympathize with the people in the story. Well, in Tangled, I didn’t even remotely care. Every time things got quiet, or someone broke into a non comic song, I just tuned out and waited patiently for the overly sarcastic Chameleon or the horse/dog/cop to bring some life back to the thing.

I suppose kids will have a lot of fun with this film, and that should count for something, but I just feel that with how far Disney has come in the past few years, with it’s Pixar division in particular, they should be able to do a little better than this. I guess this is a safe one to pop in the DVD Player while the kids are having a party but don’t expect it to get mentioned a lot come awards season.

Final thoughts: Uninspired and without much substance, but bear in mind I’m pretty jaded.

Tomorrow should be Faster followed closely by Love and Other Drugs and Burlesque.

Sef.