The movie is based on a story by Roald Dahl.  I’m not familiar with this particular story, but I get the feeling that Anderson added a lot more to it in this imagining.  Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney) is an aging reporter who longs for one last chance to act like a fox (i.e., harassing and stealing from farmers) despite the reservations of his wife (Meryl Streep).  With the help of his inept but well meaning friend Kylie (Wally Wolodarsky) he orchestrates his last big score.

Since a movie needs conflict, something goes awry and Mr. Fox, Kylie and the rest of the animals have to go about finding away to survive an all out assault from a trio of evil farmers.

And it is soooo cute.

I’ll certainly admit to being a big fan of Wes Anderson.  Rushmore is definitely among my most favorite movies of all time.  It doesn’t take a film major to realize that, though the scripts are rife with clever humor and the stories are fun and quirky, what sets his films apart from any number of other indie-quirky-cutesy movies is the obsessive attention to production design and the ephemeral idea of good taste and style.  Wes Anderson has style in droves.

With this in mind, I think Anderson left what will be a lasting impression on the genre of stop motion animation.  The details of the characters in Fantastic Mr. Fox are exquisite (there is another word I don’t use very much).  Their furry little faces gleam, their character traits are as alive, distinguishable and compelling as any (dare I say more compelling than more) live actor.  In short, this movie is beautiful.  Now, I saw Wall-E and I saw Up.  To me, these movies rely on tugging heartstrings and, at times, very effective character development to be compelling.  When CG animation looks “good” it looks “real.”  This movie doesn’t look real, it looks beyond real.  It looks alive and magical.  It still has a cute story, some very funny scenes and even very memorable voice performances, but what really makes it special is that it is so fun to look at.  Even if there was no sound,  it would be visually compelling.  I hate to make yet another corny statement about it, lest I be branded some kind of Wes Anderson fangirl (um…) but in short, this movie is more than a movie — it’s art.

I was just lamenting the other day that I really don’t get to do enough drunk blogging anymore because I don’t really have the internet at my house.  But really that just stops me from drunk *posting* not drunk blogging.  So, the original intent of the Drunk Reviews tag was to both watch and review the movie while I was drunk I am going to make an exception tonight.  Because I am drunk and I already have 3 movies that I watched and need to blog about.  So at least one of them will be a drunk blog.  Holy shit that was wayyyy too much explanation.

On Sunday I was supposed to see that movie about Nazi zombies (does anyone else have trouble reaching the “z” on the keyboard?  It’s very uncomfortable) but instead I saw Up.  I really don’t like the title of this movie.  I want it to have an exclamation point or, something.  Another word, I guess.  The Fantastic Adventures of a Clinically Depressed Elderly Man and a Racially Ambiguous Child who Lacks a Father Figure might be good.  A little wordy, though.

I wasn’t head over heels for Up, but it is recognizably well done.  The animation specifically is very impressive.  Sure, the story (is it an allegory?  I’m going to have to google that) is charming in a Pixar-y way.  It’s impossible not to cheer on the protagonists, Carl and Russel, who are both adorable and earnest in their own ways.  The thing about the absent father I feel like has been Done to Death.  Sure it’s a problem that plagues America (I don’t even know if this is true, but I’m sure it must suck when this happens) but you can bet your sweet ass (WTF, why did I just say that?) that someone would have been up in arms if the kid (Russell) with an absent father had been African-American.  I mean, right?  Because then it would have been saying something about the irresponsibility of black men towards their children like that one time that Bill Cosby told black people to stop spending their money on sneakers.  Did my blog just suddenly get controversial?  Anyway, that just kind of annoyed me.  The missing dad part, not black people.  I actually don’t remember seeing any black characters in this movie, except at the very end.

What I did like was the really dumb talking Golden Retriever named Doug.  He was funny, even if his schtick got a little old.  I used to have a Golden Retriever.  She was really sweet but dumber than a brick.  Poor Claudia.

I was also kind of offput by how much littering happened in this movie, especially considering that WALL-E, Pixar’s last offering, was basically 90 minutes of “Don’t Litter” propaganda.  Russell and Carl go to the remote jungle, the whole point of it being that it is remote and secluded and “a land lost to time” and they just leave all kinds of shit everywhere.  They unload a whole house full of furniture right there on the jungle floor, they release all kinds of balloons into the atmosphere (also, come on guys, BALLOONS CAN’T LIFT A HOUSE!) and eventually (SPOILER!) they just leave a whole fucking house!  Right there at the top of a waterfall!  Maybe most kids aren’t going to take away any messages about littering in the rainforest from this movie, but it just seemed kind of weird to me.  Yes, this is actually something I thought about while watching Up.  No, I am not a dirty hippy.  It’s just weird, right?

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

I am so excited to see EARTH.  Yay!  Parade of cuteness!  Narrated by Patrick Stewart! Darth Vader!

Swim Big Guy!

Simba & Co.!

Cute animal pictures: saving bloggers from writing since 1998!

“Man, that kid is SMART!”

Shooter

“I thought the dude was gonna die, but then he didn’t.”

Must Love Dogs

[insert sound of him leaving the room]

There are remakes that are done for the right reason – that truly bring something new and different – a new perspective or a new twist – to the table that is cinema. Nim’s Island does none of these things. But the real tragedy is that it’s not even a remake.

Nim Rusoe (Abigail Breslin) is an 11 year old girl who lives on a remote island with her scientist/widower father, Jack (Gerard Butler). One suspiciously sunny day, Jack is scheduled to go on a sea expedition and Nim refuses to go along, insisting she stay alone on the island and help hatch the sea turtle’s eggs. With an ominous “See you in two days,” Jack sets out to sea. The first night Jack is gone, a storm hits! Deceptively plucky Nim survives it just fine, but Jack is not so lucky and gets stranded at sea. Nim’s only hope for survival (not to mention to save her island from rowdy, drunken, uncouth and overweight Americ…I mean, Australian tourists) is Nim’s favorite adventurer on paper, one Alex Rover. But Nim doesn’t know that the rugged and courageous Alex is actually a creation of obsessive compulsive San Fransican Alexandra Rover (Jodie Foster) who has been emailing Jack for help with her latest book. Despite her fears, neuroses and tightly wound urbanity, Alexandra decides to track down Nim and help her. What follows (and, to be fair, what precedes) is a jumbled, predictable, uneven, hypersentimental mess that leaves a smudge across Jodie Foster’s Oscars more noticeable than her impossibly toned legs.

Where a movie like Romancing the Stone succeeds in swashbuckling suspense and romance, ‘Nim’s Island’ falls face first into cheesiness with dialogue that borders on self-parody and scenes that we’ve watched a hundred times before. When Alexandra gets her first email from Nim (don’t ask me how their deserted island has an internet connection faster than mine) she reads the signature line and gazes longingly out the window, sighing to herself “What an interesting name…” Later, she’s emailing Nim from her treadmill and literally, actually falls off. You know when the treadmill goes faster than the runner and the runner shoots off the back? You know, the most hilariously original gag since slapstick co-existed with treadmills? Yeah, that’s what happens! Gold, right? What do you mean that gag is tired?

Though the high-cache stars of Nim’s Island can be hopelessly charming in the right context: this script, direction and movie are most certainly not it. Despite the eagerness with which Foster dives into Alexandra’s neuroses, Foster’s elastic faces and exaggerated physical comedy come off as desperate attempts to prove she both isn’t too old for the role (which she really is) and hasn’t succumbed to Hollywood pressures to Botox (the jury is still out on that one). Where Breslin’s charms were obvious when surrounded by the solid performances of humans like Toni Collette, Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear, they are a little harder to parse when most of her screen time is shared with a flatulent sea lion and an incorrigible lizard named Fred. Gerard Butler is still damn sexy as both Jack Rusoe and the Alex Rover of Alexandra’s imagination, but when he’s spouting lines like “Be the hero of your own life story” his charisma fades into nothing more than a slightly less off-putting Tony Robbins.

Nim’s Island was directed by husband and wife team Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin (they also helped with the adaptation from Wendy Orr’s 1999 novel) who previously collaborated on the little seen Little Manhattan. The hackneyed direction, with constantly swelling music and match cuts unmatched by any other island adventure move so far this April makes me think that this is a pair that is truly in love: otherwise, they never could have been so distracted as to put together something this derivative.

Alas, Nim’s Island like so many films that could have been better before, is redeemed by the fact that it will probably be fun for kids. There are little dances, funny sea lions, flying lizards and goofy faces to distract them from a thin and plodding story that doesn’t really say anything. But why not just wait a couple of years and show them Romancing the Stone? Or just show them now. Kids are growing up faster these days, anyway.

This review is also available at la.cityzine.com.

The oh-so-complicated plot involves a rat named Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt) who wants to be a chef so he teams up with this kid named Alfredo Linguini (oh, great name.) who has a job in a kitchen but is completely inept at cooking. Together, they have to save the restaurant without letting people know that a rat is actually doing the cooking. I know, you’re totally in suspense right now, but I’m not going to spoil it for you!

Ok, I will.

The restaurant gets shut down by the health inspector but it’s OK because they open a new restaurant that magically doesn’t have to adhere to health codes and everyone lives H.E.A. Also, they convince a critic to stop being a jerk and Alfredo falls in love with Jeanine Garafalo who has a French accent. (The movie takes place in Paris, but most of the people & rats aren’t French for some reason).

So, it’s no Toy Story – in terms of story or voice talents – but it’s OK, not bad, great for kids probably.

But I had a couple of big problems with it. I realize that sometimes I really need to lighten up on the feminist stuff and maybe that should be especially applicable in the case of something like a cartoon about talking rats. But the way that women were portrayed (well, there was really only one woman) in Ratatouille really bugged me. Colette is a cook at the fancy restaurant when Remy and Alfredo show up. Towards the beginning, she even gives Alfredo a speech about how she has to be so tough and work so hard to compete in the male-dominated world of Haute Cuisine. Great, right?

Then, she falls in love with Alfredo. They go roller skating. When she finds out about Remy, she freaks out but eventually accepts it because the food is great. Then, she lets him tell her what to make. The little rat bosses her around and makes it look like she has no idea what she’s doing. And she is completely OK with it! She is mad at first because it’s a rat, but after her initial rant she is never mad about taking a back seat to Alfredo OR Remy. WTF? Why does she have to be made to look like she doesn’t know what she’s doing? Didn’t she have the ambition to be a chef at some point? Then, because she loves Alfredo, (also, WHY? She is a hot, purple-eyed, ambitious French chick and he is a total geek with no redeeming qualities!) she just gives up and happily resigns herself to help him out for the rest of her life instead moving up? This really really pissed me off. She is the only female character in the movie and she just serves the guys. Even when the guy is literally a RAT.

To me, this message is even worse than a princess movie where the girl just waits around to be rescued. This is promoting the idea – the very widely held and accepted idea – that if a girl falls in love she just gives up her ambitions because all she really ever needed to be happy was a man. You can dismiss the princess as a loser and an idiot, but Colette is depicted as strong, smart and talented – until this dude and his rat come along. Ugh!

Also, there is one black guy in the movie and the only thing they ever say about him is that he got fired from his last job for fooling around with someone’s daughter. Uh, stereotype much?

So, if you don’t have a huge chip on your shoulder about how movies portray women like I do, you will probably like Ratatouille a lot more than I did.

I like princesses, big song productions and McDreamy as much as the next girl.  If not more.  But 2 hours?  Come on.

Alvin and the Chipmunks

What is the deal with Jason Lee?  I always think I like him.  But I’m pretty sure that he can’t act.  Like at all.  I’m sure it’s hard to act with like fake chipmunks and stuff  – but it can’t be harder than it is to act like you like Shannen Doherty. 

But David Cross was awesome.  Per usual.