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10fttall
Reviews
Bee Movie (2007)
Bee afraid, bee very afraid
Why? That is the important question. Why was this movie made at all? I know Seinfeld was a "show about nothing" and I am a Seinfeld fan. This was a movie about nothing, but unlike the TV show, Bee Movie was agonizingly unfunny, pointless, and meandering. Whoever green-lighted this script clearly has a substance abuse problem.
I see lots of people are falling all over themselves with praise because this movie is cute, harmless, and not dirty. For goodness sake, folks, raise your standards! This is 2007! CG movies with cute characters are a dime a dozen. As consumers, we should express a desire for genuinely worthwhile, well thought, funny kids/CG movies. Otherwise, we will get more and more of this drivel, and worse. The only good point for Bee Movie, is that they did not descend into a bunch of toilet humor. On the other hand, the instances that you could call "humor" at all were few and far between.
They anthropromorphized something else non-human. This is not a bad idea in itself, but it has been done so much better before; giving life stories and every little nuance of human civilization to Bees. Everything has clever little names, mostly variants of "bee" or "honey." Only problem is that in this case, most of the clever naming and theming of the bee world falls flat, stupid, and causes eye rolls - as opposed to say, Cars, which did it about a thousand times better.
Next to Bee Movie, even the usual also-rans of animation such as Over the Hedge, and Madagascar, seem like genuine masterpieces and instant classics. I snickered a time or two, but sitting through the rest was in no way worth it. Children who are simple enough to be held in awe by anything that is animated, will really dig this movie. I'm sure as their age and sophistication increase past 6 or 7, kids will even begin to wish this movie was as sharp and funny as the dozens of better CG movies they have been exposed to.
Sting and Ray Liota? That was just plain dumb, and really not worth revisiting several times in the movie. The movie pace and feel actually had a little mediocre passable groove going, until the idiotic lawsuit plot got rolling. That brought everything to a crashing halt. John Goodman's performance fell flat, seeming to be a chemical induced over the top fat lawyer with a huge drawl (in New York?) It was almost embarrassing to hear him desperately trying to do something funny with this disaster of a script. With a great script, he can do over the top and weird characters superbly like in O Brother and Big Lebowski, but here he should not have touched the part. Chris Rock was one of the funniest parts of the whole movie, making me chuckle more than any other character, although he was only around for about 3 minutes total. The 90 minute running time seemed to crawl by, and I would have sworn I had been in there at least 2 hours.
In summary, unlike other CG movies we are used to, this has next to nothing for the grownups, and not much more for the kids. I don't know if Seinfeld is washed up, his time is past, or just rich and lazy these days, but this is not a positive for his career. Take the kids if you must, but don't bother bringing your spouse. And you're certainly not going to find yourself sneaking this one in the DVD player when nobody else is around like some of us might occasionally find ourselves doing with The Incredibles or Ice age.
A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
Close, but no cigar
The trailer looked great, the buzz and advertizing was good, but not overdone, but the end product just didn't quite get there to that special, magical place that would make it a blockbuster.
The visuals were stunning and very well done, although it's not my cup of tea. (Having such wildly wacky sets in a live action film constantly takes me out of the picture.) Acting was top notch from the kids. I had heard good things about Jim Carrey's performance, and I am a big Carrey fan. To me it just felt wrong though. I thought he was way too over-the-top considering the evil role he had. The funny parts made me snicker and even laugh a time or two, but they ended up being few and far between. They needed to either have a genuine serious villain and a dark film, or have more comedy and make it watchable in this fashion.
I was severely bored in a few places, and I hope all the kids who read the books see this a couple times each; because those who haven't will probably be bored. The younger side of the audience doesn't have a prayer. I have heard the books are quite good, and I read the author was involved in the production. He apparently thought it was a great adaptation, helped out with it himself, and didn't care if the book story was changed or not. This puzzles me because it seems like I could sense that the source material could be very good, but the film didn't capture it right. But I guess the author did. Oh well.
If you've read the books, I guess you'll enjoy it. Otherwise, you'll probably end up with your head bobbing.
Brother Bear (2003)
Somebody left the cap off the airplane glue!
****SPOILERS*******
Oh Brother, what a colossal waste of film! This has got to be a new low for Disney. I will admit that it achieved one of its goals, entertaining small children. My daughter was in love with the movie, but she loves anything animated.
The music stunk, it sounded like Phil Collins singing the same awkward forgettable lyrics and tune 6 times in a row. The humor was sub-par. Rick Moranis' Canadian Moose was trying very hard to be funny, but just didn't get there. I didn't know the voice credits beforehand and thought it was just somebody doing a weak impression of Moranis' Canadian act in the first place. The story was mostly predictable, except I never suspected that turn toward stupid that they took at the end. If they were consistent with their "departed spirits can do anything," logic why the heck didn't Koda's mom turn him into a boy? Why didn't Kenai go embrace his live brother or spirit brother first when he was temporarily changed back? Why did he go embrace the bear cub?
I don't have the complaint that it's borrowed from other Disney films, in fact, a few elements from other Disney films, such as an engaging plot or good music would have helped out greatly.
Hope Floats (1998)
Holy waste of time, Batman!
**Contains Spoilers**
Yep, this has my vote for my least favorite movie I have ever seen. Thoroughly unbelievable and dull. We're supposed to believe that Daddy has been so great to this idiot of a little girl in the past, that she would scream for him instead of her obviously more loving mother? Come on... And I'm desperately trying to recall something that actually happened in this movie. The drama for me was intense anticipation of a storyline, which went sadly unfulfilled. Maybe there will be an extended special edition when the director and producers realize they made a horrible mistake and cut out the entire plot in the course of editing. After the opening, not a single thing happens except a wooden romance with a predictable happy, happy ending. Nothing really even threatens this except for internal stupidity on the part of Bullock's character. Oh yeah, when her mother dies the more sensitive among us may almost wake up....