Tag: Family

Monkey Up is a movie I never planned on reviewing. I never planned on even knowing it existed. I could have gone my entire life and most likely I never would have heard about it in any situation. No one I know would have seen it, and know one I would meet in ten years would have seen it. It would have faded into obscurity.

However, extreme storms happened in the Houston area and it was suddenly rushed from the depths into my view. Streets were flooded, so I found myself unable to make it to the movie theater to see a screening of another film. So I had to literally drive myself back home, many hours early, suddenly finding myself needing to entertain kids.

So I turned to Netflix, like many a person under 40, and specifically set out to look for a shitty unheard of recent family movie. And there were a lot of great contenders. I wrote down some names, so maybe a few more of them will be coming your way soon. But eventually I found Monkey Up (my second choice, as my first one was a sequel, and I wasn’t ready for a series (or serious) commitment).

It was by Air Bud Entertainment, which I learned was a thing. Which makes sense, after all those films, and of course, the “Buddies” shit films.

No, this isn’t MVP and Dunston is not checking in.

Monty The Monkey (Crystal the Monkey) is a real, talking monkey in this world (voiced by Skylar Astin, technically the most famous person in this movie). He can speak English and everything, so you’d think he’d be everywhere. But nope, he is instead just the spokesman for Monkey Up, a banana flavored energy drink, which I would love to try.

His manager is Dessy (David Milchard) who first discovered him doing Shakespeare at the park. He isn’t too great at his job, since he cannot get Monty into serious roles, just shitty commercials for some quick fat cash. But the director (Chris Coppola) and owner of Monkey Up is a dick, so Monty is getting tired of it all. In fact, he heard about a famous director, Angelino Cappello (Danny Woodburn), making a film with a monkey as a lead, but he is doing it all with CGI! Oh no!

And yeah, Monty can’t convince him that he is a serious monkey actor ready for the big leagues. So he runs away and ends up in a giant doll house. That ends up in the room of Sophie (Kayden Magnuson), a present from her mom (Erin Allin O’Reilly) and dad (Jonathan Mangum) because they forgot her late after gymnastics. Also apparently everyone left the gymnastics place, fine with an elementary school girl by herself for like, many hours.

Sophie originally keeps him a secret, but then her brother (Caleb Burgess) finds out. Then the dad. Then eventually the mom. Monty decides that he wants to give this “family” thign a shot, to build up his potential as an actor to do more serious roles. He helps the brother learn Romeo and Juliet to impress a girl (Yasmeene Ball), the sister to do better at gymnastics, the dad to write his book, and of course in general do house hold chores and stuff.

By the end, Monty will learn what family really means. He will be able to reconnect with his own monkey family and maybe get out of these damn commercials. Also starring Jessi Cruickshank as an entertainment reporter, Christina Sicoli as an assistant, and John Ratzenberger as Sophie’s grandfather.

DRINK MONKEY UP! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!

Seeing Crystal the Monkey in anything is very distracting. For whatever reason, almost everything makes her a male monkey. But I when I see Crystal, the first thing I think about is Annie’s Boobs. No, I’m not being weird and fantasizing about Alison Brie on a family film review. I mean the monkey on Community named Annie’s Boobs. That was my first Crystal role, even before The Hangover Part II and the Night at the Museum movies.

That’s enough monkey talk. This is a pointless movie. The story itself is one that has been told dozens of times in family films that it is almost painful to sit through. Outsider joins a family in turmoil, fixes things up, learns to be a better person, and stays with that family. Yawn, snore, writers need to try and be more original.

But they are original! This outsider is a monkey who can talk! With his own monkey issues with a similar talking family, that wears tiny monkey clothes at the zoo, and everyone is just cool with it. It is so awkward.

Overall the film can only be described as boring. I started to distract myself with cleaning and mindless walking around to get me through it. It isn’t badly filmed, or even terrible acting. It is just so mentally uninspired that it felt like torture to watch.

And here is the thing that pissed me off the most. The bad guy didn’t even get punished. To make everyone happy, he got a ridiculously amazing pay day. A stupidly large sum, that apparently the family could totally live without, because they are already rich and no biggie. And the bad guy gets money. Money and some monkey shit thrown at him, but who cares when he goes back home to start buying amazing new furniture.

Pixar! What are you doing? This seems highly unusual!

They had Inside Out come out earlier in the year. The year being 2015. But this is another Pixar movie, The Good Dinosaur, coming out in the same year. Don’t they know that this will mean they are competing against themselves for animated film awards?

Oh well, that is because this Pixar film was supposed to come out in 2013. But delays occurred. Serious delays that pushed it back a year, and then another. The whole story had to be redone from what they initially thought about, as there were apparent serious problems with the script. Not only that, but the entire voice cast, except for Frances McDormand was replaced earlier this year. Some crazy shit went down into getting this film out.

Either way, this is the first time that Pixar has released two films in the same year. The next time they do this is in 2017, with the release of Coco and Cars 3. That year, however, they won’t be competing against themselves since they know that there is no way Cars 3 will win anything.

Oh no, there are 3 T-Rexs here. This just make me think of how bad Cars 3 will be, noo!

What if the asteroid that hit the earth 65 million years ago didn’t happen? Well, then the dinosaurs wouldn’t have been wiped out. And lots of other things would have happened, like we would never have had the rise of mammals, humans probably wouldn’t exist, and no one would be able to make lame Nickelback jokes anymore. But let’s ignore the many things that would change, assume they stay the same, but also dinosaurs still exist.

That way we can meet Poppa (Jeffrey Wright) and Momma (Frances McDormand), some sort of “long neck” dinosaur species (Apatosaurus). They have three eggs and they are about to hatch! We have little Libby (Maleah Nipay-Padilla, who I assume does the voice the whole time, not just the baby. Shitty IMDB stuff going on), strong Buck (Marcus Scribenr), and Arlo (Raymond Ochoa), the runt. Having kids is great, because they work a farm, and now they can expand their corn farm and get even more corn food to survive winters and have a wonderful home!

Let’s just say, eventually, some tragedies occur, due to the very explicit foreshadowing, so next thing we know, Arlo is far from home and on his own! Well, there is also this random human toddler, Spot (Jack Bright). See his name? He is basically a really smart dog.

They have to get back to the farm before it is too late. Before what is too late? Well, basically death. This area has a bit of volcanism, large bugs, scary winged dinosaurs, scary big mouthed dinosaurs, scary cryptic dinosaurs, and giant ass storms that make shit flood and get all sorts of scary. SCARY!

Also featuring the voices of Peter Sohn, Steve Zahn, A.J. Buckley, Anna Paquin, and of course, Sam Elliott.

Sam Elliot plays the whisper of the wind on the grass. Or at least that is how smooth his voice is in my mind.

Cutting to the chase, The Good Dinosaur is a very safe movie from the Pixar perspective. It was just a journey film between two unlikely entities. A buddy road trip movie. Sure they had their differences, but working together, their strengths were doubled and their weaknesses were, lets say cut down a small bit.

Early in the film was a bit dull, and I was worried it would finish with an average rating. Then we started to meet a few characters. The triceratops scene and the bad fruit scene were basically back to back and had me in stitches. Then we had the scary flying things (I don’t know if they were pterodactyls, so I won’t call them that). They were cool. But the T-Rex’s were just cowboys and a bit boring at that. Elliot voice be damned.

The Good Dinosaur had a few touching moments, but only made me barely cry just once. I was never able to connect to it emotionally like I could Inside Out. And hey, there was a death scene, and it was intense as fuck. About the same level of intensity as when Mufasa kicked the bucket in that one movie.

I was weary of the animation style, with cartoony dinosaurs/people and hyper realistic backgrounds, but it was amazing to watch it on the screen.

Again, The Good Dinosaur has some amazingly funny parts. The animation was great, but the story overall was very plain, not very original. Given their production problems, it is clear they just really wanted to do some dinosaur film. Through all the rewrites the film probably gradually became simpler and simpler, until we got the mostly unoriginal story line. It’s a shame, but at least we have Inside Out.

Me and Illumination Entertainment don’t get along. They had one of the most racist kid movies in recent history with Hop, a bad Lorax, and the Despicable Me series. I thought the first film was bad, but at least I liked the minions.

Then Despicable Me 2 came out. They heard we liked minions, so they gave us a bunch more minions. It ended up being bad as well, full of shitty humor and too much minions, not enough good story.

But that made Universal, the distributor, a shit ton of money. More money than any other film they had distributed, so of course we needed MORE. More what? More Minions of course! “Fuck Gru, give us Minions!” They are now super advertised, with tiny shorts before movies, awkward commercials, lunchboxes, pencils, everything. They are printing money by having tiny yellow creatures on them that speak gibberish and sing gibberish covers of famous songs.

This film was also pushed back, but not for delays. Originally scheduled for end of 2014 release, they went with the mid-summer release instead because it had been making them pretty dang good money.

Enough money to take down Disney World? We will see…

Minions is a prequel to the Despicable Me movies, about how the large group of minions (Pierre Coffin, all of them) came into existence and how they eventually met Gru. Turns out they are basically large single celled organisms, and never really evolved into bigger and better things. Instead they were followers. Instead of looking for just the biggest and strongest creature to protect them, for whatever reason they looked for the most “despicable” person to follow, because the minions are apparently evil as fuck, despite never doing anything evil.

The minions went throughout time, following bad guys and always pissing them off or killing them from their ineptitude. Until they had to go into hiding where they made their own minion community! It was safe, but boring. It wasn’t until three minions, Kevin, Stuart, and Bob, set off to find a new big bad boss did anything change. Aka, the 1960’s. Their travels eventually introduce them to Scarlet Overkill (Sandra Bullock) and her husband Herb (Jon Hamm), who are about to steal the crown from Queen Elizabeth (Jennifer Saunders) and take over the country.

But if the minions want in on being her slaves, they gotta prove themselves first. You know, doing evil stuff and doing the job for her. Easy peasy. And if they fail, well, eventually they will find Gru right?

Also using the voice talents of Michael Keaton, Allison Janney, Steve Coogan, Geoffrey Rush as the narrator, and Hiroyuki Sanada as “Sumo Villain” because that is all they could give him, I guess.

If this was called Minion Pie, this scene could be the day that the minions died?

Watching the trailer for Minions, I had hope. It looked like it could actually be a funnier movie and maybe make me laugh. Not having to worry about the awkward bad guy + kids situation, we could focus on a better more interesting plot of shenanigans and tomfoolery. Tomfoolery we may have gotten, but not the kind of tomfoolery one would want.

The movie made me laugh just one time in 90 minutes, which is obviously a bad sign. The jokes weren’t clever. Their only attempt at appeasing the adult audience would be the several songs they included for the minions to gibberish sing, all of the songs older of course given when it takes place. But even that is incredibly lazy. That joke is more of a “Haha, do you get it? You know this song right? This is funny because it is something you know but minions singing!”

This is not to say that I am angry at the fact that they don’t speak any real language. That is part of their character design. But to have a movie focus so much on them talking to others and each other, feels terrible. We can assume everything they are saying, sure, due to the weird way their language works. But it feels more annoying than anything. They rely on side human characters and narrators to actually explain plot points, because for the most part their main characters cannot.

Additionally, having them focus on three random minions to give them some sort of personality just annoys me that the other dozens of characters are ignored. I would have rather seen them work as the cohesive group, going full on henchmen, not just a couple guys on a bad road trip.

I am surprised that it ended with them actually meeting young Gru. I figured it took place in the late 60’s so they could justifiably fit in 3-4 more Minion movies pre-Gru to milk the franchise more. A Minions 2 with young Gru would be annoying, because it gets rid of all of his character development (but maybe it would actually make him evil? That’d be a shocker). For now though, our next film with them would be Despicable Me 3 out in a few years, which promises more of the same, so it will probably suck.

I am a bit annoyed that this will probably make so much money, especially if it makes more than Inside Out, a superior film in almost every conceivable way. The success of the film just means that minions will still appear everywhere. Yes, that includes the strange memes going around that have the minions as the main picture, and then some random joke text, that has abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with the franchise at all that old women and dumbasses share on your facebook page.

You see, Spare Parts is a metaphor. It both describes what they used in the movie to accomplish their goals, and what they felt society thought about them. They were leftovers, trash, extra coleslaw on the side.

Maybe I am getting ahead of myself, but you know I could have described the movie that way without seeing anything about it. That title has to work that way. As soon as I read it, my cheese factor went off, and I knew it had a double meaning.

When I read a brief description, it had every thing going for it to make a classic, and lame, “How do I reach these keeeds?” movie.

And it came out in January. I should stop before I talk myself out of even writing this review.

Ah, you teach the kids by taking them AWAY from school.

Let’s head on over to Phoenix, Arizona, where it is hotter than hot, in a lot of good ways. There is a lot of immigration going on to, one could describe it as illegal. Like all of the main high school kids in our story. All of them are not legal United States citizens, so they don’t have a lot of prospects going for them. Their futures are kind of screwed.

Oscar (Carlos PenaVega) wants to join the military, but you know, can’t. So he is disappointed. For whatever reason, he wants to enter an underwater robotics competition in California. He has no team or adviser or anything. Thankfully, there is Fredi Cameron (George Lopez), a real engineer, and he is stuck substitute teaching at the school for a few months. The economy and all. He is the head of the Robotics club as per his job, but he was told no one would sign up.

So Oscar gets the idea to do the competition. They don’t have to compete against colleges, there is a high school division. Talent scouts and internships can be won there, along with a whole pile of prestige. Well, only if they can get a few other guys together. So Oscar is able to find a big nerd, Cristian (David Del Rio), a tech guy who is good at cars, Lorenzo (José Julián), and the muscle, for heavy lifting and stuff, Hector (J.R. Villarreal).

But things can’t just be that simple though, right? No, they really can. Here are some more cast members.

Jamie Lee Curtis plays our slightly eccentric, maybe on Xanax principal. Marisa Tomei is another teacher and new love interest of George Lopez and a huge team supporter. Alexa PenaVega gets to be random girl interested in Oscar, her real life husband. And Esai Morales gets to be the father who wasn’t there for his boy and never cared about his success. The makings of a truly stereotypical true story inspirational film.

I mean, just thinking about it all makes me wet too.

If it wasn’t obvious, I certainly wasn’t looking forward to watching this movie. But I did it finally just to get it out of the way.

And you know what? It wasn’t that bad. Wasn’t bad at all. Was it full of cliches and some stereotypes? Sure, damn straight. Was the true story a bit better than the movie? Yeah, also true. Knowing some of the changes can be quite annoying. But eh, movies, yada yada, we have to get over it.

Here’s the thing. The characters were pretty charismatic. At least 2 of the boys one would probably enjoy their story. The other two I didn’t really latch on to, as I don’t think they told as much of an interesting store. Huh, a very average amount of things that I like.

There isn’t a whole lot to say about Spare Parts. You will go in knowing what to expect, and by golly, it will happen. It is a decent feel good story, where the only real difference between this and other ones is its heavy Hispanic influence.

When I heard they were making a movie version of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, I didn’t have a good or bad impression. I was more indifferent about how the quality might be. Instead, I was worried about typing out the title, or getting the adjectives all out of order accidentally.

These are the fears that I run into most often in my daily lives. And getting imprisoned incorrectly. Just those two things.

But hey, technically I have read this book before. Technically I own it. But I think, for the most part, I won’t let the book plot line bias my thoughts on the movie version. There should be differences. Should be TONS of differences. The book is just a kid, maybe 8, complaining about his day, then it getting better. I think. Sounds correct, but it has been awhile. Very simple plot. The only difference is, it looks like everyone in Alexander’s family is about to get royally fucked up by a day. So if anything more slapstick shenanigans than the book.

But maybe also a few more life lessons on how to not be an asshat?

Lesson #1: Do not drug the peter pan cast member into believing the kids in the play are actually teddy bears.

Alexander (Ed Oxenbould) is about to turn 12 years old. He has a lot of shitty days. He is generally grumpy and complains a lot too, so it is a wonder no one wants to be around him. To make matters more Terrible for Alexander, his family is perfect. His dad (Steve Carell) is an Astophysicist or something, PhD and all, but currently being a stay at home dad. His mom (Jennifer Garner) is heading out to be VP of her publishing company if this new baby book launch goes well. His brother (Dylan Minnette) is a popular junior in High School, dating a babe (Bella Thorne) and heading to prom! And his sister (Kerris Dorsey) is the lead in the Peter Pan play and just generally successful.

So Alexander is grumpy. He also found out some dick kid is throwing a birthday party the same night as his, but better with blackjack and hookers, so no one will show up to his. And there his family stands. Perfect and happy. So at midnight, he has a tiny cake with a candle and wishes his disease upon his blood.

Seemingly, the little twat has devil magic in him or something, because sure enough the family have a Horrible Day. Car problems. Oversleeping. Very Bad. Sickness. Typos. Animals. Flames. Babies. Destruction of property. No Good.

But Alexander doesn’t have a bad day. So I guess he has that going for him!

And of course there are other people! Donald Glover, Megan Mullally and Jennifer Coolidge!

What a smug as fuck look Alexander has, despite wishing he could be his brother.

OH NO THIS MOVIE DOESN’T FOLLOW THE BOOK DIRECTLY WHAT THE FUUCUCUUCCUCCKKKKK.

Just kidding. But on a related note, there was one big huge problem with this movie. Alexander. Not just the actor, who I could ignore for the most part. He was completely average, bland and annoying. Probably an actual 11/12 year old. The more annoying fact is that in this movie, he doens’t have the bad day. Just his family. Does this make the title wrong? No. But he should be having a shitty day too. Instead of having a shitty day, he becomes a weird silent observer throughout the day, every once in awhile giving a shocked face, while the rest of the movie deal with their problems and have zany adventures.

In this way, it feels like Alexander is the 5th or 6th most important person in a movie about him, allegedly. So the family? They are all pretty good. There are some good amusing parts, good clean fun for the family. Well thought out disasters for them to conquer. And Alex is a smug motherfucker just existing. Unfortunately, it ends with the birthday, which is a good experience for everyone, the bad day basically over. So it also ends with a lame feel good fest and kind of a boring note.

I am just saying. This movie already barely features Alexander. Might as well cut his role out entirely. Makes the title shorter too. Instead, we get to see a movie about rich as fuck people having a bad day. Which I am pretty sure is the plot line for lots of films anyways.

I can say I was definitely not looking forward to seeing Paddington. When I first heard about it, sure, maybe. I vaguely remember child stories about the bear.

But then the film had drama. Colin Firth was supposed to be the voice of the bear, but then he left the project. They literally had movie posters with his name attached for a Christmas release at this point. But Firth left the project, mid production. Oh no. That can’t be good!

So I had a negative perception of the film. Turns out Firth left on his own because he just didn’t think his voice fit the bear at all. He was just too old. The bear had a youthful look and he didn’t feel right for the job. That’s fair I guess. Well, I saw it now damn it. And it is a 2015 movie instead of a 2014. And it is still very, very British.

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear…

The titular bear, Paddington (Ben Whishaw) didn’t always go by that name. No, he used to have (bearsound) as an identifier. Also he can talk. He was found by a geographer with the rest of his family. The bear family was unusually smart, so he taught them English. They also really seemed to like marmalade.

Eventually, disaster strikes their home, and Paddington is forced to flee the jungles. He decides to head to London, as long ago, the geographer told him he would always be welcome in the Greatest Britain. So he makes it to London, but no one immediately takes him in, like he thought would happen. But then eventually the Browns walk by. Henry (Hugh Bonneville) is against taking in a bear, but his wife, Mary (Sally Hawkins) insists upon helping him out. So they take him in for just one night. Well, he is a clumsy bear who knows nothing about human stuff, so a lot of shenanigans occur.

Eventually they find out he is slightly truthful in his tale of the geographer, so they let him stay. Yay a pseudo-home! Too bad he is also being… hunted! That’s right. A crazy taxidermist (Nicole Kidman) has found out about his existence and really wants to stuff him. Not a euphemism. She gets the help of one of the Brown’s neighbors, a crockety old man Mr. Curry (Peter Capaldi) to help her get that bear!

Also featuring the kids of Madeleine Harris and Samuel Joslin, and Jim Broadbent. Because Jim Broadbent is the most British man I can imagine.

Who has two toothbrushes and is DTF? This bear!

Now, I’m not racist, but that bear had way more pizzazz than I thought a bear could have. Hooray for pizzazz!

I actually found the movie quite enjoyable. It was jolly good fun. Did you see the bear in the bathtub? Hilarity, my good sirs! Hilarity!

This movie was obviously British, but it was also super British. The only thing missing was the Queen herself. There might have even been a Constable.

Kidman’s character felt maybe too ridiculous for my tastes, but the filmmakers were going for a cartoon feel so it all made sense. The family versus the bear dynamic worked really good as well, and I am happy to say the bear never raged out and killed a baby or anything. Overall, it is a decently enjoyable way to waste an hour and a half with the family. I bear no regrets.

Dolphins Dolphins Dolphins.

I remember Dolphin Tale just like it was years ago. An inspirational movie, for anyone who is a dolphin and who has lost their tail and thinks they can’t go on swimming anymore. It is based on a true story and I think used the actual dolphin in question. They just cheesed it the hell up and the actual true story was far more interesting than the melo drama the movie created. Just how it goes some time.

But now we have a sequel to Dolphin Tale. It is called Dolphin Tale 2! Presumably the Dolphin now loses a fin and they replace that too, right? Wait, this one is also a true story? Is there some guy just scouring the internet, looking for dolphin rescue stories just so they can make a dolphin tale movie?

I’m hoping for the eventual reboot as RoboDolphin.

The Clearwater Marine Hospital, in the last movie struggling to survive, is now struggling to fit in so many people. They have classes, volunteers, real staff, they have so much goin on. They still want to fix animals and return them to sea, but they have some permanent residents that people want to see, like Winter. Yay fake tails. Winter lives with Panama, because of some vague rule that a female dolphin needs another female dolphin to swim or play with.

Well, Panama dies. Super old. They only have one other dolphin, Mandy, but Mandy is perfectly fine and it is their duty to return her to real life. For some reason, they have thirty days to find a new female dolphin to play with Winter, or else Winter will leave. If Winter will leave, so will their fat profits, because a lot of crippled people come to see her for whatever reason. Thankfully they get another shitty dolphin, terribly named Hope, who is a baby and didn’t get to learn how to live her life in the wild. BUT CAN THEY BE FRIENDS.

Also the main kid, Sawyer (Nathan Gamble), now in high school, is debating as to whether or not he takes a super free Semester At Sea trip, as a high school student again, because he is sad about dolphins.

This movie also features, again, Ashley Judd, Cozi Zuehlsdorf, Harry Connick Jr., Juliana Harkavy, Kris Kristofferson, Morgan Freeman, and Bethany Hamilton. Yes that 1 armed surfer chick is playing herself.

I don’t care about her story, I just know her story gave us the shitty movie Soul Surfer.

The trailer for Dolphin Tale 2 featured an emergency vehicle showing up to the hospital with a dolphin, late at night, getting called Hope for some reason, and then a bunch of shots of people playing with dolphins, basically.

This scene takes place over an entire HOUR into the movie. Up to this point, we don’t get to the dolphin Hope or hear about her coming. It is all out of nowhere. IT TAKES AN HOUR OF SET UP TO GET TO THE MAIN PLOT OF THE MOVIE. Come on! So much damn bad filler up to that point. The worst of it being of course the angst of the kid throughout the film. Look. We all know he is going to take it. He would be stupid to not take it. It is completely bad drama filler for some reason, because obviously that part is based on no true story.

I think the only part of this movie that is the true story is that the CMH real life place got a new tiny dolphin named Hope. I don’t think they were going to lose Winter in any way, but they got a new dolphin in real life, so here is a new movie. That is what this movie has become and any future movies. They also had a Mandy dolphin that they released back and actually had a sick turtle.

Aka, normal life for a marine hospital. And now it is a pointless bullshitty movie.

The young people watched it too. They found it boring as shit. They got excited every once in awhile when dolphins were playing and that is about it. And because the ending featured a long drawn out cheering sequence, they were happy and cheering too because hey, something fun is finally happening. And then balloons. Either way, kids know this movie sucks for the most part too.

Ruining child classics is one of Hollywood’s favorite past times.

But this is not one of those examples. Because Hollywood is not behind this movie, just some low budget independent company. That’s right. The Boxcar Children, a book made in the 1920s and repopularized in the 1940s, it then spawned 159 follow up books and specials. WHAT. More impressively, they are are still making more. Four of them came out this year and a few are scheduled for 2015 already.

Of course, that series after the first book decided to go completely boring and make it a strange good-natured mystery series.

But hey, I read The Boxcar Children in like, second grade. In fact, it is the first legit book I have read. It had zero pictures, something called chapters and I didn’t read like 8 of them in one reading session.

So bring on the kids who do good things and live in the woods.

And who are as happy at winning as that one spelling bee kid.

Four kids. All brothers and sisters. And no parents. Wandering around, sleeping in bakeries, paying for bread with money they presumably earned by helping old ladies cross the street.

We got Henry (Zachary Gordon) 14 and technically the leader because he is oldest. Next is Jessie (Joey King), 12 year old girl, who is the mom figure and thus the cook. She runs things when Henry is out earning change for a living. After that is Violet (Mackenzie Foy) who I have nothing of note to say outside of the color purple and she is kind of weak and useless. But not as weak and useless as Benny (Jadon Sand) who is six and has no redeeming qualities outside of being cared for by others.

They are wandering around because their mom died or something and they don’t want to go to their mean old grandparents home. So they literally ran away, walking from town to town, being runaways with a 6 year old kid.

They are afraid of getting put in orphanages so they run into the woods afraid of some baker couple. And hey look, a box car from a train on an abandoned track for some reason. K. So they live there.

And story. Also with voice talents from Martin Sheen, J.K. Simmons, D.B. Sweeney, and Audrey Wasilewski.

They literally have to drag that kid along it looks like.

And now, my analysis where I talk mostly about how creepy the movie looks.

Man, this animated film is super creepy. Not like, uncanny valley creepy, like it is so close to human just a slight step away. No, it is just creepy because the animation is really really bad. Like, worse than video game bad. Like worse than Hoodwinked Too!. Like beyond terrible. Like before PSX graphics bad. I just don’t get it. The Snow Queen was an independent movie from like Russia and they had better animation than this one.

Watching characters eat or grab things, but having that object floating next to their hand and not holding it. And the animation was especially bad with water. And unfortunately they seem to awkwardly interact with it throughout the movie.

Gah. The animation. Gah gah gah.

The story itself? Well, it follows the book pretty darn closely. That is good for your purists. But it also turns out that the book doesn’t have a whole lot going on for it. It is a pretty boring story. But if you liked and remembered the books, then you might enjoy this not completely shit animated film version of it. But I am disappointed in that a nice live action version is something I might enjoy more. Then it won’t feel so damn creepy.

It is clear from the trailers of Earth To Echo that it is going for a modernized, new ET feel. Kids find an alien, government wants to get it, they want to help it get home.

But wait? Didn’t we just have another movie try that? Yeah, a few years ago, Super 8 tried to make a similar claim. And I loved Super 8, it just didn’t make a lot of money an people forgot about it, despite it being a very well shot film.

So instead I won’t think about it like a new ET. Mostly because I didn’t find ET enjoyable in the slightest. Let the alien + kid genre stand on its own, I say!

Kids these days. Playing outside with technology. What’s the world coming to?

Out of all the themes present in Earth To Echo, the largest and most pronounced must be the theme of friendship. This story is about three childhood friends who have grown up in a neighborhood together.

The three friends are Tuck (Astro), a guy who has an active youtube page so he makes sure to record a lot of his activities for hits. Aka, the reason we get a movie out of this. We have Munch (Reese Hartwig), a “weirdo” / mama’s boy who is into a lot more nerdier things and electronics. And we have Alex (Teo Halm), a foster kid who doesn’t come out of his shell too much. They have been best friends for many many years, and now they have to move away.

Why? Because they are building an interstate through their subdivision, and nothing can be done about it. So all of their parents are packing up to leave their Nevada home and never see each other again. But wait! Something weird is happening in the area. Phones are messing up and breaking. Actually, it seems as if the phones are showing a map to a location in the desert some 20 miles away.

Well, if they are all about to move, why not spend their last night together going on a treasure hunt and building lasting memories. Yay, memories.

Unfortunately, they get into a situation much greater than they bargained for, when they find alien life.

Don’t worry, this isn’t just a dude adventure (or a dudeventure). We got a chick, eventually, with Ella Wahlestedt, and the big bad government guy played by Jason Gray-Stanford.

Hey look! They almost made it so he could’t be easily turned into a toy. Almost.

The idea of a “shaky cam” movie scares a lot of people who think it is just a cheap gimmick. In this case, it adds a lot to the movie and only feels uncomfortable a few times near the beginning. Maybe a little bit too much bike offroading action, but other than that, it was really well done.

My main issues with Earth To Echo (outside of camera work) involve mostly technical issues. The timing of events in this movie seems to be all over the place, where they cram almost a whole day’s of activities into one night somehow. It took me out of the experience on more than one occasion.

But the film has a lot of positives!

First of all, it was actually pretty funny. The boys had great chemistry with each other, tons of jokes and amusing moments occurred throughout the film and I was laughing out loud on several occasions. Because their chemistry was so great, it of course awakened the nostalgia of hanging out with your neighborhood friends back in the day, doing dumb things to pass the time. Good times, and good feelings.

The film also had the necessary tense moments once things began to get too hard for the few kids to handle. With over half of the film set during the night time, it does certainly help for the scarier moments, and thankfully it never feels too dark to not see what is going on.

Overall, it ended up being pretty entertaining. The fact that it was about friendship first, and aliens second kind of give it a more personal and relatable feel. I guess I liked it better than Super 8, despite the ratings. Mostly because I haven’t watched Super 8 since I saw it for the first time (and it is still very pretty), but I can see myself seeing Earth To Echo over and over.

For those with a lot of courage, you may have seen my review for How To Train Your Dragon. Why courage? because that review is old and weak and it certainly shows. It is weak because it was one of my first 100, which I made in like a month by adding words from my facebook status reviews that they came from. And because I tried really hard to avoid spoilers that basically didn’t exist.

Basically, parts near the end bugged me so much it lowered an overall fantastic movie to a meh movie. I still haven’t rewatched it for that reason.

But now we have the sequel, How To Train Your Dragon 2. This one perfectly allows for the crap that happened in the first to not happen again, because now we are based with the assumption that dragons are awesome, and we should train them.

Yeah. So you can stoically sit on top of them doing zero tricks. Good job, guy.

Set five years after the events of the first film, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is still a god amongst mortals in his small Viking town. Although technically not immortal, he does have cyborg parts now and a flame sword. So I mean, basically. He has his dragon, and now he is exploring more and more areas outside of the small town. After all, with dragons they now have the ability to explore, because Vikings rarely explored on their own.

While exploring he finds…dragon nappers! And giant sheets of unnatural ice through a fort. The nappers are lead by Erit (Kit Harington), who is collecting dragons with his crew for the great and powerful Drago Bludvist (Djimon Hounsou). A mad man who claims to be able to control all of the dragons and wants to use them to take over the world. Your typical desires from an awkwardly darker skin character than everyone else in an animated movie.

Oh no!

It becomes up to Hiccup to use his excellent cyborg dragon abilities, and excellent sized human heart, to save the day. Especially if he can use the help of the mysterious dragon lady (Cate Blanchett), who you already know everything about if you watched the trailers. But in case you didn’t, you are welcome.

A lot of returning characters, such as his dad (Gerard Butler), the smithy (Craig Ferguson), his lady friend (America Ferrera) and his other friends (Jonah Hill, Kristen Wiig, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, T.J. Miller). And of course, dragons.

And that is how I met and trained your dragon master’s mother.

First off, after the success of the first movie, DreamWorks starting thinking long term about this as a new franchise. So they put into development this sequel and a third film, at the same time. Which is why there was a four year delay between 1 and 2 (heavy CGI movies take a long time if done right (meaning not Planes)), but only two years before the third movie comes out.

Speaking of DreamWorks, I have hated or thought meh towards their last six movies. That is insane. Literally haven’t had a winner since Kung Fu Panda 2. Thankfully, How To Train Your Dragon 2 turned that downward spiral around. And I don’t just mean clockwise to counterclockwise, I mean up. Like a daring dragon flying maneuver.

This sequel has a lot going on for it. The CGI is extraordinary, which is probably too fancy of a word to describe it, but it really is gorgeous. They spent a lot of time and detail on every character, every scene, every dragon. Speaking of detail, the backgrounds of scenes are rarely pointless. They either showcase great scenes, or have hidden jokes and tomfoolery going on in the background as other characters are talking. It was awesome.

To avoid this wall of text, here is a bonus picture. Just. No. Bonus. Joke.

There is a lot of humor, there is a lot of character growth, there are more than one touching moments, and there is a lot of daring fight scenes. In fact, there were some terrifying scenes, and some darker moments, including some potentially heavy material for a PG movie. One drowning scene in particular still makes me shudder.

I will say there are some issues I found in terms of messages they are trying to convey. I think some parts of the ending directly contradict information said earlier in the film, a similar message given to us by Pokemon: The First Movie – Mewtwo Strikes Back.

But overall? Shit, this thing is enjoyable. Minor moral issues aren’t a big problem. The 3D only seemed blurry in the first scene of the film, so that is good.

For those who have saw it, I made a theory halfway through the movie on how the third one might go, and the ending seemed to solidify it. I’d love to talk to anyone in private about my theory, but if it goes the way I hope, then yeah, it will be epic. But this is all jibberjabber at this point. Awesome flick, and probably going to be one of the top 3 animated movies this year (to go with The LEGO Movie, and The BoxTrolls, based on its fantastic trailers alone).