The Snow Queen Meets the Mouse

Walt Disney, through its various subsidiaries, now owns approximately 87% of the known world.  (OK, I made up the number, but I'm still pretty sure it's in the ballpark.  Click here for a list of holdings and let's just say that they've come a long way from a little animated mouse that was nearly named Mortimer.)  This holiday season, Disney has released Frozen, which is loosely based on the dark Hans Christian Andersen tale The Snow Queen.  It's a keeper.

Now, I have long lamented the Mouse's desire to round off the sharp edges of fairy tales, which were not originally for children.  These were meant to be cautionary tales full of danger, darkness, in which a prince's kiss usually brought more trouble than it was worth.  Still, I"m a sucker for a bouncy tune and Frozen is a nice addition to the Disney pantheon.

As far as I can recall, Frozen is the first Disney to have two distinct female leads.  (And the voices!  Swoon.  By hiring Idina Menzel, who was the original Elphaba in Broadway's Wicked, I suspect that Disney is positioning itself to go into full-scale Broadway production with this one, a la The Lion King.)  The bond of sisterly love, as opposed to step-sisterly-wickedness, is new. There is a honorable ice-seller, trolls, and a dastardly duke (voiced by Alan Tudyk, which ensured I'd be content.)  For sidekicks, there's a dim-witted, lovable snowman and a wise, goofy reindeer.

Honestly, Frozen is a delight.  The animation of ice, frost, and snow is a marvel.  The children in the audience were enraptured (as were the majority of the adults), and the message (and all films have messages; don't fool yourself into thinking they don't) is positive and worthy.

You could do far worse this holiday season.

(Still . . . go read the original Andersen.  Just maybe not out loud to the littlest among you.)

Taking Flight

This weekend, I watched two new releases that, at first, seem to have absolutely nothing to do with each other - Neill Blomkamp's Elysium and Disney's Planes.  While the two films have a vast gulf between them, they do have one thing in common - flight and the desire to follow the advice of the American aviator and poet John Gillespie Magee and "slip the surly bonds of earth."  (That's from his poem "High Flight," by the way - great, great stuff!)

Let's start with Elysium.  Now, I've been a fan of Blomkamp's District 9 since it was released in 2009.  I think some viewers have felt a bit let down by Elysium for not being District 10, which seems unfair to me.  Yes, it's less subtle a film than District 9 is, but it's a good movie nevertheless.  Dealing with dystopian themes that science fiction has wrestled with since Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Blomkamp has created a film that calls into question the distribution of wealth, medical resources, and serves as a interesting allegory regarding immigration to boot.  Are the rich "better" than the poor?  Are they somehow more highly favored by God and therefore, enjoy a life of leisure and ease?  (The name "Elysium" comes from Greek mythology - where it was the name of a section of the afterlife reserved for the heroic and righteous dead.  Hmmmm.)  The film does some interesting things with language - English is spoken by both the indolent rich living on the glittering "habitat" of Elysium and by the teeming masses who scratch out something like a living on the scorched Earth, but the secondary language on Earth is Spanish, while the Elysites (?) speak gentle French.  The casting in Elysium is quite good, with Matt Damon turning in a strong performance as the reluctant hero Max and Jodie Foster doing her best with a role that's a bit of a cardboard cutout.  There are some juicy supporting roles here, including the lame Spider (Wagner Moura) and the oily Carlyle (William Fichtner).  But the jewel of a role here is that of Kruger, played by Sharlto Copley, who was the milquetoast Wikus in District 9.  His tuneless humming of a lullaby was enough to make me check under the bed the night after seeing Elysium.  A powerful actor and he works very, very well with Blomkamp.  Oh, and there are several strong South African references in Elysium, including Kruger's name and the markings on his ship.  

It's better up there, even with the shaky camerawork.  Go see this one.

Planes, on the other hand, is a lighthearted, feel-good kid's movie that would never have gotten made if not for the runaway success of 2006's Cars.  It's got the same style of animation and the same director (John Lasseter).  While Cars was about a hotshot becoming a better person car by way of a badly-needed comeuppance, Planes is about the Little Cropduster That Could.  It's not at all a bad movie; it's just that you've seen this before.  The kids in the audience with me when I saw it were cheering out loud for "Dusty Crophopper" and some of the aerial animation is gorgeous.  But Cars made me want to get my hands on some land yacht with tail fins and explore Route 66, while Planes made me - want more popcorn.  It's interesting to see the more global take on casting, but then again, Planes involves a race around the world, while Cars was all about the American love affair with the open road.  Also, while the takeaway message of Planes is supposed to be that "you can be more than what you were built to be," by the end of the movie, very little of the original Dusty is still there.  Perplexing.  Rental.

Also, Breaking Bad started airing its final eight episodes last night - "Walter White Wednesday" has much to discuss, so check back here in two days!!

"I'm Gonna Wreck It!"

After 30 years, a guy wants a change.

Disney bought Pixar and boy - does Wreck-It Ralph make that abundantly clear.  Ralph features magnificent vocal talent, including John C. Reilly as the title character, a bad guy who wants - just once! - to be the good guy. He "game jumps" to achieve his goal of earning a medal to show he's really a good guy, which gives the moviemakers a chance to show off a vast variety of game environments, from early 80s herky-jerky movement to today's smooth HD silkiness.  The contrasts are great fun - Ralph is appalled by the violence and scare factor of Hero's Duty and I could feel my teeth ache at the sheer sweetness overload of Sugar Rush.

In part, Ralph has a very conservative message - we all have roles to play and trying to deviate from those roles leads to destruction and chaos.  Ralph is a bad guy - he shouldn't try to be anything else, for people have to Know Their Place for society to function.

At least, that's one way to look at it.  You can also see it as a message about blooming where you're planted and realizing that pastures are perfectly green on this side of the fence.  In this reading, Ralph needs to come to terms with what he is and yes, others should respect him for his "badness."  After all, without Ralph's mindless destruction, there's nothing for the hero, Felix (voiced with pixie perfection by Jack McBrayer of 30 Rock) to repair and therefore, no need for the game to even exist.

A third way of looking at Ralph occurred to me only after I'd left the theater.  Ralph is, strangely enough, a feminist movie.  It has two central female characters who are cast in traditionally male games - Sgt. Calhoun is a tough-as-nails soldier (and Jane Lynch does an awesome job with some deliberately obtuse dialogue here), who was programmed with "the most tragic backstory ever." She leads a platoon of tough-guy soldiers on a never-ending mission to obliterate the deadly "cybugs" in a ultra-violent shooter game.  The other, Vanellope (voiced by Sarah Silverman), is a wanna-be racer in a candy-colored game involving a go-kart bakery, candy forests, and a volatile diet soda swamp.  (There are also about a dozen other racer characters, who are all uniformly horrid little girls, giving rise to one of the great lines of the film where they are referred to as "children of the candy corn")  While the Sugar Rush game is over-the-top girly girl, the ultimate goal is to win a road race - a traditionally male-oriented game.  In the cases of both Calhoun and Vanellope, the gender of the avatar is never seen as worth remarking upon - Calhoun isn't a "female" soldier and Vanellope isn't a "girl" racer - and oddly enough, that's progress.

There's a lot here for viewers of a certain age who will, presumably, be taking the small fry to the picture.  I know that I spent plenty of time in video arcades during my early teens, carefully lining up my row of quarters to mark my pixellated territory before turning my attention to Asteroids, Frogger, Galaga, or (my favorite) Phoenix. For me, part of the joy of Ralph was in locating as many of the avatars of my youth as I could - the oft-overlooked Q*Bert makes several appearances and yes, that actually is Pong in the lobby of Game Central Station.  Plus, I'm in favor of just about any movie that gives Alan Tudyk work - and this role is a doozy!

Visually, Ralph is a treat. I saw it in 2D - I suspect the 3D version of the race sequences would have made me woozy, but it may be to your liking.

By the way, Wreck-It Ralph begins with a short that is definitely for the grown-ups in the audience.  "Paperman" is a delicate and charming story of magic realism that will delight you, even though it doesn't really fit the tone of the movie it precedes.  It's a lovely mix of classic 2D hand-drawn artistry and computer generated techniques.  Ah, animation - how much you can do for us!