21 July 2012

Movie Saturday II: The Girl who Leapt Through Time

Movie Saturday continues, this time with the anime film The Girl who Leapt Through Time  In a really strange coincidence, this movie was almost the exact same time length as Mirror Mirror, and to be honest it felt longer too.  However, it felt longer because it felt that the movie had more twists and turns, and I felt more absorbed in where the plot was going to go.

For those who may not know, this film features a plot about a girl.  She leapt through time.  Thankfully, most people will get the gist from the title rather than this review.  Anyway, for the Cliff Notes/Wikipedia version, a somewhat klutzy senior high school girl gains the ability to jump through time to try to fix her mistakes... she uses her powers to anticipate quizzes, avoid accidents that others get into, and thankfully prevents her untimely demise from a set of faulty bicycle brakes.  As is human nature, she ends up using her powers selfishly to be able to indulge in fun (and sleep).  She and her two (male) friends get into a few hijinks with her powers, and she finds out that her powers have consequences.

As this is coming right after a first viewing, I could certainly see a major undercurrent of a child not wanting to grow past being a child.  She uses her powers not just to avoid death, but even to avoid pain and even being uncomfortable -- as when one of the characters is trying to have a conversation with her, she uses her powers to try to turn it aside, ultimately choosing to avoid the whole conversation.

Through the movie (and its three endings), the movie expresses the message that the most emotional times in your life are when you are in these situations, and that these situations are not necessarily things to be afraid of.  I don't know if that's a theme of my own reviews, but these emotions are not only natural, but it really is what makes us human and what makes us special.  The heroine finds out certain things in the end and finally has a sense of purpose with her jumping past her own hedonistic desires, and her desire to make things right is where her character and her love show through the most.

For a rating, I would rate this a 3.2. We watched this as a Netflix movie, and I would not be surprised if we were to purchase this movie at some point.

Movie Saturday: Mirror, Mirror

Today is movie marathon Saturday again, and the first movie viewed was Mirror Mirror, the Julia Roberts version of "Snow White".  I suppose this is one of the main goals of a movie, but thankfully this movie was a quick hour and forty-five minutes, and I can detail a few of the ways that this movie was able to accomplish that feat which challenges more than a few movies.

Firstly, it did everything it could to be over the top.  If you didn't like the dialogue, you could focus on all the wild outfits, or how they dressed the town set in nothing but shades of brown and grey.  They pumped up the dwarves from the stereotypical Disney miners to highwaymen who wear stilts... and can manage to outrun horses at full pace (?!).  Each of the dwarves had a personality, The Prince Charming character was stripped out of his clothes more than once, and Snow White got to reenact the Zorro movie with him as the movie continued.

The movie is pretty much what you would think though, a showcase for Julia Roberts and her ability to try to go as over the top as possible.  She pretty much does as promised, and I suppose that the best part of her ability to go over the top was that she knew full well that she couldn't occupy the screen 99% of the movie, as if she did the movie would have been far more of a burden.

As mentioned above, the movie sailed along, though to be perfectly honest it was the very epitome of a popcorn movie... entertainment with very little thinking behind it, for the most part.  Though there was one glimmer of a very interesting concept lurking at the very end of the movie.  It happens when the movie shows Julia Roberts as the old crone trying to give Snow White the apple... and Snow White acts so evilly, it almost gave me hope that there'd be another five minutes describing how Snow White was the true source of evil in the kingdom.  Alas, that was not to be.

Ultimately, on my four-point scale, I would rate it a 2.3.

This movie absolutely passes the time, though other than Julia Roberts there's really nothing memorable about this Snow White... heck, while the dwarves were more interesting, I think that in four months, I'll remember the dwarves from the Snow White television movie (the RAINBOW DWARVES!) more than this movie.