#2LR - Breaking Dawn, Part 2 with a Thankful Assist from "Rifftrax"

There they were.  Aligned on two sides of a snowy field, all waiting for the signal to start.  There is a brief parlay, representatives of one side bridging the gap to meet with the leaders of the other side.  Negotiation seems to calm the leaders of the other side... up until the leader makes a bold, decisive choice to cut the insurrection off at the head.

Sounds interesting, doesn't it?  If I were to talk to you about the Twilight series without actually telling you that it was the Twilight series, I may be lucky enough to talk you into it.

I mean, think about it.   You have vampires hiding out in broad... err, cloudy daylight.  A pack of werewolves who are the vampires' enemies.  Other vampires who are also rogue vampires that must be brought to justice.  An international vampire cabal that tries to keep a lid on things but is kind of self-indulgent and unpredictable.  And the "good" vampires, a definite twist in the story, who are trying to do the right thing.

With that being said, let's delve into the mind of Stephenie Meyer one last time, by watching Breaking Dawn, Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

(Spoiler Space here on in, because I would absolutely be MORTIFIED if I spoiled this film for you.)

If you don't remember the previous movie, you didn't miss much.  Ahem, in essence the movie was about Bella's marriage, Bella's honeymoon, and the demon spawn growing inside of her.  At the end of that movie, Edward had just about enough of Bella's complaining and finally turned her into a vampire.

As this movie begins, we get to meet what little subplot existed in the story... Jacob has now "imprinted" (remember, werewolves are like baby duckies!) onto the two-minute-old child and is now her guardian and lover wrapped up into one neat woofy package.  The child is unfortunately named "Renesmee" (yeah, remember when that was a fad, giving poor kids bad names?)  and the rest of the movie is devoted to Renesmee's defense.

Yes.  The two-minute-old child is now the Golden Child, and the rest of the movie is about keeping her alive at all costs.  Why?  Dunno.  Is she going to do something awesome later?  Dunno.  But, Bella really really cares about keeping her alive, so it matters... because Bella is the heroine and all.  And oh, by the way... I can't believe that I forgot this, but as I was listing the other issues of this movie, I neglected to mention that they literally digitally overwrote a face onto the baby.  Holy heck, that's off-putting.

Anyway, Bella is now a vampire, and she quickly proves to be better than Edward in running, can beat Emmitt in arm-wrestling, and can pulverize rocks with her feet.  Oh, and she also has one of the most awesome powers for vampires (remember, vampires get their own mutant powerz when they turn into vampires!)  See, she can prevent all the other vampires from using their powers on her, she's a shield!  So, to sum it up, she can beat up anyone she doesn't like, is better than them physically, AND she can prevent other vampires from affecting her AND the ones she loves too.  I'm so glad to see Bella overcoming all those obstacles put in her path.

About ten-fifteen minutes into the film, Alice leads Bella and Edward to their new house.  Yes, their new house... no down payment, mortgage, or anything.  It's fully furnished with a reinforced bed so that Bella and Edward can go after each other like crazed wildebeests, and also has a nursery for Renesmee to sleep in.  Two quick notes about that... there's no couch for poor Jacob to sleep in, so he has to share the crib.  And even my spellcheck thinks that Renesmee isn't a word.

Thankfully for Jacob, the baby is growing.  Quickly.  Not quite quick enough for legality, but hey.  The first plot point turns on Charlie finding out that Bella is now "different", through Jacob stripping in front of him.  To turn into a werewolf!  Not to kiss him or anything...  The Cullen clan flip out aggressively at Jacob, convinced that he's put Bella's dad in danger.  I yawn aggressively, this is like almost thirty minutes into this thing and there's been two plot points.

Anyway, the rest of the story finally gets revealed when another vampire sees Bella play with Renesmee as a four-year-old.  The peeping vampire goes to the international vampire syndicate and tattles... we find out in the movie that since kids are immature, they make for bad vampires 'cause they have no self-control, and the international syndicate kills the little boogers on sight.  They believe that Renesmee is a child vampire, and instantly the Cullen clan expects a problem.

The Cullen clan gathers sympathetic vampires to their side, explain the situation, and suddenly the Cullens have a small army.  Alice and... Jasper (gosh, trying to keep these names straight...) bug out somewhere else so that they can be deus ex machinas for the plot later.  The rest of the Cullen clan expects possible trouble and/or a major fight from the syndicate, and pretty much prepare the troops through the next hour or so.  Yes, all these other vampires somehow or another got talked into opposing a larger number of vampires in order to save the life of one little girl... but it's what Bella wants, and this series is not doing anything but what Bella wants.

So, remember that scene I wrote about to begin this article?  It really DID HAPPEN in this film.  I know, right?  Who would've thought?  Near the end of the movie, the Cullen allies and the syndicate face off.  At first, the syndicate seems happy that the child will cause no danger, but then the leader of the Syndicate (I'll call him Nos-fey-ratu for very pertinent reasons) decides that the kid represents a tiny sliver of control that they could claim, and then they start to fight.

And, for a change, we're treated to actual plot.  Main characters really do die here.  The syndicate outnumbers the Cullen allies about two to one, which makes scenes of three Cullens on one syndicate vampire kind of implausible, but I didn't mind.  There was actual action here!  Not really enough to engage me, but it was far better than all the talking that was going on during the first three-quarters of the movie!  Some of the Cullens die too as my mental cheering starts to take a fever pace.  Would the author be bold enough to have Edward die, leaving Jacob imprinted to Bella's daughter, and have Bella go into an absolute sublime melancholy, having no one left to mushily LUUUUV the rest of her immortal existence?  A leadership vacuum of the international vampire syndicate, leaving the few survivors to try to pick up the pieces and establish a new order?  Some sort of actual conflict in this story to give it the least shred of suspense?

Nope.  It was all a DREAM.

"As if a switch had been turned, as if an eye had been blinked, as if some phantom force in the universe had made a move eons beyond our comprehension, suddenly, there was no fight! There was no awesomeness, no plot advancement, no thing called "suspense" to be followed. "

At first I search for as many capital letters as I can find to express my disgust.  Then I remember the last four movies and think to myself, "I suppose that's what I get for raising my expectations."  After the movie goes on for one epilogue too many (there's a second extremely unnecessary epilogue to make sure that you know that Bella rulez this world completely), we get to see the cast of actors that got paid for this.  I hope that all that money was worth it, you guys.

Spoiler space over

I do try to respect the spoiler space things, even though I marked up the biggest problem with the final scene above (which probably would draw an eye if you cared to see).  It's awfully hard to address this issue with the plot in the "review" area past the spoiler space, but here goes.

There's really no challenge to be overcome for this character.  No matter what horrible scrape Bella is in, there's always someone there who is in an absolute thrall to her to get her through her problem.  If that wasn't enough, she also has one of the most boss powers a vampire could have, and can even beat up Edward, Jacob, Emmitt, or any other supernatural anything with her strength alone.  The Twilight series has the ultimate Mary Sue outside of fanfiction.  (Marrissa Picard still carries the torch for number one, though that could be because I like the Trek universe while I could care less about the Twilight one.)  We covered this before, so I know that this isn't new.

  The other characters -- nay, all the characters are pretty much cardboard cutouts.  They're describable within about five words, and little else.  For example: Alice: vampire future seer good sister.  Edward: vampire Bella worshipper.... uhh, that's it.  Charlie: Bella's dad, mustache, cop... okay, fine, five words TOPS.  To some extent, Bella is also a five-word character, but those five words are not exactly sympathy-inducing.  Strong invulnerable protagonist who two boys fight over immediately and is always protected.  Sorry, that's not five words, but I'm hard-pressed to find anything past that sentence deeper with that character.  And that's not a character that I am invested in whatsoever.  The MAIN let's-spend-eleven-hours-developing-a-story-around character.

The side effect of the character not really being put in any sort of believable danger is that there's no suspense in this.  There's no "will she or won't see?" aspect to this.  She will.  No matter what, she will.  I don't know when it was made apparent... possibly around the "death wish" phase in the second movie I suppose was the most blatant, but Bella Swan will not die.  Bella Swan will not suffer.  She may have blood on her, but big whoop.  The only people allowed to suffer are the ones around her.  And when you already know what the character will allow the story to do, there's really no reason to keep reading (watching).  Of course, that means that the plot will trundle along, not really introducing anything new... like, for instance, the Cullens turning the whole city of Forks, Washington into a colony of syndicate-hating we're-going-to-rule-the-vampire-world-now vampires.  Or, heck, *running away* and hiding.  (Heaven forbid that Bella has to deal with a little bit of hardship!)  Or taking the battle to the syndicate, picking them off one-by-one... preemptive strike, in perpetual danger of being found, "Assassin's Creed" style... oh wait, that'd imply that Bella might possibly be killed, can't have that either.  Nope, she's going to stand her ground, with all sorts of new-found allies, waiting for Alice to bring the deus-ex-machina, and the only real danger turns out to be a dream sequence.

And let's not forget again that vampires sparkle (like, only once a film though, so it's no real danger), werewolves imprint, and everybody gets l33t s|<1llz.

To sum this movie, and really the whole series... 0.0.  Ugh.  Seriously.  After that, I can't even summon the half-hearted openmindedness I had on that last review, this was just garbage.

I would like to tell the writers of Rifftrax and the performers, "Thank you."  I cannot imagine how they managed to riff these movies... I could tell that there was some hostility, mind you, but overall they did an excellent job, and the first hour was absolutely sparkling.  As the plot bogged down at about the eighty minute mark, the riffing went down in quality a little bit, but they picked it right back up for the climax scene and kept it going well through the end.

The Rifftrax for this movie: 3.1  It's one of the best they've done, but the reason it's not a 4 is that I'd have to watch the movie along with the Rifftrax again, and I'm not sure how quickly I can do that.  

#2LR - The Princess and the Frog, Disney-fied.

Tonight's review will be the Disney film The Princess and the Frog.  I have a short confession to make; this probably should not have been a "Too Late Review", because this film is one of about two or three that I have actually seen in the theaters recently.  I suppose that I could have written something short about it when I first watched it... and, to be perfectly honest, I think that this would be the best frame to put the movie in, especially since my four-point scale goes from "would not watch again" (0-1) to "would see in the middle if someone started it first" (1-2) to "would rent again if the spirit moved me" (2-3) to "would buy and intentionally watch" (3-4)  After all, this movie did end up satisfying the second step, my children wanted to see it again.

  The quick Spoiler Space summary for this movie: Tianna is a poor girl in Louisiana, growing up alongside the rich man's daughter Charlotte.  Her daddy inspired a love of cooking in Tiana, and Tiana wants to open a restaurant (partly for her and partly in his own honor).  Tiana works two jobs nonstop in order to save the money, and Charlotte puts her over the top by catering a party for the arriving playboy/partier Prince Naween... it has always been Charlotte's dream to marry a prince.  Naween and his porter run afoul of Doc Facilier, a voodoo priest.  Naween gets transformed into a frog, and the porter is transformed into Naween.  Doc Facilier is trying to get at Charlotte's father's money by marrying the porter to Charlotte and immediately killing the father afterward.

  Naween escapes and finds Tianna at the party.  He thinks that a kiss from a princess will restore him, and asks Tianna.  Tianna does the deed but since she's not a princess, she ends up turning into a frog.  Both frogs escape to the bayou and find a alligator who plays the jazz trumpet (!) and a firefly whose familly leads them to the Good Witch of the West... err, Mama Odie, who they say has the power to restore Tianna and Naween.

  They find out from Mama Odie that since Charlotte's father is the "King of Mardi Gras", Charlotte is therefore the "princess" and has the power to turn Naween and Tianna back to human with a kiss to Naween.  Yeah, that was convoluted even for Disney, but we'll go with it for now.  Naween and Tianna go back to New Orleans, run afoul of Facilier and end up defeating him, and seemingly have the rug pulled out from under them by not changing back to human.  The movie ends with them actually and for really changing back, though the reasoning was even MORE convoluted than the plot point above... the two frogs decided to marry, Naween kissed the bride, and both ended up changing back to human because now Tianna was officially a princess... ha ha.

  One more musical number ends, and all exeunt from another Disney musical.  Spoiler Space over.

So!  With that being said, I do have some faint memories of seeing the movie the first time in the theater as well as the fresh memories from seeing it only a couple hours ago.  On the first viewing, the movie really is something to see and listen to.  What stuck out to me the most was the music.  It seemed that there was a different style of music for each number, and that it wasn't forced.  There was the obligatory New Orleans jazz number, there was a Revival number, there was a bayou swing number (with fiddles a-blazin')... it ran the gamut of styles, and I really admired the songwriters for that.

On first view, the story between Naween and Tianna was sweet as well.  They both pulled each other out of their comfort zones, challenged each other to grow, and seemed as equal a Disney romance as ever you could find.  This wasn't necessarily a man winning over a woman just as much as this wasn't a woman domesticating her man.  The emotion that the screenwriters created seemed a bit sudden even on the first watching, but felt overall genuine.

Of course, here is the fair warning.  My daughter stumbled into this when she piped up at the very end (spoiler!) "How did they get their clothes back when they transformed from naked frogs to people?"  I've watched my share of anime, especially magical girl shows, and I know that there is such a thing as ClothesSpace, where the girls' civilian clothes kind of get stuck in a subdimensional pocket and are with her once her magic dissipates.  However, this did start me to thinking about the movie as a whole.

There are two rather large plot holes to drive the proverbial Mack Truck though that show themselves even on the first viewing: that a princess can be created through a rigged election and is subsequently somehow invested with magical powers, and the final plot hole that allows everyone to return to their "real" lives at the end.  You scratch that surface and realize that there are further issues... a porter that gets trod upon, yet works for the crown prince?  You're telling me he can't boss anyone around at the castle?  Doc Facilier, worrying about money with all that voodoo at his disposal... well, I suppose some things never change, but he really didn't seem the money-grubbing kind, and the plan that he presented.... well, it was right at home within the story.  Doc Facilier's plans... would probably work better if the key theme was extortion rather than, well, whatever the heck he did.  Doc Facilier's cause of death was a bit of a stretch too, in a couple of ways.  Even the two lead characters were practically distilled into a single essence... the hard worker versus the hardly working, and it almost felt as if there was nothing further to their characters, especially Tianna.

This kind of illustrates the difference between a Number 2 and a Number 3 movie.  A Number 2 has the quality of being at least decent to watch the first time, but that rewatchability really has to be there for the movie to jump up higher.  I will admit, it really depends on how much a person is willing to allow the story to carry them on this movie.  I can not only see where some reviewers were unhappy about this movie, but also why some other reviewers really enjoyed the movie.  And that puts me in quite a bind too, especially since I don't want to cop out and give you two (or even three) different ratings for this movie.

Ultimately, the music and emotion really do carry this movie, and I definitely enjoy the overall message of the movie.  On my four-point scale, I would offer this movie a 2.7.  It's so close to a movie that I would rewatch if offered a choice, especially if there are children involved... that message and that music and that emotion are good for children to experience, I think, and allows you to bond with your children (or your significant other), and the one thing this movie does well is to whisk you away to another place.  It is a movie that I would need to have a cool-down period from though, in order to forget what I wrote two paragraphs ago... not exactly something I can say for movies such as The Princess Bride, or even Wreck-It Ralph

I suppose, in that way, that this movie is as bipolar as a frog and a human can be.

Too Late Reviews (#2LR) - X-Men: First Class

Last week, we covered the art of the sequel.  This week, we will be covering the art of the prequel.  As far as comic books go, your reviewer has some slight familiarity with most characters.  As far as X-Men goes though, I had the benefit of watching the Saturday morning cartoon which allowed me to become at least passingly conversant with the characters.

It turned out that it also at least helped me to know some of the plot of X-Men: First Class in advance too.  Ultimately, this movie was about connections... the first one is between Magneto and his rage, personified by Kevin Bacon, and the second between Charles Xavier and Mystique.  From there, we learn about a rogue (HA!) team of mutants headed by the same Kevin Bacon (cross THAT off my bucket list) who just wants the world to blow up.  Just after, the CIA makes the connection between funny business and mutants with the help of another recurring character, who was amazingly never caught when sneaking (or, really, *slinking*) up and checking out what all the noise was about.

It is then that Xavier and Mystique ("Raven" in this story) get drafted into the CIA, picking up Magneto ("Erik") as he attempts to go after Kevin Bacon out of revenge.  Not a surprising impulse, I'm sure.  The rest of the team gets sniffed out by Xavier and his +3 Radar Dome of Casting Call, including a brief Hugh Jackman sighting.  It's during this part that the movie does some of its most... subversive work, as they find and add two white boys, a Hispanic girl, and then the token African-American character driving a taxi.  After the "team" is gathered, it's proven that the CIA stands for "Cannon-fodder Is All-of-us" as they get decimated by the Bacon Mutantz.  Bacon himself has his diabolical speech, including asking if the mutants being housed by the CIA want to be "slaves"... as the camera then goes for the tight-focus on the black guy... and when the Xavier/Magneto mutants decide that they do not want any part of being a Kevin Bacon production, the black guy is the one who buys the farm.

At that point, the movie starts to hit some of the continuity stuff.  Xavier is shown training his mutants, Magneto starts with the mutant pride rhetoric, which pulls in Mystique, and Hank McCoy becomes... well, a blue bear-wolf-dog thing which presumably leads to him being the Beast.  The Blackbird makes its appearance as well.

The last third or so of the movie is the big set piece, where aspects of the Russian Missile Crisis serve as the backdrop to Evil Real Kevin Bacon's diabolical plan.  Y'see, he wants World War III because... well, because it'll kill lotso Muggles, I suppose.  Part of Bacon's pep talk to the other mutants was that they could live like kings... but Kevin Bacon was already living like a king, with a yacht AND a nuclear submarine, all pimped out like mad.

Side note here... it's fascinating how many times this trope is seen.  Don't all diabolical masterminds understand that owning everything is useless if there's no one to maintain it to your best benefit?  What's the point of destroying humanity if no one's going to run the power plant to make sure your 112" 1080p television works, or to make sure that there's water enough for your jacuzzi and indoor pool?  Who's going to design the next Bugatti for you to own, and who'll act as the policemen to snarl traffic so that you can laugh at them as you zip by, knowing that traffic jams are for peasants?  This even extends to the Atlas Shrugged set, because railroads are extremely, EXTREMELY useless without people at both ends demanding transportation or cargoes, and bluesteel/copper/unlimited free energy in large quantities is pointless if no one is there to consume it.  And, most importantly, what is the point of power if there is no one around to worship you for your amazing power and for you to exert control over to demonstrate how cool you are?

Anyway, the X-Man team flies to where the Soviets are sailing the missiles into Cuba, has one of the Soviets completely blow up the second ship (?!, not really very non-violent, Mister Doctor Professor Xavier) and then Magneto unearths the nuclear sub.  The Magneto-Kevin Bacon fight commences, and as predicted Magneto wins with Xavier's help.

At the end, it's shown that Magneto really just wanted to be Kevin Bacon but couldn't be on Kevin Bacon's side.  It's (half-hearted spoiler alert) while he agreed one hundred percent with Kevin Bacon's treatment of every one else, he couldn't agree with Kevin Bacon's treatment of his own dear ma-ma.  After that is the denouement and the oh-so-predictable credits.

You may notice far more plot being outlined here, and that's because the movie was pretty much all plot.  They attempted to shoehorn in Xavier's message, and they even did an admirable job of taping together the fact that Xavier's worldview is as caught up in Xavier's circumstances as Magneto's worldview is caught up in Magneto's.  They even did an interesting job of showing how some people may have other's best interests in mind, but they end up coming off as sanctimonious jerkwads (i.e. the Mystique situation, where she refers to herself at one point as "[Xavier's] pet".

At its heart, the movie is an action flick though, and the action sequences are not bad for pacing and for motion.  There were a few nausea-inducing roller-coaster spots, because when you have mutants that can fly you're gonna get that green-screen stuff in somewhere.  It's not as if I am expecting X-Men: First Class to carry a deep message and make me think, but the scriptwriters, producers, and director knew that the story going in was going to be just as much cerebral as action because of Magneto's character arc.  Giving a bit more time to exactly why Magneto decided that Kevin Bacon was his future course would've helped the plot (and the climax, and the conclusion) to have at least a bit more consistency.

Final rating : 2.1

Dual reviews: Hop and The Muppets

We decided to hit the rental place this weekend to find some family movies so that we could spend a rainy Saturday inside. We have yet to watch the other movies (and I will likely spend a couple minutes to review them afterward), but we did manage to see both Hop as well as The Muppets.

It was rather telling when we offered the option of watching Hop or The Muppets to the children. All three would rather see Hop, so we bowed to their whims and showed that movie first.

For a quick summary of the movie, Hop is the story of a talking CGI bunny. The idea and visuals were revolutionary in 1989 (only twenty-three years ago!) when the movie was called Who Framed Roger Rabbit, though the graphics were far more interesting (in my imagination) when they were literal hand-drawn animated cartoons. On the other hand, while the story behind Who Framed Roger Rabbit was not particularly fresh – evil company wanting to landgrab, what was associated with good is not good anymore – the story didn’t exactly feel derivative of anything, they were at least attempting a fresh take on something old.

Hop is about as derivative as you can get. To its credit, it manages to crib from two movies rather than one. (I’m looking at YOU, Avatar, because Dances with Wolves had far more heart and far less contrivance.) Much like Alvin and the Chipmunks, the protagonist makes life hell for the poor unsuspecting main character, and it just so happens that “E.B.” the bunny rabbit LOOOOOVES to play the drums. And of course, it’s a holiday movie, so they lifted more than a few ideas from The Santa Clause, including the “succession crisis” story, the idea that being a holiday icon is somehow a day-to-day job, and more than a few of the ideas for the "Easter factory".

This is where I imagine more than a few people may shake their heads. See if you can wrap your mind around this one: there’s an Easter factory. Without any specific "North Pole" place that the scriptwriters could find, they decide to put it on that very traditional home of the Easter Bunny... Easter Island. (Better yet, the entrance to the Easter factory happens to be in one of the disguised mouths of the moai -- big head statues). The factory exists only to make Easter candy, nothing else… you can see it shaving chocolate into bunnies, or making marshmallow chicks (by mixing "marsh" and "mallow" together.) Workers include both prototypical baby chicks as well as bunnies, and they all talk to each other. As mentioned above, this setting is the Santa Clause portion of the movie.

Hugh Laurie, Dr. House, happens to be… err, voice the current Easter Bunny and very shortly into the movie is talking to the protagonist, E.B. (voiced by Russell Brand) about how he has to be the next Easter Bunny instead of following his dream to drum. E.B. hops into the nearest bunny hole, which happens to portal him directly to the Hollywood sign, and the next phase of the movie begins.

Here, James Marsden is the David Seville to only one Chipmunk. You almost feel sorry for Marsden due to the extremely weird browbeating that he gets in the beginning of the movie in one of the most clichéd "get out of the house you hipster slacker mid-20s too-old-to-live-at-home" speeches ever delivered. Next thing, E.B. happens into James Marsden’s life and shows even less sympathy for him than his movie-dad did two scenes ago. E.B. manages to hit the "trash the room in two seconds flat" cliché as well as the "make the tub (Jacuzzi) overflow with bubbles" cliché, not to mention the whole carrot thing. We’re up to two movies and countless clichés all within the first twenty minutes!

From there, the movie devolves into more Chipmunk-ness, employing a variable cringe humor based on embarrassment. Ordinarily, what happens to James Marsden would be what happens to Yosemite Sam or Elmer Fudd in one of the old Warner Bros. shorts. The biggest difference is a matter of tone. Bugs Bunny was many things, and I would like to think that he was a poke in the eye to meanness (or maybe perhaps even authority). There is no meanness in James Marsden’s character, though I suppose there is some sort of authority in that he doesn’t want the house he’s caretaking to be completely stinking ruined, or would like to get a job (albeit in a mailroom). The bunny gleefully trashes the majority of that though, and doesn’t really care.

See, I don’t mind embarrassment humor for the most part, though in the hands of some people it doesn’t work well. You need at least a bit of sympathy for the character dishing out the embarrassment, as well as at least a bit of animosity towards the target of the embarrassment. Watching someone get dressed down for being a slacker and then watching them fail to a CGI bunny? Unhelpful.

Ultimately, as this movie wound down towards the end, two things became exceedingly clear. Pretty much all of the actors, with the possible exception of James Marsden, mailed in their performances. More than a couple got lucky that they didn’t even have to move around, just speak their lines in a magic can in a soundproof building. Marsden kind of tried, but I think that he knew in the end that it was a lousy premise and ultimately couldn’t save the whole thing by his lonesome. Bonus points in this case go to Russell Brand, who managed to get a role that would have normally gone to Andy Dick. In this case, it’s good news and bad news… while it’s good that the role did NOT go to Andy Dick, it means that there are still roles that WOULD go to Andy Dick and that Hollywood still has a use for him (and others who want to be Andy Dick). I fear that poor Andy Dick was frozen out only because all Easter bunnies are from the U.K. and therefore need to have the appropriate accent. (?!)

Issue number two is that the movie really did a crummy job of tying up its loose ends or even sticking to its continuity. Marsden tried to lampshade the idiocy of a talking rabbit… in a public café, on some random Los Angeles street, and he literally warned E.B. to not talk or else he’d get dissected. Two seconds later, E.B. is talking to a nonplussed café waitress. No one cares. The subplot of the movie is that E.B. goes to an "America’s Got Talent" television show knockoff (there it is again!) called "Hoff Knows Talent", starring David Hasselhoff himself. The bunny talks, ostensibly only Hoff is in the room, but Hoff also tries to provide cover by saying something to the effect of “I’ve seen it all in show business”. But… well… the talking rabbit?! If everyone’s nonchalant about the talking rabbit, as if it’s not a big deal... why? Why even care to put a talking rabbit on television if it’s no big deal, even if it does

play the drums?

It’s not the only unicorn in the garden. In the denouement, James Marsden becomes the "co-Easter bunny" (?!) as if this is a full-time job, Dad is suitably impressed (?!?), his little sister whose only onscreen time consisted of eating food or getting upstaged in an elementary-school play by E.B.’s antics isn’t still pissed, nothing is said of what happens to old Easter bunnies (they must have to finish their seasons of House despite cashing out for roles like this), nobody cares that there’s a freaking Easter sleigh pulled by dozens of somehow-flying chicks and one huge chick that’s a half-rabbit mutant (?!?)… the end just becomes kind of a mess.

Much like Easter, I think. The first half-hour is the candy-fueled freak-out, the next half-hour is trying to figure out what to do with the little gifts that you may have received, and the rest of the day is... well, another Sunday with candy wrappers all over the place. Now what? I suppose that by being derivative of everything yet apropos of nothing, the movie in and of itself managed to capture the (non-religious) aspects of the holiday it was honoring.

In the "thank heaven for small favors" area, there was pretty much zero blue humor (no sexual innuendo), and while there were a couple moments of scatological humor, it was limited to the knowledge that Easter bunnies, unlike regular bunnies, excrete jellybeans as feces. (Yum.)

Overall rating for Hop: 0.7. I could sit through this movie again if requested to, though I would certainly not be the person who requested it.

That brings us to the figurative nightcap to our afternoon, The Muppets I think I know where the kids’ antipathy towards Muppets come from, after all my children pretty much rejected “Sesame Street” fairly early on, with the older kids making sure that the younger kids wouldn’t watch it because the older kids wanted no part of it. They had seen a few of the old "Muppet Show" episodes, including “Manamana” and a few others. Much to their credit, they all decided to watch the movie with us and they did seem to at least be interested in it (even if they did not completely enjoy it).

I have watched many previous Muppet Show-based movies and features. One of the main things that I dislike about previous Muppet Show productions is the introduction of new Muppets and the focus of the story being on the new Muppet alone. The problem seems to be that I can never get a handle on the new Muppet, nor can I figure out why the audience should care about the New Muppet. The New Muppet this time is named Walter, and thankfully he’s not a talking prawn or anything, just a Muppet designed to look human (much like Prairie Dawn from Sesame Street). While the focus was on Walter for quite a bit of the movie, thankfully they widened the focus to bring more of the Muppets in before it became too painful.

The movie operates in a very odd dichotomy that I’m not sure I’ve seen too many times before. The best way to express it was that the movie knew that there was a fourth wall and strived to break it down in such a way as to try to bring the audience closer into the movie. (Fourth wall, for those not in the know, is the wall between the movie and the viewer... if the movie tells you "I’m a movie!" and shows you a picture of one of the movie cameras, it’s breaking the fourth wall.) The odd dichotomy came about because the movie knew full well it was a movie, it started talking about how the Muppets weren’t popular anymore, which was pretty much the truth. Then it broke the fourth wall more, talking about traveling "by map" in order to drive from the U.S. to Paris, France, and describing how they managed to find all the rest of the Muppets "by montage", with Rowlf the Dog complaining that his story should have been interesting enough to at

least make the montage. Additionally, "The Muppet Show" exists in the movie, including all of the things that have happened previously... unlike the anonymity that all of the characters shared in The Muppet Movie among other examples.

Well, plotwise, the Muppets needed to raise $10M in order to pay off some oil tycoon in order to keep their theater and later their Muppet trademark (?!). They decide to "put on a show", and happen to be in the room talking to a network executive just as a two-hour timeslot happens to come available. Next, they run a telethon (interspersed with the other main plot, Gary and Walter’s internal monologues) and end up raising 9,999,999 as the power goes out on the last few seconds. Evil Badguy gets bonked on the head, relents, and the Muppets walk out of their studio to a Field of Dreams-esque lining up of fans along whichever LA street they were filming on.

See, I’m of mixed mind when it comes to the above plot taken in the context of breaking the fourth wall. There’s a lot of unbelievable up there, and the characters were already commenting on the movie as being a movie… yet no comments on some of the more unbelievable stuff. Ultimately, the fourth wall was broken successfully, as the movie really did take in quite a bit, the Muppets became popular again both in their movie universe as well as in the “real world”, so I suppose overall it worked out.

I bring up the fourth wall because that was where the vast majority of the humor was in the movie. If you’re a fan of meta-references, this is a good movie as long as you can put on your "suspension of disbelief" armor afterward. I really do wish though that there was a bit more funny in this... I loved the Muppet Show sequences, not so much with the Gary/Walter plot-that-thankfully-got-shelved-until-the-end, and I miss the old-old Muppet Show and kind of wish that the movie got back to what made the Muppets popular first (being a shoestring operation that had awesome writing and was funny for funny’s sake) instead of what it may do now (being a bankrolled operation that can be funny but may also go back to cashing in on the nostalgia and cachet more than the good writing.)

With that being said, this installment had decent music, was funny and self-referential, and I would watch it again given the opportunity. What makes me happy is that it seems that there are more Easter eggs hanging about and that I could find even more humor on a second or third viewing.

Overall rating for The Muppets: 3

Movie review -- Where the Wild Things Are and The Gruffalo

I know... it's been forever. And I post about movies that are months old to boot. I figure, some content is better than none, and I actually have a hook behind publishing for a change.

Recently, my family watched the two films in the title in a sort of all-day movie marathon. I am taken by both the similarities of both movies as well as the differences and the choices. I will lay them all out below:

1) Where the Wild Things Are -- 2009
Budget: $100 Million
Type: Live-action
Length: 100 minutes

I've read more than a few reviews of this movie. Many of the reviews said that this was a movie more for grownups, though we let our elementary-school children watch this movie. I can see why they say that. The book has terrific art yet a somewhat uncomfortable story of a boy who is very rambunctious and gets in trouble. In the book, it is his imagination that takes him to where the Wild Things are... in the movie, it's not quite that clear. The movie is a bit dark... when you animate Wild Things though, they have to have some sort of danger attached or they wouldn't be very wild. The Wild Things are very much reflections of Max's inner moods and demons. The movie itself gets very uncomfortable quite often.

The reviewers praised the movie, saying that it was a ride through childhood and reflects that childhood isn't the prosaic existence that many people may remember. I know my childhood was certainly rocky at times too, but the level of conflict and unevenness really is off-putting. My children did not like the movie, and I can agree with them. The biggest draw in the book is the art for me... and while the Jim Henson Creature Shop did the best they could, it just couldn't match the lushness of Sendak's art in the book.

This is a movie that I was happy to watch, but only once. I will implement a new review system here to kind of show my level of interest in movies, a one-to-four scale with a bit of blur in the middle steps...

1.I wouldn't watch it even if it was halfway through on TV.
2.I would watch it if it was on, but not intentionally cue it up.
3.I would get the tape and watch it occasionally
4.I would get the tape and watch it often.

(Please note that if a movie has a Rifftrax associated with it, I will give two ratings, one for the movie itself and one for the movie+Rifftrax.)

With that said, this movie was a definite 1. It's the definition of a 1, in that I would at least suggest that others watch it exactly once just to see if it's their bag, but it certainly isn't mine.

So, with that said, on to the second movie!

2)The Gruffalo -- 2009
Budget: possibly $3 million?
Type: Animated
Length: 30 minutes

This was the second movie of the set, and it was also based on a children's book with an unreal character. I suppose you can call me partial to animation, but I honestly felt more involved in this production than in Where the Wild Things Are. The art was very engaging and interesting, and even as the little mouse spun his tales of the fantastic Gruffalo I was not put off as much as when Max was promoting dirt-clod fights by throwing the clods into Things' heads. The Gruffalo was ugly but humorous, and the voices were terrific. To be truthful, the voices were probably two-thirds of the budget, but I still enjoyed the animation.

Additionally, the length of time was just good enough to capture little attention spans. My children definitely enjoyed this movie over the previous one.

My rating would be a solid 2.5 to 3. I would absolutely sit down to watch it, and as it's half-an-hour, I would not mind watching it with my children again.

I wrote this post though to compare and contrast a bit though. One is a massive Hollywood production and a bit of a vanity project for director Spike Jonze (and even a bit for producer Tom Hanks). The other is a BBC One television production. One had a script vastly expanded from the source material, and one was fairly faithful. One was moved into live-action and had painstaking work done to make the creatures come alive... and the other had creatures come alive through the non-reality of animation.

Ultimately, I wish Hollywood would do more to focus on making stories more honest, straightforward, and enjoyable to the children that they are trying to tell stories to. It is very incongruous to make a movie out of a children's book and tell everyone that it's only for adults, and while I see many of the critic's comments about the struggle of childhood and the monsters in our own moods, it doesn't make it enjoyable. I used to harp on audience many times back in the days when MSTing authors would present MSTings for C&C, and I wish that Hollywood would take this into consideration more often too.

NGE, Psych, and other stuff...

It's summertime now, and time to finally get out of the house! Kind of, at least... there's a few things that need clearing up before that happens, and that's the status of the last two shows mentioned below.

Firstly, the good: Psych, which I've caught up through Season Five and I'm ready for Season Six. I still highly enjoy the writing on this show, it's managed to stay consistently good longer than House and the snark isn't quite as mean-spirited. I think that they swung the pendulum too far with House, the humor was terrific through about seasons two and three, but then you could tell that it wasn't out of fun that this was happening but that he was lashing out. Psych doesn't have that problem, you can tell that the main character is always playing. Just like MSTing, it's an art that suffers when the characters aren't having fun doing it... the tone is really important in cases like this.

Speaking of tone, that brings us to the second half of Neon Genesis Evangelion. That was a dense show, and for me a difficult one to not only get into but to enjoy. I'm not a huge fan of the giant robo genre... I've watched Escaflowne as well as Martian Successor Nadeisco. With that said, I couldn't even finish the final ten episodes of the show. Of course, there was an alternate reason for that as well, alluded to previously... I'd read so much fanfic from it that I was bound to get most of the canon stuck in my head anyway. NGE has been a very fertile ground for MSTing in the past, including Mystery Octagon Theater as well as our own Dot Every T productions... there may be a chance that we return to it in the future given a good enough target, and if I need to research I'll just watch it online. Other than that, I'm satisfied where I left it, knowing that I just didn't have the time nor attention span to be able to finish it and enjoy the series.

At this point, I need to cast about for both new shows to watch as well as new targets to MST. Megane 6.7 and I are still working on the rifftrax to The Last Dragon, we're hard at work editing our script and I'm still looking forward to finishing that. In the meantime, I'm looking for a good 'fic for a newer series, such as a Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya 'fic, or an Azumanga Daioh, or even a Code Geass 'fic. I think we've located one of the latter for a good target to check out, but that's all still up in the air.

Thanks all for sticking by us while we're going through our not-so-productive periods. We hope you enjoy the projects that we're currently working on, and we'll be getting them out when we can.

The three-month update:

Not a whole lot to cover for three month's time, but there's a bit at least.

I need to plug Netflix one more time. There is a bit of a lag as far as getting anime series, because it seems that everyone wants disc one because they want to see what the series will be like before they get all the rest of the discs, but other than that it's a ton of fun to be able to get anime for free through the mail, and all you have to do is send it back.

I'm old-school 90s, where there were three options for my anime... one was to buy it tape-by-tape, which was $20-$25 and there was no guarantee you may like it. The other was to be able to find a place to rent it, which was a long shot at best (though my college town did have a place like that, thank heaven, even though I didn't rent too many because of the distance). Three was to borrow it from someone else, and since that entailed the other person to be able to lay out $20 or $25 per tape, you'd have to find some decently well-off friends. (Luckily, the college I went to also had an anime club with a small library, that was useful for borrowing too).

Compared to today, with streaming video, Netflix, and fansubs, it's a far different world now. Currently, our choice is the Netflix setup, because it's easier to find it and put it up on the big screen.

Anyway, the first series that I watched with my children is Princess Tutu. My daughter is into ballet, and we thought that it would be a good show for the family to watch. Thankfully, the grand majority of the show is age-appropriate for younger children.

The setting of the show is in (what looks like) any random old-fashioned European village. There are multiple characters who are not even human, and 90% of the cast dances ballet, even the anteater, hippo, and the teacher who is a cat. The series' protagonist is Duck, who looks like a complete human for the most part but if she quacks she turns into a duck.

I wasn't sure that I would enjoy this series, but there are a few points that I wanted to say that work very well in the show's favor, even if it is a show that young children are able to follow. First is that the show's tenor and tone change rather dramatically after episode 13, which *almost* looked like a conclusion. The second is that characters change alliance, which is always interesting in my book because of the interplay between characters who once were unhappy with each other but find themselves working towards a common goal. And the underlying basis of the story is extremely interesting too... you see, the story actually is a story within a story, and it gets very meta. It really allows room for thought and the second layer was more than enough to draw my attention as an adult (as the kids were able to focus on the first layer, which is still absorbing.) The ending seemed a bit rough on the surface, but fits very well with the second layer too. I would recommend this show to people who enjoy the interplay of meta (as I do), who enjoy classical music (as each episode is built around a different melody from history, such as Swan Lake or The Nutcracker), and especially if children are around as it would be a good anime for them to watch to enjoy the genre.

The other two shows I've been watching are "in progress" right now. First, I'm finally watching Neon Genesis Evangelion I had never watched it in the 90s, nor even in the 00s, bu I'm watching it now. It really is bizarre to watch this show because not only does it feel as if I'd watched every scene -- albeit out of order -- due to my enjoyment of anime music videos, but I've read more than my share of NGE fanfiction as well. Seeing the source material fills in more than a few blanks, though there weren't too many blanks.

I'm currently at episode 10 (or so), and there is definitely something striking about this series. The dub really sucks. Being a 90s anime, it's almost as if they created the dub prior to anyone caring about voice acting. My suggestion would be to see it subtitled, because then Shinji won't sound like a 20-year-old and Misato a teenage valley girl.

The third series is American. My wife and I have been watching Psych, thanks again to Netflix (streaming). The show answers a question I had, which would be what Dr. House would be like if he weren't so bent on self-destruction and tried to have fun. The settings even fall into that sort of stereotype, House on the East coast and Psych in sunny California. I enjoy these types of shows, they're the direct descendant of Sherlock Holmes stories yet still have a twist about them. I would recommend Psych to fans of the genre and even to non-fans to try out and see if they are enjoyable.

The work continues with Megane 6.7 and I, we're still doing a Rifftrax of The Last Dragon and hopefully we will be recording within the next couple weeks. Have a good Spring!

Review - Firefly + Serenity

I've never really been a major party animal, but when my wife and I were invited to a new-year's party we decided to take the invitation -- there were other kids there, and that would allow my wife and I to have a bit of downtime and enjoy ourselves a bit more. It was not exactly a raucous party, the loudest we got was when we trotted out the karaoke machine and essentially had a sing-along. At the party though, our hosts also showed an older television series that neither I nor my wife had seen before: Firefly

Firefly was a show on Fox back in 2002, a "blink and you'll miss it" type that endured more than one preemption and an out-of-order broadcast, which included two episodes of the fourteen not being shown on original broadcast. We watched the pilot and second episode, and were about halfway through the third when midnight struck. After midnight, we needed to get the little ones home... at 12:30, they were pretty tired and we didn't want to deal with too-tired kids in the morning.

Anyway, we enjoyed Firefly quite a bit and when we realized that we were able to get it through Netflix Instant Queue, we eagerly watched through the end of the series. The series is an odd duck, it combines sci-fi and Old West-type settings. While there are spaceships, futuristic weapons, and tons of planets to look through, there are many elements of aging and oldness in the plot -- the spaceship itself, the captain who was an unsuccessful fighter in a war (yet allowed to remain free), all the characters that seemed to have a backstory including the teenaged girl, six-shooters, horses, and the towns themselves. The second story actually concerns a train robbery; there's a train, alright, but it's an anti-gravity setup rather than traditional rails. Other than the anti-grav, which enables it to float a couple feet off the ground, it's a traditional train the rest of the way.

There were more than a few things that detracted from the show, which included how cheaply it was made as well as what seemed like a few of the inconsistencies that it raised. However, I was extremely thrilled about the characters that the show drew and the wild, sprawling universe that it spawned. This was a place that I may not have wanted to live in, but I absolutely would have loved to explore. The characters felt real, and the writing was superb. At times it did feel that all characters were informed by the same writer, but then on the other hand I have seen more than a few situations where people do act similarly even while making pains to show how independent they are. I think the element that I enjoyed most about the series was that all emotions were in play; lots of humor, some sadness, quite a bit of drama, and none of it really felt contrived.

Serenity came out three years later into theaters. It was intended as a sort of epilogue to the series, as there are more than a few plot points that show that the crew will not be the same following the movie. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit because of the way that it was able to show the characters, for its higher budget as well as the pacing... two hours passed by, but it was a very quick two hours. My only complaint is that as the stakes were raised leading to the climax, it felt almost as if the screenwriters managed to back themselves into the same corner that the characters occupied, and that the finale was a bit implausible if stared at long enough. With that being said, this universe was a brilliant setting and the characters were well-developed, and if this idea happens to receive more attention in the future I will be glad to check it out.

Thankfully, as far as I know, both the series and movie are available through Netflix Instant Queue, I would recommend anyone who likes character-driven sci-fi or westerns to check both Firefly and Serenity out.

In other quick news, the AMFAS frontpage has been updated. The quote generator has all 88 old quotes but it also has new quotes from the MSTings that Megane 6.7 and I have completed through the last couple years, and I have also made the frontpage a bit more current with the times. Thanks for your support.