Family, 91 Minutes, 2013
It used to be that companies like “Pixar” had to suffer poor imitators. Other companies would come along and produce, at best, paint-by-numbers knock-offs that hit all the same notes but couldn’t hope to match the music. For every “A Bug’s Life” [IMDB] there was an “Antz” [IMDB] and for every “Finding Nemo” [IMDB] there was “A Shark’s Tale” [IMDB]. These big-budget semi-clones where never terrible but they were always missing something.
Comedy, 98 Minutes, 2013
Had some trouble getting into this one. The core story is straightforward but, overall, forgettable. Our reformed hero, Gru, with his three foundlings in tow, is recruited by an anti-villain organization to help them investigate, um, villains.
Comedy, 104 Minutes, 2013
I’ve said it before, and I’ll continue to say it until they prove me wrong: Pixar doesn’t make bad movies. They just don’t. Some of their movies are worse than others, but none of them are bad. This one is, in fact, worse than others. It’s a super cliched story. Mike and Sully, bestest friends for life, are introduced when, get this, they didn’t like each other! They join the worst fraternity on campus and have to compete against the best fraternity… who are also total jerks!
Fantasy, 98 Minutes, 2013
The Croods are cavemen. In fact, after a series of misadventures, they are the very last cavemen in their area. They say they survive by fearing everything, rarely leaving their cave and never doing anything new. They actually survive via bombastic, attention-drawing action sequences that completely ignore everything they say.
Family/Adventure, 102 Minutes, 2013
This was fine, really. Just fine. The animation is nice. The story is simple enough. It has Chris O’Dowd [IMDB] in it; he makes everything better. There’s funny sidekicks, lots of action, a nasty little villain and love story light on the kissy-face.
It’s just fine. Not quite, you know, “epic”, but really, just fine.
“Oz the Great and Powerful” on IMDB
Fantasy, 130 Minutes, 2013
The Oz-stories have charmed people for over a century and, in fact, were first put to film by Frank L. Baum himself in 1914. The 1939 “Wizard of Oz” [IMDB] is a well-deserved and universally known classic. The unofficial sequel in 1985,”Return to Oz”, [IMDB] was brilliantly dark but is often misunderstood or just plain forgotten. This time director Sam Raimi [IMDB] dives into the pool with a lovingly crafted prequel.
“Escape from Planet Earth” on IMDB
Family, 89 Minutes, 2013
It’s a digitally animated family film! It has famous people (a few former A-listers and a solid set of B-listers)! There are multiple cute side-kicky characters! It has references to pop culture! It has a heartwarming message! It’s really nothing special.
Zombie alert!
See the review of “Zombie Diaries 2” on our sister site, MoreBrains.com decidated to all things zombie!
Fantasy, 108 Minutes, 2012
This movie aspires to be nothing less than the “Toy Story” [IMDB] of the video game generation. It has the same “your playthings have private lives when you leave” theme. It also features similar “new v. old” and “respect v. apathy” plotlines. Finally it populates its world with a mixture of classic characters and original characters that fit classic archetypes. The arrogance! The audacity! The cheek!
Damn if it doesn’t (almost) do it.
Comedy, 91 Minutes, 2012
I’m a big fan of the old Universal Horror films. “Frankenstein”, “The Wolfman”, “Dracula” and “The Mummy” are all classics and this movie gets a decent bump just by having them all together. Sure they’re all cartoons with famous voices but they’re still together and there’s a host of little references and in-jokes that just for old-time fans like myself.
The story is kinda blah. It’s got that “been there, done that… now with more pop culture references!” feel that a lot of animation has. It’s fine, but nothing that you’ll remember a few days later. Monsters are really just decent folks hiding from the horrible humans that tried to hunt them out of existence. Dracula, in an effort to shelter her from the humans that killed her mother over 100 years ago, hides his daughter away from the world in a lavish hotel that caters exclusively to the monster world. When a wayward human hiker stumbles onto the hotel everybody is, of course, forced to reconsider.
