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Holiday Movie Review Roundup: Fred Claus, Bee Movie, Shrek 3, Enchanted
Today, some flicks for the kids, and for the kid...in each of us. I've even included lame, childish puns to kick off each review.
FRED CLAUS (D+)
Ho ho...NO!
Fred Claus wastes a shocking amount of talent -- Vince Vaughn, Paul Giamatti, Rachel Weisz, Kevin Spacey, Kathy Bates, etc. had nothing better available to them? It is loud and dumb and long and boring. It is thuddingly unfunny -- there is exactly one amusing scene here (a "Sibling Support Group" for people overshadowed by their siblings, including Frank Stallone, Stephen Baldwin, and Roger Clinton), and it's more clever than laugh out loud. The filmmakers put a lot of midgets out of work by having fully grown actors play the elves, through awkwardly done special effects (think Ludacris' head bouncing on a toddler's body). Even the basic setup -- something about how Santa and everyone in his family stay the same age they are when Santa becomes a saint? -- doesn't add up. Really lazy stuff, and children deserve better. Like...
BEE MOVIE (Bee +)
Ignore the bad buzz, and bee sure to see it, honey!
There are few performers I love more than Jerry Seinfeld, so I was excited about Bee Movie even after the lukewarm reviews and the media oversaturation. To my delight, Bee Movie had everything I could ask for from an animated film. It's beautiful to look at. It's extremely funny (I laughed a LOT, to an embarrassing degree), but that's to be expected with Seinfeld on board. What I wasn't expecting was how affecting it is. It's got a really fresh and original point of view, and the message it teaches (for kids I suppose, but even I, a grown man, took a lot away from it) is unexpected and fairly profound for a cartoon.
Seinfeld's character, Barry B. Benson, is disgusted when he learns that all bees are just expected to join the crushing repetitiveness and monotony of the work force right out of college (The Graduate is an obvious influence). So he decides to bust loose and rebel. But the eventual realization he comes to -- "The Machine" may suck, but it's completely necessary -- is surprisingly mature, fairly downbeat, and...true.
There's all kinds of great stuff along the way, like an awkward romantic relationship with a human (Renee Zelwegger, in the only performance I've enjoyed of hers since Jerry Maguire) and a hilarious courtroom sequence involving Ray Liotta, Sting, and John Goodman as an obese, sweating Southern lawyer. Bee Movie is fast, it's funny, it's meaningful, it's great.
SHREK THE THIRD (C)
Why the Shrek is this series still going on? Shouldn't it be ogre by now?
Outside of the occasional surprise (see the review above), I just don't dig cartoons. I didn't even really get into them when I was a kid. But I can recognize when an animated movie is working on another level, as the Pixar movies do, and as the original Shrek did. Shrek 2 was moderately enjoyable, and Shrek 3 pretty much coasts on the love of the series, favoring more fart, poop, and vomit jokes to anything original. It's not bad, it's just not particularly inspired. The only consistently funny character this time out is the Gingerbread Man. Gold.
ENCHANTED (C-)
Enchanted I was not. Prinsucks!
Inexplicably, Enchanted has received nothing but stellar reviews and overwhelming box office. There is one aspect to recommend about the film, the terrific Amy Adams, but she's nowhere near enough to warrant a viewing. Enchanted has a promising idea -- Adams is a cartoon princess transported to real-life, modern day New York City -- but the filmmakers execute it as tediously as possible from the opening scene. The 15-minute animated sequence that opens the film is unbelievably dull and shitty. (You remember those disgraceful Disney knockoff animated movies in the early 90's, like A Troll in Central Park? It's like that.) By the time Adams got to New York, I was dozing.
Patrick Dempsey is the definition of adequate here. So is the girl who plays his daughter, who is strangely neither exceptionally talented or particularly cute. Susan Sarandon phones in her performance as a wicked witch. Timothy Spall seems to be aggressively working against the movie as the witch's henchman. He's hammy, even for a kids' movie. Outside of Adams, only Broadway star Idina Menzel and James Marsden (who was better and funnier in this year's Hairspray) rise above the weak screenplay. And as for the terrible ending -- how hard is it to make a fairy tale make sense? Why does Sarandon turn into a dragon? And what are they fighting about if Adams is no longer in love with the Prince? And why do I care?
Nice set of reviews, Pat. I grade these movies pretty much the same,
except for the Shrek movie, which I haven't seen. I watched "1409" over
the weekend. It was as though Stephen King were parodying himself, and the
ending was just eh. But don't get me started on the biggest ripoff movie
ever...."Premonition". I watched it on Sunday morning, and I can't for the
life of me see how the supposedly "bittersweet" ending was anything but
non-sweet. It was a completely craptastic suckfest. I won't say it wasn't
well done, because it was...but somewhere along the way, the creators of
"Premonition" forgot that, while a story may have intriguing elements,
there needs to be a reason for the story to be told. I can't figure out
what that reason is. It offers no real commentary on anything except that
maybe monogamy, while boring, won't get you killed. I don't know.
What? Ah...no...I can't...I will not accept that Bee Movie doesn't blow.
Sorry.
No desire to have my children see Vince Vaughn's humor as I think it's
strictly for adults and well, we've seen it every movie he's ever made?
Oh, maybe he was a little different in Swingers....
Re: Fred Claus
Great review! I love your writing and i look forward to your work. Keep it
up.
Rick,