The Croods

I have been wanting to watch this one since I first saw a preview for it.  Now that it is on netflix, I keep trying to convince Liam to watch it with me.  Finally I forced it upon him.  I can say that I enjoyed it more than he did, but he was ok with it.  He likes the visuals, but I think the moments between action would start to bore him a bit as it was more  of a story and not a musical like some kids movies are. 

In case you also have not seen The Croods, it is a 2013 3-D animated adventure comedy.  It did definitely have some hilarious moments that had me laughing.  The Croods was produced by Dreamworks Animation and distributed by 20th Century Fox.  The Croods are a cave dwelling prehistoric family that have their world turned upside down with the world starts to shift.  It takes place in a fictional prehistoric time with imaginary creatures.  The man of the cave (Grug) finds his place as leader and security provider threatened when a prehistoric genius gets the family to leave their comfort zone for future safety. His teenage rebel daughter Eep is enamored by Guy (the genius) which makes him even more adverse to the new guys "ideas."






The voice talent of The Croods is as follows:
Nicholas Cage as Grug (National Treasure, Ghost Rider, Lord of War, Windtalkers, Family Man)
Emma Stone as Eep  (The Help, Easy A, Amazing Spiderman, Zombieland, Superbad)
Ryan Reynolds as Guy (Green Lantern, Just Friends, Turbo, Definitely, Maybe; Smokin' Aces)
Catherine Keener as Ugga (40 Year Old Virgin, Captain Phillips, Capote, Death to Smoochy, 8 MM)
Cloris Leachman as Gran (Raising Hope, Beerfest, Malcolm in the Middle, Touched by an Angel)
Clark Duke as Thunk (Hot Tub Time Machine, Two & a Half Men, The Office, Greek, Kick-Ass)

The Croods premiered in the US in March of 2013.  It received mostly positive reviews and was considered a success with earnings of over $587 million on a $135 million budget.  This success caused the movie to launch a sequel that will be released in June in 2017 and a tv show that is already in development stages.  The Croods was the first feature film to be featured in 4DX format featuring strobe lights, tilting seats, blowing wind and fog as well as odor effects in Budapest, Hungary.  The Croods is the second highest grossing Dreamworks Film behind King Fu Panda. It received a lot higher reviews internationally and opened at number one in 54 countries.   It was nominated for many awards including the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Overall I thought this was an excellent movie.  I think that the American crowd prefers the animated features with musicals.  I thought that the story line was great, it even made me cry, and had some great witty humor jokes built in.  I think that older kids and adults would enjoy it a lot more than my toddler did.  I definitely recommend this movie and give it a 4/5 stars. 

The Croods Movie Dreamworks Official Site

Finding Nemo

Liam is branching out in his movie watching and I got him to watch Finding Nemo for the second time tonight in the past year and I always love watching this movie.  I loved this one before Liam was born and I love being able to share it with him.  This is one of those timeless classics that you can watch over and over again.

 In case you have been missing out and don't know anything about Finding Nemo, let me fill you in on the background of it.  Finding Nemo is a Pixar film that was realeased in 2003.  It was the 5th film released by Pixar.  Nemo is about a clown fish that is captured by a scuba diver and taken fromt he great barrier reef to Sydney, Australia.  His father (Marlin) an overprotective clown fish then goes in search of him and comes across an unlikely partner Dory who is a tang (bright orange fish) with short-term memory loss.  Together they must cross the ocean to try to find and rescue Nemo.

Finding Nemo is a comedy-drama adventure film that is computer animated.  It was the first Pixar film to be released in the Northern Hemisphere during the Summer.  It won the Academy Award and Saturn Award for Best Animated Film and was the second highest grossing film of 2003 with a total of $936 million worldwide.  It is the best selling DVD of all time and sold over 40 million copies in 2006.  It was the highest grossing G rated film of all time until took over.  And it is the 23rd highest grossing film of all time.  In 2008, the American Film Institute named it the 10th greatest animated film ever made. 

Voice talents of Andrew Gould who plays Marlin.  Ellen Degeneres who plays Dory, Alexander Gould who plays Nemo, and also features Willem Dafoe who plays Gill and Geoffrey Rush who plays Nigel.  The director Andrew Stanton voiced Crush himself. 

The inspiration came from childhood memories and intrigues of Andrew Stanton and actually began turning into a move in 1997.  Ellen was brilliantly cast thanks to the Stanton's wife watching the show and he watched her change subjects 5 times in a single sentence.  (Sounds like Ellen would fight in perfectly in my family haha).  In order to get the brilliant animation of the ocean the directors took oceanography classes and went on many of their own scuba diving trips. 

An unforeseen negative drawback of the film: The reaction to the film by the general public has led to environmental devastation for the clownfish, and has provoked an outcry from several environmental protection agencies, including the Marine Aquarium Council, Australia. The demand for tropical fish skyrocketed after the film's release, causing reef species decimation in Vanuatu and many other reef areas. After seeing the film, although some aquarium owners released their pets into the ocean, they released them into the wrong ocean, which introduced species which were harmful to the indigenous environment and is harming reefs worldwide.

The excitement of a sequel in the making:   In April 2013, Disney announced the sequel, Finding Dory, confirming that Ellen DeGeneres and Albert Brooks would be reprising their roles as Dory and Marlin, respectively. It was scheduled to be released on November 25, 2015, but the film's ending was revised after Pixar executives viewed the film Blackfish. On September 18, 2013, it was announced that the film would be pushed back to a June 17, 2016, release.  It is interesting to me how far the reaches of Blackfish have been to even change things in a huge Pixar movie.  

You can find the movie at the official Pixar website: Finding Nemo
And also at Disney's websites once they partnered with Pixar: Disney Finding Nemo

Despicable Me 2

Liam picked this one out to get for Christmas, so we have finally been able to watch it :)  I must say that it was a delightfully great movie.  More minions, more Gru, more of the girls, plus some awesomeness with Lucy Wilde voiced by one of my favorites (Katherine Wiig from Bridesmaids).  Liam was definitely into it and loving it the whole way through!

This is the sequel to Despicable Me (obviously) and you don't need to have watched the first one to enjoy this one, but it will give you some background to the story.  However this one easily stands alone as a great movie.  They did a great job with the sequel with bringing back a lot of the stuff that you love and adding in a lot of new elements, such as a new arch enemy for Gru.  Gru teams up with Lucy Wilde and the Anti-Villain League to stop the spread of a horrible serum that turns good creatures into purple furry evil creatures. 

Despicable Me 2 came out in 2013 as a sequel to the 2010 film of the originating name.  It was released by Illumination Entertainment and is the first ever sequel to be produced by them.   With a budget of $76 million dollars it grossed $918 million, suffice to say it was a box office success. It was the second highest grossing film of 2013. 

Benjamin Bratt voiced the villain El macho who was originally supposed to be voiced by Al Pacino who left the film due to creative differences just a month before premiere. At the time of his departure, Pacino's character had been already fully voiced and animated.  It always cracks me up to think of Russell Brand voicing Doctor Nefario.  No matter how many times I watch the films I just have a hard time picturing Russell Brand behind his voice haha. 

I must admit that I didn't realize that Kristin Wiig also voiced Miss Hattie in the original film, so that makes sense that they would bring her over into this one as well.  Her and Steve Carrel (Gru's voice) play off one another very well.  I would love to see them in a real-live comedy together someday. 

Excited future news is that a spinoff film titled Minions is set to be released in July of 2015 and will focus on the awesomely amazing minions of Gru.  It will features the Minions in the 1960s before meeting Gru as they try to compete to work for Scarlett Overkill voiced by Sandra Bullock.  There is also rumor that a Despicable Me 3 is in the works.

Overall I highly recommend this film to anyone and give it 5 out of 5 stars



If you would like to see the Move site go to: Despicable Me.com

Oliver & Company

I always loved Oliver & Company as I was growing up.  With Liam's continued request to watch Bolt again and his love of dogs and cats I was sure that he would love this movie.  Unfortunately from the very beginning he was seriously not feeling this movie.  He kept begging me to change it and he did not feel very engaged by it at all.  In his defense it wasn't as good as I had remembered.  There was a serious lack of action in terms of current Disney movies.  The coloring and backgrounds were not as bright or interactive as most movies are now and it had the older animation.  The story was more adult-based themes rather than something that Liam could really get into and was over his head.  I of course still watched the entire thing and was happy that I had.  I was sad that it wasn't as awesome as I had remembered, but it was still good and worth watching.  Still had some catchy tunes with  a great voice staff, a few cameos and  of course the voice talent of the late Dom Deluise making you want to go back to Itchy in All Dog's go to Heaven and Tiger in An American Tale and Jeremy in the Secret of NIMH and Stanly from A Troll in Central Park.....

Olive & Company is loosely based on the story of Oliver Twist.  Oliver is a kitten and gets in with a gang of dogs, led by Dodger who are owned by a down on his luck guy named Fagin.  Fagin borrowed money from a thug (possible mafia ties) who is wanting his money back in 3 days.  The gang goes out to hustle for some money for their owner when the come across a limo with a little girl inside named Jenni who takes Oliver home with her.

Oliver is an orange tabby kitten voiced by Joey Lawrence.
Dodger is a apparently supposed to be a Jack Russell Terrier, which I did not know until I looked this up.  If that is true, he is drawn disproportionately with the rest of the characters as he should be much smaller than he is in comparison with the other dogs.  He is voiced by Billy Joel
Tito is a ballsy Chihuahua voiced by Cheech Marin
Rita is a Saluki, and Dodger's love interest voiced by Sheryl Lee Ralph
Fagin is the owner of the dog gang and voiced by Dom Deluise
Georgette is a prizewinning show Poodle and is voiced by Better Midler

Oliver & Company was released in 1988 as Disney's 27th animated film.  The working title of the film was Oliver & the Dodger.  At a certain point this film was being tailored as a sequel to The Rescuers.   This was the first Disney film to make heavy use of computer animation.  CGI (computer generated imagery) was used for skyscrapers, cars, trains, the chase scene with Fagin's scooter.  This film signified the first time the Disney had created an actual department dedicated just to computer animation. 

Oliver & Company was Disney's test film back into the musical venue that they had steered away from since 1981 with the Fox & the Hound (somehow I don't recall the Fox & the Hound being much of a musical).  Although after watching Frozen, I think that Disney may have gone too far into the musical scene and lost actual speaking to tell a story ;)  After the success of this film at the box office, Disney created all of it's films as musicals for the next decade (ironically only excluding The Rescuers Down Under). 

This movie was also a test for new sound effects that would regularly be used by Disney studios, the next movie to attempt a plethora of new sound effects was The Little Mermaid in 1989.  It was also the first animated film to include real-world advertised products.  Such as, Coca-Cola, USA Today, Ryder and Sony.  Reportedly this was merely for realism and the mass amount of advertising in NYC that would have made NYC unbelievable without advertising and was not product placement. 

Cameo appearances are made in the beginning of the film when after recently watching the Lady & the Tramp I thought for sure I had seen some familiar faces and was just losing my mind.  When in fact there is a cameo appearance from Peg, Jock & Trusty as well as an appearance from Pongo from 101 Dalmatians. 

Oliver & Company was released on the exact same day as The Land Before Time which was released by Don Bluth (a Disney expatriate).  I am sure there was some drama going on behind the scenes with that one.  The box office success of the movie lead Disney to make plans to release at least one movie annually from then on.  The only years thus far this has not happened were 1993 and 2006.  It also started the partnership with McDonald's and joint licensing and product promotion with christmas musical ornaments of Oliver & Dodger.  Despite box office success it got mixed to low reviews at best.

My final review on this movie is a 3.9.  I still love it from when I was a kid but it can't quite push itself over to a 4.  I still love the Why Should I Worry (main theme song sung by Billy Joel) and am happy that I got to see it again. 

*If you watch closely you can see Pongo's cameo

If you want to see the Disney Link go to Oliver & Company

Disney's Robin Hood

It has been many years since I last watched Disney's version on Robin Hood.  I must admit that I was very excited when I saw that it had been added onto Netflix's instant watch.  This is the Disney version of Robin Hood as told my animals.

  It was released by Disney in 1973.  It was the 21st animated feature to be released by Disney.  The film is narrated by a singing rooster telling about the story of Robin Hood and Little John and the Sherwood Forest.  It was finished after Walt's death and was as such the first film to be continued on without him. 
Originally Disney considered doing a movie abotu Reynard the fox but there were concerns about whether or not he would be a suitable hero.  Reynard was a trickster fox from European folklore that was based primarily around satirical stories....  Using anthropomorphic tales (animals instead of people) which was probably the base inspiration for anthropomorphic telling of Robin Hood, using a similar casting of a wolf and a lion against the fox.

As the film was made during Disney's financial slump following the completion of Phase One of the Florida Project and therefore allotted a small budget, the artists reused footage from previous animated features. This is most noticeable during the song-and-dance number, "The Phone King of England"; the characters' movements strongly resemble those from The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, and Snow With

In particular, the section where Little John and Lady Kluck dance together mirrors part of the song "I Wanna Be Like You" from The Jungle Book with Baloo and  king Louie respectively, and Robin Hood and Maid Marian mirror the dancing movements of Thomas O'Malley and Duchess during the song "Everybody Wants to Be A Cat" from The Aristocats (from which some of the musicians also mirror the movements of Scat Cat and his gang) and Maid Marian mirror dancing the movements of Snow White during the song "The Silly Song".  The animation of Little John, the bear in Robin Hood, is nearly identical to that of Baloo but Little John more closely resembles a brown or grizzly bear (Baloo was based on an Indian Sloth Bear). At one point, one of the elephants who acts as heralds for Prince John attempts to trumpet a warning. Lady Kluck grabs the trunk, preventing the trumpeting and leaving the elephant flapping his ears ineffectually.The movie also reuses the same animated shots several times, including those of the rhinos walking and running and those of Sis, Tagalong and Toby laughing. Several animated clips of the Sheriff of Nottingham are also recycled at different points in the film.

At the time of it's release it was received with mixed reviews, overall consensus being that it was on par with The Jungle Book, but could not touch some of Disney's greats.

I have to say that although this was definitely NOT Disney's finest work.  I still love it all the same.  I have always loved the story of Robin Hood and I always loved it being told in a an anthropomorphic way.  I think that the songs are catchy and generally fun for the time being.  It had a good ol' Disney Love song, that was actually reused in the "The Fantastix Mr. Fox."
Liam was definitely into it.  It would be in the top half of his attention getting movies, but wasn't the best one yet.

With that being said, it is definitely worth watching and fun to relive.  I give it 4 out of 5 stars.  I love what it had to offer for the 70s.  Enjoy.

To Visit Disney's website dedicated to Robin Hood go to: Disney Robin Hood

Alice in Wonderland Review

Last night I watched Alice in Wonderland the 1951 Disney version with Liam for the his first time.  He was really into all of the different songs and noises and interesting characters.  I had the general sense as a mother at how much darker and different children's movies were in the 1950s than they are now.  I wasn't sure if it was good to have my son see the part that always bothered me with the Walrus and the Carpenter leading the oyster babies into the house and gaining their trust and than eating them.  It always bothered me and despite all of the craziness within the movie, it seemed like the most messed up part to me.  However I am also aware that my son is young and may not grasp this, but we did call the Walrus a bad man and talk about the oyster's being sad and going bye bye.  The movie score was actually not bad and definitely fit in well with the movie.

I have always thought that Alice in Wonderland really looked a lot of the dark personas and the character flaws of society by putting them into each of the characters, we see forgetfulness and time management issues, lack of responsibility, vanity, liar, etc.  Of course becoming older and becoming a parent makes you look at movies (especially kid's movies) in a whole other light.
Alice in Wonderland is based off of the Novels "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carrol.  I have always wanted to read these books, and definitely need to add them onto my list of classics to acquire.

I found a lot of VERY interesting information about the Disney version of the story when I was researching it for example that parts of this film were created as early as 1923 when Walk Disney was merely 21 years old and was working for a different movie studio.  Before finishing the short comedy series the studio was closed and Walt Disney went on to use the adapted short film as a sort of pilot to show to new prospective distributes.  The Alice's comedies series was on air from 1924-1927.  Now remember the movie version wasn't actually released for another 24 years after that.
In 1932 Walt was toying with the idea of making Alice into a feature length film but ended up turning his priorities to Snow White & the Seven Dwarves instead.  However Lewis Carrol's books still resonated with him as he made the Mickey Film "Through the Looking Glass" in 1936.  (Still 15 years before the film came out).
 In 1938 Walt officially registered the title of "Alice in Wonderland" and started working on it, but did not like the dark and grotesqueness of the script and the way that the animation was turning out.  This was also during the economic devastation of WWII and Walt decided to shelve Alice and created instead the films Pinocchio, Fantasia & Bambi.

In 1945, after the war had ended Walt decided to revive Alice but found that the scrip had taken on too literal of a translation of the book.  He had it changed to focus on comedy, music and the whimsical side of the book.  It almost became a live-action animated version but ended up all animated due to the difficulty of doing justice to the book.
Alice did not do well and was one of Disney's lowest grossing films.  British critics felt that Walt Americanized the story and ruined it and Walt felt the film failed because the character of Alice had no heart.  It was the 13th film released by Disney.

 Another interesting fact was that Alice was voiced by Kathryne Beaumont who later went on to voice Wendy Darling in Peter Pan. 
So what is the story of Alice in Wonderland?  Loosely it is a dreamland created by Alice in which nothing is at is seems and everything is as it is not.  Alice falls asleep and ends up in this psychedelic dreamland, where flowers talk and she is about tall, although sometimes growing and shrinking due to mushroom, pill and liquid substance use.  She is constantly chasing the white rabbit who she sees to lead her into the world, and she meets lots of interesting characters.  In the end it was all a dream.