J.D. Hansel

New Movie Reviews

Babes in Toyland Review

by

I recall the time when I took some tests to be assessed for my IQ, intelligence, and/or learning disabilities a few years back.  The expert who assessed me found the results quite curious, and noted the following: “a Full Scale IQ Score is not an accurate assessment of his ability.  He is a student whose scores on these measures of ability range from the 5th to the 99.9th percentile.  A Full Scale IQ Score represents an average of these numbers and as such, will underestimate his strengths and overestimate his weaknesses.”  The same can be said of many people and many things, as nothing is black and white.  This is why I argue that the classic Walt Disney embarrassment Babes in Toyland, based on the fatally frown-inducing operetta of the same name, cannot be given an accurate star rating.

Babes in Toyland is such a remarkable piece of work, which I suppose is best understood in context.  As I understand it, Disney planned to make a Wizard of Oz movie ever since the days when he was working on Snow White, but ironically, the success of Snow White prompted MGM to buy the rights to The Wizard of Oz in an attempt to make a better family film than Disney’s.  (Spoiler alert – they succeeded.)  Years later, Disney decided to try again to get the rights to make an Oz film, but he wanted to do a test-drive first to see if his creative team – and his usual cast – could pull off such a feat.  His test was Babes in Toyland, which was an old operetta made by the people who’d created a successful Wizard of Oz operetta, and Babes was just a cash-in on that.  So, Disney’s Babes in Toyland is a Wizard of Oz test drive based on a Wizard of Oz rip off, which happens to star Ray Bolger of Wizard of Oz fame.  Some of my facts might be a little off, so feel free to correct me since I’m no historian, but this is about the gist of it.

Because I love MGM’s Wizard of Oz, I naturally really like many elements of this film.  The overall spirit, mood, and atmosphere are just delightful.  It’s just as wondrous and theatrical as I would want any live-action family fantasy film to be.  Many, many, many of the visuals are fantastic because the lighting is so perfect, and the costumes so colorful.  The cast is clearly talented too, and they use every exaggerated prop or over-the-top costume piece to its fullest potential to create an atmosphere of complete other-worldliness.  Because of this, just watching clips from the movie would make it seem like perfection, at least for someone with my tastes in film.

Here comes the however.  However . . . the problems with this beast seem unending.  The puppets are often hideous and/or poorly performed, the plot doesn’t make any sense, the characters are all idiots, the focus of the story keeps changing, the songs are mediocre, and nearly every scene goes on far too long.  That sums up a lot of it, but a closer look will reveal other issues.  It seems to be rather sexist, mildly racist, and possibly advocating child slavery.  It’s not that Disney can be blamed for all of these problems – I can say from experience that the stage show is just as painful if it’s not performed with astonishing excellence from all cast members – but what people forgive on a stage they’d decry on a screen.

Unfortunately, while it’s a film worth studying as visual art, and although it may make for a good laugh if you riff it with an MST3K-loving friend, this cinematic disaster is far from being the kind of holiday classic one would hope Mr. Disney would have produced.

85 Babes in Toyland

Boogie Nights Review

by

Interesting is an interesting word.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1997 hit film Boogie Nights was terribly difficult for me to watch to the finish.  I watched the film in pieces over a period of about two weeks, which is the longest I’ve ever dragged out any of my cinematic experiences without watching another movie before finishing.  Now, this is in part because I’ve been absurdly busy lately, and I’ve had no time to watch movies, but it’s partly because the film is not very interesting.  I had to make it through to the end of the film, however, because it’s very interesting.  This is why the word interesting is so tricky.

Boogie Nights has a story structure that’s not very JD-friendly.  The fact that the last portion of the film (which would ordinarily be used for a very important climax) was actually entitled, “Long Way Down (One Last Thing)” reveals that the scenes shown to us are not scenes that are necessary for a plot, but are instead whatever portions of the lives of these characters the director feels like depicting.  This gives the film a serious case of “And-Then” Syndrome, an issue that’s chastised by writers of several different productions (ranging from PIXAR to South Park) for being the guaranteed way to generate apathy.  For me, this is the kind of movie that leaves me with a blank expression on my face asking, “so… what’s your point?”  There’s not much to gain from a film that gives off vibes of “just being there,” and I find it dreadfully tedious.

On the other hand, I do find the characters quite interesting, and characters are nearly half of the essence of a story.  I did want to know if Dirk was going to be a success, and if Amber was going to get to see her kid, and if Jack was going to find a way to stay afloat in the midst of new trends in the industry.  That being said, I wasn’t exactly on the edge of my seat waiting for the big reveal, because I knew there was no big reveal.  There was no moral of the story, no global implications, and no point – everything is presented matter-of-factly for anyone who’s curious about the field.  This, I think, it was it comes down to: the film is not interesting in the sense of keeping the audience invested and on the edge of their seats, but rather, its unique qualities persist to arouse curiosity, which is the kind of interesting at which this picture excels.

So, while it may not be my kind of film, I do think that, for the kind of film it is, it is done very impressively.  The cast is outstanding, and it is because of the cast that the characters keep us curious.  The soundtrack is one of the best that any movie has ever had, and the ’70s are captured brilliantly.  Even though the story does not appeal to me, and I probably wouldn’t recommend it to hardly anyone I know, I have to respect it for being so well done.  Also, Burt Reynolds’ character in this movie is just too darn likable.

84 Boogie Nights

THG: Mockingjay – Part 2 Review

by

(MINOR SPOILERS)

The last film in a franchise is nearly always the hardest film in the lot to make, and the hardest to watch.  It has the burden of being the “goodbye” that we know we won’t be satisfied with, but we won’t be satisfied without either.  Ultimately, we want a sense of completion, but we also need a sense that, after the credits roll, everything will stay as it should be in the world of the film.  Good characters are rewarded and satisfied, bad characters are punished, and the scope/nature of any character’s death fits the scope/nature of his or her life.  Whatever part of the movie’s finale the viewers are pondering while leaving the theater becomes what the franchise means to them.  This is a task of gigantic proportions that must be handled with extreme care, and I say The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -Part 2 is a good example of a conclusion that feels just about right.

The most impressive thing, however, is that we spend the whole movie (as we have for the whole franchise) rooting for Katniss to kill Snow, but once she has the chance to shoot him, we don’t want her to.  This is an incredible feat to pull off, and it serves to turn the saying “remember who the real enemy is” into a question of what  the real enemy is.  A series that started as a controversial story about children going to war has evolved into a timeless fable about human nature.  The dangers of history repeating itself offer more powerful terror than any of the horrific moments seen previously in the franchise, and the entire history of their dystopia is called into question during just one conversation.  Our view of some of the characters change entirely, but I was happy to see that the most important characters got just about the endings they deserved, with hope in the future for the characters we care about most.

So, it pulls off the sequel game well, but setting my sequel standards aside, what do I think of it as a film?  Well, the acting is just right, as usual, and the script seems largely well-written.  The soundtrack is pretty standard, but I seem to recall enjoying some unique parts of the score here and there.  The visuals seem even more gray than usual in this one, which is a pity, but I suppose I’m used to all that by now.  Sadly, this movie did not have the kind of moving moments that nearly brought me to tears in the second and third films, but it did have one moment (the one captured in the image below) that had me on the edge of my seat trying to keep from cheering.  This moment, however, is what makes it a great wrap-up, so I must conclude that this is not my favorite film in the Hunger Games franchise, but as a franchise finale, I adore it.

83 THG Mockingjay - Part 2

Birdman Review

by

I need to start with a spoiler warning since I don’t want to hold myself back from writing about whatever I find is most worth writing about, and this film has many interesting elements that I could focus on for much of the review if I chose to do so: it has a unique, seamless editing style that effectively creates the illusion of one continuous shot for the vast majority of the film (which eventually gets annoying since we humans need breaks in what we experience, but for most of the film it’s more of a spectacle than a burden), it has excellent performances from its superb cast, and its visuals are often very pleasing and impressive, but I think those who know my tastes well can guess that I want to talk about the ambiguity factor – after all, I am known for my issues with needless ambiguity, and this a perfect example, because, if given some thought, it becomes clear that either interpretation of the ending is stupid: either Keaton jumps to his death, meaning Stone has no reason to smile the way she does, or he randomly possesses the ability to magically fly like a bird for some reason; and to think, this all could have been avoided if not for the fact that critics love ambiguity, which makes sense in a way – it offers the viewer the chance to write a little portion of the film that makes it meaningful to him/her as an individual, but it relies on the erroneous assumption that the meaning the viewer projects onto the work of art actually matters, but here’s the catch – you, the viewer, don’t matter.

Your two cents are worthless.

If a work of art lacks definition and meaning to the extent that an observer can project his own meaning onto it without being right or wrong, it’s not deep.

It’s shallow, but with style.  It gestures towards possible meanings, but does not commit to any of them.

I can best explain it this way: a film that challenges it audience intelligently says, “when life gives you lemons, should you give them to the poor and hungry?”  An ambiguous film, on the other hand, just has a blind man hold up a coconut and say, “when life gives you melons,” and then it ends.  The second film in my example may leave the viewer asking more questions, which creates an illusion of thoughtfulness, but I’d say the first film is more important.

In other words, no matter how amazing the visuals may be, how perfect the editing may be, how smart the writing may be, or how spot-on the performances may be, it is important for a film that wants to add to any discussion to use complete sentences, or else it isn’t much of a contribution, it’s just a

81 Birdman-02

 

The Witches Review

by

Freaking Roald Dahl.

This article could be focused on any of a few potential rants about this writer.  It is no secret that children’s authors always seem to end up being very . . . difficult people (for lack of a better term), and in a way, Dahl was to Henson what Travers was to Disney.  I could just give Dahl a hard time for being a pain to poor Jim, but that’s not good for a review.  I could instead choose the more obvious rant about how awful it is to make a profession out of terrifying children, but the problem with that is simply that children sometimes like to be scared.  I think it was Walt Disney who said, when accused of making the villains in his animated films to scary,  that children enjoy it if they can peek through their parents’ fingers.  For this reason, I am not against putting a good scare in a children’s film.

My bone to pick with Dahl is a problem with a particular type of scare that is not necessarily limited to stories for children (although that is the genre in which it’s most common): The Awkward Terror.  The Awkward Terror is what I call those moments when there is a misunderstanding concerning the way one should respond to a bad scenario, but rather than making it into awkward comedy, it’s played as horror.  Don’t get me wrong – discomfort has an important place in storytelling: when done in comedy, it leads to the awkward realization that the character forgot to wear pants, and when done in drama, it leads to a good scare when the shadow of a man with a knife is on the shower curtain.  However, when an uncomfortably awkward situation (one in which people can’t figure out how to respond appropriately) meets the uncomfortably chilling spook, I have found that the different types of enjoyment that come from these discomforts cancel each other out, leaving me only uncomfortable with no element of fun.

Now it’s example time.  In an episode of R. L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour, a boy finds himself in a circus tent dressed as a clown, unable to remove his makeup or attire.  As several other clowns surround the boy (who has always had a fear of clowns) he finds his parents there, and rather than displaying the appropriate response of feeling bad for him, they gleefully take off their human disguise to reveal that the boy and his family have always been members of the clown species.  This is terribly awkward as there is no comprehensible response to someone realizing he’s turned into a clown, just as I would not know how to react if someone standing in front of me were to suddenly become a fruit.  There is no reaction to such a bizarre, unnatural phenomenon, and one would be foolish to expect people to enjoy seeing  a spectacle like someone turning into a fruit.

Roald Dahl is stupid enough to turn someone into a fruit.  Not in The Witches, of course, but in his more famous book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which Violet memorably becomes a giant blueberry.  If everyone in the scene responded with sheer terror and tried to save her right away, perhaps the scene could have worked better, but the way people just stand there confusedly as Wonka remains calm and the Oompa Loompas sing in a circle around her makes me squeamish to this day.  Not in a fun, spooky way – in a way that’s just nauseating.  This is the kind of thing Dahl does often that rubs me the wrong way, so I should have known I would dislike the film adaptation of his book that’s practically an ode to the Awkward Terror, The Witches.

Imagine if a whole movie was centered around something as awkward as a person turning into a fruit, but instead of being in a setting of fantasy (in which it might almost be permissible), it’s set in a realistic, normal, everyday place.  That is what Witches is all about: a boy goes to a hotel where he is turned into a mouse.  When different characters see these mice that used to be the boys they loved, their reactions are inevitably incorrect no matter what they are since there cannot be a realistic reaction to such an intangible scenario, which is a clear sign that this whole concept should have been avoided altogether.  It makes the entire film both uncomfortable and unbelievable, without offering a strong plot, strong characters, strong dialogue, or strong morals to make up for it.

To get to the point of this review, the film is a waste of time.  It seems that there are some Henson productions that Muppet fans joke about because of how odd they are, and others that we simply do not address.  Although this is the last film for which Henson was a producer of any sort, he’d had so little involvement in the story that he couldn’t save it, so we Henson fans honestly never give it as much thought as we give The Jim Henson Hour, or even his failed Little Mermaid series.  I cannot fathom how anyone could enjoy a film so tedious that it doesn’t get to its inciting incident until halfway through the running time, so dull that it makes Rowan Atkinson’s character a bore, and so idiotic in theme that I cannot believe it was ever released.  If this flick is watched for any reason, it should be watched for the puppetry, effects, and other excellent elements of the visual style that make this film wickedly impressive as visual art (which is what earned the film as many stars as I’ve given it).  While critics may praise it on the grounds that it will give children quite a scare,  I berate it because it offers a big scare instead of a good scare.  If a movie wants to scare people, it should make sure the emotion it’s grabbing is fear, not disgust.

80 The Witches