Family

The Peanuts Movie Review

April 6, 2016 by JD Hansel

I am fairly certain that, in the world of comedy (if not the world in general), it is a sin for me to say that I have never been much of a Peanuts fan. That’s not to say that I didn’t like the works of the Peanuts characters – I do enjoy their most famous Christmas special, among other staples of Schulz’ work – but I simply wasn’t exposed to them early enough in life to appreciate them the way so many others do. The Peanuts specials and comics have a kind of humor that is generally rather slow and deliberately underwhelming, as it focuses on a mumbling failure who tends to dread living. I certainly do identify with this kind of character, and I greatly appreciate Schulz’s approach to writing for the character, which is summed up in this simple, classic quote of his: “Most of us are much more acquainted with losing than winning.” With this in mind, I can’t help but look at the 2015 Peanuts film as a perfect example of both what it is I love about the Peanuts, and what it is that I just don’t know how to appreciate.

Right from the start, this film was full of surprises. The trailer alone stunned me with the distinction of its animation style, as it is probably the best use of CG animation I have seen since at least Inside Out, if not The Lego Movie. Because of the purity of the style, the film had earned my respect before I had even seen it, but then again, I was unsure as to whether or not it would be worth seeing. I am now glad that I did choose to see the film, because if I thought that the animation style was surprising, I was quite shocked to see how much I enjoyed the humor. No Peanuts production or comic had ever made me laugh so hard, and I think this is largely due to the way most of the jokes relied on the animation style. By doing this as a CG film rather than 2-D, this movie ensures that it does not appear to be a continuation of the old Peanuts specials, but rather an homage to the comedy and animation of older cartoons, making for an experience that’s easy to enjoy. However, both the laughs and the surprises grew fewer and fewer as the movie progressed, and I was bothered to find myself losing interest.

This is the problem. I eventually found myself playing a video game on the Wii U while the film was still on, because there was so little need to pay attention during most of the movie. The plot was predictable enough, so I didn’t really need to keep a close eye out for much, and the overall storytelling approach didn’t interest me much at all. Half of the movie seems to be spent on an irrelevant B-story taking place in Snoopy’s daydreams of chasing the Red Baron, which might have been worth including had they used the classic song, but even the superb sight gags towards the end of his fantasy aren’t quite enough of a pay-off to make it worth my time. The main story, obviously focused on Charlie Brown, was cute and relatable, but was still a little lacking in substance, and could have been over with much quicker. The ‘A’ story could have been a ‘B’ or ‘C’ story, and the Snoopy bits could have been two or three very brief scenes, which would have left room for a stronger ‘A’ story.

All that being said, this is a good movie. It’s fun, clean, and has both the frustration with life and the delightful purity required to make it feel like a classic Peanuts production. Getting a G-rated movie in 2015 was already miraculous, but it’s even more satisfying to find that it’s a good movie that adults can enjoy just as much (or maybe more) than children. It has a lot of charm and heart, which are very hard to generate without being sappy, but this movie does the job just fine. Forgive me for ending on such a cliché, low-hanging joke, but I can’t resist: “You’re a good movie, Charlie Brown.”

Anastasia Review

January 26, 2016 by JD Hansel

It’s not a documentary. With this type of film, the old saying from Mystery Science Theater 3000 rings true: “Repeat to yourself, ‘It’s just a show; I should really just relax.'” This is the kind of movie that will mean very, very different things to different people, since a historian would be disgusted, but an art student would be impressed, while a composer would be disappointed. Unfortunately, this movie doesn’t mean very much to me, which makes it rather hard to review. I suspect that I feel this way purely because the movie is so normal and ordinary for its genre.

The visuals and animation are, as one would expect from Gary Goldman and Don Bluth, really quite impressive, particularly during the more villainous scenes. However, the visual style still has that feeling of imitating the ’90s Disney look, even right down to copying the shade of green that tends to appear around Disney villains for the scenes with Rasputin. Also, one can expect to find an all-star cast in these films, with an iconic voice for the villain, and Christopher Lloyd provides more than one could ever wish for in a villain. The music is outstandingly standard and ordinary that I can hardly remember any of it now. There are also some aspects of the storyline that have been done to death in family films, and they need to be put to rest – I’m looking at you, “character who leaves the person who cares about him/her because he/she feels unwanted and unworthy in the end.”

That being said, it’s not an unpleasant movie. The characters and story kept me entertained, and some of the artwork kept me entranced. I do wish the soundtrack could have been better, but Rasputin’s big musical number is actually a pretty strong (and unique) villain song, with many thanks to the work of Jim Cummings. The premise alone is one with built-in comedy, and it feels very reminiscent of Mel Brook’s original Producers film. In short, it’s not quite on the same level as many of the Disney pictures from the time, or the same level as many of Bluth’s best works, but I do think it’s a good enough film for the family to have a good time.

Home Alone Review

December 27, 2015 by JD Hansel

Let’s just pretend, hypothetically speaking, that everyone reading this has seen at least some amount of Home Alone during this holiday season. Now let’s stop pretending. It’s as much a reality as the fact that the Sun is bright. This has always intrigued me, but it was not until days ago that I actually got to watch this film in full. Now I think I understand what makes it such a holiday classic.

This is one of the those rare films that reverts me to a stage in my childhood when I was trying to figure out who I wanted to be, and basically, I wanted to be someone like Kevin McCallister. I wanted to be Bugs Bunny too, and Spider-Man, and sometimes even Lizzie McGuire’s brother Matt, but the important thing was never the species, the age, or the powers. It was always the competence. I loved the idea of a character who could always come up with brilliant ideas and creative solutions to problems, and because of this, he approached every situation with a delightful sense of humor and a touch of nonchalance. This movie shows Kevin McCallister taking initiative, fending for himself, conquering his fears, protecting that for which he is responsible, cleverly taking advantage of everything at his disposal to use for creative purposes, and even knowing when to call authorities. There’s much to like about this kid, and I think everybody wants to be him.

I think there are other reasons why this is considered a classic, and much of this is due to the brilliant writing by John Hughes and charming directing by Chris Columbus. While it would be easy to make a film that only focuses on the values of caring about family, this movie takes advantage of everything that can be done with a story of this nature. It makes the family seem really difficult to live with, and it makes the struggle for the mother to get back home seem really difficult, and it makes Kevin thwarting the bandits with household objects seem really clever, while also packing on a bunch of great messages for a Christmas film. Everything about it feels right for a children’s Christmas movie, and I approve of its status as a classic. It may not be Muppet Christmas Carol or Gremlins, but I always knew I could count on Hughes and Columbus to blow Elf out of the water.

Star Wars – The Force Awakens Review

December 24, 2015 by JD Hansel

I love home video. I absolutely adore it. I get nostalgic about VHS tapes, I collect DVDs, I obsess over digital copies, and I drool at the majesty of a beautiful Blu-Ray on an HD screen. I must emphasize this because I’m about to say something a wee bit unfavorable about home video: it may have ruined cinema. Not completely, of course, but I think that we’ve lost something special about the movie theater experience.

Because home video has been so prominent since before I was born, I don’t know personally what going to the movies was like at the time, but I’ve heard the stories. I’ve heard how the crowd cheered in joyous support at the premiere of Muppet Christmas Carol when the dedication to Jim Henson and Richard Hunt appeared on screen. I’ve heard how the boys let out a snide “oooOOOooh…” in unison in the bedroom scene in 1968’s Romeo and Juliet. I’ve heard how the test audience for Ghostbusters went wild when they saw “scene missing” as a placeholder for a shot that had yet to be composed. I’ve heard how they edited silent pauses after the Marx Brothers’ jokes because the audience would laugh so long and loudly. I’ve heard how much more of a community experience it used to be back before we got used to watching movies in private – before we trained ourselves to take no involvement in a collective movie experience.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens made the movie theater into the big, loud, excited, delighted, happy family it was meant to be. There was applause for the Star Wars logo, applause for the Lucasfilm logo, and even for a spaceship. Everybody could feel the immense joy in the room when a familiar face came on screen. The jokes hit home with everyone. The twists had us all on the edge of our seats. Seeing this film was one of the best experiences of my life because, for the first time in a long while, I was truly experiencing a film rather than just looking at a film. Not to mention, the movie itself floored me.

I felt like a child again, even though I didn’t watch Star Wars films much growing up. This movie actually made me into a bigger Star Wars fan than I have ever been in my life. I was simply reverted to a time when watching a movie was joyous and exciting, getting more delightful by the minute, and I couldn’t have been more excited. When I remembered to use my grown up brain to analyze the film, I was impressed by the effects, the acting, the visuals, the score, the dialogue, the story structure – everything about it. This is the kind of experience that the movies are all about, and I feel privileged to live in such a historic moment when the event of a lifetime is on big screens everywhere.

The Witches Review

October 31, 2015 by JD Hansel

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.

Hotel Transylvania 2 Review

October 24, 2015 by JD Hansel

This sequel feels very sequel-ish. In spite of the fact that this storyline is refreshingly different from that of the first Hotel Transylvania, most of my feelings towards this movie are exactly the same as my feelings towards the first. It feels like an extension of the same film, with a story that shows what would inevitably follow the events of the first film, and a script that relies heavily on its predecessor’s running gags. This one does seem slightly lacking in the cleverness and creativity of the first film, but it has the added bonus of a good Mel Brooks character. I certainly did enjoy watching the movie, and I laughed out loud at Drac’s description of using FaceTime, but since my count of predictable moments reached 18 (if memory serves), I can’t pretend it was a fabulous film. (I suppose I was impressed with a lot of the visuals – particularly when it comes to classic cartoon animation styles – but this is also something that can be said of the first Hotel Transylvania.) Aside from thoughts I already described in my review of its prequel, I really don’t have much in the way of strong thoughts or feelings about this movie at all.