Category Archives: Animation

Turning Red

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Turning Red                        4 stars

Pixar’s 2022 animated film Turning Red takes a different twist on the coming-of-age theme. This first full-length Pixar film to be directed by a woman (Domee Shi) tackles the subject of puberty and menstruation in a teen-age girl by using a metaphor in the form of a giant red panda. 13-year-old Chinese Canadian Mei lives with her immigrant Chinese family in 2008 Toronto and is a normal kid, though anxious and an overachiever in school. Her mother, Ming (Sandra Oh) is very controlling and likes to keep a watchful eye on her only daughter. Mei likes to hang out with her girlfriends and talk about their favorite boy band. Things seem perfectly normal, that is until she experiences a sudden change in her mood and finds herself very attracted to a certain boy in school. It is then that she discovers that feeling strong emotions makes her transform into a giant red panda with extraordinary strength. This is symbolic in movie terms of something powerful going on in her body, making her temporarily lose control of her emotions, a common occurrence in teenagers. Naturally, she tries to hide the transformation from her friends; that is, until she finds it can be a way to be more popular. Then the trick is to hide the change from Mom and her family. The girls secretly scheme to use Mei’s gift to raise money so they can attend a concert of their favorite boy band, 4 Town. (Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell wrote much of the original music that makes the boy band seem genuine.) But then there is more to the story when it is revealed that the giant red panda is really a sort of family curse that is visited upon all the female members of this family. Traditionally, they must perform a ritual that will keep the panda in check. The movie is a tactful yet amusing way of presenting the change that will relate to teenage girls while likely be over the heads of, yet be fun to much younger viewers. Turning Red adds to Pixar’s list of successful films dealing with certain human conditions that includes Coco, Soul and Inside Out. In a way, Inside Out 2 addresses the same subject as Turning Red but is a little more abstract. Unfortunately, for Pixar, they were forced to remove the movie from theaters and show it exclusively on streaming platforms because of pressure put on them from concerned parent groups who found the subject matter too controversial for their sensitive tastes. But at least young audiences have a way of seeing this colorful, action-filled film from Pixar. Domee Shi is an Academy Award winner having previously made the animated short film, Bao, about Asian parents becoming empty nesters.

Over the Moon

Over the Moon                 3 ½ stars

Over the Moon is a sweet animated movie from Netflix created by a former Disney animator concerning the grief a young Chinese girl suffers over the loss of her mother and her subsequent journey to the moon on her home built rocket ship. That may sound incredible but it all fits together in a children’s tale about loss and accepting what life throws at you. The young girl, Fei Fei, has a fascination with an ancient Chinese legend about a goddess named Chung’e, who lives on the moon and has lost her lover. Thus, the connection that Fei Fei feels for her and her scheme to build a rocket that takes her, her pet rabbit and her annoying brother to be on the unexpected journey to the moon. There we find all sorts of odd creatures, some that help Fei Fei and others that aren’t so nice. All are done in very colorful animation in a style that reminds us of the old Disney films. The story has many familiar themes, but may be a little thin. The film is supported by some expressive songs by the main character and the goddess, Chung’e who turns out not to be what was expected. The movie should be very engaging for children.

Wolfwalkers

Wolfwalkers                       4 ½ stars

From the Irish studio Cartoon Saloon who brought us The Secret of Kells in 2009 comes their latest creation, Wolfwalkers, an animated tale set in Ireland about two girls from vastly different backgrounds who form a fast bond against troubling circumstances. Robyn is an English girl who has been brought to Ireland by her father who has the task of ridding the woods of its inhabitants of wolves. The wolves are very troubling to the local farmers as they attack their livestock. Robyn, being English is not at all accepted by the Irish children of the village, so she finds her own adventures. One day, disobeying her father’s instruction, she wanders into the woods where the wolves live and meets a strange redheaded girl, Mebh, who is very wild and outspoken and who happens to be one of the last of the Wolfwalkers, a mythical creature who is human by day, but transforms into a wolf at night when their human body falls asleep. Though very different, the two becomes fast friends and Robyn is convinced she must do whatever it takes to help Mebh and the wolves survive, even if it involves disobeying the orders and warnings of her father and the villagers. There is a villain involved in the form of the English Lord Protector, who believes he can only stay in power by gaining favor with the locals by having all the wolves killed or run out of the woods. It is an intense story about young people having to face the challenges of an adult world, but also about adults who have something to learn about the magic of childhood. I also enjoy the animation style of the movie as it is very colorful and full of movement and done is an imprecise manner. It is one that adults and children can both appreciate.

The Sea Beast

The Sea Beast                    3 ½ stars

With The Sea Beast, presented on Netflix, director and animator Chris Williams allows us to enter a world where those sea monsters of legend reputed to roam the seas actually exist. Here there are a cadre of heroes (both men and women) who sail in their wooden ships and hunt down and battle these giant creatures in defense of their kingdom. In this story, our two heroes are Jacob, a young man who was rescued from the sea as a boy and has served under Captain Crow of the Inevitable, (one of the best monster hunters who has served for decades); and Maisie, a young, orphaned girl whose parents were themselves monster hunters who lost their lives fighting the creatures. Maisie can’t get enough of the stories of the glory of the hunt, having read of them in her books, even including stories of Jacob. After Maisie stows away on Jacob’s ship and they do battle with a few of these monsters, including the most fearsome Red Bluster, Jacob and Maisie find themselves separated from the ship and her crew, stranded on an island inhabited by some of the creatures, including the giant Red Bluster himself. It is only after this encounter that they come to realize that Bluster and the other monsters may not be the dangerous creatures as told in the old stories. Perhaps the books are not telling the whole story. The film is another variation on the misunderstood creature that is befriended by a young person, who then must persuade the misguided adults into seeing things differently. This theme was present in the How to Train Your Dragon movies and in Raya and the Last Dragon as well as Nimona. The Sea Beast is much the same story, with the high seas as the setting. Chris Williams was the animator behind Big Hero 6 and Moana and has expanded his role to include director in The Sea Beast. It’s a good story for all ages but is clearly not original. It is reported that it may be getting the How to Train Your Dragon treatment with plans for a sequel. See it if you are a fan of animation. I recommend though to be wary of whales and sharks.

Inside Out 2

Inside Out 2                        4 ½ stars

Nine years ago, Pixar thrilled us with an innovative animated film about childhood emotions in Inside Out. The five emotions managed a child’s feelings about the things going on in the girl’s life all to great comic effect and with compassion. The emotions: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Liza Lapira) and Fear (Tony Hale) are back in Pixar’s sequel where the child, Riley, just turns thirteen, bringing a whole new set of challenges for the emotions to deal with. Riley starts out as a normal well-adjusted child who likes to hang out with her two friends and play on the middle school hockey team. Things are going fine for Joy and company until an alarm on the console goes off, that is the warning for the arrival of Puberty! A construction crew suddenly arrives causing chaos followed by the new emotions led by Anxiety (Maya Hawke) who try to take over Headquarters. Accompanying Anxiety are Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and Ennui (French for Boredom) (Adèle Exarchopoulos). In the real world we follow Riley who is attending a hockey skills camp with her old friends, but now faces the chance to be accepted by more mature and talented girls at the expense of leaving her old friends behind. Anxiety takes over control at HQ, sending the old emotions to long term storage in the Vault and Riley’s sense of herself to oblivion where all her bad memories go. It’s up to Joy and company to escape and take control of HQ back from Anxiety. The movie is a creative and imaginative way of portraying the changing emotions of a teenage girl and is done in the usual Pixar comedic fashion of Pixar. The picture is very colorful and full of action and especially shows the concern that Joy has for Riley’s well-being. The movie is completely appropriate for children and does not deal directly with changing bodies or attraction to boys. It focuses on a child’s sense of themselves and how they relate to other children, or the usual things that teenagers go through. Inside Out 2 is recommended for all ages.

Flee

Flee                       4 ½ stars

For a remarkable achievement in storytelling and animation you won’t do better than the documentary movie from Denmark, Flee. Released at Sundance in 2021, this film finally made it to theaters at the end of last year. It has been on my list for a long time and I just viewed it recently. It tells of the unlikely years long journey of a gay Afghan refugee, Amin, who was forced to leave Afghanistan as a child in the 1980’s with his family. His story is told by combining recordings of his voice with stark animated images of the pain and anguish he and his family had to go through. There is a certain amount of unraveling of a mystery as elements of the story slowly emerge over the course of the film. The family, including Amin’s brother, mother and two sisters try to make their way to Sweden after the father is detained by the Afghan government and disappears. Amin tells his story after keeping much of it secret after twenty plus years, one that is full of persecution and suffering at the hands of the powerful and greedy. Flee is notable for having received three Academy Award nominations this year, in Animated Feature, Documentary and International Film. It is one that is truly worth watching.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On                  4 stars

The stop motion animated feature Marcel the Shell with Shoes On can be described as poignant, heartfelt and fun. This charming “documentary” follows the life of Marcel, a one-inch-tall mollusk shell who has a face with one eye and a pair of sneakers. Marcel lives in a house that is now an Airbnb with his grandmother, Connie, who is also a shell. The latest resident in the house is a man named Dean who is renting the place until he can find a new home. But Dean happens to be an amateur filmmaker and he decides to film Marcel as he goes about his business of living, finding ingenious ways to get around such as using a hollowed-out tennis ball and a bottle of honey. Marcel is quite talented, coming up with makeshift inventions and putting on a show when the time calls for it. He can make telephone calls and has a piece of lint for a pet. But he can also make plenty of mistakes and is very conscious of his shortcomings, making frequent apologies. Marcel is the creation of Jenny Slate, who was on Saturday Night Live for one season and Dean Fleischer-Camp, film director and her then husband. They made short videos of Marcel and placed them on YouTube back around 2010, creating a viral sensation. They then got the idea of making a full movie about the little guy and wrote a story for him. Jenny does the voice and Dean does the filming. Reportedly, they spent seven years making the one-and-a-half-hour movie, released in theaters in 2022. The story is expanded as we learn the house was previously occupied by a couple who fought and split up, but the man took all the other shells that are Marcel’s family with him leaving Marcel and Grandma all alone. So, Dean suggests to Marcel that he can post the videos they make and get the word out about the search for Marcel’s “relatives”. The film has a good message about the value of family and community. It was definitely more entertaining than I initially thought it was going to be. It was nominated for a Best Animated Feature Academy Award.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish        4 ½ stars

Here is another third film of a series: this time it is Puss in Boots, that Spanish speaking adventurous feline (voiced by Antonio Banderas) back to vanquish villains and seek his own glory in another animated film from Dreamworks. I missed all the Shrek and earlier Puss in Boots movies, but understand that the sidekick character got his own treatment in the prequels after the end of the Shrek movies. In Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Puss comes face to face with his mortality when he is bettered by the big bad wolf. Puss is informed he is down to his ninth and final life and that he needs to retire. So it is off to the feline home, run by Mama Luna and inhabited by dozens of domesticated cats. Puss must tolerate the arrangement where he meets a new friend in Perrito (Harvey Guillen), a small dog disguised as a cat. (Follow along now.) But retirement doesn’t last long when the Crime family of Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Florence Pugh, Olivia Coleman, Ray Winstone and Samson Kayo) come calling since there is still a reward on Puss’s head. Add to that Puss’s former love interest, a cat called Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek), who is also a great battler and a loathsome villain in Big Jack Horner (John Mulaney) who despite having great riches wants to have all the magic in the world. The entire batch of them have learned of the existence of a lucky star that can grant a single wish, thus they are all on a quest to find it in the Dark Forest all the while fighting and playing tricks on each other. The CG animation is very colorful and has really improved in the last twenty years or so. Of course the movie is action filled and has plenty of comedy in its hour and 40 minutes running time. It can be quite a challenge to keep up with all the references to the fairy tales that show up in this story. We can see how Puss in Boots came to be such a legend. Maybe I’ll get to seeing the earlier Dreamworks movies of this collection some day. The movie is nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

The Mitchells vs. the Machines

The Mitchells vs. the Machines  4 ½ stars

I caught up with the Netflix 2021 animated feature The Mitchells vs. the Machines which tells how a typical dysfunctional American family dealt with the great robot apocalypse of 2020. This amusing action-filled movie connects well with young and old audiences with its references to how people are dependent, even obsessed with their wireless devices and what happens when those connections go away. 18 year old Katie (Abbi Jacobson) is about to leave home to start film school in California. She has been fascinated about making her own movies and posting them on the internet, but her father (Danny McBride) just doesn’t get her. He thinks it isn’t right that the family is so involved with their handheld screens all the time. So he changes Katie’s plans to fly to California and instead make it into a family road trip with Mom (Maya Rudolph) and son Aaron (Michael Rianda, also the writer and director), who also happens to be obsessed with everything dinosaurs. Katie is more connected to brother Aaron than to either Dad or Mom. These plans are upset when the next generation AI device, a mobile robot is announced by CEO tech wizard Mark Bowman (Eric Andre), which angers the digital assistant app known as PAL (voiced by the amazing Olivia Colman). PAL takes control of the thousands of gleaming robots and sets about on her plan to capture and enslave the entire human population. (Will we never learn what happens when robots are given the capability of AI?) The movie can be described as The Fabelmans meets Terminator. Somehow the Mitchell family along with their ugly pug dog, Doug escape capture, thus it is up to them to defeat PAL and rescue humanity. Entertaining comedy and action follow as the dysfunctional family must work together and come up with plans to battle the robots and find their way to the lair of PAL. They are aided by a couple of malfunctioning robots (voiced by Beck Bennett and Fred Armison) who see something redeeming in the humans. It’s an imaginative take on our dependence on our digital devices and the importance of remaking connections with our family and friends. There is plenty of cartoon violence that can be enjoyed by all audiences.

Luca

Luca       3 ½ stars

Luca, the animated feature from Pixar/Disney and directed by Enrico Casarosa, takes the theme of The Little Mermaid and puts it on the Italian Riviera. Thus we get some Italian flavor including a seaside village, some homemade tagliatelle, and riding bicycles over cobblestone streets. We also see a friendship formed between two young boys, the younger one being Luca and the older one is Alberto. They have a secret though. They are both sea monsters who are masquerading as humans. It seems that these creatures who live in the sea are occasionally glimpsed by humans from the village but after they leave the sea and dry off they can transform into human form and have the ability to walk and speak normally. This experience creates the desire in Luca to learn all about his new surroundings including to ride a Vespa and to make friends with a local human girl, Giulia. Unfortunately, for our sea monster friends they are under constant threat of getting wet which can make them change back to monster form and be revealed to the humans. It has some other elements similar to other Pixar movies like a local bully and a climactic event like a bicycle race so is not particularly original, but should be very enjoyable for the younger audience. Luca is not Toy Story but is worth a look.