Category Archives: Family

Haunted Mansion

Haunted Mansion            2 stars

A number of years back Disney came up with the idea of making a movie based on a Disney ride and voila, Pirates of the Caribbean appeared on movie screens and became an instant success. Then just a couple of years ago Jungle Cruise came to the theaters and delighted many movie goers. Now we have the latest Disney release based on a Disney ride but this time you would be better off going to the park than to the theater. Haunted Mansion features a young woman named Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her nine-year-old son, Travis, who have taken possession of an old mansion that is over two hundred years old only to discover that it is inhabited by ghosts. She goes looking for help and finds a priest named Father Kent (Owen Wilson), a quantum physicist (LaKeith Stanfield) who has lost his wife, a medium (Tiffany Haddish) and a past his prime college professor (Danny Devito). None of the team can turn down the job because they all discover that once they enter the house, a ghost travels with them wherever they go, so they have to take on the challenge of removing the ghosts from the mansion. After many missteps involving spooky portraits and endless hallways with trap openings they eventually discover there is one ghost present who was a terrible man named Crump, (Jared Leto) who is collecting hundreds of souls in the house, tormenting them for eternity. With the help of a spirit trapped in a crystal ball (Jamie Lee Curtis) and a quest to find an artifact belonging to the horrible Crump some of the group leave on a venture to complete the challenge and rid the world of Crump. It’s quite a gathering of funny talented people that should make it an entertaining movie. The trouble is that it feels like a collection of poor CGI effects that make constant reference to the Disney ride and other past Disney movies. There are the obvious portraits with moving pictures, the descending floor, the guy playing the organ and the dancing spirits. There are even chairs that pick up characters and try to eject them from the property. It all feels like the movie makers are trying to inject everything they can find to mimic the ride. I had grown tired of the silly action by the time it was over. What a waste of comedic talent. I did find Hadish to be funny in her role as the medium and enjoyed seeing Jamie Lee Curtis if only briefly. Nice try Disney. Maybe you should make the movie first and then make the ride based on the movie. Another ghost movie called Ghostbusters comes to mind that I would gladly see again for more laughs.

Trolls Band Together

Trolls Band Together                      3 ½ stars

Just out in theaters is DreamWorks’s third installment of the colorful candy-tone animated Trolls series based on the popular children’s toy of the sixties. This time it is Trolls Band Together with gray-toned Branch (the legendary Justin Timberlake) and pink Poppy (Anna Kendrick of the Pitch Perfect movies) returning for another popular tune filled adventure that will appeal to the kids and to adults alike. As the film opens we get Branch’s origin story finding out that he has four brothers that were part of a popular boy band called BroZone years before. (The opening performance contains obvious references to NSYNC and other boy bands of the early 2,000’s era. At one point one of the brothers says “We’ve gone from boys to men, and now there’s only one direction for us to go: the backstreets.”) Branch was in diapers at that time and was referred to as Baby B. Older brothers Floyd (Troye Sivan), John Dory (Eris André), Spruce (Daveed Diggs) and Clay (Kid Cudi) have all gone their separate ways, but John Dory has returned to seek Branch’s help on a desperate mission. It seems that the pop-star duo, Velvet and Veneer, (Amy Schumer and Andrew Rannells) have been holding brother Floyd prisoner. These two stringy characters have no musical talent of their own, but they have engineered a way to extract the musical gift from the troll and use it themselves, enabling their star status at Mount Rageous. But if the trolls can “band together”, and create “perfect family harmony”, they will be able to free poor Floyd from imminent doom! Poppy insists that Branch must get the family together to rescue his brother. So much for the setup. Beyond that, there are harmonious tunes galore as we take a ride through various boy band songs and medleys of music from the seventies and eighties. It’s all done on the background of some very crafty and colorful animation with the smooth textures and troll hair we have seen in the earlier Trolls movies. And of course, there is the eternal message of togetherness and how brothers will always have one another’s backs. This may not be the best of the Trolls movies but for pure animated fluff, it may be worth an hour and a half of your time.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio                   5 stars

Pinocchio by Academy Award winner Guillermo del Toro is not your Disney’s Pinocchio. It is not at all like the underwhelming live action Disney version that came out the same year (starring Tom Hanks). Del Toro’s movie is done with creative stop motion animation using physical carved figures and has a very dark aspect to it. There are the same basic elements from the original 1883 story by Carlo Collodi. It opens with Geppetto (David Bradley), the carpenter losing the son he loves, only here it is due to a stray bomb dropped from a war plane during World War II. It is set during the reign of Benito Mussolini, who we actually get to meet at one point. Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) was carved by Geppetto out of grief and was brought to life by some magic spirits. He has some very bad habits, always getting into trouble breaking things and skipping school like someone with ADHD. Like the original story his adventures include joining the circus and encountering a giant fish at sea and having a tiny cricket friend (Ewan McGregor) who looks out for him. In this version Pinocchio is crudely carved and is very puppet-like, with a large head and narrow limbs so that it is obvious he is made of wood. He would not be described as cute. And since he is very gullible it is easy for a carnival master (Christoph Waltz) to persuade him to join the circus. When it is learned that Pinocchio can be brought back to life after being killed, the local Podestà (Ron Perlman) sees that he will make the perfect soldier for the Fascist cause and forces him to join the army. He goes on to meet Il Duce who is not amused by Pinocchio’s antics so promptly shoots him! Each time he “dies” he is instructed by the Blue Fairy (Tilda Swinton) about his fate and the choices he is faced with. The movie has more violence than the Disney versions but even so is still suitable for children. It still has the same positive messages of the importance of love and family like the other versions. It is a natural story for del Toro to tackle adding it to his previous dark fantasy movies like Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water. It is very deserving of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature it received.