My parents were very strict about television, but this was one of the few shows they let us watch. They not only let us -- they watched with us. It was one of the first television shows for children to have jokes for adults. As I grew up, there were innumerable times when I would learn something new and suddenly have the retroactive pleasure of understanding some past Rocky and Bullwinkle joke. There's an opera called "Boris Godunov?" Aha! That explains the name of R&B bad guy Boris Badanov! And remember the name of their alma mater? Wassamata U? Remember "fan mail from some flounders?" And "watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat?" ("That trick never works!")
Few people today will get the joke about the Kerward Derby (a play on the name of then-minor-celebrity Durward Kirby), but this is still purely delightful.
And of course I always had a special fondness for Dudley Do-Right because his leading lady was named Nell.
The mood is romantic. The couple is parked in a secluded spot overlooking their charming home town. They lean in for a kiss. And then an alien rocket ship lands. I hate it when that happens.
Okay, no I don't. I enjoy it. That's a classic cheesy 1950's alien invasion movie set-up and "Planet 51" knows that very well. The scene we have just watched is from a movie called "Humanoids" and it is happily being enjoyed by a theater filled with rapt, popcorn-chomping, little green creatures with antennae. Just like the couple in the car on screen. Dorothy, we're not just not in Kansas anymore; we're not even on planet Earth.
It feels like an idealized, if retro suburban Earth setting, though. The houses have white picket fences and the soundtrack has standards from the 1950's. You could imagine Dick and Jane, Ozzie and Harriet, or Archie and Veronica playing hopscotch on the sidewalk, if they were green and had four fingers.
In this idyllic setting we have Lem (voice of Justin Long), very happy because he just got a job in the planetarium and is beginning to think Neera, the pretty girl next door (voice of Jessica Biel), kind of likes him. And there's Lem's friend Skiff (voice of Seann William Scott), who wears braces and works at the comic book store. And then things get complicated when an alien arrives.
That would be one of us.
This is "E.T." in reverse. The American astronaut is the alien invader. His name is Chuck (voice of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson). While many of the people on the planet (I know, they're not human, but I'm going to call them people) are terrified and determined to kill, capture, or dissect Chuck, Lem, Neera, and Skiff are willing to try to get to know him.
This theme is very similar to the more serious Battle for Terra 3D earlier this year. But it is sillier and sweeter, with a cute robotic sidekick somewhere between R2D2 and a puppy. It is also a little bland. It is a shame that a movie tweaking retro cliches falls into the white bread conventions itself, especially from a Madrid-based production company. That they believe Americans will only buy tickets to movies about white guys shows that the message of the movie about how it is all right to be different has not really been learned.
Pixar movies are beautiful to look at, but what takes your breath away is the story. They don't rely on fairy tales or best-selling books with pre-sold stories and characters we are already attached to. And, as if challenging themselves to make it even harder, they take on increasingly unlikely protagonists -- a gourmet rat, an almost-wordless robot, and now a cranky old man, and somehow they make us fall in love with them.
In some ways, this is the oldest and most enduring of tales, the story of a journey. And this is one that started a long time ago. A brief prologue introduces us to Carl and Ellie, a boy and girl who dream of adventure. They pledge to follow their hero, explorer Charles Muntz, to see Paradise Falls in South America.
Then they grow up and get married and life intervenes. He sells balloons and she works with birds. They save for their trip but keep having to use the money for un-adventuresome expenses like repairing the roof. Then Ellie dies, and Carl (voice of Ed Asner) is left alone. Developers are closing in on his little house. He just can't bear to lose anything more. And so he takes the one thing he has and the one thing he knows and ties so many balloons to his house that it lifts, yes, up into the sky, so he can follow Muntz to Paradise Falls at last.
But he does not realize he has an inadvertent stowaway. Russell (voice of Jordan Nagai), a pudgy, trusting, and irrepressibly cheerful little Wilderness Adventure scout who needs to assist an elderly person so that he can get a badge. They arrive in South America and as they pull the house, still aloft, toward Paradise Falls, they meet an exotic bird, talking dogs, and several kinds of danger, and have to rethink some of what they thought they knew and some of what they thought was most important to them.
The visuals are splendid, making subtle but powerful use of the 3D technology to make some scenes feel spacious and some claustrophobic. Carl and his world are all rectangles, Russell all curves. The Tabletop Mountains-inspired landscapes are stunning and the balloons are buoyant marvels, thousands of them, each moving separately but affecting all of the others, the shiny crayon dots of pure color amid the dusty rock and the earth tones of Carl's wrinkles, gray hair, and old clothes. The other glowing colors on screen are the iridescent feathers of the bird, inspired by the monal pheasant.
There are a couple of logical and chronological inconsistencies that are distracting. But the dogs, with special collars that allow them to give voice to the canine purity of their feelings, are utterly charming -- and there is a clever twist to keep the scariest one from being too scary. Another pleasure of the film comes from the way the precision of the graphic design is matched by some welcome and very human messiness in the story. Everything is not resolved too neatly but everything is resolved with a tenderness and spirit that is like helium for the heart.
Writer-director Robert Zemeckis wisely chose the most unquenchable of stories for his technological marvel. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, already filmed with everyone from Michael Caine to Patrick Stewart, George C. Scott, Vanessa Williams, and Mr. Magoo in the role of the skinflint who learns to give, can hold its own even surrounded by the most dazzling of special effects.
I actually gasped at one moment as the camera flew over London. It was not just that the Victorian setting was so meticulously created, though I plan to go back just to revel in the details. It was that I had never before seen a camera move so fluidly through so many different vantage points in the midst of a convincingly immersive 3D experience. It evokes a visceral sense of buoyant jubilation and freedom that immediately connects us to the movie's setting, making us feel completely present in the story as it unfolds.
We meet Ebeneezer Scrooge (voice of Jim Carrey) as he is bidding farewell to his partner, Jacob Marley, now laid out in his coffin. Scrooge literally removes the coins from Marley's eyes. It may be a custom, but money is money. Seven years later, Scrooge is well into his bah, humbug mode, turning down a Christmas dinner offer from his nephew Fred (voice of Colin Firth), turning down a charitable donation, and grudgingly agreeing to allow his poor clerk Bob Cratchit (voice of Gary Oldman) a day off to celebrate with his family. Scrooge goes home to eat his gruel by himself when, in one of the film's most thrilling effects, Marley's flickering greenish ghost appears, heaving the heavy weights he bears through the door ahead of him. As we all well know, he is there to announced that Scrooge will be visited by three spirits who will teach him about Christmas past, present, and yet to come.
Our familiarity with the story is an anchor in the sea of new visual stimuli, and it keeps our focus on what is happening to the characters, even when the technology goes slightly askew. Zemeckis said that the good news about making a motion capture film is that you can do anything. Whatever you imagine can be realized. But, he added, the bad news is that you have to do everything. The blank screen is there and every single detail, every button on every coat, every log in every fire, every reflection, shadow, and snowflake have to be separately created in three dimensions and designed to interact with every other element we see. Some of the figures are more solidly created while others seem a bit stiff and rubbery. Firth's Fred is particularly awkward. Some of the scenes are hyper-realistic while others, like a dance at the Fezziwig's Christmas party, play with space and weight, not always in aid of the story. It gets too frantic, especially during a non-Dickensian insert of a chase scene that has Scrooge shrinking like Alice in Wonderland. The decision to double up on voices (Carrey plays all three spirits, Oldman plays Cratchit, Tiny Tim, and Marley and Robin Wright Penn plays both Scrooge's sister and his girlfriend) is distracting and occasionally confusing.
But oh, there is a visual sumptuousness here to rival even the merriest Christmas celebration. Scrooge's flights through time, the glorious bounty of the Ghost of Christmas Present, the Victorian streets, the costumes, the warmth of the fire, the magic of Scrooge's first dance with Belle -- make this an instantly indispensable classic. It's all there, Scrooge's bitter loneliness to his thrilling giddy-as-a-schoolboy realization that he can change, and that the power of giving is greater than any power of having. And for the people who gave us this great gift, God bless them everyone.
Back in the era of Saturday matinées, "Aliens in the Attic" would have been just fine sandwiched between a couple of cartoons and a newsreel, especially if about half an hour was lopped off and there was a bit more imagination or wit in the title invaders. It's probably better suited for DVD and a pizza at slumber parties than for an $8 movie theater ticket. But as long as no one expects too much, this is not a bad time-waster.
The Pearson family: mom, dad (SNL and "Weeds" vet Kevin Nealon), love-struck teen queen Bethany ("HSMs" Ashley Tisdale), sulky middle child Tom (Carter Jenkins), cute sock-monkey-clutching kid Hannah (Ashley Boettcher) are joined in their vacation home by their grandmother (Doris Roberts of "Everybody Loves Raymond"), uncle (Andy Richter), and cousins, aggressive Jake (Austin Robert Butler of "Zooey 101") and gamer twins (Henri and Regan Young). Tom is not happy with himself, with being away from his computer, with having to go fishing, with any of his family, and especially with the uninvited arrival of Bethany's boyfriend Ricky (Robert Hoffman), who seems able to fool everyone but Tom with his good manners and preppy appearance. And then there are the aliens in the attic, four little green creatures with many arms who have come in search of something they need to take over the planet. One of their most potent weapons is a mind-enslaving dart that turns humans into remote-controlled zombie slaves.
But it only works on adults.
And so the kids have to learn how to work together to protect the grown-ups and the planet. What works best in the film are the special effects, clearly the primary focus as the talented cast, including Tisdale and SNL vet Tim Meadows, get less attention than the CGI and wire work. The gamer expert twins use the Wii-style remote to manipulate the zombified Ricky and grandma, the kids have to assemble weapons with whatever they have on hand, and the aliens turn off the gravity and get tangled in a Slinky. A lot of slapstick and a little crude humor went a long way with the kids in the audience and there were frequent hoots of delighted laughter. I could hear some of the punchlines repeated and stored for later use. (That last point is as much a warning as an endorsement.)
This third in the Ice Age series is a bit sweeter and gentler than the first two, perhaps less ambitious in scope than the first but much more engaging than the second. The 3D animation is beautifully immersive and the...
A show of hands, everyone. If you think it's a good idea to begin a movie for children by killing off a young boy in an industrial accident as his father looks on, raise your hand. Anyone? I didn't think...
"Honey, I'm home" takes on a cheerfully creepy new meaning in "Monster House," a fresh, fun, and deliciously scary animated film produced by Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future) and Stephen Spielberg (Jurassic Park, Jaws) and it is a great...
If you saw Where the Wild Things Are this week and loved it -- or if your children are too young for it but want to enjoy Sendak on film, try the Sendak collection from my favorite Scholastic Storybook series....
Here's a great new DVD from my all-time favorite series, just in time for Halloween -- A Very Brave Witch...and more Halloween stories. In the title story, a little witch who has been taught that humans are scary decides to...
Disney's 70th anniversary release of its first animated feature film on Blu-Ray is gorgeously restored and filled with behind-the-scene extras and a wonderful opportunity to catch up with the one that is still "the fairest of them all." Snow White...
In anticipation of the release of Toy Story 3 in 3D, Disney is issuing the first two as a 3D double feature. The original Toy Story was the first computer-animated feature film but what make it successful was its heartwarming...
An expert blend of silly fun, action that is mostly more exciting than scary, a few clever barbs, and some wow-worthy visuals make "Monsters vs. Aliens" the best family film in months. "You're glowing," says the groom to his bride...
The animation may be three-dimensional but the story is one-dimensional in this dull saga of humans invading an alien planet -- from the perspective of the aliens. I suppose it is actually the humans who are the aliens in this...
"Jonah's" production company, Big Idea, promises "Sunday morning values, Saturday morning fun," and in my opinion they have more than delivered on both, with a series of videos that are right up there with the best in entertainment and humor...
When things go very, very wrong in this movie, as they so often do, we get to see a series of television news broadcasts from around the world showing the destruction of various iconic monuments, as we so often do....
An award-winning animated student film has been turned into a full-length feature with intricately-designed visuals but a story-line that feels stuck together with chewing gum and Scotch tape. Tim Burton protege Shane Acker has proven a better student of the...
Based on David J. Smith's best-selling and award-winning book If the World Were a Village: A Book about the World's People, this is an animated story about global culture that helps families understand our differences, our commonality, and our connections....
Hayao Miyazaki has produced another trippy fantasia, this time a fish out of water story along the lines of "The Little Mermaid." A little girl goldfish with magical powers loves a little boy human and turns herself into a human,...
This movie, opening in November, looks wonderfully cool. Owen Wilson, George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody, Anjelica Houston, and Bill Murray star in this animated film based on a book by Roald Dahl, author of...
First-time preschoolers can get a head start, kids returning in the fall can get a refresher, and everyone in the family can have fun with this terrific new DVD of counting stories from my very favorite series by Scholastic. I...
In the grand tradition of Alice, Dorothy, Milo, and the Pevensie children, Coraline enters a portal to a magical world that is both thrilling and terrifying, one that will both enchant her and demand her greatest resources of courage and...
VH1 has a 10th birthday tribute to SpongeBob Suqarepants that premieres tonight. VH1 TV Shows | Music Videos | Celebrity Photos | News & Gossip I like this tribute to SpongeBob's innocence and sincerity. The Washington Post has an article...
The latest Shaun the Sheep movie is "Sheep on the Loose" The people who created "Wallace and Gromit" are behind this wonderful new series about a sheep who does not follow the flock -- but sometimes gets the flock to...
Pixar is the must successful studio in movie history, with every single one of its releases earning over $100 million. Even more impressive, every one of them is entirely original, not based on a book or classic fairy tale. I...
The first thing I saw when I walked into the room was -- of course -- a bunch of beautiful helium balloons. And then I saw Pete Docter, the lanky and affable director of Pixar's new film, "Up," about an...
Peter S. Beagle, who write the novel and screenplay for this week's DVD pick, The Last Unicorn, also wrote the screenplay for the animated version of "Lord of the Rings," the movie that inspired a kid named Peter Jackson to...
I'm delighted to have four copies of Tale of Despereaux to give away to the first four people who send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with Despereaux in the subject line. Good luck!...
The visuals are rich and inviting but a complicated three-part story makes an uneasy transition to screen for the well-loved book by Kate DiCamillo. Sigourney Weaver narrates the story, beginning with the description of a hero we will not meet...
Bolt (voice of John Travolta) thinks he is a super-dog. He and his "person," Penny (voice of Miley Cyrus) spend their days battling the evil, green-eyed Dr. Calico (voice of Malcolm McDowell), who has captured Penny's scientist father and has...
The most famous episode of Jonathan Swift's classic satire is the visit of shipwrecked sailor Lemuel Gulliver to Lilliput, where no one is more than six inches tall. In this Fleischer Studios animated feature from 1939, released this week on...
This week Disney is releasing a glorious new edition of its most most gorgeous, splendid, and fully realized of all of its animation classics, the high point of painstakingly hand-painted animation, before the use of photocopiers and computers. Every detail...
Morgan Taylor is the illustrator, animator, and musician who created Gustafer Yellowgold, the pointy-headed little yellow guy from the sun featured in DVDs and live concert performances. Gustafer is a friendly creature who came to Earth from the sun and...
In honor of this week's release of "Monsters vs. Aliens," this week's DVD pick is another great animated film, "Monsters, Inc." According to this movie by the "Toy Story" folks at Pixar, that monsters are more afraid of children than...
Michael Landon Jr.'s new film is The Velveteen Rabbit, based on the classic book by Margery Williams about the stuffed toy bunny loved so dearly that it becomes "real." The movie opens in select cities this Friday, February 27, and...
The rare sequel that improves on the original, "Madagascar 2" keeps the silliness and steps up the heart. In the first film, four zoo animals run away and after a series of adventures are sent to live in an African...
Writing about the original version of "The Electric Company" reminded me of one of my all-time favorite short films by John and Faith Hubley, who later went on to work on the "Letterman" segments of that show. It is the...
In the town of Malaria, anatomy is destiny. Boy babies get their assignments at birth. Those without hunchbacks become evil scientists. Those with hunchbacks become Igors and spend their days saying, "Yes, master," when ordered to "Throw the switch!" Malaria...
Take a look at this adorable trailer for "Monsters vs. Aliens" from DreamWorks, featuring the voices of voices of Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Hugh Laurie, Seth Rogen, Will Arnett, Rainn Wilson, Stephen Colbert, and Kiefer Sutherland: It's currently scheduled to...
Cold winter days are just right for curling up with some hot cocoa to watch DVDs filled with the pleasures of winter. And it is always wise to have some on hand for those days when it is too...
They finally got Dr. Seuss right in this warm-hearted and heart-warming story of the elephant who is "faithful 100 percent" and the world on a little speck of dust that he rescues. Jim Carrey provides the voice of Horton, an...
The good news is that animation software is so widely available these days that just about anyone can make an animated film. That's also the bad news. It is now too easy to produce a professional-looking film without the same...
This genial animated sci-fi comedy about astronaut chimps is an unpretentious summer pleasure, an entertaining mix of adventure and comedy that even manages to find some heart. Ham III (voice of "Saturday Night Live's" Andy Samberg) is a chimpanzee circus...
700 years after the last humans left the planet they had made uninhabitable through environmental degradation, one small robot is still continuing to crunch the mountains of trash. He is a Waste Allocation Load-Lifter Earth-Class, or Wall∙E. His eyes are...
Oh, George Lucas. Please stop diluting the franchise. This latest all-animated iteration of "Star Wars" has a relationship to the original somewhere along the lines of the relationship of a homeopathic ingredient to the ultimate concoction. It has been...
Po (voice of Jack Black) is a soft, sweet-natured cuddly panda. He works as a waiter in his father's noodle shop but dreams of being a kung fu champion. He studies kung fu history and cherishes his action figures of...
Disney's new Tinkerbell DVD will let us hear Tinkerbell's voice for the first time in her first-ever feature film. Get a sneak peek behind the scenes from this clip....
Disney has beautifully restored one of its most treasured classics, "Sleeping Beauty," in honor of its 50th anniversary. The King and Queen happily celebrate the birth of their daughter, Princess Aurora. The young Prince who is betrothed to the baby...
I spoke to Mary Costa, who played the title role in the animated Disney classic "Sleeping Beauty," about making the film and the new 50th anniversary DVD release. As Ms. Costa told me the story of her favorite scene, she...
Don't try to swat that enormous insect buzzing a few inches above your popcorn. It's a hologram-like image hovering in front of you and it is part of the movie. Yes, you have to wear the clunky glasses, but...
Based on the book by T.H. White, this is the story of the early years of King Arthur. Nicknamed "Wart," the future King Arthur is squire to a knight when he meets Merlin the magician, who promises to take on...
The best-selling series of books about children who find their mysterious old house surrounded by magical creatures has been turned into a visually sumptuous treat for fans of fantasy and imagination. Freddie Highmore (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) plays twins...
Movie maven Glenn Kenny has put together a list of the 25 top animated films for Moviefone. Lots of Disney classics, of course, like "Lady and the Tramp," "Dumbo," "Fantasia," "Cinderella," "Snow White," "Little Mermaid," and "Beauty and the Beast."...
Nina Paley, who bills herself as “America’s best-loved unknown cartoonist” is the artist/writer/director behind a smart, funny, visually stunning new animated film called “Sita Sings the Blues.” Paley's cartoons include "Fluff" (Universal Press Syndicate), "The Hots" (King Features), and her...
Novelty songwriter Ross Bagdasarian noticed that speeding up the audio recordings creatd a high-pitched sound in 1958, and used that technique in his song "The Witch Doctor." It was a hit. And so, he created the singing chipmunks, Simon,...
Peter and the Wolf," this year's Oscar-winner for best short animated film will be shown on PBS this Wednesday from 8-9 Eastern Time. It is a brilliantly imaginative film and well worth setting aside some family time to watch it...
Fairy tales and modern-day Manhattan find a way to live happily ever after in this adorable Disney story about the adventures of a prince, an almost-princess, and an evil queen in New York City....
Jerry Seinfeld will always be remembered for creating a brilliant and beloved television show about...nothing. His unbreakable rule was "no learning, no hugging." Popular sitcoms had always been about learning and hugging and "very special episodes." But Seinfeld created four...
"One Hundred and One Dalmatians" is one of the best-loved Disney classics (and the first of its animated films to take place in a contemporary setting). There is nothing more irresistible than 99 frisky spotted puppies and there has never...
One of the oldest surviving stories is retold through one of the most modern of technologies in a thrilling 3-D adventure from director Robert Zemeckis....
The Veggie Tales have produced a series of popular computer-animated videos for children and their families, with fruit and vegetable-inspired characters in engaging and funny stories with gentle moral overtones. Their new feature film does not mention God, as the...
Marjane Satrapi brings her award-winning graphic memoir to the screen in a powerful story of growing up in Iran as the Shah was ousted and hopes for democracy were crushed by the rise of the fundamentalists. Named for the legendary...
Did you ever wonder what happens to the villains while the hero and heroine are living happily ever after? We get to find out in this third chapter in the saga of Shrek. In the previous episode, Prince Charming failed...
"I can't believe we're paying to see something we get to see on TV for free. Everyone in this theater is a giant sucker, especialy YOU." And thus, Homer Simpson lets us know that he's onto us, as he has...
Pixar's latest release is brilliantly animated, and a lot of fun. But it does not have a clear sense of who its audience is, and families with children who are looking for the next Finding Nemo may find themselves puzzled....
Every so often an unpretentious little charmer like "Surf's Up" darts ahead of the pack of big, over-hyped, over-long, resistance-is-futile summer blockbusters lumbering into multiplexes. This one is as refreshing as an ice cream cone after a hot day. The...
Did you ever wonder what happens to the villains while the hero and heroine are living happily ever after? We get to find out in this third chapter in the saga of Shrek. In the previous episode, Prince Charming failed...
At times, all of us feel like strangers in the world. In Disney's bight, colorful, CGI animated film (available in 3D in some locations), Lewis (voice of Daniel Hansen) is left on the steps of an orphanage as a baby...
They're teenagers, they're mutants, they're ninjas, and they're turtles. Up from the sewers by way of some handy toxic waste, those Renaissance-named, three-fingered, ninja-fighting, pizza-eating turtle siblings are back in their first all-CGI adventure. They say funny-tough things like, "I'm...
Director Luc Besson is known for his striking visuals and his mash-ups of sentimental, even corny moments with intense, graphic violence. At his best, in films like The Professional and The Fifth Element, these juxtapositions work well. But here, in...
As an Empress of Evil announces that she is in charge and from now on it will be "happily NEVER after," the film appears to jump off the sprockets of the projector and a narrator interrupts with an important announcement....
It's official. The cutest thing on the planet is penguins singing "Boogie Wonderland." Especially if one of them is tap-dancing. This movie is a straight shot of sunshine. I defy anyone to watch it without smiling. Just as important, I...
I love CGI. I love the textures, the way every single hair and feather, every leaf and raindrop, every shiny, fuzzy, smooth, rough, soft, hard surface is perfectly perfect. But I realized, as I watched this movie, that one of...
The indomitable spirit of Christopher Reeve shines through this little story of a boy who will not give up his quest to retrieve the baseball bat belonging to the greatest player ever, Babe Ruth. Ten-year-old Yankee Irving (that's his name)...
In this movie, the cows are boys. They have big pink udders and manly male voices. In fact, head cow Ben has the manliest, malest, deepest voice imaginable, that of quintessential cowpoke Sam Elliott. Our hero, Otis has the voice...
A boy beset by bullies turns bully himself, going after the ants in his family's back yard. But the ants shrink him down to their size and he learns something about ants, about empathy, about himself, and about how to...
This is lowest common denominator movie-making. Why not, it's based on a lowest-common denominator comic strip. Garfield's lighter-than-air comic strip is utterly generic because its motivating force is not art or comedy but commerce; the less distinctive the character or...
Look closely at the little flying bugs buzzing and bumping in the hot light of the desert. They are, of course, Bugs: VW Bugs with wings. In the world of this story, all of the characters are cars and all...
Computer technology has always had the advantage in animation when it comes to texture and three-dimensionality, and it is superb for physical properties like "shiny" and "bouncy," but it has lagged behind hand-drawn when it came to expressions. "Over the...
"The Wild" is more like "The Mild." But it is pleasant enough; its the timing that's rotten. Like last year's suprisingly successful Madagascar, this is an animated film about zoo animals who have to learn to fend for themselves in...
Once again, as in the first Ice Age, wooly mammoth Manny (voice of Ray Romano), sloth Sid (John Leguizamo), and saber tooth tiger Diego (Dennis Leary) set off on a journey. This time, they have to lead their friends out...
This tiresome animated quest story starts out uninspired but quickly becomes irritating. Half an hour into its 80 minute running time, the child behind me asked hopefully, "Is that the end?" If only. Has anyone behind this movie ever met...
This gentle little film about the monkey whose curiosity gets him into trouble and the man who befriends him will make 4-8-year olds very happy and give their parents a chance for a nice nap. Generations of children have loved...
Adorable Little Red Riding Hood opens the door to Granny's charming cottage in the woods and walks into the bedroom with her basket of goodies. But Granny looks a little different. It is the wolf, in disguise. He lunges toward...
Plot: The children's classic by Lewis Carroll about the girl who falls down a rabbit hole is presented by Disney in this lively and tuneful version. Alice is reading with her sister when she sees a white rabbit, fully dressed,...
According to Disney, Hercules was the adored son of gods Zeus and Hera, stolen by Hades, ruler of the underworld, and made mortal. He must become a true hero to become a god again, so he can live with his...
In this technical marvel of a movie, human and animated actors interact seamlessly. It begins with a cartoon, loveable Roger Rabbit taking care of adorable Baby Herman, despite every kind of slapstick disaster. Then, as birdies are swimming around Roger's...
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