Dreamworks #6: Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron - 7.6/10 

One of the main differences between watching the Dreamworks films and the Disney ones is, as I’ve said, that all of the former have been released in my lifetime. The very first, Antz, came out when I was already a teenager and as such, I’ve already seen most of them and what’s more, I don’t really have any “childhood” memories of any of them. That’s what makes a film like Spirit so interesting to me; I had never seen it before and didn’t really have any idea what to expect.

My favorite thing about this movie is easy to single out: the animals don’t talk. I mean seriously, that was the coolest freaking thing. It’s what I wish Disney had done with Dinosaur. A movie with animal characters that really behaved like animals! Well, mostly. The effect was somewhat muted by having Matt Damon narrate from the first-person perspective of the horse (I think a third-person narration would have been more natural), and the horses did at times exhibit humanlike behavior and facial expressions. The latter is easiest to forgive, because I'm going to assume that A.) most viewers are humans, and B.) most human viewers are not adept at interpreting animal emotions.

The animation was pretty great – a nice blend of traditional and CGI techniques that considering the technology at the time was pretty impressive. I wasn’t as fond of the musical track. They were trying for the same concept as Disney’s Tarzan and Brother Bear, where Phil Collins sings about what’s going on and how the characters feel about it. They didn’t use Phil Collins of course, but the idea was the same. Not really sure how well they pulled it off. The songs fit and all, but none of them really caught my ear or struck a chord or anything. A bit more like Brother Bear than Tarzan in that sense.

As for the story itself? Eh, it was all right. Pretty basic, really. Wild horse is captured, refuses to be tamed, escapes, repeat, repeat. The friendship he strikes up with the young Lakota man/boy was nice and handled well, but there wasn’t anything particularly complex going on. Just a nice, simple story told from the heart. Overall I enjoyed the film and would say it’s worth a watch if you haven’t seen it, but it’s not one I’d put on my repeated viewings list.

Dreamworks #5: Shrek

Shrek - 8.3/10

This is it. The movie that changed everything. This film marks the biggest paradigm shift in animated features since The Little Mermaid brought them back into the mainstream. True, Toy Story had already proven that computer animation was a viable method for filmmaking, but Shrek showed us it was the way of the future.

Even more than that, it redefined what an animated film could be, and who it could be for. The level of adult humor and storytelling that is so common today was groundbreaking at the time. It was one of the first big-time animated films that really wasn’t for kids. Oh sure, plenty of kids saw it and liked it, but it wasn’t made for them.

The tongue-in-cheek pastiche of fairy tale convention was hardly new, but Shrek took a much different tone with it than most others did or even still do today. The production team really understood that for humor to be most effective, you don’t call attention to your jokes. Rather, you just sort of let them happen naturally and move on. That’s the big difference between this film, which still has a lot of big gags and plenty of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it smaller ones, and a film like Happily N’ever After, which is constantly reminding you what it’s making fun of, and that they’re doing their best to be wacky at every turn.

Also, for perhaps the first time I was completely in favor of the stunt casting. I cannot imagine this movie being half as good without the likes of Mike Myers, John Lithgow and Eddie Murphy. With Murphy I’ve heard mixed reactions, with some people saying he talks too much about random nonsense. I don’t understand why; that’s the joke. And the sheer amount of personality he infuses into Donkey is quite honestly one of my favorite parts of the movie.

That all being said, it’s time to take a trip down nitpicky lane. First of all, I was not a fan of their choice to use popular music of the time in the soundtrack. For one thing, it really dates the movie (Smash Mouth in particular), but it also doesn’t add the level of feeling that the parts with original scoring have, or even the more timeless songs like Hallelujah. 

Secondly, for a film that parodies fairy tale conventions, they sure use a lot of fairy tale conventions. I’m sorry, but the “twist” ending with Fiona remaining an Ogre (spoiler alert?) could be seen from a mile off, from the moment she first recited the poem about “Love’s true form”. Okay, I like the message about beauty being in the eye of the beholder, but at this point you’ve become exactly the kind of movie you were making fun of half an hour ago.

Lastly, the whole “overheard conversation misunderstanding” thing that’s been done a million times and stopped being an interesting plot device seventy years ago. Eugh, really, guys? And what bothered me even when I first saw it in high school was this: Why would Fiona think that Shrek, an ogre, would care that she turns into an ogre at night? Or that he would think less of her for it? It makes absolutely no sense and just makes for forced drama – which pulls on my gag reflex coming so soon after the forced, awkward romance. 

I was never really a big fan of the whole “dance party ending” craze that was going around at that time, either. And sometimes the animation of Shrek interacting with things (when he's eating or fighting) was a little clunky, but they were still perfecting things so I'll cut them some slack.

All that aside, this is still a really enjoyable film with some solid laughs, a good deconstruction of the fairy tale genre in general, and most importantly it opened the door for a whole new type of animated film that would come to dominate the first decade of the 21^st century. And so far the second as well.

 

Dreamworks #4: Chicken Run

Chicken Run - 7.8/10

I remember when this first came out; there was a lot of buzz surrounding it because it was the first feature-length production from Aardman Entertainment, the guys who by now were already famous for their Wallace and Gromit shorts. Their particular style of animation was clearly evident here, as well as their distinctive brand of British humor. Even though I’d never really seen Wallace and Gromit, I still knew about them and thus wanted to see this movie.

It’s basically a POW flick with chickens and, though I didn’t know it at the time, it borrows heavily from such well-known films in the genre as Stalag 17 and The Great Escape. There are also several subtle references to other areas of pop culture, and more than one well-executed Star Trek jokes. Unlike a lot of the films of today, these references were not overdone in the slightest, and served to add to the comedy rather than detract from it. There were also a number of very clever puns, some of which were so clever you almost missed them. I love this, since while bad puns can ruin anything, good puns are gold – in my opinion, anyway.

The plot of the movie itself is pretty conventional overall, and common elements such as misunderstandings and the liar reveal are used in all seriousness. The greatness of this film comes in its unique setting. Being chickens, a lot of the escape tactics used in films like this had to be adapted, to great comedic effect. There’s also the fact that their gaolers, the farmers, believe (reasonably) that they are simply chickens and are not capable of organization. Some of the best comedy in the movie comes from the farmer trying to convince his domineering wife that the chickens are trying to escape, and her basically calling him an idiot for it. They’re just chickens, after all.

Common story elements aside, this is a charming film with some really good comedy and some really enjoyable homages to classic cinema. It’s not my favorite Dreamworks picture by any means, but I do quite like it.

 

Dreamworks #3: The Road to El Dorado

The Road to El Dorado - 7.8/10

I’d never seen this before, and I wasn’t expecting much. Wouldn’t you know it, I was pleasantly surprised. That’s sort of becoming a thing.

There’s nothing for me to get all deep over this time. There isn’t any underlying theme regarding political and sociological ideology, nor is it adapted from an ancient story upon which the faith of billions is founded…it’s just goofy fun. And you know, I welcome the change. 

This movie was really funny. They didn’t really tell any jokes; the dialogue was very witty and energetic and there were a number of visual and physical gags. I had a good time watching it. The two leads were very likable; they were quick and clever and their banter was always good for a laugh. For once I had no problem at all with the stunt casting; Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh were remarkable.

On the technical side of things, the animation was a little lower on the scale than The Prince of Egypt, but still good. The songs were decent for the most part but nothing special, with one exception. “It’s Tough To Be A God” was freaking great. I’m going to be singing it for weeks.

They surprised me a bit with the plot as well (and this paragraph will contain some spoilers if you’re worried about that sort of thing). Despite the name of the film, the majority of it takes place in El Dorado itself once they’ve arrived. Also, in the beginning it looked like they were setting up Cortes to be a villain, and then he barely appears or does anything at all. A bit of a curveball there, but I can’t say I mind. It would have been too formulaic and predictable and I prefer the way it turned out much more.

If there’s one complaint I had – and it’s a relatively big one – it’s the language thing again. At first it looked like they were going to do the unintelligible thing and I was really impressed for a fleeting moment…and then the natives started talking to them like it was no big deal. There wasn’t even an attempt to explain it; we’re just supposed to assume that everyone in the world speaks the same language and that’s the end of it. It really bugged me, but even that I was able to forget after a while because everything else was so much fun. And later on I realized - it took me a while, I admit - that this was in homage to the old Bing Crosby, Bob Hope "Road to..." movies. Once I figured that out, it bothered me a lot less.

So yeah, a good time was had by all, and by “all” I mean me, and from the sounds of it every actor who had a role in this movie. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. It’s easily worth an hour and a half of your time.

Dreamworks #2: The Prince of Egypt

The Prince of Egypt - 8.3/10

Talk about ambitious. For your second project, you’re going to tackle a story that probably 98% of everyone in the Western world is at least nominally familiar with, and to a good number of them it’s more than just a story. Imagine the nerd rage whenever a comic book or fantasy adaptation film gets even the slightest thing wrong. Now crank that up to eleven and multiply the nerds by a couple million or so. This movie could have gone horribly wrong.

On the plus side, if you do a good job, just like those comic book and fantasy adaptations, you’ve got a pre-existing fanbase. And on the whole I’d have to say they did a pretty good job.

This was a big one for the Dreamworks team. They had a good start with Antz, but this is where they needed to prove they weren’t a one-hit-wonder. You could tell they were putting a lot of effort in for that as much as to do justice to such an iconic story. And as an outsider – that is, someone for whom the story has no special meaning beyond simply being a good story – it was fun for me too, so they managed to avoid the pitfall of being too preachy. An impressive feat.

They really went with the human angle on this one. A must, really, unless you’re making a film for Sunday School. We got a good look at who Moses was, what kind of person he was and his relationship with his family. In this too I was pleased that the royal family of Egypt were not portrayed simply as heartless villains, but as real people in their own right who simply let their privilege blind them to the needs of others.

Moses’s transformation to a better man was well played, and even though it was mostly via montage, they managed to portray his developing relationship with his wife with a degree of tenderness that kind of makes you wish the whole movie was about them. The plagues were impressive, but I wish more time had been spent on them. They kind of happened all at once in another montage, when I think delving into them one at a time would have been more powerful. Then again, it could have made things drag on too long, so I’m not sure what the happy medium would be.

The final plague was of course played out in full, and throughout the whole ordeal Pharaoh was given very realistic reasons for refusing Moses repeatedly. The seeds of this were planted early on, when we see the two princes interacting with their father. Pharaoh was a complex character who was as much concerned about his legacy and that of his kingdom as much as he was the here and now. 

The visuals were spectacular as well, even down to just the scenery of the Nile River and the kingdom that thrives upon its banks. There were some great songs too, but I will say this: I think there was too much singing. A couple of them I really liked, as I said, but you couldn’t go five minutes without some character bursting into song about something or other. It had me rolling my eyes after a while. I kind of wonder if some Dreamworks producer was looking at the successful Disney films of the day and thinking, “They’ve got songs. We’ll have songs too! All the songs anyone could ever want!” And then there’s some maniacal laughter or something, I don’t know.

Once again they had some celebrity stunt casting, but it wasn’t so much distracting this time as it was not all the actors fit the characters they portrayed. In particular I really wasn’t feeling Steve Martin and Martin Short as the high priests, but for the most part everyone performed their roles at least adequately. Makes me wonder what could have been if they’d gone for real voice actors, though.

All told, a solid second outing. Enjoyable, impressive to look at, and does justice to an ancient story. Well done, Dreamworks. You’re playing with the big boys now.

 

Dreamworks #1: Antz

Here we go with Round 2. These are going to be a little different from the write-ups of the Disney films, owing chiefly to the fact that Dreamworks is not Disney and (with a few exceptions) doesn't try to be. The films themselves are different and the write-ups will reflect that accordingly. The other major difference is that the vast majority of these films I have seen either recently, multiple times, or both. It's kind of different that reviewing a bunch of films I mostly saw for the first time as a child.

With all that being said, let's get this self-aggrandizing pomp underway with...

Antz - 8.1/10

It’s a Woody Allen movie. With bugs. 

I could stop there and you’d pretty much know everything you needed to know about this movie. There is, however, a whole other layer underneath that’s truly fascinating, and it explores concepts like collectivism, individualism and dogmatic adherence to authority in a way that a movie about human characters just couldn’t pull off.

I think what I like best about this movie’s approach is that it’s just that: an exploration. Collectivism vs. Individualism is the major theme, it’s true, but the movie does not declare which is superior, or even if there is a better option between the two. Personally, I interpreted it as saying that a balance between the two is most ideal, though that’s likely just me projecting as that’s my own philosophy already anyway. 

The strengths and pitfalls of a collectivist society are both laid out pretty straightforwardly. Likewise, the benefits and dangers of a self-oriented mindset are clearly shown as well. The two leads, Z and Bala, are both incredibly selfish people when we meet them, though in different ways and for different reasons. And of course they live in a society that is by definition a collective. Their escape from and eventual return to this society and the way they change both it and themselves is the central pillar the movie is based upon.

And the society itself grows as well. The corrupted version of collectivism we see at the beginning – really just a totalitarian state with a rigid class structure – is reformed during the climax of the film when all parties involved finally realize that though the collective as a whole is the priority, every individual within that collective has value. Ironically, the villain made this point best when giving a speech to rally people behind him (and of course it was all BS as far as he was concerned). I could go on about this crap for ten more pages, but as I'm not trying to impress any professors, let's move on.

Toning down the pretentious ramblings a bit, there was some good humor in here as well. A lot of the jokes were actually pretty passive, and took their humor from the vastly different view of the world insects have. A mound of garbage is the most beautiful place they’ve ever seen, magnifying glasses and sneakers with gum on them are cosmic horrors, and crap is delicious. There’s also a hippie commune at the garbage heap, which is funny and ties into the central theme. And they had some good jokes with the collective concept as well, such as everyone at a bar dancing in unison at a pre-specified time.

The stunt casting of various celebrity voices was a little distracting – most notably Jennifer Lopez and Sylvester Stallone, but others like Gene Hackman (and of course Allen) fit their characters perfectly. And I loved the music. When I first saw it as a kid and still today, the main theme for this movie is one of the catchiest I’ve ever heard.

If you like Woody Allen, you’ll probably enjoy this at least a little. If you don’t, it’s likely going to be hit or miss. And don’t make the mistake of thinking that because it’s animated it’s for kids. I mean, I saw it when I was a kid, but the dialogue and various other aspects are only partially toned down from Allen’s live action films. I for one welcome that. It signaled a change in the role of animated films – that they could be anything we wanted them to be and didn’t have to choose between weird cult hit or kiddie movie. The fact that it came out at the same time as the not-nearly-as-interesting A Bug’s Life only served to drive home just what a different turn they were taking.

 

DAC 52: Wreck-It Ralph

Wreck-it Ralph - 8.8/10

Is this Toy Story with video games? Well...yes and no. The concept is the same, in that it's about video game characters who come to life when the people who play with them go away, but the similarities end there. The first act of this movie is very simple. In fact, I found myself scoffing at just how simple it was. Ralph is unhappy with his lot, there's a thing he can get that will make things better, he tries to get that thing and it's very important...etc. etc.. Looking back though, I can actually appreciate this. Ralph's game is of an era when that was how things worked. There's a goal, it means everything, and you will do what it takes to reach that goal. End of story. It was also a nice way to contrast the rest of the film, once Ralph realizes that things are sometimes more complex than just getting that one shiny thing and making everything great.

There are a lot of cameos from real game characters past and present, and while they were funny, they were also kind of distracting and so I'm kind of glad they too were relegated to the first act of the film for the most part. A lot of video game-based jokes were also sprinkled all over the place, which anyone familiar with gaming history and/or culture would appreciate.

Most of the rest of the film was a friendship piece. Kind of like Bolt, only more of a big bro/little sis kind of way. In any case, it was actually really sweet, despite what the trailers would have you believe. Naturally, Ralph's epiphany comes as a result of this relationship, but not exactly in the way you'd expect, and again it was really sweet. There was a surprise near the climax that really shouldn't have been a surprise if I'd been paying close attention, but I count that as a point in the movie's favor. It means I was so invested with what was going on that I wasn't trying to figure out all the plot twists ahead of time. That doesn't happen to me very often and it's always fun when it does.

I'm glad they didn't just make this a straight comedy. The jokes were good, as I said, but the emotional and relationship aspects were the best part of the film. It wouldn't be nearly as good without them.

God, I'm such a sap.