Dreamworks #17: Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa - 7.5/10

Okay, was the first movie just a teaser trailer for this one or something? All the things I said I wanted more of the first time – that’s what this movie is. We get a deeper story, we get more into the characters, there’s a fully realized plot, yadda yadda yadda. Still, all things considered it’s only slightly better than the first one.

To start, I have seen the opening of this before. Just the first ten minutes or so when they’re preparing to launch the plane to leave Madagascar. Maybe I got that mixed up with the first one which is why I was expecting more; I don’t know. Other than that though, this was all new to me.

We start with a nice little back story on Alex the lion and how he came to be in New York. This is an obvious set-up for later when he is reunited with his parents in a game preserve in Africa, but it’s a neat little origin story, and also helps establish that Alex has always been a bit of a showman and not much of a “real” lion. More on that later.

The other three characters are kind of shunted to the side in favor of Alex; they do have their own stories, but they’re B plots at best and there isn’t much detail. Marty the zebra finds that he is exactly like every other zebra right down to personality, voice and speech pattern. Gloria the hippo tries to find a mate only to be disappointed when he turns out to be a little shallow, and Melman the giraffe is in love with Gloria the hippo. Yeah, what? I know these characters are supposed to be human-like to a degree and that’s part of the joke, but that one just didn’t work for me.

As before, the best parts of the movie involve the lemur King Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen), and the squadron of psychotic penguins. It is the penguins who fix and operate the plane, steal technology from the humans, and pretty much run shit. Their interactions are hilarious and they are definitely out of their minds. When a warning light in the plane goes off, they determine the problem is “some kind of flashing, incandescent colored light, most likely to indicate a malfunction of some sort.” The skipper calls for the plane’s manual, which he uses to smash the light and declares the problem is solved. They also have a labor dispute with monkeys.

If the penguins are crazy, King Julien is absolutely off-the-charts insane. Everything that comes out of his mouth is hysterical, and at one point I actually had to rewind a bit since I was laughing so hard I missed some stuff. To be fair, I was taking pain medication at the time, but even now in retrospect it was still really funny.

There were a few things that dragged the movie down. The friends have a falling out and a “Who needs you?” moment where they walk away from each other and whatnot, and I kept thinking, “Didn’t we go through all this in the last movie? I thought they were past this shit by now.” Also, the gag with the little old lady who beats them up was a little overplayed, even if it did tie into the plot at times. 

Most of the new voices did a good job, but I can’t decide if Alec Baldwin was a good choice for the villain or not. He gave a decent performance, but after about five minutes I was like, “Holy crap, that’s Alec Baldwin!” and that was all I could see or hear for the rest of the movie. And finally, there was the main story itself. Mostly it worked: Alex is returned to his pride, he doesn’t know how to be a lion, he’s forced to leave, but in the end his unorthodox way of doing things saves everyone. Hooray! 

I have no complaints regarding the formula itself, but there was one instance of miscommunication that really bothered me. There’s a rite of passage all lions go through that Alex volunteers for, thinking it will be some kind of dance-off (for whatever reason). Of course it’s actually a fight, and of course he loses horribly, and we get the whole “not a real lion” thing, complete with paternal disappointment. Thing is – and Alex totally calls his dad out on this – no one bothered to actually tell him what this rite of passage was. They just assumed he knew. Now, Alex’s assumption was just as foolish, but he at least attempted to clarify. A bit. I’m not letting him off the hook completely, because the logical thing to do for someone in his position would have been to go straight to his father and say, “Dad? About this thousand-year-old tradition I’m taking part in tomorrow? What exactly do I have to do? Please be as specific as possible.” The whole thing was a contrived misunderstanding for the sake of drama and I’ve never really been a fan of those.

What it all boils down to was this: a bit more fleshed out than the first movie but less focus on all but one of the main characters, a decent story with good background and set-up, one gag that was overused and plenty of others that weren’t, only one bad plot device, and hilarious side characters. Not a great movie, but a good one. 

The need to make a movie solely about the penguins. I’d watch the hell out of that. 

Oh wait, they are! I hope King Julien is in it.

Dreamworks #16: Kung Fu Panda

Kung Fu Panda - 9.0/10

When I initially saw the advertising for this, I thought it looked ridiculous. I mean, even the title is absurd. “Kung Fu Panda” starring Jack Black? Yeah, whatever. Naturally this meant I wanted to see it; I love ridiculous things. But I was expecting a goofy comedy and what I saw when I got there was just so far beyond what would ever even occur to me to expect. 

First off, to state the obvious, it’s not a goofy comedy. Unlike Shrek 2, which was a brilliant comedy that also managed to have some serious dramatic moments, Kung Fu Panda is a serious dramatic movie that also manages to have some brilliant comedy. It’s a good story first and a comedy second, I like that. It would have been so much easier to have just gone the comedy route – as the trailers all suggested – but no; they’re like that kid in high school who doesn’t give in to peer pressure and is that much cooler for it. “Sure, I can be funny, but I’m not going to make that my identity. I have so much more to offer.”

So where do I start? Jack Black gives a terrific performance as Po, a young man (er, panda), who is a fanboy of all things kung fu. Unfortunately for him, he works in his father’s noodle shop and is always on the outside looking in. I love how they handled this character. Everyone and everything is just so mean to him. “Everyone” in that he is treated usually with dismissal, irritation or mockery by the people of the valley, and even worse by the people he most admires. “Everything” in that circumstances themselves always seem to conspire to torture him, as if the universe too has decided he’s a loser. 

There is no small amount of slapstick so we kind of get sucked into this too, but at the same time from very early on we come to care about this character and feel bad for him. In a good way, too: sympathy and empathy rather than pity. And the heartstrings are really tugged when we learn just how much he’s taken all this to heart, and how little he thinks of himself as well. It makes it all the sweeter when we finally get to see him succeed, and gain acceptance and respect from those who had dismissed him before.

The rest of the cast was cool too. Dustin Hoffman played a great frustrated old master, and the “furious five” were a clever idea. Even in the trailers I liked how they actually used animals corresponding to the various schools of kung fu they were using. I do think though, that for such a star-studded cast (Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, David Cross, Lucy Liu), a lot of them were underused. Particularly Chan and Liu. Why bother putting them in the film if you’re not  going to give them anything to say? Ian McShane as the villain was great, but that pretty much goes without saying. I liked his character’s backstory as well, and how it’s fueled his bitterness and rage in the present. They really didn’t sugarcoat anything.

The environment they created for this movie was beautiful. The scenery and the colors – oh my god, you guys. Seriously, it’s gorgeous. It’s every bit as wonderful as you would imagine a mythical China to be. And the philosophy – yes, there’s philosophy in a movie about a kung fu fighting panda – is surprisingly deep and timeless as well. Did I mention the music is perfectly attuned to the setting and also amazing? In fact, I’ve heard rumors that the Chinese Film Ministry (or whatever it is) chastised its employees for not being able to make a film that represents China as well as this does. Sounds kind of apocryphal, but I believe it. It’s just that perfect.

If it sounds like I’m gushing, it’s probably because I am. I really really like this movie, and I actually kind of had to hold myself back a little. I really think its only weakness is underutilizing some of its supporting characters, but other than that I can find no faults. The story, the pacing – they showed the passage of time over montages with the changing colors of the trees! – the action, the fight choreography (so cool!), the jokes, the music, arrgh! I need to stop or I never will. If you haven’t seen this, rectify that immediately. 

Dreamworks #15: Bee Movie

Bee Movie - 7.0/10

This one got a lot of publicity leading up to its release due to Jerry Seinfeld’s involvement, and I’ll admid that was a large part of why I went to go see it. I remember feeling a bit underwhelmed, but unlike Over the Hedge I at least remembered the basic outline of the plot this time. 

The opening act of this film seems a lot like Antz with bees. A thriving insect civilization, remarkable in its efficiency, one guy wants more out of life, he’s voiced by a famous Jewish comedian, yadda yadda yadda. As time goes on though, you start to realize that this is a lot more simplistic than Antz. Where that film tried to portray the gritty (er, sorry) reality of living underground, this one presents the inside of a hive like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. I’m not saying that’s a negative, just a notable difference. 

More and more though, I started to notice that this movie didn’t know how seriously it was supposed to be taking itself. You’ve got serious ideas like the exploitation of bee labor (without their knowledge, even) for human benefits, what happens to a society when there’s nothing for its people to do (something I thought was portrayed much better in Pixar’s Wall-E), and the interconnectedness of even the smallest of cogs in the grand mechanism we call life on Earth. That’s some pretty deep stuff when you say it like that.

On the other hand, you have Patrick Warburton being extremely brash and testoseroney (even for him), a bee with a crush on a human, and John Goodman in the most absurdly over-the-top courtroom performance I think I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t decide if I was watching clever social commentary or a Saturday morning cartoon. There were also some weird potshots at random celebrities like Sting and Ray Liotta (wtf?) of all people. And even weirder, they voiced their own cameos. I are confuse.

At the center of this you have one of the nicest interspecies friendships I’ve seen in a while that just narrowly missed being a horribly awkward and weird interspecies romance by having the bee’s crush be unrequited. Thank the gods for small favors. And hey, that's Renée Zellweger again. And Chris Rock, too. (He's a mosquito lawyer. Get it? It's okay if you don't; he points it out for you.) I guess the Dreamworks crew liked working with them before, or else they were running out of random celebrities who were willing to voice minor animated characters. 

I don't have much else to say about this one. The comedy wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny, but it was mildly amusing most of the time. I dunno. I really didn’t get the sense they knew what kind of movie they wanted to make. They had a really great idea, but they didn’t execute it very well.

Dreamworks #14: Shrek the Third

Shrek the Third - 7.2/10

They’ve gone back to the well. The first one was groundbreaking and the second was brilliant, so can you really blame them? Keeping such a high level of quality over so many films is difficult though, and this time the well has run dry. Only it’s not all bad, so it’s more like the well ran dry when the bucket was half full so they just peed in it to top it off.

It starts out great, and feels very Shrek-ish. The same style of humor as the previous films is present, as are all the characters we love. In act 2 is where things start to sour a little. The new character this time is Arthur, or “Artie”, the teenaged heir to the throne of Far Far Away. They could have done a lot with this character, but they chose to make him the awkward dork with bully issues. Why? Why did they do this? The setting was funny (a medieval high school), the concept was funny (Shrek tracking down the next king so he doesn’t have be king himself), and everything else carried over from the first two was funny (Puss and Donkey especially, as usual). But this kid…ARRGH. It’s all the wimpy kid tropes made fun of in films like Not Another Teen Movie, but played completely straight. Think about that: teen angst played straight – in a Shrek movie! What the hell? Being voiced by a whiny Justin Timberlake doesn’t help, either.

Like I said, just about everything else works. Not quite to the level of Shrek 2, but at least as good as the original if not better. The other new character, Mr. Merlin (played by Eric Idle) is amusing, and Rupert Everett does a smashing job as returning villain Prince Charming. It’s just a shame so much of the plot revolves around such a boring, irritating character. 

They do a lot of neat stuff with the plot, which I’ve come to expect. More fairy tale tropes are played with, and the princesses forming an action squad to take matters into their own hands and rescue themselves was great fun (with great music to boot). However, even worse than the teen angst (if possible) is the climax and resolution. Quite apart from the usual fare of flipping fairy tale morals on their heads, they not only choose to play it straight again, but do so in such a heavy-handed, unsubtle way that it felt like an 80s after school special. Gag.

So basically, I sum it up thusly: where this movie stays true to its franchise roots, it shines. When it forgets and does the opposite of what made the original and its sequel classics in the first place, it quite predictably flops. If I had to weigh the bad against the good, I’d say the good won out enough for it to still be an enjoyable film, but just barely.

Dreamworks #13: Flushed Away

Flushed Away - 7.6/10

The third – and to date, last – Aardman production in the Dreamworks library, Flushed Away is decidedly more mainstream than its two predecessors, Chicken Run and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Not that mainstream is in and of itself a bad thing, but there’s little here aside from the distinctive art style to indicate that it’s an Aardman production at all.

To start with, they opted for CGI instead of stop-motion, and while I can understand the decision from a technical standpoint (there’s a lot of water, which is quite difficult to pull off in stop-motion), it comes at the cost of sacrificing some of that charm I talked about before. Additionally, the writing – while still pretty tight – didn’t really feel like Aardman to me. There weren’t nearly as many clever puns or visual gags as Wallace and Gromit, or even Chicken Run, and so it loses something that made those films unique. 

What we do have is a lot of slapstick, and it’s well-executed for the most part and I don’t think they overdid it. Also, as to be expected of a film set mostly in a sewer, there are a lot of poop and fart jokes, mostly to the good if you like that sort of thing. One of my favorite running gags was having ambience and background music be something characters were actually doing. Sometimes it was related to what was going on, sometimes it was just a random incidental extra who happened to be playing the accordion at just the right moment. This was always handled with a reveal a few seconds in, and since we’re conditioned to expect background ambience in films, it gets us every time. And of course is another animal mini-civilization like in Antz, Shark Tale and The Great Mouse Detective. The standard smaller version of London made of knick-knacks and garbage is present, and we do get a few good visual jokes out of it. 

There was a moment when I groaned aloud because they went with the contrived overheard misunderstanding plot device, but it was actually resolved fairly quickly so I’d say they saved it. Barely. Truly, it’s just your basic voyage and return story. Roddy is ripped out of his comfortable life as a pet rat in the royal district and into the crazy, fast-paced world of the sewer. The plot revolves around his attempts to get home, the deal he makes with a ship captain to get him there, and the villain whose plans they inadvertently hinder.

When I said they’d gone mainstream, I meant it. Aardman doesn’t do anything half-assed, and when they go mainstream they pull out all the stops. There were big name Hollywood actors (mostly solid performances but nothing outstanding with one exception), popular contemporary music, and they even closed with the ubiquitous dance party ending that Dreamworks still hadn’t gotten tired of at that point. 

There was, as I mentioned, one performance that by far outshone the others. The villain of the film is an upper class toad turned mob boss who knows he is above these filthy sewer rats and isn’t afraid to say so. He is played by Sir Ian McKellan delivering the hammiest performance of his career, and it’s every bit as glorious as that implies. Every single second his is on screen is absolute gold and he was clearly having as much fun doing it as we are watching it. This movie could be half an hour longer and I wouldn’t mind at all if it meant we could see more of his character.

The ending was predictable but still nice, and even with the dance party ending, the music is at least catchy and the visuals are still entertaining. I liked it.