As a reward for a good week and for being good for his sister on Friday night while Irish Woman and I went out for dinner, I took Boo out to see the only kids movie that’s out right now that doesn’t include an anthropomorphized dish rag as a main character.  In short, we saw Paddington.

Paddington is loosely based on the series of children’s books by Michael Bond.  A young bear is sent to London by his aunt to seek out the explorer that visited their family years before.  On arrival, Paddington is helped out by the Brown family, who take him to their home.  The father isn’t sure about all this, and the daughter is embarrassed by the whole thing, but the son loves it, and the mother has a good heart.  Paddington and the Brown’s have adventures as they try to seek out the explorer.  In the end, Paddington finds himself in a good home with a new family.

The casting for this movie was outstanding.  Ben Wishaw provides the voice of Paddington, and he fits the character perfectly.  Likewise, the Brown family, played by Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Madeleine Harris, and Samuel Joslin, was perfect.  Nicole Kidman plays Milicent, the taxidermist at the Natural History Museum, who tries throughout the movie to catch Paddington and add him to her collection, and she is an excellent villain.

The visuals and cinematography in the movie were quite good.  The character of Paddington is CGI, of course, but he doesn’t look cartoonish or over-done.  I did see a lot that reminded me of scenes from “Mary Poppins” or “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” in the movie, and that only added to its richness for the older crowd.

Overall, I’d give the movie an A for people with kids.  I enjoyed it, as did Girlie Bear.  It says a lot that the theater was about 3/4 full of small children and parents, and not a peep was heard for the entire hour and a half run of the movie.  This one is probably going on our Christmas list.

If you’re my age, you may remember playing Basic Edition Dungeons and Dragons.  Yeah, it wasn’t too intricate, and the characters and monsters you encountered were pretty simple, but a thirteen year old could figure it out and be a Dungeon Master in a couple of hours, and everyone had a lot of fun.  If you remember the hours of fun, gallons of soda, and mountains of snacks consumed as you wound your way through forests, dungeons, and villages, please raise your hand.

Now, imagine that somebody made a movie out of the teenage ideas of magic and monsters that were in that Basic set, and you have the makings for a movie like Seventh Son.  It’s a lot of fun, had some outstanding visual effects, and went just deep enough to enjoy.

The movie centers around Thomas, played by Ben Barns, the proverbial seventh son of a seventh son, who is bought by “Spook” Gregory, played by Jeff Bridges.  A Spook is a knight who would fit very well into a Larry Correia novel – a monster hunter and destroyer of witches.  Gregory is the last of his kind, but continues to ‘recruit’ apprentices to take over for him.  His last apprentice, played by Kit Harrington (who probably didn’t even have to change his costume from his character on a little-known TV show), is killed in a battle with Mother Malkin, played by Julianne Moore.  Gregory and Malkin have a history, including Gregory locking Malkin in a cave for a few decades, and she’s back for revenge.  Tom meets and falls in love with Alice, played by Julia Vikander, when she is about to be burned as a witch. The rest is pure monsters, magic, and mayhem.

The acting in the movie is a bit uneven, but not so bad that the movie itself is not enjoyable.  Bridges never seems to find the correct voice for Gregory, and his portrayal changes several times during the movie.  Also, the love scenes between Tom and Alice seem to have been written by a tweenage girl who has never actually been kissed, but can imagine how it would work.  Julianne Moore turns in the best performance of the picture as Malkin, which isn’t surprising.

However, the action scenes were pretty well done, and the visual effects were excellent.  Whereas Peter Jackson’s use of CGI in “The Battle of the Five Armies” was clumsy and stood out, the CGI monsters in “Seventh Son” blended in very well with the setting.

Overall, I’d give this movie a low B.  It was worth the cost of the tickets and popcorn, but won’t be something I’ll seek out later.