Imagine that one of the best cinematic storytellers of his generation announces that he is going to tell the story of Romeo and Juliet.  Now, you love Shakespeare, and you’re excited to see how a writer and director who has always done things that you enjoy will imagine the Bard’s great love story.  As things get moving on the movie, he announces that instead of one movie, he’s making three, and will be filling out the story with expository material that Shakespeare wrote, but left out of the published work.  Shrugging, you go to see the first movie, and it’s really good.  It tells the story of the young lovers up to the famous balcony scene in its multi-hour arc, and even though there are a few extra things thrown in, you enjoy it and look forward to the next movie.  After a year’s wait, you go to see the next movie, and even though it’s a well-told story, has great acting, and has outstanding visual effects and scenery, it’s not Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet anymore.  This middle movie, in order to jazz up and fill out the story just a bit more, has a subplot of swashbuckling where Puck, the jokester from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is searching the sewers of Verona for an ancient artifact that will settle the feud between the Montagues and Capulets.  In order to make things a little easier to film, the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt is turned from a duel with swords into a hand-to-hand martial arts fight, and when Romeo kills Tybalt, it’s more of an accident.  Plus, Mercutio and Tybalt were secretly gay lovers.  The movie ends just as Romeo buys his poison, and you are left with the last 10 pages of the play to fill out the next three-hour movie.

Now, change Shakespeare to Tolkien, and change Romeo and Juliet to The Hobbit, and you have my experience last night with The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.  To be blunt, I enjoyed this movie immensely, but I left the theater pissed off.  Peter Jackson, who is an excellent storyteller, writer, and movie maker, took the framework of a children’s bedtime story, filled in plot elements from Tolkien’s other works to make it into an adult movie, and then iced the cake with characters that weren’t in the original story, including a love triangle that doesn’t belong.

I’m not going to add a plot synopsis, because like I said when I wrote about the first movie in the series, if you haven’t read The Hobbit, you’re cheating yourself and I don’t want to ruin it for you.  There may be a few spoilers in the last couple of paragraphs here, but I’ll make sure to warn you before they begin.

Just as in the first movie, the acting in this installment was outstanding.  The returning actors from the Lord of the Rings trilogy picked up just where they left off, and the new characters (principally the dwarves) are almost exactly as I envision them when I read the book.  Benedict Cumberbatch, who provides the voice of Smaug, was an excellent choice, and turns in what is probably the best performance of the movie.  Unfortunately, the character of Bilbo is a bit diminished in this chapter.  Even though he is supposed to be the principle character of the story, I kind of feel that this movie becomes the story of Thorin, and Bilbo is just a supporting character.  Yes, he still has a part in all the important scenes, but I don’t get the feeling I had in the first movie that it’s about the actions and development of Bilbo anymore.

Even though this is a three-hour movie, it doesn’t feel like it.  Even with all of the additional material and downright padding that Jackson has put in to stretch what should have been either one really long movie or two kind-of long movies into three long movies, I never noticed how long I’d been sitting in my seat.  However, the place that Jackson chose to end this chapter and begin the third movie leads me to believe that the next installment will have a lot more padding and additional material.  Honestly, if you’re tracking the story with the book as the movies go on, there are less than 100 pages left for Jackson to fill three hours with.

As expected, the visual effects are outstanding.  Jackson is a master of knitting CGI with live action, and Howard Shore’s score is woven expertly throughout the movie.  Irish Woman commented about how the visuals in this movie were better than even the first chapter of the trilogy, which came out only a year ago.

Overall, if you’re looking for an action movie with good acting, great visuals, and an enjoyable plot, this one is worth paying full price at the movie theater.  It’s not for young kids, but the theater had everything from teenagers up to senior citizens in the seats.

However, if you’re a long-time fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, there are a few things you should know.  (Avast, ye swabs!  There be spoilers ahead!  Read on at yer own risk!)

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Tonight, I took Boo out for a movie and saw Disney’s new movie “Planes“.  It’s the latest computer animated film from Disney, and is set in the “Cars” universe.

The plot revolves around Dusty Crophopper, a plucky little cropduster who dreams of becoming more.   He takes a chance on a tryout for an around-the-world race, and gets in.  He is supported in this by his friends, including a crusty old Navy Coursair named Skipper.  Through hard work, determination, and a lot of heart, he learns to be a good racer and competes with the big boys.

Like I said, the movie occurs in the same universe as Cars, and it shows.  Cars, planes, blimps, and just about everything else that has a motor is alive and a part of the story.  The movie follows a similar formula as Cars in that a young racer turns to an old hero for help and becomes something special.  The formula is switched a bit in that instead of being a racer who needs help from the old wiseman to discover an inner strength, Dusty has the inner strength, but needs the aid of Skipper to learn how to translate it into being a good racer.  Throughout the movie, the character of Dusty is shown to be a decent fellow in a world of people who are only in it for themselves.  As part of the plot, these traits help to make him into a true hero.

The casting for this movie was very well done.  Dane Cook voiced Dusty, so now I can finally say I like a movie with Dane Cook in it.  Stacy Keach provided the voice for Skipper, an old war hero who takes Dusty under his wing and teaches him to really fly.  Supporting characters include Chug, a fuel truck voiced by Brad Garrett, Dottie, a repair vehicle voiced by Terri Hatcher, and El Chupacabra, a fellow racer from Mexico voiced by Carlos Alaszraqui.

The movie clocks in at 92 minutes, and is one of the better paced films we’ve watched lately.  Boo sat through it with minimum of fidgeting, and I was never bored.

The animation was excellent, especially when you consider that it was modeled on an earlier CGI movie.  The animators definitely borrowed extensively from existing animation from Cars for background characters.  A lot of the stadium shots during the races were very reminiscent of the stadium shots in both Cars films, except that every other ‘person’ in the crowd was an airplane.  Rather than looking dated or out of place, these characters blended in very well with what is definitely new work when it comes to the aircraft in the movie.  The animation for the airplanes was very well done.  Where they needed to be cartoonish, as in their ‘face’, they were, but otherwise they looked very much like airplanes.  Once again, the backgrounds in these movies are almost photo-realistic, and the fast-paced flying scenes were reminiscent of Imax films on airplanes and stunt flying.

Interestingly, this is not a Pixar production, which is a shift from the original “Cars” movies.  This movie was produced by DisneyToon studios, and appears to be the first of three “Planes” movies.   I hope this does not signal an absorption of Pixar into the greater Disney empire.  Pixar’s quasi-independence has allowed it to produce consistently excellent movies, while Disney tends to bat around .500.

If you’re looking for an outstanding family movie that both kids and parents will enjoy, you will probably like “Planes”.  Like most well-done CGI movies, it’s worth the price of admission to the big screen, and I expect that it will be on our DVD shelf when it comes out.

Irish Woman and I took the kids to see Despicable Me 2 this afternoon.  We all enjoy the original, and to be honest, this one was just as good.

The plot revolves around Gru and his adopted daughters, Margo, Edith, and Agnes, voiced by Steve Carell, Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Geier, and Elsie Fisher.  After giving up being a super-villain, Gru has begun using his extensive research and production capabilities to develop a line of jelly and jam.  An international agency that tries to track down evil geniuses and bring them to justice recruits Gru to find out who stole a serum that turns animals into vicious killers.  Enter Lily, voiced by Kristen Weig, who partners with Gru to find the super villain and the formula.  Adventure ensues, and we all learn a valuable lesson about friendship and family.

The strengths of this movie are the same as for the original.  The voice acting is excellent, the animation is top-notch, and the humor is appropriate both for adults and children.  The minions, the little yellow fellows who work for Gru, are back with more physical humor than ever, and they make the movie go from an enjoyable romp into a side-splitting comedy on multiple occasions.  The way that the story connects on a personal level is how it deals with the family dynamic between Gru and his girls.  As a member of a blended family, the way that the movie deals with that is, to me, wonderful.

One of the few weaknesses of the movie, and there aren’t many, is that it follows very much the same formula as the first one.  Gru has a task to do, he does it, someone close to him gets into danger because of it, and he goes to the rescue.  The formula is finished by a disco song played at the end of the movie.  That being said, even when I recognized this, it didn’t distract from a wholly enjoyable movie.

One other quibble I had was the absence of Julie Andrews, who voiced Gru’s mother in the original movie.  This was a tad disappointing, as I enjoyed that character as much as I did any of the others.

Overall, I’d recommend this movie to anyone who enjoyed the first one.  You definitely need to have seen the first movie in order to understand some of the major plot points in this one, but it’s not much of a chore to enjoy a good movie so that you can more fully enjoy this one.

Attention Hollywood:  We get it, OK?  The fathers of teenagers, especially teenage girls, are backwards, violent, dull bullies.  They do not welcome change in the ways that things happen, but they will eventually have a change of heart when faced with no other choice.

Now that that’s said, let’s talk about “The Croods“, the latest animated feature from Dreamworks.

Plot Synopsis (Some Spoilers)

The Croods are a family of cave dwellers who live on the ragged edge of extinction.  They are isolated from other human populations because the others have died off.  In order to keep his family alive, Grug, the father, is rather neurotic about keeping everyone inside their cave as much as possible.  His teenage daughter, Eep, dreams of what exists beyond the limits of her father’s comfort zone.  One night, she spies something outside the door to the cave, and sneaks out.  She meets a wandering teenage boy named Guy.  After being caught by her dad, she is being dragged back to the cave when the world starts shaking around them.  A rockslide reveals a land of wonderful plants and creatures, which the family must cross in order to survive.  Grug makes the usual movie dad moves of being an overprotective, controlling dolt, but in the end shows that he can accept changes.  And they lived happily ever after.

The cast includes  Nicolas Cage (Grug), Emma Stone (Eep), and Ryan Reynolds (Guy).  The minor characters are played by Catherine Keener as Ugga, the mother, Chloris Leachman as Gran, the grandmother, and Clark Duke as Thunk, the moronic brother.  The other characters in the story are a baby sister named Sandy and a lemur/sloth/whatever named Belt that have no real lines, but add comic relief to the story.

All of the voice acting is done well and I could believe that those animated characters would speak with their assigned voices, with the exception of Grug.  Nicolas Cage used his natural voice for this character, and it just didn’t seem to fit very well.  The character is barrel chested and muscular, but Cage’s slightly whiny, higher pitched voice didn’t work for me.

The animation in this story is amazing.  There were points in the movie where I had to work hard to not believe that the settings were not actual footage from the real world with cartoons added.  The details of the characters and the animals they encounter were astonishing.  Dreamworks came right up to the edge of the uncanny valley on this one, but stayed just on the side of ‘cartoonish’ rather than’weird’.  The animals in the movie have a Dr. Seuss feel to them, but with a sharp, toothy edge, and are rendered in a detail that would have been impossible a few years ago.

The story itself, while having some novel twists to it, has been done so many times, including by Dreamworks, that it’s predictable.  The character of Grug is especially cliché.  He follows the archetype of the father characters in other movies such as How to Train Your Dragon, Hotel Transylvania, Brave, and The Goofy Movie – A lout who tries to keep his family safe to the point that it becomes comical and who scorns any ideas from younger, hipper characters.  I guess all that can be done in a family friendly movie has been done and overdone.

The pacing of the story was actually quite good.  While the “loutish father” schtick is played over and over, the plot moves along very well.  The movie comes in at 98 minutes, and I never felt like it was dragging or rushed.

Overall, I’d give the movie a B.  It’s worth a rental or a matinée, but not worth paying full price.  It’s also pretty much the only movie for young children in theaters at the moment, so expect a crowd at the cineplex.

Irish Woman and I snuck away today to catch a matinée of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit:  An Unexpected Journey.  The Hobbit was one of the first real books I ever read, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing it done in the same manner as The Lord of the Rings.  Long story short, I enjoyed it, but if you’re a stickler for movies staying true to the books they’re based on, then you might not.  Jackson added a bunch of stuff from other Tolkien writings, changed a few other things around, and added a few things that he pulled down from the ether.  Some of the stuff he added I can understand because they fill plot holes that arise when trying to make a book into a movie.  A lot of it I either have to wonder if it was necessary or look at as someone adding to another’s masterpiece so that they can feel they contributed.

I’m not going to go through a plot summary, because honestly I think that if you haven’t read The Hobbit, you ought to.  It’s a classic, and its story of ordinary people being the bedrock of freedom is one you really need to experience at the leisurely pace of the written word.

Of course, the visual effects of the movie were outstanding.  Jackson is a master of weaving CGI and live action film together in a way that is pretty much seamless.  There were times, however, where large panning shots looked a bit blurred unless I focused on one aspect or another, which I didn’t experience in the LOTR series.

The pacing of the movie was about the same as the LOTR films.  A couple of scenes of talking followed by “we’re walking and walking and walking” followed by an action scene followed by “we’re walking and walking and walking and walking”.   Irish Woman remarked afterward that it didn’t seem like 3 hours, while I was definitely noticing it.  Note to filmmakers:  If you’re going to make a movie over 2 hours long, put an intermission in the middle.

Also, if the extra stuff that Jackson put in hadn’t been in there, it would have been a nice tight 2 hour movie, or it could have been a nice tight 3 hour movie that would have had its stories ended in a nice tight 3 hour movie next year, with no extraneous third movie.

The music was just as good as the LOTR soundtrack, with stirring orchestral music by Howard Shore.  Tolkien also added more singing by the characters in the story, so there is a quasi-musical number in the beginning when the dwarves are doing the dishes.  That being said, if the hair on the back of your neck doesn’t stand up when the dwarves sing about the loss of their mountain kingdom, turn in your geek card.

The acting was excellent. Ian McKellan repeats his stellar performance as Gandalf the Gray, and is joined in return appearances by Christopher Lee, Ian Holm, Elijah Wood, Hugo Weaving, and Cate Blanchett.  Richard Armitage does an excellent job playing Thorin.  Martin Freeman puts in one of the best performances of the movie as Bilbo Baggins.  He plays a tough hobbit rather than whining glutton.  His Bilbo is more of a country gentleman who has chosen to become an adventurer and has more backbone than even he knows.

One thing I didn’t care for:  it’s been made in such a way that I can’t share it with Boo for years to come.  The Hobbit is basically a children’s story.  Yes, there are swords and bloodshed and such in the story, but it was never done in such a way that a child old enough to read couldn’t handle it.  LOTR was, on the other hand, a story for adults, so I don’t mind waiting to let him see and read The Two Towers until he’s older.  I have read The Hobbit to all of my kids, and I will do so with Boo.  However, with the rather graphic way that combat and the more scary parts of the story are done, I won’t be letting Boo watch this one until he’s much older.  I wouldn’t suggest trying to take your young kids to see this one in the theater.  I would suggest that you see it without them and then make your own decision as to whether or not your little ones can handle it.

Otherwise, I enjoyed the movie.  Taken as a stand-alone movie as well as a prequel to LOTR, it’s a good start to the story.  It will definitely end up on my movie shelf once it comes out on DVD, and I look forward to next winter when the second installment comes out.