SYNOPSIS: In the new animated movie “Smurfs,” starring the voice of Rihanna and now playing in theatres, what begins as No Name Smurf’s (James Corden) search for identity becomes a more traditional rescue mission when Papa Smurf (John Goodman) is abducted by the evil wizard Razamel (JP Karliak).
CAST: Rihanna, James Corden, Nick Offerman, JP Karliak, Daniel Levy, Amy Sedaris, Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, Jimmy Kimmel, Octavia Spencer, Nick Kroll, Hannah Waddingham, Alex Winter, Maya Erskine, Kurt Russell, and John Goodman. Directed by Chris Miller.
REVIEW: A fun but ultimately underwhelming addition to the “Smurf” film series, the fourth franchise instalment “Smurfs” brings the whimsy and some good messages for kids but mostly feels like a rehash of their other films.
The action, which is pedal to the metal, begins with No Name Smurf’s (James Corden) identity crisis. Rather, his lack of identity crisis. Like the Seven Dwarfs, all the other Smurfs have names that reflect their personality. There’s Brainy Smurf (Xolo Maridueña), Vanity Smurf (Maya Erskine), Worry Smurf (Billie Lourd) and so on. When No Name suddenly develops the ability to summon magic from his fingertips, he feels he has found his purpose.
Problem is, his new powers attract the attention of evil wizard Razamel (JP Karliak) who kidnaps Papa Smurf (John Goodman) to get his evil hands on a magical book hidden in Smurf Village.
That sets off a rescue mission. Led by No Name and Smurfette (Rihanna, who produced the film plus wrote and recorded an original song for the soundtrack) the merry band of Smurfs travel the world. From a crazy claymation world and the inside of a mirror ball to real world (i.e. not animated) hotspots like France and Germany, they leave no stone unturned in their search.
To use Smurf vernacular, “It’s a load of smurf.”
That is to say, there’s a lot going on, often at a pace that resembles a blue streak smeared across the screen. Many of the sequences are imaginative, bordering on psychedelic—I think I now understand why the Smurfs live in magic mushrooms, er… make that mushroom houses—that entertain the eye and display a level of craft, but it’s as if director Chris Miller and screenwriter Pam Brady amped up the action to supersonic speeds to distract from the fact that story wise this is as basic as it gets.
Tone wise, it’s a different story. There’s a handful of heartfelt, radio friendly pop songs, and while they’re good tunes, there’s not enough of them to be able to call this a musical.
There are laughs, although at least some of them are of a decidedly adult nature. The film’s biggest giggle, for the grown-ups anyway, comes near the end with some judiciously applied censor bleeps courtesy of Sound Effects Smurf (Spencer X).
Like I said, “It’s a load of smurf.” A hodgepodge of music, gentle mayhem, intergenerational humour and good messages about respect, community, resilience and being yourself, it’s well performed by an interesting array of voice actors (Rihanna, John Goodman, James Corden, Nick Offerman, Daniel Levy, Amy Sedaris, Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, Kurt Russell to name a few) but the scattershot storytelling may leave you feeling blue, but not in the way the filmmakers intended.
SYNOPSIS: This live-action animated remake of Disney’s 2002 animated film, “Lilo & Stitch” tells the story of Lilo, a lonely girl who befriends a mischievous, koala-like alien named Stitch. Despite Stitch’s genetic disposition to causing chaos, Lilo’s belief in ohana, the Hawaiian concept of family, helps Stitch com e to believe in love.
CAST: Maia Kealoha, Chris Sanders, Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Hannah Waddingham, Billy Magnussen, Zach Galifianakis, and Courtney B. Vance, Tia Carrere, Amy Hill, Jason Scott Lee. Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp.
REVIEW: The latest live-action remake from Disney is an entertaining family film that may give fans of the 2002 movie déjà vu, but there’s just enough new stuff here to please older, nostalgic fans and win over new converts.
The new version, directed by “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” helmer Dean Fleischer Camp, follows the template set by the 2002 animated movie.
When we first meet Stitch he is known as Experiment 626. He’s the brilliant, but destructive creation of mad scientist Dr. Jumba Jookiba (Zach Galifianakis). Born in a lab to be an agent of chaos, he is deemed too dangerous to stay on his home planet. As he is about to be exiled, 626 makes a run for it, hijacking a space craft and ultimately crash landing in Hawaii, where he is adopted by a lonely six-year-old named Lilo (Maia Kealoha) who thinks he is a dog.
In reality, he’s more of a cross between Keith Moon and Wile E. Coyote.
Since the death of her parents Lilo has been taken care of by her older sister Nani (Sydney Elizebeth Agudong) who struggles to make ends meet and is now under the watchful eye of a social worker played by Tia Carrere.
With agents from his home planet and a determined CIA agent with the unlikely name of Cobra Bubbles (Courtney B. Vance) on the search for him, Stitch remains a troublemaker but soon learns the importance of feeling safe with Lilo and Nani, his new, adopted family.
The heightened family relationships give this otherwise run-of-the-mill alien tale a great deal of heart. It unapologetically slips into sentimentality, but the bond between Lilo and Nani, and later with Stitch, is the stuff of good kid’s cinema. The story doesn’t have the depth that Camp was able to infuse into every frame of “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On,” but he does a good job with the simple message of finding family in whatever form they appear.
Add to that Stitch’s hijinks, which are gently chaotic and likely to appeal to kids more than adults, and you get an entertaining kid’s flick that doesn’t improve on the 2002 film—it lacks the visual beauty of the original’s mix of hand drawn and watercolor animation and adds about twenty minutes of story that feels like padding—but reshapes the original with high-spirited humour and heart.
LOGLINE: Lasagna-loving, comic-strip cat Garfield returns to the big screen with a new voice, courtesy of Chris Pratt, and a new adventure. After being abandoned by his street cat father Vic (Samuel L. Jackson) as a kitten, the orange tabby leads a life of leisure with easy-going Jon (Nicholas Hoult) and canine best friend Odie. When Vic reappears, Garfield and Odie leave the lasagna behind to embark on a risky, high-stakes heist.
CAST: Chris Pratt, Samuel L. Jackson, Hannah Waddingham, Ving Rhames, Nicholas Hoult, Cecily Strong, Harvey Guillén, Brett Goldstein, Bowen Yang, Snoop Dogg.
REVIEW: “The Garfield Movie” is a big, action-packed (and product placement heavy) movie that doesn’t really feel like a Garfield movie. It’s a big, colorful action-adventure that will entertain kids, make their eyeballs spin and inspire a giggle or three, but the essence of the character, the sardonic, lazy cat with an obsession for sleeping, has been set aside in favor of a lively, fun character who has little to do with what made the comic-strip popular in the first place.
The new Garfield loses the simplicity of the strip, instead, filling the screen with rapid fire gags and frenetic action. The animation, which feels like a cross between computer generated and the comic-strip, offers up expressive character faces and fun voice work, particularly from Waddingham, who takes a generic villain character and gives her some oomph.
Aside from the father-and-son story, which touches on the importance of family, screenwriters Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgove and David Reynolds keep it simple, sentimental and predictable.
“The Garfield Movie” will likely have little appeal for anyone over the age of 10, but has a silly sense of mischief that the younger members of the family may enjoy.
A love letter to the folks who jeopardize their lives so actors can look cool taking risks on the silver screen, “The Fall Guy,” based on the Lee Majors’s TV show of the same name, is an action romance that is easy to like, but hard to love.
Ryan Gosling is Colt Seavers, stuntman for pompous Hollywood action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). He’s jumped out of tall buildings, crashed countless cars, been lit on fire and jumped through who knows how many breakaway windows in the name of making Ryderlook brave on screen and catching the eye if camera person Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt).
When a stunt goes horribly wrong, Seavers disappears, leaving the business and his relationship with Jody behind.
A year of isolation and recuperation later he goes back to work. But this time around the stunts aren’t the most dangerous part of the job. Moreno, now a director of a big budget action flick called “Metal Storm,” is pissed with him and to make matters worse, Ryder has gone missing mid shoot.
“The Fall Guy” delivers a crowd-pleasing mix of action, romance and high wattage performances from Gosling and Blunt. It is their chemistry that makes this as much fun as it is.
Set to a recurring musical motif of KISS’s “I Was Made for Loving You Baby,” their scenes provide good, old fashioned star power, with charisma to burn. The twinkle in Gosling’s eye, even as he is repeatedly brutalized on and off set, is a perfect foil for Blunt’s warmth and dead-on comic timing.
Together they help smooth over the film’s rough patches. A bit overlong, it gets unnecessarily convoluted in its last act, and loses some of its charm, but the whiz bang action and funny moments—like a fellow stuntman who helps Severs beat up the baddies as he calls out the various fighting styles from movies like “The Bourne Identity”—showcase what the movie does best, and that is deliver a sugar rush.
A cotton candy confection, light and airy, “The Fall Guy” is a bit of fun that leaves you with a sweet taste in your mouth, but not much else.
“Lock up your children,” says Winifred in “Hocus Pocus 2.” “Yes Salem. We are back!”
Twenty-nine years ago, the original “Hocus Pocus,” a comedic fantasy about the Sanderson sisters, a trio of witches played by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy, was a middling hit in theatres, and labelled “dreadful” by Gene Siskel.
But despite critical lashings and a current score of 39 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, over the years, the Sanderson sisters have become Halloween favorites, so much so, that the town of Salem, Massachusetts threw a celebration in honor of the film’s 25th anniversary.
Disney+ gives fans another wave of the wand with “Hocus Pocus 2,” a sequel that gives new life to the Sanderson sisters.
The new film begins with a flashback to hundreds of years ago in Salem. The Sanderson sisters, played as teens by Taylor Paige, Nina Kitchen and Juju Journey Brener, become outcasts, sowing the seeds of the rage that will consume them for hundreds of years.
Cut to present day. Salem teens three teens are Becca (Whitney Peak), Cassie (Lilia Buckingham), and Izzy (Belissa Escobedo) are best friends, who hang out at the local magic shop run by Gilbert (Sam Richardson). With the help of a special Black Flame Candle, supplied by Gilbert, the teen trio resurrect the sister witches, just as Max (Omri Katz), Allison (Vinessa Shaw), and Dani (Thora Birch) did decades before in the original film.
But Salem is a much different place since the sisters last visited. In the midst of a Halloween celebration, the sisters don’t inspire fear as much as admiration. So many revelers are dressed as the Sandersons, that the city hosts a look-alike contest.
But it’s not all fun and games. The sisters are looking to gather up some tasty teen life-forces and get vengeance for the mistreatment they suffered years before. It’s up to the high schoolers to stop them.
Part horror comedy, part musical (the sisters don’t understand modern day traditions, but somehow are able to belt out Blonde’s “One Way or Another” at the drop of a witch’s hat) and all nostalgia. The spectre of the 1993 haunts the new film as it pays homage to the original to the point where the new stars—Peak, Buckingham and Escobedo—get lost in the shuffle once the original sisters show up.
As fans of the first movie might expect, Midler, Najimy and Parker chew the scenery, offering up larger-than-life performances, heavy on the whimsy. They are campy—particularly when singing a revamp of Elton John’s “The Bitch is Back,” reworked as “The Witch Is Back”—and often funny in an outrageous but family-friendly way.
“Hocus Pocus 2” is fan service. It expands the Sanderson sister’s story, providing an origin story (probably the best part of the movie) and gives Parker and Najimy more to do than the original. Mix in some modern sensibility about accepting people’s differences and you have an hour and forty minutes of forgettable fun. It’s not nearly as bewitching as the 1993 film, but may cast a spell over longtime fans.
