A weekly feature from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest and most interesting movies! This week Richard looks at the photo realistic “The Lion King”–“You will believe a meerkat can sing! And lions too!”–the poignant family drama “The Farewell” and the dark Jessie Eisenberg satire “The Art of Self-Defense.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard joins the number one news broadcast in the country, the CTV National News, to talk about the continued popularity of “The Lion King.”
Watch the whole report HERE!
A fitting tag line for the new, photo-realistic “The Lion King” would be something along the lines of, “You will believe a meerkat can sing! And lions too!” The good folks at Disney and director Jon Favreau have created computer-generated animals that chatter and sing like high-tech Mr. Eds but does it improve on the original or is it a deepfake copycat of the 1994 classic?
Beat for beat the story is familiar. We see young Simba, the lion prince voiced by JD McCrary as a cub, then by Donald Glover as a full-grown king of the jungle, presented to his tribe by proud parents Mufasa (James Earl Jones) and Sarabi (Alfre Woodard). One day the Pride Lands, everything the sun touches, will be his (“It belongs to no one,” intones Mufasa, “but it will be yours to protect.”) unless his evil uncle Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who feels he is the rightful heir, has his way. After an attempt or two to jump the succession queue Scar succeeds, manufacturing the ultimate betrayal of his brother and nephew. Simba, riddled with guilt, wrongly thinking he caused the death of his father, goes into exile. “The king is dead,” Scar hisses, “and if it weren’t for you he’d still be alive. A boy who killed a king. Run-away Simba and never return.”
The young cub finds his way into the arms of a brave warthog Pumbaa and wise-cracking meerkat Timon (voiced by Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner). They teach him the philosophy of “Hakuna Matata”—essentially, “Turn the ‘WHAT!’ into ‘So what.’”—and how to survive without eating them or any of their friends. When Simba’s childhood girlfriend Nala (Beyoncé Knowles-Carter) brings stories of how Scar and his hyena henchmen are destroying the Pride Lands with over hunting and cruelty, Simba returns to reclaim his rightful birthright.
The photo-realistic look of “The Lion King” resembles one of those Disney nature documentaries. The visuals, made up of bits and bytes, are remarkable in their life-like appearance but ultimately feels like a triumph of technology over emotional storytelling. The Shakespearean narrative arc of the story still reverberates with echoes of “Hamlet” but with the realism comes less nuance in expression. Simba and Nala look like lions who have learned to speak but the character work, a raised eyebrow or a scrunched face, the things that make characters really come alive, is missing. They sing and dance but their faces are weirdly without the joy that should come along with their actions. Favreau takes pains not to anthropomorphize the animals any more than necessary but in staying faithful to the innate inspirations for the characters he misses something crucial, the human element that connects with the audience.
The intense scenes, particularly the death of the patriarch, may be too intense for younger viewers. The animated version was one thing but the hyper-realistic version of events is horrific the first time we see it and even more-so in flashback.
The voice work mostly works. It’s a pleasure to hear James Earl Jones’s dulcet tones and the inclusion of African actors like John Kani, who plays the mystical mandrill Rafiki, is a very comfortable fit in the film’s soundscape. Rogen and Eichner provide some much-needed comic relief and enliven any scene they’re in.
The songs will be familiar to “Lion King” fans, although they appear in altered form. “Hakuna Matata” and “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” brim with fun but two of the original film’s best-known songs—Scar’s “Be Prepared” and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”—have been reworked. Scar’s song is underplayed while “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” is, for no good reason, set during daylight hours.
“The Lion King” is a stunning technical achievement, but feels like a risk-free exercise in nostalgia that will entertain your eye but likely won’t engage your heart.
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk the new movies coming to theatres including “The Lion King”–“You will believe a meerkat can sing! And lions too!”–and the dark Jessie Eisenberg satire “The Art of Self-Defense.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Richard joins “CTV News at Noon” anchor Michelle Dube to preview the hype surrounding the photo-realistic remake of “The Lion King.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (starts at 29:20)
It’s every coach potatoes dream—a universal remote that not only works the television and x-box but also can control real life. Don’t want to have an argument with your spouse? Just fast-forward through it. Are your neighbors being too noisy? That’s what the mute button is for.
In the new movie Click Adam Sandler plays an overworked architect with a demanding boss whose job leaves him no time for his wife and two cute kids. When he buys a magical remote from an eccentric clerk in the Beyond section of Bed, Bath and Beyond he soon learns that he essentially can turn his life into the equivalent of a director’s cut DVD. He can pause the action, fast forward through the bad bits and there’s even a commentary track by . It’s a universal remote that controls his universe. When the remote starts making choices for him he loses not only control, but his whole life. Instead of fast forwarding through a few minutes here and there it zips through years. He becomes successful, but misses out on the important parts of life. When he finally realizes what is happening it’s too late. He has fast-forwarded his entire life away.
Like all Adam Sandler movies Click is chock full of toilet humor and his trademark angry episodes, but also has a sweet side. It’s a lesson in the need to really appreciate life’s little moments and close friends and family more.
Click is It’s A Wonderful Life with better technology.
Once again Sandler rides a story arc familiar to fans of his movies—a short-tempered guy learns about love and life after overcoming some hardship. Somehow Sandler has managed to merge the on-screen personas of Jimmy Stewart and Sam Kinison blending the best of both into one character that he recycles from movie to movie. It’s effective in Click, but it isn’t anything we haven’t seen before from him.
More fun is the supporting work by Christopher Walken as the slightly sinister store clerk / master of time. His frizzed out mad scientist hair and quirky speech steal every scene he is in and provide many of the film’s laughs.
Click is that rare movie with both a moral and flatulence jokes.
When English boxer Bruno Frank said “Boxing is just show business with blood,” he was on to something. Ever since 1937’s Kid Galahad entertained depression era audiences, there has been a steady flow of films set inside the square circle. For generations, audiences have flocked to the intersection of showbiz and blood — the movie theatre — to see films like Gentleman Jim, Million Dollar Baby and, of course, Rocky.
This weekend, Mark Wahlberg adds to that list when he stars as pugilist Micky Ward in The Fighter, joining a long line of actors who have strapped on gloves to play real life boxers.
In Resurrecting the Champ, a sportswriter thinks a homeless man (Samuel L. Jackson) might actually be a down-on-his-luck boxing legend. Loosely based on the story of Bob Satterfield, a fighter ranked in Ring magazine’s list of 100 greatest punchers of all time, it takes some liberties with the real story but makes up for inaccuracies with a great performance from Jackson.
Another flawed boxing movie saved by its performances is The Great White Hope, based on Jack Johnson, a boxer nicknamed the “Galveston Giant.” For some reason the names were changed for the movie, but the story of Johnson’s struggle with racism is brought to vivid life in a towering performance by James Earl Jones, who originated the part on Broadway. A 2005 documentary Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson revisited the story, correcting many of the mistakes of the original film.
Somebody Up There Likes Me stars Paul Newman (replacing James Dean who died before filming) as world middleweight champion Rocky Graziano. The fighter is portrayed as a tough kid from New York’s “Lower East Side, where both sides of the tracks were wrong” whose violent and callous ways are changed by the love of a good woman.
As mushy as the love story is — it inspired Sylvester Stallone when he was writing the Adrian storyline in Rocky — the fight scenes are brutally authentic.
Probably the greatest boxing bio is Raging Bull, the story of Jake “Come on, hit me. Harder. Harder” LaMotta, which earned Robert De Niro a Best Actor Oscar. But Cinderella Man, the inspiring true story of James J. Braddock and Gentleman Jim (which sees Errol Flynn playing Jim Corbett, the first heavyweight champion of the world under the new Marquis of Queensberry) is also worth a look.
