As the “PAW Patrol” franchise enters its 66th year—that’s in dog years—it shows no signs of slowing down. A new film, “PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie,” based on the canine first responder characters from the wildly successful Canadian kid’s show, now playing in theatres, is a big story about a small pup.
Featuring an all-star voice cast, the begins with a meteor crash in Adventure City. “It’s giving off some kind of energy,” says Ryder (Finn Lee-Epp), the leader of the PAW Patrol. The mysterious meteor imbues the PAW Patrol pups with superpowers, like super strength, elasticity, super speed and the ability to manifest fireballs. “Great, now the clumsy pup shoots fireballs out of his paws.”
For seven-year-old cockapoo Skye (Mckenna Grace), the smallest member of the newly dubbed Mighty Pups, the new powers finally levels the playing field, giving her the chance to make up in super strength what she has always lacked in confidence and size.
When Humdinger (Ron Pardo), the ex-mayor of Adventure City, and his Kitten Catastrophe Crew escapes from prison and teams with meteor expert and supervillain Victoria “Vee” Vance (Taraji P. Henson) to steal the superpowers, the Mighty Pups must fight back to save their city and possibly the world.
“When you go up against one of us, you go up against all of us,” Ryder tells Vance.
“PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie” is bigger and louder than 2021’s “PAW Patrol” or the television show. Returning director Cal Brunker pumps up the action, creating a sort of Marvel movie for the preschool set. Colourful action scenes will grab kid’s attention, but the spirit of cooperation, and messages of over-coming obstacles and never judging a book by its cover, that lie at the heart of the “PAW Patrol” franchise are never far away.
Voice work from Kim Kardashian, Chris Rock, Lil Rel Howery, Kristen Bell and James Marsden is solid, but Henson is having all the fun here. Her villain—don’t call her a “mad scientist”—is a blast, funny and fearless, she steals every scene she’s in.
“PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie” maintains what made the TV show so appealing for kids, but also has enough gags aimed at parents to round out the experience for the whole family.
If, somehow, you missed the 2013 megahit “Frozen,” and are unsure if you’ll be able to understand its sequel, worry no longer. In one of the new film’s best scenes Olaf the motor-mouthed snowman (Josh Gad) recaps the events of the original movie in a madcap and extremely high energy sequence that fills in all the gaps for the uninitiated.
The new film opens with Anna and Elsa (voiced as kids by Hadley Gannaway and Mattea Conforti), princesses of Arendelle and heiresses to the throne, hearing the story of how their father Agnarr (Alfred Molina) became king. It’s a grim fairy tale about an unprovoked attack by the Northuldra people, a battle that resulted in the death of their grandfather. Agnarr escaped but the enchanted forest, home to the Northuldra, became enshrouded by a magical mist, sealing it off from the rest of the world.
Cut to years later. Elsa, (Idina Menzel) is now Queen, a cryokinetic with the awesome power to manifest ice and snow. From her perch in Arendelle’s castle she hears a mysterious signal coming from the enchanted forest. Convinced she has woken the spirits that live within, she hightails it to the magical land to find the source of the voice. Along for the ride are Anna (Kristen Bell), her beau Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), his reindeer Sven and the chatty snowman Olaf. “Did you know and enchanted forest is a place of transformation?” says Olaf. “I don’t know what that means but I can’t wait to see what it does to each one of us.”
On the journey into the woods Elsa and Anna not only meet the forest’s denizens—Earth Giants, fire toads and a tribe of people who have been trapped in the timberland since the terrible battle—but also learn the truth about their shared family history. When they aren’t warbling a raft of new power pop ballads by the Oscar-winning Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, the sisters must make a decision that could affect the lives of everyone in Arendelle.
“Frozen 2” doesn’t have the same kind of icy wonder the original gave audiences but even as a warmed-over sequel it impresses. Advances in CGI animation allow for an even more cinematic approach than the original. Elsa riding an ice horse is into a raging sea is a stand-out image in a movie filled with fantasy sequences and fun character realization. It is pure eye candy that should entrance young viewers. Adults may get a laugh out of “Lost in the Woods,” a duet between Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and Sven that mimics 1980s power pop music videos.
The plot, an overly complicated story involving primeval forces, stymied marriage proposals and family secrets, feels over-stuffed and occasionally meandering but it does contain good messages for kids. In their travels to the north country Elsa and Anna learn the importance of the primal forcers of air, fire, water and earth in a subplot laden with ideas of respecting indigenous people, environmentalism and doing what is right for everyone.
Ultimately the success of “Frozen 2” boils down to the characters and the songs. Olaf has the most fun with his outing “When I Am Older,” but it’s Menzel’s powerhouse vocals on “Into the Unknown” that provide the film’s emotional high point. It’s also the closest thing to a “Let it Go” style number on the soundtrack.
Olaf, Sven and Kristoff are solid supporting characters but it’s Elsa and Anna who make the biggest impression. Directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee maintain and double down on the first film’s sense of empowerment. These are women who can look after themselves, who are self-sufficient and that re-modelling of the Disney princess tradition is a big part of the franchise’s appeal.
“Frozen 2” is a worthy follow-up to the original even if it feels simultaneously bursting at the seams with plot and visuals and less ambitious.
The title of “pandas,” a forty-minute documentary pretty much says it all. There’s some scientific content, a heroic biologist or two, a whimsical score by Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh and narration by Kristen Bell but mostly there are pandas in IMAX and in 3D. That is both all you need to know and essentially my review.
Pandas are, Bell tells us, the King Kongs of cute who “inspire a frenzy of adoration around the world.” Beyond the cute, however, is a serious problem. Lack of genetic diversity, fragmented habitats and isolated panda groups could lead to extinction of pandas in the wild. To remedy this a group of scientists at Chengdu Panda Base in China, inspired by a black bear breeding program in New Hampshire, are cultivating giant pandas with an eye toward introducing cubs to the wild. The film follows Qian Qian a panda born in captivity destined for the wild.
To a soundtrack populated by Baby-Boomer hits from ZZ Top and The Ramones, we watch as connections are made between people, cultures and animals, all united to save the wild panda. The photography, in beautiful full screen IMAX, is breathtaking, the message is intriguing but it is the cute that lingers. You will never enjoyed anything as much as Qian Qian enjoys eating bamboo shoots and if oversized pictures of him snacking is what it takes to alert you to the crisis facing his species, so be it.
Come for the pandas, their soulful eyes and playful nature, stay for the ecological message.
Panda is confirmed to open in Toronto on April 28th, 2018 at Ontario Science Centre.
CHIPs: It’s a remake, a comedy and an action film and yet it doesn’t quite measure up to any of those descriptors. It’s a remake in the sense that writer-director-star Dax Shepard has lifted the title, character names and general situation from the classic TV show but they are simply pegs to hang his crude jokes on.
The Circle: While it is a pleasure to see Bill Paxton in his last big screen performance, “The Circle” often feels like an Exposition-A-Thon, a message in search of a story.
The Fate of the Furious: Preposterous is not a word most filmmakers would like to have applied to their work but in the case of the “Fast and Furious” franchise I think it is what they are going for. Somewhere along the way the down-‘n’-dirty car chase flicks veered from sublimely silly to simply silly. “The Fate of the Furious” is fast, furious but it’s not much fun. It’s an unholy mash-up of James Bond and the Marvel Universe, a movie bogged down by outrageous stunts and too many characters. Someone really should tell Vin Diesel and Company that more is not always more.
Fifty Shades Darker: Depending on your point of view “Fifty Shades of Grey” either made you want to gag or want to wear a gag. It’s a softcore look at hardcore BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) that spanked the competition on its opening weekend in 2015. Question is, will audiences still care about Grey’s proclivities and Ana’s misgivings or is it time to use our collective safeword? “Fifty Shades Darker” is a cold shower of a movie. “It’s all wrong,” Ana says at one point. “All of this is wrong.” Truer words have never been spoken.
The Mountain Between Us: Mountain survival movies usually end up with someone eating someone else to stay alive. “The Mountain Between Us” features the usual mountain survival tropes—there’s a plane crash, a showdown with a cougar and broken bones—but luckily for fans of stars Idris Elba and Kate Winslet cannibalism is not on the menu. Days pass and then weeks pass and soon they begin their trek to safety. “Where are we going?” she asks. “We’re alive,” he says. “That’s where were going.” There will be no spoilers here but I will say the crash and story of survival changes them in ways that couldn’t imagine… but ways the audience will see coming 100 miles away. It’s all a bit silly—three weeks in and unwashed they still are a fetching couple—but at least there’s no cannibalism and no, they don’t eat the dog.
The Mummy: As a horror film it’s a meh action film. As an action film it’s little more than a formulaic excuse to trot out some brand names in the kind of film Hollywood mistakenly thinks is a crowd pleaser.
The Shack: Bad things in life may be God’s will but I lay the blame for this bad movie directly on the shoulders of director Stuart Hazeldine who infuses this story with all the depth and insight of a “Davey and Goliath” cartoon.
The Snowman: We’ve seen this Nordic Noir before and better. Mix a curious lack of Oslo accents—the real mystery here is why these Norwegians speak as though they just graduated RADA—Val Kilmer in a Razzie worthy performance and you’re left with a movie that left me as cold as the snowman‘s grin.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: Movies like the high gloss crime thriller “La Femme Nikita,” the assassin mentor flick “Léon: The Professional” and outré sci fi opera “The Fifth Element” have come to define director Luc Besson’s outrageous style. Kinetic blasts of energy, his films are turbo charged fantasies that make eyeballs dance even if they don’t always engage the brain. His latest, “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” not only has one of the longest titles of the year but is also one of the most over-the-top, retina-frying movies of the year. Your eyes will beg for mercy.
Wonder Wheel: At the beginning of the film Mickey (Justin Timberlake) warns us that what we are about to see will be filtered through his playwright’s point of view. Keeping that promise, writer, director Woody Allen uses every amount of artifice at his disposal—including cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s admittedly sumptuous photography—to create a film that is not only unreal but also unpleasant. “Oh God,” Ginny (Kate Winslet) cries out at one point. “Spare me the bad drama.” Amen to that.
THE UGLY
Song to Song: I think it’s time Terrence Malick and I called it quits. I used to look forward to his infrequent visits. Sure, sometimes he was a little obtuse and over stayed his welcome, but more often than not he was alluringly enigmatic. Then he started coming around more often and, well, maybe the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt is true. In “Song to Song” there’s a quick shot of a tattoo that sums up my feelings toward my relationship with Malick. Written in flowery script, the words “Empty Promises” fill the screen, reminding us of the promise of the director’s early work and amplifying the disappointment we feel today. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back, the Terrence Malick movie that put me off Terrence Malick movies. I’ll be nice though and say, it’s not him, it’s me.
EXTRA! EXTRRA! MOST COUNFOUNDING
mother!: Your interest in seeing “mother!,” the psychological thriller from “Black Swan” director Darren Aronofsky, may be judged on your keenness to watch American sweetheart Jenifer Lawrence flush a beating heart down a toilet. Aronofsky’s story of uninvited guests disrupting the serene lives of a poet and his wife refuses to cater to audience expectations. “mother!” is an uncomfortable watch, an off-kilter experience that revels in its own madness. As the weight of the weirdness and religious symbolism begins to feel crushing, you may wonder what the hell is going on. Are these people guilty of being the worst houseguests ever or is there something bigger, something biblical going on?
Aronofsky is generous with the biblical allusions—the house is a paradise, the stranger’s sons are clearly echoes of Cain and Abel, and there is a long sequence that can only be described as the Home-style Revelation—and builds toward a crescendo of wild action that has to be seen to be believed, but his characters are ciphers. Charismatic and appealing to a member, they feel like puppets in the director’s apocalyptic roadshow rather than characters we care about. Visually and thematically he doesn’t push button so much as he pokes the audience daring them to take the trip with him, it’s just too bad we didn’t have better company for the journey.
“mother!” is a deliberately opaque movie. Like looking into a self-reflective mirror you will take away whatever you put into it. The only thing sure about it is that it is most confounding studio movie of the year.
If you are to believe the new Mila Kunis comedy, “A Bad Mom Christmas,” the Yuletide is a time of joy… unless you are a mother. “Moms don’t enjoy,” we’re told, “they give joy. That‘s how being a mom works.”
In 2016’s “Bad Moms” Amy (Mila Kunis) Kiki (Kristen Bell) and Carla (Kathryn Hahn) were a Coffee Klatch of moms fed up with the burden of having to be perfect. Today not much has changed except for the weather. They are all still overworked and underappreciated as the holidays approach. “I feel like a giant stress ball from November to New Years,” says Amy.
On top of providing a memorable Christmas for their families, the original three moms, in the kind of miracle that only happens in Christmas movies, are ambushed by their own mothers, the primly perfect-in-every-way Ruth (Christine Baranski), the overbearing Sandy (Cheryl Hines) and former REO Speedwagon roadie Isis (Susan Sarandon). Each are as welcome as a bad case of Christmas Itch and all three complicate an already complicated season. “Remember when the holidays were actually fun?” asks Amy. “Let’s take Christmas back.”
Only in the era of climate change would it seem appropriate to release the snowbound “A Bad Moms Christmas” the day after Halloween. The first “Bad Moms” movie was a hell raising grrrls-gone-wild romp with plenty of gags but this one falls into the sloppy sentimental trap of many holiday movies.
It’s an hour-and-forty-minutes of dime store psychology—families aren’t perfect but they’re the only family you’ll ever have—that makes “Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever” look like “The Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, and Distress Tolerance” by comparison. It wants to warm the cockles of your heart with its tale of mothers and kids but none of it feels authentic. The heart-tugging stuff doesn’t tug because none of it feels authentic and the raunchy humour—the potty mouth kids, endless vaginal waxing jokes, the twerking on Santa and gingerbread cookies shaped like… well, you can guess—feels wedged in. Imagine a Hallmark Movie with male strippers and you get the idea.
It’s not the cast’s fault the script is drier than Aunt Ethel’s Christmas turkey. All of them—particularly Baranski and Hahn—are game but cannot turn this lump of coal into a polished diamond. Kenny G earns points as a willing pop-culture punchline and Baranski should win some sort of special prize for squeezing as many laughs out of this material as she does. Her take on “the most critical human being on the planet”—“When I was nine I made her a Mother’s Day card,” Amy says, “and she returned it with notes.”—is worthy of a much better movie.
“A Bad Mom Christmas” only gets one thing 100% right. “We’re going to watch ‘Love, Actually,’” says Amy. “Dumb movie,” sneers Ruth.
From 1977 to 1983 California Highway Patrol officers Jon Baker and “Ponch” Poncherello kept the highways and byways of Los Angeles safe with a mix of motorcycles, Brut cologne and wholesome machismo. “CHiPS” was a big TV hit and is now a big screen movie starring Michael Peña and Dax Shepard as unorthodox motorcycles cops. The Brut and the wholesomeness are gone in this raunchy update but the motorcycles and machismo survived.
Shepard, who also wrote and directed, stars as Jon Baker, a free spirited ex-motorcycle daredevil. His marriage is on the rocks, but he hopes if he becomes a police officer his wife will fall back in love with him.
Baker is teamed up with a seasoned FBI agent working undercover as Frank ‘Ponch’ Poncherello (Peña). Seems the feds needed two outsiders to infiltrate the California Highway Patrol and bust some dirty cops who robbed 12 million dollars in a daring daylight robbery.
The unlikely duo don’t hit it off right away, but Baker’s skills on the hog and Ponch’s experience make them an effective, if untraditional team. Cue the chase scenes and sex jokes.
In Shepard’s hands “CHIPS” is a mix of motorcycles and masturbation, homophobic jokes and gratuitous nudity. It’s hard to know exactly how to categorize “CHIPS.” It is a remake of a TV show although Erik Estrada, star of the original series and who also appears in the film, took to twitter to blast the remake as “demeaning” to long time “CHiPS” fans.
It could also be filed under the comedy category although I’d suggest the action sequences are more successful than the attempts at humour.
To recap: It’s a remake, a comedy and an action film and yet it doesn’t quite measure up to any of those descriptors. It’s a remake in the sense that Shepard has lifted the title, character names and general situation but they are simply pegs to hang his crude jokes on.
It’s a comedy—there is a paparazzi joke that made me laugh hard—but it’s a lowest common denominator comedy. I like a poop joke as much as anyone, but there have to be peaks and valleys. Shepard aims low, then goes lower. If you like a certain amount of shame with your cheap laughs then “CHIPS” is for you.
When the movie isn’t commenting on Ponch’s bathroom habits it is laying rubber. The crime story isn’t terribly complicated or interesting but the guys tear up the pavement with a handful of pretty good chase scenes. They are frenetic and it’s not always possible to tell exactly who is who, but the scenes add some zip to the story.
“CHIPS” is not your father’s “CHiPS.” It’s a kinda-sorta action comedy that revels in its rudeness at the expense of paying tribute to the source material.
From the comedy minds who gave us “The Hangover” comes another trio. This time it’s less a Wolf Pack than it is a Coffee Klatch of moms fed up with the burden of having to be perfect. It has its raunchy moments—thanks to Kathryn Hahn’s spirited performance—but by and large “Bad Moms” might better be titled “Tired Moms.
Amy (Mila Kunis) is a thirty-two-year-old frazzled mom struggling to keep up with her family life and work. She has two kids, the overachieving Jane (Oona Laurence) and Dylan (Emjay Anthony) and a husband (David Walton) “who sometimes feels like a third child.”
“I’m doing the best I can,” she sighs. “That makes it sadder,” replies Jane.
When an epiphany turns her from stressed mother to bad mom, she sleeps in, lets her kids make their own breakfast and drinks loads of wine with two other exhausted mothers, Carla (Hahn) and Kiki (Kristen Bell). Having tossed the shackles of the daily grind of motherhood aside, Amy is reborn, but not everyone is pleased. Her newfound freedom puts her in the crosshairs of the fascistic PTA president Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate).
The mothers in “Bad Moms” aren’t bad moms, they’re simply fed up with trying to live up to the expectations. The movie has laughs, mostly courtesy of Hahn’s laser sharp delivery of lines like, “I feel like everything that comes out of your mouth is a cry for help,” but mostly this is a manifesto for taking a breath and giving both yourself and your kids a chance to enjoy their childhoods. As Amy becomes the Norma Rae of mothers, she discovers taking a step away from what she thought she should do as a mom is the best way to discover the joy of parenthood.
It’s a story of the power of friendship and despite the promise of raunch “Bad Moms” is filled with gooey warmth. The set up is formulaic—you know the bond between children or parents will only grow and get stronger by the time the end credits roll—but despite the obvious story, and some obvious plot holes, the movie succeeds because underneath it all it’s not just about them talking about their kids, their exhaustion or how to best to dress for a night out. It’s about taking control of their lives, standing up to injustice and, yes, getting a date with the handsome widowed dad (Jay Hernandez) who drops his kid off at the playground everyday.
Melissa McCarthy is funny. Committed to wringing every last laugh out of her scripts, she’ll do anything to get a giggle and I think that’s what makes her latest film, “The Boss,” kind of an uncomfortable watch. You can tell she’s working on overdrive trying to mine jokes out of as script that is unwilling to give them up. Few bosses have ever worked this hard for this little return.
She plays Michelle Darnell, a mix and match of Leona Helmsley and Martha Stewart. A child of neglect, she’s now the ruthless ideal of the virtues of greed whose brash attitude and potty mouth have made her a “cash champion” and the 47th wealthiest woman in America. When her ex-lover and nemesis Renault (Peter Dinklage) leaks information to the SEC a conviction for insider trading brings down her empire. After a jail sentence she’s freed, homeless and without a dime to her name.
Her former assistant Claire (Kristen Bell) grudgingly gives Michelle a place to stay, allowing her to move into the small walk-up apartment she shares with her preteen daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson). With the new living arrangement comes a new business opportunity in the form of Claire’s delicious home baked brownies. “This is my way back,” she says. “You’re looking at Darnell 2.0.”
A mix of vulgarity, slapstick and sentimentality, “The Boss” starts slow and despite a funny-ish midsection never fully recovers. McCarthy pulls out all the stops, leading the violent charge in a turf war between Darnell’s Darlings and a Girl Guides troop called the Dandelions and never misses a pratfall, but the material just isn’t there.
Her trademark is making unlikeable characters likable. We’ve seen her do it in everything from “Tammy” to “Identity Thief” and beyond, but she’s met her match with Michelle Darnell. She’s so terrible she was returned to an orphanage by three sets of adoptive parents. Later in life she’s told at a country club, “no one at this table likes you,” and it’s not hard to see why. The warmth of her previous characters is AWOL and no amount of late movie sentimentality will change that.
Coming off a career high with the very funny “Spy” makes “The Boss” an even bigger disappointment. A capable and agreeable cast surrounds her—but I wish they had given Bell something more interesting to do—and certainly the idea of unchecked avarice is ripe with comedic possibilities but it never gels. When the best you can say about it is that it’s better than “Tammy,” the last film she made with director (and husband) Ben Falcone, it’s time to admit that “The Boss” is not always right.
Too old for Nancy Drew? Too young for Jessica Flectcher? How about Veronica Mars?
For three seasons Kristen Bell played the title character on television’s “Veronica Mars,” a teen detective show about a young woman who solved crimes in the upscale town of Neptune, California.
She’s back on the big screen in the inventively titled “Veronica Mars,” co-starring with some familiar faces from the original show, in a reunion movie that sees the former teenaged private eye turned psychologist and Ivy League lawyer pulled back into the PI game when her high school boyfriend (Jason Dohring) is charged with killing his pop star girlfriend.
The movie, which was funded through a Kickstarter campaign, is as cinematic as you might imagine a movie based on a TV show to be. It plays like a longer, blown up version of the show, which will play well to the fans who are hungry for more of their favorite characters, but may leave the uninitiated wondering what the fuss is all about.
Veronica Mars is an engaging character and Bell wears her like a glove, tossing off some zingy one-liners—“You won’t shoot me,” says a bad guy. “Why does everyone say that?” Mars replies, pulling the trigger—and bringing an easy charm to the role.
It’s too bad the story plays like an old episode of “Murder She Wrote,” with none of the sophistication we would expect from a big screen outing. “Veronica Mars” is a character based piece, with the murder tagged on to give us a reason for watching, but it would have been more interesting if the death was more than just a McGuffin.
On the plus side there is a nod to Canada—in the form of a sloppy karaoke version of our national anthem—and there’s even a Barenaked Ladies gag.
