HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is a great family film with a lot of plot, clever lines, and fascinating and amusing characters (humans and dragons.) Set on a desolate Viking island, but where most of the main adults have Scottish accents (Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson especially--they're Scottish after all!) the story centers on a sensitive and not at all brutish child of the village's leader (Butler) who is an embarrassment to his father because of his lack of bulk and uninterest in killing dragons, which the village seems to love to do. When the son befriends a dragon and trains it to fly, lots of conflict arise. The story is so quickly paced that kids and their parents remained in rapt attention through to the end, no talking, no potty breaks, to noisy trips back to the concession counter, etc. I don't feel the film is necessary to see in 3-D--just an extra expense ($3-4 per ticket)--you might miss a few flying dragons blowing flames into your face--not worth the extra cost. GRADE--A-
Another story featuring a wimpy kid but live action is DIARY OF A WIMPY KID based on a popular young peoples novel that includes graphic design, which is also incorporated into this film. I have to admit I really enjoyed this movie--it was a delightful surprise--sort of a combination of Malcolm in the Middle and The Wonder Years, and taking the best aspects of those shows and whittling them down to a 95 minute feature. Many of the best lines of dialogue were a riot, especially for the adults in the audience. It is one of those "family" films that doesn't dumb down the action or dialogue or characters, and has a great feel for character, friendship, truth and the awkwardness of growing up. GRADE--B+
Finally, talk about dumbing down, here is an "adult" comedy that is so stupid and insulting and embarrassing to watch that it made me wince many times over. I wanted to walk out after 10 minutes, but kept waiting for it to improve, since the usually reliable John Cusack stars and produced this mess. The plot makes no sense at all. If you like racist, sexist, homophobic jokes, and if you enjoy watching grown 40 year old men acting like immature 17 year olds (complete with vulgar language, sex, beer, vomit, crude pranks, partying, etc, then HOT TUB TIME MACHINE is your movie. There were glimmers of cleverness like a running gag about how the one-armed man (Crispin Glover) really lost his arm, but they become so distasteful that by the end, you want to vomit, along with several of the insipid characters. Probably the worst P.O.S I've seen since THE LOVE GURU several years back. GRADE--D
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment