Despicable Me - 3D

First Hit: A surprisingly good film with a thoughtful story.

3D films are here to stay. Although this one used the “in your face” dramatization of 3-D more than some of the others of recent time, it wasn’t over kill.

I was reluctant to see this film because of the previews; meaning why would I want to see an animation film about someone of despicable character? However I did see this film and felt the whole story was told in a wonderful, funny, and kind hearted way.

The basic story is this: Gru, (Who came up with that name?) wants to "out steal" his archrival Vector who has recently stolen the Pyramids of Giza. Gru’s plot is to steal Vector’s shrinking machine, then shrink and steal the moon. But to get into Vector’s house he befriends three orphans selling cookies to help him out. The orphans grow on him and teach him about love.

Not much of a plot, but the way it is pieced together with caring dialogue, funny lines and scenes, and great animation made this film work really well.

Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud did a great job of directing this and also selecting the actors for the character’s voices. Ken Daurio did an excellent screen play of Sergio Pablos’ story.

Overall: A wonderfully executed film with an endearing story which had the child in me and the children in the theater totally involved.

Toy Story 3: 3D

First Hit: An outstanding film. Creative and thoughtful story executed with perfection.

The animation of both the toys and humans was wonderful. The subtle distinction between human characters and toy characters was incredible.

The story line was sweet and thoughtful. It was aimed at a level which was accessible to both young and old alike. In essence, the toy’s human, Andy, is too old to play with toys and is going off to college. It's time for him to move on from playing with toys and possibly get rid of them.

He decides to take one (Andy) with him to college and put the others in the attic. However, the bag with the attic headed toys gets thrown out and ends up in a day care center. At first the toys think it’s going to be good but they soon find out it is toy hell on earth. Andy finds them and they plot a course to break out of the center.

Director Lee Unkrich did a fantastic job of putting this story together. Writers Michael Arndt and John Lasseter did a great job of creating an adult and young person accessible story.

Overall: This film could very well be nominated for a best picture Oscar.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

First Hit: I didn't get the point of this film and ended up being bored after a half-hour. A few funny quips does not a film make.

George Clooney is the voice of Mr. Fox who, with his wife Mrs. Fox (voiced by Meryl Streep), get dangerously close to getting caught as they raid a hen house. He promises to never do this again and gets a straight job as a reporter to a paper no one reads. He gets antsy, moves his family from a fox burrow and into a tree. 

The tree is near three farmers who make goods Mr. Fox likes to eat. He wants to be a real fox again by going out and raiding things. So he lies to Mrs. Fox telling her he's going to meetings and sets out to raid the three most feared farms near his property. 

The farmers get angry and come after him. He gets shot at and loses his tail. He has to tell Mrs. Fox he lied. Their son is jealous of a cousin who can do most anything he does better. But in the end the family goes out and gets his tail back.

I couldn't figure out what I suppose to care about. The dialog was quipish and rather dull although the animation was somewhat interesting. It was done in an old fashion stop motion way using props and physically adjusted movement.

I kept wondering through the whole film, what am I to care about. A good film subtly entices the audience to care about someone or a cause. There is nothing here to care about. 

Clooney is perfect at reading Mr. Fox's quippish lines which are punctuated by a whistle and a couple of mouth generated clicks. However, these lines and noises might be better served in an Ocean’s 11 film. Wes Anderson spent a fair amount of money on something that has little interesting value.

Overall: Don't bother even if you're bored on a Sunday afternoon and it's a $2.00 video rental.

9

First Hit: Beautifully constructed in every way, the story takes a second seat to the brilliant characters, their movement, and the detail which exudes the definition of quality.

This story has been told many times in many films; society and man does what he seems to do best, and that is destroy himself.

In 9, a government (with unnecessary references to a Nazi regime) is hell bent to create master machines to run everything because machines can do it better. Their belief is that we will end up having a better way of life.

But like the computer HAL, in 2001 – A Space Odyssey, machines seem to get to the point where they don’t trust or think they need humans, therefore they begin to destroy their creators. The chief inventor and designer of the Master Machine in 9 realizes this problem when his creation starts to destroy everyone therefore he wants to correct the problem.

To do this he creates small soft human like machines made of cloth on the outside and machine parts on the inside. But what makes these machines different is that he infuses each one with a part of his soul. Therefore each one of the 9 new character based machines embodies a particular strength and feature of its creator. They were named (labeled) with their number on the back and were numbered in the sequence in which they were built.

Each one was meant to work with the other in some way so that they would represent the creator as a whole. With his last soul transference, in which he dies, he finishes building 9.

The film begins with 9 waking up and searching his surroundings and when he looks out the window and sees another character, like him, dragging something down the road he heads out to make a connection. As he reaches the street, the expansive pictures show a destroyed world with no other living thing, except these characters whom we meet one by one, and a monster machine.

This initial monster machine is a cat like machine which hunts and chases after these little characters like they are mice. However, when we follow it back to a big imposing building we find it under the control of another machine, the Master Machine.

The cat machine finds a special disk like device, which was first found by 9, and mounts it into the Master Machine. This device brings the Master Machine to full life and it begins to create more machines which are hell bent on destroying any life other than itself.

The characters 1 – 9 realize they will all die if they don’t learn to work together using all their specialty skills and strengths to defeat the Master Machine once and for all.

The animation is outstanding in every sense of the term and craft. Shiny metallic items and soft cloth items are all given the same reverential craftsmanship in their representation. The voices provided by Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, Jennifer Connelly, Fred Tatasciore, Elijah Wood, Alan Oppenheimer, Tom Kane, and Helen Wilson are outstanding.

Overall: This is a well crafted film and reminds me that age old stories can be told in interesting wonderful new ways.

Coraline (3D)

First Hit: I think I’m going to be at odds with most other reviewers of this film: I really liked the mixing of the old and new technology with the filming of the character models movement by movement using high tech 3D, but for me the pacing of the story dragged the film down.

This film is remarkable in the way it uses handmade puppets, which were moved and filmed bit by bit in 3D, so that the audience sees the film as fluid and amazingly beautiful.

This old time (claymation type) process married with a non-gimmicky 3-D was extraordinary in that it doesn’t push the 3D images into your laps or eyes. It uses the 3D to enhance the geographic scene and stage of the film.

The story is of a girl who is stuck in an old building apartment while her parents are busy writing a garden manual and catalogue. She wants to go out and work in the garden but her parents are too busy and keep telling her to explore the house, which she does. She discovers a small door in one of the rooms and when it is opened it opens to a brick wall.

While dreaming, dream mice lead her to this small door and in the dream it opens to a tunnel to an alternate reality. In this alternate reality she has a mom and dad who pay attention to her and say they love her. But the darkness of the film and the feel of these alternate parents we know we’re headed to something not very pleasant. She is befriended by a young boy and his cat which help her sort out the real from the unreal and how to help other kids stuck in this alternate space.

There was a lot of attention paid to the visualization of this film, as it needed to be, however the execution of the story unfolded in a way that was too slow, especially for children snoozing next to me and the restless kids in front of me. The graphics, 3D, and execution of the visuals are first rate and extraordinary but the movement of the story never caught up to it.

Overall: This was film was fantastic from a visual sense and mediocre from a storyline execution sense making the film too long.