"Jack O'Lantern" Rob Lichter 2005 watercolor click for larger image.

I finally got to the movies last weekend! In fact, I saw TWO movies! Both were a little bit influenced by my own personal contexts, but let's get to them:

WALLACE AND GROMIT IN CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT

I've loved Wallace and Gromit for many many years. My first ever DVD was all three W&G short films. You all know who and what W&G are, so I'll leave out any background information.

When my son was around two years old, I introduced him to W&G and he was hooked. He still loves them and he's almost four! Whenever we see the poster or commercial, he gets all excited, though I don't think he understands fully what a movie is all about, even though he went with Mommy to see Pooh's Heffalump movie last year. I wanted to see this movie for myself, but I also wanted to take my boy. But I knew that if I went with him, the theater would be so chaotic that I'd never be able to concentrate on the film. So, Friday night, I braved the rain and the cold and snuck out to a 9:15pm showing at the local crap-hole theater as a precursor to taking Sam. Underneath my watching of the film was A)"Whoa, what a funky little crap hole this theater is!" B)I'm out of the house seeing a movie!" and C)My parenting radar went up as I considered the film for Sam's viewing.

So, that said, I'll say I liked it. I didn't LOVE it, but I certainly wasn't offended or actually disappointed. The main problem for me was that it felt stuffed and stretched. The originals were simple, 30-minute masterpieces. This felt a little too over-complicated. There were so many characters, comparatively speaking. I'm not saying they made any mistakes or missteps per se, I just felt that the characters work better in the shorts. Wallace's cheese-love was played up a bit too much and Gromit's eye-rolling became a bit tiresome after the 7th time.

However, I must say I enjoyed myself. The Bunvac actually made me laugh out loud. The animation was lovable. The designs are so simple and obviously clay. The animators leave fingerprints on the characters as a kind of anti-glitz.

When I first told my wife about the film, I complained about the adult material. For example, a woman holding up her prize melons to her chest and having men gawk at them. Time has passed and I realize that all this stuff will go over kids' heads anyway, and even if they get it, who cares? I was more offended by the opening short film, based on the Madagascar penguins. Never seeing the Madagascar movie, I wasn't excited by the characters.

I hate how all non-Pixar comupter animation sucks. It's all visually rich and detailed, but ugly. Everyone's so Ren-and-Stimpyized to look extremely jagged and crazy. The action was extremely fast-paced and annoying. And why does every cartoon have farts these days? Making farts G-rated is taking away all their power. You can't enjoy the gut-busting stifled laughter of hearing a fart in church if you hear them every day on Sesame Street!

Anyway, I recommend Wallace and Gromit. I just wasn't bowled over.

FLIGHTPLAN

Saturday night my wife and I got our very first non-friend, non-relative babysitter for a night. We were leaving the kids behind to see a movie and have dinner together! Whee!!! We both like Jodie Foster a lot and I was intrigued by the set up of the film: A woman boards an airplane with her little girl. She falls asleep, wakes up, and the girl is gone. Everyone tells her she never had a little girl. AAGHHH!!! How cool is that?

So the first half of the film was somewhat Sixth-Sense-ish with its questioning of reality and sanity. Then it did a 180 and turned into an action thriller. As soon as the turn was made I got angry. About ten minutes later I was drawn into it and felt, while it wasn't a brilliant film, it was fun and exciting. I wouldn't NOT recommend it, but it wasn't an exceptional film. Last year we got out of the house to see a movie and it was Ben Affleck's piece of crap, Paycheck. THAT was a disappointing, anger-inducing movie. What a waste of a night out that was. I didn't feel that way with Flightplan.

SPOILER ALERT: Skip this paragraph if you want to.
I had been hearing that flight attendants were boycotting the movie becuase it portrayed them in a bad light. I strongly disagree. It showed one nice one, two somewhat uncaring ones and one evil one. I would argue that it showed 100% of the sky marshals as ruthless kidnappers and killers. Why aren't any of them protesting? It portrayed all airline passengers as quick to judge and obnoxious. Why isn't everybody who's ever flown complaining? Get a grip, flight attendants. Stop complaining and bring me another pillow.

Overall, two films got me out of the house and didn't make me sorry I saw them. I guess I can't ask for more than that.

CURIOUS GEORGE: THE MOTION PICTURE

I have just been made aware of the Curious George movie coming out next year. It piqued my curiosity, since I loved the character and my almost-4-year-old son likes them too. So I went to the Moviefone website to view the trailer. The page has a little headline for the movie info: "The King of "curious"ity!" Do you idiots understand how puns work at ALL? I mean, the writer of that line thought he was making a creative literary leap by connecting CURIOUS to CURIOSITY. So, hackles up, I took a quick look at the trailer.

I was greeted by a grotesque abomination of Mr George. The monkey has now been rendered to look like some kind of Anime mutant child. He was clearly given a healthy dose of 21st century "attitude" that kids must have in their cartoons these days. On the bright side, it looked fairly well animated. On the down side...everything else. Ok, I'm being harsh. It looks like a decent kids movie. The problem is that they tinkered with a well-loved character. That never works. Let me repeat that...THAT NEVER WORKS! STOP DOING IT! We are treated, in the trailer, to Curious George drinking a latte and belching, followed by the Man With the Yellow Hat (who no longer smokes pipes) saying, "This is AWEsome!" Yes, I know, this is all perfectly acceptable behavior for cartoons. But I maintain it is NOT OK for Curous George and the Man With The Yellow Hat to enter the 21st Century. Make a movie about one of the bajillions of books he's done instead of inventing new, wacky, modern adventures.

Oh, that reminds me of a funny joke I heard: Donald Rumsfeld tells George W Bush that two Brazillian soldiers were killed in Iraq. Dubya says, "Holy cow! That's unbelievable! Exactly how many is a Brazilian?"

Anyway, the trailer concludes by telling me that the film boasts "magical" songs by Jack Johnson. Color me skeptical. That it claims to have the voice talents of WILL FREAKING FERREL among others. I'm sorry, but I really can't stand the guy. He ain't funny, folks. Face it. The emperor? NO CLOTHES! So yeah, WF plays Mr. With The Yellow Hat. After watching the trailer again, I realized he did a decent job. The Man is a non-character. He's the* straight man to George's manic monkey. So I guess he can't do too much harm. That got me thinking, why hire him at all? Why pay the million or so he probably got and not hire some talented voice guy who nobody knows? Is his voice talent really better than anyone elses? Ok, Ok, we all know it's the fact that he's a name actor. But seriously, who in their right mind is gonna go, "Hey, dude, wanna go see that new Will Ferrell movie?" Well, that goes without saying, but I meant that the hypothetical person was looking at a Curious George ad at the time. But I guess someone smarter than I also thought that Angelina Jolie had JUST the right voice to play a fish in Shark Tale, so what the hell can I possibly know? George's voice is that annoying, uvula-crushing cartoon/muppet voice that Elmo from Sesame Street, Treelo from Bear in the Big Blue House, Stitch from Lilo and Stitch and Nibbler from Futurama all use.

My final gut-wrenching discovery was that, through IMDB.COM I found out that the tagline for the film will be "Show me the monkey!"

Well, here ya go. Happy?