End of Month Youtube Videos

March 31, 2015March 31, 2015 | Rachel's Reviews

I got some new videos up on the channel I think you will enjoy. Definitely check them out. If you haven’t already please subscribe to my channel and give me some thumbs up if you think they are any good. Thanks!

Here’s one on movies I like to watch when I am sick.

Here’s the end of my blu-ray review series

Movies that I watched in theaters in March

Here’s one on why I think critics are particularly tough on Christian films but it would apply to any film with a narrow audience

Here’s my youtube review of Dreamworks Home

And finally here are the movies I watched at home in March. Not my greatest viewing month but Akira was pretty cool. I have to watch it a couple more times before doing a written review.

Again, thanks for giving them a watch and thumbs up. I really appreciate it. On to April!

Home: A Dreamworks Hit

March 30, 2015March 30, 2015 | Rachel's Reviews

So this weekend shows how little I know about the box office. Dreamworks Home was a huge hit at theaters making 54 million and ending up 1 by a long shot over the comedy Get Hard that brought in 34.

To say I’m surprised would be an understatement. To me Home was at best forgettable and the kids in my theater didn’t seem engaged at all. It’s bright and colorful but saddled with a predictable story and inconsistent characters. Maybe I’ve just seen too many movies because everything felt like a retread of better films and I was left asking a lot of questions about how this world could possibly work. If I’m thinking about all the plot holes than it is usually a bad sign. Plus, the voicecasting I thought was way off. Worst of all it didn’t make me laugh. Not one laugh.

Most critics were a little kinder than me but even the positive reviews said it wasn’t a classic, kind of forgettable. The fact it made more than How to Train Your Dragon 2 opening weekend is a huge surprise. But then again Maleficent was a huge hit and I thought that was total crap so what do I know?

That said, I’m thrilled for Dreamworks. They definitely needed a hit so good for them. It makes no sense to me but neither did Birdman winning Best Picture so who knows?

Why do you guys think Home did so well? What did Dreamworks do right with this release? It still has a huge budget to overcome so it may not help Dreamworks as much as it should but we will see.

Home Review

March 27, 2015March 27, 2015 | Rachel's Reviews

Dreamworks in Crisis

I hate to say it guys but I’m calling it- Dreamworks time of death, March 2015. Let’s give a little bit of background. For years Dreamworks has been battling it out with Disney and Pixar scoring some hits with particularly the Shrek films being the apex of their financial success. They’ve also had creative victories like the How to Train Your Dragon series, Kung Fu Panda and Prince of Egypt. Unfortunately they have been unable to curtail costs so even seeming successes were actually studio failures.

Last year it all came to fruition with 3 releases. Mr Peabody and Sherman with a budget of 145 mil (ridiculous for a comedy like that) made 272 million at box office. This might seem pretty good but when you take into account theater shares and marketing they took a 57 million hit on it. Then they had How to Train Your Dragon 2, a healthy success, with budget of 145 million (see Sherman should not have cost as much as HTTYD2!) making 618 million. Most of these proceeds were overseas (over 400 million of it) and it was significantly less than its predecessor so on the whole a disappointment (total profit 107 million).

Then we had Penguins of Madagascar, a fun comedy which cost $132 million and made $367 million Sounds pretty good right? Nope that 132 doesn’t include incentive based pay to the actors! So in the end they took another 57 million hit on Penguins. This is after losing 87 million on Rise of the Guardians and 13.5 million for Turbo in 2013. As you can see whatever good Dragon did is quickly evaporated.

Then at the end of last year they closed their PDI animation studio laying off 1/3rd of their artists.

That’s where we get to their latest release, Home. I think many of us were hoping this could be a Frozen size savior for the studio but sadly it is far, far, from that. In fact, if I am honest it is closer to this years’ George Lucas offering Strange Magic than anything else. It cost $135 million to make and I have a hard time believing it will do better than Mr Peabody and Sherman which was actually pretty clever. So in other words another loss.

I’m grasping at straws to find things I liked about Home but there isn’t much.

Home Review-

The best thing I can say about home is that it is harmless. Kind of like Strange Magic there is nothing offensive or off putting. Your kids will be moderately entertained so if you need a babysitter you could do worse but that is about it.

Home is based on the book The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex, which my sister says is quite brilliant. It is about an alien named Oh that is the ‘most special’ character in his entire race like we’ve seen in movies from Twilight to the Host to Harry Potter. What makes him unique? Well, he makes mistakes and likes to have friends and be happy. Not exactly defeating Lord Voldemort but we will go with it.

He is part of a race called the boovs who run away from their nemesis and conquer other planets. They have just conquered earth and sucked up all the humans relocating them all to Australia. I suppose if I had been more engaged I wouldn’t have been left asking so many questions about this basic premise. For example, why do the boov know enough about humans to build houses for every human family, evidently recreate hospitals, schools, and even an amusement park and yet they do not know something like ‘humans live in families and have a Mother and a Father’?

How do the boov know how to run everything in a city like New York and yet are eating paintings, footballs and using a hair dryer for an inhaler? How do they know how to work a power plant and yet the lights are always on? How are they planning on getting food in this land they have conquered and wouldn’t gathering all of the human race in one place be a really bad idea? Nothing like 6 billion humans that have mastered interstellar flight and atomic warfare all together on an island…especially for a race that is evidently so gun shy?

Also why does Oh drink gasoline, motor oil, eat plastic and yet is disgusted by a blue tablet and urine from a restroom? I think that is an attempt to be funny but it doesn’t really make sense so it didn’t make me laugh. It would have been more funny if he had loved the urine and blue tablet. I mean if we are stooping to that level isn’t that funnier?

I know I’m overthinking it but again it just shows how disengaged I was with the story and characters that I started asking these questions.

So our misfit Oh tries to throw a party for his new neighbors but nobody in his race likes him or parties (which again makes me ask how does he even know what a party is? And yet he has a banner, appetizers, the whole works..).

Nobody comes to his party and so he goes outside to try and get people to go but his ‘friend’ doesn’t want to so he sends him an ‘e-vite’ (these aliens still use email and internet just like us) but the email to the party he is currently having goes to the entire galaxy including their sworn enemy, a woefully undeveloped ‘bad guys with spaceship’ called the vrogs I think.

The leaders of the boov’s try to arrest Oh with the captain played by Steve Martin who is actually only in 3 scenes of the movie.

But Oh runs off before he can give the boov his password to stop the email. (Always bad in a movie when the entire plot could be resolved by a 3 minute conversation…). In his running he bumps into a girl named Tipp who was left behind by the human relocation and is trying to find her Mother. She is far too calm and collected for someone who’s entire race and Mother has been sucked up by aliens. Plus, her car has been hidden by trash. How did she know to do that? And why hasn’t the trash been sucked up by the unnecessary item balls? They are sucking up bikes wouldn’t they suck up her car? And would she have been the only human to escape? Wouldn’t it have been more interesting to have had a few that band together with Oh?

She is voiced by Rhianna and it is a terrible piece of voice casting. She sounds like a grown woman and I was never exactly sure how old she was supposed to be. She sounds like a grown up, looks like a child but can drive and yet she talks about getting an A in 8th grade geometry. At best it is completely bland.

Oh is voiced by Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parson and the two of them are the only characters in the movie for 90% of the film and he isn’t right for the part either. It just sounds too much like Sheldon which was distracting. But I have a hard time blaming him because the part was written a lot like Sheldon and didn’t give him much to work with. He’s socially awkward and oblivious most of the time. I like Big Bang Theory but I know it has its haters and they will definitely find the voicework very annoying but again I don’t think anything Parsons could have done would have saved the character.

Most of the movie is a road trip story full of road trip movie cliches. Tipp and Oh must go to Paris to enter the password (I guess no cell phones in this world even though the Boov have these little tablet things) and then to Australia to find Tipp’s Mother voiced by Jennifer Lopez who has maybe 3 lines in the movie.

There were about 6 kids in the theater with me and they laughed at a few bits of toilet humor but they seemed squirmy and disengaged.

A lot of people will want to compare this to Lilo and Stitch, a movie that grows on me the more I see it. Lilo and Stitch is not a perfect film but it is far superior to this mess. First of all Lilo is a much more complex character than we ever get from Tipp. She is strange but in interesting ways. We see her interacting with students and fighting with her sister. We see her crying and mourning her parents before Stitch is even introduced.

Stitch is also a consistent character. He is a wild creature and pretty mean throughout, to the point of frustrating me as a viewer. Here Oh is sometimes smart when the plot needs to be and other times stupid. He sometimes understands complex words and other times speaks in 2 word phrases. He’s whatever the plot needs him to be which makes it really boring and hard to root for.

I really did not care about Oh or Tipp’s journey because I knew exactly what was going to happen and the movie didn’t give me any reason except for telling us ‘people think I’m strange’… Lilo is pulling heads off of her dolls. We know she is strange and we are rooting for her because of it.

It’s also a little unclear if the Steve Martin character is intentionally lying to everyone about their enemy and the ‘shush stick’ or if he is just too stupid to know. If he is lying on purpose than he is a really bad alien and that sense of evil is never laid out at all. I mean this is Darth Vader bad if he is conquering planets and relocating everyone.

The lesson of the story is that ‘everyone makes mistakes’ and that you should ‘run towards your fears’ not away from them (I don’t know if I agree with that last one…). Again this is usually told to us not actually shown. Lilo and Stitch conquers weighty themes of family, grief, loss and it does it with the gravitas perhaps only Disney can muster. Plus, it looks so unique with the watercolors and the Hawaiian feel. Home looks anything but unique.

A movie like Penguins of Madagascar works because it was funny. The script was very clever that it could overcome a silly story. I’m not saying it was a masterpiece but it made me laugh. Same with Mr Peabody and Sherman. Home did not make me laugh one time.

Like I said at the intro if you take your kids they won’t be miserable. It’s harmless but I said the same thing for Strange Magic and that movie at least had voicework that made sense.

I’m sorry Dreamworks I want to help you out but I can’t in good conscience give this any higher than the D I gave Strange Magic. It just doesn’t deserve it. (This movie has 5 people listed in the voice cast. Why on earth did it cost $135 million to make? In contrast, Pixar’s Bugs Life with a huge cast cost $120 million!).

The music is by Rihanna and it is nice but feels like it is written for a different movie. It is dark and solemn when they are just flying across the ocean or walking around. It’s not nearly fun enough for this kind of movie (think Happy by Pharrell for Despicable ME 2. That made sense.). The whole Rihanna choice was just wrong all the way around. What a disappointment and the absolute worst timing for a Dreamworks dud.

If any of you see it let me know what you think.

Overall Grade- D, Content Grade- A

Road to El Dorado

February 24, 2015February 24, 2015 | Rachel's Reviews

It is no secret I am not the biggest Dreamworks fan. For me they’ve had two wonderful franchises, How to Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda and one masterpiece Prince of Egypt but the rest I could do without (although I admit I haven’t seen the Madagascar movies except for Penguins which I liked). Anyway, I was working on a project and put on a movie as I worked and figured why not give Road to El Dorado a shot as it is on Netflix. I’d heard some good things and I love action adventure treasure hunting movies, so maybe it would be a forgotten gem?

I’ll just say it- Boy what a stinker…

It does look nice. I will grant it that but that’s really the only praise I have for it.It’s insulting, stupid, inappropriate for children, tonally off and full of unpleasant or underdeveloped characters. In other words, a mess.

But wait…I can hear you saying ‘didn’t you like Atlantis and isn’t that very similar?’.

No it’s not. Atlantis creates a whole new world with its own culture, people, even language, so nobody is insulted because the culture doesn’t exist (plus it’s inherently more creative and interesting to see something imagined than a cheap reproduction of a people and society). There is also a whole cast of characters in Atlantis I found extremely likable and engaging. Atlantis actually embraces diversity. This says white people are smarter and better then those silly natives. The action is well paced in Atlantis and aside from a skimpy swimsuit it is appropriate for kids. So no the two are not alike at all.

The Road to El Dorado is about 2 con artists named Tulio (Kevin Kline) and Miguel (Kenneth Branagh) who in 1519 stow away on Cortes’ boat and sneak to the ‘new world’ to find the City of Gold or El Dorado. Cortes is a semi-villain and a total snoozefest and from the beginning Tulio and Miguel are very smug and unlikable.

road to el dorado 6 — What a disgusting depiction of native women. Such cliches.

The boys find the lost city surprisingly quickly and of course they are immediately treated like Gods in an offensive caricature of native traditions and people. It’s worse, much worse, than Pocahontas. It’s one thing for Redman in Peter Pan to exist in 1953 but in 2000 to have the kind of at best culturally insensitive characters, story and behavior is really quite shocking. At least Atlantis had a certain reverence and awe at its imaginary culture. This was so bad.

We even get a quasi form of soccer that is embarrassing. I don’t know what they were thinking. The villain is completely underdeveloped and feels like it was copied off of the obnoxious priests in Prince of Egypt. He is overtaken by some kind of evil spirit and creates a rock monster out of the Gods. I guess it is some kind of heathen magic but it is not explained and doesn’t make much sense or add any kind of fear or suspense a good villain should. At least in Pocahontas I can remember Radcliffe’s name.

Just like in Pocahontas the movie acts like the natives are completely oblivious to the value of gold, which is absurd. They literally have scenes with tribeswomen dumping bowls and bowls of gold into the ocean. As if all Native and Central American tribes did not have commerce, trade and even their own currency. Kids are smart enough to know they weren’t dumping tons of gold into the ocean. They have made an occasional offering but this is totally over the top and the natives act like they are clueless of it having any value at all. Give me a break. Seriously the natives are probably more badly portrayed than in Peter Pan because at least that is an imaginary land and it is a 3 minute song and we move on. This is 75% of the movie one cliche and cringe inducing stereotype after another.

It is also extremely inappropriate for kids. I had issues with the skimpy suit in Atlantis but at least she was smart and kind of mythical. In this the boys gamble, lie, cheat, steal, and are generally bad examples.

But to make it worse it’s surprisingly vulgar for a childrens movie and the princess Chel wears practically nothing and there is a scene where it is strongly implied her and Tulio have sex. I was shocked.

The music by usually reliable Tim Rice and Elton John is largely forgettable and most of it is sung by Elton John kind of like Phil Collins in the Tarzan movies. Hans Zimmer takes a huge step down from Lion King with the mundane score.

Like I said it looks nice but I thought this was a real bomb. No wonder it did so poorly at the box office. I mean who was it made for? It’s too grown up for most little kids and too stupid and predictable for adults/teens. Someone was telling me on twitter the studio got involved kind of like Disney and Hunchback and made them change things around so they are in El Dorado longer. It feels that way. I smell a rat!

This is the era when Jeffrey Katzenberg was heavily involved with stories and the Dreamworks animation films and I don’t know what he was thinking? He usually has good taste but this is tawdry insulting junk.

I normally don’t review the stinkers but I think it being on Netflix a lot of people will turn it on and I hope this review can sway at least my friends away from it. I was really offended by it and I don’t get offended that easily. There is so much good animation on Netflix. Move on to the next option.

This is a reminder of why I don’t want to review the Dreamworks Canon. Yuck.

Content Grade- C Overall Grade- F

Penguins of Madagascar Review

November 29, 2014November 29, 2014 | Rachel's Reviews

So I have made it my mission to watch all the major animated theatrical releases this year and as we are nearing December there were only 2 left in the docket- Penguins of Madagascar and Song of the Sea (which hopefully will play by me in December).

I debated whether to see Penguins because I actually have not seen any of the previous Madagascar films. The first one came out when I was just home from my Mormon mission and wasn’t really in a movie-going mode yet. Then I didn’t hear great things and so I never bothered to see any of them. (I am not a big Chris Rock fan and I really dislike the Shrek movies so not much appeal.

But I had set the goal to see all the animated movies and my favorite critics over at What the Flick said they laughed their heads off so I decided to go and check it out.

And you know what? It’s actually really funny. It reminded me of the first Naked Gun movie. Just one joke after another and they all made me laugh.

It’s not as inventive or creative as Lego or Mr Peabody and Sherman which also made me laugh but I was thoroughly entertained by the film and the kids around me were laughing long and hard.

Like I said, it is a spoof on spy movies with the penguins Skipper (Tom McGrath), Kowalski (Chris Miller), Rico (Conrad Vernon) and Private (Christopher Knights) on the case to track down an Octopus named Dave (John Malcovich) who is trying to kidnap the penguins because all the zoo patrons think they are so cute.

Our intrepid crew is aided by a band of high tech super spies called the North Wind led by a wolf named Classified who is voiced brilliantly by Benedict Cumberbatch (not that many celebrity voices in this, which was refreshing).

They go through all kinds of hijinks but the plot is really secondary as is the animation, which does the job it needs to do.

With a movie like this you either think it’s funny and laugh or you don’t. Everyone has a different sense of humor, so all I can say is that I laughed a lot. So job well done!

It also doesn’t have any of that cheeky ‘wink wink’ tawdry humor other Dreamworks films have (like Shrek). I really hate that. Most of the jokes are word humor like when they make fun of Dave’s ordinary name for a super-villain or when Dave skypes in and his audio doesn’t work. It’s a very tightly written funny script.

I’d be curious to know if you all found it funny. Like I said, humor is so subjective and there isn’t a ton else to recommend this film. Let me know what you think!

Overall Grade- B (I’d give Peabody and Sherman a B+ and Lego Movie an A+ because both made me laugh a lot and were more visually inventive than Penguins but they are all great fun!)

This makes it the 12 animated film I’ve seen out of 2014 and so far I’d rate them- Lego Movie, Tale of Princess Kaguya, Big Hero 6, Boxtrolls, How to Train Your Dragon 2, Mr Peabody and Sherman, Book of Life, Penguins of Madagascar, Rio 2, Planes: Search and Rescue, The Nut Job, Legends of Oz. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the year! Only 2 I didn’t enjoy on some level. Hope you have too.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 Review

October 27, 2014 | Rachel's Reviews

What a year in animation 2014 has been! If Big Hero 6 is the masterpiece it looks to be (currently 100% on Rotten Tomatoes!) than I wonder if this is the best year in animation since the renaissance? 2010 was a also great year too with Toy Story 3, Tangled, Secret World of Arriety, Megamind and the original How to Train Your Dragon.

That film was a fun adventure about an underdog kid named Hiccup in a viking culture that thinks Dragons are an enemy. He befriends a hurt dragon named Toothless and realizes they are kindly, peaceful creatures. Unfortunately nobody including his father Stoick will believe him and they insist upon hunting down the nest of the dragons. Eventually Hiccup helps the dragons prove their worth and they win over the town including Stoick.

For this update Hiccup is now a young man and expected to follow his father Stoick as Chief of the town. His girlfriend Astrid is a winner in the dragon races. The plot gets going when an enemy named Drago threatens to conquer them and take all of their dragons.

Hiccup wants to talk to Drago but his father says it is madness and they must prepare for war. It is a great very grown up discussion for kids about whether seeking peace is correct or appeasing your enemy. When do you fight for your family or seek peace at all costs? Dawn of the Planet of the Apes had a similar debate and I LOVED that movie.

I don’t want to spoil it for any of you but this is an epic movie. If your kids are frustrated they can’t see Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter this is a perfect option for them. It feels like that kind of epic fantasy. As fun the first one is, this sequel is even better. It’s bolder, it says more and has a very meaty story.

New characters are introduced including a special relation to Hiccup. And the villain Drago and his hypnotizing Beast called the Alpha are very effective. It does a good job of making things seem without hope for our heroes which is key to this type of movie.

The animation is stunning. I still wish they wouldn’t make the dragons so separated from the styling of the rest of the film. All the fluorescent colors don’t seem to fit in well. I love in animated movies when characters fly and in this movie Hiccup even does some base jumping!

While I am still not in love wiht Jay Baruchel as Hiccup’s voice, he is fine. Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera and Jonah Hill all return and do a good job as their characters. Cate Blanchett and Djimon Hounsou are new to the cast and both good; although the inconsistencies on accents is a little annoying. Why does Hiccup and Astrid sound like Americans, Blanchett’s Valka sound British and the rest Scottish? But that’s a nitpick. It’s a good cast .

The disappointed Dad storyline is a little tired but there is so much else going on I didn’t mind it. It might be a little complicated for some kids but there is enough excitement that I think they will still enjoy it. There are also some scenes of real heart and not to repeat myself it is an epic fantasy story!

The score is phenomenal by John Powell who earned an Oscar nomination for the first movie and he should win another. It was so good in building tension and excitement without being overbearing. Evidently they used an array of Viking and Celtic instruments including harps, uileann pipes, tin whistles and bagpipes and you can hear it. It’s gorgeous.

The official trailer gives away a big spoiler so I wouldn’t watch it if you care about spoilers. This one just shows the amazing flying sequences.

Aside from a few squabbles it is a very strong film and should be a huge hit for all ages of kids and adults. I loved it!

For very emotional kids there are a few moments of death and sadness and battle that gets intense. It’s also probably a little long for very small kids at 1 hr 41 minutes.

Have any of you seen it? What did you think?

Overall Grade A Content Grade A

Movie 46: Chicken Little

October 4, 2014October 4, 2014 | Rachel's Reviews

I couldn’t sleep last night and so I put on Chicken Little. I’d love to say that it gave me less nightmares but holy freaking “are you kidding me Disney?”

There is literally one thing I liked in this movie- Chicken Little is kind of a cute design.

I hate doing negative reviews. I’m not trying to dog on films. I have done my best to be positive but I didn’t like this movie at all. It makes me want to go back and be nicer to The Aristocats…

Chicken Little is Disney’s first 3D completely computer animated film. They were trying to compete with Pixar and Dreamworks (especially Dreamworks with this one).

And boy did it fail. It is the lowest rated movie on rotten tomatoes in the entire Disney Canon.

The Story-

I don’t want this review to be super mean spirited but that would be appropriate given the tone of this movie.

Basically the story is Chicken Little see’s the sky is falling and he warns the town. They panic (why would a town panic if a little kid said something like that. Is he like the Dali Lama of the town? Why not just ignore the brat?).

Everyone hates him for getting them worked up including his father. And this father is an awful character. He hates his son. That’s his complete purpose in the story- to be embarrassed and ashamed of his son and to communicate the shame quite clearly repeatedly.

He is the villain of the movie but it doesn’t seem to get that. I guess it thinks the aliens are the villain or maybe the town? I have no idea. But the father is so terrible to his son. He literally hangs his head in shame and tries to deny knowledge of said son in front of the the whole town! Why doesn’t he ask one question of his son? Maybe try to see why he persists with stories that are causing him such harm? Surely there is a reason.

So Chicken (I guess that’s his first name) goes to school and hopes to please his father. There we get introduced to his troop of loser friends.

They all have names that are supposed to be funny if you are 5 like the fish out of water is named Fish Out of Water, or the duckling is named Ugly Duckling. Or this is really funny the giant pig is named Runt of the Litter… Ha, ha, ha, ha…

There’s also scenes where we see supposed ‘sight gags’. This is a joke in the background which is meant to be subtly funny and they can be. The Simpsons uses them all the time (a theater sign or name of a store could be funny in the background) . In chicken Little they have a guy using a goat to clip his lawn. Ha, ha, ha, ha. That’s not funny.

Or we get a fish driving around in a fish car.

What will he do to get out of the fish car? Roger Ebert once said ‘a car has never made a movie funny’ and that is so true. Props of any kind are not inherently funny. It’s what the comic or movie does with said prop that makes (or doesn’t make) the joke. When it doesn’t work it is just confusing. Why are they doing that?

So we get a long painful dodge ball scene and then Chicken decides to join the baseball team (and we haven’t had any reference to the sky falling for some time) because his father was the big hero. He trains and the big game comes with every tired big game cliche ever included in a baseball movie. It makes Casey at Bat from Make Mine Music look subtle… And yet everything had been so awful for the poor cluck I wanted him to have his moment. But even that is ruined and made more an achievement of luck than any kind of real accomplishment from Chicken Little.

The other thing I wonder about is why aren’t there any other chickens? I mean I assume they are all vegetarians in this movie so why aren’t there lots of chickens and they are roughly around the same size. Surely there would be other chicken close to CL’s size but wouldn’t that be a problem given his name is Chicken?

But I’m way overthinking this movie, way overthinking…

So CL is the hero after the game, even to his dear old Dad. But then he see’s the sky falling again. Turns out they are aliens who can replicate the earth with the tiles of their spaceship. Should CL risk telling the town again after his new found fame? Again, why does anyone care about this one little kid in their town? I mean for a character who is repeatedly ignored at school, the adults sure care what he thinks and says.

But the people panic and come but the aliens are invisible again with the tiles so Dad is shamed again and everyone hates CL but his 3 friends. I mean the people in this town are really mean. But the aliens have left a stowaway baby alien. The alien design is pretty unique.. I will give it that.

So then we get our 3rd part of the movie where everyone realizes CL was telling the truth but the aliens are attacking to get their baby back. People get zapped, Dad and CL reconcile way too easily and it turns out the aliens aren’t really bad guys but just misunderstood cool dudes (groan…). Plus, the music during this scene is REM’s ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It’. Is that supposed to be funny? Don’t get me wrong. I love the song but I HATE IT when movies tell you how to feel and nothing does that more than that kind of music cue.

So now CL is the hero and the story is over.

Movie Review/Conclusion-

Want a point by point 17 minute rehashing of why this movie is an ‘animated atrocity’ check out this video from Animation Atrocities youtube series.

. Major language warning but he is right!

I might be willing to give this movie a pass as junk but it is so mean-spirited. It will do nothing for your kids imagination or creativity. The story is awful and it will make them fear being alone not standing up for yourself. Basically CL only gets love once he is proven right. That’s a great lesson for kids. The Dad says he loves him regardless- hogwash. Say that when you were hiding your face in shame as your son tried to defend himself. It teaches the opposite of acceptance. That people will be judgmental unless you are 100% perfect.

But all of that wouldn’t matter much if it was clever. Instead it is so lazy and didn’t even make me laugh. Not one time and believe me it tries A LOT!

Roger Ebert once said about a film “this movie was not preferable to 1 hour and 45 minutes of looking at a blank wall”

There you go. That’s Chicken Little. I would rather stare at a blank wall for 81 minutes. In fact, I may go and do that for a bit.

Overall Grade- F I’m calling it. Worse than Dinosaur. I agree with Rotten Tomatoes. Worst movie in Canon.

Oh and I almost forgot- there is an entire verse of a Spice Girls song sung by a character which I guess is supposed to be funny? Just cringe inducing to me.

Oh and a strange reference to Indiana Jones at the beginning. Why have one image of a human in the movie? And Indiana Jones? It doesn’t make sense.