Babble

I had a moment of panic when I saw the line-up on this DVD, which includes Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel and several other Grimm tales. Aren't these stories rather gory and misogynistic? I only hoped that my three young kids would see past the cannibalism, evil stepmothers, demanding wives and poor victimized children. Turns out I was needlessly worried; all the stories have happy endings, most of which involve wronged kids finding justice. And what kid doesn't enjoy that?

Like the other DVDs in this Scholastic series, Cinderella features artistically rendered cartoons accompanied by celebrity voices and pleasing classical music. It's not quite Disney, but that's okay: it's dramatically less lengthy and loud. More than anything else, my kids were captivated by the candy house occupied by the evil Kathy Bates-voiced witch in Hansel and Gretel.  ("Now do those kids get to eat all her candy?" Olivia asked when the witch bit the dust.) I was more intrigued by the final cartoon, a 1936 production of The Fisherman and his Wife. Do you know this one? The story is charming and chilling simultaneously. Sort of like Kabuki theater for the under-sixes.— Rachael Brownell

Lola is a believable, likable, bad little girl. Well, not bad. She simply has a lot of ideas and confidence, which are bigger than her abilities at this point ("I can do anything that's everything all on my own."). Her brother Charlie is a decent human being who is probably ten years old.

WOLF: Uh oh. Lola is NOT going to stay tidy for her school photo. Hehehehe.
LISA: Do you stay tidy for yours?
WOLF: Sadie's kind of like Lola. She's small as her. She kind of has a head like her. I bet Sadie has tiny head school photos too.
SADIE: No, I have BIG photos. Big!
WOLF: Tiny.
SADIE: Grrrrr.
LISA: Wolf, why are you being so awful?
WOLF: Hehehehe!
SADIE: He's a troublemaker like Lola and I'm so good like Charlie. I never lie.
LISA: I never trust those who never lie. I think siblings switch off who's the bad one, no? I never had a brother or sister, so I don't know what it feels like.
WOLF: It's nice!
LISA: Even when your sister is being the troublemaker?
WOLF: Yes, because what would happen if I didn't have that? I'd be bored. I bet you were bored growing up.
LISA: No, I was never bored because I didn't know what I was missing. I occupied myself. What are you guys doing?
SADIE: Making a surprise party for [Sadie's toy mouse and frog] Sophie and Dinah. Dino [Wolfgang's robotic dinosaur] thinks it's his party, too, but it's really not.
LISA: How are you going to solve this conflict?
WOLF: Well, there's more frogs than mice in this world. But Dino doesn't have any of his kind. He walks alone.
LISA AND SADIE: Oh.

I asked Wolf if he and Sadie's play that day was inspired by Charlie and Lola . Being somewhat autistic, Wolf answered specifically: yes, because Dino doesn't really walk anymore (his batteries died) and Charlie's elephant doesn't walk (because it's papier maché). Maybe "inspired" wasn't the right word. Unlike the generic and insipid Maya and Miguel or Max and Emmie, who take on characteristics only once per episode, according to what lesson our kids need to be taught that day (self-esteem or cooperation), Lola is just plain stubborn and Charlie is long-suffering, and their attributes do not get "solved." They don't have to model behavior. They appear to be just living, which is scarce enough among adult dramas — but among new kids programming, I thought it was extinct.

— Lisa Carver, Wolf (twelve), Sadie (four)

JOSEPHINE (five years old): Mama, is that penguin actually singing?
OLIVIA (five years old): Are those real penguins or from someone's 'magination?
MOM (late thirties): Yes, Joey the penguin is singing. Yes. Livvie, this is a movie from someone's imagination.

Happy Feet is a classic tale of the loner outcast (the dancing versus the normal singing penguin), cutened up by funny melodies and animated characters like baby penguin Mumbles (quite popular with the under-sixes). When asked what they liked best about the movie, the twins sang out "the pretty music!" and "the dancing!" And that pretty much sums it up. Happy Feet is long and loud and Nicole Kidman's reedy voice might put you in a home, but it's a fun musical adventure that will have your kids bouncing in their seats.

MOM: And you don't think this movie is scary?
OLIVIA: No. Because I like how Mumbles dances.
VIOLET (two years old): I see the ducky [translation: penguin] right there. He's funny ducky, mama . . . I see him right there. Right there, mama!
MOM: Do you girls like Mumbles?
JOSEPHINE: Yes, he look-ded cute when he saw his mama.

Sure, the "find your voice" message is predictable, but it's still charming. And how can anyone resist a movie in which Stevie Wonder's voice serenades us with the fabulous lyrics from "I Wish" (I wish those days could come back once more . . . )? — Rachael Brownell and daughters

"I thought it was from God," says Damian, a Scottish schoolboy who's discovered a mysterious bag of cash. "Who else would have that kind of money?" This kind of inarguable child's logic is the cornerstone of Millions, a gorgeous family film from Danny Boyle, the director of such inappropriate-for-children fare as Trainspotting and 28 Days Later. Damian, cheerfully obsessed with Catholic martyrs, is convinced that God has sent him the money so that he can give it to the poor. (His first act is to take the town's homeless population to Pizza Hut.) His older brother, Anthony, is a budding capitalist who wants to invest it in real estate. To complicate matters, the money is in pounds, and the UK is switching over to Euros in one week — which means their find will be worthless unless they act fast. Soon the brothers are in over their heads, and the bag of money has became an apt metaphor for how complicated and contradictory the adult world can be. The film's hodgepodge of styles — Gondry-esque surrealism, broad satire, religious drama — would be disastrous in the hands of most directors, but it serves Boyle's childs-eye view perfectly. The film's occasional scary moments and sophisticated themes (i.e. death of a parent) may be too much for small children, but encourage the rest of your family to muddle through the Scottish accents. They'll never see another movie like this one. — Gwynne Watkins

Wolf didn't have much to say about this movie because "unicorns are too girly. I would know more to say if the star was a frog." Sadie didn't have so much to say because I hogged the review, moved as I was by the themes of loneliness in a crowd, loneliness in actual aloneness, cranky and insecure misfits banding together with a common dream, and persevering in the face of fear and confusion. It's just like real life, only with illustrative songs and technicolor.

SADIE: She can't find any unicorns. She's the only one. She looked through summer and through fall and through winter and now it came spring again and she's still looking.
WOLF: A witch trapped the unicorn and a bunch of other animals. She put a spell on them to make them bad then good then bad then good.
SADIE: A magician turned a tree alive and then he turned it into a chair and the chair hugged him with its bum. Then the magician turned the unicorn into a human. Now she's trapped in the castle and she had nightmares and she asked the prince, "Take away my nightmares." But he can't, right? Because he wasn't turned from a unicorn into a prince.
LISA: Hm. I think the nightmares are to remind her of what she used to be. She's forgetting. She's falling in love.
SADIE: I think she's happy being what she is now — a woman. But I saw her dreaming about when she was a unicorn.
LISA: Oh! Turns out the prince isn't a prince. He was a peasant baby that the king scooped up because he didn't have a son and he wanted one. Just like he kidnapped all the unicorns and trapped them in the foam of the ocean waves. This has the elements of all great fairy tales: there's a search, and nothing and is what it seems. It's a journey inward to discover your real self, or what you're becoming, and a journey outward to discover some lost thing; maybe what you used to be.
SADIE: The two heros were the magician and the prince.
LISA: The unicorn is a hero too.
SADIE: Why?
LISA: Because she was scared to go on her quest, but she did anyway, and when the time came, she sacrificed herself for the greater good. Though she was only briefly turned mortal, she felt love, and now she will feel regret for the rest of her life. None of the other unicorns will understand her.
SADIE: Unicorns only love other unicorns, not princes?
LISA: Unicorns don't feel love exactly for anyone. They're just pure. They're righteous and fair and unsorry. They don't have complex, mixed-up emotions like humans. Would you rather be a unicorn or a human?
SADIE: It's a complicated choice. I want to feel love but not pain.
LISA: Can't have one without the other.
SADIE: Why?
LISA: Because when someone we love is hurt or disappears or is mean to us, we feel pain. Our greatest joy sows the seeds of our deepest sorrow. And vice versa. What makes you feel pain, Sadie?
SADIE: Splinters.

— Lisa Carver, Wolf (twelve), Sadie (four)

SADIE: Guess what, Wolfgang, there is one boy in there!
LISA: Poor guy. One boy with all those girls in Strawberry Shortcake Land.
WOLF: I think he's probably used to it by now.
SADIE: They eat the mountains, right?
LISA: I would guess so. And the lollipop trees. I'm sorry, I can't take this video. I'm going to go beat my head against the wall in the other room and then come back and you tell me what I missed. . . What did I miss?
SADIE: The doggie Cupcake did mischief. He pushed the juice machine button and all the juice spread all over and it was a big mess!
LISA: Did the doggie get in trouble?
SADIE: No. All the friends went in the factory and cleaned it up with cookie mops.
LISA: I have a visceral reaction to the things I've seen and heard of Strawberry Shortcake over the last twenty minutes. I need to go somewhere deep inside my mind and hide.
WOLF: You mean it's "ew?"
LISA: I mean sickly sickening sweet pastel sugar doughnuts mountain vomit!
WOLF: Well, it does have purple, yellow, white — all kinds of colors. And it does have all kinds of girls in it, with red hair, brown, blonde, black. But girls like that — watching a bunch of girls. Boy movies are more about adventures. Girl movies are more about girls.
SADIE: In this movie, it's hard for Ginger Snap to plow grain to make her cookies because spring hasn't come. So they're making spring come by imagining it and singing about it.
LISA: Is there some difficulty in this plot, an obstacle?
SADIE: No.
LISA: If this were a boy movie, Wolf, do you think there would be a difficulty?
WOLF: Yes — that Sadie wouldn't like it. We might argue. That would be a difficulty.

-- Lisa Carver, Wolf (twelve), Sadie (four)

I was interested to learn what a platinum edition of Disney's Peter Pan would mean for Neverland's resident Indian tribe. Racially-based comic relief ain't the guaranteed crowd pleaser it was back when Pochohantas would have been hard-pressed to book a Mazola ad. Rather than merely restoring the original print, perhaps the wizards in the CGI department would update the two-dimensional braves with nobility and wisdom. How hard could it be to cut "What Makes the Red Man Red?" Pretty hard, as it turns out, when taking the high road would have meant shelving the Platinum Edition entirely.

I can't blame the kids for busting a gut over the Injun gags. Fast-paced slapstick numbers are difficult to resist (take, for instance, the scene in Tarzan where the monkeys inadvertently invent hot jazz while destroying the professor's campsite — hilarious). But I'm appalled that the disc of bonus material, which has everything from "virtual flights" to footage of Uncle Walt waxing nostalgic, contains no featurette explaining the twenty-first century economics of granting racist caricatures a G-rated green light. — Ayun Halliday

SADIE: It's just singing and pictures! It's boring.
LISA: Well I guess that's appropriate, because he's singing about how boring it is to live on the sun.
WOLF: And this one is about an eel trying to have fun in the bath, but he's making his friend sad because he keeps splashing.
SADIE: I definitely do not like this one.
WOLF: I think this is pretty good.
LISA: You think everything is pretty good, though. What would it take to make you dislike something?
WOLF: I don't know because I've never done that.
SADIE: I dislike something!
LISA: Wolf is the Paula Abdul to your Simon Cowell.
WOLF: That bee is cute. I want a beehive.
SADIE: I want a lavender fly for a pet.
LISA: Wolf, do you know what marijuana is?
WOLF: No.
LISA: It's something that makes you sit around feeling mellow and makes you think things are funny that probably aren't. I get the feeling the people who made these movies probably smoked some. What's happening now, Sadie? Still boring?
SADIE: Yes!
LISA: Are you ever going to smoke marijuana?
SADIE: No!
LISA: Me neither. Except then I might never write a song as sweet as that first one. Can you go back to that first one so I can write down the lyrics?

Weeks go different on the sun.
Nighttime is no fun
When you don't know when it's come.
No winter on the sun.
You watch the clouds rise up
Into oblivion.
Did I say
I am from the sun?
So when my days are done
I'll be buried in the sun,
Travel through its veins
Where I'll circulate.
Through a sunspot I'll escape.
You'll watch my soul rise up
Into oblivion.

— Lisa Carver, Wolf (twelve), Sadie (four)

There's the seed of a wonderful children's film in Zoom: Academy for Superheroes. Alas, that seed is confined to the opening credits, when great quantities of exposition are relayed via efficient voice-over while the camera pans across the anguished facial expressions and bulging, radioactive muscles of old-fashioned comic book panels. The seventy-five or so minutes that follow this inspired beginning are of such excremental quality, it's hard to lay blame at the feet of any one super-villain — though I'm tempted to go with the casting director, who surely lobotomized poor Chevy Chase before placing him in a thankless supporting role. Charmless child actors, a grade-Z script, a giant, hyper-realistic snot bubble that bursts in sickening detail. . . and of course, my kids adored it, speaking reverently of the characters and their (paper-thin) motivations, and offering to make it worth my while if I'd let them watch it the following night. — Ayun Halliday

Magic Al is a former investment banker from Long Island turned magician/comedian with a penchant for pratfalls.

SADIE: Magic Al had a hand-thing and it went psht! in his stomach.
WOLF: It bonked him.
LISA: Why is it funny when someone gets hurt?
WOLF: He didn't really get hurt.
SADIE: He was just pretending.
LISA: Why is it funny for a man to pretend to get hurt?
WOLF: It's magic.
SADIE: He says he's the luckiest guy in the world.
WOLF: I can tell he's lucky.
SADIE: It's because he can do all those tricks and jokes. He's a funny kind of man.
WOLF: When he gets up in the morning, he's probably cranky like Mom, and then he does a little magic.
SADIE: He does magic tricks to make himself nice.
LISA: I've heard that in real life, clowns are the saddest people on earth. I guess because they save up their joy for the audience. So happiness becomes a commodity.

The kids leave me to my ruminations — I'm thinking about how Jim Carrey once said he spends three to five hours a day practicing faces in the bathroom mirror; I'm thinking no wonder those other women left him, and how moribund must that man be for the second half of the day? — and, under the tutelage of Magic Al, perform magic tricks for each other. Wolf masters a pretty good illusion employing a puffball and a pencil.

LISA: Now how is illusion different from lying?
SADIE: Because you just do a trick very quickly - pretending the pencil is just flying through the puff, but a lie takes a long time.
WOLF: I don't think so. Lies go away very quickly. Because you get caught and get sent to time-out and you're out after five minutes.
SADIE: Plus Magic Al likes to make kids laugh. Lies make people cry.
LISA: So magic is a loving lie?

Sadie laughs nervously. She is disturbed by this line of thought.
— Lisa Carver, Wolf (twelve), Sadie (four)