Babble

Peter Jackson did a horrible thing when he made his Lord of the Rings movies. Thanks to his ten-plus hour trilogy of blockbusters, every studio on the face of the planet has decided that they need to make noisy epics out of as many fantasy properties as they can buy. Stardust, a quiet British fairy tale graphic novel by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess, is the latest story to fall victim to booming scores and panoramic CG landscapes. The original was simply about a young boy who walked into a fairy world where he found his true love and grew into an adult — and the movie is all that, plus transvestite sky pirates, magic battles with witches and Rocky Gervais cameos. It's a crying shame. Underneath the gaudy effects and needless action is a very pleasant love story about how big the world is, even when it seems small. — John Constantine

March of the Penguins, Madagascar, Happy Feet — thus far, the '00s have been the decade of the penguin. Breaking away from this trend, Arctic Tale follows a baby polar bear (Nanu) and a baby walrus (Seela) over several years of their growth, as global warming looms imperiously over their fragile Arctic existence. In contrast to the shimmering optimism of its predecessors, this documentary does not shy away from the dire consequences of human interference with the environment. While kids will coo at the montages of cuddly polar bears and laugh at narrator Queen Latifah ’s sass (to say nothing of the 70's disco soundtrack, including a well-timed nod to "We Are Family"), they’ll be just as affected by the deaths in the film when climate change tampers with the animals' habitat. (One toddler in my screening had to be escorted out of the theater after she expressed some righteous indignation.) While the well-crafted narration and cinematography of this no-holds-barred documentary will certainly court critical acclaim for director Sarah Robertson, its lack of sugar-coating may not be palatable for particularly impressionable small fry. However, if your kids can stomach sad as well as cute, Arctic Tale will impart some environmental lessons that those penguin movies did not. — Jessica Haralson

Like that other musical tribute to hairstyling products, Grease, Hairspray is an energetic homage to a decade that never was — in this case, a candy-coated version of the sixties, where segregation is basically just a big misunderstanding. Radiant newcomer Nikki Blonsky plays Tracy Turnblad, a chubby teenager who throws local politics into chaos when she lands a spot on Baltimore's most popular dance show. Director Adam Shankman has crafted some fine scenes from the infectious Broadway score; although there are plenty of visual gags, he eschews broad parody and MTV-style montages in favor of good old-fashioned storytelling. His approach gives the actors something to sink their teeth into, and it's a delight to watch a villainous Michelle Pfeiffer and a bashful Christopher Walken devour their roles. Sadly, the same can't be said for John Travolta, whose Edna Turnblad is like the love child of Doctor Evil and Miss Piggy. But what's most absent from Hairspray is the endearing grotesquerie of John Waters' original film. This is a sanitized, telegenic Baltimore, a far cry from the one Waters has devoted his career to celebrating. And yet, like the original, Hairspray is a feel-good film where all the rejected people come out on top. And that's something worth singing about. —Gwynne Watkins

Book Five is the one in which almost no one believes Harry that Voldemort has returned, and in which the Ministry of Magic, led by paranoid dictator Cornelius Fudge, infiltrates Hogwart's and its sadistic, tea-drinking emissary, Dolores Umbridge, takes over the school. It's "the angry book," or, as my thirteen-year-old stepson and Potter fan, Blake, puts it, "the boring one."

The new film has an awful lot of Voldemort in the flesh (Ralph Fiennes). I preferred having him more shadowy; to me, the well-lighted Voldemort looks like he's just had tons of plastic surgery. But Blake thought it was a "good look for a snake-like villain." We agreed the high-level-wizard battles were pretty incredible. And how about that (really quite long) kiss between Harry and Cho? [Nervous laughter.] "It was okay."

The director, David Yates (who's also been tapped to do the sixth film), doesn't have Alfonso Cuaron's magical touch; the emotional scenes here feel forced, more X-Men than Harry Potter. But it's still awfully good, and the details are frequently funny (especially Umbridge's wall of mewling cat plates). Blake rates it up there with films three and four, and says that unlike those two, which had the best material to work with, "This one's a lot better than the book." — Ada Calhoun & Blake Medlin (age thirteen)

Against all odds, Transformers isn't about giant robots and stuff blowing up. About forty minutes of the film contain both robots and explosions, and they're some of the most impressive and exciting special effects that have ever graced a screen. The other hundred-plus minutes aren't really about anything at all. Transformers introduces roughly fifteen separate characters in the first half hour: a squad of good ol' fashioned U.S. soldiers trying to get back to their families, defense secretary Jon Voight and his staff, mischievous teenager Shia LaBeouf and his would-be grease monkey girlfriend, all of their friends, Bernie Mac, and some hackers thrown on top because, y'know, technology and stuff should have hackers. Megatron, the big bad villain, isn't even introduced until well into the third act. So, yes, you and your kids will love the giant robots — you'll just be bored as hell until they show up. — John Constantine

I was less moved by the CGI food porn in Ratatouille than by the realistic rattiness of the rodent stars, whom I recognized from the back alleys of the many restaurants where I've dined and worked. An early scene of the colony fleeing en masse achieves a creepily thrilling, Willard-meets-the-Russian-Revolution grandeur — but this being a children's film, our petulant hero, Remy, spends a wearying amount of time strutting around on his hind legs before learning valuable lessons about friendship and family. Pixar is too virtuoso an outfit to season this stew with fart jokes and put-down humor, but I questioned why Remy was given an American accent (a particularly confusing choice given assistant chef Janeane Garofalo's French-ish burr). Nonetheless, the scenes between Remy and the credulous Linguini — a human pal who can't speak rat — are a delight, as the one-sided dialogue brings out the Buster Keaton in everyone involved.

As far as the target audience is concerned, several crucial plot points regarding illegitimacy and inheritance law might as well have been in French, though a remarkably concise description of each worker's responsibilities in a three-star restaurant has inspired my daughter Inky to seek employment in fine dining, despite a total revulsion for any cuisine plus haute que le mac-et-fromage. Milo, too, loved it, even if inexperience now causes him to claim it's "so dumb" because it's about a "rat who cooks." — Ayun Halliday

If, deluge imminent, God told us to load His ark with two copies of every palatable comedy of 2007, Evan Almighty would soon find itself learning to swim. It's not a good sign when, while watching the most expensive comedy of all time — two hundred million dollars, by some estimates — you spend less time laughing than wondering where the money went. Not that Steve Carell isn't sufficiently funny as Evan Baxter, a former weatherman and newly elected Congressman who reluctantly accepts the role of a modern Noah. Wanda Sykes is hilarious, even. But the script drowns in watery sentimentality and pseudo-religious pap. After An Inconvenient Truth, any film with a conservation message as vague and generic as Evan Almighty's is going to seem antediluvian. Plus, if we have to watch Morgan Freeman take yet another cloying turn as a white man's conscience, we'll be begging the wrathful Old Testament god to pay Hollywood a visit. — Justin Clark

To its credit, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer doesn't try to be a weighty morality play or an epic saga. Movie starts, Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman are getting married, this naked silver guy starts doing crazy things, Dr. Doom shows up, everybody fights, the naked silver guy becomes good, exeunt. Yes, it's that easy and, a lot of the time, it's a hoot. The majority of the onscreen action takes the form of elaborate chase sequences, allowing our heroes to speed through Siberia in one shot and blow up the Great Wall in the next. The only distractions from the special effects are the surprisingly effective performances of Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis, tempered by all the groan-inducing attempts at humor. All told, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is a pretty good time. Of all the loud spectacles you can drop eleven dollars on this summer, it may be the most satisfying choice. — John Constantine

I hope my daughter Inky's uninhibited and maniacal guffawing didn't ruin the experience for the other children watching Surf's Up — though judging from their comparatively tepid response and some overheard inquiries as to her mental capacity, it may have. I wondered if her wild enjoyment had something to do with the fact that her father's a surfer, though his mild, mid-Atlantic waves would surely render him the laughing stock of every penguin dude ripping the film's towering, turquoise swells. Their blatant disregard of geography aside, the screenwriters have done their homework, or at least mined some well-known documentaries to good effect. Any character not stepping into liquid can expect to spend some screen time sliding on his belly or warming an egg between his toes. Points, too, for casting the Big Liebowski as Big Z, a mellow recluse who, my son Milo announced to our fellow patrons, "is a much better surfer than Daddy, I can tell!" His do-it-because-you-love-it philosophy goes down much easier than Pen Gu Island's uninspiring, unrealistic and, I might add, totally bogus lack of female competitive surfers. Perhaps an all-girl sequel is already in the works. — Ayun Halliday

"Isn't it weird that when you have a kid, all of your hopes and dreams go out the window?" Spoken by Paul Rudd's weary father-of-two character, it's not exactly the revelation you expect in a comedy about pregnancy; nor do you expect to see a full-on crowning shot when the baby finally emerges. But Knocked Up is a film about the unexpected, and it admirably refuses to ply the audience with comfortable clichés. Judd Apatow's follow-up to the lovable 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up chronicles an accidental pregnancy from conception (during a drunken one-night stand) to birth. The film is, surprisingly, much darker than its predecessor. It's also longer; by the time Katherine Heigl goes into labor, it's easy to sympathize with her exhaustion. On the other hand, Knocked Up is very funny, loaded with bullseye observations (What to Expect When You're Expecting is "basically a big list of things you can't do," says a baffled Seth Rogan) and cringe-inducing gags that never feel contrived. This may be the first cinematic pregnancy in which the expectant parents act like grown-ups: screwed-up, endearing, complicated grown-ups who say foolish things like "I don't want this baby to determine the rest of our lives." After so many TV shows and movies that treat pregnancy as an idyllic happily-ever-after, Knocked Up is a bumpy ride worth taking. — Gwynne Watkins