Disney

Frozen

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Frozen
  • IMDB: link

FrozenDisney’s latest animated feature Frozen is an odd mix of old school Disney style and modern sensibilities that works better than expected. Loosely adapted from Hans Christian Andersen‘s tale of The Snow Queen, the script by Jennifer Lee certainly fits in the pantheon of Disney Princess fairy tale films but with one major difference in terms of story that it apart from movies like Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and others. Although it has romantic subplots, the main love story in the film isn’t romantic love but sororal love.

Set in a port kingdom near the icy fjords of Norway, we first meet young Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel) as children playing in their father’s castle. Elsa has been gifted with the power to create and control snow and ice which she uses to please her sister’s love of snow. However, a tragic accident causes Elsa to hide her powers from everyone and seclude herself from even her sister’s affections.

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Monsters University

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Monsters University
  • IMDB: link

Monsters UniversityHow much do you love Animal House? I ask because the team behind Monsters University obviously holds it high regard. Over the years everything from Sydney White to Futurama has aped the story of rival fraternities battling it out on a college campus. Now it’s Pixar’s turn.

Set as a prequel to 2001’s Monsters, Inc. the story follows mismatched pair Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) and James P. Sullivan (John Goodman) as freshman students at the prestigious Monsters University. Most of the film’s first-half deals with the rivalry between the pair trying to show each other up as the school’s next big Scarer. Mike has the brains, but not the looks, and Sully’s lack of discipline undercuts his natural ability.

When the Mike and Sulley get on the bad side of Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren) and face expulsion, they have no choice but to join the university’s least popular fraternity and work together with its other members (Peter Sohn, Joel Murray, Sean Hayes, Dave Foley, Charlie Day) to win a scare competition and remain in school.

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Wreck-It Ralph

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Wreck-It Ralph
  • IMDB: link

wreck-it-ralph-posterPixar’s growing influence on Disney, particularly that of head of Walt Disney Animation Studios John Lasseter, is certainly evident in Wreck-It Ralph. The latest Disney animated feature from longtime Futurama director Rich Moore bucks the trend of most animated kids’ fare in that it’s a love story to classic video games (which skewers older) and is centered around the unlikeliest of heroes — a villain. It also doesn’t take place in our reality. Instead it’s set in a world where arcade games and their myriad characters roam about, but are connected to each other by a Grand Central-like power strip allowing them to come and go as they please.

Wreck-It Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) has spent every day of the last 30 years doing exactly the same thing. When the arcade opens and the first customer puts a quarter in the video game (as if a quarter would buy you a game anywhere today), Ralph sets to wrecking the digital landscape of Fix-It Felix, Jr. This, of course, allows the game’s hero (Jack McBrayer) to fix the villain’s destruction, vanquish his foe, and earn his medal.

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Tron: Legacy

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Tron: Legacy
  • IMDB: link

I should have have loved Tron: Legacy. The original remains one of my favorite films of my childhood. It’s unique look and style (which has never even been attempted to be recaptured over years) was the type of eye candy and simple yet heartfelt and far-reaching message of a near future digital frontier blew my seven year-old mind.

Although Legacy has a distinctly different visual style, it still creates a beautiful world you want to get lost in for a couple of hours. The new version also throws in lightcylces, a modern take on the effects, and plenty of action. It also lifts story elements from several movies than I enjoy (which come off much better than its original ideas) some of which feel like courteous nods and homages and some of which feel like not-so-subtle rip-offs. So what went wrong?

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The Princess and the Frog

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Princess and the Frog
  • IMDB: link

It’s been awhile. For more than a decade Disney has been, well, very un-Disney. In many ways, with the latest animated feature, the company returns to the roots. We’ve got a classic tale, a princess (of sorts), talking animals, big musical numbers, true love triumphant, a wicked villain, and a curse.

The Princess and the Frog, Disney’s 49th animated feature film, might not be in the same class as Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, but for the first time in a long time the studio has released a movie that feels like a Disney film (and not an animated feature that any studio could have produced).

That’s not to say the movie doesn’t have its warts. The Princess and the Frog is at least 15 minutes too long, the story meanders a bit in places, and the animation isn’t as crisp as I’d like. That said, over the course of the film you can feel (at least in places) the old-time magic being re-awoken. In many ways through the process of making this film it feels as if the studio is slowly rediscovering itself.

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