Aladdin II & III Collection – DVD

February 8, 2005Posted in1990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance

THE RETURN OF JAFAR (1994)
Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C
written by Kevin Campbell and Mirith J.S. Colao & Bill Motz & Steve Roberts & Dev Ross & Bob Roth & Jan Strnad & Brian Swenlin
directed by Toby Shelton, Tad Stones, Alan Zaslove

ALADDIN AND THE KING OF THIEVES (1996)
*/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras C
screenplay by Mark McCorkle & Bob Schooley
directed by Tad Stones

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover About the only reason for Disney to send out their direct-to-video product to be reviewed is to accumulate free advertising. They know that no sensible critic will tolerate anything so obviously thrown together as a cash grab, just as they know that no reader of critics will willingly sign up to watch them; instead, the assumption is that said readers will have kids, and that the review will act as one more reminder (in concert with the saturation ad campaigns in print and on television) that those kids are undiscerning and will probably want the discs bad. So here's my link in the chain of avarice: two age-old attempts to cash in on Disney's Random Ethnic Stereotype Generator are back on the market, and if your children are lacking in aesthetic sense (they are), these might be right up their alley. Just make sure you bite down on a leather strap as you watch them with your goggle-eyed rugrat, and take heart in the knowledge that someone on the World Wide Web knows your pain.

Mulan II (2004) – DVD

February 7, 2005Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Japan, Musical

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras C-
directed by Darrell Rooney, Lynne Southerland

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Let it be known that Mulan II is out on DVD, and that it's surprisingly good. The House That Walt Built appears to have learned from its early, awful forays into the direct-to-video realm and decided to put a little elbow grease (not to mention money) into these glorified policy redemptions; once you get past its pitifully limited research of actual Chinese culture (no mean feat, believe me), you can't help but notice that the movie looks stellar. Content-wise, it's a decent, if not great, do-what-makes-you-happy message picture slightly curtailed by its minuscule running time and bolstered by a couple of songs that sound like somebody cared how they turned out. Nothing in Mulan II is brilliant, but it's a couple of notches above eyewash–and just smart enough not to drive unwilling parents completely insane. I can think of worse things to show your attention-deficient knee-biter.

Are We There Yet? (2005)

January 21, 2005Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Drama, Family, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Ice Cube, Nia Long, Aleisha Allen, Philip Bolden
screenplay by Steven Gary Banks & Claudia Grazioso and J. David Stem & David N. Weiss
directed by Brian Levant

Arewethereyetby Walter Chaw Hot on the heels of the abominable Racing Stripes comes Are We There Yet?, an Ice Cube vehicle the rapper-turned-actor also produced that teaches in broad terms that black people like rims on their cars and bling around their necks, that Asians are just irritating and venal under/oversexed white people, and that actual white people are either hillbilly truckers or dancing, rapping grandmothers. Projectile vomit, scary slapstick, and pissing on women share equal time with forced sentiment and actions so inexplicable as to exist only in the infernal nether-verses reserved for this kind of jerk-finds-a-heart flick. Piling on the pleasure, a pair of demonic children carry on director Brian Levant's (Problem Child, Beethoven, Jingle All the Way) proud tradition of featuring insufferable kids in unwatchable movies that will be popular enough to ensure that this grade-A assclown gets to continue to making them. Levant's a racist and a card-carrying Neanderthal–and if he's not, he's actually something worse. If he's not the retarded ogre that his films suggest he is, then he's exuding this gruel with a calculated purpose instead of just a moronic fecklessness. That the little boy in this film has a doll that resembles the MegaMan toy at the centre of Jingle All the Way tells me that Levant is harking back on that debacle with fondness, which is a little like the Catholic Church harking back fondly on indulgences, child molestation, and the Crusades.

Racing Stripes (2005)

January 14, 2005Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Family, Sports, Theatrical

ZERO STARS/****
starring Bruce Greenwood, Hayden Panettiere, Gary Bullock, Wendie Malick
screenplay by David Schmidt
directed by Frederik Du Chau

Racingstripesby Walter Chaw It's some sort of tradition now, some kind of sick trick: a collaboration of nitwits releases a "family" film as counter-programming against the glut of morose, adult-oriented awards-season drivel that seeps into middle America in the first few months of the New Year. Kangaroo Jack, Home on the Range, Chasing Liberty, Snow Dogs, A Walk to Remember…each so misguided that to watch them in tandem is to see a pack of dogs outsmart a black man (and comment that he tastes like chicken), a trio of women (cows) receive threats of gang rape, and a wildlife conservationist have her breasts groped. (Then, of course, there's the metaphysical dead end of casting Mandy Moore in anything.) If parents don't pre-screen what their children watch, then care of the child's tender sensibilities is forked over to the chowderheads trafficking in shit, fart, boob, and pratfall jokes, which are only a quarter as damaging as the angry misogyny and casual racism binding them together. Add to the shaggy parade of diseased entertainments the 2005 edition, Frederik Du Chau's flat unwatchable Racing Stripes.

Party of Five: The Complete First Season (1994-1995) – DVD

January 7, 2005Posted in1990s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Family, Television

Image B- Sound B+ Extras C+
"Pilot," "Homework," "Good Sports," "Worth Waiting For," "All's Fair," "Fathers and Sons," "Much Ado," "Kiss Me Kate," "Something Out of Nothing," "Thanksgiving," "Private Lives," "Grownups," "Not Fade Away," "It's Not Easy Being Green," "Aftershocks," "In Loco Parentis," "Who Cares?," "Brother's Keeper," "The Trouble with Charlie," "All-Nighters," "The Ides of March"

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It's strange that the term "afterschool special" has hung on as a pejorative long after the death of the form it officially describes. But in a sense, it never really did leave us: hanging over much dramatic television is the spectre of issues raised but never dealt with, pain stated but never felt, emotions described without being expressed. There's a little Afterschool spirit in most hour-longs, hovering as they do over the abyss of controversy into which artistic personnel love to gaze and which the front office lives to deny. Still, the mid-'90s drama "Party of Five" is an especially bizarre example of this sort of bet-hedging and trading off, taking as it does hugely traumatic events and making them seem as threatening and life-changing as a trip to Disneyland. It's a spectacular display of cake-having and cake-eating-too that defines the Afterschool mentality, ensuring that it will raise issues without dealing with them honestly.

The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004) [Widescreen] – DVD

December 21, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Romance

*/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C-
starring Anne Hathaway, Heather Matarazzo, John Rhys-Davies, Julie Andrews
screenplay by Shonda Rhimes
directed by Garry Marshall

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I had rather hoped that my previous DVD tussle with Garry Marshall, on the subject of his The Princess Diaries, would be my last. But here it is five months later, and I'm stuck with the unenviable task of a) watching and b) working up the enthusiasm to write about The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, which is, if anything, worse than the not-so-original original. Again we have a hypocritical be-yourself message for people whose self is largely determined by what they see on the Disney channel, a horrible white-on-tan colour scheme, graceless design, and shallow characterizations–in other words, everything that made the first film such a chore to sit through. But where The Princess Diaries felt complete in its cornball wish-fulfillment, The Princess Diaries 2 is clearly an afterthought made to wring more cash out of impressionable tweens. You and I are smarter than that; one of us should flee in terror.

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)

December 17, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Germany, Theatrical

A Series of Unfortunate Events
**½/****
starring Jim Carrey, Jude Law, Liam Aiken, Emily Browning
screenplay by Robert Gordon, based on the books The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window by "Lemony Snicket"
directed by Brad Silberling

Lemonysnicketby Walter Chaw The best children's entertainments accentuate a child's strengths, encouraging the pursuit of aptitude and bliss instead of impossible pipe dreams. It's the lesson of The Incredibles, one of the bravest, most subversive films the year–and it seems to be the lesson of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events as well until the picture caves in to kid-flick conventions and worse. But while it's humming along with the freshly-orphaned Baudelaires–Violet (Emily Browning), Klaus (Liam Aiken), and little Sunny (Kara and Shelby Hoffman)–doing what they do best (Violet the engineer, Klaus the reader, Sunny the biter), Lemony Snicket, with its gothic sets and grotesque gallery of rogues, offers up a brilliant antidote to the saccharine blather of traditional holiday fare. Fleetingly effective or no, it's a shot of insulin in a season that generally offers up bloated prestige items for the grown-ups and freakishly genial, accidentally perverse fare for the kiddies.

The Beverly Hillbillies (1993) – DVD

December 13, 2004Posted in1990s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Family

*/**** Image B+ Sound B-
starring Diedrich Bader, Dabney Coleman, Erika Eleniak, Cloris Leachman
screenplay by Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal and Jim Fisher & Jim Staahl
directed by Penelope Spheeris

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I could tell you plenty of things about The Beverly Hillbillies. That it's based on the beloved Buddy Ebsen sitcom (a fact which pretty much thins the ranks of those who will tolerate it), for instance. That it features Jim Varney in Ebsen's place as Jebediah Clampett, a farmer who heads out to California with his family in tow after striking the mother lode of oil. That once the Clampetts arrive in the land of "swimming pools [and] movie stars," the mission is to a) find a fiancée for widowed Jeb, and b) domesticate the tomboyish Ellie May (Erika Eleniak). Or that these bits of information are used by a couple of schemers (Rob Schneider and Lea Thompson) to bilk the Clampetts–including Jeb's strapping son Jethro (Diedrich Bader, looking appropriately dim)–out of their newly-acquired millions. But ultimately, the only piece of information you require is that The Beverly Hillbillies is about as funny as a mugging, or an armed robbery, or "The Family Circus"–everything else is irrelevant.

Sleepover (2004) [Special Edition] – DVD

December 1, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Romance

*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C-
starring Alexa Vega, Mika Boorem, Jane Lynch, Sara Paxton
screenplay by Elisa Bell
directed by Joe Nussbaum

Sleepoverdvdcapby Walter Chaw Okay, I admit it: I'm fascinated by Joe Nussbaum's squirmy, sleazy Sleepover, a comedy for kids so queasy in its conception and execution that I'm reasonably certain it qualifies as child abuse in most states. It's not as bad as the Olsen Twins' New York Minute, mainly because it isn't disgustingly racist in addition to disturbingly paedophilic–but I have a sneaking suspicion that Sleepover engages in with some measure of cunning what New York Minute engages in recklessly. It's thus better than the evil 13 Going on 30 as well, though not nearly as good as the only so-so Mean Girls, marking it as one of those pieces of swill whose chief claim to glory is that it's subversive for adult audiences. Tragically, Sleepover is pitched at 'tweens, and the only adults likely to see it are either parents stupid enough to rent it to watch with their children or critics stupid enough to review it themselves in lieu of running Kevin Thomas's predictably lonesome positive review off the wire.

Eloise at Christmastime (2003) – DVD

November 26, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Christmas, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Television, UK

***/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Julie Andrews, Sofia Vassilieva, Kenneth Welsh, Debra Monk
screenplay by Elizabeth Chandler, based on the book written by Kay Thompson & illustrated by Hilary Knight
directed by Kevin Lima

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Last year around this time, I was expressing my surprise (and perhaps embarrassment) at having actually enjoyed Disney's first Eloise TV movie, Eloise at the Plaza. For once, the Mouse House had perpetrated something that was cleverly conceived, skilfully shot, and lacking in the mushy sentiment that oozes out of many a Disney enterprise. But the jaded cynic in me was wary of the sequel, Eloise at Christmastime, which, if only to salvage my integrity, I hoped would be a cheap quickie riding on the success of the original. No such luck: Eloise at Christmastime is every bit the effervescent piece of fluff that its predecessor is. Once again director Kevin Lima has sized up the limitations of the material and obscured them with a fleet-footed visual wit, creating one of the few Christmas specials you can watch without wincing.

Christmas with the Kranks (2004)

November 24, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, Family, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Julie Gonzalo, Dan Aykroyd
screenplay by Chris Columbus, based on the novel Skipping Christmas by John Grisham
directed by Joe Roth

Christmaswiththekranksby Walter Chaw Jamie Lee Curtis is looking alarmingly like Kim Hunter from Planet of the Apes and Tim Allen remains the single most aggressive, unpleasant personality who's supposed to be sunny and hilarious in the medieval endurance ritual that is Christmas with the Kranks. An act of self-flagellation like wearing a hair shirt, say, or whipping oneself with a cat-o-nine tails whilst chanting the liturgy, the picture has all the Christmas cheer of a reindeer carcass and is the finest evocation of being in Hell since The Passion of the Christ. People voting for "moral values" this last election should take a good hard look at Christmas with the Kranks, which purports to champion all those old-fashioned, God-fearing, middle-American moral landmarks (family, community, Christmas) but ends up championing consumerism, venality, hedonism, vanity, and intolerance. So much intolerance, in fact, that it plays rather well as a horror movie. A character is asked if a family not celebrating Christmas is Jewish or Buddhist: "No, none of that," he says. It reminds a lot of that "Twilight Zone" episode "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street," where a crisis shows suburban everymen to be monstrous, tribal, and dogmatic.

D.A.R.Y.L. (1985) – DVD

November 23, 2004Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Family, Sci-Fi, UK

½*/**** Image B Sound D
starring Mary Beth Hurt, Michael McKean, Kathryn Walker, Colleen Camp
screenplay by David Ambrose & Allan Scott and Jeffrey Ellis
directed by Simon Wincer

by Walter Chaw D.A.R.Y.L. is nigh unwatchable mid-Eighties fantasy dreck–toss this one on the scrap pile with Condorman and Krull. Its main character, a "Data Analyzing Robot Youth Lifeform" acronymistically nicknamed Daryl (Barret Oliver), is lost in an opening helicopter chase like the dog in John Carpenter's The Thing before the film proceeds to rip-off every other '80s sci-fi flick that preceded it (Starman, E.T., The Last Starfighter, War Games, Firefox, and on and on). Daryl is discovered by a kindly elderly couple (the requisite Superman steal), placed in the foster care of preternaturally sunny Mr. & Mrs. Richardson (Michael McKean and Mary Beth Hurt), and then goes on to be really good at Atari, baseball, and picking up bad habits from his chubby, sewer-mouthed little pal Turtle (Danny Corkill). Then the MIBs come a-knockin', natch.

Finding Neverland (2004)

November 12, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Family, Romance, Theatrical, UK

**/****
starring Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie, Radha Mitchell
screenplay by David Magee, based on the play "The Man Who Was Peter Pan" by Allan Knee
directed by Marc Forster

Findingneverlandby Walter Chaw Marc Forster's Finding Neverland is well-traveled territory: a historical melodrama that's been over-scored to the point of diabetes and overwritten to the point of retardation. The presumption isn't that we're unfamiliar with J.M. Barrie's play "Peter Pan", but that we're incapable of understanding that this adaptation of Alan Knee's play "The Man Who Was Peter Pan", now three degrees removed from history, lives and dies by its conveyance of the idea that the dagger of make-believe is mightier than the mundane sword of reality. How better, after all, to tell the tale of the man who created one of the darkest, most brilliantly subversive attacks on the status quo than to return him to the land of storytelling and mythmaking? Forster seems to get it–the film looks ravishing and the casting of sprightly, ethereal Johnny Depp as Barrie is a stroke of genius, but both actor and director are betrayed by a project that side-steps the disturbing issues at hand in its suggestion of this Barrie's suspected paedophilic tendencies and his inability to grow up. "Peter Pan" is the shadow; the tedious and evasive Finding Neverland is the candle. The J.M. Barrie estate is upset that the film isn't accurate. They should be upset that it isn't very good.

Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas (2004) + It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002) [Special Edition] – DVDs

November 10, 2004Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Muppets, Musical

*½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras C
directed by Matthew O'Callaghan

by Bill Chambers 2-D animation is dead, long live 2-D. Mickey Mouse and his apostles move into the realm of 3-D with Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas, cementing this maddeningly disposable gewgaw's place in the history books next to far more sublime firsts like 1928's Steamboat Willie (Mickey's debut) and 1935's The Band Concert (Mickey's colour debut). But while it's tempting to lob cheap shots along the lines of "Uncle Walt is spinning in his grave," fact is Disney's frosty remains were already a veritable "Price is Right" wheel by the early '70s, and if he'd lived to see the digital revolution, he probably would've been one of its pioneers. In other words, it's not sacrilege to experiment with a CGI Mickey, but the results probably never should've seen the light of day.

Elf (2003) [Infinifilm] – DVD

November 8, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Romance

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring Will Ferrell, James Caan, Zooey Deschanel, Mary Steenburgen
screenplay by David Berenbaum
directed by Jon Favreau

by Walter Chaw Some of the preview spots for Jon Favreau's Elf are hysterical, leading me to think that the film's failure to be very funny has a lot to do with bad direction, editing, or maybe both. It's a lightweight, unapologetically warm-hearted picture that earns a lot of respect for avoiding scatological humour en route to honouring nearly every other ingredient of the The Jerk bumpkin-out-of-water formula. Like Steve Martin, Will Ferrell announces himself with this film (and Old School) as a smart comedian unusually committed to effect and the directions his performance might take him. Ferrell isn't a chaotic jester. His clowning compels because it has the quality of internal logic, enough so that it's somehow possible to accept his man-raised-by-elves creation at face value.

Christmas in Connecticut (1992) + Jingle All the Way (1996) – DVDs

November 8, 2004Posted in1990s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, DVD, Family, Romance, Schwarzenegger, ZERO STARS

CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT
ZERO STARS/**** Image C Sound C+
starring Dyan Cannon, Kris Kristofferson, Richard Roundtree, Tony Curtis
screenplay by Janet Brownell, based on the screenplay by Lionel Houser and Adele Comandini and story by Aileen Hamilton
directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger

JINGLE ALL THE WAY
ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound C+
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sinbad, Phil Hartman, Rita Wilson
screenplay by Randy Kornfield
directed by Brian Levant

by Walter Chaw A man of many talents (a jag-off of all trades, let’s say), the honourable Arnold A. Schwarzenegger made his directorial debut with the 1992 telefilm Christmas in Connecticut, a remake of a 1945 Barbara Stanwyck flick and the sort of unqualified failure that finds something like thirty dozen ways to redefine “fatuous.” Dyan Cannon, she of the toothy, shark-like grin, stars as Elizabeth Blane, a popular cooking-show host without any actual cooking skills who’s led around by her pert snoot by her queen of a producer, Alexander (Tony Curtis, playing Harvey Fierstein). When heroic Colorado park ranger Jefferson Jones (Kris Kristofferson, one definition of “fatuous” all by his own self) saves a kid from the wilderness, Alexander hatches the brilliant plan to capitalize on Grizzly Adams’s national hero status by inviting him to a live broadcast of a fake dinner at a fake house in Connecticut populated by a family of terrible actors and an unspeakable mammy stereotype. It’s hard to draw the line between fiction and reality sometimes, isn’t it?

The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) – DVD

November 2, 2004Posted in1950s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Drama, DVD, Family, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Charlton Heston, Dorothy Lamour
screenplay by Fredric M. Frank, Barré Lyndon and Theodore St. John
directed by Cecil B. DeMille

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth is pretty close to being the Biggest Crock on Film. A lame assortment of soapy intrigues, bloated set-pieces, and garish colours, it's calculated to alienate the highbrows and haunt Guy Debord's nightmares. Some allege that it's the worst film ever to win the Best Picture Oscar, a hard claim to challenge no matter how unquantifiable the distinction. But while The Greatest Show on Earth is aimed squarely at those loathsome people who speak of films as "rollercoaster thrill-rides," there's no denying that it was made with a zesty vulgarity and executed with loving care. It's professional in both senses of the word: too much of a static thing to have artistic merit, yet big fun to watch as a well-engineered Rube Goldberg vehicle captained by Jack Smith across a field of giant marshmallows.

Mulan (1998) [Special Edition] – DVD

October 28, 2004Posted in1990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, China, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Eddie Murphy, Family, Fantasy, Musical, War

**/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B-
screenplay by Rita Hsiao, Christopher Sanders, Philip LaZebnik, Raymond Singer & Eugenia Bostwick-Singer
directed by Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft

by Bill Chambers If Disney’s animated features can be reduced to a stable of alternating boy movies and girl movies, then the studio’s decision to make the cross-dressing fable Mulan at a juncture when they really needed mass approval (that is, after striking out post-Katzenberg with Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Hercules) comes across as conspicuously non-partisan–and the hero’s androgyny isn’t the only bet-hedging the filmmakers practice. A meticulous recreation of Imperialist China, for instance, is compromised by anachronisms cultural and temporal (the eponymous Mulan (voice of Ming-Na Wen), a pre-Tang Dynasty Chinese maiden, is introduced to us wearing a tank top and what resemble capri pants; later, she is served bacon and eggs for breakfast), while musical numbers, subversive humour, and Spielbergian spectacle perpetually collide like bumper cars. The end-product is neither fish nor fowl, though it certainly leans towards foul.

The Dust Factory (2004)

October 27, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Family, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Armin Mueller-Stahl, Hayden Panettiere, Ryan Kelley, Michael Angarano
written and directed by Eric Small

by Walter Chaw Stunning in its incompetence, Eric Small's The Dust Factory highlights by its existence the unpopular truisms that there are as many awesomely bad independent films as there are mainstream ones; that the terms non-genre and non-traditional usually indicate a directionless mess; and that working with kid actors is not now, nor has it ever been, anything other than a plugger's bet. It raises the question of why there aren't more mimes acting as Greek Choruses in movies before it answers it, and most damnably, it seems to ascribe some sort of moral failing to seniors afflicted with Alzheimer's. See, in Small's fantasy world of The Dust Factory, souls in limbo can choose to "take the leap" off a trapeze tower into the arms of some faceless metaphor: miss and they're returned to the "dust" of their lives; catch and they're thrown to "the next level," which is Heaven or a video game, though stupid either way. The sticky part about it (aside from the stupid part, which is all of it, really) is that it requires courage to take that leap. The suggestion then becomes that if you have Alzheimer's disease, in some part of your brain you're a coward for not dying or "returning"–that you have in fact chosen to remain in a state of declining capacity. It's one thing to pose an Afterschool Special about how kids in comas need a will to power, another thing altogether to suggest that grandpa's a coward for contracting a degenerative brain condition.

Aladdin (1992) [Platinum Edition] – DVD

October 5, 2004Posted in1990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A+
screenplay by John Musker & Ron Clements and Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio
directed by John Musker & Ron Clements

Aladdincapby Bill Chambers Jeffrey Katzenberg may have revived the American animated feature while he was at Disney, but only one of the hits his reign yielded is worth a second viewing. Where 1989's The Little Mermaid and especially 1991's nauseating Beauty and the Beast tried to pass themselves off as Golden Age Disney (1937 (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)-1950 (Cinderella), for argument's sake), before a certain stateliness loosened its grip on the house style, 1992's Aladdin took its cue from Uncle Walt's twilight years, the Sixties, when he was interested in telling–as he geared up to pass the torch, perhaps–mentor stories (The Sword in the Stone and The Jungle Book) and pop culture had finally caught up with his incongruous predilections for psychedelia and bohemianism. It's a risk to emulate the period considered the birth of the studio's Dark Ages, and Aladdin is the least spurious movie of Disney's renaissance because of it.