And Why Penguins Of Madagascar Doesn't

I really like the Madagascar series! It's disjointed and odd at times, but the humor comes from such a wonderfully bizarre place, and the characters are such wonderful caricatures of the actors who voice them. So what happens when you take out all of the insane, moving cogs of a clock save one? It stops working.

Suddenly Dreamworks throws us into a world where the only characters we know are those weird, wacky penguins... characters that work in a secondary capacity because there are so many other characters to sort of ground them. But now the penguins have no safety net. If their gags and crude antics aren't working, there's nowhere else to turn. The penguins are it.

Forget for a moment how piss-poor the movie's setup is (they walk into Fort Knox undetected to steal a bag of puffy cheese snacks only to get captured by an octopus who poses as a human... who was apparently waiting there and expecting them to go into the employee break room all along?????) and recognize just how baffling it is that these characters were given a movie all to themselves in the first place. Not one of them is voiced by a big time celebrity (not that that should be the main focus here) and most of the time, their personalities seem to overlap to the point that you'd get them confused with each other if the writers didn't try so hard to prove to you they were different.

I've been liking what Dreamworks has been doing lately (they did have How to Train Your Dragon 2 earlier this year)... but this one feels like a mistake. No, it's not on par with the catastrophic anti-film that was Cars 2, and I feel like it will do a lot less to hurt the studios' cred with adults than that one did to Pixar. But it feels like filler, during a year when we desperately needed someone to step up and take hold of the animation category.

In the end, it seems The Lego Movie will have to sit on the 2014 animation mantel almost completely by its self.

Big Hero 6 Is Big Fun

Sometimes things come together at just the right time and place to make something special. I can't imagine Big Hero 6 even existing in this form if Disney hadn't bought out Marvel. But this is a sign of the kinds of things the two studios can accomplish as a team. It's really quite exciting.

Big Hero 6 is the story of Hiro, a young genius living in the great city of San Fransokyo. When he loses his brother (and best friend) to a fire, Hiro falls into a depression. But his brother's greatest achievement, Baymax (a cuddly medical robot) awakens to help revive the boy's joy of life. They form a super hero team... and it's awesome.

The animation is wonderfully stylish. The characters, compelling and distinct... and very well rounded. And the plot balances just on the edge of feeling too adult and feeling too kiddy. But the ingredients work, and the final product is a very entertaining ride. Though there is one particular criticism that I believe may be affecting some peoples' experiences. The sound mixing toward the middle to second half of the film tends to drop away and leave what could be exciting, big action scenes feeling less spectacular than they should. The best comparison I have for this is The Iron Giant, where the sound design frequently gets in the way of what's otherwise a very interesting, heartfelt story. Though in all honesty, Big Hero 6's sound problems are in no way as offensive as The Iron Giant's. Just something to consider though, in spite of this fault, Big Hero 6 still manages to entertain through the very end of its runtime.

If Disney is interested in making a feature adaptation of something obscure like Marvel's Big Hero 6, I can only imagine what's coming down the road. I would personally love to get big animated productions of some of Marvel's more renowned characters. Even with the live action ones still coming out.

Disney's Frozen Is Not At All What It Seems...

...And I'm so relieved.

When the first teaser came out for Frozen, I thought it looked... well, bad.

Then the trailer came up.

I really felt I couldn't get a solid grasp on what kind of movie this would be. So I wrote it off. And I honestly didn't care to research any further. Let me be clear, Disney did a piss poor job advertising this movie. But... they also made a really great animated feature.

First, let me appeal to all of the Disney fans out there... this is a musical. You hear that? The trailers somehow managed to snip and dodge any of the musical moments (which take up maybe 65% of the thing) and that's why they felt so all over the place. Now most of the songs were a bit too pop for my taste, but that didn't hinder my enjoyment. And while I was a big fan of Tangled, their last epic fairytale musical, I think Frozen is better. Why?

Well, it's just so damned refreshing to have two... count 'em... two real and relatable female leads. And a little bit of that Disney magic certainly doesn't hurt. In seeking story concepts from classic fairytale authors like Hans Christian Andersen, Disney is managing to stay true to their core fanbase. This is something I would have denied a few years back. But they are still managing to make movies that remind me of my childhood.

I think this movie is a success for Disney in a place where Pixar failed drastically. When Brave came out, I was excited but scared. After all, Cars 2 had just flumixed me into submission and suddenly I wasn't sure I could trust the studio anymore. Then Brave utterly destroyed my perception of Pixar as an unbeatable creative machine. It was just so incredibly flawed. The worst element being that this was supposed to be their mother-daughter story...??? So here comes Frozen a few years later with an actually compelling sister-sister relationship that not only drives the film, it is the film. Great Job Disney!

However, I could have done with less of that snowman.