Release the Kraken

Film: The Sea Beast
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on basement television.

It took me a disturbingly long time to figure out what the intent behind The Sea Beast was. Kids movies always have a moral to them, and I thought I knew what the moral was going to be, and I was right. The Sea Beast, like many a kids’ movie, is about tolerance. The problem isn’t that. Kids’ movies are always going to be at least a little easier to read simply because of the audience. While kids can certainly pick up on nuance, you have to be careful with it. No, the problem here is that this is a movie that you have absolutely seen before.

So walk with me for a minute. Imagine, if you will, a society that is plagued by dangerous, giant creatures. These creatures are dangerous, large, and a huge problem for the society in question. In fact, the people in the society have teams of warriors who, in this case, head out on ships to fight these massive creatures. But it might be that a young child from that society will discover that the creatures are actually peaceful, that the war that is being fought is one caused more by misunderstanding than anything. Can she, and the adult who allies with her, get the society to realize their terrible mistake before more lives are lost? What does this sound like?

Maui...Wowie!

Films: Moana
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

It’s not often that a studio gets two films nominated for Best Animated Feature in the same year. I think that is generally because it’s hard for a studio to release two animated features in the same year. In the case of 2016 and Disney, though, both Zootopia and Moana were released and both were nominated for Best Animated Feature. I watched Zootopia months ago and enjoyed it well enough. Moana made it to NetFlix streaming, which meant I knew its time was coming.

Here’s the thing. The basic story of Zootopia is that racism is bad. Admittedly, that’s not like a staggering revelation, but the entire story is based on the idea that racism is destructive. It’s a fine message even if the movie misses a great deal of the actual problems with racism as experienced in the real world. Moana is an adventure tale about a young girl going to sea to save the island of her people and to connect with the wandering explorers of her people’s past. And Moana is a better argument against racism than Zootopia despite having not a damn thing to do with it.

Dog Days

Film: Bolt
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on laptop.

I went into Bolt specifically with the thought that I probably wouldn’t like it a ton. This was a film that had to win me over. While there are certainly exceptions, Disney animation went through a dark period, and some of those movies (see Brother Bear, for instance) were, well, pretty awful. Even a lot of good non-Pixar Disney films suffer from being flatly predictable throughout. So Bolt very much started out as “I need to check off this box” instead of a film I was looking forward to seeing.

After an initial problem with the DVD, I settled in and ironed a bunch of shirts while I watched. Bolt follows the tried and true “plenty of make believe, but be true to yourself” Disney fable, in this case pretty literally—more literally than usual, in fact. We start with an introduction to Penny (Miley Cyrus before she went all “former Disney star” crazy), who gets a new dot from a pet shelter. We learn that this dog, Bolt (voiced by John Travolta during scenes without humans), has been given a variety of super powers by Penny’s father to protect her against his nemesis, Dr. Calico (Malcolm McDowell). There’s a solid action sequence of Bolt and Penny avoiding Calico’s many minions and a quick primer on Bolt’s powers.

Gotta Wonder How They'll Name the Sequel

Film: Big Hero 6
Format: Sycamore Theater.

We took the girls to see Big Hero 6 Friday night. The original plan was to hit the film on Thanksgiving, but the day got away from us. We spent the bulk of Friday cleaning and putting up Christmas decorations, and then figured we’d catch the film. I don’t go out to the movies that often, partly because I don’t always have the time and partly because I don’t like crowds of other people around me. But, now and then, it’s worth it to take the girls and have a little family time.

Big Hero 6 is a superhero origin story, although it takes us a long time to actually get to the superhero part. We start by being introduced to Hiro Hamada (Ryan Potter), a 14-year-old robotics expert who is competing in illegal robot fights (and winning). His older brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney) is a student in robotics at the local university. Wanting to get Hiro on a more productive path, Tadashi takes his younger brother to his lab, introduces him to a number of people, and essentially gets his brother excited about the possibilities for cool new inventions that he and his friends are working on. In Tadashi’s case, the invention is Baymax (Scott Adsit), an inflated robot that acts as a personal medical service.