An erudite beagle and his adopted son meet history’s most famous figures as they travel through time in the animation redux Mr. Peabody & Sherman. In this new, slightly reimagined update of a classic cartoon spin-off, Mr. Peabody (voiced by Ty Burrell) grows up as an outcast. He’s not at all interested in conventional canine cavorting. […]
A young, talented engineer dreams of the perfect airplane at the dawn of aviation in The Wind Rises. Famed Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki knows how to stir the imagination with lavishly creative animated films like his most famous examples — Spirited Away and Ponyo. However, this film is a bit different in that it’ôs a tribute to an actual […]
I first encountered LEGO bricks in the late ‘70s. I was torn between sinking all of my meager savings from chores, birthdays and holidays into LEGO sets or my new Atari 2600, and the video games prevailed. Were it not for a greater addiction to video games, I could have gone down that path of […]
This year’s collection of animated shorts is a mixed bag because it includes two shorts that people have already seen as lead-ins to Disney feature films and the others are not as strong as in years past. There’s a clear favorite in The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014: Animation that people will latch onto, but […]
Hans Christian Andersen‘s classic tale The Snow Queen is reimagined in Frozen, Disney‘s latest animated feature. In the kingdom of Arendelle, there are two young girls — Princess Elsa (voiced by Idina Menzel) and her younger sister, Princess Anna (Kristen Bell). Elsa’s a precocious young girl with a very special secret — she can transform anything into ice and snow. As […]
Some sequels are logical extensions of other properties. Think of how the X-Men movies led to the Wolverine films. Planes is also an offshoot of another popular property. Billed as “From above the World of Cars,” it does truly concentrate on the aerial citizens of that universe. That doesn’t limit the characters to those of […]
Gru and family return for a sequel to the 2010 smash-hit original in Despicable Me 2. In the new installment, Gru has given up his evildoing aspirations in order to focus on being the best father he can be for his three girls — Margo, Edith and Agnes. Unfortunately, his evil past means he’s also the best […]
The unoriginal plot meandered its way along like a stoned senior looking for a snack.
I avoided the fraternities and sororities in college except for the parties. Some of those were quite wild and involved all kinds of drinking stunts and things I wouldn’t even consider today. That kind of spirit infuses Monsters University, but the emphasis is on scares instead of drinking. This is the first prequel to a […]
Animated films seem to have fallen into a rut lately where they introduce characters only for the merchandise or otherwise forget that the film’s quality should come first. That’s not to say that they’re bad, but I expect more wonder and excitement from animated films because filmmakers can do so much in them that they […]
Dramatic climate change suddenly threatens the existence of a solitary caveman family in the new animated film from Dreamworks—The Croods. The main plot of The Croods is pretty typical in that it takes current day aspects of everyday life and pastes them onto a Paleolithic family. The father, Grug (voiced by Nicolas Cage), is obsessed […]
Animated films should be a gold mine for most filmmakers because parents almost blindly drag their kids to these movies as an easy activity for families. Add in those extra 3D dollars, and any company should clean up and at least recoup their production costs. It’s pretty hard to make an awful animated film because […]