A Double Feature In Three Dimensions

Little known fact: any two movies at the theater can be a double feature as long as you sneak into one of them.



Tangled is the story of Rapunzel... sort of. Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore) has lived her entire life in a secret tower, and her only friends are her pet chameleon and Mother Gothel, a woman Rapunzel believes is her mother, but is a mean bitch who has kept the girl hidden away because of the healing powers her hair possesses. Her curiosity gets the better of her when she meets Flynn, a robber on the run from the law, together they venture to the kingdom to see the floating lights that appear every year on her birthday.

The movie is very entertaining, especially the chameleon and the palace guard horse that tracks the lead characters like a bloodhound (not a metaphor.)

The songs are completely forgettable, and I am being literal: I cannot remember a single lyric from any one of the songs. They aren't even long enough to be considered real songs, it's like the music guy at Disney realized he'd forgotten to write any songs before the thing went into production and so he jotted the lyrics down on a napkin during a twenty-minute lunch break.

Disney finally proves that it is still in the fucking game when it comes to animation. For many long years, anything Disney did kind of got steam-rolled under the mighty Pixar machine, and while Tangled isn't quite as good as Wall-E or Toy Story, it is miles above some of the direct-to-DVD schlock Disney has been pumping out like toxic sludge. For once the 3D actually enhanced the quality, embedding the watcher in the scenery instead of just presenting it.

The cast was par, as in not sub-par, except Zachery Levi (Chuck), who voiced Flynn, he brought the comedy up to another level. His every line had me giggling, his timing and delivery are priceless.

Tangled gets 3.8 stars.

Up next is Megamind.

Megamind (Will Ferrell, Elf, Anchorman, SNL) is an alien who was sent to Earth as a baby when his planet was blown into chunks. Unfortunately his spaceship lands, not in Kansas, but in a prison, and the inmates raise him to be a villain. He does the usual evil-doer things, has a lair, a Minion (David Cross, Year One, Kung Fu Panda)and his enemy, superhero Megaman (voiced by Brad Pitt, Ocean's 11-13.) When Megamind destroys Megaman, what will he do? How will his life change? When he looks in the mirror will he like the giant blue head that stares back at him?

I love any movie that lets you peek behind the cape and get a look at the real person and their life, whether it is Megamind or Watchmen or... well, I guess it is really only the two, but still, it is incredibly interesting to see how these people tick.

The awkward social mess that Will Ferrell usually lends itself very well to this animated caper. If it had been live action and he had been playing some kind of football star, I am sure I would have been throwing things at the screen, but as an animated super villain with a giant blue head, he had me laughing.

Tina Fey, who plays the love interest Roxanne Ricthi, is freaking hilarious. I cannot say that enough, she is freaking hilarious.

In fact, they are all freaking hilarious: Jonah Jill, David Cross, all of them except Brad Pitt. Maybe his character wasn't meant to be funny, maybe it just wasn't great writing, or maybe it was just bad acting; either way it felt like Brad phoned it in a little with that one.

The animation is good, not great, but better than most of the other animated movies Dreamworks spits out. The 3D didn't really add anything to it, but seeing as how I didn't pay for my ticket, I'll let that slide.

Megamind gets 3.6 stars

Nicolas Cage: Wizard

Ever since National Treasure, my friends and I have approached Nicolas Cage movies from one perspective: all Nicolas Cage movies are, in fact, real life documentaries about Nicholas Cage.

This explains two things about life as we know it:
1. It explains why Nicholas Cage's "acting" is more or less the same in every film. It's because he isn't acting, he is just living his life while someone happens to be filming.

2. It explains why no one is allowed to see the back of the Declaration of Independence.



I can hear you now, laughing off my theory like Christians laugh off evolution. "They can't be documentaries," you say, "they would have never been able to film that one where he is a knight or whatever because cameras didn't exist." Well did you ever think of this, you stupid monkey descendant? Nicolas Cage is a fucking wizard.



That is right, Nicolas Cage knows magic.

Case in point, The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

A cute little flick, and funny, too. In it Nicolas Cage must find the one person who is powerful enough with the magics that they will be able to stop the evil wizard Maxim Horvath from raising Morgana, the evilest wizard of all. Trouble is, the kid doesn't know he is a wizard and so Cage must train him.

"A-ha!" you say. "If it really is a documentary, how come that kid, Jay Baruchel, who was in such hilarious movies as Knocked Up and Tropic Thunder, is in this movie being equally as hilarious?" Now I must ask you, haven't you ever seen a look-a-like? Come on.

"Well" you say, nervously now that I have bested you twice, "what about the evil wizard Maxim Horvath? He looks an awful lot like the fantastic actor Alfred Molina who played Doc Ock in Spiderman 2." Anyone who is paying attention can deduce that Alfred is also probably a wizard, most likely a wizard who has given up on magic and devoted his life to acting in movies... but not this movie where he is, in fact, an evil wizard.

Now all you can do is sit back and wait for Nicolas Cage's next documentary entitled Ghost Rider 2.

I give Sorcerer 4 stars and an eye of newt.

Here's To You, Meet The Robinsons

I will admit it, I am a complete sucker for animated movies. Cars, Toy Story, Happily Never After, Shrek, that one where John Cusack was a hunchback, I have seen them all and loved most of them.

Meet The Robinsons flew in under my radar, though, and I missed it -- that is, until it popped up on Netflix.


Meet The Robinsons is a Disney movie about an orphan (at this point it would be harder to find a Disney character with two living parents than it would be to repair Mel Gibson's image) who dreams of two things:

1. Inventing great things
2. Getting adopted

And yes, those things are listed in order. Lewis can't seem to get any of his many inventions to work, but just when he is on the brink of a breakthrough at the school science fair, a mysterious man in a bowler hat sabotages and then absconds with his most recent invention, the Brain Scanner. What follows is a wacky trip through time in a mad race to set things right.

When it comes to animation everyone knows that Pixar is the Holy Beast before which all must bow, but the art work of Meet The Robinsons was good, even great. Walt Disney Feature Animation really stepped up its game and, while still cowering in the shadow of the almighty Pixar, did some real quality work.

Visually, the movie is very bright and fluffy, like a neon bunny fresh from the dryer.


And as colorful as the landscapes may be, the characters are even more so. There is no way I could properly encapsulate in words the sheer hilarious weirdness of the characters Lewis meets in the future, but I will sum it up by saying this: there is a giant squid for a butler and Adam West plays a pizza delivery boy.


The thing I love about these computer animated movies is that, even with all the uplifting kiddie crap, there are still a few places where adult humor can slip in, like when a bunch of frogs in suits (don't ask) throw a flying hat (again, don't ask) into the trunk of their black sedan, and we see it land next to a shovel and a tire iron before the frogs close the lid in a menacing fashion. Kids laugh because it is a flying hat and frogs, adults laugh because they know the flying hat is gonna get whacked.

I give Meet The Robinsons 4 stars