My kids have this classic book called The Princess and the Pea. Like the first Batman movies, it is strange and stupid. Like Chris Nolan’s Batman movies, it can become a believable real world story with a few tweaks here and there. So here’s the real story (well, the old one made more believable). [You can click each image for a bigger one, or a good qualty pdf (1.6mb) or one in even higher quality (6mb)].
We are just much, much better than you.
Pixar owns animated kids’ movies. Metacritic.com provides a weighted aggregate score of all US critics’ reviews. Pixar’s greats get the following metascores:
Pixar makes everyone else look bad. And yet they may never have one distinction: the honour of one of their films being known as underrated. The following films deserve that accolade, in my opinion.
Having kids means that I have watched each of the Top 6 films many, many times. Familiarity breeds contempt, and watching something too many times certainly tests the strength of a film. Shrek, for example, remains a great movie, but seeing it a dozen times reveals that it’s really only Donkey that holds it together. Shrek and Fiona are really quite annoying. Chicken Little is OK, and Zach Braff is a funny guy, but having seen it three or four times, I don’t feel like watching it again. So, if a movie is still funny after viewing 15 or so, it probably belongs on this list.
First, here are some slightly underrated movies you should consider liking if you also want to be cool.
(Metascore: 72%)
This is one of my wife’s favourite kids’ movies, and so it must make the list even only for that reason. It is good, though a bit too much cutesiness for my taste, and for my money it is only the second best 3D supervillain-with-minion(s) movie made in 2010.
Favourite moment: Vector: the nerd villain. Oh Yeah!
Gru: [after giving Vector the moon in hostage exchange] Now the girls.
Vector: Actually, I’m holding on to them a little longer.
Gru: No!
Vector: Oh yeah! Unpredictable!
**************
Gru: We stole the Statue of Liberty…!
[the minions cheer]
Gru: …the small one, from Las Vegas!
[the cheers stop]
Gru: I won’t even mention the Eiffel Tower…
Gru: … also Vegas.
(Metascore: 62%)
Curious George is very much a young kids’ movie, but it is surprisingly all-round excellent. The animation has been carefully designed to feel true to the simplicity and charm of the book illustrations, while still appearing sophisticated and modern (the sequels on the other hand had no problem with looking and being cheap). The voice cast is strong too; Will Ferrell manages not to over-indulge himself, Drew Barrymore does her Drew thing, and David Cross is hilarious as the over-looked son trying to win his dad’s love. Jack Johnson does a sweet job of the soundtrack too.
Favourite moment: David Cross’ little comic gems (Falls from a height: ‘Ow! My body. Hey look! A dollar!’ OK, so it’s funnier when he does it.)
Worst moment: Watching one of the exploitative soulless sequels.
The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)(Metascore: 87%)
With a score of 87% this is obviously far from underrated. Nevertheless, I didn’t like it overly much the first time, and I heard no one making a fuss about it. With a couple more viewings, though, it definitely grew on me. One of the better ones.
Favourite moment: Vicar confronting unseen intruder: “Hello? [Creepy music] Hello? is anybody there? [Loud burp] Mrs. Mulch?”
All of the above are deserving of your consideration if you have been ignoring them. The following are six gems that got a mixed reception from the critics, but get two hand-thumbs and two toe-thumbs up from me.
(Metascore: 63%)
Why it’s underrated: This film suffered with the critics due to its release very shortly after Despicable Me, which obviously invites comparison (they both feature minions, as I said). Also, it stars Will Ferrell, which is asking for trouble.
Why it deserves more: Was there ever a role more suited to Will Ferrell than an arrogant, grandiose semi-supergenius? He’s great in this, and there are plenty of genuinely funny moments. But the thing I appreciated most about Megamind was the amount of attention paid to physical comedy, to timing and gesture. I love the bit where Megamind in his huge mechsuit gets bored waiting for his new nemesis to turn up, and so starts playing with the cars on the street like toys. Megamind often manages to be funny without dialogue.
(Metascore: 60%)
Why it’s underrated: My initial thought was that the opening squirrel cameo — which was used to promote the film and is genuinely excellent — was was its only redeeming feature. That little short-film had raised expectations, and the slightly wooden animation and clunky performances (in parts) in the movie itself never reached those heights.
Why it deserves more: Much like Donkey in Shrek, multiple viewings improved the appeal of the sloth character. The DVD includes a background documentary that shows how much work John Leguizamo put into developing the voice and personality of Sid, and it translates into a quality performance. In spite of the fact that he’s meant to be an annoying character, it is played with outstanding sensitivity. It’s a movie-saving performance. If Sid the Sloth had been like Jar-Jar Binks, there would never have been a sequel, and Blue Sky Studios would never have survived to make…
(Metascore: 71%)
Why it’s underrated: It’s not that Horton was hated by the critics or that it deserves too much more than the 70% it has, but it was one of those kids’ movies that moved on without a fuss. Pixar movies get hype, chatter, DVD purchases. This one gets mostly ignored.
Why it deserves more: It’s beautifully made. Granted, most are these days, but it is often really really pretty. It is a massive jump in technical quality in the six years since Ice Age. Secondly, it is an interesting story. It raises questions about the limits of knowledge, our place in the universe, moral responsibility, peer pressure, politics.
Gaaaaaaa
Thirdly, it takes risks. There is that yellow puff-ball character that is a little too left field even for me; and there is that scene where Horton’s imagination makes everything Manga, which is one of my favourite ever kids’ movie moments. It’s a charming, good-natured, funny film.
(Metascore: 70%)
A Disney movie? So one of them is a princess, one is a mage, and they’re all going to sing at some point.
Why it’s underrated: It’s a non-Pixar Disney movie, which means it’s likely to have musical numbers written by rhyming dictionary, and sung by a teapot. The word pageantry will be used on the poster, in the reviews, and probably in the musical number (but not at the end of a line, because almost nothing rhymes with ‘pageantry’… OK there ‘gadgetry’… and most adverbs…where’s my rhyming dictionary?).
Also, the title is stupid — they just had to go for an Emperor’s New Clothes tie-in, even though it makes no sense — and Sting was employed to write a schmaltzy stereotypically Disney theme tune. [Allow me to say at this juncture that Sting’s song, and the strange and brutal Tom Jones number at the end, are bizarrely mismatched to this movie, and are for me its worst feature.]
I hate Disney movies. Even the freaking Lion King. My wife bought the Lion King II for about R3 at the market; I don’t know why she hates me. I hear Matthew Broderick’s voice in all my nightmares. So this movie was meant to suck along with all the others from the 80s and 90s.
Why it deserves more:
It is possible that this film was a turning point for Disney. They might have employed someone who enjoyed Pocahontas II as much as I did, but they seem to be trying harder in the new millennium. Whatever happened, Emperor’s is really funny. Surprisingly funny. Nobody breaks into song. Nobody says pageantry. It has David Spade doing his David Spade thing and Patrick Warburton talking to squirrels.
It’s not perfect, and not every joke lands, but while the critics on metacritic.com gave it 70%, the user score is a whopping 88%. Those who watched it liked it.
(Metascore: 66%)
Why it’s underrated: ‘Hey! Come see a movie with me. It stars Bill Hader and Anna Faris.’
‘The guy from Napoleon Dynamite? Yeah, I don’t know…’
‘No, that’s Jon Heder. Bill Hader was in Night in the Museum. As, uh, General Custer.’
‘Uh. Who’s the director then?’
‘Phil Lord. He did some of this series… called, uh, Clone High… And, um. Hmm… There’s this Julia Roberts thing on too?’
Cloudy stars no one you’ve ever heard of, unless you are a huge fan of Evil Dead movies or the Scary Movie franchise. When every other kids’ movie headlines with Tom Hanks or Jim Carrey, that’s not ideal.
Secondly, it was part of a herd of shiny, colourful movies at the beginning of the 3D fad that we’re currently living through. It is too dazzling — ADD as one reviewer called it — too dominated by the disaster-movie feel that takes over by the end. Superficially, it seems like it’s trying to preach about obesity or the environment or pet-issue whatever. (It actually isn’t nearly as preachy on ‘issues’ as critics suggested; I didn’t notice them taking any crowd-pleasing opportunities to lecture kids about environmentalism).
I took my daughter too see it for bonding time (she was about four). We had ice cream and then watched the non-3D verson. She sat bolt upright for 80 minutes, came out of the cinema and vomited.
Why it deserves more: Cloudy is a bit hyper, but also has ludicrous amounts of charm just below the surface. There are quotable catchphrases (you’d be surprised how often ‘Woah, Steve, no. We both know how you get around gummibears!‘ can be used in regular conversation’). My daughter walked up to me the other day, reached out her hand and said, ‘Mustache!’, before withdrawing her hand in shame (as the monkey does). That already makes it great, but it also has Mr T (‘You know what you are Flint Lockwood? A shenanniganiser!‘), and an outstanding number of comic details that present themselves on subsequent viewings.
Sam Sparks: Can you keep a secret?
Flint Lockwood: No.
[awkward pause]
Flint Lockwood: But this time, sure. Yeah.
Sam Sparks: [sighs] Ok. It was a really long time ago but… I, too… was… a *nerd!*
Flint Lockwood: [blankly] Too?
***********
Flint Lockwood: Do you like Jello?
Sam Sparks: I love Jello!
Flint Lockwood: I love Jello too! Oh, and peanut butter, right?
Sam Sparks: Oh, no no no, I am severely allergic to peanuts.
Flint Lockwood: Hey, me too.
Sam Sparks: So what’s it called?
Flint Lockwood: Peanut allergy.
Sam Sparks: No, the machine.
Flint Lockwood: Of course.
(Metascore: 74%)
Why it’s underrated: The previous offering from the Aardman studio was Chicken Run, which was not particularly good, and so expectations were low. The trailer I saw seems to have been completed well before the main body of the movie, because there are key differences (e.g. it features characters that are cut from the actual movie), and it is largely based around the opening act in which the pampered pet rat is unexpectedly visited by a sewer rat. It comes across as a padded-out Town Mouse and Country Mouse story that relies on toilet humour. The trailer got a groan from me, and I watched it reluctantly (my wife rented it or something; don’t remember). I didn’t really recover from my bad attitude, although the sometime-screaming sometime-singing slugs at least got some laughs out of me.
The story is also adventure-based, lower-brow than Pixar epics, and it is British.
Why it deserves more: Simply put, it is hard to think of any cartoon character that is quite as rich and funny and larger-than-life as Ian McKellen’s Toad (when you’ve watched it enough times to appreciate it). The interactions between Toad and his cousin le Frog (Jean Reno) are also outstanding. The movie hits top gear from the moment that le Frog enters by flip-flopping down a window like one of those stretchy sticky toys. Much of the humour relies on poking fun at the French-British relationship, but it is rarely done better than in Flushed Away.
Le Frog: We leave immediately!
[strides off screen]
Henchfrog #1: What about dinner?
Le Frog: [strides back on screen] We leave in five hours!
Le Frog: To action!
Henchfrogs: We surrender!
Le Frog: Not that action, you idiots! The kung-fu thing!
Because, you know, le War.
While walking out of Checkers Hyper the other day, I spotted their bookshelf. Excellent attention to detail once again:
Ungenius 