WISH Review

This is the one you guys decided to have it out with, huh? The completely inoffensive, abundantly charming homage to Disney Animation Studios’ one-hundred-year history that also means to continue to push the boundaries of what constitutes a Disney princess further? I'm convinced there is a small (yet loud) and clearly influential sect of the internet whose entire purpose is to get as ahead of the narrative as possible and establish whatever direction they'd like to sway public opinion toward just to see if it sticks. For some reason, Wish was immediately dubbed lazy and unoriginal by hordes of people on TikTok (a format for micro shorts and ads) who picked apart the first clips of songs released from the film for no other reason than to say they supposedly weren't as good as songs from two years ago made for movies with different tones and objectives than this one.  

So, first, in the context of the film each and every song here works as intended which is to say, really well, with "Knowing What I Know Now" being a certified banger in the vein of classics such as "I'll Make a Man Out of You" and "I've Got a Dream". Further, the titular track of "This Wish" would be a standard Disney classic circa any other time in history. It, along with the whole of the story that doesn't stray far from your standard fairy tale pillars (young girl experiences longing and/or ambition and, in a manner of speaking, absolves the kingdom in which she lives from an evil sorcerer), are majestically rendered through a combination of the animation style and the style of that aforementioned music. The animation is in and of itself a combination of 2D watercolor background paintings (a homage to classic films dating all the way back to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) and cutting-edge CG that emphasizes the hand drawn look that ultimately creates both a very modern and very retro aesthetic simultaneously.

WONDER WOMAN 1984 Review

Wonder Woman 1984 is not a good movie. Unfortunately. It's not that it's soul-crushingly bad, but it's just not good and it for one reason or another feels like it's completely mistaken silly for entertaining. Absurdity for ambition. There is a wealth of good intent imbued on the project as writer/director Patty Jenkins returns to continue crafting the titular character into more of a beacon of hope than ever, but come the end of this bloated two and half hour epic it's nearly impossible to see how anyone associated with the project could have mistaken it for quality rather than recognizing the bizarre (and often times extremely cheesy) choices that were made, not to mention the incredibly preposterous nature of it all. It's almost as if the film actively goes out of its way not to necessarily make its message more convoluted, but rather like it's trying to do or say more than what is actually on its mind. In other words, it's trying to make the simple idea at its center feel more complex and therefore more sophisticated when in reality said execution simply feels perplexing. The oddity that is this Wonder Woman sequel is difficult to describe as it's still somewhat mind-blowing that Jenkins along with co-writers Geoff Johns (a former executive at DC Entertainment and a prolific writer and producer) and Dave Callaham (seasoned franchise screenwriter) submitted this screenplay to Warner Brothers with the confidence not only that it would be approved, but that it was good while it's even more confounding that Warner greenlit this $200 million experiment. All of this is difficult to come to terms with as I very much am in the bag for excessively bombastic superhero films that have a distinct point of view and while Wonder Woman 1984 is most certainly excessive and most definitely carves out where it wants to stand in the pantheon of the genre none of what transpires on screen ever feels satisfying despite the virtue of what the film is trying to convey. Its a baffling misfire, an ill-conceived attempt at looking to the past in order to enlighten us about our future, but most of all it's disappointing. With the first Wonder Woman film three years ago Jenkins crafted an equally ambitious, but more balanced film that honed in on the titular character’s optimism and slight naivety while utilizing the tangible and rather terrible world she entered as a way of highlighting those qualities. 2017's Wonder Woman found the right avenues to take in order to balance the many ambitions it hoped to accomplish with its story and characters whereas Wonder Woman 1984 crams in so many disparate ideas and goes so far out of its way in such ludicrous fashion in order to say what it wants to say that hardly any of it resonates.

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG Review

Sonic the Hedgehog is the kind of straight-down-the-middle piece of live-action family entertainment that we just don’t get as often as kids fed on this particular genre in the nineties were once accustomed to. At a certain point in time, it seemed as if audiences on the verge of puberty, but not quite there, were delivered a sports-themed adventure or underdog story featuring kids their own age on an annual basis-whether it was The Sandlot, The Little Giants, The Mighty Ducks, The Big Green, A Kid in King Arthur’s Court or Angel’s in the Outfield-the point is there were plenty of options not only for the youngest of youngsters, but for tweens before people even knew what tweens were. Lately though (and when I say lately I mean the last twenty-five years or so lately) that demographic has been lumped in with the more sophisticated audiences required to digest the lofty animated expectations of studios such as Pixar. That said, having never been a fan or player of Sonic the Hedgehog there was no real emotional or nostalgic connection to the original Sega property or its many animated incarnations over the years. As a live-action adaptation of a popular nineties video game is the closest we get to any of those aforementioned titles these days though, director Jeff Fowler’s feature directorial debut then fills the nostalgic void left by the absence of such titles by default. Fowler and/or Paramount Pictures seems to have known this to be the case thus their main objective becoming to not only entertain the kiddos of today with an updated take on a character they might have seen an episode of or played a game with at one time or another, but also to hone in on the same fan base that threw a fit when the first, original trailer for the film was released and the design of the titular character garnered such backlash that the studio delayed the release of the film and re-designed its CGI star completely. That is to say, not only did Paramount realize there was a large fan base for this property, but a passionate one as well and one that was not only anxious to see a childhood favorite get the live-action treatment, but to re-capture the feelings this character inspired and to re-live this time in their lives that Sonic represents. To this extent, Paramount went the extra mile and hired Jim Carrey to play the role of the antagonist in the evil Dr. Robotnik. This isn’t the Jim Carrey of Mr. Popper's Penguins or even Yes Man though, no, this is the Jim Carrey of The Mask or Ace Ventura as the fifty-eight year-old pulls off his most physically comedic role in what feels like forever to what I can only imagine is the pure joy and delight of thirty year-olds everywhere. It is this combination of Carrey playing the hits combined with the genre re-vamping that leads to Sonic the Hedgehog being as appealing as it ends up being, for despite not having any nostalgic connections to the character itself, these elements make up for this as Fowler’s film more or less accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish and will satisfy any resident of the 16-bit gaming era while still not mustering enough excitement to write home about it…and if I remember anything about The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog from my Saturday morning binges in 1993 that feels about par for the course.

First Trailer for SONIC THE HEDGEHOG

The first trailer for the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie has been released and well...it's actually a movie. The film, based on the video game franchise first released in 1991 and originally conceived by Sega to replace Alex Kidd to compete with Nintendo's Mario as their main mascot, the game went on to become uber-successful spawning many sequels and helping define Sega as one of the leading video game companies during the golden 16-bit era. Like other video games of this heyday, Sonic has crossed many platforms and animated series, comic books, and no doubt countless other media adaptations, but never has the character had its own feature film production...until now. In a move that feels like it's being made twenty or maybe even twenty-five years too late, Paramount has decided to follow suit per Warner Bros. new Pokemon movie and give birth to beloved video game character in the real world where they look like real animals and function as members of our present society. Enough about how everything about this film seems to be working against it though, as the screenplay from Patrick Casey and Josh Miller (a duo with nothing but what seem to National Lampoon knock-offs on their resume) is being directed by Jeff Fowler (making his feature debut after having served in the visual effect dept. on Where the Wild Things Are) with the story following Sonic (voice of Ben Schwartz) as he tries to save the world alongside human pal, Tom (James Marsden), to stop the villainous Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey). While the involvement of someone like Carrey in a role that is literally a cartoon come to life is enough to be intriguing the film otherwise doesn't look to be doing anything outside of what that string of "live-action" Alvin and the Chipmunks films did a few years back. I imagine Sonic is about as hot right now as the Chipmunks were in 2007, but at least they had a Christmas special to bank on. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out and if the quality of the film can actually rise above the inherent cynicism that comes with its existence at the moment. Sonic the Hedgehog also stars Tika Sumpter, Natasha Rothwell, Neal McDonough, Adam Pally, and opens on November 8th, 2019.