Frozen

We were roughly twenty minutes into Frozen, watching the brown-haired sister (voiced by Kristen Bell) sing a duet with her beau, when I realized my kids weren't showing me a movie. They were showing me a Broadway musical disguised as a movie. About ten minutes after that, while watching Idina Menzel's Ice Queen belt out a full-throated (and Oscar-winning) “Let it Go,” I realized they were showing me a particularly good Broadway musical disguised as a movie. They ate it right up, and so did I.

Here's what makes Frozen a particularly good Broadway musical disguised as a movie: the songs, the story, the sets and costuming, and the performances.

Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez wrote the songs. Between them, they boast 'The Book of Mormon,' 'Avenue Q,' 'The Wonder Pets,' 'Winnie The Pooh,' and 'In Transit.' Robert Lopez has an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony. These people know what they're doing, and what they're doing in Frozen is writing show tunes. These songs have great hooks, catchy choruses, and singability written all over them – just try listening to “Fixer Upper,” sung in the movie by a chorus of Scandinavian rock trolls, and not imagining a bunch of 12-year-olds in homemade costumes. I dare you. And if you happen to be one of the few people who still haven't heard Frozen's big anthem, “Let it Go,” well, get ready for an ear worm that'll play in a constant loop for days.

The story has a story of its own.  Re-pitched in the wake of Disney's successful The Little Mermaid, an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's The Ice Queen had been knocking around the Mouse House since 1943. The picture got a green light in 2011, and the story went through multiple iterations involving many people before it got to the version we see today. And that version? It's a near-perfect combination of family tension, romantic interest, villainy, and magic. Best of all, it does unexpected things with those elements. The family tension is about two sisters who love each other so much that it's simultaneously pushing them apart and pulling them together. The romantic interest zigs one way, then zags another, then zigs and zags a few more times, helping the audience mirror the conflicted feelings of the protagonist. The villainy, well, it's wonderful. There's Alan Tudyk (CDNW), voicing a character that's just a perfect weasel. And there's -well, you're going to have to see it for yourself. And the magic? It delights in that it plays more like something from an X-Men movie than a fairy tale. But those are just the elements. Frozen's unique charm springs from the way it lulls the audience with its first act simplicity, setting up all the pieces and archetypes for a pleasant if predicable story, then combines and recombines those pieces in unexpected ways while taking the story in fresh directions. I am used to watching children's movies for execution over story. Frozen offers both.

The sets and costuming are the result of a combination of extensive research, artistic sensibility, and technical brilliance. Animators visited Norway to get a sense of Scandinavian architecture, wilderness, and maritime culture. It's one thing to look at pictures of a fjord; it's quite another to see one for oneself. They traveled to Wyoming to understand how people move in deep snow in a variety of different styles of dress, from ball gowns to traditional Nordic furs. They visited a Canadian ice hotel to see how ice architecture really works. Then, they took all this and combined it with Ice Queen designs from the Disney archives, their own original artwork, and technical tools like Matterhorn, a snow-animation program written specifically for this film. The result? A beautiful, organic, seamless world that enriches its story, adds depth to its characters, and maintains the illusion of reality throughout the film's running time.

Of course, the whole thing breaks down if the performances don't resonate. In addition to the aforementioned Tudyk (CDNW), Idina Menzel provides a speaking voice for the Ice Queen that's both strong and vulnerable. Perhaps more importantly, Menzel (who boasts an impressive Broadway resume) has extraordinary singing pipes. The Frozen soundtrack provides a great example of this by including renditions of “Let it Go” performed by Menzel in the film and the pop singer Demi Lovato for a radio audience. Menzel blows Lovato clean off the record, bringing a clarity and technical proficiency that somehow reminds me of Nat King Cole.  And the rest of the cast? Well, not a single voice or inflection broke the movie's spell. We're talking about top-drawer stuff.

All of this adds up to a little more than a movie, and a little more than a really good Broadway musical disguised as a movie. It adds up to an extraordinary film, both entertaining and beautiful, that I'll be happy to watch again and again. Way to hit one out of the park, Disney.

Wreck-It Ralph

My kids loved Wreck-It Ralph. My wife loved Wreck-It Ralph. I liked Wreck-It Ralph. Two out of three ain't bad.

Here's the setup: Wreck-It Ralph is the bad guy in a video game that's a cross between Donkey Kong and Rampage. He's tired of being the villain, however, so he sets out on a quest to find the legendary Dumont, the oldest program in cyberspace. He's blocked by the Evil Master Control Program. With the help of his allies Tron and Yori, he defeats the Master Control Program and takes his place as a hero.

Sorry, I got lost in my imagination there. While Ralph does set out to be a hero, he does so in a universe that's just one step to the left of Tron. Where Tron's vision of the world inside computers and video games (which are ... but you already knew that) is both awesome and a little scary, Wreck-It Ralph's is a lot more fun. While the film states that a game character can die if it leaves its own machine, we sense that the odds of that actually happening are really quite slim. This played well with my three and six year-olds, who thrilled to the film's dangers rather than hide behind my arms, as they sometimes do. Further, much of the film takes place inside a game Ralph visits called "Sugar Rush," a cart racer set in Candyland. Scary monsters become decidedly less so when they can get stuck in gum.

This reasonably non-threatening milieu makes for a nice place for kids to lose themselves for a couple of hours. Plug in a redemption quest, a cute sidekick, and sweet romantic B story, and you've got yourself a movie. Of course, none of it could work without good voice acting, and John C. Reilly voices the title character with a winning combination of soulfulness and lovability. While the other major voice actors basically do their schtick, Alan Tudyk (CDNW) outshines them all. His King Candy, with a voice reminiscent of Ed Wynn on a Fanta and Twizzlers bender, is the most energetic, exciting, and delightful villain you're going to find at the movies this season. (By the way, you really should see Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. It's available on both Amazon Prime and Netflix Instant right now.)

So why did I just like, instead of love, Wreck-It Ralph? Well, I'd been up for 20 hours, so perhaps I wasn't at my most receptive. Thing is, I felt like I knew every beat of this movie before it happened. Don't get me wrong: the script is tight and the whole thing flows, but it felt, maybe, a little too perfect for me. It offered no real challenges, no insights beyond "Hey, be yourself." And that's fine, really. It just takes a little more to make me flip for something.

So, what am I telling you? I'm telling you that your kids will probably love Wreck-It Ralph. You very well may, too At worst, I bet you'll like it. Wreck-It Ralph is a good time at the movies.

Up

To say that Pixar is on a roll does not approach the reality of what’s going on over there. I’m on a roll when I hit the Pass Line a few times in row. Pixar is in the midst of a monumental achievement, a Golden Age of Disney achievement, in which it’s creating films that audiences will enjoy for decades to come.

UP is a proud addition to this emerging tradition. Its opening sequence, alone worth the price of admission, would be the finest short film I’ve ever seen if it were exhibited as such. The film goes from there to tell a story that, if you’re an adult, will absolutely break your heart. I don’t mean Iron Eyes Cody single teardrop break your heart. I mean cry like a little girl break your heart. It’ll make you laugh with gags and lines that you’ll quote to your friends and family, that’ll become part of the ties that bind you. And it’ll tell a story that will captivate your kids, enthrall you, and make you thankful that you get to be present when a giant like Pixar is in full flower.

I saw this movie in 3D, making it the first 3D film I’ve seen since ROPE. Unlike ROPE, however, UP doesn’t use 3D as a cheap gimmick. It uses it to provide greater depth of field, but it isn’t important. This was my third grader’s second viewing, and he put it best: “UP wasn’t good because it was in 3D. It was a good movie because it tells a good story.” I love that kid. I’m glad I taught him how to set up a tent.

Bolt

My third grader has discovered my blog and, after struggling through my first paragraph about KUNG FU PANDA, he has asked me to write a review that he could understand. So, here's my first attempt at film discussion for the younger set.

BOLT is a story about a dog who is the hero of a tv show. BOLT doesn't know that he's only in a tv show, though. He thinks everything is real. He thinks his bark is so awesome that it can flip over cars. He thinks he can run through walls. And he thinks he can shoot laser beams out of his eyes. When he escapes from his trailer to save his human, he has to learn how to live in the real world and survive long enough to reunite with the young actress who loves him.

BOLT looks great, and its simple and clear style of animation reflects its simple and clear story. There are no singing animals in this one, no one-liners for mom and dad. It's just a story of a dog who wants to reunite with his human. And it works - it does everything it sets out to do, and does it brightly and loudly enough to hold the attention of kids from ages of two through, at least, nine. It's not the kind of movie that I'll remember for years, but it's not a movie for me - it's a movie for them, and it delivers.

WALL-E

Pixar is in an interesting place. When we sit down for a Pixar film, we expect beauty and thought and humor. We expect to be dazzled, and anything short of that disappoints us.

Fear not. WALL-E is dazzling - it entranced my 2-yr old, my 8-yr old, my wife, and me. But it's also disturbing.

One of the film's sequences follows an obese person in a floating chair, gorging on visual media and wasting time discussing inanities such as what he thought of some movie or tv show he'd recently seen. It's all part of the film's message about consumerism, physical and virtual, and I couldn't help but see it as a shot at me.

You see, I'm a guy who likes to spend his time thinking about entertainments. I find watching movies and writing little snippets about them to be recreational, certainly moreso than the mind-numbing tedium that is fishing or planting stuff. And I do that writing on a nifty little computer, while sitting on a comfy couch. Granted, I'm fit, but I'm pretty sure that Jack LaLanne could kick my ass, and he was born in 1914. In other words, I'm almost exactly the kind of guy at whome WALL-E is taking a shot.

Which is fine. Good art has the power to confront, and I resolve that confrontation by noting that this isn't *all* I do, but that I also spend a considerable amount of my time doing actual jobs that actually make people's lives better here in the real world. But while I accept that film's thesis that a passive life is a live half-lived, I take issue with the agrarian utopianism it presents as an alternative. While the agrarian utopia has long held a place in the western imagination, anyone who has spent considerable time around farmers can report that they aren't the healthiest people on Earth. They live a hard life, the kind of life that looks great when you're stuck in a cubicle writing code, but the kind many would trade in a minute.

Jeez. Looking over the last couple of paragraphs, it seems like a wrote an nigh-incomprehensible mishmash of ideas. Perhaps it's time to go for a run.

Enchanted

The line has been used before, but I'm not above petty larceny. ENCHANTED is enchanting.

Everything about this movie, from casting to costumes to color palette to CGI, is perfect. So perfect, in fact, that even little boys can groove on it. Adams, Marsden, Sarandon, and Spall (the faery contingent) play their parts with delightful servings of innocence or evil or both. Dempsey, Menzel, and Covey (the New York contingent) manage to be both grounded and hopeful. Even the choice of narrator is spot on: Julie Andrews, the woman Adams (if she's lucky) might get to be when she grows up. There's danger, but no real sense of danger, the production numbers are absolutely top notch, and everyone seems to be having a good time.

What's not to love?

Meet The Robinsons

MEET THE ROBINSONS is your standard kids' fare, hot off the assembly line. It has bright and adorable orphans, a fun villain right out of "Dudley Do-Right," and a moral that we can't help but get behind, even if we may object to being bludgeoned with it so mercilessly.

Here's the setup: Orphan Boy is a super genius who turns off every potential set of adoptive parents at the fantasy orphanage in which he lives. One day, Marty McFly -er, some kid- shows up, gets involved in his life, and puts him on track to happiness. And that's it, really. Beyond that, all I can say is, hey, it entertained my 7-yr-old while teaching a mantra "Keep moving forward" that's a great thing for people to carry around. It was bright, it was shiny, and it did what it was supposed to do. Yeah, it was no RATATOUILLE, but not everything can be. I'll take it.

Chicken Little

If CHICKEN LITTLE is set in middle America, why does the dad speak with a thick Brooklyn accent? The film establishes that said dad went to the same high school as the eponymous chicken, so ya think the accent might have dulled a bit around the edges, ya know? And here's another question: if you're Disney and you're making a decidedly average movie, do you really want to start it with references to THE LION KING and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK? Those are some pretty challenging points of reference you're putting out there.

Welcome to my inner monologue as I sit on the couch and watch CHICKEN LITTLE with my seven-year-old, who thinks it's hilarious.

Well, I'm not seven, and this movie had nothing to offer me. It had all the subtlety of a 2x4 to the nose, its music was forgettable, and its characterizations were the epitome of "meh." Am I saying that CHICKEN LITTLE is a bad movie? No, not really. I'm just saying that it's remarkably average. Sure, spend an hour and a half on the couch with it and your kids. But bring a magazine.

The Incredibles

THE INCREDIBLES is a perfect movie. It has humor, it has pathos, it has action. It has a wonderfully creative design, a fully realized world, and terrific music that builds on a solid script.

You know how some movies are billed as "fun for the whole family"? THE INCREDIBLES really is. The movie offers several characters that provide an "in" to the story, it builds and sustains tension in interesting and creative ways, and it manages the perfect balance between providing enough danger to keep things interesting, while never scaring the kids into believing that the heroes are in really big trouble.

It had been a few years since last I saw this movie, and I wondered if it would hold up. It did. THE INCREDIBLES is a genuine classic.