Jumanji

In my review of SITA SINGS THE BLUES, I noted that most of the films we see are achingly average. For Exhibit A, I present to you JUMANJI, a feature-length adaptation of a picture book by Chris van Allsburg. The picture book, a trifling story that gives van Allsburg an excuse to draw things like monkeys making a mess of a kitchen and rhinos charging down Main Street, gets the full Hollywood treatment. It’s shoehorned into a three act structure about a kid who learns to deal with fear, it gets Robin Williams as a star, and it’s a full-throated combination of CGI and practical effects that veers between fun and terrifying, depending on the viewer’s combination of wildlife and insect – related phobias. (Yeah, yeah. I know. Arachnids aren’t insects. Everyone loves a pedant.)

While some of the effects are quite good (I particularly loved the giant plastic spiders – fishing line and all.), JUMANJI doesn’t plant the combination of danger and adventure. Its world is so dangerous that it’s hard to have much fun in it. That leaves the kids out, and it makes the parents so conscious of the effect it may be having on their kids that it leaves them out, as well.

Still, stars Williams, Kirsten Dunst, Bradley Pierce, and Bonnie Hunt do professional work, and I’m a sucker for father-son relationship stuff, so I’m not willing to call JUMANJI a right-out failure. It’s just achingly average, like so much else we see.

Happy Feet

HAPPY FEET is an animated movie about a tap-dancing penguin who teaches the other penguins in his flock how to dance along with their already excellent, if derivative, singing.

Compare this to SURF'S UP, an animated movie about a surfing penguin who travels to a tropical island to compete in a surfing competition.

Why compare the two? Because for some reason, animated surfing penguins are more interesting and exciting than animated dancing penguins. I don't know why. I find live-action surfing movies to be remarkably dull (and I surf), but I can watch Astair and Kelly movies all day long. All the excitement of dance vanishes when it's animated, however, even if I know that someone, somewhere, actually did those tap routines so they could get recorded and animated.

So if HAPPY FEET's big draw is the dance numbers, and the dance numbers are flat, what else has it got? Well it has excellent singing (Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman, and Nicole Kidman all lend their voices), and yet another tiresome performance from Robin Williams, who is at a point in his career in which he just has to scale things back a little. But those singing performances are hampered by the fact that they're all covers of popular songs, which subtracts from the spell the movie is ostensibly trying to cast.

My 7-yr-old liked HAPPY FEET, but I think it's no SURF'S UP. Give me surfing penguins over dancing penguins any day of the week.

Night at the Museum

I wanted to hate NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM. I really did. I'm tired of Ben Stiller. I'm tired of Robin Williams. I'm tired of Owen Wilson.

I'm in the process of teaching my spawn theater etiquette, however, and matinees of kids' shows provide a forgiving environment. NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM hooked both of us, much to my surprise, and we had a good time in the theater.

Here's the hook: Ben Stiller's a divorced dad trying to set a good example for his son. He takes a job as the night guard at New York's Museum of Natural History and, as guards Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney (!) already know, the place literally comes alive at night. Personal growth, and the earning of respect in the little tyke's eyes, follow as surely as landings follow takeoffs.

The thing that makes NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM worthwhile isn't the by-the-numbers plot or even the CGI workmanship, however. Stiller carries this movie, bringing a charisma to the project that I thought he'd lost sometime after MYSTERY MEN. He sells the idea of running from a reanimated dinosaur skeleton and brokering peace between the Western and Roman dioramas. He makes the tired routine of winning his child's respect breathe, and he made me interested in his work again.

Then there's another thing: the chance to see Van Dyke and Rooney is a major theatrical relase. In a sense, I felt like I was bringing my child to the museum: "Hey, that's the guy from MARY POPPINS! That other guard is from -well, I'll have to rent something for you. But he's been around nearly as long as talkies!" What a pleasant surprise.

I honestly thought NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM would be an exercise in tedium, useful only for giving my boy a place to practice whispering and not kicking the seat in front of him. Who knew it would come alive, and prove to be such a fun place to hang out?