Inside Out PG
The trailers made the movie look like it was borderline personality comedy, the movie, with a little girl who hears voices in her head that do wacky comedy. The actual film was far more interesting.
When watching the movie you first get a shortm 'Lava' which is about a lonely volcano singing about love. Then his loved one ruses from the sea. It is one of the cutest and most catchy tunes ever. The guy performing is not from Hawaii, but he copies some of the voice all right and comes out as at least a fan.
Then it's on to the Andersons and their move from Minnesota (possibly Minneapolis) to San Francisco (near the waterfront row houses possibly), as they could not afford the immediate waterfront, or in the middle of the city. Maybe they are in the Tenderloin but on the other side.
The little girl in the story and central to it is Riley, a hockey playing and creative, possible misfit, who hears voices in her head. She is likeable if not pouty, bordering on puberty but not there yet, so she doesn't have the intense emotions of that, and Joy appears to be the surrogate for later emotions, (even though really Love could have been there as unconditional or family love, and not meant anything).
She also has Anger, a male persona who sounds like a hotheaded uncle.
Then there is Fear, a skinny male character who has googly eyes.
Then there is Disgust (which could later become envy), who is grossed out by everything, especially vegetables.
Joy and Anger seem to run the brain, but a mix up happens, and it is because of Sadness. Sadness wants to be sad and Joy just won't let her. This leads to essentially a mental breakdown. (Only since it's Pixar it's cute and involves little glowing colored bowling balls with memories in them).
Last there is Sadness, a short and squat female character (later Depression), who has messed up happy brain land by leaving her blue touch trails everywhere, forcing Joy to go with her to find her core memory, leaving the rest of them to run her brain.
Joy and Sadness meet up with imagination characters including her silly and obviously gay imaginary friend, Bongo, (who is a pink chimera of things) and would fit in well in the city, and a unicorn, a fake boyfriend, and various other things.
Eventually Joy and Sandess learn the vailue of each other and try to overcome the obstacles to get back to the brain control tower, as they have lost track of the other memories.
The movie is ultimately about moving to another place and being sad about it, surely something people can understand. Pixar is good at pulling on emotions, so they decided on making them manifest in reality.
It still is a bit like she's schizophrenic or if nothing else, seriously obsessive compulsive. Will the sequel be about the new emotional policeman called Ritalin, or Prozac? That's would be messed up.
It is a very good movie and one of Pixar's finest since Toy Story 3. Go and see it in theaters.
Review by Adam Browne
Monday, June 29, 2015
Review: "Ted" series tries too hard for funny but just shocks
"Ted" 2012, R
Seth MacFarlane clearly intended to make a Teddy Ruxpin movie and couldn't get the rights. A lot of 80s generation kids, including myself, imagined the talking bear as a foul mouthed jerk as a joke, and what it would do to children if it talked like that.
The premise literally is Ted can cuss. Great. Not only that, Ted can smoke pot and work as a clerk at a store, and also be a ladies man, and alongside Mar Walhberg can appear to be his alter ego. It's Burns and Allen with cussing and with a bear.
Oh and Ted sounds like Perter from Family Guy. That's the joke. The rerst of the movie is an excuse for jokes like that show, and about being obnoxious.
"Ted 2" 2015, R
Seth returns for the sequel and brushes off any charm from the last movie, referencing a live action show tunes Oscar gag from the Ted at the Oscars bit, and a wedding, and the bear and the girl wanting a baby. Yep, they want to completely stop the franchise by having a baby. Suddenly it's about family values.
The twists and turns that lead Whalberg and Ted to a sperm bank and then to a lawyer to see if they can grant Ted person hood sometimes have funny scenes. Mostly though they're gross out jokes. In one scene a large rack of sperm samples falls on a guy. In another, the old gag about the penis bong appears, and is used to comic redundancy.
One of the truly surreal bits is a crazy Hasbro exec dealing with an evil janitor who liked urinal cakes as his code word, which is bizarre, and another is an improv joke where they attend a comedy night and shout out inappropriate comedy suggestions.
The trouble with Ted 2 is meanly in the delivery. The pot jokes are funny mostly. They have a Jurassic Park moment even, although oversold, as usual.
The internet porn and google search jokes are funny.
It's worth a rental but they miss the obvious, never ever include a baby, and the obvious joke, why wasn't the villain Teddy Ruxpin?
Also why did they not have a Boston Legal joke in there, as they're in Boston and it was one of the most celebrated law comedies of modern times? It would have been hilarious if they got Shatner instead of Morgan Freeman.
Review by Adam Browne
Seth MacFarlane clearly intended to make a Teddy Ruxpin movie and couldn't get the rights. A lot of 80s generation kids, including myself, imagined the talking bear as a foul mouthed jerk as a joke, and what it would do to children if it talked like that.
The premise literally is Ted can cuss. Great. Not only that, Ted can smoke pot and work as a clerk at a store, and also be a ladies man, and alongside Mar Walhberg can appear to be his alter ego. It's Burns and Allen with cussing and with a bear.
Oh and Ted sounds like Perter from Family Guy. That's the joke. The rerst of the movie is an excuse for jokes like that show, and about being obnoxious.
"Ted 2" 2015, R
Seth returns for the sequel and brushes off any charm from the last movie, referencing a live action show tunes Oscar gag from the Ted at the Oscars bit, and a wedding, and the bear and the girl wanting a baby. Yep, they want to completely stop the franchise by having a baby. Suddenly it's about family values.
The twists and turns that lead Whalberg and Ted to a sperm bank and then to a lawyer to see if they can grant Ted person hood sometimes have funny scenes. Mostly though they're gross out jokes. In one scene a large rack of sperm samples falls on a guy. In another, the old gag about the penis bong appears, and is used to comic redundancy.
One of the truly surreal bits is a crazy Hasbro exec dealing with an evil janitor who liked urinal cakes as his code word, which is bizarre, and another is an improv joke where they attend a comedy night and shout out inappropriate comedy suggestions.
The trouble with Ted 2 is meanly in the delivery. The pot jokes are funny mostly. They have a Jurassic Park moment even, although oversold, as usual.
The internet porn and google search jokes are funny.
It's worth a rental but they miss the obvious, never ever include a baby, and the obvious joke, why wasn't the villain Teddy Ruxpin?
Also why did they not have a Boston Legal joke in there, as they're in Boston and it was one of the most celebrated law comedies of modern times? It would have been hilarious if they got Shatner instead of Morgan Freeman.
Review by Adam Browne
Review: "Spy" is a female Austin Powers more so than Bond
Spy R
Not being a fan of McCarthy movies, this one was going to be a tough one to credit, but it ultimately was a funny movie. The SNL heavy movie has some practical and funny juxtaposition jokes, even if the main joke is mean.
The story centers on a secret agent and his desk bound agent operative, whereas she likes him and he is not interested, because she's slovenly and heavy. That's literally the joke. They carry this to the hilt, although not using a girl in a fat suit, but by actually casting someone plus sized. Then she self humiliates throughout the movie.
The James Bond type man is supposedly killed, leading the agent lady and her own sidekick, a tall Brit lad, to go and stop the assassin, who happens to be another spy woman. Along the way is another agent who is dogging them and they find him obnoxious.
The movie plays like a girl version of Austin Powers from decades ago, but with the mojo being estrogen, and the jokes being about loser stereotypes. In the end it's not a particularly good message, and the story is meant to prove that although the underdog triumphs, she does to at the expense of her self image. That is messed up.
It's not as good as critics claim and is probably at best a funny background rental movie when it comes out on bluray. It isn't bad, but it sure isn't great.
Review by Adam Browne
Not being a fan of McCarthy movies, this one was going to be a tough one to credit, but it ultimately was a funny movie. The SNL heavy movie has some practical and funny juxtaposition jokes, even if the main joke is mean.
The story centers on a secret agent and his desk bound agent operative, whereas she likes him and he is not interested, because she's slovenly and heavy. That's literally the joke. They carry this to the hilt, although not using a girl in a fat suit, but by actually casting someone plus sized. Then she self humiliates throughout the movie.
The James Bond type man is supposedly killed, leading the agent lady and her own sidekick, a tall Brit lad, to go and stop the assassin, who happens to be another spy woman. Along the way is another agent who is dogging them and they find him obnoxious.
The movie plays like a girl version of Austin Powers from decades ago, but with the mojo being estrogen, and the jokes being about loser stereotypes. In the end it's not a particularly good message, and the story is meant to prove that although the underdog triumphs, she does to at the expense of her self image. That is messed up.
It's not as good as critics claim and is probably at best a funny background rental movie when it comes out on bluray. It isn't bad, but it sure isn't great.
Review by Adam Browne
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Review: "Jurassic World" is epic nod to the cloned dinosaur genre
"Jurassic World" PG 13
Chris Prat stars as a raptor wrangler in the fourth installment of Spielberg's Jurassic Park series, based on the books by Michael Crichton. This one is not from the books though, as in the re imagined version, of which re imagining has become cliche. The park is actually opened for business since 2005 and patrons to the park was dropping. In order to drum up new people, including Bryce Dallas Howard, the park leaders create a hybrid dinosaur monster with obvious results, she gets out.
The movies harken to the fun house flicks and monster movies of old, especially Godzilla, Land of the Lost (the TV show) and any number of classic dinosaur stories. The two sequels before had a lot of dinosaurs chasing people but were weaker than the first. This movie is better than those two sequels. It took 14 years for that to happen. Although there is no Tokyo in the story, the idea of it being like Godzilla still works, as it is a rampaging dinosaur.
The park people in the story have a military group on the island led by a crazy obese colonel who wants to train dinosaurs, raptors and the like, as soldiers, which is one of the lame ideas from the earlier script they kept. The wrangler doesn't like this idea and wants him nowhere near his raptor pack. Then the crazy penned up dinlo escapes and the military guy takes over, and the park patrons are trapped.
The boys in the story are two rather unexciting and bored kids sent to the island while their parents go through some issues, and they are supposed to be watched, but the aunt lady, who happens to run the park, pays no attention to them and sends them off with a nanny who is distracted a lot. They're not so important except to be the ones current millennial kids will relate to. Since they remain elusive and bored the audience might also be elusive in return.
The hacker guy is not supposed to be connected to the original Lex or her brother Tim. He is just a bit like Lex in character. Since technology has so vastly improved there is no need for him to marvel at setting up restart on a Unix based security system.
The boys have to escape the hamster ball of doom when the white washed hybrid dino chases after it.
Then later they hotwire and resoptre a classic 1993 jeep from the first one. Now since it's a movie with cloned dinos, this being a little silly is really not an issue. Perhaps th park people left it nearly functional as it sat there in the garage, in the hope of restoring it.
Yes there are silly moments, but after checking in your brain as the film rolls, it's a lot of fun. It isn't due over analysis.
The aviary scene is fantastic, when the flying dinos get broken out as a copter crashes into it and go around dragging off people.
Some critics on the net complained that it wasn't realistic or didn't have enough gore, but it's PG 13 and it doesn't need all that. If they want reruns of Jurassic Fight Club then go watch that.
Chris Prat chews scenery more than his raptor pack tries to chew at him. He seems to enjoy the part. The military guy has fun too. The redheaded leader lady spends some time playing like she's Ellie when she's obviously not.
I will not give away what happens to everyone as that would be a spoiler fest.
See it on the big screen.
Review By Adam Browne
Chris Prat stars as a raptor wrangler in the fourth installment of Spielberg's Jurassic Park series, based on the books by Michael Crichton. This one is not from the books though, as in the re imagined version, of which re imagining has become cliche. The park is actually opened for business since 2005 and patrons to the park was dropping. In order to drum up new people, including Bryce Dallas Howard, the park leaders create a hybrid dinosaur monster with obvious results, she gets out.
The movies harken to the fun house flicks and monster movies of old, especially Godzilla, Land of the Lost (the TV show) and any number of classic dinosaur stories. The two sequels before had a lot of dinosaurs chasing people but were weaker than the first. This movie is better than those two sequels. It took 14 years for that to happen. Although there is no Tokyo in the story, the idea of it being like Godzilla still works, as it is a rampaging dinosaur.
The park people in the story have a military group on the island led by a crazy obese colonel who wants to train dinosaurs, raptors and the like, as soldiers, which is one of the lame ideas from the earlier script they kept. The wrangler doesn't like this idea and wants him nowhere near his raptor pack. Then the crazy penned up dinlo escapes and the military guy takes over, and the park patrons are trapped.
The boys in the story are two rather unexciting and bored kids sent to the island while their parents go through some issues, and they are supposed to be watched, but the aunt lady, who happens to run the park, pays no attention to them and sends them off with a nanny who is distracted a lot. They're not so important except to be the ones current millennial kids will relate to. Since they remain elusive and bored the audience might also be elusive in return.
The hacker guy is not supposed to be connected to the original Lex or her brother Tim. He is just a bit like Lex in character. Since technology has so vastly improved there is no need for him to marvel at setting up restart on a Unix based security system.
The boys have to escape the hamster ball of doom when the white washed hybrid dino chases after it.
Then later they hotwire and resoptre a classic 1993 jeep from the first one. Now since it's a movie with cloned dinos, this being a little silly is really not an issue. Perhaps th park people left it nearly functional as it sat there in the garage, in the hope of restoring it.
Yes there are silly moments, but after checking in your brain as the film rolls, it's a lot of fun. It isn't due over analysis.
The aviary scene is fantastic, when the flying dinos get broken out as a copter crashes into it and go around dragging off people.
Some critics on the net complained that it wasn't realistic or didn't have enough gore, but it's PG 13 and it doesn't need all that. If they want reruns of Jurassic Fight Club then go watch that.
Chris Prat chews scenery more than his raptor pack tries to chew at him. He seems to enjoy the part. The military guy has fun too. The redheaded leader lady spends some time playing like she's Ellie when she's obviously not.
I will not give away what happens to everyone as that would be a spoiler fest.
See it on the big screen.
Review By Adam Browne
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Review: "Tomorrowland" is strangely dated future vision
"Tomorrowland" PG
Disney has a habit of trying to make their rides into movies. Taking on the success of Pirates and the failure of Haunted Mansion, the newest ride movie is somewhere in between spaces. It seems like it wants to be Indiana Jones too, and can liberally make Star Wars references if it likes. Ditrect Brad Bird and Damon Lindehof, (yes from Prometheus). take the chosen one story to another dimension where a fantasy city is hidden in plain sight.
Somehow the 1960s world's fair includes Disneyland itself, where a boy tries to show off his rocket pack. The boy follows a Britsh girl's lead to another world. The boy finds that It's a Small World leads into an elevator that takes him there in the beginning, he doesn't fly in a rocket. This comes intro play later.
Then it's off to the present day as some kind of voice over of Clooney and some unknown girl are making a speech about the possible end of everything. Then the girl and her sabotage of a dismnatled rocket site in Florida is seen, and her eventual discover of a pin that takes her to an alien dimension where it's cheery and sunny, even fore so than in Florida.
The girl must meet up with the little girl robot, who hasn't aged a day since the 1960s, as she's a robot, and they must escape assassin robots that are trying to kill them, in a Disney movie.
The heroe's journey is as classic as Greek myth. Fantasy is based upon many tropes like that. This is no different. Modern scifi, such as Star Wars, uses this trope also.
They act like this trope is original, but it isn't, as anyone who has seen science fiction classics like Metropolis and Buck Rogers clearly knows the mantra. A disillusioned sage thinker has made his hose a fortress after being kicked out of dream land, and when he is visited by a teenage girl chased by robots, he must return with her to the other place to fix something.
In the future world, or other dimension, the greatest thinkers have made a robot controlled utopia of flying jet packs, monorails, ray guns and spire like shiny buildings like right out of the world's fair that Walt saw so long ago and made into his attraction.
Originally everyone was white and American, but this being the future he predicted, they had to toss in all sorts of ethnic groups at the end to cover up the obvious white washing. A little Bitritish moppet does not count!
Actually some of the movie is unexpectedly creepy. Clooney plays the doe-eyed boy who grew up, and is now over 50 inventor and mentor, while a relative unknown plays his robot mentor, still a little girl, as he was when he was a little boy, because she's a robot.
The teenage girl who has new ideas goes to his stalker looking farmhouse with booby traps and cameras all over to escape the robots and androids, and they escape through a bathtub while laser ray guns fire and blow up things.
The inventor and the girl then take a ride in a rocket under the Eiffel tower, because it so is a space rocket launcher, and fly to the other dimension. They didn't have to do this.
Getting to the utopia, it has become a dystopia, another trope of science friction. It is not a coincidence the actress was in Divergent, another such thing.
It's so so much Ayn Rand, which is boring, as it is Metropolis meets Tomorrowland. It's not boring so much as needlessly complicated. It was good how they handled trans-dimensional gates and such bvy just saying, it works that way, instead of making a long speech. Instead they make long speeched about doomsday and global destruction, which turn the movie into a forces message.
When you go to a movie you want escape, not reality.It should not have been about lecturing us on wars and climate change. It should have been a coming of age Disney princess movie.
Still is is kind of creepy Clooney plays the prince, as he's older than the father figure. Yeah sure he's like Obi Wan, but it comes off as he's more like her new boyfriend in the story.
Review by Adam Browne
Disney has a habit of trying to make their rides into movies. Taking on the success of Pirates and the failure of Haunted Mansion, the newest ride movie is somewhere in between spaces. It seems like it wants to be Indiana Jones too, and can liberally make Star Wars references if it likes. Ditrect Brad Bird and Damon Lindehof, (yes from Prometheus). take the chosen one story to another dimension where a fantasy city is hidden in plain sight.
Somehow the 1960s world's fair includes Disneyland itself, where a boy tries to show off his rocket pack. The boy follows a Britsh girl's lead to another world. The boy finds that It's a Small World leads into an elevator that takes him there in the beginning, he doesn't fly in a rocket. This comes intro play later.
Then it's off to the present day as some kind of voice over of Clooney and some unknown girl are making a speech about the possible end of everything. Then the girl and her sabotage of a dismnatled rocket site in Florida is seen, and her eventual discover of a pin that takes her to an alien dimension where it's cheery and sunny, even fore so than in Florida.
The girl must meet up with the little girl robot, who hasn't aged a day since the 1960s, as she's a robot, and they must escape assassin robots that are trying to kill them, in a Disney movie.
The heroe's journey is as classic as Greek myth. Fantasy is based upon many tropes like that. This is no different. Modern scifi, such as Star Wars, uses this trope also.
They act like this trope is original, but it isn't, as anyone who has seen science fiction classics like Metropolis and Buck Rogers clearly knows the mantra. A disillusioned sage thinker has made his hose a fortress after being kicked out of dream land, and when he is visited by a teenage girl chased by robots, he must return with her to the other place to fix something.
In the future world, or other dimension, the greatest thinkers have made a robot controlled utopia of flying jet packs, monorails, ray guns and spire like shiny buildings like right out of the world's fair that Walt saw so long ago and made into his attraction.
Originally everyone was white and American, but this being the future he predicted, they had to toss in all sorts of ethnic groups at the end to cover up the obvious white washing. A little Bitritish moppet does not count!
Actually some of the movie is unexpectedly creepy. Clooney plays the doe-eyed boy who grew up, and is now over 50 inventor and mentor, while a relative unknown plays his robot mentor, still a little girl, as he was when he was a little boy, because she's a robot.
The teenage girl who has new ideas goes to his stalker looking farmhouse with booby traps and cameras all over to escape the robots and androids, and they escape through a bathtub while laser ray guns fire and blow up things.
The inventor and the girl then take a ride in a rocket under the Eiffel tower, because it so is a space rocket launcher, and fly to the other dimension. They didn't have to do this.
Getting to the utopia, it has become a dystopia, another trope of science friction. It is not a coincidence the actress was in Divergent, another such thing.
It's so so much Ayn Rand, which is boring, as it is Metropolis meets Tomorrowland. It's not boring so much as needlessly complicated. It was good how they handled trans-dimensional gates and such bvy just saying, it works that way, instead of making a long speech. Instead they make long speeched about doomsday and global destruction, which turn the movie into a forces message.
When you go to a movie you want escape, not reality.It should not have been about lecturing us on wars and climate change. It should have been a coming of age Disney princess movie.
Still is is kind of creepy Clooney plays the prince, as he's older than the father figure. Yeah sure he's like Obi Wan, but it comes off as he's more like her new boyfriend in the story.
Review by Adam Browne
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