There is a great deal of enjoyment to be had with Kung Fu Panda 2. The sequel to Dreamworks 2008 hit animation film combines interesting characters with good action sequences, a decent number of big laughs and breathtaking animation. Actually, with Pixar’s Cars 2 appearing to have had a somewhat lukewarm reception with the American critics, this years Academy Award for best animated feature may well turn out to be a real contest.
Kung Fu Panda 2 benefits a great deal from not being a Pixar film. The ‘masters’ of the genre have the problem of the expectation of the public, of the high standards they have set themselves with the golden three-piece of Wall-E, Up and Toy Story 3. Films that were not just animated films, or children’s movies, but proper adult dramas at the same time. Wall-E (together with The Dark Knight) was responsible for the Academy’s decision to raise the number of Best Film nominees to ten, and promptly Up and Toy Story 3 ended up on the list of nominees for that prize in their respiective years. If Pixar, as it now appears, take it a little easier this year with ‘just-a-kids-flick’ Cars 2, then the film need not actually be bad in order to disappoint.
Dreamworks Animation have none of these problems. They have already squeezed their most profitable and adult-minded franchise, the Shrek films, for the last drop of money that was in it with the shameless cash-in of Shrek Forever After. They have dispersed with the image of a ‘rogue group of artists’ and can now be seen for what they really are: a movie studio. A commercial venture in the entertainment industry, that sometimes makes good (How to Train Your Dragon), and sometimes makes less good (Madagascar) or even bad films (Megamind). Part of the job.
Kung Fu Panda 2 is one of the good ones. The story sees panda Po, now a trained Kung Fu warrior, cross fists with Lord Shen, a peacock bent on destroying Kung Fu and conquering China with the use of gunpowder. Po is joined by his friends Tigress, Monkey, Mantis, Crane and Viper. Meanwhile Po himself has some daddy-issues to work out: he comes to the conclusion that the goose that raised him cannot possibly be his father.
As I said: the animation is gorgeous: there is a beautifully drawn opening sequence, and the computer animation is of a detail I had not seen before. I said the same thing about Rango previously, and it appears that the technology and the craft in using it are still progressing with giant leaps.
The voice work is very good. Jack Black convinces as Po – a great example of succesfull typecasting in animation. He is surrounded by big stars: Gary Oldman as Lord Shen, and (amongst others!) Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen and Lucy Liu as his friends. One actually wonders, considering how much aspecially Monkey (Chan), Viper (Liu) and Mantis (Rogen) get sidelined, what the point is in bringing all these expensive voices to the studio for this film.
That also hints at the one major problem with Kung Fu Panda 2: the over abundance of characters. There are just too many different fluffy and not so fluffy animals doing Kung Fu. Quite a number of them have no real prupose or function in the story, other then to model for toys to be sold or given away with Happy Meals. The marketing department here takes control of the storytelling – which is always a disappointing moment.
But to the kids it won’t matter: They’ll enjoy themselves a lot and will find great affection for Po. Luckily for them, and for Dreamworks, there is a short epilogue that leaves open enough space in character development for a third installment. And as an adult I would not mind seeing that one as well.
There is no film more on my mind right now than the newest film about The Muppets. Kermit, Miss Piggy and their friends return to cinemas in tha aptly titled The Muppets, set for a February 2012 release (in The Netherlands, it will be november 2011 for the US and Canada). Apart from the fluffy characters we all know and love the film will star Jason Segel, Amy Adams and Zach Galifianakis. Voices and or cameos will be supplied by a gazillion of celebs, including but not limited to Emily Blunt, Ed Segel, Jack Black, Katy Perry, Whoopi Goldberg and Danny Trejo. The film will be directed by James Bobin.
It is nice to see, in this age of Green Hornets, Green Lanterns and Green Screens, a film about and made with real puppets. And the trailers are mouth-watering funny.
Get Low is an original story based on true events forced into the straightjacket of conventional American filmmaking. Usually that is a good thing. In this case, it is not.
Aaron Schneider’s film tells the story of the hermit-like Felix Bush (Robert Duvall) who wants to throw a funeral party for himself, while he’s still alive. Everyone who has a story to tell about him is welcome to join. The whole affair includes a lottery (the prize of which is Bush’ property after his death) and is organized by undertaker Bill Murray and his apprentice Lucas Black.
What gets in the way of this original idea becoming a really good film is that it is not a French film. In a French film people can come together and eat and talk and tell stories. And for a French film, that’s good enough. Unfortunately, Get Low is an American film, so there needs to be a plot that progresses. There needs to be character development, and most of all, there needs to be a realistic motivation. ‘Cause normal people don’t throw funeral parties for themselves.
And thus Get Low is not a film about the stories that people tell about Felix Bush the hermit. Actually, not a single story is told by anyone once the long-awaited party has begun. Get Low is about the story that Felix Bush himself has to tell, the big revelation of his motivation to live his life in seclusion. The big ‘Something Terrible’ that he has walked around with for forty years and that he wants to get of his chest. Because normal people do not live their life in seclusion for no particular reason. This ‘Something Terrible’ involves Sissy Spacek and is actually not that interesting when revealed.
It is a pity to see Duvall, Murray and Spacek waste their time in this failed film. They each give strong performances with what seems the slightest ease. And the much younger Lucas Black stands his ground against these acting giants, turning his role into the moral centre of the tale.
Avoid if possible. Better rent The Godfather, Ghostbusters or Carrie.
The premise to the film Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry, 2008) is a very entertaining one. Small town car mechanic and village idiot Jack Black is afraid that the power plant near his trailer will microwave his brains, so he decides to sabotage it. But the power plant strikes back, thereby magnetizing Black’s character Jerry. Jerry subsequently, and unintentionally, erases all the VCR tapes (what wonderful nostalgia) in the video store where his best friend Mike (Mos Def) works. With the boss out of town, and regular customers to satisfy, they decide to remake all the films in the store’s catalogue themselves. This leads to funny do-it-yourself versions of scenes from Ghostbusters, Rush Hour 2, Carrie, Men in Black and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
These scenes are entertaining, Black is good in the film, Mos Def annoyingly mumbles his way through, and the bigger story arch that holds it all together is very, very poor. But this is not supposed to be a review of the film. Rather, I would like to reassess the idea behind the film. That you can remake popular films yourself, and that these new films would somehow be more interesting than the originals. Also, the question of intellectual property arises, both in the film and in this short essay.
The first problem, as is the problem with any pastiche, is that the film never would be or could be funny without familiarity with the original, and could never exist in the first place if the films it makes vulgar fun of had not existed. The form is a very disrespectful parasite. Ghostbusters is treated with some decency, but Rush Hour 2 and Driving Miss Daisy are poorly treated. Although the film tries to exude a love of film, it merely looks down on it.
Second problem comes directly out of the first one. The film is directed by Michel Gondry. Gondry is French. And he made films like Sleep, in which people, well, sleep. He also made Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Great film. Not a comedy, but a film about memory, love and regret for serious people. Michel Gondry is a great filmmaker, but the very LAST you want to direct a smart little comedy about Jack Black being in love with popular cinema.
Third problem comes directly out of the second one. Jack Black is a nice actor. He does slightly more serious stuff like King Kong and High Fidelity very well. He does flat out gross comedy okay, as in Tropic Thunder. But he is at his best as a the sympathetic underdog in love with popular culture. See School of Rock. But in this film he is not the nice character. That’s Mos Def. In Be Kind Rewind Jack Black is annoying as hell. He wines, vomits, shouts and is generally a pain in the ass. If the unsympathetic character is the one to embody the love of film in this movie, than this love will not be shared by the audience.
Fourth problem is a new one. Copyrights. In an inexplicable and completely unnecessary plot contrivance Jerry and Mike’s film remaking (or ‘Sweding’ in the vernacular) are shut down by copyright lawyers, who destroy all their films and dispense ridiculous fines and threaten with prison sentences. Wait, what? This film is still made by major Hollywood producer New Line, right? Is this some sort of statement? Now that the copyright lawyers are declared bad guys by New Line, am I allowed to remake or redistribute their film? Or is it sheer hypocrisy? Did they not have copyright problems with this film themselves? Ghostbusters surely was not produced or distributed by New Line…
Fifth problem. VHS. The film is set in the early days of DVD. What then about the internet, about Youtube, about do-it-yourself cinema. This is not an original idea! Much better film parodies have been made and shared by film fans over the world. Has New Line secured copyrights for the idea of Be Kind Rewind from them?
Sixth problem. Theory. Be Kind Rewind offers a simple-to-swallow introduction of the concept that is central to most theoretical accounts of postmodernism: collage. Snips and bits from various media are recombined to produce a new work. However, the central story arch of Be Kind Rewind is one of nostalgia, the yearning for a pre-big-corporation-era American town life. Which in the end appears to have never existed, but that does not matter, because through the miracle of cinema, Jerry and Mike recreate it with their neighbours. Contradiction alert!
The problems with the film are numerous. It is thought-provoking, but not smart enough to keep up with the thoughts it provokes. Be Kind Rewind is a dumb movie. It feels fake. It feels like a remake or rip-off of a much better movie that has not been made yet. And that, paradoxically, is again very postmodern.
