Both Better Than Expected

I guess I'm kinda behind the times here as my wife informed me that a bunch of mommy bloggers received advance copies of the Tinker Bell DVD (three and a half stars total) and they already reviewed it weeks ago. I remember hearing about this movie a year or so ago and thinking that it would be on par with all the other Disney direct-to-DVD sequels (in other words - blah). Sequel/prequel(?) or not, I have to admit this movie stands on its own. Right off the bat, you notice the "Celtic Christmas"-sounding music stands out from the usual cliché soundtrack. Serious thought went into setting and character designs. There are great world-building concepts like the origin of fairies being a baby's first laugh and metal "lost things" from the real world contrasting against the all-organic world of fairies. That world is called Pixie Hollow and it looks suspiciously like a Disney theme park from overhead, with different lands for each season and the giant Pixie Dust Tree at the hub like Cinderella's Castle. Fairies are shown to be a little bigger than ladybugs, and their clothes and homes and tools are all made from twigs and moss and flower petals. In fact, the origin of Tink's green outfit is shown as an oversized leaf cloak that she cuts down. The most interesting thing to me however is that Tink's character is what older generations would have called a tomboy. The name of the game for other characters is racial diversity: African American Raven-Symoné voices the light fairy, Asian Lucy Liu voices the water fairy, Caucasian Kristin Chenoweth is the garden fairy, and Latin America Ferrera is the animal fairy. Those names by themselves should be proof that Disney spared no expense on actors, but the biggest surprise for me was the voice of the fairy queen herself, Anjelica Huston. There actually are guys in the movie, a Laurel and Hardy-looking pair where the fat one has a Cockney accent and the skinny one sounds Scottish. Not all the guys are ugly though, Terence the pixie dust distributor is the fairy equivalent of Zac Efron. The story has it all: the thrills of a high-speed hawk chase, the chills of an after-dark attack by living thistles, drama in the competition between Tinker Bell and Vidia (what a horrible name), comedy in all the puns for the few grown-ups paying attention, and action in the rodeo-esque thistle stampede. I know what you're thinking by this point, "that's great that you noticed all this in a kiddie movie, but my kid won't care about any of that." And you're right, everything I've said so far is just to support your purchase if you do decide to buy the movie and subject yourself to repeated viewings. As to the question of whether or not a kid would like it, my 18 month old watched without fidgeting for 25 of the 78 total minutes, and he never stood more than two minutes of a Baby Einstein video. Final word: the animation's not as bad as the videogame graphics I expected to see.

I recommend The Haunting Hour: Don't Think About It (three stars total) to any list of family-friendly Halloween movies. This season I tried taking a chance on Disney's Halloweentown series but it's just kids in fake-looking masks and more magic than Halloween-ness. If I ever have a daughter, maybe I'll try Nickelodeon's Roxy Hunter movies. But back to The Haunting Hour, the overall look and acting in the movie caught me off guard. Call the younger brother annoying if you will, but I think that was the fault of an otherwise competent script and not the actor. I just can't believe they got the guy from the Saw movies to play the creepy Halloween shopkeeper. That's the equivalent of Freddy Kruegger making an appearance on Saved by the Bell: The Movie (if there had ever been such a thing). This movie also stars Hannah Montana's Emily Osment in full goth gear, which is perfect because she's the kid sister of the boy from The Sixth Sense. The monster makeup was on par with the Alien movies, and the best part is that they actually used makeup in an age where crappy CGI has become standard procedure. There's some great Edward Scissorhands-style music which almost makes up for the generic rock ballads that the main star evidently recorded just for this movie. If you like creature features and teen flicks where the loser girl gets the jock (here he's dumb and ok with that), then I recommend cruising the direct-to-DVD section.

OUT TODAY ON DVD: KUNG FU PANDA