Review of Amelia

Skip It

Produced by and starring Hillary Swank, Amelia is a gorgeous biopic featuring pretty vistas and period details.  However, while the performances are passable, the characters, and thus their motivations, never show much depth.  To be sure, Amelia Earhart is a feminist hero, but Amelia fails to inspire when it skims through her accomplishments with dull obligation.  The movie glosses over Earhart’s feelings—for the loves in her life, not to mention for flying, too; instead, it dutifully recreates her final radio transmissions, punctuated by the mind-numbing repetition of her call sign.  Circumnavigation of the earth shouldn’t be so boring.

Review of Old Dogs

Skip It

If you’d like to watch a female hand model crying in pain in a scene punctuated with the song “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” a father trying to explain the birds and the bees to his seven-year-old son while he’s farting on a public toilet, or a white man being mistaken for a few non-white ethnicities after he gets a really dark spray tan, then go see Old Dogs.  Robin Williams is a successful businessman, John Travolta is his partner, and together they struggle to take care of twin seven-year-olds.  I struggled to find something worthy of laughter.  Unfortunately, I failed.

Review of Leap Year

Wait for the DVD

Leap Year is a forgettable yet unobjectionable romantic comedy starring Amy Adams as Anna, a too-organized apartment “stager” who flies to Dublin to propose to her boyfriend who’s attending a medical convention.  Of course, she only makes it to seaside Dingle and must rely on Declan, the scruffy but likable pub owner, to get her to Dublin.  Anyone who’s seen It Happened One Night or The Sure Thing can guess what happens to the young couple as they travel from one misadventure to another.  While it could have been worse, Leap Year offers pretty people and landscapes but nothing original.

 

Review of Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Wait for the DVD

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland starring Johnny Depp delivers what you’d expect:  peculiar-looking characters and settings rendered effectively, and a recognizable story about one young lady’s quest to live unconventionally.  And that’s basically all it delivers.  The fantastic creatures are unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, except for maybe in other Alice adaptations, but there’s little suspense in whether Alice will accept the vorpal blade and battle the Jabberwocky in the climax, or whether—despite the disapproval of her peers, her mother, and her snooty fiancé—she will live her life in the real world beyond the conventions of society.

Review of Shrek Forever After

Wait for the DVD

Fed up with his domestic duties, Shrek decides to experience his inner ogre with the help of Rumplestiltskin’s magic.  However, Rumplestiltskin sends Shrek to a world in which he was never born, just like in It’s a Wonderful Life; unfortunately, this world is full of the same gross-out jokes, obligatory celebrity voices, and tired pop songs used as punchlines as in the other Shrek movies.  While I liked that the alternate Fiona was a warrior leading an ogre resistance, and I admit that some kids will probably like this movie, I think parents should at most wait for the DVD.

Review of Marmaduke

Skip It

Samuel Johnson said of a dog walking on its hind legs, “It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”  I could say the same for most of Marmaduke, which places the Great Dane in the “O.C.,” where he wins a surfing contest; copes with Bosco, the dog bully; throws a party while his owners are away that is “off the leash”; navigates the cliques of the dog park; tries to impress Bosco’s girlfriend Jezebel (voiced by Fergie); and does the robot to “What I Like about You.”  Avoid this movie at all costs.