This week, Pixar revealed that in 2029 we will be getting Coco 2. My immediate thought was oh no. For some 2017’s Coco is the last truly great Pixar film. I think 2020’s Soul could be part of that conversation, but the point remains. What we have gotten since Coco are Toy Story, Incredibles, and Inside Out sequels/prequels, and original stories that haven’t really caught on like the earlier films that made the studio what it is. In June, we are getting Elio, their newest release that was pushed back from last summer. It doesn’t look great, but we will see. With the Onwards and Lucas in mind, I get why we are getting Coco 2, Toy Story 5, and Incredibles 3. Those will make money. It’s just a shame that the studio responsible for bringing us such cool new things like Finding Nemo, WALL-E, and Toy Story just seem to be falling back on sequels like Disney Animation did for so long. We aren’t at Cinderella II: Dreams Come True territory yet, but it is on the horizon. On to the reviews!
This was a Screen Unseen I thought long and hard about skipping. None of the options were ones that I really wanted to see. But to the theater I went. This film is based on the true story of an English teacher in an Argentina school, who while on break in Uruguay, saves the life of a penguin in an attempt to woo a lady. The penguin refuses to leave his side after that. This film was aggressively fine that is a constant battle between two different tones and focuses that limits the impact of the film. On one side, we have Steve Coogan’s Tom Michell and how his life is changed by the penguin. We see how it allows him to connect with his class, and makes him really a better person. On the other hand, the film is set during the Coups of Argentina where fear and distrust had hold of the area. I get that the events really took place at the same time, but the film, and the score that is the backing of most of the scenes, wants that is to be a fun, playful film about acceptance. Having the tonal shift to drama really derails what the other side is trying to do, and the film doesn’t do a great job of tying the two sides together. What we are left with is a ok movie that could have been a lot better.
To begin with, I don’t think this is the horrible, dumpster fire so many think it is. I certainly don’t think this movie should exist, but my feelings on these live action remakes are pretty clear. I do wonder how many of those who are trashing it have watched the 1937 masterpiece recently though. It’s widely thought of as the greatest animated film of all time, but it was also the first, so that plays into it a little. There are most assuredly better animated films in the 88 years since then. Disney is on mission to remake everything, so this was an inevitably. So, let’s start with what is good in this version.
First, Rachel Ziegler is great as Snow White. She gives the character so much more dimension, whether we needed Snow White to be more fleshed out. There is a reason she is cast in musicals. She really nails all her songs here. Speaking of the songs, for the most part, they work. There are only 3 that make it from the original. Heigh Ho is one of my favorite Disney songs (it’s the alarm on my phone every morning), and in this new version it is expanded into a introduction to the Dwarfs that we never got in the original. As for Whistle While You Work, that switched from a White and the animals song to White and the Dwarfs. If you look back at the original, the actual song is only 56 seconds long, with 2 minutes of a Silly Symphonies to finish the sequence. Here, it feels like a modern song. The entire soundtrack feels like one they would use if this was a Broadway show. I’m not saying that’s a great thing, but it’s a better musical than some of these remakes.
Now for the bad. The Dwarfs look uncanny, and that can traced to the change from actors to cgi creations during the production. As for that leaked photo early on in production of the human “dwarfs” that were just normal people? They are still in here, but now they are bandits in a storyline that is only there to give the character who wakes Snow White up has more context in the story. Did it work, or not make this feel like completely different film at the halfway point when the are introduced? Not really. While talking about the Dwarfs, there was a major change that made me irrationally angry. For 88 years, 3 words have rung true: Dopey. Doesn’t. Talk. Apparently, a mute Dopey was problematic, because when Show White wakes back up, it gives Dopey the courage to start speaking. Once you hear his voice, you remember what the narrator sounds like, and it dawns on you Dopey is the narrator. It’s was terrible and I didn’t want it. Finally, Gal Gadot. She was not great here, and earlier when I said the songs work for the most part, the Evil Queen’s song doesn’t at all. For as much as Ziegler works as White, Gadot is just wooden and pretty bad as the Evil Queen.
So, if you were looking for another tear down of a horrible film, I’m sorry to let you down. There was some good here. There was also a lot of bad that slightly outweighs the good parts. In the end, kids won’t know the difference. They aren’t watching the 1937 original anyway. This will most likely bomb in the box office because it never had a chance to succeed with how toxic the environment around this film has gotten. It will probably get a second life on Disney+, and its box office failures would never be bad enough to stop Disney from live action remakes. Only an asteroid hitting the planet would stop them at this point. Hooray for us….
As I watched whatever this was, I am just reminded that WB decided this was worthy of a MAX release, and Batgirl or Coyote vs Acme was not. Life is funny sometimes. In this one, we meet Rohan and Josh, a couple who have decided to rent a country house, and invite their parents to join them for there for the weekend. This is because Rohan is planning on proposing to Josh. The problem is that the house is haunted by demon that we see kill the original family of the house in the opening of the film. I’m not going a lot of time on the one. It’s just dumb, and fairly predictable at points. Parker Posey shows up as the person renting out the house to the couple, but it is obvious she knows something they don’t. This movie isn’t subtle, and as much as I read people thought The Electric State was terrible and pointless, it isn’t as bad as how pointless this one is. It isn’t the worst of the year though because the cast is doing a better job than the film deserves, and there are a few laughs in here. There are just so many other film on Max you could spend 90 minutes watching rather than this. I like dumb movies, but even this one tested my limit.
A film about Timothy McVeigh could have been an interesting film with the right context. This film is as boring and uninteresting as the evil man who committed that horrible action in Oklahoma City. Allie Allen plays McVeigh, and he is just there as the film moves around him. We never really get into his head. We just follow along as he puts his awful plan into motion. Thankfully, the main film ends as he is making his way to the Alfred P. Murrah building. The film then concludes with a newsreel montage of the attack. I’m not sure who really wanted this film. It’s categorized as a psychological thriller, but it very much is not that. I’m not making an argument we need a film about that monster, but if you started the story to when he was in the Gulf War, and then show how Waco cemented his revenge plan, this could have been a better film. Again, we don’t ever need to see it as it would add nothing to society.
Going in to the weekend, I really wasn’t expecting that the Robert De Niro gangster film would be the one I despised. But here we are. This is the “true story” of two of New York’s organized crime bosses, Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, both played by De Niro for some reason. This was a slug to get through that felt like watching a book report. How this movie works is two or more people will have a conversation dropping exposition, and we will see old pictures about what they are talking about. Either that or De Niro explaining things talking head style like we are watching a documentary. This style the film had made a 2 hour film feel like 4. I counted 5 people leave the theater starting near the middle of the film, and I almost fell asleep a couple times. I’m not sure why De Niro had to play two roles. The character an aren’t related to each other, so they didn’t need to look alike. You could have cast a separate actor as either Frank or Vito, but that wouldn’t save this stinker. This was a huge disappointment.
This next weekend is going to be another soft showing at the Box Office. Hopefully the Minecraft movie in two weeks will b the first to crack $60 million in a weekend for the first time in a bit.
- Snow White
- A Working Man
- Novocaine
- The Woman in the Yard
- Mickey 17
Three films this week to close out March. I also begin my dance of balancing movies with Tiger Baseball starting Thursday Night. In a couple hours from when this is posted, the Finals of the Box Office Classic will begin. It’s taken two weeks to get to this point, and we will know who the champion is tomorrow night!
Mitten Film Nerd 
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