fine whine

... at least, more forgiving than I'm willing to be.

I realize I'm probably at least twice the target demographic for Jon Favreau's Zathura (and I've never seen Jumanji, to boot), but I don't know if that can explain my dissatisfaction with the film. I'm not entirely certain I can explain it well, but I'll try.

First, an aside. Why didn't the people who put together the trailer (really just the first important scenes of the movie) have any input on the cover art? The trailer, to its credit, revealed a lot without giving too much away, and left rather major plot points out entirely. The cover, on the other hand, pretty much ruins the surprise on most everything. This is something that is not limited merely to this film, or its cover. Lots of DVDs have covers and menus and whatnot that spoil stuff, but this time around the trailer seemed so well crafted and the cover so, well, not, that I thought it merited mention.

The trailer wasn't the only thing done well. The two kids are very believable as two brothers, and their actions for the most part ring true. At one point the younger brother hits the older one in the face with a ball, not out of malice but simply because it seemed like something to do. Something in his expression or manner shows that so well. The kids, both of them, did a good job but they deserved better.

First of all, they were slaves to the game. Nothing they did had any bearing on the final outcome, save for occasionally figuring out how they were supposed to use what they were given. In those cases there was only one way to do things, so they were trapped anyway.

Second, they were robbed of characterization when from the first few minutes it became obvious that the two of them, initially at odds, would become best buddies forever. Moreover one of the boys doesn't really get much of an arc at all, other than he's a tad bit less timid at the end than the begninning. He's on screen almost the entire time, doesn't he deserve a little bit of personal growth?

Of course, this is a movie for kids, and they won't really care about those things. They probably won't care about oversights and shortcuts taken in the special effects, the most glaring of which is the static 'stars' outside the windows that are so obviously a wall four feet away. If Star trek: the next generation could get this right on TV couldn't they have done the same? After all the effort put into effects like the meteor shower, overlooking something like that seemed just cheap to me. But the kids won't notice. Nor will you, if you don't know what you're seeing (if you haven't been told, of course. Sorry).

Next up, Charlie and the chocolate factory. Few so-called family movies are more divisive* than 1971's Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory: In none of the conversations mentioning that movie I recall did anyone admit to being lukewarm or wishy-washy on it. People love or hate it. Those who love it, really love it, though, and as such a remake was all but inevitable. It's a shame that with the improved technology, the filmmakers didn't spend time on an improved story (or even one to rival the first film or original book).

The movie's actually dumbed down. The story's dumbed down and Willy himself is dumbed down. The writers found fit to add not only scenes to show things that don't need to be shown, but also entire subplots to explain things that don't matter. In previous incarnations, Mr. Wonka was an enigma, and even now we don't need to know his life story. And to contradict what I said about Zathura: just because he's a major character doesn't mean he needs a character arc. After all, his name's not the one in the title anymore.

This is not to say that some of the new additions are unwelcome. The Small World-esque sequence at the factory in the beginning is an intriguing idea, and pays off unexpectedly later in an almost throwaway bit you'll miss if you blink ("This is the puppet hospital and burns center. It's relatively new"). The design of the glass elevator was much closer to Roald Dahl's original vision (and illustrations, if I recall) than the one in the 70s film, and they used it the way they should, as an elevator that could go in any direction, and, as such, was done well (though I thought back to the very similar Magrathea bit in The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy that at the time was simultaneously cool and tedious). The squirrels bit is amazing, at least until the plot takes hold again. The new approach to the Oompa Loompas was refreshing, if for nothing else to be rid of the hideously ugly costumes and makeup. The new Oompa songs, though, were a failure of style over substance, in that I couldn't make out a good half of the lyrics and was far too distracted by the visuals (elaborate staging and production design) to want to try much harder. Most of the other new problems suffered similarly in execution, but weren't as good of ideas.

Johnny Depp plays Willy as an aloof idiot, and talks in a manner that mixes the worst of David Spade, Dana Carvey's Church Lady, and a four year old. He doesn't just talk like an idiot, he often acts like one too, walking into the glass doors of his elevator not once but twice. Humor doesn't work like that, at least not for me. The kids are a mixed bag as well, acting into cliches more than characters, but Charlie and his family come off as more or less genuine, a feat none of the other characters even approaches.

But still the question remains: why did they need to bludgeon us with the message about family**? Why did Willy need to change? We may never know the answers, at least not until the next producers and writers take this on in the next remake cycle. Give it another 35 years, and we'll see.

Rather than remaking any one of the 'classic' Universal Studios monster movies, the makers of Van Helsing chose to appropriate the star attractions of pretty much all of them. Frankenstein's monster met the Wolf Man back in 1943 (and then Abbott and Costello and Dracula too) but rarely since have so many monsters shared the screen in the same two hours. Trivia buffs more well-versed than I am in these 'classics' point out that there wasn't a Universal Jekyll and Hyde film other than the Abbott and Costello spoof, but that part does make for a very watchable sequence and does somewhat propel the movie forward. That's all the movie does, all the way through - rush forward without many a moment to waste. It follows the video game pacing (that Scott Tobias mentions in his review of Silent hill) of action-exposition-action-exposition for a while, but soon leaves out the exposition altogether and we're left seemingly knowing even less than the characters do.

The effects are mostly good and the atmosphere okay, if a bit drab, but so much is so silly for me to take this movie seriously. All but its most ardent fans will admit it's a mindless popcorn film, but when I watched it I guess that wasn't enough.

So these movies weren't exactly horrible, but none were great. In my opinion. Which we know can't count for too much, because I can recall thinking that Spawn wasn't all that bad, at the time, and am willing to admit that now. If you've seen it, that should clear things up. If you haven't, well, don't. Give one of these three a try instead, and who knows, maybe you'll like them more than I did.

* One word that always, always, always eludes me is the one that you use to describe this sort of thing: Opinions are divided completely for or against; there is no middle ground. The word occasionally comes to me, but when it doesn't I can't find it, and founder about with the wrong words like "galvanizing" and "catalyzing". I know I'm on the right track with those two, as the word I seek is vaguely scientific, but neither is the right one. Each time I recall or rediscover it, I know it right away, but every single time I've forgotten, and the quest begins anew. What is this word? It's more than just "controversial" and "divisive", it's... what?

** To see a movie that gets the whole 'family' message right, watch Disney's Lilo and Stitch. There's a movie about families (and aliens), not a movie about a boy and a chocolate factory and other stuff with a family message and subplot grafted on as an afterthought.