Saving Mr. Banks

"Just Because It's Fiction Doesn't Make it a Lie"*
or
"Cavorting, Twinkling, and Prancing to a Happy Ending Like a Kamikaze"

Mary Poppins was a bitch.  That's been my joke for a long time, especially given the reputation that Disney's film of Mary Poppins (this year voted to the National Film Registry) has of being just as sugar-gooey as cotton candy in an Orange County heat wave.  It isn't.  And I've gotten several startled looks from adults who then see the film and, yes, they do see that aspect of it, despite the step-in-timing chimney-sweeps, the dancing penguins, and the moments of larkiness. It's not all a jolly 'oliday with Mary. In the end, it's a little bittersweet, and she ascends into a Peter Ellenshaw matte painting of London that isn't dabbled in sunlight, but is a melancholy smearing of smoke and darkening skies.

That's probably due more to Travers' own stipulations to the Disney crew than to anything.  Disney could be dark—dinosaurs died and there was "Night on Bald Mountain" in Fantasia, Pinocchio had its moments jack-assery and Monstro swallowing, Bambi's mother died, and 101 Dalmations almost got skinned—and provided moments of terror and threat in its films, as long as everything turned out all right as the final song paraded people up the aisles. But, Mary Poppins would have been a slightly different movie if it hadn't been for Travers' nannying the scripters and Disney with her chalk-lines drawn in the sand.  For that, we should be grateful.

Maybe less so for Saving Mr. Banks, the Disneyfication of the Disneyfication of "Mary Poppins."  It's "based on a true story," which means (as Blake Edwards coined the phrase) it's "true except for a lie or two," and in the western parlance of John Ford, "when the truth becomes legend, print the legend."  They couldn't have made this movie without Disney and "the Disney version," so, obviously the filmmakers are going to take a charitable stand on the studio's side of things (for example, Richard Sherman, who's played by Jason Schwartzman in the film, says that, rather than, as in the film, taking a personal approach when Travers came to work with the film-makers, Disney took off for Palm Springs and didn't come back until she left).  But, the more you find out about P.L. Travers (her nom de plume), the more you realize that they're taking the edges off her, as well.  Travers was a fantasist, and her largest work was the construction of her life, ever-changing, malleable, inconsistent and to her specifications as the mood and the myth suited her. "Mary Poppins" suited her just fine, and her demands for what was and was not acceptable are well documented in the many scripts versions filled with the word "No" in the margins, and the audio tape of the back-and-forth's between her and the scripters and song-writing team (which she insisted on, and which is played as coda over the end-credits).  Emma Thompson, who listened to them all in her preparation for the role, called her "vile."**

"Two artists at the height of their powers-like two gorillas fighting:"*** 
A study in contrasts between Disney (Hanks) and Travers (Thompson)

Fascinating, complicated, but vile in the instance.  And understandable in her concerns for what she considered "family," and that is where the film is at its most charitable and lovely.  Where Saving Mr. Banks shines is in the film's presentation of Travers' carefully hidden back-story, of her growing up in Australia to a charming, but erratic alcoholic father (played by Colin Farrell...think about that, Colin Farrell in a Disney movie), a frail mother (Ruth Wilson), and a precariousness to the family that, until her father is demoted from his bank managership, she had not previously known existed.  The movie goes back and forth between the disappointing assaults on her stipulations at Disney and her memories, some of which inspired the work she fights so egregiously to defend.  Meanwhile, Disney (Tom Hanks, who pushes "folksy" mighty hard to play a role almost too familiar to play), with theme parks to build and other movies in the pipeline, is left vexed and perplexed that the "Disney magic" isn't working at all well on "Pamela."

How could it?  I remember one writer describing the movie adaptation business for one of his works as "holding the coat for the man who's assaulting your child."  Disdainful of animation and films in general and Disney's work in particular, the movie's Travers reluctantly comes to Hollywood, where she is inundated by welcoming gifts in the form of "all things Mickey" in her hotel room to the point where she feels under siege. Any pleasantries are seen with suspicion for agendas, hidden.  And for the Disney dwarves, the task is mining anthracite because they're playing to a vision of Travers from her books, but not from her history and will always come up short until they know the origin story...which she'll never tell.  

The process, by which the movie-makers back-and-forth to keep the starched corners of the character, and the tone from being perpetually giddy, would be long and tedious to sit in a movie, and so compromises have to be made. Let's just say things didn't happen the way they happen in the movie—there was no meeting of the minds and no sharing of histories; Disney was a businessman and entrepreneur who knew a good thing when his daughters saw it and Travers wanted to keep her house.  Battles were chosen; compromises were made...in Mary Poppins and Saving Mr. Banks.  That same give and take, that same grace under fire, to produce the best work regardless of the truth, permeates both films in their way.  The truth is just one more hurdle to a good story.

So, one can gripe—although Thompson is the very definition of "practically perfect in every way" here and should cause no consternation—but if one does, they're being a little bit intransigent and dealing with their own "issues," reflecting, again, the issues of the film.  It's a film that ultimately charms.  Anyone immune to it can, as everyone on both sides of the conundrum seemed to agree, "go fly a kite."

Saving Mr. Banks is a Matinee.  I'm not so sure I'd take the kids.

Julie Andrews, Uncle Walt, and Dr. Travers on best behavior

* P.L. Travers

** In one of those perfect symmetry moments, Thompson, in her satiric acceptance speech winning the Golden Globe for her adaptation of Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" imagined Austen's own disregard for her just-awarded work: "P.S. Managed to avoid the hoiden, Emily Thompkinson, who has purloined my creation and added things of her own. Nefarious creature."

*** Thompson, in an interview, describing why she was drawn to the script and the story.  

Frozen (2013)

Ice-Ice, Baby
or
(The Cold Never Bothered Me, Anyway...)

Disney's latest animated feature—not in the flat 2-D classic animation, but in the 3-D pixilated version ala Tangled—is "inspired" by Hans Christian Anderson's "The Snow Queen," according to the credits.  That's a whole new interpretation of the word "inspired" because Frozen has next to nothing to do with "The Snow Queen" other than...there's a Queen...and she makes snow.  But Tangled wasn't exactly "Rapunzel," either.

But, it's a quibble (And it's Disney).

Disney, who just put the first female (albeit co-director) on one of their female-dominated animated films. Based on a screenplay by, and co-directed by Jennifer Lee (with Chris Buck), it's another "Princess" movie that will expand the Disney marketing franchise (with two of them), but as with Pixar's Brave it dares to up-end some story-book conventions, making the royal sisters Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell) the emotional hub the story revolves around, and relegating the two hunky guys that are standard love interests pretty much transportation tools. This is a good thing.  And especially when the movie sets up "the guys" (one prince/one working stiff) as the solution to the problems and then very briskly pulls the cloth-simulated tapestry out from underneath that cliché.  I like that.  And I like how the solution to "the problems" is bundled very tightly in one unexpected moment that, frankly, shocks, and takes one aback emotionally.  I like that even better.

So, it's not "The Snow Queen."  What is it?  Elsa and Anna are princesses in the kingdom of Arendelle and they're by no means twins—Elsa is older by a couple years, and she has the telekinetic power to freeze things and project snow and ice from thin air.  This delights Anna, but a childhood accident forces the King and Queen to seek the assistance of trolls who save Anna's life, but take away her memory of Elsa's power to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again.  The Royals also lock up Elsa, keeping her from her sister...and everyone, until she learns how to suppress her powers, usually brought on by her emotions.

The two sisters grow up apart under the same roof, even after tragedy strikes the household.  The two don't see each other until Elsa's coronation day as Queen of Arendelle, but the two are distant even when inches apart, and when the scattered Anna becomes enamored of a visiting prince (Santino Fontana), upsetting Elsa and exposing her powers to the Kingdom.  Elsa flees, now that her frightening powers are out there for all to see.  

You couldn't miss it.  She's dropped Arendelle into a permanent winter, with no way to get it out.  It's up to the plucky Anna to go after her and try and mend fences and thaw her relationship with her sister and the town.

Prince Hans is a love interest, but so is an ice-cutter that Anna finds on her journey (voiced by Jonathan Goff), whose best pal is an anthropomorphized reindeer named Sven.  There's also a walking, talking snowman (created by Elsa) named Olaf.  The revelation of a goofy snowman in the movie was enough to give me a brain-freeze, but, as voiced by Josh Gad (he of "The Book of Mormon"), he's pretty danged funny.  The songs have the same show-connection, as well, as they're a collaboration between Robert Lopez (who co-composed both "Mormon" and "Avenue Q") and wife Kristen Anderson.  That's very much in the tradition of bringing the song-writing team of "The Little Shop of Horrors," Ashman and Menken, to Disney.  The songs are decidedly less Broadway, however, and more "pop" oriented—and will be appearing on the many reality-talent shows on the air in the not-too-distant future—and geared more for a cartoon audience than a theater one.

Again, quibbles.  And if Frozen didn't exactly warm my heart, my brain had some warm thoughts towards it.

Frozen is a Full-Price Ticket (I wouldn't spring for the 3-D, though).

One of three "I Want" songs in Frozen (four if you count Olaf's "In Summer").

Going in...er, "cold," the power-ballad approach makes one cringe, but given the back-story 

preceding it, it's a break-out moment...and a little scary.  In fact, the Elsa character was 

slated to be the villain of the movie until this song's themes of empowerment changed everything.

Monsters University

Crossing the Line
or
Big Monsters on Campus

They're ba-ack.  The monsters who regularly hide in your childhood closets to go bump in the night have returned.  And the whole premise of Monsters University is to show how Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) and James Sullivan (John Goodman) first bumped into each other in the first place.  It was a given in the first film (and one of its unstated charms) that a one-eyed puke-green bi-ped and a shaggy polka-dotted blue-green beast became friends in the first place.  M.U. feels the need to explain this monstrously odd color in the first place.  You just know that at some story-meeting, the Pixar geeks leaned back and said "they probably met in college."

Which leads to the question, what sort of college would that be?  Knowing that we, as an audience, had already suffered through the entire course-load at Hogwarts, M.U. was a good bet for movie-goers.  There are all sorts of easy ironies for a place of learning that specializes in scaring the tar out of you (just as there was in the "Potter" series), and the ways that faculty and staff can exert their own forms of terror can make for a fairly seamless story-line (Helen Mirren is brought in—seemingly the only Britisher not to appear in the "Potter" movies—as the dragony dean of studies).  And the writers have a good time expanding on the differences between Mike and Sully.  Mike has all the scary potential of a rubber ball, and his struggles through the "scare" curriculum makes him more of an over-achiever than he already is (one can easily see him pulling one-nighter's until his one eye is blood-shot, but they don't go there).  Sully has it easy—he's a legacy student and doesn't put much effort into it, until his own back is against the wall.  Both are campus mis-fits of a sort; they can't get into the fraternity lorded over by Johnny Worthington (Nathan Fillion) and can only get into the scary "animal house" of losers that are the nerds on campus.  Once all this is established, the story writes itself, as if by rote.

Ever taught at a University?  It looks kinda like this.

And that's the problem with Monsters University.  The basic concept does some stretching, but then it's "pixilate by the numbers."  Everything looks great-nobody makes a movie look as good as Pixar, whether it's a natural setting as in their Brave, or the unnatural one here, and the nuances of character draw from classic animation as well as a few wrinkles that Pixar tosses in.  But the studio's sequels (excepting the "Toy Story" series) have a sameness that feels like coasting, as opposed to the daring ideas like Ratatouille and Up.  The best of the Pixar films expand the horizons and stretch the form.  One like this one are more insular and shrink the potential and the possibilities.  At least it's better than Cars 2, which, basically, ran around in circles, as race-cars are wont to do.

The preview for the next Disney factory movie shows it's about airplanes.  *Sigh* It does not bode well.

Monsters University is a Rental.

One of the little details that makes me love Pixar:
A "traditional" styled map of Monsters U.

Oz the Great and Powerful

What a World, What a World;
or
There is no Baum in Gilead

Any movie attempting to resuscitate L. Frank Baum's "Oz" books has to deal with the series' own Wicked Witch of the West—that being M-G-M's musical version The Wizard of Oz, which had Judy Garland in it, and set the bar very high as far as expectations go (for quality that is, whereas for the box-office TWoO was not a box-office success at the time of its release and only became a classic after a couple decades worth of Thanksgiving showings on network TV).  Walter Murch's attempt to take an OZ story back to its roots, 1986's Disney's Return to Oz, was an abysmal failure, although artistically it was a terrific show--but probably butted heads with too many memories for its own goodness as, for instance, the Lion, Tin Man, and Scarecrow were not vaudevillians in theater-suits, as was the 1939 version, but looked more in line with the book's illustrations.

Sam Raimi, he of larkey horror films and the Tobey Maguire Spidermen, is probably a very good choice for doing an OZ film, as he has equal qualities of sweetness and sour, where Tim Burton (the next usual suspect*) would have made the film travel heavier to the morose.  Raimi's Disney's Oz the Great and Powerful (as convoluted and punctuationally challenged a title if ever, oh ever, there was one) manages to be its own thing while bowing and occasionally scraping to the previous' yellow brick road (which is revealed, as an aside, to have potholes, which nicely sums up the movie's respect, and lack thereof).  A prequel, kinda sorta to The Wizard of Oz, it starts out in a black and white box-square format (with a special effect detail amusingly violating it here and there) on a sound-staged Kansas that creepily recalls the musical version.  There scam-magician Oscar Diggs (James Franco) is conning rubes and comely assistants alike, and taking advantage of his stage-assistant, Frank (Zach Braff).  He's a jerk, only revealed to better purposes when a lost love (Michelle Williams) comes to visit to tell him she's going to marry farmer John Gale (father of Dorothy, making her mother of), and he takes the higher road, telling her she chose the better man.

But his past catches up with him...or tries to...and his road goes even higher, escaping a vengeful cuckolded circus strong-man in a helium balloon.  Kansas being Kansas, he is caught up in a tornado—one that presumably opens up a rip in the space-time continuum through some sort of meteorological consequence, and winds up in the storied land of Oz, where, true to movie-form, everything turns to color and the screen expands to wide-screen proportions.

The pattern is set—Diggs is an outsider, a stranger in a strange land, but enough of a roué that any sense of wonder he initially feels is soon replaced by annoyance (Franco is great at that).  Oh, it's nice to have a minor seduction with the first female he stumbles on, Theodora (Mila Kunis), but the flying monkeys (in the form of Finley, voiced by Braff), and the girl who comes from hummle beginnings, the fragile porcelain girl (who comes from the neighboring land of Chinatown and voiced by Joey King), but before long he's embroiled in Oz's matriarchal politics between witches Theodora and her evil sister Evanora (Rachel Weisz), who are lording it over the Emerald City, and the witch Glinda (Williams again), who is protecting the provinces from the influence of the Big Bad City.  This troika of females all think that Oscar will bring some sort of balance to Oz, and despite himself, he's got enough answers to help Finely and China, who become devotees.  Evanora is the first to see Oscar and think "there goes the neighborhood," and the plot and the make-up thickens in a battle royale between the various forces of magic, Evanora and Theodora in the Emerald City, and Glinda and Oscar and her army of tinkers, winkies and munchkins.  Tinkers and winkies and munchkins.  Oh my.

As Donald Rumsfeld said, you fight with the army you got.

And just to show this isn't Gramma's OZ (or Louis B. Mayer's) when we get welcomed to Munchkinland this time, and the town's welcome wagoneers start into a bouncey little song with high, tight voices (provided by composer Danny Elfman), Diggs just calls the whole thing off: "Stop!  Stop it!"  Musical numbers are not tolerated in this more cynical fantasyland.  Nor is anything approaching the good-heartedness of Baum or Fleming.  Even Glinda the Good Witch turns out to be something of a bad-ass here, far badder than in the '39 version.  And that's just a little backwards because the original has an empowered little girl who saves the day, while in this one it's a man, a messiah, who must sort things out in the messy rule of a matriarchy.  

This is progress?

The movie ends with some fantasy-nastiness.  Glinda is captured, tortured, and made to grovel before the sisters, Oscar comes to the rescue with his own Earth-bound pyrotechnics, similar to what he's use in the future.  But the movie feels very much like a movie of today—things end not with a splash of water, but a lot of impressive fireworks.  You want something a little meatier, though, something that might last and impress longer, but given the Oz that will come post-prequel, there's really nothing much to do about it.  The great and powerful Oz is merely a humbug, the man behind the curtain.  The evil sisters will remain evil, although Evanora's fashion sense (especially regards hosiery) will take a serious hit.  And Oscar will become a patriarch based on big promises with nothing much to back it up.  Sounds like any politician, really.  This Oz is not so magical, not so great and not so powerful.  What it needs is more brains, more heart and more courage.

Disney's Oz the Great and Powerful is a Rental.

Yellow Brick Road?  Check.  Emerald City? Check.  Dark Forest?  Check.
Now we just needs brains, a heart and courage.

Oz, the Great and Powerful is available on DVD starting today.

And the original is forever.

 
* Frequently recalled as this film is scored by Burton co-conspirator Danny Elfman.

Wreck-It Ralph

Who Framed Wreck-It Ralph?
or 
Being Two-Bit in an 8-Bit World

It's not that I didn't "like" Wreck-it Ralph.  I did.  I just wasn't moved by it, nor did I care one bit about any of it—not the movie, not the characters—any of it.

Oh, there's a lot to admire: the animation is amazing, albeit to a limited world inside a video game (it can't be too complicated in its design as it's supposed to reflect the limited world-view of a flat 8-bit world refracted in 3-dimensions); the expansions and contractions of those worlds are quite cleverly done—the expansions of those environments being of the commingling of those worlds before the lights turn on in the video arcade, the characters commuting in a Grand Central Station hub to their various scenarios, and the contractions being in the limited animation movements of some of the characters.  The voice-acting is fine, headed by John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jane Lynch, Alan Tudyk, and Jack McBrayer (of "30Rock").  The cameos by various amusement game characters are amusing—the Pac-man ghosts, Sonic, Qbert—which gives the whole thing a tinge of Who Framed Roger Rabbit,* Disney Animation has done a great job of it under the tutelage of Pixar's Jon Lasseter.

But, as great as it is, it's hardly inspired, the central conceit being all those video game characters have lives and concerns when no one's looking, which is the idea behind the "Toy Story" franchise.  But, instead of that series forming a concept of the toys banding together to get along in The Big Toy-Box, the issues of the segregated video game characters are decidedly trivial and territorial.  They inhabit an 8-bit world, but their concerns are decidedly two-bit, as in the story's central story-line.  "Wreck-it Ralph" is the villain of the game "Fix-it Felix"—inspired by "Donkey Kong" but not (Mario, remember?) and he's dissatisfied with his life as a villain.  He wants to be a hero, but is never given a chance and his intended role keeps him ostracized in the "Felix" community.  He's shunned, gets no respect, and isn't even invited to parties.  His "villain support group" provides no comfort.  So, Ralph decides to expand his horizons (if video games have horizons) and starts visiting other games, like a WOW game with a butch commander in curvy leather (Lynch, of course), then navigates to another game "Sugar Rush" (no doubt coming to a Game Stop near you) where perky princesses race in a candyland world (and one of the racers is voiced by Silverman, not of course).  

There are some wonderful things that could be done here as far as the migration of traditional characters in non-traditional environments, but what's here doesn't have a lot of imagination as far as plot, the complications or the resolution.  Ultimately, it's a bright, pretty snooze-fest (I felt the need to feed myself quarters to keep from nodding off).  But ultimately I just wanted to move on, feeling like I was losing a life—the only one I have!—just waiting for the blessed relief of "Game Over."

Wreck-It Ralph is a Cable-Watcher.

The game-screen of "Fix-It-Felix" and its inspiration "Donkey Kong"©

* ...although you wonder where some other characters are, like Prince of Persia, Mario, Halo, and then you remember "Oh, yeah, they have their own movie franchises" (mostly inactive) and their places are "suggested" by other characters.

Brave

We All Have Our Bear to Cross
or
"A Princess Strives for Perfection"

They used to have a lot of trouble with hair in the early days of digital crafting.  For instance, you remember the monkeys from Jumanji—the hair was short and matted and plasticene looking ("Not good enough, Sonny Jim").

Things have come a long way; Princess Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald) in Brave has an unruly hedge of red hair, of all different textures and tensile strength, thatched together, the odd curlicue strands floating, like the representatives of an unruly spirit.  The one girl in the royal Scottish family of Lord Fergus (Billy Connelly) and Lady Elinor (Emma Thompson), she is being groomed, quite radically by Elinor, to be the perfect little princess, a prim and proper consort to one of the sons of the other clans (led by voice actors Robbie Coltrane, Craig Ferguson, and Kevin McKidd)—losers all.  Trouble is, Merida is very much a product of her parents.  The first born, she takes off a lot from her Lord-father, who when we first encounter the family, gives his daughter a bow for her birthday.  A wild shot sends an arrow deep into the forest where Merida has her first encounter with will'o-the-wisps, which her Mother tells her can lead her to her Fate.  As if Merida wants to be led anywhere.  As she grows, she'd much rather take off with her steed Angus, firing arrows at a full gallop on an archery course of her own devising, going on adventures that her potential suitors might blanch at.

But, when forced to play the role imposed on her, Merida becomes defiant, setting in motion a series of events that will prove disasterous to her clam, politically and personally.

To reveal any more would be spoiling the surprises along the way, which are heart-felt, potentially extremely tragic, and ironic all at the same time.  It's a grim fairy tale, conceived by original director Brenda Chapman (Pixar's first female director, although she was let go in the middle of production over "creative differences.")

There are a lot of "first's" here: it's Pixar's first "period" film; their first with a female protagonist, believe it or not (and this has a strong one to start off with, with feminist leanings, and mother-daughter issues); their first "princess" film and their first "fairy tale" of sorts, although it's not based on any story I'm aware of, treading new ground, although the touchstones along the way have all the familiarity of ages-old myth.

And Pixar has re-written their software codes to make a truly complex-looking film.  It's not just the hair, but also the verdant forests, rough-hewn roads, castles, and water effects all have a photo-realism quality, while the cartoon-proportioned people have a fastidiously eclectic design and a malleability of expression far beyond what Pixar's animators have been able to accomplish before.  There are no short-cuts here, but only the pushing of the artistic envelope (and that includes the 3-D effects which looks seamless and flawless with no speed-artifacting) that has been the standard for every production out of this studio.

At the showing I attended there was a technical glitch with the projectors that delayed the film somewhat (pfft...so I missed a couple of previews), and one of the patrons remarked out-loud how much the theater might compensate for the delay.  It left me wondering what sort of compensation is needed besides a great film, flawlessly done. 

Brave is preceded by a magical short, La Luna.  And stay 'til the end as there's a nice little coda.

Brave is a Full-Price Ticket.

John Carter

Forewarned is Four-Armed
or
"Men are for Mars, Women, Curvaceous"

Edgar Rice Burroughs not only created Lord Greystoke (otherwise known as Tarzan of the Apes), but he created another hero who commuted between different worlds, that being John Carter, a Civil War vet, who managed to mentally displace himself from 19th Century Earth to Barsoom, as the natives called it, although we Earthers called it Mars.

The Carter books were solid pulp, but soaring adventures, with lusty Barsoomian princesses, warring political and tribal factions, including a race of 15 foot four armed insectoid inhabitants who were frequently at odds with the more humanoid Martians.  They inspired all sorts of science fiction writers like Bradbury and Clarke (and scientists including Carl Sagan) and film-makers from Lucas and Spielberg to Cameron and any author whose hero leads a Walter Mitty fantasy existence on another continent, planet or Universe. 

It's the 100th Anniversary of JC's creation, and it's about time that somebody made him take the astral projection from book-paper to celluloid...or pixels—not that there haven't been attempts over the years.  The books have rarely been out of print and—probably inspired by the covers painted by Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo that neatly made real Burroughs' vivid descriptions—and something's been in the works for the last couple of decades.  Now, finally, Disney took a chance with it—although they don't have a clue how to sell it—with director Andrew Stanton, one of Pixar's shining lights (directing both Finding Nemo and WALL·E).

And, hell, if they don't pull it off, making it work and seem fresh (if highly reverberent, as so many others have borrowed liberally from the series for years), while also recalling the straight-faced brio of biblical epics, combined with the cheese-factor of movie serials.  It's pulpy, old-fashioned, and definitely of the "white-guy-saves-the-natives" school,* but it has fun with it, playing off the duality of practically everybody in the script, reflecting the "two worlds" concepts inherent in the series.**  And why shouldn't Carter have an exploitable advantage over the Martians?  The planet's lesser gravity allows him to bound like a flea across landscapes and from precipitous tower to precipitous tower (although one loses that concept when Carter is shown getting winded climbing up steep hills).  And the Barsoomian concepts of ERB-dom are in full abundance, gathering details from the series—the white apes, the Therns (the duplicitous Gods of Mars), Carter's ways of dealing with passage between worlds (and covering up his disappearances on Earth), the participation of "Ned" Burroughs in the telling of the tales, and the environmental struggles of the dying Mars (although the canals of Mars are mostly gone, Stanton and co-screenwriters Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon, have created a gargantuan crawling city of Zodanga that sprawls across the planet's surface, leaving decimation in its wake.

Yes, it's pulpy.  Sure, it's cheesy.  But in the same way that any romance story is, (and Burroughs wrote romance novels for men), and this is boy-hokum space romance fantasy, without much logic to it, but enough momentum and emotion to keep so many of the quibbles at bay, and Stanton has shaped it in a fine, breezy style that kicks the story along at a good clip—check out the economy he uses to make note of Carter's indefatigable fighting instinct in the film's second sequence (the first is a rousing, dis-orientingly brusque Martian air battle) in trying to escape forced re-enlistment at the hands of his former Captain Powell (the now ubiquitous Bryan Cranston), then jumping from Western tropes (filmed in Monument Valley, of course) to Bibical epic trappings, to its own weird amalgamation of the two, with a bizarre twist on familiarity.  Where the movie roars are in the sword fights and hand-to-hand battles that bring to life Frazetta's "berserker" illustrations, that push the envelope of what can be presented in a PG-13 rating.

It's a grand ride, energetically told, imaginatively realized, with a good cast of fine actors, committed to doing it all with a straight face, and selling the fantasy, without any betrayal of the mechanics that had to go into this thing (a tough job to do that has bested others in the last few years).  I've read a few reviews by some critics that strike me as rather cranky about the film being derivative (in a reverse engineering way of looking at things), but, frankly, I don't think they saw the right movie.  Kill me if I ever get that sophisticated I can't have fun at something done well.  To this kid, who grew up reading the Barsoom books, (as Bradbury once wrote) Mars is Heaven.

John Carter (of Mars) is a great Saturday afternoon Matinee.

First edition depiction of John Carter and Dejah Thoris
from the initial hardcover dust-jacket

Frank Frazetta's iconic cover to "The Princess of Mars"
The production design of John Carter owes a little bit to both.

* It was, after all, written in 1912.  What's Avatar's excuse?

** Even the titular Princess of Mars has a nick-name in the film.  Carter calls her "Perfesser."  Carter's Thark name is Dojahr Sojak, but also "Virginia," after a mis-communication in greetings from Tarkus. 

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

"Sinking to Lower Depps"
or
"PG-13? It Should Be Rated "Arrrrrrrrrrr."

I enjoyed the boisterous first Pirates of the Caribbean—who would have thought that even talented film-makers and writers could turn a ride at Disneyland into a good movie?  But, it had been awhile since there'd been a quality pirate pic, and POTC hearkened back to the giddy Saturday-matinee thrills of past sea-faring adventures, but with a nice, gritty frou-frou quality.  Yes, it was loud, and confusing, and piled on too many episodes of buckling swashes, so it was hard to separate the buccaneers from the privateers.  And it gave Johnny Depp a break-through role that saved him from the pit of despair that is Tim Burton's cob-webbed basement-rec room. 

It was just plain, simple fun.

I passed on the second and third films because I figured they'd run the formula for movie trilogies: the second one turns dark and complicated without the fresh feeling of the first, leaving cliff-hangers that could grow barnacles on any writer's knuckles; then the third complicates things more, and resolves everything quickly and rushes to a well-deserved finale where everything (*sigh*) turns out alright.

I gave them not so much as a hailing shot across my bow.  I'd sailed on.

But, I thought I'd give Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides a chance.  For one thing, having resolved the Keira Knightley/Orlando Bloom romance (again), they're no longer present on this passage and the additions of Penélope Cruz and Ian McShane was an inducement.  Plus, the director is Rob Marshall and I wanted to see how he did with a project of a lesser pedigree than his previous work.  I liked Chicago, and parts of Memoirs of a Geisha.  But I thought Nine was an unmitigated disaster, occasionally brightened by performance (I was surprised to find numbers by Fergie and Kate Hudson the highlights).  Marshall needs a hit, and On Stranger Tides is just the ticket—an established franchise ($2.6 Billion in revenues?) with a built-in audience that doesn't care who directed it—all they care about is Depp's tipsy Keith Richards imitation and running like a girl from trouble.

Those sunken souls will be pleased; Depp does that schtick but with that silent-comedian's crack razor-sharp timing in the reactions.  It plays like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World with three groups of sailors all after one thing: Ponce de León's fabled Fountain of Youth (it seems, all of a sudden, Spain, England and the Pirates are interested in the same thing).  After a brief sequence where Sparrow frees a member of his crew, he is arrested and brought before King George II (Richard Griffiths—when he sits there is a big musical fwump from Hans Zimmer's "Mickey-Mousing" score).  It seems that Spain's interest in the FOY has reached the King and he hires Captain Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush, or most of him anyway) to lead the expedition.  Jack escapes...and then things get complicated.

In the meantime, there are McShane and Cruz, as the pirate Blackbeard and his daughter, Angelica, mermaids, a Jack Sparrow imposter, silver chalices to find, and the series' obligatory focus on the supernatural (while also having a missionary hero, despite all the disparagements of religion in the script).  Blackbeard knows his voodoo, has a "zombified" crew, a magic cutlass, and a fine collection of ships-in-bottles.  Plus, his vessel "Queen Anne's Revenge" has a few nifty tricks that other pirate ships do not.  McShane is terrific, playing the comedy for truth ("If I don't kill a man now and then, they forget who I am"—a line similar to one from The Princess Bride—is played absolutely straight and with a baleful disinterest that never leaves his face.  Cruz is fine, but it appears she's just along for the ride—as duplicitous as her character is, she doesn't register much range, or fire...as she can. 

Marshall keeps things moving, editing things a bit too quickly for continuity to rush the dialogue, eliminating any pauses, and he does a few cute things with the 3-D imaging, beyond the snakes and pointy swords and rolling barrels, moving his cameras over the heads of a court-room, giving a sailing shot of the sea actual depth, and making the split-screen Jaws water's edge shot work well.  And although he isn't that good framing the fights, which jerk along with the breezy calculation—and lack of zest—of a Roger Moore fight from a James Bond film,* and there really isn't much of an ending—although there are three of them—it's pretty sprightly, the highlight being an encounter with mermaids—portrayed as supermodels with the manners of piranhas**—that is genuinely exciting.  There are even a couple of charming, if brief, surprises along the way. 

There is another quality issue, though.  On Stranger Tides, shot in 3-D, has an opening that is pretty murky once you put on the dark glasses, the same kind of clarity issues you get at drive-in's when they would start a movie at dusk.  Even in 3-D and IMAX (which is how I saw it—I was splurging), it's a little difficult to determine precisely what is going on.  It's something of a toss-up just how one should see the latest Pirates of the Caribbeans. It might be worth it to see it in three dimensions, but I'd do it at home.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides makes a fine Rental.


* Every once in awhile, sitting through this, I got the odd "formulaic" bustling feeling I get from the Bond films and the Indiana Jones movies (Zimmer's "Pirates of the Caribbean" dance-step has to accompany every bit of derring-do, like the "Indiana Jones Theme"), where the dialog is just not clever enough, but "it'll get by," if you don't mind a bit of eye-rolling (it does, after all, relieve some of the eye-strain produced by those glasses), and the action set-pieces just go on and on.  And one can set their watch by when action is timed in this thing.

** ...or is that redundant?