 |
| Begone. You have no power here! |
Having
kids is expensive.
Do
they teach in school?
Well,
let this be your lesson for the day.
Clothes,
food, shelter, and endless supply of shoes with the toes worn through. (But why the toes?) More food, school supplies, field trips, more
food.
And
then there’s the entertainment. In the
early days, it’s easy, because their eyes don’t see well, they don’t have an
opinion, and you can veto their vote.
Plus, you probably already have stuff in your collection—provided you
have a soul—that will appease most kids of various ages.
Then
they get older. The punks.
 |
| Strong, smart, clever female protagonist? Yes please! |
They
start seeing ads for movies, and those ads are cunning, clever, downright
evil. Sometimes, that works out pretty
good. Moana is an excellent film, and probably deserved a much wider
audience and more accolades than it received.
But
it’s damned, damned expensive to take three or four or even five people to the
movie theater and have it be an enjoyable experience. The youngest one never sits still. The oldest one always pouts that he didn’t
get something.
They
all want treats and snacks and desserts.
Staying
home and renting has suddenly made a reappearance for us. That’s how we watched Trolls and Storks. These two movies had decent premises but
mediocre executions.
Storks
 |
| Pretty much how I watched the film. |
Straight-up
about storks who used to deliver babies, but don’t anymore. Now they deliver packages, like some kind of
Amazon-gone-wild. The defining moment
was when a stork, Jasper (voiced by Danny Trejo) went rogue, and wanted to keep
one of the babies. That baby, Tulip
(Katie Crown) now 18 is old enough to be cut free, and it’s Junior’s (Andy
Samberg) job to do it. If you think that’s
enough plot to go with, there’s a young boy who wants a baby brother (with ninja
skills!), his career-driven parents who mostly ignore him, an accidental baby
produced by Tulip who has to be delivered, Tulips “missing” family, and a pack
of wolves who can form anything (Keegan-Michael Keyand Jordan Peele). There are some real shining moments, clever
dialogue, and so forth, but with so much going on, the movie just never really
takes off.
Trolls
 |
| Prehensile hair is totally a thing! |
By
comparison to Storks, Trolls is incredibly straight-forward. The titular Trolls live in a state of
perpetual bliss, with hugging on the hour.
Twenty years previously, they fled to their current home from the giant Bergens
who would eat the Trolls in order to feel happy (no subtext here at all). Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick) leads the
Trolls in singing, dancing, scrapbooking, hourly hugging and evening
parties. Branch (Justin Timberlake) is
constantly doom-and-gloom about the return of the Bergens. Spoiler-alert: Branch is right. A Bergen, Chef (the excellent Christine
Baranski) stomps in and captures a dozen of the Trolls to win back her position
and somehow make herself queen.
Meanwhile, the Bergen scullery-maid Bridget (Zooey Deschanel) pines for Bergen
Prince Gristle (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) who pretty much doesn’t notice her at
all. Poppy and Branch go on a quest to
save the captured Trolls, and there are a lot of song-and-dance numbers, most
of which parents will know some if not all the words. The movie has some clever bits of dialogue,
and the voice actors are always fun to listen to, but the plot doesn’t even
start to get complicated.
In
both cases, my boys were very entertained, and we made an evening of it. Each time, I’ve been very glad that we didn’t
shell out to see these movies in the theater.
The 24-48 hour rental window is nice, and since these are digital
rentals, I don’t have to worry about returning them at 11:59 PM in the middle
of a winter storm.
No comments:
Post a Comment