The Lion King (2019)

 

The Low-Down: For the past decade, Disney has dedicated an immense amount of resources to translating its classic animated films into live-action blockbusters – with varying degrees of success. This new incarnation of The Lion King is unusual because it is, in itself, another kind of animated film: all its creatures, great and small, are computer-generated to look photo-real. The technical wizardry on display is undoubtedly impressive. But the final film winds up undermining its own existence – what is the point of re-making something that evidently works so much better with traditional hand-drawn animation?

The Story: If you’ve seen the original 1994 film, there’ll be no surprises here. We are introduced to the adorable Simba (voiced by JD McCrary as a cub, before ageing into Donald Glover), the little prince who will one day lead his pride as a king. But even the best-laid succession plans crumble into dust when Simba’s sinister uncle, Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor), plots against reigning king Mufasa (James Earl Jones). After tragedy strikes, Simba is forced to build a new life for himself – even though his true destiny lies far closer to home.

The Good: There’s no denying that the cutting-edge technology used to bring Simba’s pridelands to life is really quite remarkable. It’s photo-real in a way that probably wasn’t possible even a few years ago, and you’d be forgiven for thinking you’ve stumbled onto a sublimely shot nature documentary if you watch this film without the sound on. That’s not advisable, however, as director Jon Favreau clearly put some effort into engineering a new soundscape for the film. Elton John’s score is beautifully refreshed, mixed with a fresh energy and rhythm that work very well (even though the new songs – Beyonce’s Spirit and John’s end-credits number, Never Too Late – aren’t particularly memorable). The new voice cast is mostly very appealing. Glover never quite manages to slip under Simba’s skin, but Ejiofor deliciously unearths several shades of evil as Scar, and John Oliver is a hoot as fluttery hornbill advisor Zazu.

The Not-So-Good: The biggest problem with this film is that its best feature also happens to be its worst. This new kind of photo-real animation looks great, but it somehow manages to appear life-like while lacking any actual life. As it turns out, hyper-realistic lions can’t emote or talk like humans, so it borders on the ridiculous (and unnerving) to have them do just that. Moments that broke your heart in the original 1994 film might make you giggle 25 years later. It’s unfortunate, too, that Favreau’s film hews so closely to its predecessor’s script and story beats. With that crucial spark of life – or soul, as it were – already missing from these lions, you’ll only become more aware of the weaknesses that have always been a part of Simba’s rather patchy emotional trajectory. (Chiefly: does he actually learn anything? Guilt and grief alone do not a character’s growth make.)

Comic Relief: Favreau’s film almost slavishly follows its predecessor, except it allows comedians Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen a little room to riff as Timon (meerkat) and Pumbaa (warthog) respectively. Together, they provide some of the film’s funniest – as well as its most annoying – moments. In one instance, they make an inspired reference to another classic Disney movie that’s a surefire crowd-pleaser, even though its cheeky meta-textuality adds to the film’s tonal woes.

Recommended? Not particularly. This Lion King is more misfire than masterpiece.

 

Aladdin (2019)

The Low-Down: For the past decade, Disney has been mining its treasure trove of animated classics for live-action remake fodder. Thus far, the results have been charming enough, though none of them has made a definitive case for or against telling the same story in a different medium. Aladdin has the rather dubious distinction of tilting the debate in favour of leaving well enough alone. Notwithstanding a few welcome sparks of colour and reinvention, this remake will struggle to convince anyone that it needed to exist. In fact, it provides concrete proof that – however good, however photo-real modern special effects have become – there are some things that just work better when animated.

The Story: You know the drill – Aladdin (Mena Massoud) is a street rat with a heart of gold, picking pockets to stay alive in the bustling markets of Agrabah. He’s recruited by Jafar (Marwan Kenzari) – nefarious, ambitious vizier to the Sultan (Navid Negahban) – to steal a magic lamp from the Cave of Wonders. Aladdin’s life takes a turn for the weird and wonderful when he rubs said lamp, freeing an all-powerful Genie (Will Smith) who grants him three wishes. With the Genie’s help, Aladdin makes his bid for the heart of Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott). But romance falls by the wayside when Jafar sets his evil plans into motion.

The Good: There are some welcome efforts to update elements of Aladdin’s story to better reflect the world in which we live today. In the 1992 original, it was always frustrating that a princess with the intelligence and independent spirit of Jasmine had to find a husband to rule Agrabah. This remake doesn’t derail the romance, but it does make time to return Jasmine her agency – making clear that she’s the one in the relationship with all the (political) power. It’s a shame that Speechless, the new song she’s been given to explore her inner turmoil, feels so out-of-place in both the film and the score. The tune is disposable, presumably fished out of composer Alan Menken’s bottom drawer, with pop anthem lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul that are frustratingly generic. But hey – effort appreciated.

The Not-So-Good: Unfortunately, the rest of Aladdin never quite lives up to the spectacular  heights of the original film. It’s decently made, for the most part, and the action sequences are gratifying to watch. In live action, Aladdin is something of a parkour practitioner, the camera chasing after him on his gravity-defying sprints through the streets of Agrabah. But the magic is curiously gone, bled out of scenes that should crackle with joy and emotion, like Prince Ali and A Whole New World. Apart from a couple of goofy moments that feel charmingly improvised, you won’t be able to spot director Guy Ritchie’s chaotic comic streak in the film at all. Almost all of its best bits – specifically the friendship between Aladdin and the Genie – are lifted, beat for beat, from its predecessor.

I (Don’t Want To) Dream Of Genie: Robin Williams’ Genie is one of Disney’s towering achievements – his every motion, facial expression and quicksilver transformation like lighting captured in a bottle, literally and figuratively. It’s truly one of the most sublime marriages of actor and animation ever: Robin Williams is the Genie, and the Genie is Robin Williams. It’s actually unfair to expect anyone to fill Williams’ enormous shoes, even someone like Smith, who has bucketloads of natural charisma of his own. Here, he’s not only hamstrung by having to give a performance already perfected by someone else – he’s saddled with unfortunate character design (that gigantic, puffed-up torso) and occasionally ropey CGI. As a result, Smith’s Genie becomes the stuff of nightmares. It should come as no surprise that Smith is most effective in the scenes when he isn’t big and blue. The opposite can be said of Jafar, who was made all the more sinister by his distinctively arch appearance in the animated film – something Kenzari can’t possibly hope to approximate as a real human person. At least the film’s animal companions (Abu, Rajah and Iago) are wonderfully rendered, which gives one hope for Disney’s next live-action remake, The Lion King.

Recommended? Not particularly. Aladdin tries, quite hard, but doesn’t make a convincing argument for its own existence – and occasionally threatens to ruin your childhood.

Dumbo (2019)

The Low-Down: Dumbo is Disney’s latest (but far from its last) attempt to adapt its vast stable of animated classics into live-action films. On paper, the project seems promising – there’s a hallucinogenic quality to the 1941 film that sits right in the wheelhouse of visionary director Tim Burton, who has concocted a career for himself out of wild, creepy, romantic movies about misfits and the people who love them anyway. The film also tries to do its own thing and doesn’t slavishly imitate the original film (which featured next to no human characters and was just 64 minutes long.) What a shame, then, that the final product feels a lot like the other remakes Disney has produced – passable, on the whole, with a few inspired moments and ideas, while never really coming close to surpassing the charm or magic of the original films.

The Story: Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell) returns from the war, short of an arm and a wife, to the travelling circus that is still home to his children, Milly (Nico Parker) and Joe (Finley Hobbins). He’s given the job of elephant whisperer just as a new pachyderm is born: Dumbo, a baby with ridiculously out-sized ears. Holt’s children bond with Dumbo, and quickly discover that his ears lend him the magical ability to fly. Soon, Dumbo’s growing fame as a circus act attracts the ravenous attention of theme-park entrepreneur V.A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton).

The Good: Dumbo is precious – with his enormous ears and soulful puppy-dog eyes, he’s easily one of the most adorable, appealing CGI creations ever put on screen. His story is also the most affecting narrative thread woven into the film, as he is forcibly separated from his mother and yearns to find his way back to her. Dumbo’s heartbreak is simple, true and heartfelt, recalling the bittersweet way in which his animated counterpart sorely missed his mother. The baby elephant’s tireless bravery in the face of cruel laughter and mockery will make you wish that this film named after him didn’t spend so much time with other characters instead.

The Not-So-Good: Dumbo, as a film, makes for a rather puzzling viewing experience. Beyond some gorgeous, gothic visual sequences (specifically Nightmare Island in Vandevere’s Dreamland theme park), there’s barely a hint of Burton’s trademark whimsy to be found. Except when Dumbo is in the mix, Ehren Kruger’s screenplay is lifeless and, on occasion, logic-free – possibly a holdover from his similarly bland work on three of the Transformers franchise’s worst and most bloated films. It’s especially frustrating because the bare bones of a good story are all there – especially the fact that Millie and Joe are motherless children, just like Dumbo. But it’s largely squandered on paper-thin characters and a literally fiery climax that doesn’t make either narrative or emotional sense.

Balancing Act The cast Burton has assembled is actually very good – but none of them is given quite enough to do. As a result, Farrell’s charm is wasted on a character who never stops to listen while he constantly yells about his late wife being the one who could “talk to the children”. Keaton’s Vandevere winds up as little more than a one-note capitalist cautionary tale. At least there’s a little snap and crackle to DeVito’s harried circus owner, and Eva Green manages to suggest both darkness and light as Colette, an otherwise underwritten French trapeze artist we first meet on Vandevere’s arm.

Freak Show You’d imagine that Burton would take the purest delight in populating this travelling circus with freaks and oddities akin to the ones that have peopled his filmography over the years. But most of the characters in this travelling circus barely even register. If you’re a fan of cult British shows though, watch out for Sharon Rooney as Miss Atlantis: she was dazzling in My Mad Fat Diary, and will steal a laugh and wring a tear or two out of you here, especially when she sings Baby Mine – one of the loveliest songs in the entire Disney canon.

Recommended? Hard to say. It’s undemanding family-friendly fare, for the most part, and you’ll be rewarded with the cutest baby elephant ever put on screen. But the movie can be a bit of a slog to get through the rest of the time.

 

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

The Low-Down: Disney has been trying to make a sequel to 1964’s Mary Poppins – a classic in every imaginable sense – for decades. But author P.L. Travers, who publicly disapproved of the studio’s adaptation of her books, stood in the way of most early attempts. Ultimately, it’s taken a good 54 years for everyone’s favourite magical nanny to finally return to the silver screen. That’s more than enough time for several generations of children to fall in love with the original film, grow up, and worry that the sequel will ruin their childhoods.

The Story: Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) returns to Cherry Tree Lane just when two generations of Banks children need her most. All grown-up, Michael (Ben Whishaw) – with the help of activist sister Jane (Emily Mortimer) – is a widower trying to keep it all together after the death of his beloved wife. As he ransacks the family house to ward off the threat of foreclosure by Fidelity Fiduciary Bank, Mary Poppins takes charge of his three children – John (Nathanael Saleh), Annabel (Pixie Davies) and Georgie (Joel Dawson).

The Good: There’s plenty of spark and dazzle in Mary Poppins Returns, but its truest magic comes in the loss and heartbreak layered into its narrative. This time, Mary Poppins isn’t here just to remind everyone to embrace their inner children (as was the case 54 years ago). She’s back to patch up a handful of broken hearts that are sorely missing a mother or a wife. This deep, rich and necessarily darker aspect of the film works wonderfully – its wisdom, depth and maturity will make you weep your heart and your childhood out of your eyes, in a good way.

The Not-So-Good: Less successful is the film’s creaky adherence to the formula established by its predecessor. Meryl Streep – so often the best thing about any film she’s in – is both over-the-top and slightly pointless as Topsy, Mary Poppins’ indiscriminately Eastern-European cousin, and the clear equivalent to the first film’s laughing/floating Uncle Albert. As Jack the lamplighter, Lin-Manuel Miranda leads his fellow leeries in Trip A Little Light Fantastic – a flame-lit number that isn’t half as magical as Step In Time, the glorious chimney-sweep dance in the original movie.

Practically Perfect In Every Way: Blunt may not have Julie Andrews’ soaring soprano (now tragically lost to us all), but she makes the iconic character thoroughly her own. She’s wonderfully adept at playing the heart of gold, tinged with an unspeakable grief, that lies beneath Mary Poppins’ sarcasm and stiff upper lip. It’s a shame, though, that her character almost fades into the background in the film’s final act. There’s a climactic moment featuring Big Ben and a lot of ladders that will make you wonder why Mary Poppins doesn’t get involved sooner rather than later.

Jack Of All Trades: At some point in the sequel, we’re informed that Dick Van Dyke’s Bert – everyone’s favourite chimney sweep with the godawful Cockney accent – is off having untold adventures. His replacement is Jack, who literally brings light to the streets of London, and helps to take it away. Jack is mostly charming, but doesn’t have quite the snap and fizzle of his predecessor. That’s likely because Miranda – an unqualified creative genius (Hamilton ftw!) – isn’t quite as strong an actor as he is a wordsmith. While he improves (very marginally) on the Cockney accent, he lacks the on-screen presence and charisma that Van Dyke has in spades.

High Score: Marc Shaiman of Hairspray fame has created a score that’s eminently lovely and accomplished. It’s been criticised as forgettable, especially in contrast with the numerous breakout hits from the first film. But the Sherman brothers’ score has had 54 years to soak into the cultural consciousness. On their own merits, Shaiman’s songs are wonderfully tuneful, alternating jaunty numbers like Can You Imagine That? with sob-inducing ballads like A Conversation. If nothing else, Shaiman gives us The Place Where Lost Things Go – a modern classic built out of love and loss that will settle in your heart, where all the lovely, sad, joyful things go.

Watch Out For: Two absolutely fantastic cameos that will make your soul sing. Van Dyke’s return to the franchise – at the venerable age of 93 – is pretty much the most magical moment in a film that’s deliberately packed full of very magical moments. And we defy your Disney-loving heart not to swell with joy when Dame Angela Lansbury makes her appearance!

Recommended? Yes. Mary Poppins Returns often goes too far in the wrong direction when it tries to be a homage to the first film. But, when it does its own thing, the final result is both wonderful and wondrous.

 

Ralph Breaks The Internet (2018)

The Low-Down: Ralph Breaks The Internet is the sequel to 2012’s Wreck-It Ralph, one of Disney’s most inventive and beloved films. The first movie mined comic gold from nostalgia, bringing to life a host of video-game favourites from the ’80s and ’90s. This new film addresses the technology we have today: Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) and Vanellope Von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) head into the crazy wilderness of the Internet in a bid to save her game from being unplugged for good.

The Good: The film smartly keeps its emotional focus on the wonderful friendship between Ralph and Vanellope, and is all the better for it. There’s a great deal of wonderful comedy in Ralph’s desperate efforts to save Vanellope (who, as it turns out, might not want to be saved anymore) – including going viral. Ralph Breaks The Internet is unexpectedly mature in reminding audiences about the value of unconditional love between friends – that your friends can make you better, smarter, and more loving than you ever thought possible. You might find yourself sobbing at the grief and the growth that both Ralph and Vanellope experience as their friendship deepens.

The Not-So-Good: Much of the film’s commentary on the social-media age in which we love works quite well, from over-eager search engine Knowsmore (Alan Tudyk) to sassy algorithm queen Yesss (Taraji P. Henson). But why are some well-known elements of the Internet given new names (Buzzfeed and YouTube merged into BuzzTube, for instance), while others aren’t? It ends up feeling like product placement – for eBay, in particular. Also, the sub-plots for new character Shank (Gal Gadot), as well as old favourites Fix-It Felix (Jack McBrayer) and Calhoun (Jane Lynch), work, but also feel somewhat inconsequential.

Knockout Moment: The Disney Princesses win the Internet! This is definitely product placement but it works beautifully because it’s done with so much tongue-in-cheek affection for the entire Disney Princess franchise. The first Wreck-It Ralph film introduced Vanellope as the Mouse House’s most intriguing princess yet – full of spunk, fire and a refusal to abide by the usual princessy tropes – but didn’t really do much with it. Here, Disney deconstructs itself: gifting Vanellope with her own ‘I want’ princess song, while giving its other princesses (from Elsa and Anna to Mulan, Belle, Snow White and more) the chance to comment (and act) on the not-always-very-feminist stories of which they were a part.

Watch Out For: The easter eggs in the credits – the one at the very end is pure genius.

Recommended? Absolutely. It’s not as utterly wonderful as the first film – the script is a little clunkier and the nostalgia factor replaced with a world-wide-web-weary cynicism. But the big, beating heart embedded in this story is a true delight. The Princesses alone will be worth the price of your ticket.

Beauty And The Beast (2017)

Adapting Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s original French story about a beauty and her beast is no easy task. In the wrong hands, this romance between a girl and her captor could easily come across as creepy – Stockholm Syndrome parading as a fairy tale. Disney managed to pull it off in 1991: its sublime animated version, with its tender heart and gorgeous music, has rightly become a classic. 25 years later, has the studio managed to capture lightning in a bottle again, this time in live-action format?

Well… not quite. To be fair, this brand-new incarnation of Beauty And The Beast, directed by Bill Condon, has a great deal going for it. It makes a good case for updating the tale with more modern sensibilities. The film is beautifully performed and designed, and there’s plenty of fun (and nostalgia) awaiting fans of its animated predecessor. But it never feels quite as effortless or natural in telling its story. While there is magic here, it’s tough to shake the feeling that it’s engineered, not organic – that it grazes rather than grabs the heart.

The film centres on Belle (Emma Watson), a bookish, resourceful young lady who’s never really fit into her little French village. She hankers for adventure – but gets more than she bargained for when her father (Kevin Kline) stumbles into a forgotten castle and becomes a prisoner there. After trading places with her dad, Belle gets to know the inhabitants of the castle: a surly, fearsome Beast (Dan Stevens) and a host of living household appliances and furniture, all of them living in fear that they will never be free of the curse that has robbed them of their humanity.

On its own merits, Beauty And The Beast is a decent effort. Condon’s film is the Hollywood blockbuster at its most efficient, from its photo-real fantasy castles to splashy musical numbers teeming with life and colour. The screenplay, by Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos, is a canny adaptation of familiar material, particularly when it comes to adding layers to its characters. Belle has more agency in ways big and small – she’s the one in control even when she (voluntarily) becomes the Beast’s prisoner and, in a small but important scene, she shares the gift of independent thinking by teaching a village girl how to read.

Similarly, the many relationships in the film are given welcome depth. Belle and the Beast find common ground in books and feeling out-of-place, even in the places they call home. We’re furnished with hints as to why the household servants – including suave candlestick Lumiere (Ewan McGregor), jittery clock Cogsworth (Ian McKellen) and motherly kettle Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson) – are more invested in breaking the curse that befell them. LeFou’s (Josh Gad) devotion to the pompous Gaston (Luke Evans) goes, quite logically, from subtext to text, though in a way that hardly warrants the firestorm of controversy that has erupted in conservative circles over Disney’s ‘gay agenda’.

That said, other aspects of this remake yield more mixed results. The Beast’s very real, very human eyes provide emotional connection and depth in a way that animation can’t fully approximate. But burying Stevens beneath layers of CGI and prosthetics also means that the Beast can occasionally come across as a stiff, oversized teddy bear, lacking the fluidity of expression of his animated counterpart. The same goes for the household servants: ironically, efforts to make them more ‘realistic’ end up bleeding them of life and personality.

It’s the same story with the film’s music. Some of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s iconic original numbers are thoughtfully re-imagined: Be Our Guest is a joyous explosion of camp colour, featuring welcome nods to movies like Cabaret and Singin’ In The Rain; and Gaston morphs into a lively bar-storming number that practically demands applause at the end.

But the new songs, penned by Menken and Tim Rice, are more nice than necessary. How Does A Moment Last Forever is lovely but lacks impact. Evermore – a new anthem for the Beast – will no doubt become a cabaret standard but is badly served in the context of the film: it feels overwrought and a bit silly, lessening rather than heightening the dramatic tension at that particular moment.

Performances across the board are good, as you would expect from a cast of this calibre – though it’s hard not to wish for accomplished performers like Thompson, McKellen and Broadway legend Audra McDonald (playing the part of an operatic, narcoleptic wardrobe) to be better served by both script and special effects. Watson, who has proved a better advocate than actor in recent years, is a perfectly credible (though hardly riveting) Belle. Stevens does a decent job with a challenging part, while Evans convincingly conjures up both swagger and menace.

It’s evident in every frame that everyone involved in Beauty And The Beast worked mightily hard to prove that transforming one of Disney’s most iconic movies into a live-action extravaganza is worth the effort. They don’t always pull it off: the film gets about as many things wrong as it does right, and it most certainly doesn’t surpass the animated classic in quality. But it tells a familiar tale well enough – enough, one suspects, to win over fans old and new.

Basically: A good, though far from great, adaptation of this tale as old as time.

Frozen (2013)

There was a time not too long ago when it looked like Disney had lost its place as the premier animation studio in the world. The renowned Mouse House was churning out lacklustre, forgettable films that sank at the box office, just as Pixar was creating movie magic with films that were not just brilliantly animated but also boasted stories, characters and ideas that spoke more directly to audiences. In recent years, however, Disney has begun to regain its footing. Frozen can proudly join the ranks of The Princess & The Frog, Tangled, and Wreck-It Ralph as one of the most delightful animated movies in recent memory.

In the markedly Scandinavian kingdom of Arendelle live two young princesses. Elsa (voiced by Idina Menzel), the elder of the two, has powers over ice and snow. Anna (Kristen Bell) has no such magic, but is a sunny, cheerful child who adores her sister. Things go awry when Elsa accidentally knocks Anna out with a blast of wintry ice. Thereafter, Elsa resolves to put herself in cold storage (sorry) to protect those around her. Over the years and through the death of their parents, the two sisters become strangers. When Elsa loses control of her powers on the day she is due to be crowned queen, she flees to the mountains, and Anna must set out to bring her sister home again.

Anyone hoping to see an accurate interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen’s original fairy tale The Snow Queen should be forewarned. This is a Disney movie, after all, and so the malevolence of the titular Snow Queen has been scrubbed clean and replaced with Elsa’s conflicted misery over powers that seem to be beyond her control. There are comedy trolls, sidekick snowmen, anthropomorphic reindeer and rugged mountain men – oh, and did we mention they all sing too? This is a Disney vehicle through and through.

Crucially, however, this is a Disney vehicle with a bright, modern soul. On the surface, it looks like a disappointingly typical tale of swooning romantic love. Anna croons a jaunty song – Love Is An Open Door – with charming Prince Hans (Santino Fontana), and resolves immediately to marry him. She then spends much of the film in the company of forthright ice delivery dude Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and his reindeer buddy Sven, both of whom risk life and limb to help her get to Elsa. Her dilemma is, of course, which handsome man will bring her everlasting happiness… right?

Dig a little deeper, though, and it’s clear that Frozen is really about the far more empowering themes of family and self-acceptance. The real emotional pay-off in the film comes in the efforts made by both sisters to find their way back to each other, after years of tension and frost (of the metaphorical and literal variety). Many a Disney princess before Elsa and Anna have laboured under the notion that finding the right man will bring them their happy endings. Here, the twist on that old narrative chestnut is simple but results in a far more effective message for young girls: the right man, should you find him, will allow you to be who you want and ought to be. Even then, it’s your job and your right to find your own happy ending.

The magic and delight of Frozen is not confined solely to its more progressive message. It’s also teeming with great characters. Anna is a spunky, determined chatterbox, brought to particularly enchanting life by Bell’s quirky, more improvised moments in the recording studio. Elsa, too, is given enough scope to grow and shine in the role of the fiercely protective elder sister. Olaf the summer-obsessed snowman (Josh Gad), who came across as worryingly unfunny in the trailer, is a great deal more charming within the context of the entire film. The troop of trolls might feel somewhat like a narrative afterthought, but are adorable and crowd-pleasing nonetheless.

It’s heartening, too, to see Disney properly return to the musical format that made classics out of The Little Mermaid and Beauty & The Beast. The songs featured in Frozen – written by the song-writing team behind zeitgeist-y musicals Avenue Q and The Book Of Mormon – range from the blithely comic to the stirringly heartfelt. The decision to cast actors better known for their vocal prowess than their Hollywood celebrity pays off handsomely. Menzel tears into her confessional ballad Let It Go with her signature theatrical aplomb. Bell acquits herself wonderfully well too, especially in Anna’s heartbreaking plea to a stonily unresponsive Elsa: Do You Want To Build A Snowman?. 

All in all, Frozen is a joy. There are moments when the film drags a little, and some character beats don’t ring quite as true as others. But these are easy enough to forgive. In the larger scheme of things, Frozen looks absolutely gorgeous – witness Elsa’s breathtaking construction of her ice palace in the mountains – and also brims over with heart and emotion. It’s proof positive that Disney is back and, quite happily, better than ever.

Basically: A tale that will thaw the iciest of hearts.

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

To be honest, I’m not much of a gamer – I have too obsessive a personality to allow myself to plunge myself into the pixelated worlds of video games with any hopes of emerging into daylight again. So I wasn’t particularly emotionally invested in the success of Disney’s newest video-game mash-up movie, Wreck-It Ralph. I was merely looking forward to seeing some of the iconic avatars I did recognise from the few games I have played – like the ring-collecting Sonic The Hedgehog, or face-off games like Street Fighter – pop up in the movie in cameo roles. Fortunately, even for the largely uninitiated, like myself, there’s a great deal to enjoy in the colourful, fizzy, smart-as-a-whip Ralph… the latest in a string of great films that suggests the Mouse House is well on its way to re-establishing itself as a leader in the animation industry.

The titular Wreck-It Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) is the bad guy – who isn’t really a bad guy – in Fix-It Felix Jr, a video game in which the pint-sized hero (Jack McBrayer) goes around fixing everything Ralph wrecks with a tap of his magical hammer. Ralph has just about had it with dutifully playing the role of a villain with no reward or recognition for his efforts – so he decides to earn some himself. He storms into the adjacent first-person shooter Hero’s Duty to claim a medal for himself, only to end up chasing it down in the candy-fied empire of Sugar Rush, a racing game in which sugar and spice emphatically do not add up to everything nice…

It takes a while for Ralph to level up – there are lots of cute in-jokes and cameos by an array of video-game villains in the first twenty minutes or so, but the film also feels as if it’s just idling in first gear, going through the bog-standard paces of setting its (anti-)hero on a typical path towards self-actualised redemption. It reaches the point when one wonders whether the movie has anything going for it beyond its admittedly quirky, interesting concept – are we really meant to just spend the film’s entire running time keeping our eyes peeled for video-game characters, or chortling at the admittedly very funny, smart ways in which the movie sneaks in references and pays tribute to arcade games of yore?

But then Ralph finds himself quite literally catapulted into Sugar Rush, where he meets his destiny in the form of a tiny, annoying wannabe-racer girl – Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman), a literal glitch in the coding who just wants to become part of the world around her. It’s at this point that Ralph goes into hyper-drive: the prickly, antagonistic relationship between Ralph and Vanellope is wonderfully developed, the two outsiders in their own games thrown together and merrily insulting each other in a lovely, unforced display of growing camaraderie and friendship. Ralph is at first manipulated into helping Vanellope secure a vehicle for the race to beat the likes of King Candy (Alan Tudyk) and Taffyta Muttonfudge (Mindy Kaling), but soon he becomes just as invested in Vanellope’s victory as the audience.

In terms of character development, Vanellope is a complete triumph. She could so easily have been a soppy, simpering sweetheart of a character, but the film-makers instead take the opposite route, presenting her as a tough, proud, obstinate child who’s instantly more identifiable and sympathetic than any one of the more (stereo)typical Disney heroines who have preceded her. In fact, she’s every bit as rude and rough around the edges as Stinkbrain (as she not-always-affectionately calls Ralph), and remains so throughout the film. As a result, she’s a breath of fresh air, and one of the most relentlessly fun, spunky female characters ever sketched into animated life.

There isn’t really a whole lot wrong with Ralph – it takes a while to get going, sure, but once it does, it practically radiates wit, fun and inventiveness. The character and world design is glorious, as the video games designed specifically for the movie (Fix-It Felix Jr, Hero’s Duty and Sugar Rush) blend seamlessly with ones that generations of kids have grown up playing. The moral of the story is a huge, important one (embrace who you are, even if everyone else thinks the less of you for it), told in a way that’s neither heavy-handed nor ham-fisted. If it’s still less of a transcendent experience than Rise Of The Guardians was (at least for me), it’s nevertheless proof that Disney is definitely back in the game – with three lives to go, and a ton of XP points under its belt.

Basically: Smart, inventive, funny… and utterly fantastic. I’m going to (w)rec(k) it!!

Meet The Robinsons (2007)

It’s been a lean decade or so for Disney fans. Pipped to the post by Pixar after Pixar movie, and even competitors from studios like Dreamworks (Shrek) and Fox (Ice Age), Disney hasn’t put out a movie in years – without relying on Pixar as a crutch – that’s had quite as much of a blissed-out, loopy joie de vivre as Meet The Robinsons. With by-the-numbers cack like Chicken Little and even more risibly poor offerings like Home On The Range (which I didn’t even bother to see) counting among Disney’s offerings in recent years, it’s been sad to see a once almighty studio on the forefront of animation reduced to always playing catch-up… poorly. Thank god, then, for the irreverent, madcap wit of Robinsons, a smart, genuinely funny Disney movie that, for the first time in ages, feels like a worthy successor to classics of a long-gone era. Oh, sure, there’ll be people who feel its frenetic pace (jokes on speed!) and decidely loopy humour will mark it out as a bizarre, slightly cultish phenomenon rather than a proper classic – and certainly there’s a case to be made for that. But, for me, it was just great fun to be thoroughly entertained by a Disney movie again, to be reminded of the flights of fancy and imagination that animation can still make available to us… all with a dollop of wickedly random, almost post-modern humour that, with Robinsons, has finally found its way into Disney movies.

Lewis (Jordan Fry) is a little boy who was left on the steps of an orphanage as a baby – smart and precocious, all Lewis seems to be able to do is invent endless machines that keep his hapless room-mate Goob (Matthew Josten) awake at night and alienate well-meaning prospective parents. Finally, Lewis gives up hope on his future, resolving instead to look into his past to find the mother that abandoned him. But when he develops a memory scanner that just might work and enters it in the local science fair, he suddenly meets Wilbur Robinson (Wesley Singerman), a boy from the future who claims to be a time-cop on the lookout for the sinisterly bow-legged Bowler Hat Guy (Stephen J Anderson). BHG, Wilbur claims, is out to steal Lewis’ invention – and surely that’s what happens, as the mustachioed comedy villain BHG, with the help of irate flying hat Doris, carries out his nefarious plot and nicks the scanner. Eager to prove to Lewis that he is from the future, Wilbur propels Lewis through time and inadvertently introduces him to the extended Robinson family – as kooky a mix of characters as any set of animators has ever dreamt up, including matriarch Franny (Nicole Sullivan), who teaches frogs to sing, and apparently insane Grandpa Bud (Anderson). Lewis quickly finds himself identifying with them, and wants nothing more than to be adopted by them. But when BHG tracks him into the future, Lewis discovers just what the Robinsons really mean to him, and realises the huge stakes he’s playing for in thwarting BHG and Doris’ evil plans.

If the plot sounds a bit half-baked, I must apologise – but, honestly, it’s difficult to tease the synopsis into anything approaching true coherence without giving the convoluted plot away. Some have argued that the storyline makes little sense, and attempting to understand it can only be futile. I disagree: there are certainly some time travel paradoxes involved here that might not make sense, and others that are dragged to the limits of credibility for dramatic purposes (e.g., when Lewis takes BHG on a quick sweep of a scary future he has just managed to avoid, as it dissolves before their very eyes). But the plot, for the most part, actually does make sense. What’s crucial to note here, however, whether you eventually agree with me on this, is that the plot is the last thing on the film-makers’ minds. It’s meant to service the real reason this movie was brought into being: its sense of character, as well as its deliciously weird sense of humour.

In what other movie are you going to be introduced to characters clearly meant to be completely whacky and plain far-out? Every member of the Robinson clan is just strange: from Grandpa Bud and his penchant for wearing his clothes back to front; through to sensible robot Carl (Harland Williams) and Uncle Fritz (Ethan Sandler), who thinks he’s married to his hand puppet. And you’re introduced to all of them and more, like a couple of apparently unrelated, but very competitive gate-keepers, and meatball-firing Uncle Gaston (Don Hall), in the space of five minutes, give or take thirty seconds. Other minor characters sprinkled throughout the movie are freaky-weird too: the school’s Coach (Hall again) perpetuates stereotypes of bulky, stupid athletes even as he dismantles them by running away screaming like a girl when attacked by fire ants… owned by a deliciously evil little girl Lizzy (Tracy Miller-Zarneke), who sics them on her “enemies”.

Robinsons‘ coup de grace is in the creation of one of the most proudly stupid, bumbling villains in the history of comedy villains: BHG, at first glance a spindly, dastardly nemesis eerily reminiscent of Peter Pan’s Captain Hook, quickly shows himself to be a useless dolt completely at the mercy of a distinctly Machiavellian mechanical hat. It’s got to take some comedy guts to have your top villain be a hat, but Anderson takes the joke and runs with it, and comes up with true comedy gold. BHG is hilarious in his gloriously stupid incompetence: whether it’s his need to depend on Doris as a teleprompter to sell Lewis’ scanner as his own invention, or his distinctly harebrained schemes to take down Lewis with the help of a mini-Doris – even if it means selecting clearly underqualified “minions” such as singing frog Frankie (Aurian Redson) or a rampaging T-Rex plucked from the past. (Their dazed reporting to him after failing in their missions to capture Lewis, capped off by the final question, “Master”? L. O. L. :D) Hey, any villain who proudly claims that TP-ing the house of his enemy is a brilliant plan – albeit not as brilliant as one involving complex time-travel and sabotage of intellectual property rights – wins in my book!

It’s tough to describe just what made Robinsons so winning in my book. People have complained about its breathless pace, and certainly it whips through scenes and characters like the film-makers were on crack, speed and E, all at the same time. Others have argued that the movie, lacking a real plot, pulls every trick in the book to create marketable characters so they can kickstart yet another lucrative cartoon empire. All of that is probably true, at least to some extent. But, oddly enough for an animated movie, the main goal of which is usually to appeal to as broad an audience as possible so as to rack up box-office takings, I think a particular sensibility – or at least, a particularly quirky sense of humour – would help a lot in one’s enjoyment of this movie. The jokes are irreverent, whip-smart and cheerfully tongue-in-cheek… but also bizarre and not likely to strike everyone’s funny bone in quite the same way. (When Wilbur slaps a Carmen Miranda fruit-basket hat on Lewis’ head, and the latter deadpans that he didn’t expect that, I was quite helpless with laughter.) I suspect that’s why some reviewers have thought it to be a pile of worthless pap, while others have cottoned on to a glimmer of the humour behind the movie but filed it away as a bit of a fizzle for not having managed to struggle out from beneath the weight of a poor script. Actually, what’s happened here is that the film-makers have grafted an almost Will Ferrell-esque style of disjointed, loopy humour onto an apparently traditional family-friendly structure… which no doubt confuses more people than it wins over. Come on, man – Grandpa Bud first introduces himself by shaking a woodchuck that’s hanging off his sleeve in Lewis’ face! It doesn’t get more inspired than that… or more offputting, depending on whether your sense of humour skews in quite the same direction.

That Robinsons, for all its buzzed eccentricities, nevertheless remains a heartfelt story in the tried-and-tested Disney mold is even more impressive. Lewis’ emotional journey, as he learns to let go of a past he is literally allowed to recapture, does not suffer from the myriad ongoing comedy hijinks, and in fact turns out to be surprisingly, touchingly sweet. In effect, you get in this movie a comedy with very modern, very wry sensibilities, married to an old-school Disney tale about family, hope and the future. It’s a nice touch that the movie starts out with an old Disney short featuring Mickey, Donald and Goofy as inventors themselves, building a boat that little Lewis and future Disney characters will continue to construct in future. So, honestly, when it comes down to it? If you can keep up with the speed at which Robinsons whips through its scenes, and gain an appreciation for its kooky, far-out characters, you might very easily grow to love this movie too. Very appropriately for a film that touches on the idea of always moving forward (that being the motto for Robinson Industries), this movie finally suggests great things in Disney’s future that go beyond falling back on Pixar, and which might yet yield classics similar to those which have defined so much of our lives.