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Review of DUCKTALES: WOO-OO! (DVD)

December 31, 2017

James Plath, Family Home Theater Animation, Children's, TV-G Leave a comment

Grade: B
2017, 21 min., Color
Children’s, Animation
Disney
Rated TV-G
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Featured audio: Dolby Digital 5.1
Bonus features: C-
Trailer
Amazon link

It would be tempting to say that the 2017 reincarnation of the popular ‘80s animated TV series DuckTales pales by comparison, but that would be like trying to tell people who grew up with Roger Moore that Sean Connery is the better Bond.

A whole new generation is being introduced to the new DuckTales, and they have never seen the more traditionally animated ‘80s version. As a result, they also have no idea that the earlier TV series had more color and fuller animation, with characters rendered to reflect what viewers had seen in the last remnants of Disney comic books and voices that still matched what families saw on Disney’s Sunday television programs. Watching the new DuckTales, this new group of viewers has no idea that Donald Duck’s nephews—Huey, Dewey, and Louie—are drawn more with more rounded heads and barely formed beaks to distinguish them from Donald and his trillionaire uncle, Scrooge McDuck, or that their voices are more contemporary.

Just as they’re too young to know the difference, they’re also too young to think it matters. All they care about is if it’s fun to watch, and DuckTales: Woo-oo! is probably as good as any non-educational cartoons currently being produced for children.

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Review of THE LEGO NINJAGO MOVIE (Blu-ray combo)

December 30, 2017

James Plath, Family Home Theater Animation, Entire Family, PG rated Leave a comment

Grade: B-
2017, 101 min., Color
Animation
Warner Bros.
Rated PG for some mild action and rude humor
Aspect ratio: 2.4:1
Featured audio: DTS-HDMA 5.1
Bonus features: B-/C+
Includes: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital Copy
Trailer
Amazon link

Lego my Ninjago?

Maybe it’s the law of diminishing returns, or maybe the charm of seeing the Lego world come to life is starting to wear off. Whatever the case, though The Lego Ninjago Movie is entertaining enough, it really didn’t delight my son or me as much as The Lego Movie (2014) and The Lego Batman Movie (2017). It wasn’t as original, as sharp, or as sophisticated.

Maybe it’s because a large number of gags and verbal jokes seemed to be aimed at a high-school age audience—viewers who have outgrown Legos but whose fond memories of playing with them are still vivid and fresh—as well as those who still put Legos on their Christmas lists.

The Lego Batman Movie was far more successfully satirical in its takeoff on the Batman saga and movies, with a heck of a lot more sophisticated wink-wink jokes and more sight gags going on in the background—all of which added to its broader appeal.

Maybe The Lego Ninjago Movie ended up being something that mostly children and younger teens will appreciate because if riffs not on adult live-action films but on the Danish TV series Lego Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu and related Lego toys. Or maybe it’s because three talents (Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher, Bob Logan) new to directing animated features teamed up on this one, or that the story and screenplay were the result of a fairly large committee of 13 writers—often a red flag.

Even headliner Jackie Chan, who gives voice to Master Wu/Mr. Liu, doesn’t have the same crackling energy as he has had in previous films. But mostly I suspect the film isn’t as crisp and fresh as the first two because we’ve seen too many aspects of this plot before: the young teen (Dave Franco as Lloyd Garmadon) who is a social pariah because he’s the son of a villain—in this case, Lord Garmadon, who looks a bit like Zurg and regularly attacks the Lego city of Ninjago. At some point Garmadon starts to feel like Gargamel—just another cartoon nemesis for another group of cartoon people.

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Review of A NEW LEAF (Olive Signature Blu-ray)

December 28, 2017

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy, G rated Leave a comment

Grade: B
1971, 102 min., Color
Comedy
Olive Films
Rated G
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Featured audio: DTS-HDMA 2.0 (Mono)
Bonus features: B
Clip montage
Amazon link

Looking ahead to New Year’s resolutions, if the new leaf you’re turning over this year is to be more receptive to older and subtler comedies, you might start with A New Leaf—an understated 1971 film featuring Walter Matthau (The Odd Couple) and Elaine May.

Matthau stars as an arrogant playboy who suddenly finds himself penniless. Desperate, he decides to take his butler’s advice and use a loan from his skinflint Uncle Harry (James Coco) to maintain his status and try to get a rich woman to marry him. There’s a catch: if he doesn’t get her to accept his proposal within six weeks, he forfeits all he owns to his uncle.

It’s the kind of premise that opens the door wide for slapstick and humor that’s a throwback to the old screwball comedies. But May—a founding member of the pre-Second City improv group Compass Players in Chicago, who often worked with Mike Nichols—writes every scene with tongue in cheek and crafts a black comedy instead.

As the socially awkward and übernerdy Henrietta Lowell, May plays well off of the naturally acerbic Matthau. Henrietta, whom Henry meets at a party and boorishly defends when she spills her drink on the host’s expensive rug, is an introverted heiress who teaches botany at Columbia University and dreams of discovering a new plant species. But it’s she who’s ripe for the picking.

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Review of DUNKIRK (Blu-ray combo)

December 28, 2017

James Plath, Family Home Theater War Leave a comment

Grade: A-
2017, 106 min., Color
War
Warner Bros.
Rated PG-13 for intense war experience and some language
Aspect ratio: 2.21:1 and 1.78:1
Featured audio: DTS-HDMA 5.1
Bonus features: B+
Includes: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital Copy
Trailer
Amazon link

Dunkirk, a small northern coastal city in France, is historically famous for a massive WWII evacuation in May 1940, when Hitler’s armies surrounded the French and the British Expeditionary Force and pinned them against the sea. With snipers firing and the German Luftwaffe strafing and bombing the area and any vessel that tried to load soldiers—hospital ships included—the Allied military brass decided they needed to save many of the larger ships for the next impending battle. That set up what Winston Churchill later called “The Miracle of Dunkirk,” when more than 100,000 French and British soldiers were rescued by a hodgepodge fleet that included private civilian launches, all acting on the prime minister’s order that ships large and small should go to Dunkirk to rescue the besieged soldiers.

As a film, Dunkirk is one of the year’s best—if you don’t mind minimally plotted films that feel vaguely like fly-on-the-wall documentaries. It may also be the ultimate anti-war movie, because it feels more like a disaster film than the typical war movie. That’s because director Christopher Nolan (Intersteller, Memento) employs minimal dialogue and in media res camerawork to plunk the viewer right into the thick of things so you don’t feel as is you’re watching a movie about war—you feel like you’re experiencing it: the chaos of war and the reactive drive to escape it. The narrative thrust isn’t heroism, or the fight-or-flight impulse, or the need to defeat an enemy. It’s escape, and the bombs and bullets might as well be lava pouring from an active volcano, or a fire threatening to destroy a skyscraper, or a floundering cruise ship taking on water in the middle of the Atlantic. War, in Nolan’s hands, isn’t political. It’s a disaster to survive.

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Review of DESPICABLE ME 3 (Blu-ray)

December 8, 2017

James Plath, Family Home Theater Animation, Entire Family, PG rated 1 Comment

Grade:  B
2017, 90 min., Color
Animation
Universal
Rated PG for action and rude humor
Aspect ratio:  2.40:1
Featured audio:  DTS-HDMA 7.1
Bonus features:  B-/C+
Includes:  Blu-ray, DVD, Digital Copy
Trailer
Amazon link

Although Readers at IMDB.com and the critics at Rotten Tomatoes thought otherwise, Despicable Me 3 is just as entertaining as the first sequel to Despicable Me (2010)—the animated feature from Universal that introduced us to the carrot-nosed Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), a villain who was softened up by three orphaned girls.

By the third installment, Gru has gone straight and has been working for the Anti-Villain League with his partner/wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig). Because they failed to capture or eliminate Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker), a maligned child actor who, as a resentful adult, is driven to become the world’s biggest villain, Gru and Lucy find themselves kicked out of the League. But of course that doesn’t stop them from tangling with Bratt (aka Bad Boy Bod) again and somehow managing to save the day. That’s no spoiler: it’s what superheroes and crimefighters do.

How much you enjoy Despicable Me 3 may depend on how much you like Gru’s “minions”—those capsule-shaped little yellow guys in blue overalls that speak in their own gibberish language. This outing the minions aren’t integral to the plot and only seem deployed in several overly cute (and overly long) sequences designed to satisfy those who do love the little guys, and, of course, to keep those Minion toys and product tie-ins flying off the shelves. They mattered much more in the first two films. Here, they’re as gratuitous as nudity in a teen slasher movie. Also marginalized this film are the three orphaned girls that Gru adopted in the first film, so if you thought Mr. Despicable’s interaction with those girls a strength, you’ll be disappointed to find them underused in Despicable Me 3.

Dominating this entry are Gru’s interactions with the villain and a twin brother he never knew he had until recently. Carell also gives voice to Dru, the seemingly perfect (and fabulously wealthy and successful) twin from whom he was separated at birth. Reminiscent of the 1988 comedy Twins, in which the genetically perfect Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito, the twin made from DNA leftovers, discover each other, Despicable Me 3 features one twin who is predominantly evil and the other predominantly good. The complication, we learn, is that the successful twin was as much of a disappointment to the villainous-at-heart father who raised him as Gru was to his goody-goody mother. How the brothers learn to cope with who they are and how they were raised, and how they learn to deal with their “Other” gets the lion’s share of narrative attention. And frankly, the twin brother angle probably rescues the third installment from a familiarity that can make sequels seem tedious.

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Review of THE BEST OF THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW: 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION (DVD)

December 1, 2017

James Plath, Family Home Theater Entire Family, G rated, TV Variety Leave a comment

Grade:  B/B+
1967-78, 806 min. (16 episodes), Color
TV variety
Time Life
Not rated (would be TV-G)
Aspect ratio:  1.33:1
Featured audio:  Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Bonus features:  B

‘Tis the season when shoppers look to “Best of” lists and compilations as a gift-giving resource, and this latest Time Life release of The Carol Burnett Show is certainly gift-worthy. The six-disc DVD set contains 16 full episodes of the long-running variety show, plus an interview and two featurettes originally made for the full series DVD set. Rich-looking and nicely packaged, The Best of The Carol Burnett Show: 50th Anniversary Edition seems designed not for the obsessed fan who undoubtedly owns or wants the full series on DVD, nor as a stocking stuffer for casual lovers of old-time TV or variety shows whose curiosity could be sated by a smaller collection. This one seems aimed at fans who fondly remember the star, her supporting cast, and those memorable recurring sketches—though not fondly enough to plunk down the money for the complete set.

What’s nice is that the very first and very last episodes are included, and people who haven’t seen the show will be amazed by Burnett’s opening Q&A sessions with the live audience. Yes, there’s a lot of repetition, but it’s also a showcase for Burnett’s quick wit and improv talents. And an episode featuring the Jackson 5 and Michael Jackson doing his thing as a very young man is going to be a hit with all ages.

The only lump of coal is, I’m not sure how Time Life can call this a “Best of” compilation when two of the series most infamous episodes aren’t included. Gone is Episode #8 from the 10th season, featuring the Gone with the Wind parody “Went with the Wind” —an episode so iconic that TV Guide named it #53 on their list of 100 Greatest TV Episodes and The Smithsonian Institution asked for the dress that Burnett wore so that it could become a part of their permanent pop-culture displays. Also missing from this “best of” set is Episode 20, which featured one of the series’ funniest sketches starring Tim Conway and Harvey Korman, with Conway playing the patient in a dentist’s office. That’s one of the negatives; the other is that the comedy sketches hold up for today’s audiences much better than the musical numbers do.

Still, as recently as 2013, TV Guide ranked The Carol Burnett Show in its top 20 on a list of  “Greatest Shows of All Time,” and this was a variety show featuring songs and sketch comedy at a time when variety shows were on the decline. Yet it still drew a dedicated following for 11 years. As Burnett says in an interview included in this set, “Some of the sketches, if they were done today on television, they would hold up. Some of them would not. Some were awful, and some were really good.” The bottom line, according to Burnett, is one I agree with: “The sketches that were funny are still funny.”

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