Movie Review: Zootopia 2

 

Michael's Movie Grade: B+

An excellent Disney sequel. 

What really makes this movie work is how it expands on Nick and Judy's relationship. After the events of the last film, they are officially Zootopia's new police team. However all is not well in paradise. It seems there is a lot of friction between them and the two's approach to their police work makes it, so they are not exactly on the same page. This friction is handled incredibly well. It feels very natural and real, just like friction two actual partners would have. The reasons why they are not working well together also reveal a lot about who these characters actually are. This gives us an even greater understanding of these characters then we had in the first film. These are fully fleshed out characters that feel completely real to us in the vein of many classic Disney characters. Underneath the characters' friction with each other, you can still feel how much they love and care about each other. This is even true in the scenes when they are most at odds with each other. How well they work as a team is put to the test here, but their friendship is never in question. I loved this aspect as it made both characters feel completely endearing here.

For a movie where these characters are solving a mystery, the plot actually contains a lot of twists. Some of them I saw coming while others took me by surprise. All of these twists though worked very well making this a fun and constantly engaging ride. 

The humor could be a bit hit and miss ay times. However, when it works it is truly hilarious and there will multiple gags that really made me laugh here. 

  The thing that keeps this movie from being as great as the first film is that it rehashes a lot of story elements from the previous movie. The first movie involved a villain who framed a whole group of animals and created a prejudice against these animals in order to retain power. This second movie features a family of villains doing the exact same thing against a different group of animals. While the message about prejudice and scapegoating is still important, I wish this sequel could have been more original in the way it presented it. 

This movie may rehash many plot points from the first film. However, if you look past that, this is a truly excellent movie with a lot to recommend it. 

Movie Trailer: GOAT

Movie Trailer: Hoppers

Video Link: Disney's Forgotten Power Couple: Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow - West of Neverland

Classic Short Film: Daffy Duck and Tom Turk (1944)

Happy Thanksgiving all. 

Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise (2020)

 

Scott Eyman is becoming one of my favorite film historians. After reading his biography of Cary Grant, I am even more of a fan. This biography is a gripping read that I always hated to put down. It is incredibly well-written, very informative and always fair when examining its subject. 

One of the main points this book makes is that the persona of Cary Grant was a creation of Grant himself. While it did not fully resemble the man who was born Archie Leach and would later bear the name of Cary Grant, it was the creation of the star not the studio. As well as digging into Cary Grant and his movie career, this book also greatly discusses who Archie Leach was. Probably the highlight of this book is the early chapters discussing Archie's life before becoming Cary Grant. As most writings about the Hollywood star tend to focus on his movie career, this is where I learned the most about the man born as Archie Leach. These early chapters are not only very well researched and informative but also where Scott Eyman's writing is at its best. We feel completely engrossed in this bygone world of English Music Halls and American vaudeville. The picture painted of a very vivid picture of this world, and it is easy to understand how it shaped Archie Leach, well into the years he would be known as Cary Grant. 

As well as starting strong, this book also finishes very strong. Most movie star biographies tend to wind down when the reach the years when the star retired. That is far from the case here. Eyman digs heavily into these years painting a very vivid picture of an older man, who finally find much of the peace and joy that he looked for through much of his life (especially due to the love he felt for his daughter Jennifer). These chapters give us probably our greatest understanding of who the man is. 

Though the middle section may not be as strong as the start or finish, it is still quite well worth the read. This is especially true because of the chapters when it talks about Grant's working and personal relationships with his three favorite and possibly best directors, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks and Leo McCarey. The book provides a very well-researched look into the making of his best work. It also provides a very smart and well-written critical examination of his filmography as a whole. Eyman argues that Grant's reluctance to take risks with many of his roles, hurt his career at times causing him to make inferior films while passing up movies that would have been perfect for him. At the same time Eyman is not short in his praise of Grant's best work, acknowledging that his best films are true cinematic masterpieces of the highest order.  

This book is highly sympathetic to Grant and often times paints a positive picture of the man. However, this does not mean that it overlooks or excuses Grant's worst flaws. Still for every story about his ego or selfish behavior, there are two more about how he took chances with newcomers he believed in or how much he truly loved his daughter. 

This is a must-read biography.    

Movie Review: Now You See Me Now You Don't

 

Michael's Movie Grade: C

An enjoyable but instantly forgettable movie.

I have seen the previous two movies in this series. I remember enjoying them but remember next to nothing else about them. I thought that those two previous films would come back to me as I watched this third entry, but they did not. I feel this third movie is most likely going to suffer the same fate for me. I enjoyed watching it, but I doubt that even a few months from now, I'll be able to tell you anything that happened in it.

Everything about this movie is simply average. There is nothing that bad about it but there is nothing that great about it either. The characters are pleasant, but they hardly have anything to make them stand out from countless similar characters. The action scenes are fun, but they still feel like we have seen them a thousand times before. The humor may make you chuckle or smile, but it will never make you laugh out loud. The visuals are fun but again in our minds they will simply blend in with visuals from a million other movies. The only thing about this movie that stands out is that the cast has good chemistry with each other. 

There is not much more to say about this movie other than that it is extremely average.