It's not the cuteness that offends - it's the obviousness of the effort to be cute.
Everyone involved in this pic - even the children actors - are trying to find 'the formula' for a cute Disney kids' movie. So there's no effort to tell a straight story as well as possible, to define and perform interesting characters in interesting situations. Instead, obnoxious cuteness (21st Century style, so it's utterly tasteless) abounds. The guinea pig has disturbing bug eyes and craps and farts a lot - but it is, after all a guinea pig, so it just must be 'cute' - right?! Well, no. Cute for cute's sake is a kind of porno-of-the-mind for anxiety-ridden parents, since like the sex-for-sex-sake of porn, movie cute gets awfully tiresome after a while.
There are some good jokes at the beginning, but once the movie enters the main excuse for a plot, about bed-time stories coming true in odd (and oddly unremarkable) ways, the sheer effort to get cute gets less and less bearable as the film drags on.
And yet, one thing really bothered me - the supposed theme of the film is the coming together of an estranged family - and I found this movement in the plot completely unbelievable. In fact the members of the movie family play against each other like total strangers - a bit unnerving in a 'kids' movie.'
Everyone involved in this pic - even the children actors - are trying to find 'the formula' for a cute Disney kids' movie. So there's no effort to tell a straight story as well as possible, to define and perform interesting characters in interesting situations. Instead, obnoxious cuteness (21st Century style, so it's utterly tasteless) abounds. The guinea pig has disturbing bug eyes and craps and farts a lot - but it is, after all a guinea pig, so it just must be 'cute' - right?! Well, no. Cute for cute's sake is a kind of porno-of-the-mind for anxiety-ridden parents, since like the sex-for-sex-sake of porn, movie cute gets awfully tiresome after a while.
There are some good jokes at the beginning, but once the movie enters the main excuse for a plot, about bed-time stories coming true in odd (and oddly unremarkable) ways, the sheer effort to get cute gets less and less bearable as the film drags on.
And yet, one thing really bothered me - the supposed theme of the film is the coming together of an estranged family - and I found this movement in the plot completely unbelievable. In fact the members of the movie family play against each other like total strangers - a bit unnerving in a 'kids' movie.'