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It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown! (1997)
This was not the best special ever, Charlie Brown
"It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown" is a shallow attempt to restore the fading art of the Peanuts TV specials. Although it hit the mark in cuteness and charm, it failed to present any of the deeper meanings and characterization present in Schulz' comic strip or the other specials. In fact, it doesn't present much of anything at all. Half of the 25-minute cartoon is taken up by an uncharacteristically bold and independent Linus skating through town with hip inline skates. This scene was animated rather well, with nice 3D moving backgrounds and a fairly realistic-moving Linus, who looks rotoscoped. How do you rotoscope the actions of a huge-headed cartoon kid with a real person? You can't, not very well anyway, as the discerning eye will notice Linus' limbs stretching and bending in odd locations. Yet this is the best animation in the special, and the filmmakers know this well as they opt to play the entire sequence twice, with the same music and even the same scenes. The rest of the animation is not even on a par with the substandard low-budget cartooning present in the 60's and 70's Peanuts films. The entire production looks like it was done in Shockwave Flash. Many characters have an anti-aliasing problem which makes them look like they are sticking out of the scenery instead of blending with it. Characters will move towards and away the camera through a simple sprite enlargement technique, which looked pretty high-tech on the Super Nintendo but sticks out like a sore thumb in feature animation. When they want to zoom in the camera, they just crop and enlarge the image, which makes the film very blurry. They might as well have just cut to a close-up shot. The kids at the party run on a loop of about three frames each, as they flap their mouths and clap their hands in unison. Where did Linus get all these many friends anyway? And why are there *gasp* adults in the picture?
All complaints about the animation aside, the story is pretty cute, but not up to par with other Peanuts specials. Linus stumbles into a garden while riding his rollerblades and meets Mimi, an operatic child diva that can actually sing (anyone who heard the kids sing in "Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown" will thank the movie at least for this). Mimi is a gardening prodigy as well, and spends several minutes dispensing encyclopedic botanical wisdom to Linus, such as the fact that digitalis, the heart medicine, is extracted from the foxglove plant. Linus is instantly smitten with the girl, as she is the first girl he's ever met who tolerates him without being abusive or overly clingy. Linus then invites her to his upcoming birthday party, and she tentatively agrees. He then spends the next half of the program agonizing about whether or not Mimi will show up to his party, even though any reason why she can't or wont come is never quit e explained. Nevertheless, the question here is not whether or not she will come, and *** SPOILER SPOILER *** she does (big surprise), but how she will break his heart in the end. Needless to say it was all very anti-climactic, not even reaching the amount of pathos invoked by the Little Red-Haired Girl in "A Charlie Brown Valentine" (2002) and Melody-Melody in "You're In the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown" (1993), or for that matter Linus' own unrequited "love"--the Great Pumpkin, who never fails to disappoint Linus every Halloween. There isn't even any requisite cruelty from Lucy or Peppermint Patty to liven things up. There wasn't even any cool Vince Guaraldi jazz music, having been replaced by some guy on a synthesizer busting out crappy hip-hop beats that should have been buried with Vanilla Ice. I almost expected the Peanuts cast to bust out into a "cool" kiddie rap like those clean-cut child stars in "Camp Cucamonga" (1990)--"Yo, I'm Linus, and I'm here to say/I'm passive-aggressive in a major way..."
In the end, I think I have said more about this half-hour made-for-video cartoon than most people write about Oscar winning movies. Nevertheless, it is worth a rental for kids and for the devoted Peanuts fan. It's not all that bad.
Konrad (1985)
This is a mission for the not-nice team!
Meet Konrad, a loveable little boy played by adorably-named Huckleberry Fox. He's a genetically-engineered "Instant Child", mass-produced in a factory, brainwashed by oppressive "trainers" to become docile, loyal, and respectful to elders, then vacuum-sealed in a pop-top can for ease of storage and delivery. So what happens when eccentric rug-maker Berti Bartelotti (Polly Holiday) gets him by mistake? Report such flagrant human-rights violations to Amnesty International? Bring this fiasco to the attention of the paranoid media? Oh no, of course not. Won over by his ingrained cuteness, she keeps little Konrad as her very own, while she and her boyfriend, known only as "Mr. Thomas" (Ned Beatty), haggle over the right to dote upon him like he was some sort of toy they were sharing. Meanwhile, the factory owner, Dr. Monford (played by Max Wright of ALF fame), is upset that Konrad got accidentally placed in an unfit environment (since Berti and Mr. Thomas are [gasp!] living in sin) and sends his elite cadre of bumbling security guards to "recall" and "recycle" their perfect child. This child is indeed so perfect that he has grand mal seizures of anxiety whenever he makes the smallest mistake and is regularly pantsed around the playground by bullies with no special programming. The hilarity ensues as our heroes track down the kidnapped Konrad to the "factory", a dystopian monochromatic "1984 Elementary School" where perfect Aryan children march double-file down the halls, and a loudspeaker announces, to the shock of all kids watching, that "Halloween has been cancelled." Needless to say, after the spell-binding thrill-a-minute climax, everyone goes away happy and realizes that it's okay to be less-than-perfect even if you are a dysfunctional abused clone. Fairly good production values and quirky acting make this PBS/Wonderworks special a great family movie. Or is it?
This was one of my favorite movies growing up when I thought it was far more chilling and dystopian than it really was. The scene with Konrad lying desiccated in the can after being opened haunts me 17 years later. However, coming back to it as an adult, I realize just how juvenile the premise really is. In this story, cloning isn't morally wrong, nor is eugenics, child abuse, imprisonment, cryogenics without consent or slavery. Konrad is not a human being, he's "another one of those fads of yours" and "a miracle of genetic engineering," as Mr. Thomas states. And how are these children constructed? Are they normal, yet enhanced human beings (like Star Trek's Khan) or are they designed to stay adorable 8-year-olds forever, their growth forever stunted like that of toy dogs? In that case, Dr. Monford is right in recalling Konrad from his chaotic surroundings. A child like him would be unable to function in the outside world and be subject to countless health problems, just like a toy poodle or a Shar-Pei. He would be so dependent on his controlled lifestyle that he would need a home where he and his environment could be constantly monitored. To be such a being, a living plaything at the disposal of the decadent elite, would be very depressing indeed. But yet the factory children wave their dimpled smiles as millions of normal babies are born and die waiting to be adopted. Indeed this is a great movie for children... if you want to teach them that their worth as a human being is calculated only by their value in the consumer marketplace. If you want to watch this movie done right, watch Little Man Tate, Gattaca, Star Trek II, or A.I. Oh heck, you can even watch Parts: The Clonus Horror.
Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Is this a Glock I see before me?
It seems so odd and yet so natural that so many people would return to "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet" and comment mightily in its favor only after seeing Baz Luhrmann's more recent masterpiece "Moulin Rouge." When I first saw this film as a teenager in 1996, having been raised on more "refined" versions of Shakespeare's plays, I remember being outraged at how Hollywood was raping the words of the immortal Bard, taking them out of context in order to make a buck. However, viewing this film under the lens of "Moulin Rouge," it all makes sense to me now.
Baz Luhrmann, like Shakespeare, is a man of the theater, very bombastic, intense, and infused with showmanship. The reviewers who panned "R + J" for its lack of period costume seem to forget that Shakespeare himself wasn't exactly a stickler for historical accuracy. Shakespeare's plays bridged the gap between the historical periods they purported to represent and the Elizabethan mores of his day. You will notice that while the plays are set in places like ancient Rome and medieval Scotland, the actors in Shakespeare's day didn't wear kilts or togas--they are wearing Renaissance-era jerkins and tights. Luhrmann recognizes this, and sets his "fair city of Verona" in a world both modern, ancient and fantastical, where street gangs with ultramodern convertibles wield ornately decorated guns (named "Sword" and "Rapier" to fit with the 17th-century lyrics) against a backdrop of towering skycrapers and Gothic cathedrals, where TV newscasters compete with numerous images of Mexican-Catholic iconography, and where knights and angels fall in love in a spectacular Victorian mansion complete with tap-dancing butlers and a cross-dressing Mercutio diva. The story itself is told as intensely as the intense love between the star-crossed duo, through a bright mix of radical cinematography, using a mix of rapid cuts, pans, wipes, fades, blurs, and hallucinogenic imagery in a kaleidoscopic style reminiscent of music videos. The film is also punctuated through a self-conscious choice of color. Each scene has its own color scheme: scenes between the lovers are shot in a faded pastel color scheme reminiscent of colorized 19th century photographs, the gang battles are displayed in a violent mix of yellows and reds, the death scene... oh, sorry...
*** SPOILER ***
yes, Romeo and Juliet both die, as if you didn't know
*** END SPOILER ***
fades from glorious color to a cinema-noir black and white. This panoply of architecture, costume design, and film style serve to highlight the timelessness and timeliness of the Shakespearean drama, bringing it down from the pedestal of elite literature and lavishing it onto the "penny-farthings," the ordinary folk, where it belongs. Baz Luhrmann brings theatrical art to a movie industry lost in its own sense of commercialism and self-importance, and to a genre (Shakespearean film) that often seems to be "more matter with less art".
In retrospect, it's obvious from the vivid display of the extremes of human emotion and the dramatic conflict between the Elizabethan dialogue and the modern setting that this movie knows that it is a movie, a self-conscious entertainment pop-culture product, rather than displaying the events with a false sense of truthfulness and subliminal emotional manipulation. This one fact makes "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet" a lot more honest than most "realistic" movies today.
Cinderella II: Dreams Come True (2002)
Oh, how the mighty have fallen
When I first saw the huge life-size cardboard standup promoting Cinderella II in my local Hollywood Video, I was positively shocked and dismayed as to how far Disney has fallen in its attempt to strip-mine the memory of its classics in order to make an extra buck. Watching the video itself did nothing to enlighten my preconceived notions. While the animation and voice-acting is top-notch, the story suffers as the film tries to describe Cinderella's "happily ever after" life in the castle. Since any real conflict could possibly hurt that "happy" image, they appoint Cinderella head of the Ministry of Parties and allow her to demonstrate her unbounded optimism through several heavily contrived situations that mostly involve jokes about clumsy, amorous fat women (fat-acceptance advocates, watch out!) and mice being mindlessly chased by palace cats (who in real life would probably have servants to chase mice for them!) The mice are the real stars of this film, recreating their feature film roles pretty well and tying the loose, disjointed narratives together. Yet, one gets the feeling that the mice are the only characters in this film and the others are just there to give the mice something to do. For a movie that purports to teach us how to be ourselves and feel good about ourselves, one would be shocked at the gross lack of characterization in the film. Even compared to other Disney movies, the characters never go beyond their surface stereotypes and develop any hidden motives. Why does Jaq so singlemindedly want to pursue Cinderella? Why does the Fairy Godmother linger around the castle like a freeloading roommate? Why does Anastasia fall in love with the incredibly uninteresting baker? Yet one shouldn't picket the movie too seriously, after all, it's clear from the packaging and DVD extras ("A composer is a person who writes the music to a movie") that this film was intended solely for the kiddie crowd. With that in mind, it's blissfully entertaining. It's a great film if you are under 6 or so, but if you were raised on more captivating Disney fare such as the great musical features and the Disney Afternoon of the early 90's, it's rather disappointing.