Children’s Movie – Zachary Mule

FROZEN IN TIME

(ARC ENTERTAINMENT/KICKSTART PRODUCTIONS (47 minutes, Rated G); 2014)

A few weeks back, I railed against a kids’ movie that featured a little girl who cared for no-one and nothing except for herself and what she wanted to do. That movie was produced in China, so I eventually came to the conclusion that the girl’s attitude had to be some type of cultural thing. After watching two-thirds of FROZEN IN TIME, I was reconsidering that estimation and moved forward under the supposition that all children everywhere were actually evil, self-centered, smaller versions of politicians, lawyers and other such snake-oil salesmen.

Eric and Patty (voiced by Valin Shenyei and Alyssya Swales) are siblings who enjoy torturing each other (and their brother, Brody, played by Drake Bell) and getting each other into trouble. Eric’s motto is, “I’ve always found that whole being good thing to be overrated.” The family dog, Arnie, is equally annoying and hyperactive; he looks a whole lot like Ed Asner (a name that you’ll be seeing again!). The kids’ inability to follow simple commands (actually, their blatant disregard for their parents’ instructions) causes a near catastrophe as, on Christmas Eve, the family heads out for Grandpa’s house. Having been told that Arnie couldn’t come along for the trip, Eric hides the pooch in a box disguised as a present; when the rambunctious canine gets loose, he bounces all over the vehicle, causing Mom (Mira Sorvino) to almost wreck the car, barely missing an oncoming truck and losing all of the presents over a snow-covered embankment. Things get worse when the family finally arrives at Grandpa’s house. Grandpa (Ed Asner) is an inventor with a bunch of whacky ideas; Patty and Eric are very disrespectful to their Grandpa and manage to destroy an entire automated kitchen (and their dinner in the deal) after being told to stay out of the room. The two take it on the lam before their Dad (Colin Murdock) can think of a punishment more severe than sending them to their room and denying them dessert (which is what they were after when they demolished the kitchen), heading out back to Grandpa’s workshop. There, they discover a weird looking old clock and, as these two destructive forces are wont to do, they find a way to break it.

From there, the movie turns into GROUNDHOG DAY with kids, Christmas and, of course, Santa Claus. As they discover that they are repeating the same day over and over again, Eric and Patty decide they can do whatever they want because it won’t matter when punishments are meted out… they won’t have to serve them since they’re the only ones who realize what’s happening to them and the clock will reset as soon as they fall asleep. Here’s where things start to turn around. After four or five days, they are getting sick of the auto-repeat. Besides, if Christmas never comes, they never get their gifts! As they’re once again confined to their room, Grandpa comes in and tells them a story about an inventor who built a clock that stopped time; the clock worked so well that Santa asked if the inventor would build one for him (making millions of stops in approximately five hours was no easy task… this would help). The light bulb finally goes on for Patty when her Grandpa tells them that the inventor didn’t stay at the North Pole with Santa because he didn’t want to be away from his family. The solution, Patty tells Eric, is being nicer to their family. The kids, over the course of several more Christmas Eves, straighten up their acts, displaying kindness, helpfulness and cooperation, turning FROZEN IN TIME into a pretty nice family Christmas story. They actually help Santa and save Christmas (the commercial aspects of it, anyway). How? Well… that’s called a spoiler and I won’t be the one to spoil it for the kiddies. If you can get through the pint-sized thuggery, the pay-off is pretty sweet.

The movie is, obviously, geared for very young children… I think that kids older than say seven or so would lose interest in the repetitive aspects of the middle part of the thing. The animation and design is also something that will appeal more to the smaller kids; the animation is just okay and everything is presented in very bright primary colors. Having said that, if you have small children (and maybe a pair of sunglasses), FROZEN IN TIME is a good way to kill the better part of an hour.

UNDER WRAPS

(DVD and Digital; ARC ENTERTAINMENT/KICKSTART PRODUCTIONS (47 minutes, Rated PG); 2014)

I recently reviewed a “kiddie” movie called AVA AND LALA, a really bad example of what passes for “family-friendly” viewing these days (it actually received positive reviews from several Christian sites, even though the Ava character has virtually no redeeming values and exemplifies many non-Christian traits, such as disrespect to others, covetousness and hubris). Still cringing from that experience, I approached UNDER WRAPS with a sense of trepidation. Just a few minutes into the flick, I found myself mumbling, “Now, this is more like it!” UNDER WRAPS is, thankfully, standard-issue American style animation and storytelling (though most of the production team and animators are British or Indian), with plenty of adventure, action, comedy, thrills, chills and a message that everyone can relate to.

The story centers around twelve-year-old Danny (voiced by Nick Wolfhard) and his wi-fi starved older sister, Eleanor (Kazumi Evans), whose archeologist parents (Brian Drummond and Brooke Shields) have dragged them halfway around the world on an Egyptian expedition. Danny is excited to help his parents; they, unfortunately for him, think he’s too young and… uh… too “hands on” to take into the tomb. In his quest for adventure, he tends to act before he thinks things all the way through, leading to plenty of broken relics, groundings and, of course, releasing a curse that turns his parents into mummies. Unlike Ava from the previously reviewed AVA AND LALA, the kids learn their lessons early on as, through the course of the flick, they learn the importance of family, working together to reverse the curse before the sun sets and their parents become permanently mummified.

The curse is accidentally activated when Danny drops and breaks a relic he took from the tomb, setting into motion a fun, fast-paced adventure through the Howard’s hometown. As he and Eleanor take charge (and try to hide their rapidly deteriorating parents), they are stopped by a pair of marginally inept police officers (Brenda Crichlow, Colin Murdock). The officers continue to show up at the worst times possible, leading to some of the funniest moments of the movie. One of the funniest moments occurs when the kids go shopping for the ingredients needed to stop the curse. The cops, of course, take their coffee break in the same grocery. By this point, the parents have become the children, not listening to instructions to remain in the vehicle and out of site. They do neither and are soon wreaking havoc in the store. Drake Bell voices an excitable kid in a squid costume who, after being set upon by Mister Howard, gets no sympathy from anyone because, “That’s a mummy… mummies don’t eat brains. Zombies eat brains.” The mummified Howards, naturally, win the award for best costume.

Along the way, the siblings are set upon by a monstrous mummy (who looks a lot like Iron Maiden’s mascot and cover boy, Eddie), who is looking to retrieve the broken artifact. Eleanor and Danny finally decide that they may be in over their heads as sundown approaches and take their parents’ assistant, Peter (Matthew Lillard), into their confidence. This leads to a final confrontation as the four Howards, Peter, the two cops and the Pharaoh mummy converge for a final showdown. It should be fun for the younger kids to follow the clues throughout to figure out how the story ends.

The movie is rated PG. It does feature some rude humor and the Pharaoh mummy can be a pretty scary thing for really young kids; the action sequences are fairly mild and funny enough to be enjoyed by everybody in the family. UNDER WRAPS would be a good Halloween “scare” for kids above, say, the age of eight, particularly tweeners. The messages of responsibility and working together as a family will not be lost on that age group.

DVD/Blu-Ray HEY, MA! WATCH THIS | Darren Tracy | October 19, 2014 | Adventure Movie Ancient Egypt Brenda Crichlow Brian Drummond Brooke Shields Children's Movie Colin Murdock Comedy Computer Animation Digital Drake Bell DVD/Blu-Ray Family Movie Kazumi Evans Matthew Lillard Movies Mummies Nick Wolfhard

AVA AND LALA

(DVD and Digital; ARC ENTERTAINMENT (80 minutes, Rated PG); produced 2012, released 2014)

So… this is what I get out of this movie: A bunch of Asian dudes are sitting around in – uh… are opium dens still a thing? – and one of ’em says, “Hey, let’s make, like, an anime version of that Disney thing with the monsters… ‘cept let’s make ’em animals.” “Dude, that would be, like, so wicked! What if they kicked each others’ butts up and down, like POKEMON… but with more drugs. We can put it up in the sky and call it, like, Cloud World or something,” exclaims another. A third coughs and giggles, “Huh… yeah, but with more drugs! And George Takei.” “Oh, absolutely,” concurs the first, “You gosta have some George Takei, dude! Oh! Oh! Let’s make everybody, like, martial arts masters like in that KUNG FU PANDA movie. Also… I think there should be more drugs.” (For some inexplicable reason, that’s the way Asian dudes talk in my head; that’s probably how I sound in their heads, too). And, thus was born AVA AND LALA. By the way, George Takei is totally unrecognizable in all that – what is that thing supposed to be… a muskrat? An anorexic hamster? – makeup. I mean, if it weren’t for his voice… uh… what? Ooh! It’s a cartoon! Never mind about the George Takei thing, then.

Ava is an obnoxious, rude little girl who cares about nothing except herself; Lala is a liger (part of the way a lion and not all together a tiger) that looks like one of the bit players from WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. Ava sneaks out of her house, sees Lala trying to hide, chases him (presumably because he didn’t want to be seen or bothered in any way), falls over a cliff, is saved by Lala, wanders into the mouth of a “cloud whale” and is, thus, delivered to a world in the clouds, inhabited totally by animals. One of the first animals they meet there is a grumpy old bear with a heart of gold who looks a lot like someone in a Tom Arnold costume; Mister Bear (or Uncle Bear… he’s called “Mister” in the movie, “Uncle” in the synopsis), freaked by the appearance of a human (and monumentally annoyed by this particular human), tells the pair that Ava must leave the world within three days or become an animal herself. There’s also a wicked tiger with massive supernatural powers who is seeking the death of all humans (like Ava… a sentiment that I wholly encouraged until the very end of the movie) and the supremacy of the entire universe. Along the way, Ava, Lala and the totally not-down-with-this Mister Bear meet up with a variety of animals: A tough bulldog enforcer, his minions (including a boar, a wolf and other such mean and nasties), and – my favorite – a herd of kung pao chicken… wait… that ain’t right. A flock of kung fu chickens… yeah… that’s it.

Okay… look, here’s the deal: AVA AND LALA has some fun, even scary and exciting, moments; the problem is, as much as I love animation, I’m not a big fan of anime (the post-apocalyptic brutality of NEON GENESIS EVANGELION being one of a few exceptions), especially computer animated anime and the story and plot are way below my age level. So, what’s a reviewer to do? Why, call upon his six year old niece and a couple of her friends to give him the skinny on what’s really up with this kinda-sorta family-friendly kid’s flick.

Unfortunately, they pretty much share my opinions (though they won’t openly admit to the same weird dream sequence that I had with the Asian guys) about most of the movie. First, they couldn’t believe that someone as jaded as Ava could actually exist; how could a person, especially a little girl who is so loved by her father, be so consumed with self-importance that she would laugh at her father’s doting and defy him at every turn and, even when her only friend is facing certain death, she is so easily diverted by something shiny, something that she didn’t have, but wanted. All of this, by the way, knowing that she was losing her humanness (I can’t call it humanity because she doesn’t appear to possess any attributes that would apply) and Lala and Bear were her best chance of returning to Earth. Throughout the movie, the girls were wondering if Ava would ever learn her lesson. It isn’t until the very end of the movie, when her life is inextricably linked to Lala’s survival that she finally does the “heroic” thing and saves him from certain doom. Oops! I just spoiled the ending, didn’t I?

AVA AND LALA is rated PG for, according to the people who decide such things, rude humor and some action. However, other concerns involve the over-the-top violence in the final third of the movie: While it is fairly mild by adult standards, the kids were really frightened, especially by the murderous General Tiger. Apparently, this is a pretty popular franchise in its country of origin, China (which explains all of the gasping and grunting noises… remember the original US airings of SPEED RACER?), under the title YUGO AND LALA, where it saw theatrical release in 2012. I just don’t see the appeal; neither do the kids I used as “more age appropriate eyes.”

DVD/Blu-Ray HEY, MA! WATCH THIS Movies | Darren Tracy | October 14, 2014 | Adventure Movie AVA AND LALA Children's Movie Chinese Anime Computer Animation DVD/Blu-Ray Fantasy Movie George Takei Tom Arnold

WHAT’S INSIDE