Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who

More Animated
Dr. Seuss Gets a Spotless Facelift
By Cole Smithey

The best-loved 1954 children’s book by Ted Geisel (AKA Dr. Seuss) gets an appropriately colorful and vibrant film treatment with the aid of beautiful animation and expressive vocal performances. "A person is a person, no matter how small," is the lesson that the sensitive jungle elephant Horton learns and shares with other animals when he discovers a city of little people living on a dust spec that he protects on a piece of soft clover. The well-worn story’s sheer poetry comes through in this masterpiece of kid’s cinema.

There’s an existential element to the guiding ethic that Geisel leads the humanitarian Horton to champion with Dr. Seuss’ trademark tongue-rolling poetry (eloquently spoken by voice talent Charles Osgood). Screenwriters Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio have done an outstanding job of fleshing out Giesel’s sparsely told original story to fill out a feature length movie. A terrific voice cast that includes Will Arnet as the black-bottomed eagle Vlad, Steve Carell as the Mayor of Whoville, and Carol Burnett as a confrontational kangaroo, is led by Jim Carrey’s effortless incarnation as Horton. There’s real chemistry among the actors’ vocal characterizations, and their giddy infectious humor resonates against a cheery animation design. Far from the scantily colored line drawings of the book, the movie excels in bringing scale to Horton’s jungle life as opposed to the world of Whoville. When a bunch of dastardly blue monkeys fire bananas at Horton by squeezing them through the armpits of an especially large primate, the playfulness of the slapstick comedy is charming to a fault.

"Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who" is an inspired cinematic adaptation that improves on the book in a way that a movie of this magnitude should. There’s nothing heavy-handed here, and no fart jokes to taint the quality of the story. It’s a movie that instantly appears as the kind of old friend that you expect it to be based on past experience. Will you still have to read the book to little kids? You bet, but now you’ll have a much better grasp of the inhabitants of Whoville and of Horton’s bravery.

Rated G, 88 mins. (A) (Five Stars)

Persepolis

Culture Shock
Marjane Satrapi Revolutionizes Animated Cinema
By Cole Smithey

Executed in a striking style of bold black and white animation with restrained splashes of color, "Persepolis" is Marjane Satrapi’s highly-original autobiographical coming-of-age story that takes place during and after Iran’s 1978 Islamic Revolution that resulted in a war with Iraq. The artistic delivery and raw intellectual sharpness is most akin to the work of political cartoonist and graphic novelist Ted Rall. In Tehran, free-spoken nine-year-old Marjane (voiced by Chiara Mastroianni) dreams of saving the world, but her irreverent sense of liberty is at direct odds with Iran’s fundamentalist constraints that plague her daily life. This is a girl that not only questions authority but also talks back to it with educated passion.

Marjane entertains fantasies of chatting with God and Karl Marx and it’s during these witty nocturnal conversations that we comprehend the young girl’s precocious intellect and earnest desire to connect with the world on a personal level. For a moment she’s like a character from a Peanuts cartoon, and the connection to Charles Schultz’s iconic personalities is helped along by American pop culture references like Abba or the theme from "Rocky." When she makes a black market purchase of an Iron Maiden cassette, you can’t help but empathize with the defiant act as it mocks Marjane’s poor taste in rebel rock that could more appropriately have discovered the Clash instead.

At 14, Marjane’s worried parents send her to Vienna to escape the Ayatollah Khomeini‘s revolutionary regime responsible for murdering her politically active uncle, and to attend high school in a more peaceful environment. But sex, drugs, romance, and anti-Iranian prejudice bring Marjane’s four years abroad to an inauspicious end living homeless on the streets. Nevertheless, it’s this significant growth period that gives Marjane a touchstone of free-willed experience when she returns to Iran to go to college. Once back home, Marjane marries and attempts to live under Iran’s inhospitable conditions before the young humanist is forced to consider permanent exile away from her home country.

"Persepolis" has a vibrant punk rock take-no-prisoners tone that is as refreshing as it is elucidating. The animated autobiography aspect has a liberating effect of allowing the viewer to make more random associations with the characters by virtue of its uncluttered visual space. The title comes from an ancient Persian city in southwest Iran, and suggests a connection to a futuristic past. Marjane’s grandmother (voiced by Danielle Darrieux) tells the troubled youth, "There’s nothing worse in the world than bitterness and revenge. Always keep your integrity and stay true to yourself." Against the gloriously stylized backdrop of the movie, those words resonate with an inspiration that is undeniable. Marjane Satrapi’s and Vincent Paronnaud’s animated film adaptation of Satrapi’s four-volume graphic novel shared the 2007 Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize with Carlos Reygadas’ "Secret Light."

Marjane Satrapi, an illustrator and author of children’s books now living in Paris, was born into a progressive (read liberal) Iranian family in 1969. Her grandmother told her that the saddest life is to be born a cow and die a donkey—meaning that dying dumber than you were at birth, because fear got the best of you in life, is a disgrace. It’s this kind of pithy logic that pulses through the simplistically stylized yet complex story of her rebellious journey. And it’s also this type of cross-generational dialogue that has gone missing between the idealism of the ’60s and the fallout of Watergate that backhandedly led America to its current condition.

Exile is the theme that Satrapi tugs at in every imaginable direction with an informed innocence striking for its clarity. For any American that has ever sworn to leave the country if the Republicans steal yet another election, Satrapi’s story is a lesson in objectivity. In interview, Satrapi has pointed out that while the Bush administration seems obsessed with attacking Iran on a basis of lacking human rights, the U.S. government is only too happy to sell out to China, which has a notoriously low regard for human welfare. As she puts it, "The real war is not between the West and the East, but rather between intelligent and stupid people."

It’s telling that the Iranian government has called for a boycott on "Persepolis" when the filmmakers are busy testing a groundbreaking distribution model that promises to open up new distribution channels for other animated films. The original French language version will open in the states on Christmas day, before giving way to an English-voiced version to be released soon thereafter. For the English version, Sean Penn will voice Marjane’s father, Iggy Pop will play her politically invested uncle, and Gena Rowlands will portray Marjane’s influential grandmother. At the end of the day, "Persepolis" is an immensely meaningful film because of the cultural gaps that it bridges toward a new kind of adult cinematic dialogue. Here is that rare profoundly original film that will open floodgates. It also announces the brazen identity of a fiercely independent female voice in international cinema. Marjane Satrapi is a real-life heroine.

A Scanner Darkly

Watching Ourselves
Richard Linklater Pushes The Envelope On Philip K. Dick
By Cole Smithey

Richard Linklater gives an audacious cinematic adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1977 novel about corporate/government surveillance of a public led by their noses with drug addictions similarly fueled and fed by the ‘system.’ Given the novel’s scattershot method of dipping in and out of a reflexive reality occupied by a group of drug addicts and state-employed wonks, Linklater’s use of rotoscoping (see "Waking Life") adds a veneer of narrative information that causes you to further question the identity puzzles presented in the story. Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is an undercover Los Angeles narcotics cop who wears a "scramble suit" that disguises his identity, even to his employers, behind an ever-shifting amalgam of physical appearances. Arctor himself has become addicted to a drug called "Substance D" and is so far removed from his personal sense of identity that he puts what little faith he has in the hope that the all-seeing scanner will view him clearly.

Set seven years in the future the movie immediately submerges you in its comic paranoid atmosphere. A young drug-affected guy, Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane) scratches all over his nude body at real or imagined aphids that attack him. It’s a specific brand of insect dread that William Friedkin’s upcoming thriller "Bug" explores with accelerating visceral detail. Freck desperately phones his friend Jim Barris (Robert Downey Jr.) who requests that Freck bring him samples of the aphids in a jar. We can tell by Barris’ wry and distant tone that he’s not a shrink or even much a friend to Freck but he’s the closest person the poor guy can talk to. Freck nervously drives to a diner where he and Barris engage in a superficially lofty conversation about the extent of Freck’s addiction to Substance D (causes "dumbness, despair, desertion and death") before retiring to a mini-mart to acquire inexpensive ingredients that Barris will magically turn into another mind-altering substance.

It’s inside this intimate world of codified self-destruction that Bob Arctor resides in a low-rent Anaheim cul-de-sac with Barris and Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson) an equally wobbly addict. The three live a dead-end frathouse existence that mocks society with a pre-disastered sense of skeptical autonomy. The intellectual apathy that the men rely on as their moral imperative for pursuing oblivion is to be savored as when Barris brings a newly purchased bicycle into their house. Acquired from a neighbor, the ostensibly stolen bike’s gear count gets considerable attention as an object of animated debate among Luckman, Arctor and their mutual friend and drug dealer Donna (Winona Ryder). Here, as in other scenes, Linklater embraces Dick’s source material for its inherent humor and let’s the comedy soar.

Bob Arctor isn’t as drug-ravaged as Barris or Luckman, and he struggles with a real or imagined past in which he was a responsible husband and father. Smarmy young inquisitors patronizingly insult him during psychological testing sessions when Arctor isn’t trying to doublethink his way around being his police department’s number one drug-dealing suspect. Arctor lives in a bad dream that becomes a full-fledged nightmare at the turn of a romantic screw involving Donna, who may or may not be part of the authoritarian metaplot that spirits Bob Arctor into a corporate/government-run land of "rehabilitation."

Richard Linklater sticks to the narrative flow of Philip K. Dick’s novel without embellishing it with current sociopolitical realities that the book foreshadowed. In so doing, Linklater contains the author’s enigmatic work as it pinpoints all-consuming aspects of our modern existence--the pervasive use of drugs and surveillance to stifle freedom of thought and action. "A Scanner Darkly" is a movie that goes down better the second time you see it. It’s easier to laugh at the jokes after you’ve accepted Philip K. Dick’s cynical and accurate 1977 vision of America in the year 2013. Like George Orwell before him, Philip K. Dick’s premonitions were just barely ahead of their time.

Rated R, 100 mins. (B-)  (Three Stars)

Over The Hedge

Stealing Suburbia
Woodland Creatures Take A Stand Against SUV Culture
By Cole Smithey

Co-directors Tim Johnson ("Antz") and Karey Kirkpatrick (the film's screenwriter) make sly commentary on the suburbanization of America with a computer-animated kid's comedy notable for its ingenious voice cast that includes Bruce Willis as a con-artist raccoon named RJ and Garry Shandling as Verne, a conscientious turtle. RJ the loner raccoon makes a terrible mistake when he attempts to steal a wealth of packaged food from Vincent (Nick Nolte), a hibernating bear, one week before his spring awakening. Vincent demands under threat of death that RJ replace the accidentally destroyed food in one week when he ceremoniously awakens from his slumber. RJ convinces a family of possums, a skunk, and a turtle to take advantage of the suburban sprawl that has suddenly sprung up around their hedge-walled enclave to plunder vast quantities of processed junk food from their human neighbors. However, homeowner's association president Gladys (Allison Janney) makes big trouble by hiring a military-minded exterminator calling himself "The Verminator" (Thomas Haden Church - "Sideways") to lay waste to the little critters. RJ gets a lasting lesson in the ethics of familial trust from his newfound clan before the story is over.

As with all modern animated movies, half of the fun of watching them is associating the camouflaged actors with the eccentric characters onscreen. Steve Carell's zippy vocal interpretation is especially inspired as Hammy, a hyperactive squirrel whose superfast antics give the story's climax an unexpected hook when he's suddenly able to move so quickly that the Earth's orbit veritably stalls. Nick Nolte's presence as Vincent the bear is perhaps the most recognizable voice in the cast, and his gently booming phonation connects well against Thomas Haden Church's self-evident enjoyment in delivering his evil character's droll lines. Wanda Sykes steals the show as an impertinent skunk named Stella when RJ disguises her as a slinky black cat to flirt with Gladys' magisterial tomcat Tiger (Omid Djalili) so that she can filch the automatic cat door key from his collar. The bit is an obvious homage to the Looney Tunes skunk Pepe Le Peu, famous for his guileless efforts at romance in spite of his stinky inner nature. 

"Over The Hedge" is a kids' movie made up of adult circuitry. The only human children in the story are a couple of realistic and therefore unsympathetic girl scouts selling cookies that have a narcotic effect on Hammy when he steals them. What really pushes the uncomfortable interaction between the cute woodland creatures and the narcissistic humans that have invaded their habitat is what critic David Thomson calls 'a primitive feeling for endangered civilization.' The animals are barely able to co-exist with the artificial territory built up around them, and their future seems gloomy at best. For all of the animals' efforts at storing up stolen unhealthy people- food for the next winter, it's Hammy's constant search for nuts that finally serves their purpose best. The metaphoric subtext is as clear as the apocalyptic destruction that befalls Gladys' treasured suburban home. All of the humans have gone nuts.
Rated PG, 87 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)
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The Wild

Drop Madagascar
Disney Trumps Dreamworks
By Cole Smithey

Obvious plot similarities to Dreamworks animated kid’s movie "Madagascar" haunts this superior Disney produced CG animated story about a group of New York Zoo animals that go for an unexpected boat trip to an African jungle. Samson the lion (voiced by Kiefer Sutherland), has convinced his lion cub son Ryan (Greg Cipes) and the rest of the zoo animals of his mythic experiences in the wild. The king of the zoo wears his mighty roar like a badge of honor that little Ryan can barely hope to emulate with his slight whimper of howl. When the forlorn Ryan steals away from the zoo in a shipping container, Samson and his best friend, a squirrel named Benny (Jim Belushi), are joined by Nigel the koala bear, Bridget the giraffe, and Larry the goofy anaconda to rescue Ryan from the wilds of Africa.

The animation for "The Wild" has a more intricate look than "Madagascar" thanks to director Steve "Spaz" Williams’ CG process that he developed working on films like "The Mask," "The Abyss," "Jurassic Park," and "Terminator 2: Judgement Day." However, it’s the unique chemistry of vocal performances by Kiefer Sutherland, Greg Cipes, Jim Belushi, Eddie Izzard (Nigel), Janeane Garofalo (Bridget), Richard Kind (Larry), and William Shatner (as a bloodthirsty wildebeest) that harmonizes the movie. Where "Madagascar" suffered from vocal interpretations that frequently clashed, "The Wild" carries a dulcet and dynamic harmony that plays like well-practiced orchestra.

Eddie Izzard brings an understated nuance and flair to his role as Nigel the egocentric British koala bear. Much of the plot turns on Nigel’s character when he is adopted by a tribe of African wildebeests who believe him to be a deity due to the stuffed koala they have previously been praying to. The strained relationship between Samson and Ryan resonates with an unresolved romantic connection between Bridget the giraffe and her romantic admirer Benny the squirrel. Bridget disdains Benny because of his petite size, but that doesn’t prevent the little guy from trying his heart out to win her over. In the same way that Ryan seeks respect from his father for his effort to roar like a big lion, so too does Benny crave props for his sincere affection and loyalty toward Bridget.

Jim Belushi creates a perfectly transparent vocal character for Benny that zings with just the right pitch of emotional investment and youthful exuberance. For her part, Janeane Garofalo practically sings Bridget’s voice and outlines her character’s condescension that eventually turns a bit warmer toward Benny.

"The Wild" carries "Madagascar’s" themes of animals "going wild" and a lion releasing his pent-up primal roar to get in touch with his true nature. And yet, there’s more emotional closeness and paternal significance attached to the animal characters here. Even the music, scored by Alan Silvestri ("Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"), contributes to the aural textures of the story better than Madagascar’s sometimes jarring score did. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Eric Idle, Lifehouse, Coldplay and Everlife contribute songs that nestle into the movie rather than calling inordinate attention to themselves.

There’s also an obvious "Finding Nemo" aspect to "The Wild" wherein a father embarks on a desperate mission to regain his son, and to that end "The Wild" goes further in fleshing out aspects of the father’s past that inform his treatment of his son. A flashback sequence illustrates the way Samson’s circus lion father inflicted emotional scars on him that are healed by his reconciliation with Ryan. "The Wild" is a visually arresting and thematically inspired animated movie that shuns the typical kiddie toilet humor of the genre. It’s a children’s movie that should stand up well to many a repeated viewing.

Rated G, 85 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

Chicken Run

Clay Animation Goes Big
"Wallace and Gromit" Creators Work Comic Wonders
By Cole Smithey

Peter Lord and Nick Park, the creators of "Wallace and Gromit," have crafted a devilishly clever clay animation feature film that is as thoroughly British in its humor as it is enjoyable to watch. A band of hyper kinetic European chickens, imprisoned in a Stalag-type egg farm run by a tyrannical husband and wife team, struggle to escape with the questionable aid of a cocky American rooster named Rocky (voice by Mel Gibson - Lethal Weapon). Rocky is a circus performing rooster who is inexplicably able to fly, or so it seems. It only follows that Rocky should be able to teach the fat little egg-laying chicks to get airborne long enough to escape over the barbed wire fence that keeps them on a course with early death when they stop producing enough eggs.

Beyond implications about animal cruelty in food processing farms, "Chicken Run" pokes fun at cheer-for-the-hero escape stories, and the very cliché of the American male hero. The chickens trapped on Mrs. Tweedy’s (voice by Miranda Richardson – "Sleepy Hollow") Yorkshire poultry farm wouldn’t stand a chance of ever escaping were it not for their fearless and caring leader, Ginger (voice by Julia Sawalha – "Absolutely Fabulous"). Ginger rifles the group through every escape scenario she can imagine before landing on the idea of going over the fence instead of under. When Rocky, the American "lone free ranger" rooster, crashes into camp, it seems like the answer to Ginger’s plans for the freedom of her flock and also for her romantic heart. Nonetheless Rocky is more of a motivational speaker than a liberator of hens. Little facts about chickens and roosters not being able to fly, and roosters not being able to lay eggs are clarified in the funniest of ways.

When Mrs. Tweedy discovers an ad for a chicken pie-manufacturing machine that promises to make her a bundle in cash, it gives the movie a centerpiece comedy sequence that rivals anything of the most knee-slapping scenes from Billy Wilder to Mel Brooks. The hapless Ginger falls into grave danger of becoming the next day’s chicken pie as Mr. and Mrs. Tweedy test out their monstrously large cooking and packaging contraption. There are slippery slides, gravy shooting spray guns, mixed vegetables, and a heck of a lot of heat from oven burners that Ginger ends up dodging from conveyor belt to cardboard box.

"Chicken Run" is a classy melding of story ideas from movies like "The Great Escape" (1963), "Cool Hand Luke" (1967), and even Charlie Chaplin’s "Modern Times" (1936). It’s easy to take for granted the painstaking process of "frame-at-a-time" filmmaking that clay animation requires when watching "Chicken Run" because the filmmakers have done such a picturesque job of seamlessly blending flawless set and figure design with story and character. Brought to the big screen by a large crew of inspired animators and modelmakers, "Chicken Run" multiplies the well-rounded effect of "Wallace and Gromit" by a hundred-fold. Where it was possible for an audience to get bogged down by the somber color scheme of "Wallace and Gromit" and its not-quite-lifelike-enough clay design, "Chicken Run" compensates with a crowd of quirky chickens capable of acting like real chickens when the farmers are snooping.

Kid’s movies are just as important to the summer season as the string of Hollywood blockbusters that rarely live up to audience expectations. "Chicken Run" is every bit as ridiculous as the title suggests, and carries with it a look and style that, while referencing a tradition of escape movies, surprises an audience with its ingenuity and cheeky brand of British satire. The little plasticine-and-silicone figures that portray the two human characters oddly resemble people we all have seen before.

Rated G, 84 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

Hoodwinked!

Infectious Family Fun!
Red Riding Hood Rides Again
By Cole Smithey

On first look, this animated revamping of the Little Red Riding Hood story seems to farm the same well-tilled soil as the plethora of big studio animated features. Yet there’s much more of a rich homegrown quality to this little animated pearl that kicks with spicy zing emanating from its original songs. Anne Hathaway does her best little blasé Janeane Garofalo voice as "Red," a bicycle-riding delivery girl for her Granny’s (Glenn Close) baked goodies. An unknown thief has been stealing pastries from around the forest at the same time that Red discovers a cross-dressing wolf in her Granny’s bed. Screenwriter and co-director Todd Edwards caresses the fun with 27 brilliantly poppy songs that range in style from driving rock to hip-hop, funk, surf, country, folk, Bossa Nova, teen pop and inspired instrumental orchestral motifs. The soundtrack alone is enough to make the movie a winner.

These Little Red Riding Hood characters are full of personality surprises. The movie opens with Red arriving at her Granny’s house only to confront the big bad Wolf wearing a Granny disguise that our quick-witted lass sees right through. Red questions the Wolf at length before the scene comes to an abrupt finale when her gagged and bound Granny pops out of the closet just as a Woodsman bursts in on the cottage with his trusty ax. Detective frog Nicky Flippers (David Ogden Stiers) arrives at the scene to weed through four interweaving testimonies told by Red, the Woodsman (Jim Belushi), Granny and the Wolf (Patrick Warburton).

It’s soon revealed that the Wolf is not the drooling monster we traditionally think of, but rather a reporter researching the spate of bakery robberies. The Woodsman is really an actor rehearsing for a role as a Woodsman when he isn’t driving a schnitzel truck and Granny has a knack for extreme sports. Red has some kung fu moves up her sleeve that come in handy against some villainous humans with their own grudges against our snowboarding Granny.

Anne Hathaway ("Brokeback Mountain") cinches the film’s enjoyable tone with a vocal characterization that breathes with comic life. Andy Dick does a neat vocal turn as a quirky bunny rabbit, and Jim Belushi’s intonation is downright hilarious as pictured through the clumsy guise of the muscle bound Woodsman. The animation is state-of-the-art CGI that the filmmakers contain in a consistent palate of visual smartness. Cory Edwards, Tony Leech and Todd Edwards all did dual duties of scripting and directing the movie, and their euphoric collaboration carries an unmistakable stamp of unique talents working in harmony. The film’s cheerful songs are immediately memorable and infectious, and although the version that I screened was not in 3-D, Hoodwinked! is due to be released as a 3-D feature film. With or without the 3-D, "Hoodwinked!" is a clever screwball take on the Little Red Riding Hood fable that speaks to the kid in all of us.

Rated PG, 80 mins. (B+)  (Four Stars)

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie

You Buy Now
Japanese Animate Revenue
By Cole Smithey

Feature-length animated movie based on the television series, and Manga comic book of the same name, is like watching a Japanese video game being played on a movie screen. With careful marketing ploys strung throughout the film, "Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie" also operates as one long commercial to inspire the purchase of collectible cards that coincide with the monsters and magical forces that the characters/players use in their "Shadow Games." Yugi is a punky "King of Games" gamer boy who holds the three strongest "God" cards in the "Shadow" game when his archrival Seto Kaiba attacks him in a fierce grudge battle that awakens the wrath of the evil Anubis. The movie quickly gets repetitive as the players call monsters, spells, and traps into play, while excitedly one-upping their opponent. Kazuki Takasashi’s "Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie" is a well-crafted animated video game with style, humor, and a built-in mechanism to sell merchandise to kids.

The publicity notes state: "Armed with special energies Yugi absorbs from the Millennium Puzzle, a powerful ancient artifact he wears around his neck, Yugi and the Pharaoh (Yugi’s alter ego) whose spirit inhabits the Puzzle – join forces to battle various foes in their quest to save mankind and become the best duelists in the world." This nutshell description shows the distance the writers have gone to in order to win over the pocketbooks of young boys who identify with Yugi and fantasize about living in the abstract and cruel post-modern world that Yugi endures. A great deal of irony stems from the fact that "Yu-Gi-Oh!" represents Japanese capitalist and wartime propaganda in one of its most sophisticated forms, a children’s cartoon.

The innumerable monsters in the movie represent Japanese backlash fear, from the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of a colossal attack from the sky. Here, the pain of the Japanese people has taken a circuitous route into the collective sub-conscious of the world by way of a popular and branded cartoon.

The writers succeed in presenting a self-contained story that corresponds to the television show without relying on outside information as a narrative crutch. The predictable conceit of the battles between Yugi and Kaiba is that by the end of the game, their monsters will become physically real and endanger the actual Earth unless Yugi and his friends can defeat the brutal and all-powerful Anubis.

There’s no denying that "Yu-Gi-Oh!’s" graphics are iconic and potent in an archetypal way. When the players draw new cards from their decks, every new monster, spell or trap is a revelation in context and substance to the anticipated battle that follows. From a giant mute clown to a pair of intimidating Sphinx monsters, there is an atmosphere of unbridled imagination and randomness permeating the boy friendly subject matter.

"Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie" operates on a premise that all boys want to grow up to be ‘master duelists’ in a world of villainous monsters. It’s a model that history bears out and one that attracts many young male viewers more obsessed with their cartoon alter egos than with their potential maturity.

Will the gigantic monsters scare new young audiences? Will more kids take up the arms of collector cards in order to participate in the necessarily violent metaphorical carnage that must remain constant?

There’s something transfixing about the violence in "Yu-Gi-Oh!" The battles come at regular intervals that adhere to the pop song (sex act) length of 3 to 4 minutes, and all finish with a similar fist-blow of energy that pulverizes the enemy. There is also a certain satisfaction in seeing multiple monsters combined into a single more-powerful and diabolical creature. These kids are already altering DNA. There are many more levels in "Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie" than meets the eye.

Rated PG, 90 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

The Polar Express

Michael Jackson’s Santa Coaster
Animated X-mas Spectacle Carries Peculiar Agenda
By Cole Smithey

Just seeing Tom Hanks’ name attached to an animated Christmas movie directed by Robert Zemeckis ("Forrest Gump") should be enough for audiences to know all they need to about the kind of cheesy entertainment they’re in for. Creepy looking "performance capture" computer generated animation transposes artist/author Chris Van Allsburg’s roller-coaster-ride influenced story about a steam train called "The Polar Express" that takes a group of kids to the North Pole on Christmas eve to meet Santa Claus. The train goes up a steep mountain and the train goes down an even steeper mountain as it puts a cynical 8-year-old boy with no name in the way of cliffhanger dangers that provide plot filler until Santa’s Christmas metropolis is shown in all of its industrial splendor. The entertainment hook for the movie is the fact that Tom Hanks plays the little boy, the boy’s father, the train conductor, a hobo ghost, and Santa Claus. With a price tag of $165 million dollars, you’d think Zemeckis could afford to give audiences a break from so much of a mediocre thing.

"The Polar Express" boasts a new GCI technology designed to replicate human movement by digitizing an actor’s performance. But the results are expressionless mannequins that move with an odd fluidity that seems somehow uncontrolled or uncontrollable. Added to this plastic distancing effect is the fact that none of the characters, except Santa, have names and even then only four mannequin kids are afforded any trace of personalities. We have the all-American white "hero boy," our African American "hero girl," a generic European immigrant "Lonely Boy," and "Know-It-All Boy," a stereotypical Jewish kid who round out the group’s cultural diversity quotient.

You don’t have to look far to see the cogs of fascist indoctrination at play in the execution of the story. The train conductor gives each of a handful of the children on his train a ticket for passage which he later insists on demanding so he can punch it with initials that he will later turn into words for each child to live by. But when Mr. Conductor goes to collect the ticket belonging to the nameless little African American girl (Nona Gaye), whose eyes are too far apart, she has misplaced it and must be escorted away, allegedly, to be ejected from the train by the suddenly judgmental (read deceiving) conductor. Keep in mind that all of the children are dressed only in pajamas and slippers. This is just one example of the many layers of uncomfortable subtext buried in the film’s scenario. Since the conductor gave the children their tickets to begin with, his pretense at punishing the only minority on the train for not having hers still in her possession seems a subterfuge for some unsavory plan.

Indeed the next time we see the girl several scenes and many minutes later, she is in the engine car with the driver and stoker who have given her a lesson in which red lever makes the train stop. The cruel metaphors at play in the movie may be accidental on the part of the filmmakers, but they would not be there in the first place if more attention had gone into telling a story. "The Polar Express" is a movie that Michael Jackson will probably love. It’s about encouraging arrested development. Sure kids should believe in Santa Clause until they’re old enough to figure out the ruse and make up their own minds about what other kinds of games they want to play with their imaginations that will fulfill their present level of maturity.

Even when you look past the unnecessary dangers that the dehumanized child characters in "The Polar Express" experience, you are left with a hammered home theme that says you must believe in a lie in order to be satisfied on a personal level. The problem comes from the boy we meet in the beginning of the movie who is on the brink of maturing and exerting his individuality. We, the audience, are supposed to cheer as we watch him backslide into a dream state that more closely reflects a nightmare vision than any scenario of protected domestic life that the boy could experience. "The Polar Express" isn’t smart enough to be effective propaganda, but it can’t hide its cold agenda of labeling people (children) with words that will distract them from the seduction they’ve encountered. This polar express is one cold friggin’ ride.

Rated G, 100 mins. (C-) (One Star)