Movie Review Peter Rabbit

Peter Rabbit (2018) 

Directed by Will Gluck

Written by Ron Lieber, Will Gluck

Starring Rose Byrne, Domhnall Gleeson, James Corden, Daisy Ridley, Margot Robbie, Elizabeth Debicki

Release Date February 9th, 2018 

Peter Rabbit is the latest in a long line of kids movies based on dignified and beloved works of children’s fiction that replaces the dignity with shrill, unfunny modernity. Peter Rabbit takes Beatrix Potter’s lovely rabbit stories and wipes it’s furry feet on them with a terrible pop soundtrack and sub-Home Alone style gags so jarringly violent you begin to wonder if they belong in a kid's flick.

Peter Rabbit (James Corden) is a mischievous, blue jacket-wearing rabbit who enjoys wreaking havoc in the garden of Mr. McGregor (Sam Neill). That is, until one day when Mr. McGregor up and dies while attempting to kill Peter. No, that’s not something I am making up for effect; the guy dies in the first ten minutes. The death is played with comic effect, but it is a nonetheless dark way to start the movie.

Peter and his family, including Cotton Tail (Daisy Ridley), Flopsy (Margot Robbie), Mopsy (Elizabeth Debicki) and Benjamin (Colin Moody) then take over Mr. McGregor’s home and garden on the assumption they have won the place. They throw a party for their comically anthropomorphized animal buddies and begin to wonder where this adventure will take them next.

Meanwhile, in London, Thomas McGregor (Domnhall Gleeson) has just found out that he did not get his prized promotion at Harrods Department Store and went a little mad. Fired, he finds that his long forgotten Uncle has left him a country cottage. With nothing else to do, he heads for the country and sparks up a rivalry with Peter and his family while he attempts to rebuild the cottage and sell it.

Find  my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal.Find  my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review The Emoji Movie

The Emoji Movie (2017) 

Directed by Tony Leondis

Written by Tony Leondis, Eric Siegel, Mike White

Starring T.J Miller, James Corden, Patrick Stewart, Anna Faris

Release Date July 28th, 1997

What is there to be said about The Emoji Movie? That’s what I have been asking myself for the more than an hour since I sat down to write this review. This empty, mostly competent, 90+ minute ad for smartphone apps doesn’t inspire much to be written about it. Sure, I could rail against the empty, soulless, mercenary nature of what amounts to app product placement the movie, but I have been shouting into that void since the trailer for the film hit and no one seemed to care then. So, let’s just start writing and see what happens.

The Emoji Movie centers around Gene (Voiced by T.J Miller), a professional "Meh" emoji on his first day on the job in Textopolis, a home for Emoji’s inside a teenager’s phone. Gene’s parents Mel and Mary Meh (Steven Wright and Jennifer Coolidge) aren’t sure Gene is ready for the job of expressing indifference because, unlike other Emojis in Textopolis, Gene is able to perform other Emoji functions beyond just being the face of Meh.

When Gene panics and ruins a text to a girl by making a funny face instead of Meh, he’s set to be deleted as if he were a virus. This leads to Gene having to flee Textopolis with his new pal Hi-5 (James Corden) to find a hacker named Jailbreak (Anna Faris) whom he hopes will be able to reprogram him to be Meh and help Hi-5 get back into the favorites page of his owner’s phone where he was once among the most oft-used Emojis.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Into the Woods

Into the Woods (2014) 

Directed by Rob Marshall 

Written by James LaPine 

Starring Meryl Streep, James Corden, Emily Blunt, Chris Pine, Johnny Depp, Anna Kendrick

Release Date December 25th, 2014

Published December 21st 2014 

“Into the Woods" is a shrill, monotonous mess of a movie.

Director Rob Marshall has followed up the self indulgent tragedy that was 2010's "Nine" with an even more full-of-itself, or just plain full of it, musical adaptation. The difference this time is that he has buried a good deal of big money talent under his hack direction. 

"Into the Woods" stars Meryl Streep as an over-the-top street performer - ahem, I mean a fairy tale witch - who tasks a baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt), with obtaining several magical items. These objects will help the witch to lift a curse, which is preventing the couple from having a child, is one she placed on the baker’s family years earlier. 

The items include a cow of milky white, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn and a slipper of … something or other. I lost track as I stopped giving a damn. These items, naturally, already have owners including a boy, Jack (Daniel Huttlestone), who believes his cow is his best friend; a nasally singing, irksome girl, Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford); and Cinderella (Anna Kendrick). 

Each of these story threads eventually coalesce into something of a story, but not without various distractions, including the entirely unnecessary inclusion of Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy) and her prince suitor (Billy Magnusson), whose presence has literally nothing to do with the other stories going on. Indeed, the one attempt to rope Rapunzel into the main plot is literally discarded just a few short scenes later. 

Then there is Chris Pine as another prince who is continually abandoned by Kendrick's Cinderella. He too will be discarded from the main plot without much effect before the film is over, but not before he's rendered his entire plot meaningless by turning into a minor villain, a character trait that also has little bearing on the main plot. 

Oh, and did I mention there are giants? Yes, dear reader, this movie that is packed to the gills with needless characters seems fit to toss in a giant in the final act, even after it had reached a fitting, if somewhat abrupt, happy ending. The giant is a tacked-on bit of plot intended to underline something about fairy tales … blah, blah, blah. I truly stopped caring by this point. 

Somehow, I have made it this far without raising the most offensive topic of "Into the Woods," which is Johnny Depp's uber-creepy Big Bad Wolf. Yes, I get that he is a villainous character, but was it necessary for his villainy to carry a child-rape subtext? Just take a moment to ponder these lyrics and tell me I'm overreacting: 

"Look at that flesh, pink and plump. Hello Little Girl" 

"Tender and fresh, (Sniff), not one lump. Hello Little Girl" 

Later, Red Riding Hood herself sings a song that underlines the awful subtext and takes it a step further on the creep-meter:

"He showed me many beautiful things" (What did he show her? Flowers? That's just about flowers?) "Then he bared his teeth and I got really scared, well excited and scared." (Excited? Why would she be excited? She's about to be killed in the surface context, so why is she excited?)

"But he drew me close, and he swallowed me down, down a dark slimy path where lies secrets I never want to know." (What exactly is the context of that?) 

Later Red Riding Hood sings about how she should have listened to her mother and never strayed from her path. The implication: What happened to Red was her own fault. Accuse me of overreacting all you want, but the Red Riding Hood story has long been contextualized as being about a young girl's sexual coming of age. Just ask the French.

Putting aside the creep-tastic Wolf, you still have an ungainly mess of a movie that doesn't know how to end and is overpopulated with unnecessary characters and nonsensical talk-singing. "Into the Woods' ' is a shrill disaster of a fairy-tale musical; one of the worst movies of 2014.