GRITZ Movie Reviews: Horton, Doomsday, Bank Job, and More
Posted: Mar 17, 2008HORTON HEARS A WHO
This was one of the first books I remember reading back in first grade. Like most kids, I was fascinated by the rhyming fantasy world of Dr. Seuss. Truth be told, I still am. I remember seeing a 2-D cartoon of Horton back years ago, which was pretty cute, but the new high tech Horton is an absolute delight. Voiced by Jim Carey, already a Seuss veteran having played The Grinch, Horton is very funny, as are all of the other characters, including all the Who’s in Who-ville living on a speck atop a clover.
Carol Burnette voices the purple kangaroo who stands by her motto “if you can’t hear it or see it, it doesn’t exist.” There seems to be a lot of religious metaphor in the story, as the Mayor of Who-ville tries in vain to convince the citizens of the validity of the “being in the sky who speaks to him.” All the while, Horton the elephant is trying to convince all of the animals in the jungle that he has discovered a whole world living inside a speck. But lest we get too serious, this is one funny animated feature. I enjoyed every minute of it, and you will too, no matter if you are an elephant, no matter if you are a Who.
FIVE STARS
DOOMSDAY
What do you get when you mix Mad Max with 28 Days Later and a little bit of every apocalypse movie ever made? You get the creepy world of Doomsday. While almost everything in this movie has been done before, except maybe that bizarre knights of the round table scene, they do manage to crank up the thrills with non stop chases, massive blood letting, and some major sicko neo- Nazi punk rock bad asses. I liked it, but be warned, there are scenes here that make Saw look like Bambi.
THREE & ONE HALF STARS
BABE WATCH - Mona Mitra is hot, even when she's kicking ass and taking names.
THE BANK JOB
I really loved this British bank robbery flick based on a true story. A rag tag group of misfits get together and formulate a plan to break into the safe deposit vault by digging a tunnel underneath two stores and coming up Bugs Bunny style right in the middle of rich city. Good acting and a good script set in the 1970's.
BABE WATCH- Saffron Burrows, hot seventies-style babe.
MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY
I am in love with Amy Adams. Who isn’t? After she won our hearts in Disney’s Enchanted, and now she plays a Marilyn Monroe type actress in 1939 London who hires a down and out nanny (Francis McDormand) to be her personal assistant. Miss Pettigrew helps her juggle her many boyfriends, and eventually helps her find true love. Somewhere along the way, Miss Pettigrew herself finds true love.
FOUR STARS
BABE WATCH- Amy Adams, always enchanting.
COLLEGE ROAD TRIP
Martin Lawrence stars in his first ever Disney movie, a family film that is funny, but not hilarious. Donny Osmond does an admirable job of playing the annoying father of an even more annoying daughter. Lawrence is trying to get his daughter to her college, sort of, while learning to be less of a control freak. The pig gets five stars. The movie....
TWO STARS
The problem a lot of critics are having with this film is that they are trying to view it as history, which is just not what the writers were going for. The narrator even says at the beginning of the film that the legends have been repeated so many times over the year it’s hard to know what happened and what was exaggerated. Taken in that context, the super sized saber tooth tigers and wooly mammoths as well as time displaced things like ships and wagons don’t seem to matter. Lots of action, sort of like 300. I liked it much more than I thought I would going in.
THREE STARS
All Reviews by Michael Buffalo Smith
Comments
coconut1955 says...
I loved The Bank Job and agree Saffron is a hottie. Yes I am a woman but I admire beauty in other girls as well.
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