FamilyFilms Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Of course, "family film" usually translates into "kiddie film," with the parents and older siblings left to grit their teeth and endure while the tykes laugh at the singing chipmunks. Rare is the film that is truly entertaining for the entire family -- which is why I'm always excited about a new Pixar project, since they're the only ones who pull it off regularly.

Pixar's Up (due May 29) is this year's entry, and there's no reason to suspect it will be any less admirable than the company's previous work. Coraline (Feb. 6), from the director of Nightmare Before Christmas, looks like it could be an imaginatively macabre treat for grown-ups and kids. There's also a Harry Potter movie due in July, though that series becomes darker and less kid-oriented as it progresses, so you might want to leave certain younger family members at home.

Here's as complete a list as I can muster for what family-oriented flicks are coming in 2009, including live-action, animation, and whatever the Jonas Brothers are.

January: Hotel for Dogs, Inkheart.
February: Coraline, Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience.
March: Race to Witch Mountain (Disney + The Rock = $$$), Monsters vs. Aliens.
April: Hannah Montana: The Movie.
May: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Up.
June: Imagine That (warning: contains Eddie Murphy).
July: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (is this a prequel? How are the dinosaurs dawning after the mammals?), G-Force, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
August: None, unless you count G.I. Joe, which is based on a line of children's dolls.
September: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
October: Toy Story (3D re-release), Where the Wild Things Are, Astro Boy.
November: A Christmas Carol (one of those crazy 3D motion-capture things, like Polar Express), The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Old Dogs (aka John Travolta and Robin Williams remake Daddy Day Care).
December: Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel (GET IT?!!!?!?!?), The Princess and the Frog.

A couple of people have been griping about Wall-E director Andrew Stanton's refusal to admit that his cute little movie about a robot in love actually contains some pretty upfront green politics, but there's a far more polarizing reference in the film than its harmless pro-environment agenda. It's no major plot spoiler to reveal that, about an hour or so into the story, Fred Willard appears in a recorded message as the mysterious president of Earth's corporate government and orders the ship's captain (Jeff Garlin) to "stay the course." Wait, we've heard this one before: It was the go-to statement used by the Bush administration for about three years or so when describing its modus operandi in Iraq (the term was abandoned when staying the course started to sound like a bad idea). In Wall-E, the context is quite different -- it's an order to not do something, rather than take action -- but hard to ignore nonetheless.

Certain critics with (surprise!) conservative slants have taken issue with this. At Dirty Harry's Place, John Nolte expresses his disappointment in the first paragraph of his review: "Have we lost the wonderful studio who brought us The Incredibles and Ratatouille to Bush Derangement Syndrome?" he asks. New York Post critic Kyle Smith picked up the rant and decided to write his own, even though he hadn't seen the film yet: "This kind of crack, lame as it is, also breaks the spell of the movie by hurling you out of the theater and back into reality."

"You know what, Ted?"

"What, Frank?"

"There's been a whole bunch of them sequels lately - we got that Hulk and another Narnia, heck, even another Indiana Jones movie..."

"Yep."

"...and you know what I've been waiting for another one of?"

"What's that, Frank?"

"A Cinderella Story."

"Huh?"

In theory, those who write about film are supposed to enter a movie without any pre-conceived notions or bias and proceed to give it a fair shake. However, it becomes exceedingly difficult for one not to eye with suspicion the looming threat of a Raja Gosnell-helmed talking animal bonanza and consequently find their sense of reason rendered stone-cold ...

... which is why it pleases me to report that we as a society have staved off the likes of Beverly Hills Chihuahua for a whole week, as the Disney flick has officially been bumped back from September 26th to October 3rd. Just in case you good readers find this all a mite irrational, might I direct you toward Weinberg's deservedly righteous rant whilst I again praise the heavens for allowing us poor souls an additional seven days with which to gird our loins against the potential awfulness of this film.

In related news, the Richard Gere/Diane Lane romance Nights in Rodanthe has followed an inverse path, moving itself up from October 3rd to September 26th. If October informally qualifies as the month for horror, then thank goodness my Halloween is getting off to just as frightening a start as the prospect of sitting through a Nicholas Sparks adaptation.

[Mercy in the grand scheme of things courtesy of Box Office Mojo.]

If you wondered when it came out if there needed to be a third Shrek film, all you need to do is ask the kids. Adults may be growing tired of the clever plays on modernity -- mascot contests, bubblegum-blowing teeny-boppers, endless takes on modern store names made to sound "fairy-taleish" -- but kids never seem to tire of the toilet humor that permeates the Shrek series.

The advantage of making a film with ogres and a donkey at the center is that you can acutally (kind of) justify the endless stream of projectile vomiting and fart jokes, and my own kids, at least, never seem to tire of them. And when you have the film on DVD, well, they can rewind to watch the baby spewing green-pea vomit out of the baby carriage over, and over, and over again. So, rejoice, parents, Shrek the Third is here.

Actually, for a third film in a series, Shrek the Third isn't a terrible effort. While it's not as strong as the first two films (the second was surprisingly good for a sequel) and at times it feels that the filmmakers are really reaching by stretching the franchise to support a third film, if you compare it to, say, the dreadful Happily N'Ever After, it's pretty tolerable. Any time you can find a kids' film that the adults in the household can stomach watching multiple times, that's a good thing -- but you might want to make sure to have Shrek and Shrek 2 on hand as well.