I suppose every new animated feature has to have a comic relief side-kick that follows in the footsteps of Scrat of “Ice Age” fame. In Walt Disney Studio’s Frozen that sidekick appears to be a snowman named Olaf. His purpose is unclear (other than to make the kids laugh) but from the synopsis of the…
As a result of their parent’s separation, 12-year-old Koichi (Koki Maeda) lives in Kagoshima with his mother (Nene Ohtsuka) and grandparents (Kirin Kiki and Isao Hashizume) while his younger brother Ryunosuke (Oshiro Maeda) lives with his intermittently employed musician father (Jo Adigiri) in Fukuoka. Both talk to each other daily on their cell phone but…
DreamWorks Animation, often the poor stepbrother to Pixar, has had a pretty good run over the past two years with “Kung Fu Panda 2,” “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” and “Rise of the Guardians.” That trend continues with The Croods, a wild, colorful tale about the end of the Neanderthals, continental drift, plate tectonics and…
L. Frank Baum’s much loved colorful Land of Oz has recently seen a resurgence thanks to the success of the current Broadway show “Wicked.” His novels have also seen many popular film adaptations such as with “Return to Oz” in 1985 and more famously “The Wizard of Oz” back in 1939. Now in 2013, director…
You’d think they could have at least come up with better name for it. I’m talking about Sony Pictures Animation’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 for which the first trailer has been made available for viewing. In similar fashion to “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” the sequel pits inventor, Flint Lockwood (Bill…
Well, it is nice to see Billy Crystal back on the screen again (the last time being an uncredited role in 2009’s “Tooth Fairy“), but the pretention and lack of very many funny moments in the newest “family comedy” from 20th Century Fox swamps whatever humor is created from Crystal’s fish-out-of-water grandfather character in Parental…
Someone poke my smurfing eyes out. Please. That’s really all I have to say after watching the, putting it nicely, lackluster full trailer for Sony Pictures Animation’s The Smurfs 2. In it Gargamel, now a famous magician in Paris, conjures up two “Naughties” to corrupt the wholesome Smurfette in an effort to get back home….
