This week, there doesn’t look to be much on offer in the video store for the JOE man, but a closer look reveals a couple of films that, despite their target audiences of 12 years of age, also offer plenty for the more mature viewer.
How to Train Your Dragon
This might come as a surprise to you but if it wasn’t for the brilliant Toy Story 3, the best animated film of the year would easily go to this unexpected gem from DreamWorks.
Based on the popular series of kids books from Cressida Cowell, How to Train Your Dragon is the simple tale of Hiccup, a weedy, geeky young Viking who yearns to emulate the rest of his village as they go about the business of dragon slaying. To this end he uses his talent for engineering to bring down a near-mythical Night Fury dragon but discovers there is more to the scaly beasts than he has been left to believe.
On the surface the film is nothing you haven’t seen before, with the usual kid-friendly moral story of how it’s important to value our differences and blah, blah, blah.
Very quickly, however, the film turns into something vastly more enjoyable thanks to some straight up decent storytelling which, unlike so many animated films, is devoid of fart gags and unnecessary pop culture references and which actually manages to deliver likable characters.
The key to film is the relationship between Hiccup (winningly voiced by geek of the moment Jay Baruchel) and the captured dragon called Toothless. The film never once loses its focus on these two as they go from untrusting enemies to dependable partners via a series of thrilling flight sequences and well-judged humour.
Toothless himself is a fantastic creation and manages to be both endearing while remaining a wild beast. The other dragons in the film are also spectacularly realised with each species given their own distinct personality.
The film is also unafraid to put its characters in real peril and there is a genuine sense of danger in the huge action scene at the film’s climax which actually has you fearing for our hero’s lives.
Obviously the Pixar films are still in a league of their own, but if this latest effort from DreamWorks is anything to go by, it won’t be long before Woody and Buzz have some real competition.
The Karate Kid
What a relief it is, that this is one of those rare remakes that actually works both as a retread of a much-loved classic and as an enjoyable film on its own terms.
The original Karate Kid is part of the pop culture of an entire generation and even with the rose-tinted specs removed, it is still a movie that works for just about any audience.
This new update works because they have taken the theme of the original and almost nothing else and have then wrapped their own story around it, thus successfully giving the film the room to carve out its own personality.
The action this time around has been moved to China and tells the story of young Dre Parker as he struggles to adjust to life in the Beijing. The film follows the original’s template as he befriends his building’s janitor who just so happens to be a kung-fu master. Life Lessons are learned and bullies are given their comeuppance.
The biggest difference to the remake is that they have gone much younger with Jayden Smith and the fish-out-of-water premise is a degree more subtle.
Smith is an engaging presence and clearly worked very hard during the fight scenes, but there is a feeling that perhaps he is a bit too young to appeal to older audiences and there are a lot of scenes dealing with 11-year-old issues that kind of drag things down.
Thankfully Jackie Chan is on hand to balance things out and he really does shine here. He delivers a fantastic dramatic performance as the grief stricken tutor that is miles away from his usual Chaplinesque buffoonery. His chemistry with Smith is spot on too and when the pair are on screen together the film is fantastic and at times quite emotional.
As you might expect, the training and fight scenes are well executed, with Smith showing some impressive skills and Chan delivering a delightful fight sequence where he literally makes some bullies beat themselves up.
Despite all these pluses, the film is nearly two and a half hours long and could have been trimmed down by a half hour quite easily. Another issue is that the films almost like a promo for the Chinese tourism with Beijing painted as a perfect city devoid of poverty or even any kind of pollution.
One particular niggle for us was that the evil head of the local dojo just wasn’t evil enough and we think a boo-hiss villain could have enlivened things a bit more.
Don’t let any of this put you off a perfectly enjoyable remake that does no disservice to the original whilst managing to be a decent movie in its own right.
V: Season 1
Aliens. It doesn’t seem to matter what they look like, they always seem to have it in for the human race. Whether it is Geiger’s Alien shoving toothy foetuses down our throats or massive armadas laying waste to our cities, it seems that any encounters of the third kind will inevitable end up going badly for us.
So it comes as little surprise when the aliens in sci-fi show V start to do all sorts of nasty thing to us as they go from peaceful visitors to an underhanded invasion horde. The funny thing is that you think people would have learned that space people are not to be trusted, even if they are as pretty as the ones on show here.
Predictable is the key word here as there is nothing you haven’t seen here before complete with city sized spaceships, alien imposters and plucky human freedom fighters.
The show is based on the clunky 80s series which saw a fascist race of aliens worm their way into positions of power while disguising their scaly hides with the appearance of perfectly toothed models.
The new versions is just as clunky and even though it has a bigger budget, it creaks under the strain of poor acting and the kind of plotting that would make even the average soap seem like a study in plausibility.
The cast is easy on the eye, especially Morena Baccarin as the devious alien leader Ana and Joel Gretsch as priest-turned-soldier Jack Landry serves up the closest thing the show has to a relatable character.
Everything else is just boring and will test your patience as you can see where the show is going to go at every turn.
There could have been some interesting things said about the nature of power and blind faith but the writers never got there, instead relying on cheap thrills and contrived plot twists. The worst part is that the show has already been granted a second season, which is just nuts when you consider the amount of excellent sci-fi shows such as the dearly missed Firefly that struggle to make it past their first seasons. Avoid this and hopefully they might reconsider.
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