Reviewing
DVDs literally provides a mixed bag. When Disney offers
up each month's releases, it's easy to jump at something
animated, and then realize, oh man, the kids are going to
want to see that thing, the movie that you know in
your heart just isn't going to stand up when you're in your
forties, but is like Citizen Kane when you're in
pre-school. (This explains why in the past two years, I've
probably seen The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl
more times than any other movie.)
Then
Disney also provides strange bedfellows. Today I'm going
to cover the January/February releases for kids, but know
that at least two of these DVDs came in the mail with Gone
Baby Gone, and thankfully my kids didn't get
a glimpse of that.
DVD
reviews also offer a chance to catch up on movies that I
should have seen but didn't. When The Game Plan screened
for reviewers, Marin Carpenter reviewed it for us and apparently
my family snuck off and saw it without me. While I applaud
my children for appreciating the brilliance of Dwayne Johnson,
I figured ah, well, I pretty much know how that movie was
going to play out anyway.
After
going through the DVD release, I'd say I was half-right.
As per Marin's review,
The Game Plan echoes much of Disney's live-action
family comedies from the sixties and early seventies, only
instead of a place-kicking mule, you have The Rock as the
ass.
It's
a star turn in terms of over-the-top physical comedy, and
no wonder that kids love it. Even though you can predict
almost every turn of the plot, it at least has more depth
than the average Disney Channel sitcom - which, to my horror,
I discovered Dwayne Johnson spent a little time cameo-ing
his way through last Fall. Johnson isn't afraid to look
absolutely ridiculous, and it's that quality along with
his commanding screen presence that continues to tick me
off that he somehow isn't a top box-office draw.
Then
again, The Game Plan isn't high film-making, full
of emotional payoffs that somehow miss the set-ups, and
then vice-versa. How do you make a movie about a run to
the Superbowl without mentioning either that event or showing
much actual football? The answer is here, and in the deleted
scenes, all those football set-ups actually exist, so if
you're very careful and clever with your DVD programming,
you could possibly edit back in scenes that make Joe "The
King" Kingman's professional growth make sense.
The
other extras pay heavy homage to the sports fan, covering
(if speciously) Johnson's training to be a quarterback (he
did have a brief college football career) and making liberal
use of Disney's ESPN connection. It's not high art by any
stretch, but The Game Plan at least succeeds as being
the kind of movie that the family can watch together, while
Dad quietly fears his daughter is going to drag him into
performing some kind of bizarre ballet ritual.
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On the
other hand, Snow Buddies is best viewed when you want
your children hypnotized while you take a nap. Foolishly,
I thought this was a sequel to Snow Dogs, and wondered
why Cuba Gooding, Jr. decided he had too much dignity to return
for another round. It's possible there may be a pedigreed
connection between the two, in that both involve huskies and
dog sledding. In actuality, this is the fourth (?) in the
Air Bud franchise, which has evolved from literally
a feature-length "Stupid Pet Trick" to a heartwarming family
comedy with talking puppies.
No one can resist
talking puppies.
Actually, this
movie should be review proof, and to tear into its lack
of logic just makes me mean old dad. I'm absolutely positive
that in my young childhood, my parents had better things
to do than sit with me and watch Wonderful World of Disney
offerings like Sammy the Way-Out Seal or Biscuit-Eater,
but they sat there anyway.
Suffice to say,
though it's heavy-handed with its moral messages in the
way that only a talking animal movie can be, Snow Buddies
kept a group of young children absolutely enthralled at
my house, and though my youngest was exhausted from a long
day of playing hard like a golden retriever puppy, he slapped
himself silly to stay awake rather than go to bed without
finding out what happens to them all. Which is almost as
cute as a talking golden retriever puppy…
For him, I also
got Power Rangers: Operation Overdrive volumes 4
and 5. The Power Rangers phenomenon had only lightly brushed
my house until a few weeks ago. Now the mania is in, well,
overdrive.
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This series
marks the 15th Anniversary of the venerable franchise, and
volume 4 includes a two-part episode called "Once a Ranger"
that brings back several characters from previous incarnations
of the show. Until this, I didn't even know that it had a
loose continuity, with different rubber-suited villains threatening
the Earth each season, and a new group of college-age students
discovering new power sources to become rangers.
It's not as
badly acted as I thought it would be, certainly a cut above
the English-dubbed Ultraman, Space Giants
and Spectreman shows that I loved as a kid. And though
a lot of the comic relief is overplayed, it's not insulting
to the intelligence of its kid audience. Plus it's allowing
my son to understand the strange thrill of watching monsters
without being terrified by them, since he knows a brightly
colored hero will defeat it in the end.
In the absence
of a show like the 1960's Batman, I'm grateful for
Power Rangers. Good and bad are clear-cut. The villains
get punished without being killed. The fight scenes consist
largely of striking poses and flying around. So it's not
meant for me - every generation deserves a silly action
series of its own. (Though I'm still stumping for Fox and
Warner to get over it and deliver us Adam West's Batman.)
The discs have
just a few special features, and despite the warning that
any commentary on them do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint
of the studio, there's nothing controversial here. A look
"behind-the-scenes" doesn't break character, instead having
each ranger talk about his or her personal growth. Each
volume (let's presume 1-3 includes this) has a "Power Ranger
Training Session," consisting of trivia questions that at
the end of volume 5 will qualify a young viewer as an alternate
ranger, should disaster strike one of the main five. I'm
not telling you where I'm keeping my zord, but it's ready.
The
Game Plan (Widescreen Edition)
Snow
Buddies
Power
Rangers - Operation Overdrive, Vol. 4
Power
Rangers Operation Overdrive - Vol. 5
