Tag Archives: Disney

Kingdom Hearts Is Meant for Final Fantasy Fans, Not for Disney Fans

I don’t think Kingdom Hearts was made for folks like me, who’ve watched a lifetime of Disney films but barely played any of the Final Fantasy games. It feels much more like a Final Fantasy game dressed up in Disney drag than like an interactive Disney tale built around the Final Fantasy structure.

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Moana Is a Cheery Throwback to the Heights of the Disney Renaissance

There is a little bit of magic in Disney films of a certain stripe, when the music swells and the counterpoint kicks in and the protagonist hears the call to adventure and your cold, icy heart can’t help but melt just a little as you feel the hero’s same pull toward the horizon and mix of excitement and trepidation over the sheer possibilities. Moana is filled to the brim with these moments, the kind that make the most of the hero’s journey the films sets its eponymous protagonist on. And it capitalizes on Moana’s unique combination of self-confidence, internal conflict, and gnawing uncertainty, that give her layers and make her a compelling figure.

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A Christmas Carol (2009): Jim Carrey, Robert Zemeckis, and a Mishmash of Tones


Every modern adaptation of A Christmas Carol starts out at a disadvantage. No matter the strengths of its take on the material, no matter what unique flourishes or embellishments it adds, no matter how novel its interpretation, the new version will inevitably be compared to its hallowed predecessor, so ingrained in the public consciousness that it has become a part of the cherished lore of the holiday season.

I am speaking, of course, of the classic 1992 film, The Muppet Christmas Carol, starring Michael Caine and Kermit the Frog, in the production that forever proved that Dickens’s work is best realized in shades of well-trained British grump and felt.

Despite working in the shadow of that seminal work, writer and director Robert Zemeckis, of Back to the Future fame, brought Dickens’s story to life anew in his motion-captured retelling of the classic tale. The film stars Jim Carrey as the curmudgeonly Ebenezer Scrooge, Gary Oldman as his put-upon employee Bob Cratchit, and Colin Firth, Robin Wright, Bob Hoskins, and Cary Elwes who, alongside Carrey and Oldman, play multiple roles in filling out the film’s cast. While Zemeckis assuredly puts his own stamp on the source material, in the end, his interpretation is a muddled one.

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Why “How Were They Built?” Is the Dumbest Criticism of Pixar’s Cars

Cars is Pixar's seventh feature film and was released in 2006.

Cars is easily Pixar’s most poorly-received film. The movie, featuring a world of anthropomorphic automobiles, completely rankled fans of the studio. These detractors view Cars as a rare misstep amidst Pixar’s otherwise unblemished offerings. While movies like A Bug’s Life may have underwhelmed, and those like Ratatouille flown under the radar, no Pixar film has engendered as strong a negative response from the faithful as Cars. With a sequel coming out soon, these doubters have renewed and redoubled their critiques.

Personally, I generally enjoyed the film as a bit of harmless popcorn entertainment, and I believe that Pixar is, in many ways, a victim of its own success. The studio has a remarkable track record of releasing uniformly outstanding feature films, from its initial offering of Toy Story to classics like Finding Nemo to recent triumphs like Up. When held up against these lofty brethren, Cars status as merely “pretty good,” makes it seem overly lacking by comparison. It’s a solid, but unspectacular film, doomed by the company it keeps.

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