BEFORE: OK, so this is only the second movie I managed to watch at the theater where I work part-time, the first one was "House of Gucci". I've passed on so many, because I'm not really there to watch movies, I'm there first and foremost as a house manager, and it's honestly rare when there's a movie I want to see AND that movie also lines up with my self-imposed rules about linking. Generally speaking, if I don't have a slot earmarked for it, I don't sit in the theater and watch (there also has to be another house manager covering the lobby and office, or I can't do it - or I need to check the lobby every 15 or 20 minutes, like I did for "House of Gucci".)
All the guild screenings that I passed on - but I've made up for it by streaming most of those movies, like "Being the Ricardos", and "Tick, Tick...Boom!" and "Vivo" - in June I'm going to watch "The Lost Daughter", then in July I'll be watching a bunch of the films I didn't watch during DocFest, like "Jagged" and "Adrienne" and "Dean Martin: King of Cool", that's the plan anyway. Then I'll just need to track down "Belfast", "Cyrano", "Licorice Pizza" and "The Matrix Resurrections" after they start streaming, and I'll be all caught up. Who am I kidding, I'm never going to be all caught up.
Awkwafina carries over from "Swan Song"
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales" (Movie #4,000)
THE PLOT: Several reformed yet misunderstood criminal animals attempt to become good, with some disastrous results along the way.
AFTER: This is a film based on a series of children's books, and I really should be keeping better notes about that sort of thing. At the end of this year I'll be giving out bogus awards, and it wouldn't be too weird to give a prizes for "Best movie based on a children's book" as well as "Best movie based on a book for adults" and maybe also "Best movie based on a comic book" - assuming I choose to break things down that way, of course. I guess we'll find out together.
But this is all very clever stuff here in "The Bad Guys". Of course it all riffs off of heist movies, it's kind of like "Ocean's Eleven" for viewers who actually are eleven. Which is kind of weird because most kids don't seem to have an affinity for heist movies, most of which are R-rated - but kids DO know fairy tales, and they know that when a character is a spider or a snake or has a name like Big Bad Wolf, that character is up to no good. And those characters themselves act as if they've been pigeon-holed into the villain roles, but they seem to be enjoying the criminal lifestyle - I imagine it's prettty profitable - so where's the impetus to change?
The desire to achieve, to be better, is imposed on the Big Bad Wolf when he accidentally helps an elderly woman, he keeps her from falling down while he's picking her pocket at a gala - and this leads her to scratch his head and tell him he's a "Good Boy", causing his inner canine instincts to come out, his tail to start wagging and a strange feeling (to him, anyway) of desire to do more good things, just to have that feeling again. Sure, it's dopamine, it's addictive, and it's released by the brain's reward center, all of this makes sense on a chemical level at least.
Mr. Wolf ends up playing both sides for the majority of the movie, at the same time he's trying to do good, or at least better, he's planning another big heist with his gang, they want to steal the Golden Dolphin Award, which is being given to philanthropist guinea pig Professor Rupert Marmalade IV, who believes that everyone deserves a second chance, that all criminals can be rehabilitated and trained to do good things. With the approval of Governor Diane Foxington, the Professor is given charge over the whole criminal animal gang to reform them to do good deeds.
Wolf reveals his master plan-within-a-plan to the other members of the gang (Mr. Snake, Ms. Tarantula, Mr. Shark and Mr. Piranha) - they'll go along with the training only because it puts them close enough to try and steal the award AGAIN, which then puts Mr. Wolf in the hot-seat again, he could go either way, pull off the biggest heist or call it off and get that rush again for doing something noble. Only there are still a few more reversals to come, and not everybody is who they appear to be - this time I figured out who the real criminal mastermind was, before the film could reveal it.
This is a weird fictional world, because it's not completely made of animals living in cities, wearing clothes like people, in the style of "Zootopia" - somehow it's a mostly human world with only a FEW animals doing this, so, umm, which is it, a human world or an animal world? And if it's a human world with a few talking animals, why doesn't that freak out any of the humans? They just accept it like it's the most natural thing in the world. PLUS in this world that's part human and part talking animal, there are also non-talking pets, like a very prominent cat and about a million non-talking guinea pigs. How come only ONE guinea pig wears clothes and has the ability to talk? Am I over-thinking this or did some screenwriter not think about this enough? The world in an animated film is usually weird enough, this just makes it super weird, right?
Also starring the voices of Sam Rockwell (last seen in "Trust Me"), Marc Maron (last seen in "Duck Butter"), Craig Robinson (last seen in "Zeroville"), Anthony Ramos (last seen in "In the Heights"), Richard Ayoade (last heard in "Soul"), Zazie Beetz (last seen in "Geostorm"), Alex Borstein (last seen in "The Lookout"), Lilly Singh (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451" (2018)), Barbara Goodson, Dina Morrone, Michael Godere (last seen in "After Class"), Walt Dohrn (last heard in "Trolls 2: World Tour")
RATING: 7 out of 10 orange prison jumpsuits
No comments:
Post a Comment