Jurassic World: Rebirth

Year 18, Day 101 - 4/11/26 - Movie #5,300

BEFORE: All right, this Movie Year is officially one-third over - umm, right after I watch this one, that is. I didn't even mention I've been operating sick the last few days. I called out "sick" last weekend for one day (I wasn't sick, but had a different valid excuse, sort of) and then karma's just going to take it out on me, by giving me a real cold. Right? I worked last Tuesday and wore a MASK for the first time in forever, it's not really a good look if you're serving food or beer at a sports game and you're coughing all over the place. By Thursday I didn't feel I needed the mask any more, it felt like the cold was going away, but really it was digging down and planning to stay a while. I'm coughing more now, and my already irregular sleep schedule is now completely nuts, because I can't sleep when I'm supposed to, so how the hell can I finish a movie?  This would only be a problem if I had four theater shifts coming up in the next week, and two of them had early morning starts... I may have to skip a movie day here or there if I'm still feeling under the weather. 

Ed Skrein carries over from "I Used to Be Famous". It's a big century-mark today so I'm landing it on the latest installment of one of the biggest movie franchises ever

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Jurassic World: Dominion" (Movie #4,226)

THE PLOT: Five years after "Dominion", an expedition braves isolated equatorial regions to extract DNA from three massive prehistoric creatures for a groundbreaking medical breakthrough.

AFTER: Anything in the "Jurassic Park" or "Jurassic World" franchise re-confirms the "Reductio ad Absurdum" idea, where we all tune in to see everything go wrong. Think about it, if they built an amusement park with dinosaurs genetically grown from million-year-old DNA and everybody was safe and happy and have a good time, that would somehow feel like it was just HALF of a movie, right? But then even after things went horribly wrong, they rebuilt and re-opened that theme part a couple times, didn't they? And people WENT BACK for some reason, knowing there was a non-zero chance they would somehow get eaten up by dinos. Like, come on, fool me once and shame on you, but fool me twice, that really should be on me. If people died going on the "It's a Small World" ride at Disneyland, and they closed it, fixed it, re-opened it and then MORE people died on "It's a Small World", would you go on that ride? Not if you were smart. 

So in at least two or three of the movies, they re-opened Jurassic Park and we're supposed to believe that people came back because the appeal of live dinosaurs was still there, despite the danger. Umm, sure, but right now people are boycotting a movie theater chain just because their ticket app or their food app isn't working. If customers do not have a good experience, they will NOT come back again, this was part of my training at the stadium where I'm working now. They showed us the results of a poll where people who said they would not return to the stadium were asked WHY, and according to this poll, 57% of those people said they would not return because they had a negative encounter with an unhelpful employee. What's funny to me is that 0% of the people said they would not return because the food and ticket prices were too high, which is what I suspect people really would say. (My guess is that this was not an option given to them on the survey.)  Where "Jurassic Park" is concerned, they surveyed the people who were eaten by dinosaurs if they would return to the park again, and well, they're still waiting for a response. But thanks to the poll, corporate believes that 0% of the people who would not return said that was because they were eaten, so really, no need to improve on the safety issues. 

The most recent sequel neatly sidesteps this dilemma by NOT showing any of the island park venues re-opening, THANK GOD. Instead this depicts a world where the dinosaurs who live in most parts of the Earth are dying off en masse, perhaps it's a problem with the air or the unstable nature of the cloning process, or maybe it's some kind of correction the Earth is taking because it knows that the natural order has been messed with. But there is still a zone around the equator where dinosaurs are NOT dying, so it's maybe got something to do with the climate or the amount of daylight or the distance from the poles, who can say? Anyway there's a small number of countries and islands that can support dino life as a result, so thankfully everybody knows to stay AWAY from that part of the world, like even families on a personal boat trip know to steer clear of the equator, so there's zero chance of any civilians passing into the danger zone...

Instead, a pharmaceutical company puts a crack team together to go back to one of the old island testing grounds of InGen or BioSyn, whichever, because they need to get fresh genetic material from living dinosaurs, as they believe they can use this to create a cure for heart disease and save millions of human lives. Well, sure, with all of the disasters that befell those other two companies, I guess it's believable that none of them saved any of their genetic material, or any of their notes. Or perhaps it's a legal thing, if they went through the proper channels they'd have to reimburse those companies or the shareholders or whatever, plus it would be a whole legal thing, but if they just went down there and got the samples themselves, like they were just out there in nature, you could make a case that material would be public domain, or taking it would at least be a lot less prosecutable. And the mission will be quick and easy, as long as there's not a family on a personal boat trip that crosses into the danger zone for some reason. 

Come on, admit it, even in this new scenario, if they put this crack team together, took the boat down to the island, used their fancy technology to collect the samples, got in, got out and nobody got hurt, the movie would be like fifteen minutes long and YOU would feel like you got ripped off. So you paid your $18.50 to sit in a movie theater and you WANT to see things go south, you WANT to see people get eaten by dinosaurs, sure you want the mission to succeed, but you WANT it to be very difficult, because only then will you feel like you got your money's worth, that you've been properly entertained to the legal limit. The greater the danger, the greater the payoff, and things really have not changed a bit since the days of Roman gladiators, now, have they? 

So, really, it's same shit, different island - the team has to travel to Ile Saint-Hubert, which we're being told was a testing lab, it's where the original park tried to come up with some new dinosaurs, because people were getting BORED with the old ones. People, right? You bring back a bunch of species from billions of years ago, major scientific miracle, and after people see the T. Rex and the raptors and the giant apatosauruses, people got BORED. OK, the people that didn't get eaten got BORED. I can't really tell if this is meta or not, because what we're talking about here is franchise fatigue, and it's being referenced as a problem in the fictional theme parks, so you have to wonder if it isn't also a problem in real life with the "Jurassic Park/World" films themselves. They showed us T. Rexes and raptors and the giant apatosauruses, and then where do you GO after that? Are you not entertained enough? 

So now we have to focus this film on Mosasaurus, that giant aquatic dinosaur, the Titanosaurus which maybe wasn't even ever a real dino, and the Quetzalcoatlus, which was like the largest flying thing that ever lived on Earth. Sure, the dinos are getting bigger, but so is the danger... to make things even worse, this turns out to be the island where the company was making new hybrid dinosaurs, you know, to get people back to the theme park to see new dinosaurs that never even existed in the first place, this will surely fight the franchise fatigue both within the movie and IRL. So now we get the Mutadon, which is a mix between the raptor and the pterosaur (sure, flying raptors, what could possibly go wrong there?) and the Distortus Rex, which is a mix of the T. Rex and the xenomorph from "Alien". Sure, green light, let's run with that.

The Distortus Rex sure looks like a rancor to me, the creature kept underneath Jabba the Hutt's throne room in "Return of the Jedi". The tip-off was how it held that guy and bit him in half, like he was a corn dog or something. I mean, I guess if you're going to steal, you steal from the best, but do you have to do that so blatantly? 

I firmly believe we're past the point of worrying about diminishing returns with this franchise, like this most recent film did get an Oscar nomination for visual effects, but it did NOT win and it did NOT get any other nominations. The only people still watching these films are the visual effects junkies, not people who love a good story or seek out great acting - if you took a survey asking why people went to see this movie 40% would say it was for the effects, maybe another 30% for the adrenaline rush and probably 20% went out of habit. Maybe 10% of people just had nothing better to do on a Friday night. But really, it's time to cut the losses and stop trying. 

To prove my point, there are only 20 cast members - I remember when a "Jurassic Park" film had a cast of thousands, or at least hundreds, so clearly they're in desperate straits and trying to save money wherever they can. That's a sinking ship, if you ask me. My fear is that this latest film is just the start of another trilogy, however, because this DID make money, with a budget of $180 million and a worldwide gross of $869 million. So yeah, there will be more. 

Directed by Gareth Edwards (director of "The Creator" and "Godzilla")

Also starring Scarlett Johansson (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Rupert Friend (ditto), Mahershala Ali (last heard in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Jonathan Bailey (last seen in "The Young Messiah"), Manuel Garcia-Ruffo (last seen in "A Man Called Otto"), Luna Blaise, David Iacono (last seen in "Joker"), Audrina Miranda, Philippine Velge, Bechir Sylvain, Adam Loxley, Niamh Finlay, Julian Edgar, Lucy Thackeray (last seen in "A Royal Night Out"), Billy Smith (last seen in "Mile 22"), Jonny Lavelle (last seen in "1917"), Frankie Verroca (last seen in "Babygirl")

RATING: 5 out of 10 bags of stale chips in the abandoned service station

I Used to Be Famous

Year 18, Day 100 - 4/10/26 - Movie #5,299

BEFORE: I had probably a few dozen roads out of "Jay Kelly", if not a hundred. So why this one? Sure, it's going to bring me via an actress who's not in a lot of films, to a film I know nothing about, but also a film with very FEW links to other movies. But one of those links is to a big blockbuster franchise film that came out last year, and that film feels kind of good to schedule on a century mark, a film number ending in 00. That's all, I can discard all the other paths out of "Jay Kelly" because I'm just looking at this one, and this one gets me to Movie #5,300 and also all the way to Mother's Day, via the Burnt Toast codicil. Today's movie could be a real stinker and I wouldn't care, because I'm looking down the road with big things to come. 

Eleanor Matsuura carries over from "Jay Kelly". 

THE PLOT: Vince, a desperate former popstar who dreams of making a comeback has an impromptu jam session with autistic young drummer Stevie that sparks an unexpected friendship between the two misunderstood musicians. 

AFTER: OK, so I've seen a few films about street musicians over the years, and today's film isn't exactly as good as "Sing Street" or "Once", but you know, that's OK, it doesn't have to be. It can just be what it is, which is a film about a former boy-band member who's now unemployed and looking to get back into the game. Look, I can sympathize, I was part of the indie animation scene in NYC for over 30 years, and now that I'm out, it's really tempting to try and find a way back in. I mean, I've got knowledge that I picked up over the years, and I've got experience, so part of me still wants to put all of that to use for someone else. But then there's a more rational part that says, "Nah, you've done that, you can do something different now, if you go back you're only going to have those same stresses all over again." So that's my plan, I'm doing something different, I'm working at a movie theater and I'm working at a stadium concession stand, and while there's stress in both places, it's a different kind of stress, and so far, so good. 

It's OK, I can be semi-retired from show business, I did so many of the things that I wanted to do, and a few things that I didn't even KNOW I wanted to do. I was interviewed for a documentary about George Lucas, I got my a cappella group to perform on a movie soundtrack, I got my name in the credits of a "Simpsons" episode and I met "Weird" Al Yankovic before a concert. I produced the only animated feature to qualify as a SAG low-budget project, I got another animated feature into the Dramatic Competition at Sundance, and I jumped through all the hoops to get one short film all the way to an Oscar nomination. Plus I ran a clean and legal operation for 30 years and only appeared before a judge ONCE (at the Department of Labor). I ran or co-ran FIVE successful Kickstarter campaigns and sold $11,000 of animation art to a French museum. Even if I'm done in that industry, that's a long and varied list of accomplishments. 30 years prior, I didn't know I could do all that - I didn't even know those were possible things to do. 

Anyway, perhaps Vincent Denham, or "Vinnie D" went through something similar as a member of Stereo Dream. He's got his memories, but he's also got regrets, most noticeably the loss of his brother, and the fact that he was on tour with the boy band when his brother died. Of course, when he starts playing music on the street and a young drummer joins in, when they develop a connection it's easy to see that Vinnie is looking to replace his brother in some way. The similarities are not subtle, Vinnie's brother Ted had some kind of learning disability, and the drummer, Stevie, is autistic. But Stevie is also very talented, so in addition to finding a brother substitute, Vinnie thinks he's found his ticket back into the recording industry. They just need to rehearse a bit, plus come up with some killer lyrics, and then they need to find some gigs. Then if Vinnie could get in touch with his old bandmate - the famous one - and maybe get turned on to a good record producer, he'd be right back where he wants to be. That's a lot of "IF's", though. 

He starts by gaining Stevie's trust (and Stevie's mother's trust) by joining the therapy drumming circle at their local church/community center. Vinnie was only there to fill his pockets full of cookies and sweets, but then he heard the drumming and thought it might lead him to that mystery kid. Well, it's a movie so of course it did. And also it's a movie so of course there's an upcoming concert that showcases local talent. And also it's a movie so of course a video of Vinnie and Stevie busking goes viral at the just the right time.  

But remember the autism - bringing a kid on the spectrum out at night to perform at a club full of people, it's loud, dark, people are drinking and being rude, potential triggers are everywhere and so it does NOT go well at first, and Stevie's mother nearly shuts down the whole process. But then while Vinnie is away visiting his mum, Stevie somehow has the confidence to go from bar to bar and find them a new gig. Yes, he's willing to go out and have conversations with strangers, which is a new and scary thing for him, but Vinnie did tell him how great it feels to be on stage and have a show go well, so maybe he could reach beyond the limits that his mother had put on him, it could happen. 

And Vinnie does manage to reach Austin, his bandmate who managed to have a long career after the boy band. And Austin's record company does want Vinnie D. to go out on tour and be the opening act - but they don't want him to bring Stevie, they've got more professional drummers that can back him up. So Vinnie does get another shot at stardom, but he's got to go back on his word to Stevie to get it, it's a horrible dilemma. I won't spoil how it ends up, though. 

I just want to mention something about autistic people - I do have a nephew on the spectrum but I want to talk about a few years back when we were making an animated feature with a co-director who lived in California. This brought us in touch with some new crew, like our sound recordist was out on the West Coast, and I think through him we met this girl who was autistic and aspired to be an animator herself. She really wanted to meet my boss, and I hadn't had much experience dealing with autistic people at the time, I didn't know how exactly it was different from ADHD or Tourette's or other conditions - honestly her brand of autism kind of reminded me of Tourette's, she just seemed to say whatever she wanted, and in her meeting with my boss she ended up spilling water on a bunch of his original art. Now I look on Instagram and I see that she's doing motivational talks about dealing with her condition and also having a career in animation. Again, not knowing all the facts here but it kind of feels a bit like she's using her diagnosis to get ahead, and that doesn't really rub me the right way. I guess you've got to use whatever life throws your way the best you can, but like if a guy with no arms wanted to become a painter, sure, go ahead, paint with your brush in your mouth if you can, but I don't really see how you turn that into a selling point to get ahead. I'll probably get in trouble for saying something like this, so I usually don't - but it's how I feel. 

Similarly, Stevie in this movie applies to a prominent school of music - and I have to wonder if his autism diagnosis was a help or a hindrance. Maybe the school was trying to fulfill some kind of quota - like they had me fill out a form about whether I have a disability, and I do - hearing loss. Hey, if it helps me keep my job then I'm also half-blind and I have arthritis and gout and ADHD and psoriasis and chronic halitosis and any other condition you can think of....

My point is, if it's wrong to NOT hire someone because they have a disability or medical condition, I think it should also be wrong to hire someone just because they have a disability or medical condition, does that make sense? 

Directed by Eddie Sternberg

Also starring Ed Skrein (last seen in "Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver"), Leo Long, Eoin Macken (last seen in "Centurion"), Lorraine Ashbourne (last heard in "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim"), Neil Stuke (last seen in "Twice Upon a Yesterday"), Kurt Egyiawan (last seen in "A Real Pain"), Stanley Morgan, Racheal Ofori (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Joplin Sibtain, Tom Bacon, Carrie Rock, Aiyana Goodfellow, Jack Minton, Marcus Fraser, Jedial Stiling, Jacob Webster, Jack Maw, Jamie Wannell, Pooja Shah (last seen in "Bend It Like Beckham"), Nicole Avraamides, Cooper Filby, Edward Hyland (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Anita Reynolds, Jessica Murrain, Jennifer Joseph, Zara Symes, Mark J. Elias, Sukey Willis, Craig Stevens, Gethin Jones, Kimberley Walsh, Alex Wood.

RATING: 6 out of 10 jammie dodgers

Jay Kelly

Year 18, Day 99 - 4/9/26 - Movie #5,298

BEFORE: I'm on the road to Mother's Day now, just about one month away. I don't want to reveal the target film just yet, but last year I had a couple featuring Sally Field, "Not Without My Daughter" and "Norma Rae", plus "End of the Road" with Queen Latifah. I may only have one this year, the one that makes the most sense in this crazy Movie Year, but who knows, there may be more. 

Lenny Henry carries over from "Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl"

THE PLOT: Famous movie actor Jay Kelly embarks on a journey of self-discovery, confronting his past and present with his devoted manager, Ron. Poignant and humor-filled, pitched at the intersection of regrets and glories. 

AFTER: Somebody clearly tried to make an Oscar run with this film, I'm sure there were guild screenings and trade ads were taken out, but it only resulted in some Golden Globe and Critics Choice nominations, I guess it was too much of a leap from there to any Oscar nominations, because they just didn't happen. Perhaps somebody over-estimated how much the audience would care about George Clooney playing a successful actor looking back on his life. Was this story intentionally based on him, was he playing a version of himself? It doesn't matter, because if the actor in question is portrayed as TOO successful then he (Clooney or Kelly) could come off as entitled, and that's a big no-no these days. If you act like you deserve an Oscar, you're kind of turning off the voters at the same time, and then you won't get one. 

Oh, they tried to portray Jay Kelly as a sympathetic figure - sure, famous, rich, successful, but also a broken marriage or two and two daughters who are convinced he was never there for them. Sure, a great actor can be a bad parent, they're just like us, after all, only there's a feeling like maybe they're supposed to be better?  It almost doesn't make sense that somebody can be so good at one thing and terrible at another, but then if you think of career, family and love as a triangle of sorts, consider that some people only manage to lock down TWO of these things at a time, and that's with trying, all THREE could be damn near impossible, if you know somebody who can juggle some form of success in all three arenas, buy them dinner and give them a pat on the back, I guess, because they're winning at life.   

The film shows Jay Kelly as he wraps shooting one film and has a bit of a break before starting the next one, so he tries to spend time with his younger daughter, only she's about to leave for a trip through Europe before college. Then Kelly learns that the director who first cast him in a film has died, so he attends the funeral. At the funeral he re-encounters Tim, his former roommate from acting school and they go out for drinks. Tim eventually accuses Jay of tagging along on an audition and stealing the role that WOULD have made Tim famous, only Jay got it. They have a fist-fight in the parking lot and Jay Kelly gets a black eye. 

The next morning, Jay ditches rehearsals for his upcoming film and books a trip to Europe, to secretly follow his daughter. To have a cover story, he has his manager, Ron, agree to a tribute screening at a film festival in Italy, which he had previously declined. But now it's back on, even though Ron arranged for another one of his actor-clients to get the screening and award. So now the festival has to give out TWO awards and have TWO tribute screenings. Jay's whole entourage flies by private Jet to France so they can all get on the same train as Jay's daughter, headed toward Italy. 

Jay Kelly is immediately recognized on the train, but he interacts with everyone on his train car, like, why hide it, and meanwhile his manager and publicist are dealing with the negative publicity and lawsuit caused by Jay punching that guy in a parking lot. Jay is now being sued for assault, but it all seems like this is par for the course. While on the long train ride, Jay has some flashbacks that clue us in about his strained relationship with his older daughter, and an affair he had with a co-star, cheating on his wife and his daughter's mother. So yeah, it's so weird how they think that he abandoned them, but he kind of did. 

More stuff happens, like a cyclist on the train steals an older woman's handbag, and as the train is stopped, Jay chases after the guy and retrieves the bag, the cyclist was off his medications and allegedly did not know what he was doing. Umm, sure. But now there's some GOOD viral video of Jay doing a good deed, to maybe offset the roommate fight thing. Jay's publicist and another member of the entourage get off the train early, I guess to go back to their lives, and his hair person takes a side-trip to give a haircut to the French President. Somebody PLEASE tell me this is all going to add up to something relevant - I got a feeling at this point that was becoming an incredible long-shot. 

Finally the train arrives in Tuscany and Jay's father is in attendance, that appears to be yet another strained relationship in Jay's life. Meanwhile his manager, Ron, meets with that other client, who fires him and there's also word from Jay's lawyers that they made the whole assault lawsuit go away. This plus the tribute means that everything once again seems to be going Jay Kelly's way, except that neither daughter wants to attend the ceremony, but they both seem pretty OK with cutting him out of their lives, one to go on her own filmmaking adventure in Italy and the other stays home in California for her twice-weekly therapy sessions. Finally, Jay's manager quits, too, because he needs to start putting his own family ahead of Jay's needs, but Jay convinces him to stay for the tribute, as a friend, because they share in his professional success. Sure, and I'm the Tooth Fairy. 

This film is hitting for me at an extremely coincidental time - now I can't tell if this is fate, karma, coincidence or just my own darn luck, but if you're a longtime reader of the Movie Year you know that I worked for an independent animator for over 30 years, and I was fired about a year ago. Well, that animator has a birthday coming up, and I've been asked (twice, no three times) to not only attend the show, but help put it together, maybe make a video about how I got the job and what working for that person meant to me, oh, and if I've got access to any photos from working at the studio, or pictures of my boss with celebrities, could I help organize them into a tribute for his special birthday screening of his films? 

My response so far has been "No" - followed by "Hell, no." and I'll have to answer an e-mail from his wife next telling her the same. I can't tell you how many times it fell on me over 31 years to organize screenings of his work at this festival or that one, plus at least three times I was paid to compile photos of him with famous people, for this book or that web-site or some kind of promotional reel. And now that I'm no longer working for him, you want me to do this all again, for FREE? Yeah, I was born on a Sunday but it wasn't last Sunday. If nobody saved the work I'd done in the past putting these photos and tributes together, that's not my problem. As for the video, he didn't want to hear my input on running his studio over the last two years, in fact he would usually tell me my suggestions were horrible ideas and then two days later he would ask me to implement those exact same things, which were now GOOD ideas because HE thought of them. Did he think that I would forget that he told me those were terrible suggestions when I made them? And NOW somebody wants me to make a video where I talk about what a delight it was to work for him? I don't think he wants to hear what I have to say on a video.

So yeah, I'm not helping to put this tribute together, because now he seems to have forgotten that he fired me after I made one too many suggestions that he didn't like. OK, sure, he hired me back but he wanted me to work from home, which was impossible, so then I quit. I don't work for free, so I'm not working on this tribute screening, let someone else put it together for once. His studio was supposed to fall apart without me, and that hasn't happened yet, but I'm still hopeful. The only tool I still have to allow him to feel my absence is to stay away, and not get involved.

My experience has also been that when people say they want a "roast" as a tribute, they don't really mean it. So me not getting involved here is better for everyone, I think. 

Jay Kelly represents, to me, someone with "artist brain", and I have known a couple over the years. These are successful people who surround themselves with managers, assistants, hair and make-up people, publicists, and interns so THEY can remain in control of their lives, but God forbid any of those people disagree with him, or point out his failings or shortcomings. If they do they'll most likely be fired and replaced with people more unlikely to speak out. The thing about people with "artist brain" is that they ensure that nobody will say "No" to them about doing all the anything they want to do, but unfortunately that's exactly what they need to hear, at least once in a while. 

Directed by Noah Baumbach (director of "De Palma" and "White Noise")

Also starring George Clooney (last seen in "Ticket to Paradise"), Adam Sandler (last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), Laura Dern, Billy Crudup (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Riley Keough (last seen in "The Discovery"), Grace Edwards (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Stacy Keach (last seen in "Valerie"), Jim Broadbent (last seen in "Paddington in Peru"), Emily Mortimer (ditto), Patrick Wilson (last seen in "The Assistant"), Eve Hewson (last seen in "Tesla"), Greta Gerwig (last seen in "White Noise"), Charlie Rowe (last seen in "Never Let Me Go"), Louis Partridge (last seen in "Enola Holmes 2"), Alba Rohrwacher (last seen in "The Lost Daughter"), Josh Hamilton (last seen in "Landscape with Invisible Hand"), Nicole Lecky, Thaddea Graham, Sadie Sandler (also last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), Isla Fisher (last seen in "Burke and Hare"), Jamie Demetriou (last heard in "Strays"), Patsy Ferran (last seen in "Mickey 17"), Parker Sawyers (last seen in "Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre"), Lars Eidinger (last seen in "Proxima"), Giovanni Zeqireya, Kyle Soller (last seen in "Marrowbone"), Tom Francis, Giovanni Esposito (last seen in "Book Club: The Next Chapter"), Stanley Townsend (last seen in "The Song of Names"), Erica Sweany, Kevin Shen (last seen in "Unlocked"), David Neumann (last seen in "White Noise"), Dean Wareham (ditto), May Nivola (ditto), Leila Farzad (last seen in "Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy"), Juliet Cowan, Eleanor Matsuura (last seen in "The Love Punch"), Lucas Aurelio, Tuwaine Barrett (last seen in "The Personal History of David Copperfield"), Martha West (last seen in "Creation"), Philip Arditti (last seen in "Happy-Go-Lucky"), Nigel Whitmey (last seen in "Shining Through"), Doug Cockle (last seen in "Criminal"), Helene Maksoud, Ruthie Rogers, Josh Berger, Penny Mortimer, Carlos Jacott (last seen in "Omni Loop"), Eloise Jacott, John Macmillan (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Andreas Munoz, Ferdi Stofmeel, Rosita Raffaelli, Antoinette Aaron, Philippe Spall (last seen in "Final Portrait"), Annabel Mullion (ditto), Nasser Memarzia (last seen in "All the Old Knives"), Christophe Guybet, Federico Scribani, Francesco De Vito (last seen in "When in Rome"), Sharon Rooney (last seen in "Barbie"), Hannah Onslow (last seen in "Empire of Light"), Amber Mendez-Martin, Janine Duvitski (last heard in "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim"), Pippo Crotti, Yinka Awoni (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Theo Augier, Alex Jarrett, Alais Lawson, Cassius Hackforth, Emily Piggford, Danielle Lewis (last seen in "The Son"), Monica Nappo (last seen in "House of Gucci"), Galatea Ranzi, Fabio Vannozzi, Arianna Becheroni, Lucian St. Aubyn, Marco Conte, Donald Sabourin, Matilda Thorpe, Morgan Beale, Ruby Stokes, Alastair Coughlan, Andrew Malik, Joe Hewetson, Max Beken, Carly-Sophia Davies, Debora Weston (last seen in "Patriot Games"), Martin McDougall (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"), Kit Rakusen (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Sadie Stallcup, Daniel P.D. Smith, with a cameo from Noah Baumbach (last seen in "Kicking and Screaming")

RATING: 5 out of 10 clips from other George Clooney films (you thought it was going to be slices of cheesecake, didn't you?)

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

Year 18, Day 98 - 4/8/26 - Movie #5,297

BEFORE: I just recorded the new "Now You See Me" movie, I worked at the NYC premiere screening last November, and all of the major stars turned up. So I definitely have my problems with that movie franchise, but also I kind of want to fast-track that one, because I was there at the premiere event. I noticed that I COULD watch that film tonight, instead of the Wallace & Gromit film, because Isla Fisher could easily be the bridge between "Burke & Hare" and tomorrow's film. Also, the "Now You See Me" movie missed out on being in the Jesse Eisenberg chain in late January - however I've got to skip it for a SECOND time, because the linking on today's film is so unlikely, so fragile that I can't skip this one. Today's film only links to TWO other films on my list, so I've got to watch it here, or risk not being able to watch it at all, ever. 

Reece Shearsmith carries over from "Burke and Hare". You know what, "Now You See Me 3" is going to be fine, it links to a lot of other movies. I'll get it back into the line-up as soon as I can, sometime after "Jurassic World" and "One Battle After Another" and "Zootopia 2" and "Wake Up Dead Man". I mean, a guy's got to have his priorities in order, right? 

THE PLOT: Gromit springs into action to save his master when Wallace's high-tech invention goes rogue and he is framed for a series of suspicious crimes. 

AFTER: Jeez, how long has it been since the last "Wallace & Gromit" feature, could it be 20 years? How the hell does that happen? I remember when those short films "The Wrong Trousers" and "A Close Shave" came out, it was a big deal and then the feature film, "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit", well, it was fine. All that was BEFORE I started my blog in 2009, so there's nothing to follow up here, because I saw all the previous W&G films long ago. You couldn't really call yourself an animation fan back then if you weren't current on this franchise. 

God, this new feature is SO good and it works on so many different levels - there's a big warning here about A.I. because that's really what most filmmakers are afraid of these days, losing their jobs to a system that is completely artificial, like the goal is to have no humans involved in the very silly art of making movies, other than the people who read prompts into a microphone or push a couple buttons to make a movie. I guess the people who have coding jobs will be fine, but I definitely feel like I got off of the sinking ship that is independent animation just before the iceberg hit. Meanwhile, the production of a stop-motion feature like "Vengeance Most Fowl" is exactly the opposite, it's slow, labor-intensive and human oriented. Maybe it took a crew of people 20 years to make this movie, Del Toro's crew certainly worked on "Pinocchio" for a very long time.  

The A.I. here is represented by a robotic garden gnome, called a Norbot, that Wallace invented to do gardening work. However he gave it some form of sentience, so it can make decisions about the shapes of topiaries, and what tools to use to cut grass, and so on. Gromit doesn't like the Norbot from the start because of course it destroys the plant he JUST put in the ground, and also almost cuts his toes off with an edging device. Gromit is 100% correct to be wary, because anything with an A.I. system can be corrupted, and the notorious criminal penguin, Feathers McGraw, is working on accessing Wallace's computer files, he just needs to keep guessing passwords, and that's not hard. Once he gets it right, it's just a matter of switching the Norbot's programming from "Good" to "Evil" (there are lots of shades in-between, like dull and grumpy, that's all part of the fun, but let's focus on just good and evil.)

The now-evil Norbot goes immediately to work, building MORE evil Norbots. Sure, why not give a robot the ability to reproduce itself, what could POSSIBLY go wrong there? While we're at it, why not make "evil" one of its potential character traits? Wallace, what was the plan here? Like if you didn't want the robots to be evil, why program that as a potential character trait? We need to treat this animated film as a template for the future, in addition to the robotic rules about never harming humans and always obeying human commands, we should think about adding in a rule about robots never building more robots, OK?  The other obvious warning sign about A.I. is that no matter what your intent was when you BUILT the robots, they can always be hacked at some point in the future by people with bad intent, and so we have to know NOW to pre-plan for this. 

The notorious criminal "Feathers" McGraw was playing the long game here, in his quest for the famous Blue Diamond. In between scenes during "The Wrong Trousers", he apparently swapped it for a turnip and so they put a root vegetable in a sack back in the vault, while he hid the real diamond inside Wallace's house. Then he surrendered himself to years in "prison" (a zoo) and waited for robot technology to advance to the point where he could use it to get his revenge AND the diamond. 

The whole last third of "Vengeance Most Fowl" is a giant chase scene, and I know how hard it is to keep your animated feature from going in this direction - of the three animated features I produced, I think they all turned into chase scenes in the final third. But at least they did a really GOOD one here, there's one part that calls to mind the train crash scene from "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning", I mean it's a boat and not a train but the principle is the same. (I didn't know there were aqueducts, or "boat bridges" in the U.K., similar to train bridges. They're probably bending reality here just a bit to pay homage to the Tom Cruise action film...)

It's OK if you have a GREAT chase scene, though, and this one is pretty crackin' good. But you can tell that this story was initially designed to be a 30-minute short, and then it got expanded to 79 minutes, so that's where a chase scene comes in, you can make one of those as long as you want, just keep adding more scenes, more obstacles and additional vehicles.  Some really good gags, too, like Wallace decided to "reboot" the robots by hitting them on the back with actual boots. Wellingtons, of course, but it's a powerful visual pun. 

Directed by Merlin Crossingham, Nick Park (director of "Early Man" and producer on "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget")

Also starring the voices of Ben Whitehead (last heard in "The Pirates! Band of Misfits"), Peter Kay (last seen in "24 Hour Party People"), Lauren Patel, Diane Morgan, Adjoa Andoh (last seen in "Invictus"), Muzz Khan (last seen in "Wonka"), Lenny Henry (also last heard in "The Pirates! Band of Misfits"), John Sparkes (last heard in "A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon"), Maya Sondhi

RATING: 8 out of 10 pieces of toast getting jam on them in mid-air

Burke and Hare

Year 18, Day 97 - 4/7/26 - Movie #5,296

BEFORE: I was making a master list yesterday of my Star Wars autographs, all signed 8 x 10s, some of them are hanging on the wall and some of them are in boxes because I ran out of wall space. But I noticed how many of those actors have popped up recently, like Rose Byrne (Episode 2) and Domhnall Gleeson (Eps. 7-9) were both in "Peter Rabbit 2" and I didn't realize the "Star Wars" connection there. Keri Russell (Ep. 9) popped up in "The Upside of Anger") and Naomi Ackie (Ep. 9) in "Mickey 17" and "The Thursday Murder Club", Liam Neeson in "The Naked Gun", of course. Oh, and Laura Dern (Ep. 8) was in three movies in February and Celia Imrie (Ep. 1) is second on my leader board right now, and Ben Mendelsohn (Rogue One) popped up in "KIller Elite". They're all over the place. 

Today's film has at least THREE, which I think is notable - Simon Pegg (Ep. 7) and Andy Serkis (Ep. 8) and a cameo from Christopher Lee (Ep. 2). Simon Pegg carries over from "Terminal". 

THE PLOT: Two 19th-century grave robbers find a lucrative business providing cadavers for an Edinburgh medical school. 

AFTER: I should point out that I have not MET those three "Star Wars" actors in person, I only purchased their signed photos from reputable sources. (I've met a LOT of Star Wars actors, just not any of those three...). But I did meet John Landis, the director, and SPFX genius Ray Harryhausen, who has a cameo here - both at San Diego Comic-Con, though in different years, Harryhausen did a signing in the booth next to mine in 2007 and Landis walked by and then visited my booth in 2009. I'm just glad I knew what both people looked like and therefore I was able to spot them and chat them up. 

Today's comedy is based on a real string of 16 murders committed in Edinburgh, Scotland around 1828, so almost 200 years ago now. William Burke and William Hare sold the corpses of their victims to Robert Knox, to be used for dissection in his anatomy lectures at the Royal College of Surgeons. It seems that someone passed a law that stated that the only corpses that could be dissected were people who were sentenced to death for crimes, and then the main medical school in Edinburgh was paying the executioners top dollar for exclusive rights to those corpses, leaving the smaller anatomy school without any bodies. So Dr. Knox spread the word among local mobsters that he'd pay a second-tier rate for any bodies they encountered - and come on, what proper mobster doesn't have a few bodies he'd like to get rid of? - and the word filtered down to Burke and Hare, who happened to be in the pub and just happened to be disposing of the body of a lodger who'd died before paying his monthly rent. The next lodger was only sick, but they sort of helped him along, and then after robbing graves was a bust (and didn't provide fresh enough corpses) they just started killing people at random, more or less. 

Hare's wife seemed to approve of his plan, as her husband had finally found something he was good at, rather than selling mold as a medical cure for everything, and she only demanded a pound per killing as a "wife tax" - meanwhile the local mobsters decided they wanted in on the scheme and for half of every corpse sale, they basically provided "protection" to keep the cops from figuring out what was going on. Meanwhile Burke suddenly had money to invest in his intended girlfriend's all-female production of "Macbeth", which sure seems like it was way ahead of its time. This sounds a lot like what the Public Theater might stage in the 21st century, not the 19th. 

But as you might have guessed, with half the money going to the mob, a pound going to Hare's wife, and other money being invested into a theater production, that didn't leave much, so they had to double their murder rate just to break even. Fortunately this was back before CSI or even fingerprints, so the police were pretty inept and it was only by chance that someone in the anatomy class recognized the body of one of the mobsters being used in a demonstration. A captain in the police force takes up the case, investigating where all the missing persons might be going, and the head solicitor and the Lord Provost offer him a promotion if he will help keep the scandal out of the newspapers. However, after Burke, Hare, Hare's wife and Burke's girlfriend are all arrested, he demands that one person admit to the killing in order to allow the others to go free. 

This isn't REALLY the way the trial went down in real life, Hare was granted immunity if he turned king's evidence, and also confessed to all 16 deaths, then formal charges were made against Burke for three of the murders, and he was only found guilty of one, but still sentenced to death. Yeah, it doesn't really make much sense for the police to make ONE person confess and then let everyone else walk, that feels very much like an oversimplification of this case.

The real irony was that Burke's body was turned over to medical research after his hanging, and after dissection his skeleton is still on display at the Museum of the Edinburg Medical School.  Another irony was that the case highlighted the need for bodies used in medical research and led to the passing of the Anatomy Act of 1832, which allowed more people to donate their bodies, or those of family members, for anatomical dissection in exchange for eventual burial at the school's expense. Also surgeons could have legal access to corpses that were unclaimed after death, people who had died in hospitals, prisons or workhouses. 

The way the police got suspicious about the murders in real life was also quite different, but you can just look that up on Wikipedia yourself, if you're so inclined. What's more important is whether this works as a kind of dark comedy, and I suppose it does. I guess it's better to laugh about murder and the ongoing need for medical research than it is to bemoan it all, right?

Directed by John Landis (director of "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project" and "Into the Night")

Also starring Andy Serkis (last heard. in "Venom: The Last Dance"), Isla Fisher (last seen in "Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy"), Tom Wilkinson (last seen in "Unfinished Business"), Tim Curry (last heard in "The Pebble and the Penguin"), Jessica Hynes (last seen in "Paddington in Peru"), Hugh Bonneville (ditto), Simon Farnaby (ditto), Bill Bailey (last heard in "The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales"), Allan Corduner (last seen in "Bigger Than the Sky"), David Hayman (last seen in "Macbeth" (2015)), David Schofield (last seen in "Six Minutes to Midnight"), Ronnie Corbett (last seen in "A Liar's Autobiography"), Reece Shearsmith (last seen in "Saltburn"), Christian Brassington (last seen in "Easy Virtue"), Michael Smiley (last seen in "Gunpowder Milkshake"), Christopher Lee (last heard in "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim"), Jenny Agutter (last seen in "The Eagle Has Landed"), Georgia King (last seen in "Austenland"), John Woodvine (last seen in "Wuthering Heights" (1992)), Steve Speirs (last seen in "The Musketeer"), Stephen Merchant (last seen in "Locked Down"), Paul Whitehouse (last seen in "King of Thieves"), Michael Winner, Max Landis, Ray Harryhausen (last seen in "20 Million Miles to Earth"), Gabrielle Downey (last seen in "The Double"), Stuart McQuarrie (last seen in "Terminator: Dark Fate"), Mike Goodenough, Robert Fyfe (last seen in "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"), Robert Willox, Ciaron Kelly, Joyce Henderson (last seen in "About a Boy"), Pollyanna McIntosh (last seen in "Filth"), Shelley Longworth, Amanda Claire-Jones, George Potts (last seen in "Dorian Gray"), Duncan Duff, Alan Munroe, John Gaynor, Michael Wilson, Robert Paynter (last seen in "Into the Night"), Tom Meeten (last seen in "Paddington"), Tom Urie (last seen in "T2 Trainspotting"), Ella Smith (last seen in "The Voices"), Janet Whiteside (last seen in "Pride & Prejudice"), Robert Stone (last seen in "RocknRolla"), Chris Obi (last seen in "Ghost in the Shell"), Patricia Gibson-Howell, Jacob Edwards, Billy Riddoch, Esme Thompson, Costa-Gavras (last seen in "Spies Like Us"), Michele Ray-Gavras, Kieran-Miguel Diego D'La Vega, Ken Matthews, Spencer Noll

RATING: 5 out of 10 "missing person" posters

Terminal

Year 18, Day 96 - 4/6/26 - Movie #5,295

BEFORE: There are just a few games left in the NBA season, so I've been working all of the last  home stand for the Brooklyn Nets. There was like, zero chance of that team making the playoffs.  But what's great about having two jobs is that while one job might be shut down, for say, Easter break, because it's run by a college, there's a chance that things could pick up at the other job to compensate, and that's where I find myself right now. There will be a couple weeks before the WNBA games start up, so essentially I've got several weeks off from THAT job, and it looks like I'm about to get very busy at the other. Now, if BOTH temp jobs were to slow down, I'd be in some trouble, that would mean I'd have to kick the job hunt into high gear again. But the college is about to start thesis presentations in late April and May, plus the Tribeca Film Festival starts in early June, so I hope to be very busy at the theater, and I'll work as many NY Liberty games as I can, plus concerts maybe, but my focus might be shifting back over to the theater job, that's all. 

Margot Robbie carries over from "Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway". I know, why not just have Simon Pegg carry over "Mission: Impossible", but I had to get the rabbit film to land on Easter...

THE PLOT: Follows the twisting tales of two assassins carrying out a mission, a teacher battling a fatal illness, an enigmatic janitor and a curious waitress leading a dangerous double life. 

AFTER: Oh, what do I even DO with this film? It's streaming on Hulu, you can almost bet that means it's not good enough for Netflix, or else it's just not connected enough to Paramount or Amazon to find a streaming home there. I'll admit I don't know how all of that works, none of the films I produced really have a streaming home, but that's a long story, the difficulties of getting independent animation distributed, especially films aimed at adults. But I digress - this Hulu presentation is really kind of average at best, like all of the intensity of an assassin-based action movie, just without all the action. 

Instead it's the BORING parts (mostly) of the killer-for-hire game, the showing up for clandestine meetings in cafes and bars and churches, getting phone calls that tell you where to be and when, and then sequestering in a rundown apartment for weeks while you wait for your target to appear in a window across the alley or something. The hitmen here have to do that, just WAIT and they chat to pass the time and they drink and they try to play cards, but usually they just end up arguing with each other.  Meanwhile, there's an teacher who's got a fatal disease of some kind who goes to the same cafe, near the train station - it's the middle of the night and there are no trains, if there were he would jump in front of one and commit suicide - but I guess if you can't kill yourself, you might as well go have a cup of coffee and something to eat. Great tagline for the cafe, "Eating here is slightly better than killing yourself." 

Yes, I realize the double meaning of "Terminal", any train station at the end of the line is a terminal, plus the nature of the assassination business - it's really the only joke the film has, so of course they play it up every chance they get. Cleverness in the plot, unfortunately, is a lot harder to come by. 

The film also jumps around in time, quite liberally - to the point where after a while it's impossible to tell WHEN anything happened, and are we dealing with a split timeline, like one in the past and one in the present, or is everything just randomly ordered to make us more confused, or to cover up all the gaping plotholes?  Anyway the story shifts three weeks back in time, to that same waitress from the cafe, posing as a prostitute in order to get a man into bed, where she ties him up (kinky) but then kills him. This has something to do with her desire to work for the mysterious Mr. Franklyn, but she wants to be his only employee, and she intends to kill all of his competition, or maybe her competition, to nail down the job. 

We then see Mr. Franklyn hiring two of his regular hit-men to do a job, and this involves picking up a briefcase from the train termimal, and figuring out the job from the clues in the briefcase. Again, since we're jumping back and forth in time, it's impossible to determine if we're looking at the past or NOW, if the word NOW still has any meaning, which it kind of doesn't here. Everything just happens at "story time", and we have to work pretty hard here to put the pieces in order, and I don't usually like that. When they follow the matchbook clue to the strip club, they see Annie, the waitress, doing double duty as a dancer, but what this means is still anybody's guess. You know, maybe she just has two jobs, she works in the cafe and also the club, that wouldn't be the weirdest thing in the world. And then the third job is to relay information to the hitmen from their employer? Sure, could happen, I guess but things are getting more and more unlikely. 

Annie also tries to "help" the teacher, she gives him great advice about how to commit suicide, various methods, what would be quickest or least painful, and he's kind of into the idea. I mean, if you've got an undetermined fatal disease, and you could die at any moment, that could lead your brain down some very weird paths, thanks to intrusive thoughts. Or if you've got a beautiful woman who's willing to assist you, that could be somewhat convincing. For a minute it almost seems like Annie is the mastermind here, and she's hired the hitmen to kill this teacher to make his painful death a little less painful? Nah, that would be much too easy, the real truth of what's going on here is WAY more complicated than that. 

But that's it, I'll say no more about the plot because if all that is intriguing to you, you can watch the damn movie yourself. I had to endure it, so I wish the same on you, and I don't even know you. (Do I? You seem kind of familiar...). But of course there is a reason here for people to be doing what they do, and it all makes sense after the fact, they just take their damn time in getting to a point where something HAPPENS and all is revealed, and then fortunately we can all get back to whatever we were doing before this movie came into our lives. It's only 95 minutes long but it FELT like forever. I don't know, maybe you'll like this sort of thing if you're deranged somehow or have absolutely nothing better to do. 

Directed by Vaughn Stein (assistant director on "Beauty and the Beast" and "Wonder Woman")

Also starring Simon Pegg (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"), Dexter Fletcher (last seen in "The Long Good Friday"), Mike Myers (last seen in "Biggest Heist Ever"), Max Irons (last seen in "Dorian Gray"), Katarina Cas (last seen in "Danny Collins"), Nick Moran (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"), Matthew Lewis (ditto), Les Loveday (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), Jourdan Dunn (last seen in "Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie"), Thomas Turgoose (last seen in "Mickey 17"), Jay Simpson (last seen in "Enola Holmes"), Ben Griffin, Robert Goodman (last seen in "Napoleon"), Paul Reynolds (last seen in "Eddie the Eagle")

RATING: 4 out of 10 references to "Alice in Wonderland"

Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway

Year 18, Day 95 - 4/5/26 - Movie #5,294 - Happy Easter!

BEFORE: I made it to Easter, and the chain is still unbroken - really, it's was either this film about rabbits or one about the biblical Mary - I'll pick this fictional character every time over THAT one. Just saying. 

It's not just Easter, though, it's also Hayley Atwell's birthday, April 5, so we'll be sending a Birthday SHOUT-out today to her as she carries over again from "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning". I think it's probably very safe to say that I'm the only person who was watched these three films with Hayley Atwell, back to back. Probably not even her agent would do this, because the films are all so vastly different. Or, are they? 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Peter Rabbit" (Movie #3,119)

THE PLOT: Peter and his rabbit family are now living with Bea and Thomas MacGregor, who are now married. Bored of life in the garden, Peter goes to the big city, where he meets shady characters and ends up creating chaos for the whole family. 

AFTER: I think I'm on to something here, even though two of these three Hayley Atwell films have been animated features, and the other a big-budget action movie, I think there's sort of a through-line, not just the fact that Ms. Atwell appears in all three of them. "Paddington in Peru" was kind of a quest movie, not just the search for the missing Aunt, but a search for the lost city, and "Mission: Impossible" was kind of about the search for that missing submarine, of course every "Mission: Impossible" film is also kind of like a heist film, and now we have "Peter Rabbit 2" which greatly resembles a heist film at one point, with Peter and his family helping a city rabbit named Barnabas steal a bunch of dried fruit from a farmers' market. OK, so that's not really the same thing as stealing from a bank or breaking in to a fortified end-of-the-world bunker, but a heist is a heist.  

Another thing today's film shares with "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning" is that things don't exactly go as planned (do they EVER?) and some of the team members are caught, in this case all of Peter's family and friends who helped with the heist get caught by the people who run the pet shop, and they all get sold off very quickly to people who want to keep rabbits, or a hedgehog or a badger as a pet. This leads to the SECOND part of the quest, as newlyweds Bea and Thomas McGregor have to drive around the U.K. or even other parts of Europe, to put the whole gang back together at the end. NITPICK POINT: I get why the fisherman bought Benjamin Bunny, he wanted to make a rabbit stew as he was probably sick of eating fish, but WHY was this guy in Switzerland so into skiing down the alps while carrying a badger? Was this some weird fetish thing? If so, I don't want to know about it. 

The good news is that they do eventually get all the woodland creatures back, but this sends a weird message out to the kids - if somebody takes your pet without any right to, the best response is to go and steal it back from them, even if they paid the pet shop for it. Umm, sure, kids need to know how to break the law to make things right, maybe taking legal action against the pet show would instill a better lesson?   I suppose that would take longer, and Benjamin would have been eaten, but still, if stealing is bad then stealing something back is also bad, right?  And Peter Rabbit learns his lesson (at least until next time) that him wanting to act like a "Bad Bunny" has consequences for the people and animals around him. Also, if you are a pet owner or a woman who writes books about animal characters, you do NOT take your eyes off of your pet, not even for a second. You're a bad pet mom if your rabbit is hanging out with a thieving street gang of animals, and they're planning something.

Barnabas had no intention of sharing the dried fruit with Peter's family, or making sure that they weren't captured during the heist, plus he lied when he implied that he knew Peter's father, it was just a plot to gain his trust. Another lesson for the kiddos: street people and petty criminals will lie to you to get you to do what they want. Also don't leave your parents while on holiday with them to go hang out with street trash. That's maybe a better lesson to send out to the kids at home. 

But we still have to deal with why Mr. McGregor is marrying Bea (the stand-in for Beatrix Pother here, I guess) in the first place. Is that how we solve our problems now, by turning our enemies into family that we don't like all that much, and who never trust us and blame us for doing bad things when we were trying (for a while) to do only good things? Also we learn that people who work for major publishing companies are never to be trusted either, they just want to make too-hip sequels that destroy the validity of the original work. Can this be true, can the film that is an unfaithful adapted unnecessary sequel be taking a stand against unfaithful adapted unnecessary sequels? That's maybe just a bit too meta for the room, I don't think kids will get this joke, but maybe it's there for the adults to appreciate? I guess we should be thankful that they didn't make this film into a space-travel themed adventure film? 

I could have done without most of the slapstick, like when they made Mr. MacGregor prove that he could "frolic" and have fun, and this just ends with him rolling down a hill and getting out of control. The way he landed, he surely should have ended up in hospital - but we get it, kids bounce more easily than adults, so we old people shouldn't do anything physical, this is ageism of the highest order though. Really, this could have been a LOT worse, I'll take this story if this really the best they could do, but it's still a complete bastardization of Beatrix Potter's tales. But yeah, heist films sell, so why not do a Peter Rabbit sequel like it's "Ocean's Twelve"?

Directed by Will Gluck (director of "Peter Rabbit" and "Easy A")

Also starring Rose Byrne (last heard in "I Am Mother"), Domhnall Gleeson (last seen in "Calvary"), David Oyelowo (last seen in "See How They Run"), Tim Minchin (last seen in "Robin Hood" (2018)), Tara Morice, Dave Lawson (last seen in "Peter Rabbit"), Alex Blias (ditto), Jude Hyland, Neil Hayes, Neveen Hanna, Shona Tough, Tom Golding, Tina Maskell, Andy Gathergood (last seen in "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society"), Nigel Cooke, Lily Hall, Raelee Hill (last seen in "Superman Returns"), Gordon Waddell (ditto), Owen Beamond, Jonathan Elsom (last seen in "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales"), Jack Andrew (last seen in "Aquaman"), Harry Peek (also last seen in "Peter Rabbit"), Matt Newport, John Batchelor (last seen in "Man-Thing"), Eliza Logan (last seen in "Truth"), Maddison-Cleo Musumeci, Joshua Kim, Ingrid Macaulay, Zoe Cash, Chika Yasumura, Callum Macgown, Simon Edds (last seen in "Hacksaw Ridge"), Rowan Chapman (last seen in "Ticket to Paradise"), Andrea Berchtold, Dalip Sondhi, Chantelle Jamieson (last seen in "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire"), Megan Smart, Taylor Ferguson, Nick Chopping, Lance Kerfuffle, Buckminster Kerfuffle, Alexandra Gluck (also last seen in "Peter Rabbit"), Taryn Gluck (ditto), Anthony Vercoe, Anton Grimus, Mia Willis, Russell Penton, Isla Hawkins, Dean Gould, Yasca Sinigaglia, Stephen Murdoch, Philip Partridge, Mike Duncan, Connor Van Vuuren, Buffy Anne Littua, Renee Ware

with the voices of James Corden (last seen in "Begin Again"), Margot Robbie (last seen in "Z for Zachariah"), Elizabeth Debicki (last seen in "The Tale"), Aimee Horne, Colin Moody (also last heard in "Peter Rabbit"),  Lennie James (last seen in "Colombiana"), Damon Herriman (last seen in "The Bikeriders"), Rupert Degas (last heard in "Planet 51"), Sam Neill (last seen in "Backtrack"), Sia (also last heard in "Peter Rabbit")), Ewen Leslie (ditto), Will Reichelt (ditto), David Wenham (last seen in "Elvis"), Matt Villa, Stewart Alves,

RATING: 5 out of 10 release delays (due to the COVID pandemic)