Curious George

—1. Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—5. Posters
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads

We live in a culture that doesn’t allow kids to remain in childhood very long. Mothers pierce their infants’ ears. Children are the targets of intense marketing efforts even before they speak. A violent and sexually charged mass media deprives children of their innocence and robs them of the ability to see their world as a safe place.

The seven Curious George books by Margaret and H.A. Rey portrayed our world as one of adventure limited only by a child’s curiosity. The captivating pictures told the story and, no matter the trouble, the gentle message reassured children that everything is going to come out all right in the end.

The new Curious George film produced by Ron Howard and directed by Matthew O’Callaghan successfully translates the spirit of the beloved books and their visual feel to the screen. Combined with an outstanding and original acoustic soundtrack performed (and mostly written) by Grammy-nominated Hawaiian guitarist Jack Johnson, Curious George is destined to become a classic among primary-grade and pre-school-aged children and their families.

Borrowing visual high points from a number of the books, originally published between 1941 and 1966, Curious George tells the story of “Ted� (voiced by comic actor Will Ferrell), a museum educator who ventures for West Africa to save a failing museum by finding an ancient archeological wonder. In the process, he becomes the Man with the Yellow Hat. As he ventures into a clothing store, Ted is outfitted by two salesmen desperate to unload what they see as a doomed clothing line. “Yellow is the new khaki,� they tell him.

The Man with the Yellow Hat is in search of the Lost Shrine of Zagawa, a towering ape-like statue that aging owner Mr. Bloomsberry (Dick Van Dyke) believes will reverse his failing museum’s fortunes. Yet his son (David Cross) wants to turn the museum into a more financially lucrative parking garage and feels threatened by Ted, whom his father describes as “the son I never had.�

While on his journey, the novice explorer happens upon George, and a never-ending game of peek-a-boo ensues. The man departs without his yellow hat. George, seeking to return the hat, finds himself trapped in the hull of a ship bound for America. A ship full of bananas, of course. Cue Dole product placement.

Although there are many G-rated films produced for small children each year, Curious George is one of the first in a long time that is sweet without being saccharine, cute without being cutesy and adventurous without being frightening. It truly is an awww-filled movie. I heard more “awwws� from children and parents at the early evening screening I attended in the opening few minutes of this film than I’ve heard for the sum of all the other family movies I’ve seen in several years.

Like the books, the visuals dominate this film. Ferrell does a nice job of carrying large portions in, essentially, a monologue with occasional monkey sounds by Frank Welker. The 86-minute film also features a budding romantic interest with Maggie (Drew Barrymore), a grade-school teacher who faithfully attends Ted’s presentations each week, and some curious antics with an inventor (Eugene Levy).

The two-dimensional animation remains faithful to H.A. Rey’s watercolor images. Although there are certainly many more compelling animated films with better visuals and better storylines, there’s enough here to interest adults: visual references to King Kong, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parades and a car stunt preceded by Ferrell’s winning line: “Luckily, movies have taught me exactly what to do in this situation.�

Some may criticize Curious George for lacking the depth of some of the most acclaimed animated films or fairy tales, in which the dark side of human nature comes to the fore. But the strength of this film is that it doesn’t try to graft a mature storyline onto something that was developed for small children. It simply tries to allow young children to approach their world with joy, wonder and awe. Or, as the Man with the Yellow Hat says, “The real way to learn anything is to go out and experience it, and let your curiosity lead you.�

— Overview

Hoodwinked

—1. Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—5. Posters (Anne Hathaway)
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads

What if there was a rush to judgment in the story of Little Red Riding Hood? Did the Wolf get a bum rap? And would some crack-shot criminal investigators have discovered the true culprit in the classic fairy tale?

That’s the premise behind Hoodwinked, a low-budget but highly entertaining animated combination of the fairy tale and police investigation genres.

This tale begins at the penultimate point of the classic fairy tale. Red (Anne Hathaway) is confronting the Wolf (Patrick Warburton) in Grandma’s clothing.

“What big ears you have.�

“The better to hear your complaints with.�

As the Wolf chases Red around the house, Grandma (Glenn Close) pops out of the closet all tied up, followed by the Woodsman (Jim Belushi) crashing through the window.

Then the forest animal cops arrive at the scene, and bring in detective Nicky Flippers (David Ogden Stiers) to sort out the differing stories.

One by one, we are treated to each of the four principals’ engaging stories of what really happened that day as the police try to sort them out and discover the Goody Bandit whose been stealing recipes from all the forest creatures and wreaking havoc on the forest economy. In the process, we discover Red has a martial-arts background, the Wolf is an investigative reporter, the Woodsman is an out-of-work actor trying to get in touch with his inner woodsman for a commercial and Granny is an extreme sports champion.

With a similar feel to Shrek and the classic “Fractured Fairy Tales� that accompanied “Rocky and Bullwinkle� shorts, Hoodwinked appeals to both children and their parents. We meet a colorful array of characters: Twitchy, a hyperactive squirrel who is a photojournalist and the Wolf’s companion; Japeth, a mountain goat with horns for every occasion and who sings (or yodels) all his dialogue; and Boingo, a bunny with the knack of showing up at all the right moments.

While animation by the independent Kanbar Animation Studios doesn’t rival the standards of most CGI animated films today, the script certainly stands above Chicken Little, Robots and most of the higher profile animated features of the past year.

The 81-minute PG film, one of the first releases of the new Weinstein Co. founded by former Miramax co-owners Harvey and Bob Weinstein, shows viewers that things aren’t always as they first appear. “Before you judge a book by its cover, you have to flip through its pages,� the film’s narrator says.

You won’t flip over Hoodwinked. Adults will solve the crime in the first few minutes. But there’s more than enough laughs to keep you entertained, and you won’t feel hoodwinked either.

— Overview

Nanny McPhee

—1. Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—5. Posters(Emma Thompson)
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads

One of the underlying themes of Nanny 911, Super Nanny and other reality TV shows that touch on parenting is that the children’s misbehavior is almost always rooted in the neglect of parental responsibility. The kids’ behavior changes in the end because the parents have needed to learn the primary lesson.

Nanny McPhee, a delightful and charming new family film, picks up on similar themes as we are introduced to the seven ill-mannered Brown children. Since the death of their mother, they have managed to scare off 17 nannies with their calculated and ruthless behavior.

Cedric Brown (Colin Firth) is the widowed father of the brood, who works in a mortuary and only is able to maintain his family’s standard of living because of the conditional benevolence of the domineering Aunt Adelaide (Angela Lansbury). She privately has insisted that she will cut the family off from all support if Brown doesn’t remarry within 30 days. Faced with debtors prison for himself and more dire consequences for his children, Brown’s desperation to keep his family together leads him to dig up the name of a widow he might marry.

Although he has not told his children of these prospects, they have figured it out, and it is at the root of their behavior. “There is not one single story ever of a stepmother who isn’t evil,� says the oldest boy and ringleader Simon (Thomas Sangster, in an excellent performance). “Who likes other people’s children?�

But under the family’s very noses is the kind, beautiful and sensitive scullery maid, Evangeline (Kelly Macdonald). She understands what’s behind the children’s behavior and secret cares deeply for them and their father. He, nevertheless, continues to seek solace in conversations with an empty chair that once was occupied by his wife.

Just as with the problems faced by families on nanny reality TV, the solution seems plain as the nose on your face. But the loss of the last nanny the agency will provide seems to have blinded the Browns to the answer. Enter Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson) with a bulbous nose they couldn’t miss. With a unibrow, two hairy warts, enormous ear lobes and a single tooth that protrudes over her lower lip, she’s no Mary Poppins. But then again, the Brown children, whose previous ruses include pretending to eat their baby sister, are no Jane and Michael Banks, either.

Nanny McPhee is a darker, tough-love Mary Poppins, a more mysterious sort whose magic has a way of accentuating the dire consequences in the bad choices the children make. With her enchanted branch-like walking stick, Nanny McPhee says she has five lessons to teach, adding “what they learn is up to them.� In contrast to this post-modern nanny, the rules are traditional and didactic: Go to bed when you are told, get up when you are told, get dressed when you are told, listen and behave. Yet these lessons are not only for the children to learn.

Nanny McPhee also has two other conditions in her contract – Sunday afternoons off and “When you need me, but do not want me, then I will stay. When you want me, but do not need me, then I have to go.�

At the beginning, Nanny McPhee’s warts suggest to the children that she is a witch. But as the children learn their lessons, her ugly blemishes disappear. While this could be misinterpreted as suggesting that physical beauty is more important than inner beauty, I think it rather suggests that as the children come to love Nanny McPhee she becomes beautiful to them. That is highlighted by the film’s log line – “You’ll learn to love her. Warts and all.� – but perhaps not handled as adroitly as possible by director Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine).

Thompson, the only person to ever have won Oscars for both acting (Howard’s End) and screenwriting (Sense and Sensibility), wrote the screenplay, which is based on the British “Nurse Matilda� books by Christianna Brand. The 97-minute film also contains some unforgivable clichéd gimmicks designed to pander to the younger set: a talking and dancing donkey, a food fight and using computer-generated imagery on baby Aggy (Hebe and Zinnia Barnes) to make her lips match inserted dialogue.

There also is the stereotypical evil stepmother-to-be Mrs. Selma Quickly (Celia Imrie), a scheming tart who already has buried three husbands.

Nanny McPhee’s strongest moral lesson is that there are consequences to our actions. But that even when the consequences seem dire, we can use our creative abilities to imagine how to achieve possibilities that seem as impossible as snow in August.

— Overview