Blu Ray/DVD Review: THE BOOK OF LIFE

Releasing this week on Blu ray & DVD:


THE BOOK OF LIFE

(Dir. Jorge Gutierrez, 2014) *

This Mexico-set CG-animated musical comedy adventure is a vast improvement over the animation studio Reel FX�s first feature, last year�s FREE BIRDS.



While that unfunny fiasco was about time-traveling turkeys, THE BOOK OF LIFE, the directorial debut of long-time television animator Jorge Gutierrez, has a lot more ambition by way of a fantastical storyline that pays vividly colorful respect to Mexican folklore. That Guillermo del Toro (PAN�S LABYRINTH, PACIFIC RIM) is one of the film�s producers gives it a bit of cinematic gravitas as well.



Unfortunately, it�s often clunky and cluttered, with hard-to-care-about experiences and loads of jokes that were met by silence at the screening I attended � one packed with families with kids.



The characters are accurately described as wooden; through the framing device of a museum tour guide (voiced by Christina Applegate) telling the film�s tale to a group of snotty school children, the major players are represented by handcrafted wooden figures that come to life as marionettes without strings.



Via Applegate�s narration, we are taken to a Mexican landscape sometime in the unspecified past on the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) holiday, and introduced to a love triangle in which two young suitors � the sensitive Manolo (Diego Luna) and the cocky warrior Joaquin (Channing Tatum, in his first animated feature) � compete for the hand of the beautiful, free-spirited Maria (Zoe Saldana).



Watching from above, the squabbling husband-and-wife deities, La Muerta (Kate del Castillo), ruler of the Land of the Remembered, and Xibalba (Ron Perlman), ruler of the Land of the Forgotten, make a high-stakes wager on which suitor will marry Maria.



Manolo�s father (Hector Elizondo) wants him to carry on the family�s bullfighting tradition, but Manolo wants to be a musician. This gives the film the peg for both its transparent �follow your dreams� moral and its musical numbers. Annoyingly interjected into the action is a bunch of Latin-tinged American pop songs, including Rod Stewart�s �If You Think I�m Sexy,� Biz Markie�s �Just a Friend� and even Radiohead�s �Creep.�



There are some decent original songs written by Oscar-winning composers Paul Williams and Gustavo Santaolalla and performed by Luna and Saldana. One entitled �I Love You Too Much� is catchy enough to be a hit. (It�s also a plus that they don�t make Tatum sing.)



Of course, every animated movie aimed at kids has to be in 3-D these days, and this one has more elements that can be enhanced by the format than most � like a sequence involving Manolo running through a mega maze before speeding boulders crash down the corridors and crush him. But it made very little difference otherwise.



The presence of Ice Cube as a cuddly, goofy ancient god called �The Candlemaker� is irksome. The rapper/actor�s performance is �on,� but it seems a cynical piece of casting designed to up the hipness factor. Still, he drew some genuine laughs.



Despite the fact that a character dies, parents won�t have to worry about the film being dark or disturbing enough to give children nightmares. But on the flip side, THE BOOK OF LIFE isn�t magical or memorable enough to really resonate later, either.



* This review originally appeared in the October 16th, 2014 edition of the Raleigh News & Observer.



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Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/10/16/4235680_review-book-of-life-fantastical.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Minor Marvel Characters Make Major Movie Debut

Now playing at a multiplex near you:

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

(Dir. James Gunn, 2014)

The latest offering from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, James Gunn�s GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, is for sure one of the funniest movies of the year.

Sure, it�s a big action-packed sci-fi spectacle, but for me, it was all about the laughs. And there are a lot of them, many coming from one-liners spouted by the lead, Chris Pratt (Parks and Recreation, ZERO DARK THIRTY), who carries the movie like a reigning comedy champ.

Funnier still, is Pratt�s co-star, an animated raccoon named Rocket voiced by Bradley Cooper, in maybe my favorite performance of his, who�s as much a master of weaponry as he is wisecracks, employing both in battle.

In this adaptation of a long running comic book series that I�ve been unaware of despite the fact it has been in existence since the year I was born (1969), Pratt plays Peter Quill, who we first meet as child in 1988 played by Wyatt Oleff witnessing his mother�s (Laura Haddock) death in the film�s opening moments. The young boy is abducted by aliens immediately afterwards, and we flash forward 26 years.

Pratt, identifying himself as a �junker,� flies around in his spaceship called �The Milano� scouring various planets for stuff to steal while listening to an old school tape compilation of �70s hits called �Awesome Mix. Vol. 1.�

From the dark, rocky terrain of a planet named Morag, Pratt obtains a mysterious orb (the movie�s McGuffin) which is sought for evil purposes by the villainous Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), who sends the green-skinned Gamora (Zoe Saldana, who was blue in AVATAR) to fetch it.

After Pratt tries unsuccessfully to sell the orb the much more stable planet Zander, Saldana steals it from him, but a couple of bounty hunters (the aforementioned raccoon, and a tree-like creature named Groot, voiced by Vin Diesel) get caught up in their chase/fight sequence mix.

The friction fraught foursome gets arrested by the Nova Corps, an intergalactic military/police force stationed on Zander, and run by Glenn Close as Nova Prime Irani Rael, with the always reliable John C. Reilly as one of her high-ranking officers.

From there, the thrown together team joined by Drax the Destroyer (WWE pro-wrestler Dave Bautista), who�s bent on taking revenge on Ronan to murdering his family, break out of imprisonment (in a hilarious chaotic set-piece to the tune of Rupert Holmes� �Escape (The Pi�a Colada Song),� and set about to keep the dangerously powerful orb away from the destructive devices of Ronan, and his boss Thanos (Josh Brolin), who you may remember from the stinger at the end of THE AVENGERS.


Also caught up in this crazy, uber colorful mayhem, is a blue-skinned Michael Rooker (HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, The Walking Dead) as the leader of the Ravagers, a rag tag posse of alien ruffians also after the orb. Rooker�s gravel voiced scenery chewing makes you believe that extreme racist redneck stereotypes will no doubt flourish in the depths of space and other dimensions.

Now, it may seem silly redundant to say that this Phase 2 Marvel movie has a STAR WARS-ian swagger to it, as every summer sci-fi/comic book contender draws upon the blueprint of George Lucas� original 1977 space opera, but with this particular entry with its motley crew onboard a hunk of junk spaceship traveling to seedy ports thing a-goin� on, I can't help going there.



Also, it has more than one Han Solo figure present in the rogue smartass bravado of both Pratt and Cooper, leaving Diesel�s Groot to be our Chewbacca stand-in. There�s a great running gag involving how Groot can only say �I am Groot,� and how each time (with different Diesel inflections), Cooper�s character can understand what he�s really saying, a sort of Han and Chewie-ish situation.



Bautista's Drax being able to only take things literally (�Nothing goes over my head! My reflexes are too fast. I will seize it.�) is another highly amusing thread.

The big ass CGI- saturated battle sequences were a bit too visually cluttered for my tastes at times, but the sheer amount of fun I had with what director Gunn and his co-screenwriter Nicole Perlman kept hurtling at me and the audience made that not matter so much.

Just like Pratt�s coveted cassette compilation is called, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY is an awesome mix. It takes nifty sideline superheroes, only known to hardcore comic fans, and makes major stars out of them (it's also certainly a star-making part for Pratt). But more importantly it made me a laugh a lot, while it proved once again that the Marvel formula - Stan Lee cameo included � has a lot of life left in it.

And, of course, stay for the traditional post-credits scene, which, I won�t spoil, but I will say that it hints at the resurrection of an infamous Marvel character apparently still trapped in a world he never made. That probably is a bit of a spoiler, sorry.

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