He could be a small child, a house plant, maybe even you or me! Is he you, Kowalski?

Penguins of Madagascar

(2014)

You’d think DreamWorks would have realised they can rely on formulaic animated sequels for only so long before they have to come up with something new, but no. Instead, their approach of milking properties until they run dry, and then milking them some more, has blighted other studios’ approach (Pixar is spinning off sequels to pretty much anything that can carry them, Universal has Despicable Me, Fox/Blue Sky is looking forward to Ice Age 11). There’s surely a point when even “indiscriminating” kids are going to realise they’re being had, though. DreamWorks probably thought they had an easy win here, depositing their popular penguins in their own spin-off vehicle. And just to prove their thinking wasn’t necessarily wrong, Universal did exactly the same thing to the tune of a $1bn worldwide gross with Minions this year. So what went wrong? A dearth of anything innovative.

Of course, these things are relative. While Penguins’ stateside haul was of underwhelming Turbo proportions, it still made nearly $400m worldwide, putting it above recent (relative) fizzlers like Rise of the Guardians, Megamind, Turbo and Mr. Peabody and Sherman. Lest that be put down to “undiscerning” international audiences, this year’s Home was notably not met with the same enthusiasm; seen as a US hit, it only doubled that sum worldwide, rather than the two or threefold studios are accustomed to with animations. Thus, they failed to come in much higher than Penguins.

All told, things aren’t looking so hot for the animation house right now, and they’re hoping Kung Fu Panda and The Croods sequels will do the business. Trolls – they’ll be looking for a Smurfs-esque audience tie-in there – and Boss Baby aren’t sure things. Their B.O.O. Bureau of Otherworldy Operations is off the schedule so maybe the retooling is currently in the realm of “unsalvageable”, while Puss in Boots and Madagascar have second and fourth instalments planned.

I’m generally quite forgiving of DreamWorks fare, though, increasingly so now Pixar is happy to turn out dreck like Cars. I’d rather watch speedy snail Turbo any day than Lightning McQueen. And the first half hour of Madagascar 3 is up there with the best CG animation has delivered. Then there’s How to Train Your Dragon 2, proof that sequels don’t have to be bereft of engaging and resonant content. Sadly, though, Penguins is just plain lazy, from conception through to its attempts to jiggery poke the finely tuned mission microcapsules Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private engineered in in the Madagascars.

Eric Darnell, co-overseer of all three Madagascar movies, must share some of the blame as co-director (the other being Simon J Smith of Bee Movie) for not recognising this wasn’t up to snuff. The rest goes to the five writers, who failed to come up with anything remotely suited to the quartet’s particular appeal. Two of them, Alan Schoolcraft, and Brent Simons, worked on Megamind, the substandard superhero affiliations of which this reminded me most (that and the hard done by super villain of The Incredibles). That sub-genre is currently over stuffed, with Despicable Me also vying for that super hero/villain crown. Unless the conceit is distinct, such fare just won’t stand out from the crowd. Feeble Machiavellian octopus Dave (John Malkovich), who presents himself as human and has a serum to mutate penguins – which he doesn’t like as he feels shunned because the foursome were so popular back in the zoo and stole the limelight from him – is as bland a villain as they get.

Added to the mix, there’s a gang of superspy animals, the North Wind, out to stop Dave and butting heads with the penguins. They consist of a wolf (Classified, voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, who surely got paid well but could have been anyone doing it really), a seal, a polar ear and an owl (which Kowalski falls for). Again, it’s not that this sort of thing can’t be plundered for laughs, but everyone is doing it at the moment, and what we get is moribund.

There was more potential early on, when it looked like the penguins were robbing Fort Knox. Unfortunately, they were just after some hard-to-get Cheezy Dibbles snack food. Committing felonies seems much more the sort of thing these can-do guys should be doing, rather than being turned into mutant penguins or a parent-child relationship being fostered between Skipper and Private. That’s the danger of a spin-off; you end up softening characters that were appealing for their lack of moral compass (if the lemurs had their own movie, you can bet King Louis – here not voiced by Sacha Baron Cohen – would have a heart of gold).

The best moment of black comedy, the kind of thing Darnell and Smith should have been indulging, comes in the prologue, as the young penguins (there’s always a flashback with these things, naturally) are intentionally knocked off an ice cliff by a documentary film crew (lead by the voice of Werner Herzog!) in order to get some prize footage. Following this, the madcap adventuring turns decidedly pedestrian, including poo (courtesy of a chemical toilet) and Kevin Bacon gags (“Kevin, bake on”) and Planet of the Apes references that also reference Madagascar by virtue of it including Planet of the Apes references (“You maniac, you blew him up”).

Is anyone going to care about Kung Fu Panda 3, arriving in January? Its last instalment experienced diminishing returns (it made a bit more than the original, but was creatively bankrupt) and there have been rumours of production problems. For sake of DreamWorks stocks, they’d better hope it isn’t another Penguins of Madagascar.

Comments

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

So you want me to be half-monk, half-hitman.

Casino Royale (2006)
(SPOILERS) Despite the doubts and trepidation from devotees (too blonde, uncouth etc.) that greeted Daniel Craig’s casting as Bond, and the highly cynical and low-inspiration route taken by Eon in looking to Jason Bourne's example to reboot a series that had reached a nadir with Die Another Day, Casino Royale ends up getting an enormous amount right. If anything, its failure is that it doesn’t push far enough, so successful is it in disarming itself of the overblown set pieces and perfunctory plotting that characterise the series (even at its best), elements that would resurge with unabated gusto in subsequent Craig excursions.

For the majority of its first two hours, Casino Royale is top-flight entertainment, with returning director Martin Campbell managing to exceed his excellent work reformatting Bond for the ‘90s. That the weakest sequence (still good, mind) prior to the finale is a traditional “big” (but not too big) action set piece involving an attempt to…

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

They literally call themselves “Decepticons”. That doesn’t set off any red flags?

Bumblebee (2018)
(SPOILERS) Bumblebee is by some distance the best Transformers movie, simply by dint of having a smattering of heart (one might argue the first Shia LaBeouf one also does, and it’s certainly significantly better than the others, but it’s still a soulless Michael Bay “machine”). Laika VP and director Travis Knight brings personality to a series that has traditionally consisted of shamelessly selling product, by way of a nostalgia piece that nods to the likes of Herbie (the original), The Iron Giant and even Robocop.

Welcome to the future. Life is good. But it can be better.

20 to See in 2020
Not all of these movies may find a release date in 2020, given Hollywood’s propensity for shunting around in the schedules along with the vagaries of post-production. Of my 21 to See in 2019, there’s still Fonzo, Benedetta, You Should Have Left, Boss Level and the scared-from-its-alloted-date The Hunt yet to see the light of day. I’ve re-included The French Dispatch here, however. I've yet to see Serenity and The Dead Don’t Die. Of the rest, none were wholly rewarding. Netflix gave us some disappointments, both low profile (Velvet Buzzsaw, In the Shadow of the Moon) and high (The Irishman), and a number of blockbusters underwhelmed to a greater or lesser extent (Captain Marvel, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Terminator: Dark Fate, Gemini Man, Star Wars: The Rise of the Skywalker). Others (Knives Out, Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum) were interesting but flawed. Even the more potentially out there (Joker, Us, Glass, Rocketman) couldn…

It’s like an angry white man’s basement in here.

Bad Boys for Life (2020)
(SPOILERS) The reviews for Bad Boys for Life have, perhaps surprisingly, skewed positive, given that it seemed exactly the kind of beleaguered sequel to get slaughtered by critics. Particularly so since, while it’s a pleasure to see Will Smith and Martin Lawrence back together as Mike and Marcus, the attempts to validate this third outing as a more mature, reflective take on their buddy cops is somewhat overstated. Indeed, those moments of reflection or taking stock arguably tend to make the movie as a whole that much glibber, swiftly succeeded as they are by lashings of gleeful ultra-violence or humorous shtick. Under Michael Bay, who didn’t know the definition of a lull, these pictures scorned any opportunity to pause long enough to assess the damage, and were healthier, so to speak, for that. Without him, Bad Boys for Life’s beats often skew closer to standard 90s action fare.

They seem to be attracted to your increasing nudeness.

Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019)
(SPOILERS) I was put in mind of Shazam! watching Pokémon Detective Pikachu, another 2019 tentpole that somewhat underperformed based on expectations. Not particularly due to any plot resemblance, but because both movies fall apart under the weight of an overblown and underwhelming finale. In the case of Shazam! that may be more damaging to its prospective sequels (if they keep the team of super-adult kids), whereas Detective Pikachu will simply have to struggle with a whole heap of unnecessary expositional baggage attempting to imbue the proceedings with emotional resonance.

To defeat the darkness out there, you must defeat the darkness inside yourself.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)
Easily the best of the Narnia films, which is maybe damning it with faint praise.

Michael Apted does a competent job directing (certainly compared to his Bond film - maybe he talked to his second unit this time), Dante Spinotti's cinematography is stunning and the CGI mostly well-integrated with the action.

Performance-wise, Will Poulter is a stand-out as a tremendously obnoxious little toff, so charismatic you're almost rooting for him. Simon Pegg replaces Eddie Izzard as the voice of Reepicheep and delivers a touching performance.
***

You’re a slut with a snake in your mouth. Die!

Mickey One (1965)
(SPOILERS) Apparently this early – as in, two years before the one that made them both highly sought-after trailblazers of “New Hollywood” – teaming between Warren Beatty and Arthur Penn has undergone a re-evaluation since its initial commercial and critical drubbing. I’m not sure about all that. Mickey One still seems fatally half-cocked to me, with Penn making a meal of imitating the stylistic qualities that came relatively naturally – or at least, Gallically – to the New Wave.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog