What is it with Disney and orphans?
It’s an age-old adage in storytelling that if you want to create a sense of danger you stick a kid somewhere dark and scary, possibly a forest, and take away all parental supervision.…
Tag: kids
Pete Docter proves just the tonic for Pixar with Inside Out
Say what you want about the superhero genre, over the past twenty years Pixar has turned our childhoods into a cottage history.
From the animated playthings of Toy Story to the night terrors of Monsters, Inc., with the occasional sequel and prequel thrown in, no studio has displayed such consistent inventiveness and insight into the processes of growing up.…
Paddington gets right more than the bear necessities
How exactly do you go about adapting a classic children’s character to the big screen?
Stay too true to the source material and you’ll miss out on the audience of hyperactive tweens; stray too far, however, and you end up with a soulless “product”.…
How To Train Your Dragon 2 soars high but carries little weight
When it comes to computer-animated family fun, the only real contender is Pixar.
Their main rival, Dreamworks, has been mostly reliant on a number of franchises: Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda. So far, though, they’re yet to produce anything to rival the artistry of Toy Story.…
Everything is awesome with The Lego Movie
Brand movies are notoriously not good.
Generally reliant on a calculated blend of nostalgia and big-budget cheesiness, they are essentially vampires of good will, and however much money they do make, it’s never quite enough.
Who, for instance, authorized a $200 million adaptation of Battleship, a children’s guessing game?…
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters is pure family-friendly froth
Man, it’s a difficult life being the child of a god.
It’s been three years since teenage demigod Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) last appeared in The Lightning Thief, his equivalent of Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone. In it, Percy learned about his mystical heritage, headed over to Camp Half-Blood (a slightly more outdoorsy Hogwarts), and headed off for his first adventure with his two new best friends.…