The Bee Movie, Alvin and the Chipmunks and Happy Feet...

Introductions aren't my strongest suit, so let's just say that I had ideas to talk about three different kids movies, but couldn't think of compelling reasons to focus on just one, so I decided to meld them all into one story. That and I had a few of them partly written and was too lazy to finish.

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One Friday, Julia and I were on our own. Laura was out of town visiting a friend so I promised Julia that we would see the new movie, The Bee Movie.



We saw the 5:00 showing at the local theater here. Julia was pretty excited to see it. After all, if you've been watching television, it would have been really hard to miss the advertising for The Bee Movie. They were on for the two months before it came out non-stop on the kid channels.

We get to the theater and we go to buy popcorn. Julia really loves popcorn, so we ended up sharing a large popcorn.

Inside the theater, Julia decided that we're going to sit at the very top of the theater so that "we can see better." I tried to tell her that if we sat a few rows closer, we'd see it even better, but she had her heart set on the top row. Once you get Julia's mind set on something, it's hard to change it.

The previews were going and we're eating our popcorn. Julia was holding the huge bag on her lap. After a few minutes, she pulled the popcorn away from me.

I exclaimed in a loud whisper, "Hey! Bring back the popcorn!"

Julia defiantly said, "No, we're saving it for the start of the movie."

I tried to reach across her to get more popcorn.

She pulled away. After a few seconds, she put the bag back on her lap. I reached again. She slapped my hand! I reached again. She slapped my hand again!

I exclaimed, "Hey!"

She said again, "No! We're saving it for the start of the movie!"

I looked at her and then my watch. It's only a few minutes before the movie was supposed to start. I said, "Fine."

I sat there waiting, but I still felt hungry as I had not eaten yet. I looked over at Julia periodically. She was just sitting there watching the trailers, but then I noticed that she was putting popcorn into her mouth every 10 seconds or so.

I said, "Julia, I thought we were saving the popcorn."

She stopped eating for a minute. Then she began again.

I said again, "Julia, I thought we were saving the popcorn."

She stopped eating for yet another minute. Then she began eating the popcorn yet again.

I exclaimed, "Julia! Stop eating!"

She didn't stop, so I grabbed the bag. She slapped my hand again. This time, I moved close to her face and I said in a low voice, "Julia. This is ridiculous. I paid for the popcorn, and I'm going to eat it if I want to. Otherwise, I'm going to take this popcorn, throw it away and you'll get none. On top of that, you'll be grounded. Is that what you want? Besides, we can get a refill on the popcorn if we run out, remember?"

She looked at me for a second as if she was trying to figure out how serious I was. I think she got the message. Without sighing, she gave me the popcorn bag. I proceeded to eat.

Ahh... kids, aren't they precious? I'm sure years later she'll be convinced by her therapists that all of her problems in life can be traced back to the time when she tried to conserve her popcorn for the movie, but I ate it anyway. She'll come home one Christmas and yell, "You bastard! You ate my popcorn!"

So back to The Bee Movie...

The Bee Movie was written by Jerry Seinfeld, who coincidentally starred in the show Seinfeld. In The Bee Movie, Seinfeld plays the roll of Barry B. Benson, a young bee who's just graduated from school and excited to pick his new career. He gets freaked out that he'll get stuck in his career choice until he dies. After all, he hasn't seen anything out of the outside world. While flying with the pollen jockeys, the bees that collect and spread pollen, he gets lost in the big city. From there, he meets a florist, who he falls in love with. There are some funny scenes with her jealous human boyfriend and his dealing with the human world.

I don't really remember a lot about how the movie's plot goes, but it somehow moves to bees suing the human race for harvesting their honey without permission.

I fell asleep a few times during the courtroom scenes in the movie, which should give you an indication on how much I liked this movie. All in all, it was okay. It started out pretty good with lots of bee puns and humor that adults could appreciate. I just thought it dragged a little.

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Another movie we saw recently was the new movie, Alvin and the Chipmunks. As with every beloved franchise from our youth, they have to remake it into a cartoon, 3-D animated film or combination action and 3-D animated film. This is the latter.



The movie centers around a guy named Dave, like the guy from the original song (played by Jason Lee). He's a song writer, but not a very successful one. He plays his demo tape to his friend, Ian (played by David Cross), who is a record executive of some sort, or maybe he's an agent. Ian rejects it and tells him to find something new, so Dave does when he inadvertently becomes the guardian of three chipmunks who can sing and talk. How does one acquire three talking chipmunks you may ask? Well, if you are in the process of leaving a record company's lobby with a stolen muffin basket, it's possible that three talking chipmunks will jump in after their tree is cut down and erected as a Christmas tree in the lobby of said record company.

They introduce themselves to Dave, he freaks out, throws them out, they manage to get back in, and he blackmails them to sing his songs for free room and board. He throws them out again for ruining his dinner date with the girl next door, who happens to look like a super model (played by Cameron Richardson, who curiously enough played a teen supermodel on the show House, when she was about 24 years old). The chipmunks high tail it over to Ian's house without knowing who Ian is, what he does or where he lives. They sing for him the Christmas song and he proclaims them new artists on the record label!

Apparently, it's possible to record, produce and release a Christmas song sung by Chipmunks not only overnight, but so fast that when Dave is in the grocery store the next day, he hears the song on the loud speaker.

Fame comes to the chipmunks. Of course, Ian starts to wedge himself between Dave and the chipmunks, Dave loses the chipmunks, chipmunks miss Dave, Dave misses the chipmunks, Dave wants the chipmunks back, Ian won't let the Chipmunks go, yadda yadda yadda... the Chipmunks are back with Dave.

I left the movie twice to get a refill of popcorn and to go to the bathroom. Curiously enough, I didn't seem to miss anything. I even took my time. This should tell you that I didn't think much of this movie.

I joked with Laura when I came back the second time, "What did I miss?"

She rolled her eyes and said, "Nothing."

The movie was okay, but lacked a clever plot or jokes that weren't derived from trashing an apartment or chipmunk bodily functions.

The one interesting thing to me was the phone-it-in performance by David Cross, who has a dual career of corny movie actor and hipster comedian. You could tell that he was winking at the camera the whole time. Hey, I understand. If I was bit player actor, I'd probably be happy for any role that came my way, too.

One thing I'm getting tired of in these movies are the uses of the same plot device of two parties getting together, then one party goes away, which the other party realizes they were meant to be with the other all along. It's been used over and over with these films. Memo to Hollywood: Can't we just have a remake of a beloved pop culture icon(s) that involves a different plot device?

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The next movie has been out for a while, but I'm finally around to reviewing it. It's called 'Happy Feet' and it's a movie about a penguin that tap dances instead of singing, which I guess most penguins do... This month, it's back on HBO and because it's also available in our On Demand section, we get to see it whenever Julia wants to see it. Yay!!!!



The movie centers around a penguin named Mumble. From the start, Mumble is different from the other penguins because he doesn't have a singing voice. Apparently, penguins not only sing, but they sing various versions of popular songs that include, "Heartbreak Hotel", "Somebody to Love", "Kiss", "Broken Wings", etc. It's like watching 'Moulin Rouge' with penguins. Curiously enough, they both star Nicole Kidman.

Watching this movie or even listening in the background to this movie makes me want to shove pencils in my eyes and ears. The butchering of songs is bad enough, but then it takes a turn for the worse by the two voices that Robin Williams provides for this movie. First off, he provides the voice of the sassy narrator, who turns out to be the character of Lovelace, the sassy love doctor, which he reads kind of like a grizzled Morgan Freeman meets Barry White. Then we hear him again as Ramon, the sassy Hispanic sounding penguin that Mumble befriends. For some reason, the writers of this movie felt the need to have the smaller penguins that Mumble encounters voiced like they came across the border.

The segments with Robin Williams drive me crazy because I personally can't stand him anymore. There was a time when I really liked Robin Williams. My brother and I thought that he was hysterical, and we'd see every movie that he was in. After a while, you start to notice that he's just doing the same voices whenever he's in a movie or appearing on a show. His list of characters include the sassy John Wayne, the sassy gay guy, the sassy southerner, the sassy Hispanic, the sassy preacher, the sassy cop, the sassy kid or the sassy grandma. I'm sure I've forgotten one. It wasn't so bad in the movie 'Robots' when he played Bender, the sassy, kleptomaniac robot made of spare parts, but it was definitely restrained. He's much better in movies when he's restrained like his roles in Awakenings and Good Will Hunting.

Another thing that drives me crazy about Happy Feet is the non-stop use of music for the sake of plot. You see the plot revolves around Mumble being an outsider because he can't sing like the other penguins. Because of this, he's kind of an outcast due to his crazy dancing that he does instead.

Because the plot, voices and music drive me up the wall, I'll admit that I'm not sure what happens in the middle of the movie. I do know that Mumble loves a girl named Gloria, he can't sing, he's shunned and explores a lot because of it, which is where it's discovered that fish are disappearing. Where it gets really weird is when Mumble and others try to figure out what happened to all the fish. In a very weird turn, Mumble is captured and placed in a zoo in which he faces real actors. He's depressed because he's away from his family and Gloria, the girl penguin he likes. He starts to tap dance one day, people notice and suddenly it turns into a save the world by dancing sequence. Mumble appears back home (with a tracking device on his back) and convinces the penguins to dance to bring back the fish. They do and the humans watching are astounded. It ends with real actors yelling at each other about how they must save the penguins!

It's a very weird movie, and I can't believe it got the good reviews it got. Julia seems to love it though, which I guess is the whole point...