“You seem like such a nice beast. Well I certainly hope you are what you seem to be.”

I don’t know what it is about this movie. It’s undeniable how perfect an example of “bad” 80s moviemaking it is. It’s obviously comparable to “Alice in Wonderland” (you’ll notice a theme in the next few reviews, incidentally … it is a certain someone’s birthday this weekend, afterall …), not only in the “lost girl” theme but also in the rhymes and riddles she encounters along the way. It’s practically identical to “Wonderland” in fact – but for one detail, Sarah’s brother, the baby … the goal. The whole thing is set up like a video game. The wonder of wonderland, of course, was that Alice had no great reason to be there, it’s very much one thing after another (“Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”)

I guess the goal element comes from “The Wizard of Oz” – Jareth’s (has there ever been a sillier name for a villain? lol) castle as the Emerald City, you see the book (with a lot of other fairytales – not sure if Alice is there though) in Sarah’s room at the start – but it strikes me more as over-dependence on the Joseph Campbell mythology thing that started to dominate screenwriting around the time thanks to Syd Field and hand in hand with high concept and VHS produced hoards of horrors that still have my kneejerk thought on the Eighties as “the worst decade for cinema” even while movies like this always remind me it really wasn’t so bad.

In the end there’s just something mystical about it that defies explanation – if you know and love the movie, you just know what I’m talking about – it’s there when the opening credits music strikes up, in those shots of Jennifer Connolly running through the rain to “Underground”, at the strange diversion of the masked ball where she dresses older and dances with Bowie, and at the end with the upside-down staircases; ironically, somehow it just wouldn’t be the same without the tacky Eighties synth music and hairdos, lol. It makes you feel like a horrible wish like the one Sarah makes at the start – the kind we all half-heartedly make from time to time – really could be granted and turn our world on its head. It’s bizarre and silly and fun, but in the end it’s somehow a lesson that never gets old, perhaps because it never quite gets learned.

In the hopes of enhancing my enjoyment of the remaining films in my little Shirley Temple “season” lol … okay, the planned programme was delayed for technical reasons … I decided to finally watch this that’s been gathering dust in my room for quite some time. I was immediately more interested when I saw director Nadia Tass’ name in the credits but couldn’t quite remember why – looking up on the IMDb I was reminded, she did two of the American Girl movies including the best one, Samantha, and the even better (non-American-Girl) Amy.

Being TV bound, this production is closer in quality to the American Girl movies than anything, but that’s not bad company to be in. The script feels like it’s really just been culled from snippets of memories and anecdotes (a book by Shirley is credited as the source) and really just breezes through the more notable movies with occasional dips into her homelife which is almost clichéd, daddy spending her money, mommy being stage mommy, brothers being brothers.

I can’t imagine any actress could’ve done a better job than Ashley Rose Orr as Shirley. There’s something kind of tacky and cheap I find about movies like this from the outset (especially when they’re made for TV) and there’s something inherently “wrong” in seeing a young actress in the 21st century in those costumes in full colour*, not to mention how ridiculous it would be easy for the then 10-year-old Orr to feel prancing around in them, but she does it all, from the dancing to the “Good Ship Lollipop” (doing all her own singing), at times (particularly with the singing) almost startlingly well. The faithful reproduction of the movie sets etc, especially considering it’s a TV production, deserves mention too. At times if you caught in in your peripheral vision you’d almost be forgiven for thinking a colourized version of the real thing was on. For what it is, I really can’t fault it, and I personally enjoyed it more than a couple of the actual movies.

* Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with it – but at a time when just about every day now I read about someone somewhere going crazy about pre-teens being oversexualised, I feel like the only way to beat them is to join them.

Well, it took me a little longer than a year to get around to watching this a second time but I feel the distance (from Awards Season if nothing else) helped a lot – knowing where the dots are joined, however, definitely makes a second viewing more revealing.

The huge thing that prevented me from hands down adoring this movie the first time I saw it was, as I think was true for many others, the Rinko Kikuchi storyline, the entirely looser connection to “the whole” compared to the other threads being the main reason. Even that first viewing, I still wanted to overlook that flaw because the story in itself, primarily due to Kikuchi’s astonishingly moving performance, was the one that really got to me the most. That’s still true – but I realised something else about it this time around that makes overlooking the flaw entirely unnecessary. If you just look at the movie thematically rather than as interconnected stories, really, the Kikuchi storyline is perfectly connected to the whole. I won’t elaborate any more than that, there’s tons of speculation on the IMDb etc and it should really be left to the individual to make up their own mind.

The editing really struck me on this viewing too, the transitions between the stories are really old school juxtaposition, like from laughing Japanese schoolgirls to herding goats, the headless chicken in Mexico going to the wounded Blanchett on the bus, Blanchett screaming as her wound is stitched up to silence in Japan (and there, too, from a dodgy-looking needle to sterilized dental instruments), it sells the diversity of cultures across the world superbly in this manner and subtly (okay, not so subtly at times) guides your mind into joining the dots and drawing the message out. It’s perfect, even better a second time around.

December 21st, 2006:

“I’m not bad – I just did a stupid thing.”

Like Little Children, this one is just great in ways I can’t begin to start on after a first viewing. It covers so many things, so many stories, so many characters, so many places, but it’s never too much or too hard to follow. The performances are brilliant, most notably Brad Pitt and Rinko Kikuchi, even though I didn’t quite get the relevance of her story on this viewing (I get it, her dad had the gun, but it just didn’t strike me as being as important to the whole tapestry as the other threads – not that that stopped it from moving me). A movie I’ll definitely be watching again next year and I’ll write more then.

Finally Shirley gets a story. I felt like I could trust this from the off and in terms of pure production quality this is leagues above the other Shirley movies I’ve seen. The sets look right out of a storybook. I’m still left unimpressed by Shirley’s talent – there are a million 6-8 year olds who could deliver this stuff if you only threw discipline into the mix; to me the best child stars are the ones who can do it almost mystically of their own accord (I know, there are a million of those too, but they’re still more special) – but she’s mostly tolerable in the title role.

But though it’s better than some of the Shirley movies (Stand Up and Bright Eyes notwithstanding – I seem to remember enjoying The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer way back when I saw it too), I still imagine any number of the other Heidi adaptations are more enjoyable (I’ll find out later in the year, I’ve at least 3 in the queue). Which I guess is my point when it comes to the Shirley Temple movies. The defense everyone always uses for them is that she cheered everyone up through the Depression etc. which is fine and dandy but it paints the movies themselves as of the “pure entertainment” variety (which I’m rarely too hot on unless they have something else to them) and on that front they just don’t deliver as much anymore. I won’t deny their historical value, and Shirley herself is “cute enough” ... but there are still hundreds of movies that are more worth anybody’s time.

This is another Temple vehicle desperately light on story. I’d say the songs were nice, especially the main “Codfish Ball” but 2 minutes after the end credits all I had stuck in my head was the awkwardly similar “Lambeth Walk”, lol. There’s an interesting surreal sequence with Shirley as a tiny nurse tending to a man dressed as a baby in an oversized highchair, complete with oversized props and a staircase for Shirley to reach him by. I’d raise the creepy card again, but it’s at least a little visual creativity amidst 75 minutes of bland nothingness.

Again, I probably made an error watching more than one of these in one sitting and this was the one that suffered but all I can do is write what I can about it. This struck me almost immediately as a little too much like Annie, everything that didn’t resemble it only making me wish I was watching Alicia Morton or even Aileen Quinn rather than Shirley Temple. Really nothing special unless you’re crazy for Shirley. It’s 75-minutes of everything going relatively smoothly, with songs liberally sprinkled to pass the time; this doesn’t do a lot for me.

“There ain’t no Santa Claus!”
“Don’t say ain’t! Say isn’t.”

Okay, this is more like it. I was surprised as I checked about 10 minutes into this that it, too, like the three Shirley Temple movies I watched at the end of last week, was released in 1934. She looks a year or two older to me as she appears at the start here, marching down the road in flying leathers hitching a ride to the airport, and she looks a lot more comfortable too.

But just 15 minutes later, I discover, yet again there’s something in this Shirley Temple movie that overshadows pretty much all her contribution. It’s Jane Withers, a screen brat who certainly predated but possibly also exceeds the likes of Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed. It’s astonishing given the clear value Temple held for Hollywood at the time that nobody seems ever to have stepped in and put a damper on Withers’ performance – if it can be called that even. Where Temple is as controlled and directed as ever, Withers seems simply to have been placed on the set with her full knowing that if anyone’s going to notice her over her co-star, then dangit she’s gonna have to scream, lol.

Anyway, the story worked for me and even moved me, despite Shirley’s complete inability to stir empathy in me. James Dunn as the godfather Loop is fantastic, particularly when explaining to Shirley about her mother – and the ending is one of the most beautiful ideas I’ve seen in a movie so old … early in the movie, Loop asks Shirley “how much do you love me?” and she gives him the tightest of hugs, and this he repeats in order to make her hold on as they bail out of a storm-wracked plane with one parachute. There’s some funny business with the Uncle in the wheelchair too. Well worth the watch, and I’ll likely bring it out at Christmas some time as that’s where the movie begins.

Now, how do I say this …? Despite really enjoying Daddy Day Care, I still came to this expecting the absolute worst after the reviews and, well, just look at the re-casting they did. It’s almost as bad as Splash, Too, lol. The presence of Cuba Gooding Jr. not only makes it worse but adds the whole dimension of depressing to the picture. I mean, really: what happened to him?!

But you know what? It grew on me. I laughed. Loudly in places. I mentioned about the toilet humour in the first movie that I liked how it threatened to go too far yet never quite did. I’ve gotta say, here, the gross stuff does go a little far – you could almost make a direct comparison between the “I missed!” scene in the first movie where evidently a little boy with potty problems gives Eddie Murphy’s bathroom a new coat of brown paint, yet all this is played from Murphy’s expression, and a scene here where a kid vomits all over the inside of Cuba Gooding’s tent – I guess Gooding’s expressions aren’t as convincing, because he has to have some of the vomit drop on his forehead. Later, we get the full-on Problem Child/Little Britain style projectile stuff. Not necessary. But I did laugh.

In the end it has just as solid a family message as the first, and I was honestly slightly stirred especially by the son taking matters into his own hands to win the contest, also the climbing wall smashing down on all the trophies Scattered throughout are a number of scenes with a very cute girl called Telise Galanis who hopefully has a future. I truly had no problems with it. Yes, the first is better, duh, it was first. But this one really deserves some kudos for overcoming such mindbogglingly bad casting issues.