Oh gosh

When I first heard about this I turned my nose up because of the whole set-up … a prequel to the original, which of course meant no Melody lol. A few months ago I saw a still from the movie posted to some IMDb message board or other and my interest seeing in the movie for all but disappeared because the moment in particular that they’d captured just looked atrociously drawn.

How fast those doubts can be swept away by the merest glance during the first few minutes here of a tiny tiny Ariel (no seashells, just a cute purple wrap, lol!) and all the other characters, and the animation, crucially, in motion. The animation here is spectacular ... and I’m not even gonna add to that ”... for a DTV sequel …”

Well, anyway, the tiny tiny Ariel doesn’t last ‘cos this is evidently all occurring pretty close to the start of the original. The story is nifty once it gets going – I actually laughed out loud when Ariel first stumbles across Sebastian’s underground music speakeasy, lol. Basically Triton has outlawed music in Atlantica and the movie is kind of Prohibition for kids about the importance of music. I guess Disney is getting a headstart on the neo-depression genre lol.

There are lots of cute references to the original, my fave being the jawdrop moment (if I remember correctly, this was also in the sequel when Melody tells Sebastian she sometimes imagines she has fins) – here it’s flipped around and it’s Ariel’s jaw that drops when she first seas goody-goody Sebastian breaking the rules by singing. Later we see the villainess Marina Del Ray mimicking the splash-up-on-the-rock moment that ended the “Part of Your World” reprise. There are some supersubtle gags for adults though, too, like “At-lant-ic-a!” when all the sea creatures find themselves locked away. The movie really has a surprisingly rebellious streak to it. Oh and also, almost making up for the absence of Melody (though her voice, Tara Strong, is here! hehe), at last Flounder is back to the cute version we fell in love with in the original, not the adolescent, voice broken, version that was about the worst thing in Return to the Sea LOL.

All in all I was surprised. I’d obviously rather see another Melody story than this but I can’t deny the animation is just leaps and bounds better than most Disney DTVs – though I’m cringing the more I hear about the Tinker Bell movie which basically sounds like Bratz meets Sex and the City with fairies, bah … I can’t wait to see the animation.

“We was beat when we was born.”

I needed this one pretty bad (and again, I’m totally behind, this was before this past weekend). It’s amazing how many of my thoughts, things I’ve written this past week or so in places I can’t even link to such is the world, came together while I was watching this movie, as if someone up there, call it the movie god, was watching down and decided to send me a message saying, “you’re not alone on that, don’t worry.” (gugh, sorry if that was cryptic – I’d make it less so by way of more words but I really just need to post these straggling reviews while I’ve the urge)

“I’m just not used to having whether I stay or whether I go matter to anybody …”

The songs don’t come as thick and fast as I’d like, I found my focus drifting somewhere towards the end of the second act (speaking in 3-act movie terms, not 2-act theatrical terms, lol) – it would I think work ever so slightly better as the 90 minute TV movie musical like Annie or A Christmas Carol. But once the pace picks up again at the end – boy oh boy does it ever pick up, from “Once and for All”, the reprise of “And the World Will Know” all the way up until the end credits.

I’m not often stirred by things like this but like I said it just spoke volumes to my current concerns with how people are freely allowing their senses to be beaten down by keywords in the media that genuinely amount to brainwashing. The sight of Robert Duvall as Pulitzer with his fingers in his ears to the crowd of truth outside his building is seriously almost more music to my eyes than Alan Menken’s songs are to my ears.

“I can’t afford to be a kid no more.”

It’s really just one of those movies that, despite its flaws, when it hits its highs, of which there are many, it honestly feels like there needn’t be another movie in the cosmos. I keep going back to the lyrics of Once and For All this evening – nevermind the wonder of Alan Menken (god, I was tearing up almost before the picture had finished fading in with his opening notes, lol), if I’m honest Jack Feldman’s work is what deserves praising more here. Seriously if we could have just one or two movies a year with as much passion in them as there is there, the world would be a better place.

I wanted to love this so much so, as such, I went in with the utmost fears of being grossly disappointed. I’d seen the marketing clip of Meryl Streep singing “Winner Takes it All” and it just took my breath away, it was the kind of emotion I never really associated with the musical which, in all it’s Greasey popularity, I had no option but to loathe from the off. I don’t see the reasoning behind spending £20 and upwards to see these jukebox shows in the theatre, and though I’ve certainly done my share of standing and clapping etc to a show that moved me that way (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), I hate when I go to a show and feel like I’m being compelled to get involved. I don’t like to share that admittedly grumpy side of myself lol but, hey, it serves as the perfect setup to my review.

For 20 minutes or so (aside from the gorgeously spinetingling “I Have a Dream” opener), it wobbles something disastrous. There’s a lot of exposition in setting up the basic story (girl is getting married, doesn’t know who her father is, invites the three most likely candidates without her mother’s knowledge – but you probably knew that better than me) around the song “Honey, Honey”. But then Meryl Streep finally pokes her head in on the scene. And the movie literally takes off when she opens her mouth to sing “Money Money Money”.

Now I’ve never denied that Streep is one of the best actresses ever to grace the screen. But she never really did anything that struck me beyond the appreciative acknowledgement of her talent like this did. It was there in that short “Winner Takes it All” clip. But taken as the full 2 hour performance – it’s overwhelming. She’s so alive, so full of joy, and the camera loves her. It gets right up in her face in places but at times just sits back, like us, in awe of such a fantastic woman being in the moment. If I called Evening “so vaginal it’s stifling” (_checks_: yep, sorry, that was me, lol), then this movie is so much so that it’s joyous. When even my least favourite ABBA song, “Dancing Queen”, can move me to wish more than ever I could join those girls dancing and leaping in the water, so much so I almost applauded out loud in the very British silence of the multiplex, lol … you know we have a winner. It just killed me how beautiful all the female interactions were in this movie, how upfront and unashamedly they were placed on the screen, all manner of girls and women, mothers and daughters – never done in this retributional way so many feminist tracts come; just as a statement of people with as much right to be and love and live as anybody else, no matter what their age, sex or level of conventional beauty. Did I mention that all this is glorious?

But, oh, there are men too. Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsard, Colin Firth: never mind the Meryl, Julie Walters and Christine Baranski, all of whom in opinion were perfect on the tunes … these guys are adorable when they sing. The guys’ songs seem mostly to come in those moments of character where they’re unveiling the side of themselves that is usually regarded as something that ought to be hidden. There’s a moment when Brosnan sings to Streep, I think it’s his first sung piece in fact, and it cuts back to her face in a picture of shock, the kind of shock that you get when a traditionally uptight male breaks down and cries and reveals an embarrassing secret or, hey, just plain talks ... this is how screen musicals should be, this is how the songs should come in my opinion. It’s just wonderful. Colin Firth’s voice is like the lead singer of the Zombies or Belle & Sebastian: that endearing weakness, again the honesty and love that I love so much about this movie. There are lots of other guys in the movie too lol, very much there for the girls or guys who want them lol.

I didn’t expect this to be one of my “gush, gush, just get the initial reaction into words and publish!” reviews, lol, but the movie really did strike me that way, moreso than I even expected or hoped. I’m still buzzing when I remember the songs and the faces – I even emerged with a new favourite ABBA song, “Slipping Through My Fingers”, which I’d never heard in my life – it comes just after Sophie asks her mother to help her prepare for the wedding, something Streep takes to with heartrending glee. The song is about a young girl’s first day at school and the mother saying goodbye like losing her to the wide world, and we see Streep doing her daughter’s hair, butting a bandaid on her ankle and kissing a booboo better as she brushes her teeth, sitting in a chair doing her nails and talking, all in the present. If I go any further into why this scene crushed me so much I’ll be here for pages lol. All I’ll say is it’s the most beautiful standalone scene I’ve seen in too long and for it alone I could go back down to the multiplex and pay for another ticket right now, let alone all the other wonderful moments I haven’t even touched on.

When even the cheesy end credits stuff (where it really does threaten to become “menopausal karaoke night” as I wrote here lol) had me buzzin’ (and frankly wishing I was in a livelier audience) ... again, you know a good thing when it’s there in front of you For me it’s really the first great movie of the year, and I’m happy shocked to find I’m still rooting for it to catch on enough to be an Oscars contender next year.

“The me I never knew
Begin to stir sometime this morning;
The me I never knew
Appeared without a word of warning.”

I’d forgotten entirely how this version, too, replicates that “golden afternoon” feeling at the start so well, also that it begins in such a fashion in a framing device of “Mr. Dodgson” (Lewis Carroll) telling the three Liddell sisters the story. All bonus points in my book.

What I always remember about the movie are the songs, John Barry’s score, and Fiona Fullerton, who is absolutely beautiful in the central role – I don’t care what people say about her being too old for it, she’s young enough in spirit and appearance for me. The visual effects, it bears repeating from below, I still find absolutely stunning. The slow shrinking over “Curiouser and Curiouser”, ending with the trackback to reveal the pool of tears, is simply perfect, as is the later growing in the White Rabbit’s house.

It’s certainly still my favourite adaptation (so far). It also has the benefit (I think – as I’ve said in other Alice reviews today I only discovered this past week) of being one of the few to focus solely on the first book (hence the title, presumably).

September 8th, 2005:

This movie has a beautiful look to it, the kind they simply don’t do anymore, all foggy and mysterious like The Water Babies, not slick and perfect like today’s fantasy adventures. There’s some great music by John Barry (slightly dodgy lyrics by Don Black though) and an enchanting performance by then 16-year-old Fiona Fullerton as Alice. What’s most wonderful about the whole thing is its infectious innocence. The cast is packed with stars, from Peter Sellers to Spike Milligan and Michael Crawford, if you can recognise them under all the make-up. The effects are flawless, too. For a 90 minute movie, it tires towards the end, but overall it’s a fairly fantastic adaptation.

Of course, as the Disney version, this is the best-known, most-loved, most stylised and standardised of all the adaptations. As far as I know, it was likely my only source of the story for a good chunk of my life, and by that I mean, I don’t even remember reading or being read the book (_sniff_ lol): I only realised this past week reading the first of the books that parts of this and the other adaptations, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee for example, were in fact taken from “Through the Looking Glass” which I’ve yet to read. In this version, in fact, they even pull in a couple of elements from Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”, as well as throwing in some genuinely clever characters and lines of their own (“You gave me quite a turn!” “She’s stark raven mad!”) ... all in 70 minutes. I still prefer the Fiona Fullerton version by a smidgen, and who knows what Tim Burton’s going to deliver, but this is one of Disney’s best, it’s eyepoppingly colourful particularly when you consider the year it was made, and the character designs etc certainly stick in one’s memory.

“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.

The May Day staple Actually, I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually remembered to watch it on May 1st so this may actually be a first though it’s long been the plan. On this occasion I decided to watch the 15-minute-longer “director’s cut” – it took some deciding but in the end I remembered it’s really just the theatrical cut with deleted scenes spliced in so in a way you wind up watching both at the same time if you’re already familiar with the theatrical version.

I don’t think the extra scenes make a huge amount of difference – though it heightens our understanding of Howie to see him on the mainland at the start, the quality of the scenes (I’m not talking about the grainy nature of the print they had to use, I mean the general acting and production quality which dips below perfect more than a few times during the rest of the film) is the film at its most flawed and hokey. The sooner you get Edward Woodward in the same room as Britt Ekland or Christopher Lee here, the better, ‘cos that’s when all its failings go out of the window as it begins to soar into the ether.

It’s one of those films that can be taken many different ways depending on your outlook on all the fronts it addresses. Whether you’re religious or not, what religion that may be, what your moral views and more happen to be (and if you’re anything like me, all these things will tend to shift wildly over time), the movie will affect you differently, but every different interpretation will be just as extraordinary as the next.

Usually when I watch this movie, while I’m not exactly on the side of the Summerisle residents, I find myself just as against Howie as I am them: because of his stubbornness, it’s almost fun to watch him being made (literally, in the end) a fool of, that is, of course, until it all goes too far at the end. This time, I was struck at the end how everybody actually wins and I found his ending almost a triumph for his faith, a sacrifice as powerful as that of Karras at the end of The Exorcist, even though all control is out of Howie’s hands, he makes his own death into something grander … through his singing, his praying, his resoluteness to the end.

The way we see Howie almost wallowing in his religion throughout the movie, most particularly the struggle we see in him as Willow tempts him through the thin walls of the inn, his end here is almost inevitable and almost the only way he can resolve his devotion to that quite miserable form of religion. He wins because until the very end he insists on his own beliefs, he never gives into temptation; by the rules of his religion, not to mention the law, he’s done right.

Contrast that with, by law, the “murderers” of Summerisle, that horrifying image of Lee and others swinging from side to side joyously singing “Summertime is coming in,”: their end is happier, but it’s really no different from Howie’s. They’re just as trapped by the rules of their religion, and they win too.

It’s a stunningly simple set-up, and for me it works everytime, if sometimes a little differently than expected. As I said, it’s flawed, but there’s so much (I haven’t even mentioned the beautiful songs by Paul Giovanni, it’s one soundtrack I’ll never grow tired of) to make up for the dips in quality.

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.