Ed's Review Dot Com

Twentieth Century Fox Animation, Blue Sky Studios, Feigco Entertainment,

Noah Schnapp, Hadley Belle Miller, Alexander Garfin, Mariel Sheets, Venus Schultheis, Rebecca Bloom, Noah Johnston, A.J. Tecce, Francesca Capaldi, Bill Melendez

Charlie Brown is back in this new 3D feature film with all the Peanuts gang. This goes back to the roots and the beginning of the peanuts gang and is about their adventures in school and out. A new neighbor moves in across the street from Chuck and Snoopy and it turns out to be a little red haired girl. Charlie Brown is smitten, and tries his best to impress her. but Charlie has nothing but bad luck. Snoopy, meanwhile, along with Woodstock and company and his new girlfriend set out to write the worlds greatest novel about his adventures fighting the evil Red Baron. This is a flash back to our youth that is brought to us with all the greatest new technology and techniques.

This is a stunning 3D film. All of the gang is there, and though they’re presented in a new way with 3D Pixar style computer generated characters, they never looked better. There were many adults in the audience, including me, that laughed out loud numerous times as the humor was really poignant and just really funny. We took my 7 year old grandson with us, and although he liked the movie, he told us it was a bit boring and too slow. Imagine this coming out of a 7 year old boy, but he knows what he likes. The problem for him, of course, is that it the nostalgia and the warm memories of Charlie and Snoopy that bring such pleasure to the older folks. The kiddies are aware of Snoopy and the gang, but don’t get the fuzzy warm memories that we have. When I was in college, the only comic strip our paper carried was Peanuts, and we literally ran to the newspaper stand to get our copy every morning turning to the last page first to check out what Charles Schultz had written for us. In those days the strips continued the story for weeks and weeks on end, and it was a pleasure to see them every morning. That’s why I think the adults may love this film way more than the kids. Just don’t be devastated if your kids don’t get as excited afterward as you do, as they are just too young to get it. Still, the story is very well told, and though it is slow developing, that’s the way Peanuts always was. For kids who are used to Iron Man and their doses of Saturday cartoons that are all action, they won’t get the relationship stuff that good kid friends have when there are no adults around. One elephant in the room. Prior to his death, Charles Schultz insisted that Charlie Brown die with him. Charlie Brown, after all, was Sparky Schultz, and he couldn’t bear for anyone, even his son, to create new stories without him. I don’t know what the agreement was, or how this was done, but one thing that stood out like a sore thumb was the title screen where it said, “by Schultz”. It seemed really odd, and though there wasn’t much original here, but more background of the original comic strip, I felt a little like maybe we were cheating on Charles Schultz, final wish by watching this. Then I realized that he is gone, and his estate belongs to his family, and it’s up to them how they honor his wishes. Perhaps it was only the daily comic strip that he wanted to stop, and I sure he would have loved this homage to his original characters. Whatever the case, I really loved it and was very glad to see it. This is a true G rated film, good for everyone, and very much worth seeing. If you get a chance to see it on the big screen with the reclining seats, in 3D, please do it. If you have fond memories of Peanuts at all, you’ll love this as much as I did.

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Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Pictures,

Amy Poehler, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Bill Hader, Mindy Kaling, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Kaitlyn Dias

Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) was born in Minnesota. From the moment she was born, the emotions in her head controlled her actions. In the beginning it was really easy. Mostly Joy (Amy Pohler) ran things as she was a happy baby, but occasionally Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Bill Hader), and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) would take their turns at the controls. Another major task of the emotions was to keep the memories safe, and to transfer them to long term memory at night when Riley slept. But as she grew older, and the family moved to San Francisco, bad things happened and Joy and Sadness were locked outside the control room and they had to work long and hard to try to get back to the control room to prevent something awful from happening to Riley in this animated Pixar feature.

It’s interesting that this film is rated PG, as it’s not a kids film. But the kids will love it, just the same. The meaning of all the goings on here require a lot of life experience to understand, but the colors are bright, the characters are all fun, and the fact that the kids cannot understand the nuances here won’t make any difference. This means that for the grown ups, this film will be very enjoyable as the concepts are complex and little things will remind you of your childhood experiences with an adults understanding of what was going on. But it’s a great film for the kids to enjoy as well. Then 10 or 15 years from now they’ll run across it again, and have a whole new experience seeing how complex this film really is. The price of admission is worth it, just for the short feature “Lava” at the very beginning. Pixar always starts us off with a very good cartoon. This one is a Hawaiian legend put to song that is really good. The movie itself is also very good for all ages, and this is a shoe in for the best animated film of 2015. Pixar has another winner. If you can still get a chance to see this in the theater, it’s certainly well worth it, but if you miss it, be sure to catch it as soon as the DVD is released. This is a MUST SEE movie.

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BenderSpink, David Dobkin Productions, New Line Cinema,

Ed Helms, Christina Applegate, Leslie Mann, Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo, Chris Hemsworth, Skyler Gisondo, Steele Stebbins, Keegan-Michael Key, Regina Hall, Charlie Day

Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) is grown up now, married to his lovely wife Debbie (Christina Applegate) with two sons. Rusty is a pilot with EconoAir flying back and forth from Indiana to Chicago and spends every vacation with his family up at a rustic cabin. The family makes the best of it, but it’s getting really old. When Rusty overhears Debbie complaining about it, he stumbles across some old photos of his family, Mom and Dad and his sister Audrey on the 1950’s  1970’s  journey across the country to Disneyland  Walley World which he fondly remembers. (Don’t we all?)   So he rents a car and plans a cross country journey just like his Dad to bond the family together. Naturally everything that can go wrong in the next generation Griswold family disaster.

It makes sense that a reboot of Vacation would be about Rusty. Rusty was the most normal one in the family, and we all knew he would group up to be like his Dad, with a great heart and a losing streak a mile long. Now many people are upset that this movie touches sacred ground. The original 1983 movie is holy to some folks. Personally I suffered through the it’s different than the story back in 1983. The original short story was published in National Lampoon Magazine long before it was a movie. I had a subscription to three magazines in those days, and they were 3 of the best. The first was Mad Magazine, and the second was a somewhat inferior but still pretty good copy cat magazine called Cracked, and the third was National Lampoon. There was a series of articles over a number of monthly issues about the court case between Wile E Coyote vs. the Acme Corporation. I followed that month after month as they had the court transcripts, and I couldn’t imagine how the judge would rule, but the ending was absolutely perfect and the judge got it right. If you want to know the decision, you can email me at admin@edsreview.com and I’ll be glad to reply. But the original Vacation was a short story about a family who packed up in a station wagon and drove across country to Disneyland in 1956 because they watched the damn advertisements every Sunday on ABC, the brand new network who helped finance Walt, and who needed content for their upstart network, and what could have been better than Walt’s Disneyland TV show. It was a match made in heaven. Well, I was in Kindergarten in 1955 when Disneyland opened, and my Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa and my brothers and I made the journey from Pittsburgh to Anaheim to visit Disneyland because we HAD TO in our hardly road worth blue Ford station wagon my dad recovered from the junk yard and fixed up. Actually most of the gags from the original movie were in the story, but changing it to Walley World and moving it ahead a few decades in time did really hurt the story a bit, but needed to be done. Now don’t get me wrong. The 1983 movie was unbelievably funny and one of the greatest films ever made, and certainly one of my personal favorites of all times. The critics of this new version that are tearing it to pieces for two basic reasons. First, because this one is a lot more filthy R rated than the original which was shocking in a way, but still mostly family friendly. This one definitely is a hard R film and is not kid friendly at all. My answer to that is that this is a different time, and those of us who remember the original from it’s original release are at least 40 years old now and can handle the dirtier version. The second reason that people hate it is because it is such a treasured film and didn’t need a remake. Well, my answer to that is that it NOT by any means a remake, and is simply a 2015 version of the next generation Rusty trying to rescue his struggling family and relive the best memories of his youth. When you think of that, Clark actually did succeed.

No sign of Uncle Eddie here, as I suspect Randy Quaid is still struggling to right the sailboat he took off on. But we get to see how Audrey ended up, and the little tramp settled down, or did she? As for this film, I was shocked at how absolutely funny it really was. Granted, knowing the original, you had to know where the jokes were headed, but when they arrived they were so outrageous that the whole theater was laughing out loud time after time. I thought my poor wife was going to bust a gut sometimes. It’s been a long time since I’ve laughed that hard. Perhaps the first time I saw Porky’s (the original) in the theater was the last time. It too was a rather raunchy comedy, but just so outrageously funny. This is the same thing. No, this Vacation is not really as good as the original, nothing could be, but dang it, I liked this better than the original Hangover, even. I would be lying if I didn’t rate this 5 stars for me. Another criticism have heard was that Walley World was the greatest destination in the world, and the prime goal of the original and the visit to Walley World here really ends up as almost a cameo. Certainly it was not the prime destination. Well, Disneyland in 1956 was the place everybody in the world wanted to go to, but today it’s not nearly the ultimate destination it was in the beginning. This film gets that right because it’s not about going to Walley World, it’s about getting the family together when it’s falling apart, and the destination wasn’t important. It was to Rusty because of his own memories, but not to everyone else. As for the performances, everyone was about perfect. This is, I think, the best performance Ed Helms has ever done. I think he was perfect as Rusty. Christina Applegate as Debbie did a great job and really performed some great scenes. The two boys were just like me and my brother (My brother and me) in the way the had such a hard time getting along. Chris Hemsworth has a small part as Audrey’s husband, but he certainly steals the movie every time he’s on screen. In fact, the weakest parts could be when they finally make it to Clark (Chevy Chase) and Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo)’s place in San Francisco to borrow a certain green station wagon to finish the journey to Los Angeles. But is was necessary to have them in it to tie it all up. The two of them have aged just like Clark and Ellen would have anyway.

I’m sorry that I’ve over 1200 words already, as I am excited by this film, and could watch this one over and over as I have with my two favorites of the series (The original and Christmas Vacation). If you are going to get offended by the swimming in sewage, pedophile truck driver jokes, and other sexual references, then stay far away, as the raunchiness is up there with Hangover or Superbad, but if you can handle the light-hearted shock comedy, don’t miss this one. Just go in with an open mind, and realize they are not trying to take the original 1983 Vacation away from you, but to show you what happens 30 or so years later. Watch and listen to the rest of the theater laughing and you’ll realize it’s just a lot of good fun and not to be taken so seriously.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Universal Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, Legendary Pictures,

Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jake Johnson, B.D. Wong, Irrfan Khan, Omar Sy, Ty Simpkins, Judy Greer, Lauren Lapkus, Nick Robinson, Brian Tee

Twenty years ago Jurassic Park almost opened. Just before opening, however, things went horribly wrong and many people died, and the park was virtually destroyed. After 20 years of more careful genetic engineering, and with a lot of very effective marketing, The bigger and much better Jurassic World is now open. They, like Sea World, are doing a combination of educational, rescue, and ecological work. But they need a new bigger attraction to keep the gate turnstiles spinning, so a secret plan to genetically engineer a whole new breed of dinosaur is under way. Though there were very many precautions, this new dinosaur is a lot smarted and faster than her predecessors. Naturally things once again go very wrong, and though this new monster is not on display yet, but housed back near the ruins of the original park, when it gets free, thousands of guests and workers are in serious trouble. This sequel to the original (pretending the sequels do not exist) is tearing up the box office this summer of 2015.

This week Ed and his wife celebrated their 25th Wedding Anniversary. We took a very nice and relaxing trip to the sleepy town of Avalon on Catalina Island. While we were there we saw a large round building known as “Avalon Casino”. It’s a very iconic building and the emblem most associated with Catalina. Inside this beautiful building is a ballroom on the top floor and a movie theater on the main floor. This beautifully decorated movie theater is very old; It was the first theater in the US that was built for talking pictures, and has been in use since it’s construction. It is the only movie screen on Catalina, and they have one showing a day, at 7:15 PM, 7 days a week. The week were were there, Jurassic World was playing so we made our way out to the Casino (Casino is an Italian word that means “place of gathering”, so there is no, and has never been, gambling in this facility.) to see this film in this iconic theater. What a wonderful experience that was! The theater seats over 1100 people and is certainly beautiful.

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As to the movie, it was very, very good. The excitement level was off the charts, and the special effects and CGI was outstanding. The story is a really good sequel to the original, and when they revisited some of the original park sites which are now dilapidated and in ruins it was really nice to revisit the original. There are some family stories going on, a couple little boys, some worried parents, and an all business aunt who is supposed to be watching the visiting youngsters but passes them off to her assistant to care for, but the forefront story going on, though the major part of the story, is not near the best parts. When thing go wrong, they go really wrong, and between some greedy folks who want to profit from the situation and Chris Pratt who is an animal expert who is trying to protect and save the animals, the push and shove between these two is the real story. The action is spectacular and the suspense is thrilling. This is a real summer blockbuster, and perhaps it may end up the biggest film of all times. The original story was excellent, but this sequel is what every sequel should be, every bit as good if not better than its predecessor This is a MUST SEE film, and if you haven’t been there yet, what are you waiting for? Don’t wait for DVD for this film (unless of course you want to own it) Get out there and see it on the BIG screen with as many special effects you can get. This is the best film I’ve seen in several years, I swear.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Chernin Entertainment, Ingenious Media, TSG Entertainment,

Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell, Judy Greer, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Enrique Murciano, Kirk Acevedo, Karin Konoval

In 2011’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, we learned that humans had developed a virus that could cure Alzheimer’s but it turned out that though it made the test apes amazingly smarter, it was deadly to humans. Now some years have passed and what’s left of the humans are huddled in San Francisco trying to survive. Meanwhile, Caesar (Andy Serkis) has risen to be a mighty leader of the ape colony living in the forest outside the Bay area. Ape has not seen man for a couple years and they assume the humans are gone, but when a small group turn up tension builds quickly as both sides prepare for an all out war. But Malcolm (Jason Clarke) sees intelligence in the eyes of the apes, and they need a big favor from them, so he takes a few people and set off to the ape’s home as they try to form a mutual but fragile peace. But with many people and apes who feel differently, peace is difficult and a great battle will result for the future of the planet if they can’t pull it off.

I was greatly impressed by the original Planet of the Apes series that they ran into the ground by releasing sequel after sequel, each one getting a little cheaper and cornier. The original was a stunning film for 1968. But when they decided to do a reboot with “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” in 2011 I thought to myself, “Oh, not, this is another classic film that doesn’t need to be remade!” They thought, however, that the technology was so advanced that it was time to do it. I was really impressed with the first reboot [Click Here for Ed’s Review of Rise of Planet of the Apes] I gave this film a solid 5 stars and was very impressed. This is now the second of a trilogy of Planet of the Apes films, and this one is far better than the first. I need to break out a sixth star for this one! I wish I had gotten to see this on the big screen, but seeing it on DVD was awesome. Though the scenery, filmography, and sets (including a devastated San Francisco) are spectacular, the character definition of both the Human characters and the Apes is excellently done. If it were not for the spectacular battle scenes that are amazing, just the development of the Ape culture itself would be enough to give this film 5 stars. The acting is fantastic, but the screen writing and directing is wonderful as well. Basically this is the best adventure movie I’ve seen this year bar none. I highly recommend this movie, and though there is a lot of war and fighting that might be frightening for younger children, certainly anyone over the advertised age of 13 should have no trouble with it. This is a wonderfully done film.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog