Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Walden Media, Chernin Entertainment,

Billy Crystal, Bette Midler, Marisa Tomei, Tom Everett Scott, Bailee Madison, Joshua Rush, Kyle Harrison Breitkopf, Jennifer Crystal Foley, Gedde Watanabe, Rhoda Griffis, Madison Lintz, Brad James

Phil (Tom Everett Scott) and Alice Simmons (Marisa Tomei) are uptight busy parents with strong ideas on the right way to raise children. They have three kids who are as straight laced as their parents who believe in not eating sweets, using inside voices, and use your words to solve problems, and the like. Phil and Alice have not been away since their youngest was born, and an opportunity to go away for a week for work arises, but there is no one left to watch the kids. No one that is, except for Alice’s Parents, Artie (Billy Crystal) and Diane Decker (Bette Midler) who are very much different and a lot looser than their daughter. Against her better judgement Alice invites them to watch the kids for a week, and they accept, and madness and mayhem ensues in this generation gap comedy. The grandparents really want to do a good job, but they just can’t understand the new age rules on child rearing, and fall back upon their old school ways of watching kids with hilarious results.

This is similar to a lot of other family comedies. It’s exactly what you’d expect from Billy and Bette. It’s old style family comedy where the kids rebel against the parents and the parents rebel against their parents. The comedy is good. Many of the gags and pranks here are different from what I’ve seen before, so that is why I rate it so highly. If they simply borrowed from every other similar film, it wouldn’t be good, but this is not a Meet the Fockers ripoff. Of course it’s very similar to other similar films. Jane Fonda has done a few of these, and even Roseanne Barr. But this was enjoyable enough for me, and I really enjoyed my time watching it. Billy and Bette are really good together, and the grandparents really love each other and their daughter and grandkids, so it’s not all family fights from start to finish, but they are learning new ways and the parents need to learn from the wisdom of the older generation too, so it’s got heart and good family values. No one here is cheating or betraying anybody, they’re just trying to get along. Artie is up to some tricks, but he’s good hearted and a really lovable guy. The daughter is brilliantly played by Bailee Madison (the young Snow White from the Once Upon a Time ABC TV series) and it is really good to see her in a modern role. She’s really good as the stressed out daughter being forced to conform to her mother’s dreams. This is a cute story, not a great film, but very worth a family video evening. It’s a fun little comedy of family conflict and resolution.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

 

 

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CD2 Films, Mad Choice, Polymorphic Pictures

James Marsden, Nick Nolte, Christina Applegate, Katt Williams, Bette Midler, Neil Patrick Harris, Sean Hayes, Wallace Shawn,  Roger Moore, Joe Pantoliano, Michael Clarke Dun can, Chris O’Donnell, Jack McBrayer, Fred Armisen, Kiernan Shipka

The battle between Cats and Dogs has been going on for centuries.  But in this war, one feline took it a step too far.  Kitty Galore, formerly an agent for MEOWS (a cat spy organization) has gone rogue and has a plan to bring her canine enemies under her power, but also to take down the rest of the cats, and rule the world of cats and dogs herself.  She uses and evil invention (a low frequency signal only dogs will react to) to turn dogs into her own personal slave robots.  They must do what she says.  She had an ugly hairless cat henchman sent off on a the quest to conquer the world.  The rest of the cats and the dogs have to band together to try to overthrow her and save mankind!

I really did not like this movie at all.  I didn’t think any of it was really funny, and although they had tons of stars lending their voices to the characters, there story is really bad.  They are mostly puns.  Roger Moore’s character, for example, is named Tab Lazenby.  How cute.  Make fun of another Bond actor.  The plot is like a bad “Pinky and the Brain” epsiode, except that Pinky and the Brain was somewhat funny, and only lasted about 15 minutes at a shot.  Truly I would much rather attend a Phineas and Ferb marathon that this film! It would be much, much more entertaining.   It was so boring that I could hardly make it through.   Seriously, 1950’s Saturday Morning adventure cartoons were more interesting than this stuff.  The original Cats and Dogs came out a decade ago.  What happened in the 9 years that have passed since then?  Why this stinky sequel?  I don’t think a little kid would be able to enjoy this film.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

 

 

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