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REVIEW: Pearl [2016]

2017/01/282017/02/09 Jared Mobarak

“There’s no wrong way home” It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the director of Pearl is also the man behind Oscar-winning Disney short Feast. Patrick Osborne for all intents and purposes has merely updated that previous look at a dog experiencing the tumultuousness of humanity around him to one capturing the bond between a father and a daughter as time turns love into a struggle before ultimately coming back full circle post-adolescence. The camera is again virtually set in one place, but it’s affixed to a locale rather than…

REVIEW: Sing [2016]

2016/12/252016/12/26 Jared Mobarak

“Don’t let fear stop you from doing the thing you love” After helming The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Son of Rambow, it’s easy to forget writer/director Garth Jennings started his career as one half of music video masters Hammer & Tongs. Pair his knowledge of music with some great past examples of family-friendly aesthetics (Supergrass‘ “Pumping on Your Stereo” puppets, Blur‘s “Coffee & TV” stop-motion) and the notion he’d eventually gravitate towards a feature-length animated children’s film doesn’t seem far-fetched. In fact, the only thing about his third…

REVIEW: Ma vie de Courgette [My Life as a Zucchini] [2016]

2016/12/14 Jared Mobarak

“Well, I think I killed my mum” You have to respect when a story targeted towards children is allowed to possess pathos. Take Gilles Paris‘ 2002 novel Autobiographie d’une courgette for example—a 228-page piece centering on a nine-year old boy’s experience living as an orphan in France after accidentally killing his mother. This is the kind of dark subject matter many parents wouldn’t let their children go near and yet it also contains a hopeful strain of optimism and love those same kids crave. But even if some readers aren’t…

REVIEW: Moana [2016]

2016/11/252016/11/25 Jared Mobarak

“Beat the drum” It’s tough to give two white guys the benefit of the doubt when it comes to spearheading a blockbuster feature-length animated film about Ancient Polynesian mythology, but you cannot deny that Disney stalwarts Ron Clements and John Musker did what they could to ensure Moana stayed true to their subject’s traditions and culture. The pair conducted extensive research in the South Pacific and recruited a local “brain-trust” to keep them honest. Taika Waititi wrote a first draft, a laundry list of writers listed above took over, and…

REVIEW: Inner Workings [2016]

2016/11/252016/11/25 Jared Mobarak

“Boring, Boring & Glum” When the title of the film is Inner Workings and its conceit is to personify a human character’s internal physiology, comparisons to Inside Out are unavoidable. Not even the delineation that Leonardo Matsuda‘s short deals with organs rather than emotions can help if you have your mind set on an ill-advised idea of plagiarism. What does allow you to hope for the best, however, is that both are under the Disney umbrella (I include Pixar) so no nefarious intent is at play. Luckily it doesn’t take…

REVIEW: Milton’s Secret [2016]

2016/09/272016/09/29 Jared Mobarak

“Without forgiveness the past determines who you are in the present” After finding international success with his spiritual teachings through best-selling books The Power of Now and A New Earth, author and counselor Eckhart Tolle set his sights on children in 2008 with Milton’s Secret and its blatantly synergistic subtitle to those previous works “An Adventure of Discovery through Then, When, and the Power of Now”. Written in collaboration with Robert S. Friedman and illustrator Frank Riccio, this tale focuses upon the titular eleven-year old (soon-to-be twelve) boy as an…

REVIEW: Storks [2016]

2016/09/192016/09/21 Jared Mobarak

“We never stop” While a bunch of adults were definitely having a good time during Nicholas Stoller‘s Storks, I’m not sure about their children. It wasn’t restlessness, though. If anything they were catatonic, a similar state as myself. Now I did chuckle at a few of the higher concept stuff because the absurdity of a stork and penguin stabbing each other with a fork in silence so as not to wake a sleeping baby is funny. And the children chuckled at least twice in response to displays of destruction because…

REVIEW: Kubo and the Two Strings [2016]

2016/08/222016/08/23 Jared Mobarak

“Memories are powerful things” The narrator of Travis Knight‘s Kubo and the Two Strings demands us to look closely and never blink. His story delivers fantastical wonders and poignant metaphors concerning family, love, and traditions to uphold if not an archaic remnant of a lost time meant to be broken. We’re to pay attention because details are intentionally only thinly-veiled, alluding to discoveries Marc Haimes and Chris Butler‘s script shortly reveal. A mirroring of roles proves critical to the tale’s resonance, our own dreams as children coaxing the real world…

REVIEW: Pete’s Dragon [2016]

2016/08/082016/08/10 Jared Mobarak

“Just because you don’t see anything doesn’t mean it’s not there” You have to give Disney credit for accomplishing the unthinkable this year by releasing remakes of archaic properties to rapturous fanfare. The Jungle Book began this refurbishment movement with the studio’s Iron Man steward Jon Favreau taking the helm of what proved a fantastically realized world made almost entirely of pixels bolstered by a story with the type of stakes the original forgot in lieu of sing-a-long frivolity. And now the trend continues with Pete’s Dragon and director David…

REVIEW: Pete’s Dragon [1977]

2016/08/072016/08/07 Jared Mobarak

“I didn’t think I’d ever be happy til I met you” If memory serves, I loved Pete’s Dragon. It was on the same VHS tape as Sword In the Stone in my family, two Disney films I don’t think anyone else enjoyed. As such I watched Robin Hood a lot to keep the peace—a superior work to both anyway. So now that I’m probably about twenty-five years past my last viewing, it appears little was retained. While I vaguely recall Elliott the dragon’s look, the reality of its two-plus hour…

REVIEW: The Secret Life of Pets [2016]

2016/07/052016/07/07 Jared Mobarak

“Liberated forever, domesticated never” Illumination Entertainment’s latest film The Secret Life of Pets has an amazing hook: what do our pets do while we’re gone? We could obviously pay Comcast Xfinity to supply cameras and discover the answer to that question—why use product placement when you can show a commercial before the film that uses its characters as shills—but it’s more fun to imagine the possibilities ourselves. If you’ve seen any of the trailers you’ll know this is precisely what Ken Daurio, Brian Lynch, and Cinco Paul have decided. Their…