Neil Sharpson's Blog, page 3

Moomins on the Riviera (2014)

The Moomins are a topic that I feel I understand less the more I try to get my head around them. I tackled another Moomin film, Moomin and Midsummer Madness, around ten years ago so I should have been ready for this. And yet, here I am, looking at this film all…

A brief refresher, the Moomins are a multimedia franchise created by Finnish author Tove Jansson that encompasses picture books, novels, short stories, TV shows, movies, theme parks and a comic strip written and illustrated by Jansson herself. The comic strip that inspired today’s film, Moomins on the Riviera, began in 1954 and ran until 1975. This was actually the second Moomins comic strip, the first having appeared in a left wing newspaper but which failed because the readership considered the Moomins to be “too bourgeois”, because even in the late forties there were people who needed to touch some fucking grass.

So what’s it all about?

The series features things called Moomins doing stuff.

I can’t really get more specific than that.

Sometimes they don’t do stuff. Sometimes they just chill.

First off this movie gave me one hell of a nasty shock. I’m watching the opening credits with beautiful vistas of Moomin valley which perfectly recreate Jansson’s signature style when who do I see?

Now, you might be thinking “holy shit that’s a cool name” and it is. But see, I know this motherfucker, and he’s not Patrick Stewart working incognito and half-assing his alibi. Picard worked on The Bots Master, a TV show we covered on the podcast and which is currently my choice for worst cartoon show I have ever seen. Which puts him squarely on my shit list. But, this movie is so utterly at odds tonally with that show that I have decided that Picard was just led astray by bad men. Or that he’s matured and grown as an artist, who can say?

Anyway, the Moomins and all their forest friends are having a midnight party around a bonfire, dancing and playing music before the inevitable sacrifice to the Wicker Man. We have Moomin, Moominpappa, Moominmomma and Moomin’s girlfriend the Snorkmaiden.

Yes, she’s clearly also a moomin.
No, I don’t know why she doesn’t have “moomin” in her name.
No, I don’t know why Tove did that to us.
Yes, it keeps me up at night.

Unfortunately, the light from the bonfire confuses some passing pirates which causes their ship to run aground. The pirates abandon their ship along with their prisoners, Mymble and Little My. Okay…so. The Mymbles are recurring characters in Jansson’s oeuvre. According to Wikipedia, the word “mymble” comes from a “slang word used by Tove Jansson’s circle” which I think is code for “lesbian street argot”. They’re red-headed girls who are all related and these two are sisters and the youngest one, Little My, is a threat to every living thing on Earth. And they hang around the Moomins for no particular reason. Got it? Okay.

So, this movie is not in any damn hurry to get anywhere. In fact, despite being a very svelte hour and thirteen minutes, it moves at an absolutely glacial pace. For example, the pirates abandon ship, leaving Little My and Mymble to drown. A typical screenplay would then have the Moomins notice the sinking ship, mount a rescue, save the Mymbles and then carry on from there. Not Moomins on the Riviera, which waits until the next morning, has a long scene where Moomin has to choose between helping Snorkmaiden practice her play, go fishing with his buddy Snufkin or go swimming with Moominmomma. This doesn’t have any payoff. It doesn’t lead to anything. It’s just (if you’re feeling generous) a low-key, low-stakes, slice of life story beat or (if you’re not feeling generous) wasting your god-damned time.

Only then do they notice the sinking pirate ship and Moomin swims out to rescue Mymble, which earns him the ire of Snorkmaiden. Because, obviously, a real boyfriend would let her drown before his eyes. That’s a little something called “respecting your relationship”.

Anyway, Moominmomma suggests that they strip the pirate ship of any treasure they can find.

“And if any pirates are still alive, cut their throats and take their boots. That’s the law of the sea, it is.”

They find fireworks, a chest full of seeds, a chest full of gold and a load of magazines. The pirates arrive and take back the gold, but leave them with the rest. The Moomins read the magazines and become enchanted with the Riviera, and decide to go on holiday to escape the vicious grinding rat-race of their daily lives.

The Moomins set sail in a small row boat, with Little My tagging along. In the middle of a storm.

They wind up stranded on a desert island. Nothing much happens here except that a box drifts ashore full of foul mouthed bugs who the Moomins gather up and put in a sack. If you’re coming away with the impression that this is less a story and more a series of vignettes linked by vibes and dream logic, that is not an unfair take.

Anyway, that night Moomin and Snorkmaiden are sitting out on a cliff bemoaning the fact that they’ll never reach the Riviera, when suddenly a nearby coastline lights up and they realise the Riviera is literally next door. So, that was easy.

The rest of the movie is really just slice of life shenanigans as the Bohemian Moomins upset the stuffy affluent ways of the Riviera elite. Moominpappa makes friends with an artist named Marquis Mongaga who wants to give up being rich and live like the poor Moomins because then he’ll be a real artist.

Mongaga sculpts elephant statues and Moominpoppa helps him dump a statue of the local governor in the river and replace it with one of his own.

Meanwhile, Snorkmaiden tries to fit in with the wealthy denizens of the Riviera. She tries her hand at the casino and ends up winning big and starts hanging out with style icon Audrey Glamour and playboy Clark Tresco and trying on fancy clothes in the boutiques.

Why does she look more naked wearing clothes than when she’s naked?

Moomin gets so jealous of Snorkmaiden hanging out with Tresco that he, of course, sits down with him and tries to work through their issues in a mature and constructive…

“I am going to murder this guy.”

Sorry, Moomin chooses to CHALLENGE TRESCO TO A DUAL for breathing in the direction of his woman and ends up beating him unconscious with the butt of a sword.

All these eccentric shenanigans and violent assaults makes the manager of their hotel realise that the Moomins are not members of the aristocracy like they thought (flawless logic there, lads) and they get evicted from the hotel and are landed with a huge bill for the room. But Snorkmaiden pays the bill out of her casino winnings and then just gives the rest of her vast fortune as a tip to the hotel staff because it’s just, like, money, man.

It’s cool how money doesn’t matter as long as you have vast amounts of it.

The Moomins decide that rich people are trash and they had best be off, but before they go they try to help Mongaga find homes for his elephant statues. They gift one to the Mayor, only for him to realise that they were the ones who tossed the Governor’s statue in the river and order their arrest.

But, they sic the foul-mouthed bugs on the police which causes a massive brawl to break out and the Moomins escape back to their lives of decadent bourgeois hedonism.

They sail back to Moomin Valley, but get caught in a storm and have to jettison pretty much everything they brought with them from the Riviera which symbolises…you get what it symbolises. And the movie ends with nothing of consequence having really been achieved but it looked nice and the vibes were chill so who cares really?

Moomins.

***

Scoring

Animation:  16/20

Beautiful backgrounds and absolutely flawless translation of Jansson’s style.

Leads: 11/20

As always, Moomin is a perfect blank slate of a protagonist except now we know he has murder in his heart which is good for an extra point or two.

Villain: N/A

Supporting Characters: 12/20

“Most of the best intentionally funny lines and best unintentionally funny weirdness comes from the supporting characters.” As true today as when I wrote it a decade ago.

Music: 14/20

A wonderful, charming mixture of Nordic folk and fin-de-siécle French music that suits the subject matter like a glove.

FINAL SCORE: 63%

NEXT UPDATE: I am taking off August for holidays and other writing projects but I’ll be back on September 5th with a new review and to launch Shortstember 2025!

NEXT TIME: Look, as long as they finally do Taskmaster justice, that’s all I ask…

Runs in the family

My brother has done a video ranking every Dad in the Disney canon, check it out.

@smameann

Best Disney Dads! Ranking 30 of the Dads from the Disney Animated Canon! My list is a bit arbitrary, so who would you have added instead. Part 2 is next. #disney #disneydads #fathersday

♬ original sound – smameann

@smameann

Part 2 of my ranking of the Disney Dads from the Animated Canon. See part 1 on my channel. I made this Tier list online so you can try it yourself here: https://tiermaker.com/create/disney-animated-canon-dads-18333903 #disney #disneydads #ranking #fathersday

♬ original sound – smameann

Sharpsons and Ranking Disney Things. Name a more iconic duo.

Lu Over the Wall (2017)

Okay, I gotta be careful here. I did an almost complete 180 on my opinion of it in the process of writing the review with the result being the most schizophrenic thing I’ve ever written on this blog.

“Mouse. You know that’s not true.”“Yeah, you’re right, picture of a map I’ve been talking to for thirteen years.”

My point is, I’ve been holding off on writing this review just in case I have a similar reversal in opinion on Lu Over the Wall, but I’m pretty certain that my feelings on it are settled:

I think this is a mildly charming (if frustratingly unoriginal) “lonely boy makes friends with supernatural creature” story that is thoroughly undone by disastrous visuals and animation.

This is entirely subjective. I’m not saying the art style is bad per se. I’m just saying I hate it with every fibre of my being.

Also, at times it’s pretty fucking bad.

In the small fishing town of Hinashi, Kai Ashimoto lives with his divorced father and his grandfather. His father is trying to get him to knuckle down and study because exams are around the corner and jobs in the town are scarce. His grandfather, by contrast, is terrified of Kai going near the sea and spends his days making umbrellas. In his spare time, Kai writes music and posts it online which attracts the notice of two of his classmates, Kunio and Yuho, who try to convince him to join their band. Kunio is the son of a local priest and is forbidden from playing rock music, so the band have to rehearse in secret on Ningyojima, an island off the coast of the town where they’re forbidden from going.

See, historically, Hinashi has had beef with the Ningyo, half-human half fish creatures that, like the merfolk of Western folklore, seduce and enchant sailors to their doom. Unlike the merfolk of Western folklore, we must assume they have great personalities.

“I’m sho shexy!”

Kai reluctantly joins the band and, during their first rehearsal together, hears a mysterious voice singing along with them. On the boat ride back the trio run afoul of some illegal fishermen but are rescued when a mysterious shape swimming in the sea enchants the water and overturns their boat which causes Kai to drop his phone.

Fortunately, the phone is returned to him by a little mermaid named Lu who swims through his window in what looks like a solid body of bright green piss.

So this is one of the choices that makes me unreasonably unhappy with this film. Every-time Lu does her water-bender schtick, it transforms the water into a neon green that, I’m sorry, makes it look like Gatorade piss. I don’t know why they chose to do it that way. I do not like it.

Lu begins to follow Kai around and even helps him come first in his swimming exam. At the next rehearsal Kai reveals Lu to the other band members and it turns out that listening to his music causes Lu to grow legs and dance and sing like a chipmunk on helium.

So. You may be thinking “wait a minute, lonely Japanese boy, adorable little mer-toddler who becomes infatuated with him and grows legs to come on land, this sound awfully like a certain other film.“

Yes, Elim Klimov’s searing anti-war masterpiece Come and See, obviously, but apart from that?

Yeah, when I made the Ponyo joke at the end of the last review, I didn’t realise how close to the mark I was. My first instinct was to be generous and assume that Miyazaki and the creators of this film were drawing on the same Japanese folktale but apparently Ponyo‘s story is largely original in which case, yeah, this feels like it’s walking right up to the line of plagiarism. It’s not a complete rip off, but there’s a lot of similarities, including the mer-child having an overly protective father and the climax involving the town being flooded and the townspeople being rescued by sea creatures. Apparently the original conception for the film was that Lu would be a vampire (there are holdovers from this in that the mermaids in this movie are vulnerable to sunlight and the people are afraid that being bitten by them will turn them into fish) and I honestly think that would have worked so much better. The movie would have then avoided comparison to Ponyo which it desperately needs to do because this movie is no Ponyo (and I say that as someone who considers Ponyo minor Miyazaki at best).

Firstly there’s the obvious inferiority of the animation. Now, I will say this, I don’t like Lu’s animation but it’s certainly not bad. In fact, it moves with a wonderful fluidity that reminds me of early Flesicher cartoons.

But it achieves this by basically making the character models as simplified as it can get away with. There’s very little detail, zero variation in line-thickness, almost no sense of weight or mass and it feels kinda amateurish.

Another way in which Lu falls short of its inspiration is in the relationship between its two main characters.

Sosuke and Ponyo love each other but in the way of two very small children who just adore hanging out because each one thinks the other is the coolest. Kai and Lu though?

I’m really not sure how we’re supposed to read this relationship. It’s nothing blatant or anything. But there’s a scene of Kai immediately after meeting Lu and he’s wandering the streets with this dumb faraway look on his face and it kinda reads like “he’s just met the girl of his dreams”. But then we get scenes of him showing her around town and she’s basically a tiny, barely verbal toddler and…eesh. Like I say, nothing you can point to and say “slap the cuffs on ’em” but it feels off.

Anyway, the band perform at a local festival and Lu’s existence is revealed to the town and her singing causes the whole crowd to start dancing. Lu becomes an instant celebrity and Yuho’s grandfather, who’s a big muck-a-muck in the local business community decides to reopen his old merfolk themed amusement park on Ningyojima which shuttered because…this town hated merfolk with a passion before this moment so I don’t know why he thought that was a viable business model. That’s like…putting Barack Obama Plaza in Alabama.

Yes, it’s a real place. Great burgers, actually.

Yuho gets upset about Lu stealing the spotlight and runs away. This coincides with lots of weird ocean shenanigans like fish skeletons crawling on on land and Yuho’s father, the mayor, suspects that the merfolk have kidnapped her and a wave of anti-merfolk hysteria starts sweeping the town. The mayor locks Lu in a warehouse and threatens to expose her to sunlight which of course will kill her because she is a mermaid.

Kai learns from Kunio’s father that the people of the village used to worship the merfolk but that one day a mermaid was left out to die in the sun (for some reason) and that triggered a terrible curse.

Meanwhile, Lu’s father, who is a big shark man in a suit, hears her cries of fear and comes to rescue her, almost bursting alive in the sunlight.

Both Lu and her father are trapped in a massive iron dome by the townspeople but the curse has been triggered and now the whole town is in danger of being drowned in bright green gatorade piss.

Kai, Yuho and Kunio team up to rescue Lu and her father with the help Yuho’s grandfather (who, as mentioned before, is rich as balls and owns a helicopter). Once they’re freed, Lu and her father decide to let bygones be bygones and call all the merfolk to help evacuate the town. But, it takes too long and the merfolk are exhausted and left out in the sea as the sun rises. But, fortunately Kai’s grandfather, who has renounced his merfolk hating ways, arrives with a load of umbrellas which the merfolk use to save themselves. Kai tells Lu that she’s his friend and the movie ends with a big dance party, the universal symbol of “let’s just end this thing for God’s sake”.

***

Most movies would be better with vampires. But this is probably the movie that would be most better with vampires.

Scoring

Animation: 07/20

Not technically incompetent but ugly as fuck.

Leads: 10/20

Not an original idea in its head, this movie.

Villain: N/A

Supporting Characters: 12/20

Meh.

Music: 13/20

Kai’s band has a couple of bops.

FINAL SCORE: 53%

NEXT UPDATE: 24 July 2025

NEXT TIME: Moo Moomins Moo Problems

New Podcast Episode!

Hey folks, sorry for the wait, but we think it’s worth it! Our epic ninety minute look back at the iconic (in)famous Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers!

Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)

I had a good cringe not so long ago when I stumbled on my old list of Top Ten Non Disney Animated Movies.

Some of the choices I stand by but jeez, I’ll probably have to re-do that list entirely. Or will I? Are listicles even a thing anymore? Are blogs? Is anyone out there reading this who’s not a bot? Hello? Hellooo?

Anyway, existential dread aside, one of the big surprises for me was that 2014 Mouse apparently put 2008’s Kung Fu Panda on the list, a movie I think I have seen maybe once and have never had the urge to watch again. I have no idea why I did that. I feel like the years must have Ship of Theseus’d me into a completely different person because I cannot imagine that movie provoking that strong a reaction in me, either positive or negative. And I know that this is definitely a “me” problem. These movies are, structurally, very very good. Like, just put together magnificently well. I get the praise for them. Mostly. Some of the more rhapsodic critical responses to this movie I find a little baffling. Particularly the praise for the visuals. Again, they’re very good. But I came across one review (from a critic who’s opinion I rate very highly) who actually claimed that Kung Fu Panda 2 was the most visually beautiful film Dreamworks had made up to this point in their history.

Uh…fucking WHAT?

If you haven’t seen Kung Fu Panda, it tells the tale of Po, a chunky boi panda voiced by Jack Black who is obsessed with Kung Fu and who, through the power of slapstick and comic shenanigans, becomes the Dragon Warrior, a legendary hero to an ancient China populated by various species of talking animal. Kung Fu Panda 2 begins with a flashback told in a gorgeous shadow-puppet style. In Gongmen City, the royal peacocks who ruled the land invented fireworks but the prince, Shen, began using gunpowder to make weapons. His parents, naturally concerned, consulted a soothsayer who prophesied that if Shen continued dabbling in the dark(powder) arts he’d be defeated by a “warrior of black and white”. Shen overheard this and well, you know how pandas are almost extinct? Yeah, apparently it was this asshole’s fault. When Shen comes home his parents are all “what the fuck?” and exile him (good plan) along with his army of wolf warriors (noooooo, don’t let him keep those).

In the present day Shen has constructed a doom fortress to conquer all of China and sends out his wolves to raid the nearby villages for metal.

One of those local villages is Po’s where he is now the leader of the Furious Five, the hero team consisting of Tigress, Snake, Mantis, Crane and Monkey (which are all of course actual styles of kung fu, which is cool). They roll out to fight the wolves and the battle goes well for them until Po catches sight of a red eye symbol on the leader’s armour which causes him to have a PTSD flashback to being abandoned by his mother. The wolves escape with the metal and Po decides to go and see his adopted father.

So, I really do have to give credit to Dreamworks here, for this series (and, thinking about it, in general): they understand what a sequel should be. There’s no re-setting here. Everyone hasn’t forgotten that Po’s now the Dragon Warrior and they aren’t treating him like a screwup like he was in the first movie. And, as the fight scene demonstrates, he is now a genuinely amazing fighter. His abilities haven’t been nerfed just so we can get back to status quo. I approve.

Po visits his dad, Ping, a goose voiced by James Hong who I now remember is my favourite character in these movies. He’s at once hilarious and really, truly sweet in how much he loves his son. Ping reveals to Po the shocking truth that he is, in fact, adopted which is such an obvious cheap retcon for the sake of drama. No way you can tell me that was planned from the start.

C’mon! They look practically identical!

Meanwhile, Shen makes his move and takes back the city of Gongmen from the Council of Kung Fu Masters who are its current rulers. Shen is a formidable fighter but is no match for the council’s leader, Thundering Rhino. He does, however, have a big fuck off cannon, which levels the playing field (as well as Thundering Rhino). Damn, this bird just does not give a fuck about endangered species.

Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) gets word of this and dispatches Po and the Furious Five to Gongmen to use Kung Fu to defeat this new weapon which defeats Kung Fu. When Po points out a slight logical flaw in that plan, Shifu tells him that all things are possible with inner peace.

Insurance scam. Calling it now.

Meanwhile at Gongmen, Shen learns that there is still a panda out there and that he’s headed right for him. Shen is one of the elements of this movie that gets the most praise and yeah, absolutely, this is a great villain. Gary Oldman gives a fantastic performance and the character hits a great sweet spot of being fun, creepy and at times even sympathetic. When Po and the Five arrive in the city, they manage to free the Kung Fu masters but Po chokes in the battle against Shen when he sees the red eye on his plummage which triggers another flashback. All the flashbacks are animated in traditional style, and they are some gorgeously animated PTSD. Top tier. Shen uses this opportunity to destroy the palace and escapes with a load of cannons.

Tigress, who recognises this is kinda becoming a thing, takes Po aside and demands to know what the hell is going on. He refuses to tell her and they fight for a bit which gives Tigress a chance to demonstrate that…yes, she absolutely should have been chosen as the Dragon Warrior, this should not even be up for debate. Mid-fight Po finally breaks down and admits that Shen killed his parents and Tigress moves in for the kill.

She hugs him, but tells him that she can’t risk her friend’s life and that he’s gotta be benched for this op. Po, obviously, is the protagonist, so that’s not going to happen. He crashes Shen’s factory alone which inadvertently leads to the Five being captured. Shen taunts Po saying that his parents never loved him.

He also shoots him in the stomach with a cannon. See that’s a villain, right there. Emotional and literal devastation.

Po ends up floating down a river where he is found and cared for by the soothsayer sheep who told told Shen’s parents the prophecy that set all this carnage in motion. So, in a way you could say she’s the real villain of this story.

“Heh heh heh. I hate pandas.”

Would you believe I only learned that was Michelle Yeoh doing this review? She’s honestly amazing in this (and I say that as someone who thinks her English language work is honestly…a little overrated. Please don’t tell Spouse of Mouse, she will kill me and it will not be a good death).

The soothsayer sadly tells Po that they are in sitting in all that remains of the panda village. She says that she prophesied that Shen would be stopped by a warrior of black and white but that she could not have foreseen what he would do next.

“Uh…what’s your job again?”

Po finally remembers what happened to his people, but he also remembers all the good times with Ping and the Five and realises that the tragedy of his childhood does not define him or his future.

He journeys back to the city and we get a really funny scene where he stands dramatically on a rooftop and calls Shen out…who can’t hear him because obviously he’s miles away on a distant rooftop.

Anyway, there’s a big battle and Po and the Five are joined by the surviving kung fu masters and Shifu himself. Everyone’s kung fu fighting and those cats (and ursids, insects, reptiles, primates, birds etc.) are fast as lightning. Shen brings out the big guns (literally) and Po demonstrates that he has found inner peace. I mean, this dude is full of inner peace. He’s got so much inner peace it’s seeping out and becoming outer peace. And so he is able to re-direct cannonballs in mid-air.

Shen’s ship is destroyed and at last the peacock comes face to face with the Dragon Warrior. Shen is aghast that Po was able to find inner peace despite everything that Shen took from him. But Po tells him that he learned to let go of the past and Shen should too. Shen instead chooses violence and ends up getting crushed by a giant cannon.

Po realises that some people are just assholes and returns home to his father and his friends.

***

“It’s okay, it happens to lots of critics.”“Sorry, sorry. It’s not you, it’s me.”

I feel so goddamned embarrassed here. It’s a good film! It’s a really good film! It just doesn’t quite do it for me. I dunno why. I’ll give it a good score, don’t worry.

Scoring

Animation: 16/20

Obviously (to me at least!) it’s not in the top tier of Dreamworks but very strong.

Leads: 17/20

It’s such a hard feat to pull off a successful heroes journey, doubly hard in a sequel.

Villain: 19/20

Pure text book excellence. Writing, performance, design. Fantastic.

Supporting Characters: 13/20

I’ve always found the five kinda bland and one note. This movie pushes them even further to the background with the exception of Tigress (Angelina Jolie will never be a good choice for voice-work, sorry) and Mantis who gets some good lines.

Music: 14/20

Decent, nothing amazing.

FINAL SCORE: 79%

NEXT UPDATE: 10 July 2025

NEXT TIME: Not gonna lie. This looks like Ponyo was left out too long in the sun.

Burial Tide Giveaway!

Hey folks! If you’re based in the US, Goodreads are giving away 20 copies of my new horror novel, the Burial Tide!

The offer is running until the 29th of June and you can enter HERE.

“Please. Don’t be boring.”

It’s not a job I’d want as a writer, I’ll tell you that much.

Trying to write the first movie about a black Captain America in such a viciously polarised time is a hell of a poisoned chalice and I don’t envy the approximately eighteen thousand screenwriters who worked on Captain America: Brave New World. What does it mean for a black man to represent America given, y’know, the whole business? That has to be delved into right?

Or does it? Is it fair to insist that Sam Wilson has to make some great serious statement on The Issue of Race, when you would never ask that of Steve Rogers? Shouldn’t Sam Wilson just be able to be Captain America without it being a whole thing?

Personally, and this is just my instinct as a writer, I would have focused on winning the crowd over in the first movie with a really kickass Captain America movie and keep the heavy stuff for further movies down the line once Wilson/Mackie had been accepted by a critical mass of the fanbase as the new Cap.

I don’t know how I would have done that exactly.

I can tell you one thing: I wouldn’t have done this.

This being a stealth sequel to 2008’s The Incredible Hulk where Captain America feels like a supporting character in his own damn movie.

The film opens with Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford replacing John Hurt) nervously waiting to step onstage and give his acceptance speech after winning the presidency. Now, much as I love Ford, he’s the opposite of a Philip Seymour Hoffman or an Alan Rickman. If he doesn’t think the movie’s worth his time, he will phone it in so hard that he crashes the telecom system. Which is why I’m actually kinda shocked by how good he is in this. Seriously, this may be one of my favourite late period Ford performances. He gives a genuinely compelling portrayal of a deeply flawed but fundamentally decent man trying to do the best for his country as he grapples with the sins of his past and his estrangement from his daughter. The problem is, he kinda ends up stealing the show. Sam Wilson’s role in the story is so static and functional (Mackie is doing alright but honestly, he’s been better as Sam in other movies) that Ross kind of ends up becoming the protagonist by default.

So it’s a few months later and Sam is tracking down a terrorist named Sidewinder and his organisation Serpent, which is this movie’s version of The Serpent Society. In the comics they’re a colourful gang of snake themed villains, here they are a bunch of dudes with guns because the modern-day set Captain America movies, even at their best, have always been somewhat allergic to joy. We also are introduced (technically re-introduced) to Joaquin Torres, the new Falcon, who manages to break the world speed record for making me utterly loathe a character. He swoops down, knocks three of the terrorists onto the ground and then shoots one in cold blood as he tries to stagger to his feet, and then does a little smug dance at how cool he is. So…remember this bit from Falcon and the Winter Soldier (let’s be honest, probably the one part you do remember from that show).

Y’know, the part where John Walker murdered an unarmed terrorist with symbolism? I’m not one of those “John Walker did nothing wrong” lunatics, I’m just saying there seems to be a bit of protagonist-centred morality at play here. I actually wondered if I was over-reacting and that maybe he just shot him with a stun blast or something but according to the MCU wiki:

Maybe one of those “non-lethal” machine guns?

And look, I’m perfectly aware that if this was, I dunno, Thor twatting a Chitauri I wouldn’t bat an eye but…when it’s a representative of the US government just casually shooting a man on the ground and then doing a little Fortnite dance, that feels really gross to me.

Also, we got to talk about the dialogue in this thing. Here’s an actual exchange between Captain America and one of the Serpents before they throw down.

“The Captain America I dreamed of beating was bigger than you.”

“I’m happy to disappoint.”

“I bet you break easy”

“Not that easy”

I have heard children playing super heroes in a playground come up with better fight banter than that. Anyway, Cap and Falcon defeat the terrorists, save some hostages and recover a mysterious canister that they stole while it was en route from Japan to America. Sidewinder escapes, however, and Cap learns that Serpent were supposed to hand the canister off to their employer who never showed up.

After the mission, Torres asks Sam to help him learn some moves and Sam takes him to meet his trainer, the second Captain America, Isaiah Bradley. Sam gets a call from Ross inviting him to the White House and asks Bradley to come with him. Bradley doesn’t want to go, a), because he doesn’t like Ross and b) because of the whole “being locked up for 30 years and experimented on by the federal government” thing but Sam convinces him to go.

We then get a weird ass scene where Sam, Isaiah and Joaquin are in a limo, travelling to the White House, and just keep stating stuff like how they’re in a limo. And going to the White House. It’s like someone just turned on the audio description for the blind and chronically oblivious.

Arriving at the White House, Ross takes Sam aside. Sam is surprised to find that Ross seems like an entirely different person. I mean obviously he’s a different person…oh, by the way, want to see the stupidest headline in history?

Oh gee. I wonder why.

But no, what I mean is that Ross is respectful and humble and downright chill in a way he never was before. He asks Sam to reform the Avengers, pretty much admits he was wrong about the need for superheroes and tells him he wants to work with him to represent all Americans. And, I realise this is probably just current events colouring my reaction but there is something so fucking wholesome about this that I can’t help but love this scene.

We’re also introduced to Ruth Bat-Seraph, better known from the comics as the Israeli superhero Sabra whose inclusion feels like a choice. Sabra in the comics is a Mossad agent and has always been something of a lightning rod of controversy. I don’t necessarily object to her being depicted onscreen but what strikes me as weird is that we have an Israeli character who’s shown as the US President’s chief of security and a former black widow. So now, every time she’s onscreen I’m thinking “she’s a foreign national trained by a notorious cabal of Russian assassins, how the HELL did she get clearance for this job when the Secret Service won’t even hire non-Americans?”

There are absolutely scads of tough female super spies in the comics who would fit this role. Abigail Brand. Jessica Drew. Victoria Hand (yeah I know she died in Agents of SHIELD but are we even still pretending that show was canon to the MCU?). My point is, it’s one thing to include her if it makes logical sense for the story. It’s another thing to go to the trouble of including this character when her mere presence has me constantly going “wait, how does that even make sense”? Like I said, it feels like a choice.

Ross gives a presentation to all the assembled dignitaries on the subject of Celestial Island, the dead alien sticking out of the Earth’s crust that was introduced in The Eternals. Ross tells them that a new metal has been discovered, one that is “even more indestructible” than vibranium.

He then tells us the name of this new wonder metal: ADAMANTIUM.

“OH WOW! PRETTY COOL, RIGHT?”“Are you honestly expecting me to stand up and cheer for a fucking metal?”

Also, how the fuck is this going to work? If this is literally the first time adamantium appears in this world then the earliest Wolverine can get his claws and lose his memory is 2024. His losing his memory won’t have any long-term impact. He can just piece the details of his life back together with social media.

Anyway, the first sample of refined adamantium was what was in the canister recovered by Sam and Joaquin so everyone’s happy…until Mr. Blue by the Fleetwoods plays over the speakers (ha! I get it) and several people in the crowd go berserk and start attacking Ross. And, unfortunately, one of them is Isaiah Bradley.

Isaiah makes a run for it and escapes the White House with Sam in hot pursuit. The old man has no memory of what just happened and pleads with Sam not to be sent back to jail. The scene of Isaiah being being dragged away by the cops and begging them not to ruin the suit he was married in is genuinely affecting and highlights just how all over the place the writing quality is in this movie.

Case in point, our next scene is Sam angrily barging into the underground facility where the President is in lockdown, actually physically forcing his way past security. Which is so stupid. Firstly, there has just been an assassination attempt by people who had full security clearance, so aggressively making a beeline for POTUS is really not a good look right now. Secondly, this whole thing is framed like Sam going in to give Ross a piece of his damn mind but…what exactly did Ross do? He got shot at. By Sam’s plus one! Why is Sam mad at Ross?! And then Ruth comes into the room and Sam’s all “can we have a minute?”

No Sam. There’s just been an assassination attempt by someone closely linked to you and you just strong-armed your way into a secure area to get close to the President. HIS CHIEF OF SECURITY IS NOT GOING TO GIVE YOU A MINUTE. And I really feel that someone like Sam Wilson, who’s spent most of his life in the military, should know this stuff.

Famously the movie was reshot more times than Tupac Shakur, and this feels like two quite different drafts coming into conflict.

Sam says that Isaiah would never try to kill the president, Ruth points out that he did, in full view of several witnesses.

Sam says that Isaiah had no motive, Ruth points out that the US Federal government destroyed his life.

Sam says that he wants to uncover the truth about what happened, Ross points out that a criminal investigation carried out by the prime suspect’s best friend is compromised by definition and then he calls Sam “son” because the writers need something to make Ross unsympathetic and distract us from the fact that literally everything Sam has done and said since the start of this scene has been dumb and stupid.

Sam is fired from being Captain America (or not, it’s actually really unclear in the dialogue) and decides to investigate the shooting himself. He and Joaquin figure out that Sidewinder’s buyer from Mexico has been behind all this, and used flashing lights on Isaiah’s phone to mind control him. Sam gets attacked by Sidewinder and beats him, only for his phone to go off. A mysterious voice tells Sam that he won’t like what’s coming next (truth in advertising). Back at their headquarters (which I’m going to call the Americave), Sam fills Joaquin in on Sidewinder’s attack in a scene that’s unintentionally hilarious to me. Maybe it’s the Americave’s “small tech-startup” vibe or Mackie’s vaguely annoyed reaction to being almost killed by a global terrorist but it’s just so funny when Sam says “Sidewinder tracked me down”. It’s like they’re bitching about that one co-worker they both hate.

“Guess who I ran into? Karen from HR.”
“Oh JOY.”
“Mhm-hm.”

Joaquin traces Sidewinder’s last call and tracks it to a secret military installation called Echo One, which Sam says is a place “they send you and you never leave”. So that’s something we’ve normalised.

They reach Echo One and meet the real mastermind behind all this, Samuel Sterns.

This is why you have to check the ingredients on the shampoo bottle.

Sterns tells them that Ross has been holding him prisoner for 16 years which is how long it’s been since The Incredible Hulk came out. But, given the Endgame time skip and the fact that this movie has to take place a few months after the Presidential election of 2026, that means that it’s been more like 19 years. So apparently this dude is smart enough to predict the future to a decimal point but not smart enough to read a calendar. It’s such a fumble too, saying “he locked me up for almost twenty years” hits so much harder.

Anyway, Sterns reveals that he was aiding Ross all through his presidential campaign with the understanding that Ross would pardon him once he became president. But, obviously, Ross realised that when you pardon a man who looks like he was spliced with broccoli, people are prone to ask awkward questions like “Who is this man? Why does he look like broccoli? Why are you pardoning him? What was his actual crime? You were holding him for how long? But he got a trial? He didn’t? Why not? Can we re-do the election?” and so forth. So he welched on the deal and kept Sterns locked up. Sterns tells Sam that Ross knows all of this and is still allowing Isaiah to take the rap and face a death penalty (although how he can be even considered for capital punishment for a mere attempted murder, even on the President, is more than I can explain). I suppose they might try and pin a treason charge on him…fuck it, doesn’t matter. Stern tells them that this is all his plan to get pretty fucking justified diabolical revenge on Ross and leaves them to fight some mooks he prepared earlier. After defeating said mooks, Sam finds some pills that Sterns was apparently giving Ross for a heart condition and sends them off to be tested.

Meanwhile, Ross is in Japan trying to salvage a treaty with the Japanese government to prevent a scramble for adamantium. But Sterns has given the Japanese false intel that the US was behind the theft at their mine and the Japanese have decided to just grab as much dead Celestial as they can.

Sterns mind controls two US jet pilots and tries to get them to do a reverse Pearl Harbour but Cap and Falcon arrive and save the day (yay!) but Falcon gets horribly injured (yay!).

At the hospital as he waits by Joaquin’s bedside for the Grime Reaper to stop being such a pussy and do what needs to be done, he’s approached by Bucky…sorry, by the FUCKING CONGRESSMAN FROM THE GREAT STATE OF NEW YORK JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES.

And I wish I still lived in a reality where I had the right to mock that as being ridiculous.

Sam confesses to Bucky his feelings of inadequacy, saying that he thinks Steve made the wrong choice giving him the shield. Bucky replies that Steve gave people something to believe in, but that Sam gives them something to aspire to. And I can’t help but notice that you could have swopped those around and it would have made about as much sense.

The pills that Sam had tested turn out to be loaded with gamma radiation and can I just point out that I worry that thanks to Marvel a large majority of the population no longer realises that gamma radiation is a real thing. Anyway, Sterns turns himself into the military police for…no fucking reason at all, that I can see. He wants to let the media know the truth about Ross but allowing himself to be arrested seems to me the worst way of doing that. Just Wikileaks that shit. Anyway, he unveils his final plan to destroy Ross’ legacy: he turns him into Red Hulk while he’s giving a press conference.

Which would be a pretty cool reveal if it hadn’t been spoiled by the trailers, the posters and every word to come out of Harrison Ford’s ornery mouth. Red Hulk goes on a rampage and Sam arrives to fight him. He lures Ross to a street lined with cherry blossom trees where he used to take his daughter Betty and that proves to be enough to calm him down and end the fight. That is some Batman versus Superman: Dawn of Justice level writing there.

“Save…blossoms…”

Ross de-hulks and is taken into custody. We get the nice escapist fantasy of an obviously criminal president being removed from office without much fuss or to do. Isaiah is freed, Torres is invited to join the Avengers (boooo) and Ross is visited by his daughter Betty in jail and they reconcile so that’s nice, I guess.

***

Increasingly, the bar to clear for MCU movies is whether Spouse of Mouse was able to stay awake until the end and, I must report with regret, she was out like a light by the end of the first act.

Scoring

Adaptation: 07/25

The making of this film was, by all accounts, an absolute shit show and all the signs are there. The story seems at once too simple and yet has too many moving parts, character motivation is all over the place. It’s just a mess.

Our Heroic Heroes: 14/25

Mackie struggles to bring his usual mega-watt charisma to a script that just does not know what to do with him or his character. He feels very much like a supporting player in his own story and that’s a crime.

Our Nefarious Villain: 12/25

Tim Blake Nelson is a damn good actor and he’s not un-menacing as The Leader, and the design is actually a pretty cool and gruesome translation of the comic design. But the whole concept of a villain who can predict every future event with perfect accuracy just rewards bad writing. I can see how he might be a dark horse favourite for some viewers but he just didn’t grab me.

Our Plucky Sidekicks: 08/25

Real mixed bag here. Harrison Ford is genuinely the best thing in the movie. I loathe the new Falcon, I just want to punch this guy in the face.

The Stinger

Sam visits Sterns in jail who taunts him that he may have saved this world but what’s he going to do about the other worlds, oooooooohh.

And the audience went…

Hey, you remember this absolutely classic little bit of internet comedy from a century ago?

This scene feels like that, but for Marvel stingers. That’s how fucking boilerplate it is.

FINAL SCORE: 41%

NEXT UPDATE: 26 June 2025

NEXT TIME: Hey, remember when “Jack Black is in this” didn’t sound like a threat?

The Swan Princess (1994)

There really should be a sub-genre for animators who left Disney during the eighties all ready to set up their own animation studio with blackjack and hookers…only for Disney to get their groove back with The Little Mermaid and eat them alive. We all know of Don Bluth, of course, the one who came closest to unseating the Mouse from its throne. And we’ve also met Phil Nibbelink. Well today we’re going to look at another of these would-be contenders; Richard Rich:

So how’s this for some animation bona fides: Richard Rich was the director of not one but two Disney animated features.

Those features were The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron.

Now now, let’s be fair. Disney in the mid-to-late eighties was in its most hellish creative funk since World War Two. The kind of hellish creative funk that would not be seen again until the early 2000s and…now. Of all the hellish creative funks Disney has been in I’d rank it…somewhere in the middle. Bad times, anyway. Disillusioned by working on Oliver & Company (as anyone would be) he left in 1986, convinced that the old studio was a goner and that nothing could ever change that.

Oops.

After a stint in the desert making religious animation for the Church of Latter Day Saints, Rich watched the Disney Renaissance take off and decided to make his play for the crown with The Swan Princess, an animated re-telling of the ballet Swan Lake, without any actual ballet (thank Christ). Made on a paltry budget of 20 million dollars, it was worked on for four long years before being released in 1994, where it had to compete against The Lion King. The result was pretty much what would happen if you pitted a real swan against an actual lion, but it did have an extremely healthy second life on video. It’s not the worst of the Disney-chasers of this era, nor is it close to being the best. But it is significant for one very important reason. This was the last feature length, cinematically released animated motion picture that was created entirely by hand. Not a single cel of this was touched by the infernal machine. So let me be clear, no matter what I think of this movie…

So remember when I said that The Swan Princess did gangbusters on video? Well, that probably explains why this thing has eleven feckin’ sequels. Obviously, I’m not going to be covering them all here but I did come across one or two interesting factoids about them. One of them is that in all approximately eighteen hours of the Swan Princess Cinematic Universe they never get around to telling us the name of the kingdom where all this nonsense is supposed to be happening. There’s references to places like “Colchester” so presumably this is somewhere in Britain but I honestly have no idea.

Anyway, we begin with the birth of the Princess Odette in the Kingdom of Filenotfound where she is presented to her proud father, King William who proceeds to show her off to the cheering commoners.

Odette’s mother, is never seen or even heard of in this movie, although apparently the eleventh movie in the series, A Fairy Tale is Born, revealed that her name was Queen Aubri and that she died giving birth to Odette.

Which, as you can imagine, casts this scene in a rather grisly light.

“Yes, my wife is lying dead in the next room but my line’s secure! That’s all that matters!” “HOOORAY! WE LOVE OUR KING! YAAAAY!”

Nobles come from all around to pay homage to the young princess, including the king’s good friend Queen Umberta and her young son Prince Derek. And we get a scene of Derek seeing the baby Odette that I’m going to be generous and call an homage to Sleeping Beauty.

William and Umberta decide that they want to unite their kingdoms and that the best way to do this would be to have Derek and Odette marry. I’ve seen reviews asking why William and Umberta don’t just marry each other and save all the hassle but I don’t actually think this is a plothole. If they marry, then both thrones will descend to their eldest child (Derek), cutting Odette completely out of the line of succession. Derek and Odette marrying means both family lines continue to rule. So thats perfectly sensible in a fucked up medieval kind of way. What’s less sensible is that they decide to have both children spend lots of time together so that they’ll fall in love and I think the Westermarck effect will have something to say about that.

While all that’s going on, however, we meet our villain, Rothbart, an evil sorceror voiced by Jack Palance. And that sounds like a great idea right? Unfortunately, Rothbart is probably the most mismanaged element of the whole film. Firstly, the name. That’s not the movie’s fault, of course, Rothbart is the villain of the original ballet but still. Rothbart. We’re already starting in debt. Second, let’s look at this design:

He doesn’t even look particularly evil. This is a design for a comically inept mad scientist. And the movie seems to have no idea what kind of villain he’s supposed to be. Brooding and menacing? Funny and manic? Tragic and misunderstood? The film tries a different mode with every scene he appears in and none of it works. None of it. I don’t know why no one caught basic stuff like “having the villain constantly refer to his arch-enemy the king as “Willie” just sucks any sense of threat out of the character”. It’s head-scratchingly incompetant.

Anyway, operation “Most Awkward Sleepover Ever” is put into effect and we get a montage of the two kids getting to hate each other to the tune of This Is My Idea, our first song which I actually like quite a bit. It’s a little bit “poor man’s Belle” but it skips along merrily and some of the lyrics are good for a chuckle, like when the commoners sing:

At least we’d get a holiday to rest our ploughs and axes
Someday these two will marry
Two lands will be united
And with some luck their marriage may result in lower taxes.

Odette and Derek continue to loathe each other until one day when they meet and suddenly realise that they’re both hot. I wish I was being facetious but it’s really that basic. An engagement is announced and the two dance before the court in a scene that I shall be generous and call an homage to Sleeping Beauty.

But Odette calls the marriage off when Derek says that he wants to marry her because she’s beautiful and can’t actually articulate a single other virtue that she possesses. And I would judge him more harshly if I could either.

She’s…good at poker? Sure, that’s a personality.

So William and Odette return home and Derek gets pilloried by his sarcastic older courtier Rogers, who I will be pretty fucking generous and call an homage to Grimsby from The Little Mermaid.

I do like Rogers, he gives excellent sass.

Odette and her father are ambushed by Rothbart in the form of a gargoyle. One of William’s soldiers is able to reach Derek’s castle and warn the prince who races after them and finds William dying and Odette vanished. William’s last words to Derek are “We were attacked by a great animal. It’s not what it seems. Odette is gone” and peaces out to be with his beloved wife in the afterlife who will presumably have some pretty choice words for him.

Meanwhile, Odette’s been transformed into a swan and taken to a lake near Rothbart’s castle. He tells her that she can turn back into a human if she’s on the lake and the moon is shining on the lake but once the moon stops shining on the lake she’ll turn back into a swan. Rothbart tells Odette he wants her father’s kingdom and so she must marry him or be a swan forever. She, naturally, chooses swanhood.

Meanwhile, get this, Derek has gone fucking insane and convinced himself that not only is Odette still alive but that he’ll find her if he finds the “Great Animal” because beasts of the jungle take fucking hostages now, apparently. To prepare for his new life as Animal Punisher, he forces the court musicians to dress up as animals so that he can practice firing his (non-lethal) arrows at them. This is the kind of shit Nero used to do.

Meanwhile, it’s time to meet our Princess’ coterie of talking animal sidekicks; Jean-Bob the frog, voiced by John Cleese doing his French Knight voice and Speed the tortoise voiced by Stephen Wright doing his Stephen Wright voice. Jean-Bob wants Odette to kiss him so that he’ll turn into a Prince, but Odette refuses because in order to break the spell she must only kiss the man she loves.

“What? I never said that.”“Shutupshutupshutup…”

Undeterred by her refusal (he is a French cartoon, after all) Jean-Bob tries to get some flowers for her by pole-vaulting over the crocodile infested moat around Rothbart’s castle. The thing about this movie is that there is precious little plot so a lot of the film is time killing nonsense like this. That said, there is some genuinely charming Looney Tunes-esque animation in this sequence and I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t love it.

Anyway, after explaining to Jean-Bob that she totally would kiss him but…y’know…she launches into Far Longer Than Forever, the movie’s signature song. Like most of the songs in this it’s competent without being stunning. Interestingly, David Zipple (the lyricist) went on to write songs for Mulan and Hercules so clearly he had the stuff. There is honestly a lot of talent on display in this film it’s just not quite cohering.

Oh yeah, something that bugs me about this song. It kind of makes Odette seem like a massive hypocrite. The song is all about how Derek is her one true love and that he’ll rescue her, but she shit-canned him for not being able to think of any reason that he loved her apart from her beauty. So here’s my question: Why does she love him? Because Derek is the biggest himbo in all creation and if he has some hidden qualities that won Odette’s heart we never seen them. So we kinda have to assume that Odette’s love for Derek is every bit as superficial and based on appearance as his is for her.

The song is interrupted by the arrival of our last (and least!) comic relief character, a puffin named Puffin (brilliant) voiced with a clock-stopping Oirish accent by Steven Vinovich. And between this guy and the evil Irish nuns from last time I am in fierce danger of being radicalised.

Anyway, after she explains the curse to Puffin, he suggests that she flies away and finds Derek and lures him back to Rothbart’s castle so that he can see her transform and break the curse. She says she doesn’t know where he Derek is, because she doesn’t even know where she is, and after 12 movies that still won’t have changed.

Anyway, the animals launch a daring heist on Rothbart’s castle to get a map that will show them where they are and Odette and Puffin fly off to find Derek.

Derek meanwhile, has been doing meticulous research by reading every random book in the royal library and has decided that King William’s last words about the “Great Animal” not being what it seems means that the creature is a shapeshifter than can assume the form of literally any animal. Which is obviously a buck wild leap of deduction but would also mean that Derek’s hope of finding Odette is zero unless he’s willing to go through the kingdom literally killing every creature he finds.

God he’s dumb.

Derek searches a nearby forest and sees Odette in swan form and growls “A swan! Of course!”

He’s just saying what we’re all thinking. It’s always these bastards.

He instantly assumes that this random waterfowl is the monster who abducted his love and tries to shoot her. And Jesus Christ, Rich, if you’re trying to compete with Disney maybe don’t make a movie where the Princess almost gets shot by the Prince. You’d never see Disney doing that.

Oh wait.

So, fleeing for her very life from her lover who’s trying to kill her…

…Odette flies back to Rothbart’s castle with Derek in hot pursuit. As the moon rises her friends try to persuade her to fly out on to the lake so she can transform and she’s all “yeah…I think he’s a psychopath now who just shoots swans for fun, maybe he’s not #goals”. She flies down anyway and he does very nearly shoot her but then she transforms in a lovely piece of animation.

She fills him in on what’s been happening and he tells her to come to the ball that his mother is hosting to find another princess for him to marry. He says he’ll profess his love for her in front of the whole court which will break the spell. He peaces out but Rothbart has overheard the whole thing and plots to disguise his hench-wench, Bridget, as Odette so that Derek will profess his love to her instead which will kill the real Odette. You know, we never get a scene where we see Rothbart actually laying the curse on Odette because with all these caveats and contingencies it would probably take half the runtime.

“Section 8, Paragraph 9: All parties to the curse agree that public holidays shall not count towards the periods of time specified in Paragraph 7 of this section without the prior written consent of all relevant parties…”

Bridget shows up at the ball disguised as Odette in a black dress, to the shock of the Queen who believed her to be dead. She and Derek start dancing.

Meanwhile, Odette has turned back into a swan and has been imprisoned in a dungeon by Rothbart but is broken loose by Jean-Bob, Speed and Puffin. Odette flies to the castle to stop the prince professing his love to someone who’s used magic to impersonate her in a scene I shall be generous and call a complete fucking rip off of The Little Mermaid.

Now, I’m sure you realise where this is going? Obviously, because Derek at first only loved Odette for her beauty, he has since learned to see past that to her true worth as a human being, and so he’s able to pierce Rothbart’s cunning ruse?

No. He does not do that. He thinks that Bridget is the real Odette and professes his love to her.

Rothbart shows up to gloat and tells Derek that Odette will soon die. The Prince races back to Rothbart’s castle where he finds Odette dying and having turned back to human form. For some reason. Derek tells her that the the vow was made for her so really, it should count, and dude, you fucked up. You had one job and you fucked up. At least own it.

Rothbart shows up to gloat and Derek demands that he save Odette’s life and Rothbart agrees if he defeats him in battle because it’s a knock off Disney movie from the nineties and we need our giant monster fight. And Rothbart turns into a massive green winged bat in a scene that I will be generous and call OH MY GOD RICHARD RICH YOU WHORE.

Anyway, Derek may be a shallow idiot himbo but he is good at killing animals and so defeats Rothbart quite handily. Odette is suddenly not dying, she decides that maybe it’s time to lower her standards and they get married. And I’m sure they’ll have many more adventures, each more beautiful than the last.

Shudder.

***

Scoring

Animation: 14/20

Whatever else you may say about his film output, never doubt that Richard Rich had the goods as an animator.

Leads: 05/20

There’s a reason that Sleeping Beauty isn’t actually about the Prince and the Princess.

Villain: 02/20

You’d think the guy who directed The Black Cauldron would know how to create a menacing villain.

Supporting Characters: 09/20

John Cleese could have been Zazu. He chose this instead because he thought Jean-Bob was a more interesting character.

Music: 11/20

Couple of halfway decent songs. For a low budget Disney wannabe from the nineties that’s a bloody miracle.

FINAL SCORE: 41%

NEXT UPDATE: Argh I’m working on a really, really exciting writing project that I can’t…tell…you about but I’ll be back 12 June 2025

NEXT TIME: Oh brave new world! That has such people in’t!

Pan (2015)

Old lags on this blog know, from my review of Disney’s Peter Pan written way back in the Hadean Epoch, that JM Barrie’s Peter and Wendy is one of my favourite books of all time. By a strange coincidence, I recently finished reading it to Mini-Mouse (my first full read-through in around fifteen years) and I was once more struck by how achingly beautiful it is purely as a piece of writing.

Look at this passage describing Hook’s ship:

One green light squinting over Kidd’s Creek, which is near the mouth of the pirate river, marked where the brig, the Jolly Roger, lay, low in the water; a rakish-looking craft foul to the hull, every beam in her detestable, like ground strewn with mangled feathers. She was the cannibal of the seas, and scarce needed that watchful eye, for she floated immune in the horror of her name.

Now, I’m not normally one to gush about editions of books and what not. If it’s a good story, I don’t tend to care about the packaging. But I do make a special exception for my copy of Peter Pan.

The Everyman Children’s Classics edition with illustrations by F.D. Bedford. I got this one Christmas many years ago and it’s always been indescribably special to me.

When I see a bad adaptation of Peter Pan, it feels I leant this book to someone and got it back torn, stained and with obscene notes scribbled on every page.

I feel angry and appalled and betrayed.

Watching Pan, however, felt like I leant this book to someone and they put it in a shredder and painstakingly re-arranged the shreds into a diorama depicting the Conference of Versailles.

Now we’re waaaaaay past angry. Now I’m just baffled and confused.

Why? Why did you do that?

What the fuck even is this movie? Multiple reviews and the movie’s own wikipedia page refer to it as a “prequel” to Barrie’s original story but that’s a blatant lie. I don’t know where this story was heading (and, given its box office reception, I never will) but there is simply no way this film was ever going to dovetail neatly into Peter flying into Wendy’s bedroom and taking her off to Never Never Land, because that happened in 1904 and this movie opens during the Blitz and that’s not how time works. It’s tempting to think that this is a prequel that failed at the one thing that makes a prequel a prequel, happening before or “pre” the “quel” but I don’t think that’s it.

I’ve also seen it described as an “origin” story for Peter, but the character is so radically different from his book counterpart (and don’t even get me started on other characters like Hook and Tiger Lily) that there is really no way to reconcile the two depictions. Maybe it’s better to think of it as a “reimagining” a lá Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes but even that hewed closer to the movie it was aping (heh). In fact, Pan veers so hard away from its source material that the creators could have just changed the names of a few characters and I doubt anyone would have realised it was supposed to be Peter Pan.

Anyway, in the 1930s a baby is left on the steps of a London orphanage with a mysterious pan flute pendant. So you know what that means.

Ten years later this baby is now a boy called Peter and living in an orphanage run by comically evil Irish nuns. Sorry, I think they’re supposed to be comically evil Irish nuns but they forgot to make them comical and just made them very evil and very Irish.

“Shall sir be playing the race card?”

Nooo, I don’t think so. As long as they don’t do anything ridiculously anti-Irish like having the nuns attacking the children with hurleys…

Oh. Well. Fuck you too, movie.

ANYWAY. Like a lot of bad movies, Pan struggles with tone. Sister Barnabas is the kind of ridiculously over the top child-hating villain that you’d get in a Roald Dahl novel but it’s totally lacking the camp that’s needed to make that kind of character entertaining. Pan, particularly in its earliest scenes, has the sombre grey palette of a Holocaust drama and it’s not a fun time. Peter and his best friend Nibs break into Barnabas’ office looking for proof that she’s hoarding food and instead find a letter from Peter’s mother which the nuns kept from him because…cartoonish supervillainy. They also find a load of money which leads the boys to deduce that Sister Barnabas is selling orphans who are vanishing in the night.

Yeah, that’s what every adaptation of Peter Pan needs, the implication of child molestation. I don’t want to associate Neverland with that kind of thing!

You KNOW what I meant, you jerks.

The boys are caught and caned, and Sister Barnabas tears up the letter from Peter’s mother before his eyes because she is 100% that bitch. They are sent to bed and suddenly there are flying pirates coming through the roof and snatching children up. Now, you might be thinking “Oh! Phew! That’s where the missing orphans went!” but…no, I don’t think that can be true. The nuns have no idea what’s going on, and the pirates are clearly stealing these children, not buying them so I have to assume that Sister Barnabas is really selling orphans for nefarious purposes and her orphanage just happened to also get raided by flying pirates. During the blitz. Some orphans just cannot catch a break.

The next sequence I think is probably the only explanation we need as to why this movie was set thirty years later than the original story: someone thought that the sight of a flying pirate ship dodging Spitfires over London would look cool as Hell and I have to admit that they OBVIOUSLY were correct. The ship escapes and travels to Neverland. This results in the movie becoming brighter (if not necessarily all that much more colourful) which means I might actually get some useable screenshots.

Peter and the rest of the terrified orphans are brought to a mine, where they are greeted by hundreds of captured miners singing…fuck it, you need to see this for yourselves.

You know what? This just became my go-to answer for “scene I love in a movie I otherwise hate”. Yes, it’s pure random nonsense but there’s a swagger to it, you know?

This is Hugh Jackman who is ostensibly playing Blackbeard but who I choose to call “Fake Hook” or “Fook” for short. His whole deal is that he’s running a slave mine to dig up Pixum, which is crystallised fairy dust which is all that remains of the fairies because Blackbeard FUCKING GENOCIDED THEM.

Peter learns all this from Sam “Smee” Smiegel, played in this version by Adheel Aktar. In the original play and book, of course, Smee is a stage Oirish idiot. I presume they didn’t go in that direction because they thought that would be insensitive to Irish viewers.

Ship. Has. Sailed.

While working in the mine Pan meets this guy…

As you can no doubt tell, he’s the tough badass mercenary who’s only out for himself but will eventually become a hero thanks to the innocence and nobility of the child protagonist and his name is James Hook.

Excuse me.

What the FUCK?

Why do this? Just to be contrary? Just to be special? Just so you can be the guy who said you wiped your ass with one of the greatest villains in world literature? I AM GENUINELY CURIOUS WHAT THE THOUGHT PROCESS WAS HERE.

For starters, Captain James Hook was not born with the name “Hook”. He got the name after Peter Pan cut his hand off and he replaced it. WITH A HOOK. It’s pretty obvious. J.M. Barrie, in his children’s book written in the nineteen tens even pointed out that him being named “Hook” from birth would be really stupid. “Captain Hook” is supposed to be a name that strikes terror because of its implications. There are no implications here, this guy is just Jim Hook.

Secondly, they made him American and Garrett Hedlund is struggling mightily with the accent. I don’t know why, because Garret Hedlund is American but he somehow manages to sound like that’s not his real accent. It’s a fucking trainwreck. I’m not calling this one “Hook” either. I will call him Jimbo.

Jimbo very helpfully tells Peter how to mine without hurting his wrist and then sharpens his pick. Peter thanks him and Jimbo replies “Don’t thank me. I’m not your friend. And I haven’t got your back.”

I will pause here to give credit where credit’s due. Levi Miller is perfect casting as Peter. I’d have loved to have seen him in a more faithful adaptation. The kid is top tier.

Anyway, Peter finds a lump of Pixum but it’s snatched from him by an older pirate. When he fights back, he’s sentenced to walk the plank. After two small children plummet to their deaths to a fun little string melody it’s Peter’s turn and, to the amazement of all, he flies. A little. Kinda like a chicken. You know?

After a fall that really should have broken every little bone in his fragile frame he wakes up in Fook’s chambers. Fook tells Peter that the savage peoples of Neverland have a prophecy of a boy who was born of the love of a fairy prince and a human woman. Uhhhhhh….

Blackbeard tells Peter that legend says that the boy was hidden away in the real world until he could come of age and return to overthrow Fook and that the prophecy said this boy could fly. So, obviously, with the one person who could threaten his rule at his complete mercy he kills him?

No, he locks him away in the dungeon where he’s promptly rescued by Jimbo who agrees to help him search the island for his mother if he helps Jimbo escape the mine with his ability to fly.

PETER: If I’m going to trust you I need to know your name.

HOOK: It’s Hook, James Hook! Ya happy?!

(Pushes Peter down a mine shaft)

PETER: Noooooooooooo!

“My sentiments exactly.”

So Jimbo, Smee and Peter take a cable car up to the dock and Jimbo tells Peter to fly them over to one of the flying ships. But Peter reveals that he’s only ever flown once and you’ll never guess…

You know what, I really don’t like Hook but goddamn Hoffman was awesome.

Anyway, they manage to steal a ship anyway and escape and crash in the jungle where they get menaced by some terrible CGI birds before getting captured by Tiger Lily, played by native actress Rooney Mara.

Specifically, she is a native of Bedford, New York.

So. So so so.

The portrayal of Tiger Lily and the Piccaninny tribe (yes, that is their name) are definitely the aspect of the original novel that has aged the worst.

I am also far too pretty to cringe in this way.

So yeah, there is definitely a minefield there to be avoided but it has been done.

The 2003 Peter Pan had a Tiger Lily played by a native actress and she was widely agreed to be one of the best things in that movie. You can have the Indians in a Peter Pan story, you just have to do the work. Anyway, White Tiger Lily thinks Jimbo is a pirate (as if, who could ever mistake this guy for a pirate?) and throws him into the arena to fight their tribe’s finest warrior. But they release him when they see Peter’s pendant and realise…

White Tiger Lily tells Peter that after leaving him in the real world his mother went and hid in a hidden fairy kingdom. This is actually done through “the Memory Tree” where the lines of wood on a tree render the story in animation. It’s actually a very nifty bit of visual storytelling. She tells him that he is the chosen one, destined to save them all. Oh, and his mother’s name was “Mary”.

But to prove himself, Peter will have to fly.

Oh, and Jimbo starts flirting with White Tiger Lily.

Well I mean, who DOESN’T ship them?!

This movie is bad and I do not much care for it.

Anyway, Smee gets captured by Fook and his pirates and betrays the native’s village and also tells Fook about the existence of the hidden fairy kingdom. Fook attacks, slaughters most of the natives and then reveals to Peter that he is his mother. Sorry, I mean, that he killed Peter’s mother.

Peter, White Tiger Lily and Jimbo manage to escape but Peter is furious at White Tiger Lily for lying to him and she’s all “I’m sorry, orphaned child, that I dangled the hope of your mother still being alive only for you to lose her again but I really needed you to do what I want.”

There’s a long sequence of the three journeying across the Neverland and encountering mermaids and a giant crocodile and other assorted things to remind you of better versions of this story. Jimbo finds a flying ship in pretty good nick and abandons the other two. White Tiger Lily tells Peter the truth about his mother, that she was a warrior who died defending Neverland from Blackbeard and he decides to follow in her footsteps (hopefully without the dying part). They arrive at the Fairy Kingdom.

Unfortunately, they’re ambushed by Fook who takes Peter’s pendant and uses it to unlock the way into the kingdom which he plans on taking over and strip mining for Pixum which he uses to stay young forever. He sails his ship into the kingdom (which looks like Krypton in the seventies Superman movie for some reason) and orders his men to make for the “fairy hive” which as a phrase just conjures up the perfect atmosphere of Victorian fairy tale whimsey.

But, wouldn’t you know it, Jimbo isn’t a complete bastard and returns in the nick of time.

Peter meets Tinkerbell who is actually a fairy and hasn’t been reimagined as a fucking Galapagos turtle or something and he finally flies, rallies all the fairies and together they defeat Blackbeard and the pirates.

Peter sees a vision of his mother who tells him that he is the special and that he’s finally home and he tells her that he loves her and has always missed her.

Jimbo takes command of Blackbeard’s ship, The Jolly Roger, and they sail back to London to rescue the rest of Peter’s friends from the orphanage.

The ship sails off into the night, and Peter and Jimbo reflect on how they’re such good friends now and nothing will ever happen to change that.

And it won’t.

***

I’m honestly not even mad. I’m just utterly baffled. There is a certain crazy gonzo inventiveness that’s sort of admirable but when you take such strong material and go out of your way to mess with it this hard, call it what it is: hubris. They couldn’t have had more hubris if they’d given this movie a name that means “critical mauling”.

Oh wait.

SCORE: 34%

NEXT UPDATE: 22 May 2025

NEXT TIME: You know, on the one hand this will probably be my last chance for a long time to review Conclave during an actual Conclave. On the other hand…I am going to be so busy this week and that movie really needs a proper write up so…

Don’t you click on that podcaaaaast! (You’re a FOOL if you dare!)

‘Ello! Today’s episode of Now That’s What I Call Nostalgia covers iconic British claymation classic The Trapdoor! We had a great time re-watching and talking about this one.