So my students are being very un-genki at this time of the school year, so I went to the video rental store and marathoned a bunch of recent English kids movies in hopes of finding something to use in class.
Idly, I also thought I'd do some comparative thinking on them.
In order of viewing:
Wallă»E: Best of the lot. I really wasn't expecting much from the trailers, but it ended up being a really thoughtful movie. Despite its attempts to have a generally positive ending, the whole experience was actually pretty horrifying to me as it presented a realistic view of 'apocalypse' that terrified me. Not the intention, I know, but my imagination ran away with me while I was watching it, apparently. On reflection, it does an amazing job of mixing elements of silent film and sci-fi/environmentalist themes. Not my favorite movie ever, but at least it was a good movie.
Golden Compass: My personal favorite of the bunch. This movie felt a bit rushed, but the main antagonist lady was truly chilling. And the child actors weren't horrible, so that was nice. It was a visual feast, so I'm glad I saw it, but the whole experience worked more as an advertisement for the books than as a movie. I haven't read the books yet, but now I -really- want to. Why didn't anti-Christian literature exist for me when I was kid? I don't feel I can it rate it much more objectively than this because I found myself seriously agreeing with every plot point and thinly-veiled anti-Christian theme. The plot alligns with my personal views too much for me to be entirely objective here. It's like when overly-conservative people try to claim that FOX news is objective. I'm at least aware that I'm biased here. Note that I liked the Christian symbolism in WallE.
Lady in the Water: Yeah, I watched it during this marathon. As bad as advertised. And according to Grefter, let's move on.
Eragon: From this point on, the movies get progressively better. Well, considering that they're following Lady in the Water, that's not saying much. Anyway, Eragon is entirely fogettable. Even the visuals were lame. And I -like- dragons and swords/sorcery (obviously). Fail, Eragon. The titular hero himself is an impulsive idiot and there's the horrible romantic subplot involving the girl he's never met... The dragon character was also pretty lame. The cool Obi-Wan/UOM guy dies. Spoiler. If you couldn't figure that out five minutes into the movie, you're too young to be on this forum. The whole thing is just -too- predictable and -too- archetypal. Don't get me wrong, Djinn likes tropes, but at least try to subvert one or mix them up somewhat creatively. Tales of Symphonia has more creative characters than this movie.
The Seeker: Seems based on a book series for tweens. There's a chosen one, some really heavy-handed Light/Dark symbolism, and a 'surprising' twist on the villain's identity. It also has a lame romantic plot that they thankfully drop later on. It's set in modern day England somewhere, but magic exists secretly and our chosen one (angsty teenage blonde-haired kid) has to travel through time to collect macguffins and stop the Dark Rider or something.
The exposition is mercifully short, and the very first instances of BHK starting to see evidence of magic existing in the modern world is actually pretty and culminates in a dark chase scene with some creepy raven-esque eldritch things. Then the secret magic society shows up to take all the mystery out of the magic and the movie sucks. Disappointing.
Spiderwick Chronicles: A Nickelodeon movie, and appropriately, filled with so-ugly-they're-cute little creatures. Except they're not cute. Apart from this failure, this movie wasn't bad! Not great, but not bad. It's another kid-lit book-based movie that's set in modern times where magical things exist secretly. The 'secretly' part being the key. There's a world of fantastic faerie-creatures that exist hiding in nature and Professor Spiderwick chronciled all their secrets. Unfortunately, some bad faerie-creature wants to get the book to use its secrets to destroy all the other good faerie creatures. The villain has zero motivation, but who cares? The rest of the story revolves around a family who moves into Spiderwick's home after it's been abandoned (they're distant relatives or something), and the youngest son-with-attitude finds the book in the attic. Some stuff happens with the family finding out about the faerie creatures which culminates in a magical seige of goblins vs. kids that involves exploding an oven with tomato sauce. Somehow, it was kind of cool.
There's no romantic subplot in this at all, and it's probably the main reason why the movie is 10X better than all of the previous ones (besides Golden Compass and WallE). There is a human drama subplot about how the family has recently been split up because of an unfaithful father. Luckily, this is but a blip on the radar compared to the magical plot (rightfully so, who cares about your deadbeat dad when you're being seiged by fucking goblins?!).
Bridge to Terabithia: Another one based on a kids book, but this time, not a series, but a singular book. This works really well. I was surprised by the quality of the movie. The actors aren't great, but the story is told pretty well. The ads are misleading. This is not a magical fairy tale story. It's actually just a human drama with some acid trip sequences spliced in while the kids are out in the woods 'imagining' things. It works pretty well at conveying the sense of 'Oh come on, you -know- you did this when you were 8!' It was a change from the rest of the kid-lit fantasy stories I had been watching, so my opinion might be biased by being thankful for a change. There's also no romantic subplot, another plus. It's basically a friendship story with a tearjerker ending, and all the tropes that go along with that. Not much to say beyond that, apart from the fact that it's actually enjoyable and the characters are believable.
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian: Were the Telmarines in the original books Spaniards or is that a creative addition for the movie? The movie had the biggest budget of any on this list by a large margin and it shows (apart from WallE, perhaps?). The visuals are beautiful. ...and that's it. I was really bored the whole movie. Even the plucky mascot character didn't grow on me. The actors for these kids are terrible. And Caspian himself is an idiot. The only actor I liked was the guy who was playing the 'I eat babies' bad guy. But the visuals were really pretty and the source material wasn't slaughtered, so I supposed it did its job well. Better at being 'epic' than any of the other films, though I can't tell if I mean that ironically or not.
tl;dr:
WallE >> Golden Compass > Prince Caspian > Bridge to Terabithia > Spiderwick Chronciles >>> The Seeker > Eragon >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Lady in the Water
Did I miss any recent-ish kid-lit releases?
