Wow – I have no problems admitting that I’m a 27 year-old guy and I bawled my eyes out for the last twenty minutes of this movie!

It was probably the 4^th or 5^th grade when I first read this book, so it was like a trip down memory lane when I saw it on late night TV earlier this week. In fact, I could’ve sworn that I remembered seeing the actual film some fifteen years ago because it seemed like the kind of thing that we’d watch in class after the teacher made us trudge through the book … which left me more than a bit surprised when I saw that this film came out only last year! My best guess is that this is one of those that got lost my own scoffing after Narnia and The Golden Compass and every other “magical fantasy realm”-type movie that tried to become the next epic journey after Lord of the Rings, which is too bad because I actually would’ve paid to see this one in the theater…

Bridge to Terabithia was very much a true-to-heart kind of movie, in that they actually did quite a good job at holding off on the special effects and simply letting the story speak for itself. I remembered Jess’ initial struggles with opening his mind as he first stepped foot into the wild imagination of his new friend – there was no computer-generated world the moment they swung across the creek, but simply elements that came to life as they explored the way the creative mind tends to do when left on its own. Why Disney didn’t pump half the marketing of Narnia into Terabithia is beyond me because this was clearly the better film by a landslide.

The casting was spot on from Leslie’s parents all the way on down to Jess and Leslie themselves – Josh Hutcherson and AnnaSophia Robb brought this childhood favorite of mine back to life wonderfully and I hope that the industry gives them other opportunities to play such carefree roles again. These two really sold me on the movie, coupled with the tiny Bailee Madison playing Jess’ sister who just barely helped to calm my tears down as her brother showed her Terabithia for the first time! And of course, I can’t fail to mention Zooey Deschanel, who always ends up playing the quirky roles that I just can’t get enough of … first saw her in The New Guy, loved her role in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and now Terabithia – talk about icing on an already wonderful cake…

This is the kind of film that we often say doesn’t get made anymore because it takes a truly heartfelt story of incredible growth and loss and presents it honestly without all of the glitz and glamour that was Narnia’s downfall. I don’t know how many more books from my childhood like this are still out there, but if they can do as good of a job transcribing those to the big screen then you can sign me up! And I’ve also gotta hope that Terabithia’s release last year at least got enough word of mouth to remind any schools that had somehow forgotten (as had I) and persuaded them to usher this tale back into their reading programs – if there’s a better child-level story that deals with such a devastating loss so gracefully, I haven’t read it.

I won’t be forgetting this hilarious comedy for a long time!

Things actually are looking up for comedies these days, I’m certainly happy to profess, and although the bar was set undeniably high by Juno earlier this year and even by Superbad looking back as far as last summer, I think I can confidently say that Forgetting Sarah Marshall was the funniest movie I’ve seen in the last year. No, not Funniest Movie of the Year, like they plugged into all of the newspaper ads for Juno a month into the freakin’ year, but truly over the last twelve consecutive months, Sarah Marshall was at the top of the list.

Wait, even over The Simpsons Movie?! Ok, not fair, but definitely best live-action comedy in the last twelve months – hands down.

Anyways, I think one of the things that I respected the most about this flick was the fact that this is the second instance lately where we’ve seen a relatively young actor also show writing talents because Forgetting Sarah Marshall was actually written by Jason Segel, who also happens to play the lead as Peter Bretter in the movie. Last year started this trend with Seth Rogen co-writing Superbad, in which he also starred as Officer Michaels … not exactly the lead in that one, but by far one of the funniest roles along with Bill Hader and of course, McLovin’ (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). And it’s sort of a new aspect to enjoying these kinds of movies for me because if there were others that followed a similar trend in the past, it certainly never dawned on me as I was watching them, whereas nowadays these are guys my own age who are not only doing a bang up job on the screen delivering the jokes, but are also flexing their creative muscles off camera by writing these scripts as well – so I guess just given my own passions for writing, it’s a pretty inspiring thing for me to watch…

Not that I’m even remotely interested in acting myself, mind you, but hey – stranger things have happened!

But enough frightening talk like that – this movie was hilarious, from the opening scene that had us staring down the business end of, err, Jason Segel within the first minute and a half to my favorite scene in the entire movie that just so happened to paint a gentler side of Dracula, if you will! If I’d have made it through any more of our 32oz soda by that point in the movie, I have little doubt that I would have completely wet myself when Dracula himself began to pour his soul out to an unsuspecting crowd in that quaint, Hawaiian lounge. Jason Segel and Russell Brand (who played Aldous Snow, the sex-crazed rocker who steals our lead’s girl away) both deserve a bow for delivering some of the funniest casual humor that I’ve seen in a long time, not to mention a couple of great lines each from both Jonah Hill and Paul Rudd, whose performances could’ve only been better had they been given more lines … despite the fact that that would’ve likely screwed up the balance of the movie. Even the ladies had their moments of fun more frequent than most, with the female lead quite possibly being a toss up between Mila Kunis’ love for dessert, if you will, as the four stars enjoyed dinner and of course, the mother of all fake orgasm scenes shortly after that in retort lead by Kristen Bell! Yeah, so they’re both sexually charged moments that were frankly pretty hot, but hey – I’m a guy, I have my needs, what do you expect?!

Also, Muppets! Does it get any better???

Well, at least I can confidently say that if it does, we’re going to have ourselves some damn hilarious movies coming up because Forgetting Sarah Marshall was one of the best I’ve seen in quite some time. Just as movies like Ace Ventura and Dumb and Dumber defined the ‘90s, I think we’ve finally found ourselves a crop of humor worthy to represent these new times. Rejoice!

At the end of the day, it was just good to see The Dudes up on the silver screen…

Or at least my big screen in the living room, as it were, in continuing my theme of finally catching up with all of the leftovers that somehow managed to slip through the cracks this summer. And mind you, Hot Rod wasn’t exactly of the same blockbuster caliber as Spider-Man 3 or Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix or even my beloved The Simpsons Movie, but instead it made it on the list because after watching their videos online and on Saturday Night Live for the last couple of years, I just had to see how Andy, Jorma, and Akiva would do with a full 90-minutes on their hands!

In retrospect, it’s probably better that this one waited until DVD because I’d have owed my fiancée big time if she had been forced to sit through the entire thing in a theater as opposed to being able to retreat to her Tivo’ed shows in the bedroom after the first ten minutes, but I digress…

I’m not gonna lie to you – Hot Rod is a pretty stupid movie – in fact, likely one of the stupidest movies of the year, so I guess it’s a good thing that they didn’t hire me to write the tag line, but that’s not to say that it doesn’t have its memorable moments. It’s kind of like how Saturday Night Live itself is these days – every once in a while, they’ll air a good sketch here or there, but you’ve just got to sift through an awful lot of bad impersonations and mediocre parodies to find them. Every clip can’t be a Lazy Sunday or Dick in a Box, but for what it’s worth Hot Rod did remind us to take a bit of time every now and then to ponder that age-old question, “Who would win in a fight between a grilled cheese sandwich and a taco???”

No, seriously – take all the time that you need!

I really wanted this movie to be a huge hit – maybe the next Ace Ventura or Dumb and Dumber – but I think there’s just only so far that you can run with the awkward, offbeat humor and eventually underneath you still need to have more than a handful of good laughs to really build a solid foundation. I mean, the main character has a few good quotes here and there, and it was nice to see Isla Fisher in another movie after her cute chick appearance in Wedding Crashers, but it still wasn’t of the caliber of Superbad or Knocked Up or even …Chuck and Larry when it all comes down to it. It was amusing to me and yes, I did sit through the whole thing, but that might very well have simply been because I’ve come to enjoy The Dudes other work and I had to see how their first feature film turned out for myself. Is that saying that they shouldn’t make another one? Not necessarily – look at Will Ferrell – the last three or four comedies that he’s cranked out have been crap in my eyes and yet I still can’t help but list Night at the Roxbury in my top ten comedies of all time, so figure that one out!

I say keep at it, Dudes, because while not everything you churn out will always be a smash hit, for those times when your latest film provides us detailed instructions on how to best package our, well, packages for optimal presentation to the ladies, well sometimes it’s worth the wait…

That said, for a look at some of the hilarity that turned yours truly onto The Dudes in a completely heterosexual, yet hilarious way, be sure to check out www.thelonelyisland.com.

Bender’s back, baby … and I think that’s a good thing…

So it’s been four years since Futurama was pulled off the air after five seasons of futuristic fun that simply couldn’t compete with the scheduling conflicts of Major League Baseball and a group of executives who couldn’t understand why a show just like The Simpsons couldn’t perform at The Simpsons-like levels when given the worst timeslots on the schedule and pre-empted for just about anything else worth airing. I’ll admit that I was pretty bitter about Futurama getting cancelled because it was so much like The Simpsons, but in SPACE, which added a whole new geeky dimension to it! Matt Groening may not have had the same super-grand-slam-homerun with Futurama that he had with The Simpsons, but seriously, who can compare themselves to such a phenomenon anyways?! The Simpsons is an amazing success in all of history, but that still doesn’t mean that its little brother Futurama can’t do well in its own right…

Needless to say, I was pretty excited to hear about the straight-to-DVD movies in the works and even the possibility to see new episodes on Comedy Central in 2008, however at the same time I just couldn’t help but wonder if Futurama would do any better at surviving the revival than another popular cartoon that recently returned from the dead. You might remember this familiar story from when Family Guy went through it the first time – FOX cancelled the show, then proceeded to bring it back after making a killing on DVD sales, however I think many of us will admit that the show isn’t quite the same as it was back in 2002. Sure, many of the scenes still have the same style and feel to them, but it many cases it’s gotten a lot edgier, almost as if it needs to impress or continue to shock an audience that it didn’t necessarily care to the first time around. Mind you, I still watch the show every week and I still enjoy most of it, but more and more I do find myself saying, “What the…?!” and it didn’t use to be like that.

Unfortunately, I kinda felt the same way about Bender’s Big Score.

I really enjoyed the last season of Futurama, but one of the most obvious differences about this season is that they really started playing up the romantic tensions between Fry and Leela. And this worked, actually, because of the way that the series ended – with Fry writing an opera to show his love for Leela and the credits closing on a fairly touching moment, at least for Futurama, anyways! Of course, I think this later proved to present some problems because for the first four seasons, Fry’s interests in Leela were very sporadic, only to have them brought out into the spotlight for the show’s final hurrah … but then what happens when the show comes back? Suddenly that touching cliffhanger has to be revisited and it seems like that’s all they’ve got to work with – anything and everything is woven to be about Fry’s love for Leela, and frankly it sort of took away from a lot of the fun that I used to realize from Futurama. I put Bender’s Big Score into my DVD player thinking that it was going to be a big adventure in which Bender ends up getting himself into a mess of trouble, and instead I got a love story that simply didn’t end up being as fun as it could’ve been.

I now find myself a little worried to see the next DVD that comes down the pipeline bearing the Futurama name because Bender’s Big Score gave me the feeling that they really weren’t staying true to what the show used to be about … maybe a feature-length production simply isn’t the best format for the show at this point. I mean, The Simpsons Movie was amazing this summer, but they went through eighteen seasons before making the jump to the big screen. And I know that I previously mentioned that I don’t necessarily think that it’s fair to compare anything else to The Simpsons, but I think we can still take a lesson from their history – they really put in a lot of work before jumping to a new medium and thus it really felt like The Simpsons belonged in a movie. Family Guy even managed to pull it off because they basically wrote several stand-alone episodes that could be strung together into a single movie, and that worked well for them. Bender’s Big Score just feels like it tried to do some sort of mash-up of the two, and that’s didn’t work for me.

Ultimately I think I enjoyed parts of this movie not necessarily because they were great but simply because I loved Futurama so much that I really wanted to love Bender’s Big Score, too. A lot of the callbacks to previous episodes were, in fact, great, but then again there were also some parts that I just blatantly felt shouldn’t have been there at all (a la new Family Guy syndrome) – namely our actually seeing Hermes’ body after it had been severed (it had been done on the show, sure, but the animations were always arranged so we never had to see any “gore”) and even more so the very introduction, in which the gang all rants and raves on their “business” being cancelled by FOX. It was funny when Family Guy did it, but they get the only points for this one because their punch line was quick and witty, whereas Futurama’s just seemed to go on and on and on. So while I can appreciate the need to take a little stab there, it wasn’t well thought out at all…

Final verdict – I just hope the next movie that they do is better than this one. Whoever is in charge needs to go back and watch the first four seasons of the show to help remind themselves what Futurama is really all about because I’m sure there’s a larger-scale story to be told there, but it can’t be created by grabbing bits and pieces of what other shows have been successful with over the years. Give us a movie Futurama fans will enjoy and then we’ll talk.

You know those kind of movies where you sit up 90 minutes later and find yourself scratching your head, befuddled as to why someone would even attempt to create a movie out of an otherwise entertaining concept?

I give you The Darwin Awards.

The movie caught my eye while browsing around NetFlix late one night. Way back in the very early days of Just Laugh (1999, maybe?), the creator of the Darwin Awards website allowed us to reprint a few stories for the very first issues of our online magazine. I became a big fan of the tales and have collected all of the books over the years, so when I noticed that a movie had been released, I just had to wonder how it turned out. Of course, we all know all too well that Hollywood sometimes has a habit of latching onto the most minute of details and trying to stretch them out into a full-length feature because you know, if it can be successful in any other medium, why wouldn’t it be successful on the big screen?! That kind of mentality has gotten us dozens of comic book movies that should’ve stayed in print, countless 90-minute-renditions of our favorite TV shows, and even a couple of flicks based on Dave Barry’s books, which still baffles me because they were good books, but not-so-good movies. And I truly hoped that The Darwin Awards wouldn’t follow that same path towards mediocrity, but I still had that aching feeling as I pushed the play button on my DVD player…

What killed it for me, not only in this movie, but for so many of those other flops that I previously mentioned, is that the story just felt so lifeless and lacking, almost as if it was phoned in by an advertising executive while he’s driving through a tunnel and trying to also read the newspaper at the same time. It didn’t feel like any real effort had been made to come up with a believable storyline – more so “These Darwin stories are pretty funny … how can we weave a bunch of them together into a script?” The story jumped from place to place seemingly without direction, and several of the happenings just seemed unnecessary (why was Fez in this movie, for example?!). Frankly, it was almost as if the story itself knew that they were kind of pushing it with this movie and was just sort of along for the ride, whether that meant splashing into a lake or into the side of a mountain.

The actors themselves were ok, at best – Joseph Fiennes as the lead reminded me of a role that Luke Wilson could’ve played, who in fact might’ve looked better alongside Winona Ryder anyways. Frankly, I was surprised to see her because I honestly can’t remember her work for anything since those “shopping incidents” a few years back. Aside from that, it was kind of neat to see the two guys from Myth Busters make a cameo, and David Arquette’s appearance was forgettable at best.

I wish Hollywood would take a page from the lackluster results that we’ve seen time and time again and not take a page and try to convert it into a movie when that’s clearly not the best avenue to expand a creative idea. Sure, an awful lot of the best movies of all time have been adapted from books, but there’s also a significant handful that have been truly awful, meaning simply that there’s got to be someone that looks beyond all of the projected figures that will just admit, “Yeah, these are funny on the website or in the books, but they just wouldn’t be a good fit for Hollywood.” Trying to convert The Darwin Awards to a feature length film is the equivalent of trying to convert volumes A-L of the encyclopedia into a feature length film – seriously, what’s the point?

Some things are just better enjoyed in small doses…

It sure has been a while since I’ve seen a good college movie…

This one caught my eye while I was channel surfing the other night and after recognizing Jonah Hill from Superbad, the film that pleasantly surprised me when a chance was taken on it a few weeks ago, I thought I’d give Accepted a whirl as well. The on-screen description was a unique young adult transitional story from high school to college-life, with the monkey wrench in it all being that the lead character doesn’t end up getting into college and is forced to take drastic measures to please his parents, who are very old-school, “college is the foundation of adult life”-types. Of course, as any of us would suggest, the next best thing to getting into the college of your dreams is simply creating your own, and now we’ve got an interesting movie!

I’ve got to admit when I come across movies like this one that I’m a bit surprised…and confused…that I hadn’t heard of it sooner. And it seems to be quite the steady stream of amusing, but not quite blockbuster comedies like this, too, so it can’t just be that one year when I didn’t go out to the movies all that much! New Suit was a good example, now Accepted is another one, and heck, even the granddaddy of them all – Office Space – is it maybe that Hollywood just doesn’t give these flicks the time that they need (and deserve) up on the silver screen to turn a respectable profit? I suppose sadly it’s probably just one of those things where the low-budget movie doesn’t grab eyeballs like your huge, multi-million dollar blockbusters, so even if they did make a nice profit for what they initially cost, they’ll never even show up on the radar because Hollywood considers anything less than $100 million a wash. But I digress – this movie was too good to waste my whole article griping about Hollywood politics…

Justin Long is a good lead, as the student who opted to take higher education into his own hands in this film. We saw him earlier this summer alongside the infamous Bruce Willis in Live Free or Die Hard, but hands-down this was a much better role for him, proving that he’s certainly capable of playing a lead character as long as he’s cast appropriately, and simply put – he fit this particular character well. He did have some great back up from the likes of Columbus Short, who you might recognize as I did as Darius from Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Maria Thayer who made her debut at least in all the movies that I’ve seen and did a great job, and also of course, Jonah Hill, who managed to play nearly as awkward of a character in this film as he did in Superbad. Which does make me a bit curious to see what we can expect from him in further movies to come, however at least with his track record thus far I’m still happy to give him the benefit of the doubt!

Case in point – one of the first scenes at South Harmon, when Bartleby is up on stage and he asks everyone who got into other colleges to raise their hands and Hill’s character is just arrogant enough to be the lone one with his hand raised … it doesn’t translate back into words here nearly as hilarious as I found it to be, but just trust me on this one.

I think if I had only one negative thing to say about the whole thing, however, it would have to be just how out of place Lewis Black’s dialog felt in the story – not so much that I didn’t like seeing Black himself, as I think he’s a hilarious comedian, but just that it seemed almost like the writers just left that part of the script blank and told him to “Go nuts!”, adlibbing any speaking parts that his character had. They even called him Lewis at one point in the film, whether by accident or planned I’m not sure, but it ultimately just seemed out of place to me – there’s simply no need to fall back on proven comedy tracks in this movie because otherwise they went outside the box and did quite well on their own anyways.

Overall, the movie had a really fun, almost light-hearted feel to it that made it enjoyable for me, without being overburdening with any of the other aspects like excessive, pointless language or endless partying that tends to ruin most college movies for me. I’m sure that Schrader would argue differently, but not just any idiot can create their own college from the ground up – this was a pretty smart flick and I enjoyed it quite a bit! Ultimately, Accepted filled a 90-minute void in an otherwise boring evening with something that was quite amusing and would definitely be worth suggesting to friends for them to fill their boring evenings with as well! Friends, errr, like you – so enjoy…

Hell hath no fury like a woman strong enough to throw your car into orbit…

I tell you, we’ve all been through some tough breakups, but have you ever had a great white shark thrown through your bedroom window?! Not until then does your ex-girlfriend truly earn the title of “Psycho,” that’s for sure! I never thought I would say this exact phrase in one of my Movie Talk columns, but hands down, the shark attack scene in this movie nearly had me rolling on the floor with laughter … rofl, for you Internet folk.

I really wasn’t sure what to expect of My Super Ex-Girlfriend. This was a flick that we’d talked about seeing in the theaters last summer, but I think it got trumped by a rousing game of gin rummy or something that night and it just never came to mind again until I found it on HBO the other night while channel surfing. It had Ana Farris in it, who I honestly hadn’t really heard of until her appearances on Entourage because I’m proud to say that I never watched any of the Scary Movie installments, but now realize that she’s not only hot, but also seemingly a pretty decent actress, and also Luke Wilson … not because I think he’s also hot, but more because I thought he was fantastic in Alex & Emma and am always anxious to see his other movies in hopes of finding a similar performance elsewhere. And much to my surprise, My Super Ex-Girlfriend was impressively close!

The story is a relatively simple tale – while roughing it through the dating world, a man eventually learns that the woman who he’s seeing is a superhero. And this is cool for a while, albeit her idea of the mile high club would lead anyone with a fear of heights to a serious case of performance anxiety! Of course, eventually he decides that this woman just isn’t right for him, and that’s when the real fun begins. While your typical, average crazy ex-girlfriend may very well slash your tires or egg your house or leave harassing messages on your answering machine, our heroine in this adventure kicks things up a notch by using her powers to make her ex’s life a living hell in a number of manners, including the aforementioned great white shark attack! I won’t go ruining the movie by detailing out all of the craziness that she unleashes on his sorry soul, but needless to say, I certainly wouldn’t want to be in his shoes…

Other shining appearances in this film are Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office) as the lead’s buddy who seems to always have the most awkward comments to make at the best times … such as his rapid departure when stumbling very accidentally into the middle of the final “battle scene” with the intent of inviting him to a baseball game, as well as the incredible Eddie Izzard as G-Girl’s arch-nemesis … of sorts. I’ve always loved Eddie Izzard as a comedian and was pleasantly surprised to hear the very same inflections of personality from his comedy act appear in his character in this film as well – a well-spoken, highly-educated dry sense of humor – hilarious. Of course, September has offered me up a double-helping of Izzard’s wit, as I just recently was reminded of his genius as we watched The Wild on DVD. Simply put, the man is hysterical and it’s always great to see his name in the opening credits of any film.

So hands down, My Super Ex-Girlfriend definitely caught me off-guard as a great comedy that came out of the blue, and possibly even a reminder not to write off as many flicks simply because they seemed just mediocre from their original theatrical trailers. Then again, that mentality can most certainly go both ways to come back and bite you in the end later, but at only a two hour risk with the possibility of uncovering a great flick at stake, the gamble was super worth it for this fine piece of cinematography…

Because every generation needs their Dumb and Dumber…

I’ll be honest – I really had no intentions of watching this movie, much less making a trip to the theater out of it, but what can I say, at the end of the summer it was a toss up between Superbad and Transformers as far as what we still hadn’t seen and seeing as I’d pretty much picked the last four or five flicks that we’d gone to see at the theater, this was a fiancee’s choice and we were pretty much going on the hearsay that someone she knew thought it was hilarious.

Fortunately, for the most part, they were right!

I guess ultimately the reason that I had planned to steer away from this flick was simply because based on the trailers that I’d seen in theaters, this was going to be another dumb, high school coming of age story where the main goal is to sleep with a chick before graduation. My generation had American Pie and admittedly, that was a pretty good one by such standards, and just after seeing those trailers five or six times, I was reminded more of all the stupid teen movies these days – Scary Movie, Not Another Teen Movie, Epic Movie – and couldn’t imagine it being anything close to what I would enjoy for upwards of an hour and a half. They showed just enough of the “McLovin’” scene for it to sound stupid, and that’s what I was ready to write this movie off as…

…but then I went and saw it anyways, and I’m glad I did because otherwise I might’ve gone through my entire life not knowing just how many different ways a man’s genitalia can be drawn! Or how not to react if you find blood on your pant leg after dancing close with a stranger at a party. Or even how to really buy booze on a fake id, if for some reason one day I should have to go back in time to relive those pre-21 years once again. I know – grotesque isn’t quite the word and even some high-schoolers might find themselves challenged to use the sheer volume of language that is dropped in Superbad, but if you can’t see past a bit of swearing and more than enough disgusting and perverted jokes to go around, then this movie really wasn’t made for you anyways. For the rest of us, though – be prepared to come closer to dying laughing at times than you ever have before!

I think what I enjoyed the best about Superbad was the “McLovin’” storyline once it really gets going. The trailer doesn’t get into it nearly enough, but this character ends up going off in his own direction and along with the two officers in the movie ends up creating some of the funniest scenes that I’ve seen up on the big screen this year, hands down! I really came away with a newfound respect for Seth Rogen after this movie – he not only appeared in this flick (along with Knocked Up earlier this summer), but he also co-wrote the movie and already has other screenplays planned for the future. It’s great to see someone so young diving headfirst into writing for Hollywood, and not doing too bad about it, either!

So will it end up in the DVD collection this fall? Yes.

Did we learn a little lesson about taking chances on potentially dumb movies? Yeah.

Will we still get nonetheless pissed if they try to shortchange us with Superbad 2? You bet.

Some things never change…

What can I say? Sometimes a guy just wants to watch ninja turtles…

I seriously wanted to go see this flick in the theaters when it was released earlier in the year, but was deferred because … well, how can I put it delicately? Chicks don’t really dig ninja turtles. At least not when offered a dozen other movie options that featured comedy and romance and action and adventure and, more specifically I guess, did not feature ninja turtles. Honestly at this point I don’t even remember what we ended up seeing, but I needless to say, I left the theater that evening knowing what would be jumping to the head of my Netflix queue in about six months, give or take!

I don’t care what anybody says, that this is just a kids movie or that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle franchise was ruined after they made the third movie back in 1993 (you know, the one where they were transported back to ancient Japan … ringing any bells?!), but I actually really enjoyed TMNT. Oddly enough, it didn’t even spike my unnecessary sequel radar like nearly every other sequel I’ve seen this year, which clearly means only one thing – there’s no such thing as too much ninja turtles.

But just for the record, if they try us with another one next year … don’t get me started!

Anyways, back to the movie itself, though, TMNT was a unique ninja turtle experience in that this story depicted our heroes in yet another medium – we first saw them as cartoons, then live-action characters, and now they’ve returned as CGI animations … very cool, indeed! And although I previously preferred the classic cartoon-y turtles to the live action characters, I do believe I have a new favorite because the animation in this movie turned out quite well – just like the Shrek movies, only watchable because it featured ninja turtles instead of that green, ogre thing that is possessed by the voice of Mike Meyers. The attention to detail both in the close-ups of the turtles themselves and also all of the bizarre beasts that thrashed New York City was among the best that I’ve seen in computer animation really, and since I was first introduced to them in my childhood, I’m happy to say that the turtles have never looked better than they did in this movie!

As for the story, while we didn’t see any time traveling specifically in this latest episode, we were treated to a bit of a history lesson as New York City finds itself under siege by not one, not two, but thirteen 3,000 year-old monsters from another dimension, having been called forth by a power-hungry warrior king who had thought that it might be a neat idea to open up a portal to another dimension with the intent of becoming immortal. Of course, as you would only assume, the dude got just a bit more than he bargained for and it would end up taking four turtles to bring this chaos to justice! If only the fighting foursome was still together…

We enter the story to find that each of the turtles have gone their separate ways since defeating the evil Shredder, with Donatello’s newfound occupation being the most amusing, at least in my opinion. But never fear, for I don’t think that I’ll be ruining the movie by inferring eventually the dynamic quatro eventually does work things out and rejoin forces for the good of all mankind, just as we would expect from the greatest crime fighters the world has ever known! Just exactly how do the turtles save the day, though? For that, you’ll have to check out the flick for yourself!

Ultimately TMNT was a fun trip down memory lane for a guy who fondly remembers all of the action figures and party favors and even the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles birthday cake that my Mom created for my sister during the height of her “Cowabunga, Dude!” phase. Sure, there may have been some plot holes along the way … like what those thirteen ancient monsters were doing to pass their time before the movie started and they suddenly began rampaging the city … but hey, as far as I’m concerned, just about anything is better than the same-old talking zoo/farm animals these days.

Anything!

Now this was a fun, little movie!

Believe me – I was just as surprised as any of you who haven’t yet seen this flick in which the man in the yellow hat makes his silver screen debut, but as much as I had expected this animated children’s movie to be just over-the-top ridiculous, it wasn’t. In fact, it was actually pretty good … to the point where I wish a few more of the movies that I watched this summer resembled this curious little monkey…

Of course, we all know by now that the main reason for my bitterness in resurrecting childhood favorites for the silver screen is that they often just fail so miserably at recreating the original feeling of those favorites, hence you get a live action movie where robots turn into cars and trucks and that’s about it. I remember reading the Curious George books when I was just first learning to read and they were always very playful, fun, captivating, even educational, and I’ve got to say that I was oh-so-impressed when I popped this DVD into my home theater to find exactly that – a light-hearted, upbeat children’s adventure that, as an added bonus, even us adults could be entertained by as well!

Seriously, I haven’t enjoyed a Will Ferrell performance this much since he chased after Jay and Silent Bob when they stole a monkey back in 2001, although admittedly the language was just a bit cleaner in this particular episode! And again, I would’ve never expected it unless I saw it for myself, but the man was simply dead on for the persona of the man in the yellow hat! The bumbling, yet harmless to the point of being endearing character that he’s come to be known for in some of his best flicks translated just beautifully into the animated lead who can’t seem to do anything right. Grand slam, though, was the commentary that retained that Will Ferrell sarcasm while still remaining entirely and completely kid-friendly – something that seems kind of obvious for this kind of movie, but both Shrek and Madagascar proved apparently isn’t quite a given just yet…

“Who leaves eight open cans of paint lying around?!”

Oh yes, and we mustn’t forget a fun and whimsical soundtrack by one of my favorite acoustic artists, Jack Johnson, who does a marvelous job of carrying this upbeat adventure during the dialog breaks in the story. Hands down, Curious George was a great movie and I know if I had kids, they’d be watching it eight times a day until the disc finally wears out. And while in the meantime I might not watch it quite nearly that many times myself, that certainly doesn’t discount the fact that this was one of the very best children’s movies that I’ve seen in a long time.