JACK BROWN GENIUS -- Movie Review by Porfle

Originally posted in 2009

Do you miss the good old days when Yahoo Serious was a cinematic force to be reckoned with? Then you may enjoy JACK BROWN, GENIUS, a 1994 comedy from New Zealand, because it plays as though producer Peter Jackson, director Tony Hiles, and co-writer Fran Walsh had him in mind for the title role when they penned the script for Wingnut Films.

The farcical nature of the story emerges during the prologue, with a 10th century English monk named Elmer (Stuart Devenie) jumping off a cliff to test his newly-invented wings only to fall to his death and be wrongly banished to Purgatory for committing "suicide." Nearly 1000 years later, but only days before Elmer is to be consigned to Hell for all time, he enters the brain of a struggling inventor named Jack Brown (Timothy Balme, BRAINDEAD) and nags him into trying to succeed where he failed, thus convincing God that Elmer didn't really intend to commit suicide after all. (Wait--isn't God supposed to be omniscient? Oh, never mind.)

I've seen "Scooby-Doo" episodes that made more sense, but this movie just blithely sails along as though the story weren't completely out to lunch. Like a weird medieval variation of INNERSPACE (with a dash of HUDSON HAWK thrown in, God help us), we see Elmer bopping around inside Jack's brain and poking at his nerves and blood vessels to get attention whenever Jack starts to work on his current project (hydraulic leaping shoes) for his demanding boss (Edward Campbell). "Thou canst not silence me, Jack! Thy brainpan is my permanent place of abode!" Elmer insists.

After spending some time in a "Regional Centre for the Deeply Disturbed", Jack actually does invent a working pair of wings, only to have the power source stolen by The Boss and his evil dominatrix girlfriend, Sylvia (Lisa Chappell), to sell to an Asian businessman. Meanwhile, Jack's best friend Dennis (Marton Csokas, LORD OF THE RINGS, THE BOURNE SUPREMACY), who runs a mobile hot dog stand, is seduced into helping Sylvia while his bride-to-be Eileen (Nicola Murphy) starts to fall for Jack, whom she thinks is crazy. Okay, where did I lose you?

JACK BROWN GENIUS features some nicely garish set design and is directed like a cartoon, full of hyperkinetic action and ridiculous plot developments that just barrel along like a circus wagon with no brakes. Some potentially funny situations are set up and then just sailed through without any elaboration--this movie could've been twice as funny if the writers had just taken the time to insert some comedy into the comedy scenes. This is especially true during Jack's stay in the nuthouse, although the part where he tries to silence Elmer by subjecting himself to shock treatment is nicely done.

Then again, the movie sometimes manages to pull off some almost dazzling sequences out of the blue. Angry with Jack for messing up their leaping-shoes deal with the Asians, The Boss takes after him in a car with the intent of running him down. This leads to some incredible stunt/effects scenes involving a car and two speeding trains as Jack leaps for his life. Another chase in a garbage dump has Jack and Eileen being pursued by a livid Sylvia in a demolition-derby style smash-up with an exhilarating finale. And the climactic flying effects are well-done.

I enjoyed some of the dialogue, such as this simple exchange:

JACK: "There's a monk in my head, Eileen."
EILEEN: "Pardon?"

Timothy Balme is appropriately cartoonlike in the title role, a perplexed wacky-inventor type who depends on his imagination to get him out of a scrape. Nicola Murphy is likable in her debut as Eileen, although her sudden infatuation with Jack, who throws up on her shoes and seems insane enough for her to have him committed to an asylum, seems a bit of a stretch. As The Boss, Edward Campbell has a gruff Vinnie Jones-like thing going. Marton Csokas, who would go on to have quite a successful career, does what he can with the role of Dennis, which is just all over the map.

Likewise, Stuart Devenie makes the best of his wacky monk character, Elmer, which consists mainly of being irritating and bouncing around inside a big rubber brain. My favorite supporting character has to be Lisa Chappell as bad girl Sylvia, for reasons which I will leave to your conjecture. She has the one graphic gore scene in the film, but, unfortunately, neither of the two bare behinds on display belong to her. (You don't wanna know who they do belong to.)

I watched a barebones screener so I can only say that the final DVD extras should include a stills gallery. The 16 x 9 anamorphic widescreen image and 2.0 Dolby Digital audio are good. The film has a nice pop music score and I especially liked the song "Not an Ordinary Life" by the Brainchilds.

JACK BROWN GENIUS gets by on a certain amount of inventiveness, some appealing actors, and lots of energy--which adds up to a decent amount of fun. It isn't one of the best comedies ever made, but it's one of the best comedies that Yahoo Serious never made.

JACK BROWN GENIUS -- Movie Review by Porfle

THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 12/17/19

 

Imagine one of those ABC After School Specials in which the scripter slowly went insane during the process of writing it. If you can picture that, you'll have a pretty good idea of what it's like to watch the 1985 Canadian children's film THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION (Severin Kids).

Michael (Mathew Mackay, LITTLE MEN, THE BOOK OF EVE) is a normal kid who likes to play soccer, and his sister Suzie (Alison Podbrey, THE SUM OF ALL FEARS) is struggling to take over the "Mom" role in the family while their real mom is away. Meanwhile, their eccentric dad Billy (Michael Hogan) is a successful painter working in the attic studio of their home.

When a nearly abandoned house burns, killing some homeless people trapped inside, Michael and his friend Conrad "Connie" Wong (Siluk Saysanasy of "Degrassi High" in a wonderfully likable performance) decide to explore it.

But when Michael goes inside, he sees something so frightening that, after a close-up in which he resembles a pint-sized Yahoo Serious, he goes into shock and then loses all of his hair, turning completely bald. 

So far, this is just like any other kids' show you might've tuned in to watch after school back in the 80s, and it might've even had Scott Baio in it. But when the ghosts of two dead "winos" appear to Michael in the dead of night and share with him a secret formula for restoring his hair (one involving, as you might guess, peanut butter), then that's when we fear the writer has started going progressively coo-coo.

Actually, a group of writers worked on the script, which takes us through Michael's painful first day back at school as a "baldy", effectively portraying a kind of emotional turmoil that most kids can identify with. His family and faithful friend Connie are shown trying to comfort the stricken lad, each in his or her quirky way, but to no avail.

Then Michael becomes even more of a freakish outsider when, after using too much peanut butter in the solution, his hair begins to grow at an alarming rate--several feet per hour, in fact--which is depicted in such bizarre terms that the film begins to take on much the same feel as iconic surrealist Fernando Arrabal's only children's film, THE EMPEROR OF PERU.

(I'm not even going to mention that part where Connie tries out the hair-growing solution on his...err, never mind. Suffice it to say, it's something you don't expect in your standard kids' film.)

With six feet or so of hair trailing behind him, Michael can't even walk to school without the wind twisting his flowing mane around a nearby hedge. It's here that he is kidnapped by the villain of the story, taken to a hidden location where there are several other recently abducted children, and made part of an insidious plot that's like something out of Ian Fleming during a flush of fevered imagination.

The story by this time has made a determined foray right into mind-bending fantasy territory to such an extent that it should delight both children and likeminded adults.

This involves magical paintings that one can enter, rendered with magical paintbrushes made from human hair (guess whose), and is all presided over by Michel Maillot as the delightfully sinister Signor Sergio, a frustrated artist recently fired from his teaching position at Michael's school for being, well, too damn weird.

Mathew Mackay and Alison Podbrey do a fine job as a relatably normal brother and sister, while Siluk Saysanasy often steals the show as Connie. Connie's own little sister Mai Ling (cute-as-a-button Nadka Takahataki) shows up as one of the kidnapped children.  The adult members of the cast are equally good, with special honors going to Maillot as The Signor.

Severin Films' new kids label, Severin Kids, is well-served by this good-looking entry which is both subtitled and closed-captioned with mono English sound.  Severin's usual well-stocked bonus menu includes an extended U.S. theatrical release version with extra footage, an easygoing commentary with producer Rock Demers and actor Mathew Mackay, a seperate interview with Demers, an interview with Siluck Saysanasy, a look at Canadian kids' films, and both Canadian and U.S. trailers. The Blu-ray's cover art is reversible.

THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION is just the sort of kids' entertainment that places young viewers into a recognizable environment before taking a wondrously entrancing detour into the surreal.  I wish I'd been able to see it as a child, although my current inner child had a fantastic time.

Special Features:

    Extended U.S. Theatrical Release Version
    New Commentary with Producer Rock Demers and Actor Matthew MacKay, Moderated by Filmmaker Ara Ball
    Human Beings Are The Same All Over: An Interview with Producer Rock Demers
    Conrad’s Peanut Butter Solution: An Interview with Siluck Saysanasy
    Tales for All: Paul Corupe on Rock Demers and the Canadian Kids Film
    Canadian Trailer
    Original U.S. Trailer
    Reversible cover

Alternate cover art:

THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

"CAT PEOPLE" (1983) Leopard Tree Dream Sequence With Alternate Album Track (video)

Giorgio Moroder's soundtrack album for 1983's "Cat People"...

...contains some music that is considerably different from that in the film.

A notable example is the music for the memorable "Leopard Tree Dream" sequence.

Here is the scene from the movie, accompanied by the music from the album.


Music by Giorgio Moroder

Starring
Nastassia Kinski
Malcolm McDowell

Directed by
Paul Schrader

Written by
DeWitt Bodeen, Alan Ormsby, Paul Schrader

Video by Porfle Popnecker
I neither own nor claim any rights to this material.  Just having some fun with it. 
Thanks for watching!

"CAT PEOPLE" (1983) Leopard Tree Dream Sequence With Alternate Album Track (video)

Does Kiko Cry "Mommy!" At The End Of SON OF KONG? (1933) (video)

"Son Of Kong" is a delightful, fairytale-tinged follow-up to "King Kong."

(You can read our review of it HERE.)

Kong's son "Kiko" is a likable character played for laughs and sympathy...
...with decidedly human-like qualities.

Kiko's life is threatened when the island begins to sink...
...and his foot gets caught in a crevice.

Does the poor little soul actually call for his Mommy?

What do you think?


I neither own nor claim any rights to this material.  Just having some fun with it.  Thanks for watching!

Does Kiko Cry "Mommy!" At The End Of SON OF KONG? (1933) (video)

A CINDERELLA STORY: CHRISTMAS WISH -- Blu-ray/DVD Review by Porfle

(Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this blog post. The opinions I share are my own.)


Originally posted on 10/25/19

 

Much of the success of a "Cinderella" story depends on how much we hate her wicked stepmother and two wicked stepsisters, while at the same time finding them perversely funny. We also have to like the title character enough to root for her to win out over those three harpies and find true love with her Prince Charming.

In that, 2019's A CINDERELLA STORY: CHRISTMAS WISH (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment) fills in the blanks quite nicely, with Johannah Newmarch (POLARIS, "Stargate: SG-1") as stepmother Deirdre Decker, along with Lillian Doucet-Roche and Chanelle Peloso as the jarringly misnamed stepsisters Joy and Grace, horrify us with their selfishness, vanity, and deviousness yet still delight with their comically overdrawn characters and addlebrained bungling.

As Kat Decker, Laura Marano ("Austin & Ally", SAVING ZOE) fills the "Cinderella" role likably enough, going about the thankless task of waiting hand and foot on her step-monsters while holding down a job as a performing elf at Santa Land, all the while keeping as cheerful and upbeat as possible as she dreams of someday becoming a famous singer and performing her own songs for an adoring public.

Romance is another concern, one which is hampered by her becoming an object of internet ridicule when Joy posts a video in her vlog of Kat making a clumsy fool of herself in front of the town's most eligible bachelor, the handsome and charming Dominic Wintergarden (Gregg Sulkin, "Runaways").

As fate would have it, Dominic plays Santa at the store where Kat works, but she doesn't know it's him because he never takes off his beard at work. 

Naturally, they fall in love for all the right reasons, and as we can all guess by now Kat will get invited to a big gala thrown by Dominic's billionaire dad. But as we can also surmise, wicked stepmother finds a way to steal Kat's invitation and crash the party along with Joy and Grace, who all have designs on snaring one of the Wintergarden men as their own. 

All of this is about as lightweight and breezy as can be, and just as easy to take if one's expectations are no higher than your average teen or tween looking for something fun and vaguely identifiable to watch.

The movie looks bright and colorful, the leads are attractive and chipper, and the baddies are cartoonishly evil. (In my case, it helps that one of the wicked stepsisters resembles Miley Cyrus.)

With the help of Kat's devoted best friend Isla (Isabella Gomez, "One Day At a Time"), who assumes the "Fairy Godmother" role by making a beautiful gown for the gala and encouraging Kat every step of the way, our "Cinderella" gets her big chance for happiness when she ends up singing one of her own compositions for the high-tone audience.

Music plays a major role throughout the rest of the story as well, with Laura Marano and fellow castmembers performing a series of heavily-autotuned pop songs which, while totally forgettable, at least keep things bouncing along pleasantly enough.

Director and co-writer Michelle Johnston, an actress and dancer in such films as A CHORUS LINE and CHICAGO, ably follows up her 2016 effort entitled "A Cinderella Story: If the Shoe Fits."

The 2-disc set from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment contains both the Blu-ray and DVD versions of the movie plus a code for digital download. Extras consist of two featurettes, "The Look and Costumes of 'A Christmas Wish'" and "The Mic and The Stage", as well as trailers for other releases.

As teen-oriented musical rom-coms go, this one is about as wispy as cotton candy but equally sweet and easy to swallow.  A CINDERELLA STORY: CHRISTMAS WISH does what it aims to do: make us root for "Cinderella", hate her wicked step-harpies (while laughing at them), and feel good when "Prince Charming" sweeps her off her feet.



#CinderellaChristmas

Region: Region A/1 (Read more about DVD/Blu-ray formats.)
Number of discs: 2
Rated:PG/Parental Guidance Suggested
Studio: Warner Brothers
DVD Release Date: October 29, 2019
Run Time: 93 minutes


TRAILER:





MUSIC VIDEO:

A CINDERELLA STORY: CHRISTMAS WISH -- Blu-ray/DVD Review by Porfle

SLIPSTREAM (2007) -- Movie Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 6/28/11

 

Anthony Hopkins the writer-director just may be as nutty as Hannibal Lecter.  (Hey, that rhymes!)  Or so it may seem while watching SLIPSTREAM (2007).  It's one of those movies about making movies that people who make movies like to make in order to show us what a crazy world they live in by taking it to the extreme and making it even more crazy.  You're never sure what's real, and what's a dream, delusion, or rift in the time-space continuum.  Which doesn't always make for an entertaining or even vaguely coherent film--but in this case it's both.  I think.

Summarizing the plot is difficult, but here goes.  Anthony Hopkins plays a screenwriter named Felix Bonhoeffer who may or may not have been involved in a traffic-jam-rage shooting, may or may not have a cute, perpetually-chatty blond companion named Tracy (Lisa Pepper), and may or may not have been urgently summoned to a diner in the desert near Las Vegas where filming of his latest script has been halted due to the sudden death of the star, Matt Dobbs (Christian Slater) on the set.  Felix must write Matt's character out of the script while the ineffectual director (Gavin Grazer) and balls-out nuts producer (a very funny John Turturro) try to salvage the project.

Meanwhile, Bette Lustig (Fionnula Flanagan) is either a woman on her way to Las Vegas to visit her sister-in-law or an actress in the film, while Bette's niece Gina (co-producer Stella Arroyave) is either Bette's niece or Felix's wife.  Michael Clarke Duncan plays either a bartender named Mort who gets whacked by a gangster named Ray (Slater), or an actor in the movie named Phil Henderson, or a highway cop whose partner is played by Slater.  Jeffrey Tambor is wonderfully geeky as either Ray's gangster crony Geek, an actor named Jeffrey, or a doctor named Dr. Geekman.



Also appearing in the people-studded cast are Christopher Lawford as Lars the cheerful cinematographer, Camryn Manheim as volatile script girl Barbara, S. Epatha Merkerson as either a waitress or an actress named Bonnie, William Lucking as Det. Buzz Larabee, and Kevin McCarthy in a wonderful appearance as himself, reacting with pleasant surprise when Felix mentions to him that he was the hero of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS.  "I was?" Kevin beams.  "How do you like that!"

It's never made quite clear what's going on (until the last second) but we suspect that, due to work-related stress, something's not quite right in Felix's mind.  At least that's as close as I could figure for most of the movie.  It's all like a deluxe "Twilight Zone" episode that Rod Serling might have written after someone slipped LSD into his coffee. 

From the very beginning, SLIPSTREAM is a continuous stream of engaging oddness, ranging from neat little looping effects and subliminal flashes that foreshadow the future, comment on the present, or simply baffle, to full-blown Oliver Stone/NATURAL BORN KILLERS pastiche.  This may sound terribly arty and indulgent, but it's all great fun in Hopkins' capable hands.  No shot is left untouched--Felix's perceptions of reality are always being tweaked in some way large or small. The movie looks like it was edited by a guy with two turntables and a microphone, while the soundtrack often seems like something John Lennon and Yoko Ono might have created after warming up with "Revolution 9." 

The diner scene is my favorite.  Slater and Tambor (as gangsters Ray and Geek) slide into a booth and then quickly set about terrorizing everyone in the place, including Bette and Gina, who have stopped off on their way to Vegas, and Merkerson's Bonnie (the waitress, not the actress).  The ways in which they screw with everyone's heads just get wackier and wackier, especially when they start imitating Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo.  At one point Geek discovers an old autographed photo of Kevin McCarthy on the wall, which sets them both off on an aggressively nostalgic, guns-drawn, in-your-face INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS rant.  (It's their favorite movie.)  This sequence alone would make a great short film--one which might even weird out David Lynch a little.



Occasionally, the goofball momentum does lag a bit, and there are moments in which it all seems a tad too self-conscious.  But these are few and far between, and for the most part it's pure baffling fun all the way to the end, when things get just clear enough for you to finally be able to nod and say, "Ah...so that's it."  

Unless, that is, you sit through the credits, which feature a rewind of the entire movie from last to first frame accompanied by a dazzling piano performance by Anthony Hopkins himself, until the final seconds reveal the real, no kidding "Ah, so that's it" ending.  So there are actually two endings to SLIPSTREAM--one for the people who stop watching the movie when the credits start rolling, and one for those of us who dig hearing Anthony Hopkins jamming his distinguished butt off on the keyboard.  (He also composed the film's score, by the way.)

You may have a low tolerance for movies like this, and indeed I wouldn't blame you if five minutes of this one made you want to rip the DVD out of the player and Frisbee it off an overpass or something.  But I liked what Anthony Hopkins was trying to do here and admired the way he did it.  So if you're slightly nutty yourself, you just might go coo-coo for SLIPSTREAM.

SLIPSTREAM (2007) -- Movie Review by Porfle

Wicked Witch Actress Margaret Hamilton Seriously Burned While Filming "The Wizard Of Oz" (1939) (video)

Margaret Hamilton was memorable as the Wicked Witch of the West.

But the iconic role proved a painful one in this scene.

During her disappearance through a trap door in the floor...

...a burst of flame was ignited too soon.

She received 2nd and 3rd degree burns on her face and hand.

Hamilton returned to work after recuperating for six weeks...

...but staunchly refused to do any more fire-related scenes.


I neither own nor claim any rights to this material.  Just having some fun with it.  Thanks for watching!

Wicked Witch Actress Margaret Hamilton Seriously Burned While Filming "The Wizard Of Oz" (1939) (video)

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (BBC-TV, 1966) -- DVD Review by Porfle

   
 

 

Originally posted on 3/14/10

 

 

A reimagining--or rather, unimagining--of Lewis Carroll's fantasy masterpiece, the 1966 TV production of ALICE IN WONDERLAND seems to be one of the most strangely ill-conceived artifacts ever to emerge from the BBC. While Carroll's story is designed to appeal to both children and adults, this version is about as kid-friendly as an Ingmar Bergman movie.

It starts out very nicely with Alice and her sister being properly dressed by their nurse for a lovely walk in the countryside. Sitting amidst the swaying grass to soak up some sun, the sister quietly reads as Alice succumbs to sleep. When she awakens, she's alone--until she spots a smartly-dressed figure checking his watch and hurrying along as though late. The White Rabbit, you ask? Nope, it's Wilfrid Brambell, who played Paul McCartney's very clean grandfather in A HARD DAY'S NIGHT. He's called "The White Rabbit", but we're given no indication as to why. It's here we discover that one of the conceits of this production is that none of the actors portraying non-human characters are costumed to resemble them. Why? I don't know...go ask Alice, I guess.

Anyway, Alice follows him into a drainage pipe that leads her into a large, airy building with white drapes billowing over tall windows. As she creeps down its spacious corridors we enjoy the only truly atmospheric part of her adventure. The familiar routine with Alice changing her size in order to fit through the doorway into Wonderland is also well-handled. It's here, though, that Alice begins to encounter the largely uninteresting weirdos that inhabit this joyless world. An uninspired jab at organized religion has them flocking like chickens after a spaced-out priest while spastically crossing themselves. Like much of the film, it reduces Carroll's droll satire to bug-eyed burlesque.

Familiar vignettes from the book are stocked with name actors either having a lark or showing up for the paycheck. The celebrated tea party features Peter Cook hamming it up as the Mad Hatter and Michael Gough portraying the March Hare as some middle-aged British guy, which is rather depressing. Peter Sellers makes scant impression as the King of Hearts, while Sir John Gielgud's Mock Turtle and Malcolm Muggeridge's Gryphon mutter and mince along the seashore as though they'd missed their meds. (Only Leo McKern as the Duchess manages to create a truly amusing character.) I can understand director Jonathan Miller's intent to emphasize the nightmarish qualities of the story, but whatever delight is inherent in the original text itself is largely overcome by the utter joylessness and willfully obtuse direction of these scenes.

Pretty young Anne-Marie Mallik may have been a good actress but you wouldn't know it from this, since she's been directed to respond to everything going on around her by reciting her lines in a petulant monotone while staring off expressionless into space. Her Alice is just as inscrutably peculiar as any of the creatures she meets on her listless sojourn through pastoral settings and dreary interiors that could hardly be described as a "wonderland" of any sort. She seems, in fact, to have wandered onto the grounds of an insane asylum, or perhaps to have just been committed to it herself.

The pop sensibilities of the mid-60s era seem to have had an unfortunate influence here--it's as though someone noticed what a "trip" Carroll's story was and thought it would be interesting to play it up as a mystical mind-trip (complete with a droning sitar score by Ravi Shankar), which dates this adaptation badly. Seeing groups of oddly-dressed people prancing about the English countryside like aimlessly frivolous fools reminded me of similar scenes in the Beatles' misguided MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR. It wouldn't surprise me if this served as one of the inspirations for that failed effort in mindless psychedelia.

The DVD from BBC Warner is in 4.3 fullscreen and original mono, with English subtitles. Besides a brief photo gallery, a look at Ravi Shankar scoring the film, and a director's commentary, the extras menu features two very good reasons for seeking out this DVD. One is the original 1903 silent version of ALICE IN WONDERLAND, a fascinating eight-minute peek back at an ancient film whose entrancing images cling desperately to the ravaged nitrate print which seems to deteriorate as we're watching it. The second is Dennis Potter's excellent feature-length biopic of Lewis Carroll, ALICE (1965), which explores the stammering, painfully odd young writer's obsession with the young Alice Liddell and boasts a brilliant performance by George Baker.

Just as it's drained of color by the moody, almost noirish black-and-white 35mm film photography (which I liked very much), this ALICE IN WONDERLAND adaptation is almost entirely drained of magic as well. In its place is a dreary art-film opaqueness that ill serves Lewis Carroll's enchanting prose by resembling an uneasy cross between Monty Python and Carl Dreyer.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (BBC-TV, 1966) -- DVD Review by Porfle

DOWNSIZING -- Blu-ray/DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 3/31/18

 

For a movie that I originally thought was going to be a lightweight sci-fi comedy--sort of a modern-day THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN, or a variation on HONEY, I SHRANK WHATEVER--director/co-writer Alexander Payne's DOWNSIZING (2017) starts out as a fun indulgence and then, before you know it, develops into something much more substantial and meaningful.

The premise is instantly intriguing as scientists create a way to shrink humans to action-figure size, which will both greatly increase their financial wealth (little stuff costs a lot less) and decrease their negative collective impact upon the global eco-system. 

The actual shrinking part is where DOWNSIZING offers viewers the most enjoyable wallow in the story's sci-fi potential. We follow everyman Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) through the process after they've gone through much soul-searching over this major (and permanent) change in their lives, submitting themselves to what amounts to a fascinating and suspenseful shrinking sequence inside a cold, impersonal laboratory environment.

This part of the movie is filled with wonderful sights such as tiny people traveling by bus or airplane in seperate sections with tiny seats, interacting with their fellow giant-sized alumni at a class reunion, etc. 

Naturally the effects are first-rate--with CGI currently at so advanced a stage it would practically be a disgrace if they weren't--giving the illusion a sense of dreamlike reality that's irresistible.

It's right around this point, however, that the story takes a more serious turn when something jarringly distressing happens to Paul.  He's suddenly left in his tiny new home in a tiny new city without a tiny wife, and facing the prospect of a lonely, meaningless tiny new life.

With Paul's arrival in the spotlessly clean mini-metropolis, the film shifts from the "ooh, ahh" sense-of-wonder of its premise to more down-to-earth social and interpersonal matters. 

We see Paul stumbling through the singles' scene until he runs into his almost freakishly outgoing new neighbor Dusan (an ebullient Christoph Waltz) who opens up a whole new world of experience on the wild side of life.

As Paul tastes the bohemian lifestyle he's brought back down to earth by Dusan's impishly abrasive housekeeper Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau), a Vietnamese political refugee who was force-shrunken by her government and shipped out of the country in a TV box, losing a leg in the process. 

Ngoc introduces Paul to the lower class of little people on the fringes of small society, giving him a sense of purpose when she shows him what a positive impact he can have on their lives.

While all of this is going on, Paul's new environment becomes so familiar that it gradually loses its miniature charm and starts to feel like the real world apart from the occasional giant-sized reminder.

The simple premise also gives way to a more political undercurrent that will result in Paul experiencing an even more drastic, life-changing event when he encounters the original downsized colonists and their elaborate plan to abandon the doomed outer world for a new life underground.  This is in addition to even more social concerns about how "normal" sized people begin to regard the ever-growing "small" population.

It's deep stuff--not excessively so but enough to provide ample food for thought until, before we realize it, DOWNSIZING has transcended its simple, lighthearted premise and evolved into almost an epic of emotional and philosophical import.  Yet this remains grounded by its small personal stories, not the least of which is an unexpectedly sweet sort of romance between Paul and Ngoc. 

Alexander Payne's deliberately subtle direction gives the cast a lot of room to excell, which they do. Damon has the "regular guy" thing nailed, while Waltz gets to be as flamboyantly outgoing as I've seen him.  Hong Chau is a delight as Ngoc, her flighty exterior masking both inner pain and a life-affirming resolve.

Cult favorite Udo Kier appears as Dusan's ship captain friend who still sails tiny ships that he has Fed-Ex'd to various bodies of water around the world. Kristen Wiig's part is small, but she makes the most of it.

Paramount Home Entertainment's Combo Pack includes the film on both Blu-ray and DVD discs, with access to a digital copy as well.  The DVD contains only the feature film in standard definition, while the Blu-ray has it in HD with the following featurettes: "Working with Alexander", "The Cast", "A Visual Journey", "A Matter of Perspective", "That Smile", and "A Global Concern."

I was initially dubious of DOWNSIZING's running time of two hours and fifteen minutes, but that was when I thought it was just going to be a comedy.  As it became sort of an epic, albeit a rather downsized one, that time was well filled. 


DOWNSIZING DVD  The DVD is presented in widescreen enhanced for 16:9 televisions with English 5.1 Dolby Digital, French 5.1 Dolby Digital, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital and English Audio Description and English, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles.  The disc includes the feature film in standard definition.

Street Date:      March 20, 2018 (4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD)    March 6, 2018 (Digital)
U.S. Rating:    R for language including sexual references, some graphic nudity and drug use
Canadian Rating: 14A, nudity, coarse language

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DOWNSIZING -- Blu-ray/DVD Review by Porfle

DOOM PATROL: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON -- Blu-ray/Digital Review by Porfle

(Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this blog post. The opinions I share are my own.)

Originally posted on 9.30.2019

 

It's binge-watching time again with another entertaining superhero-centric season set, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment's 3-disc Blu-ray DOOM PATROL: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON. 

I never read the classic DC comic book (which inspired Marvel's "The X-Men") as a kid, but these 15 episodes proved, for the most part anyway, to be some of the most fun, engaging, and utterly surreal superhero stuff I've seen on any screen.

The pilot/origin story tells how the seemingly benign but unfathomably eccentric wheelchair-bound scientist Dr. Niles Caulder (Timothy Dalton) rescues various people from horrific physical injuries, mental and/or biological catastrophes (such as suddenly turning into a monster, etc.), rehabilitates them in some way, and assembles them into a motley gang of super-powered misfits who are expected to save the earth from all manner of extreme evil and paranormal calamity.



Thus, much of the action is as mental as it is physical, leading to some real "Twilight Zone"/"X-Files" type plots with the same dark, mind-expanding "sense of wonder" as a good Clive Barker novel but with a rich vein of often lowbrow humor running through all the deeply weird, sometimes downright bizarre character drama.

It's good to see Brendan Fraser (BLAST FROM THE PAST, THE MUMMY) with such a meaty role again even if he does resemble a robot version of Ron Perlman as former race car star Cliff Steele, whose horrific auto accident turns him--with Dr. Caulder's help--into the group's version of the Tin Man. Cliff's tragic loss of his wife and daughter add to the complexity of his character even though he provides most of the show's comic relief.

Joivan Wade plays Cyborg, the closest thing to a real "superhero" on the team (I couldn't figure out where I'd seen the character before until it finally hit me that he'd been one of the Teen Titans) but subject to his own problems due to technical malfunctions in his semi-robotic body in addition to doubts as to the motives of his own father (Phil Morris), a brilliant scientist who saved his life by making him less than human.

April Bowlby plays the former movie star who, through a weird on-set mishap, frequently turns into a pulsating blob against her will. Matt Bomer is Larry "Negative Man" Trainor, an aspiring Mercury astronaut who, during a high altitude test flight, picked up a strange alien hitchhiker now residing in his body and giving him unpredictable powers.

But most unpredictable of all is the volatile Crazy Jane (Diane Guerrero), an incredibly disturbed young woman with 64 different personalities, each with its own unbridled superpower. 

The result is a fascinating and mostly likable bunch of anti-heroes (with special emphasis on the "anti") who spend much of their time getting into each other heads (in one episode Cliff literally gets into Crazy Jane's head and almost doesn't make it back out) or trying to fathom the deep, dense mysteries of Dr. Caulder himself.

What looks at first as though it's going to be mostly comedic eventually becomes deeply moody and introspective, subjecting the characters to episodes of heavy soul-searching that often result in their acting out in reckless superhero style. 

Still, some of the episodes are heavy on the action, such as when an evil government organization bent on wiping out anything or anyone who's too "abnormal" captures our heroes in their underground bunker, which becomes the site of a battle royale.  During it all the team members are still learning how to use and control their own powers, often resulting in chaos.

Direction and photography are endlessly kinetic and eye-pleasing (especially in this pristine Blu-ray edition) and performances are uniformly fine, with Fraser, Dalton, and the versatile Guerrero as the standouts. Alan Tudyk (A KNIGHT'S TALE) tries his best as the team's arch-enemy, Mr. Nobody, but despite the show's intention to make him a strongly engaging (and funny) villain I never really found the character all that effective.

This is especially true in the season finale, a poorly-conceived episode that I prefer to consider apocryphal in relation to the mostly excellent fourteen episodes which precede it. When the team's final adventure of the season ultimately features a giant kaiju cockroach and a giant kaiju rat locked in a passionate French kiss in the middle of town with various members of the Doom Patrol crawling around in their stomachs, I found myself hoping that the writers would calm down, go back to the drawing board, and get a fresh start for season two. 

Be that as it may, the majority of episodes in DOOM PATROL: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON are first-rate fantasy/sci-fi/superhero entertainment that's just brimming with fun. Rather than giving us one "origin story" episode followed by various adventures, the entire season is an ongoing origin tale where everything that happens is yet another step in the evolution of these reluctant heroes and their bumbling yet earnest efforts to save the universe.


DIGITAL FEATURES

    Gag Reel 

BLU-RAY & DVD FEATURES

    Gag Reel
    Deleted Scenes
    Featurette: "Come Visit Georgia"

15 ONE-HOUR EPISODES

    Pilot
    Donkey Patrol
    Puppet Patrol
    Cult Patrol
    Paw Patrol
    Doom Patrol Patrol
    Therapy Patrol
    Danny Patrol
    Jane Patrol
    Hair Patrol
    Frances Patrol
    Cyborg Patrol
    Flex Patrol
    Penultimate Patrol
    Ezekiel Patrol

Read our original coverage HERE

DOOM PATROL: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON -- Blu-ray/Digital Review by Porfle

QUEEN CRAB -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 9/23/15

 

"Let me get this straight--your best friend is a giant crab?"

Like one of those old Roger Corman B-movie creature features, or a giant-monster cheapie that wanted to use stop-motion animation for its oversized critters but couldn't afford to get Ray Harryhausen to do it (think MONSTER FROM GREEN HELL or CRATER LAKE MONSTER), the monster-movie spoof QUEEN CRAB (2015) is a giddy, goofy throwback to those hokey flicks we grew up eating TV dinners to.

The first "crab" we see is an ill-tempered young wife and mother who constantly berates her well-meaning but mischievous daughter Melissa and henpecks her nerdy scientist husband whose upstairs laboratory is home to experiments in unnatural animal growth.  While dancing around on the banks of Crabbe Creek Pond, Melissa finds and makes a pet of a small crab which she feeds with some strange berries grown in her father's lab.  You can pretty much guess what happens next.

Skip ahead a decade or two, and Melissa (Michelle Miller, who earlier played the part of Melissa's mother), orphaned by an unfortunate lab explosion, is now an eccentric trigger-happy hermit with an isolated cabin near Crabbe Creek Pond where she can commune with her crab-monster significant other, whom she has dubbed "Goliath."

But encroaching on her personal space are childhood friend Jennifer Kane (Kathryn Metz), now a Hollywood actress popping in for an unexpected visit, and state wildlife agent Stewart MacKendrick (A.J. DeLucia), drawn to the area after examining Sheriff Ray's plaster cast of a giant crab pincer print made at the scene of a cow-devouring. (It seems something really big and awfully hungry has been crashing through barn walls and chowing down on the local livestock.)

What really sets the colossal crustacean off, however, is when she pops out a passel of football-sized crab eggs that are shotgunned by Sally (Yolie Canales), another of the reclusive local loons who all seem to wield shotguns.  The eggs that actually hatch into little baby giant crabs are crunched by a recklessly driving  yokel who laughingly careens all over the highway while his terrified passenger, a woman he picked up after her own narrow escape from the creatures, screams in terror (one of my favorite scenes).

The caustic relationship between burly Sheriff Ray (Ken Van Sant), who raised niece Melissa after her parents' death, and boneheaded deputy Sonny Huggins (Rich Lounello) is also rife with lowbrow humor.  Some of it takes place in the town biker bar where Sonny picks a fight with Jennifer and, unaware that she has received martial arts training for one of her films, gets the old foot to the face until dizzy.

This comic interlude is interrupted, however, by the beginning of what will become a full-scale crab attack, which is when QUEEN CRAB really takes off.  Once Goliath goes into action, the fun barely lets up with a succession of stop-motion animation sequences that are a real treat to anyone who loves this particular medium and is a little tired of seeing nothing but CGI at every turn. 

While not exactly spectacular, the effects are smoothly executed and well integrated into the live action.  One particularly nice shot is when Melissa actually mounts Goliath and rides her "like a pony" as MacKendrick describes it.  It reminded me of one of those shows about a circus kid and their pet elephant.  Also impressive are some of the attack sequences with the crab pursuing her human prey and disposing of them in well-animated fashion.

There's even some nicely rendered miniature backgrounds, model vehicles (including a jeep and an army tank), and a couple of jet planes that dive bomb the creek where Sheriff Ray and a well-armed local militia (called into service with the promise of something to shoot at like they're never seen before) have the Queen Crab cornered.

The acting ranges from serviceable to pretty good, with even the lesser-skilled non-thespians in the cast managing to be rather amusing.  (I like the guy who plays the mechanic filling in for the bartender and getting everyone's drinks wrong.  The guy can't act but he's still funny.)  Prolific schlock filmmaker Brett Piper (TRICLOPS, A NYMPHOID BARBARIAN IN DINOSAUR HELL) handles the technical end of things well enough and knows how to direct this kind of hokey material.

The DVD from Wild Eye Releasing is in widescreen with 2.0 sound.  No subtitles.  Extras include a commentary with director Piper and producer Mark Polonia, a blooper reel, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and trailers for this and other Wild Eye releases including some of Piper's other films. 

It's definitely lightweight stuff and it isn't likely to win many awards, but QUEEN CRAB is the kind of movie that intentionally tries to be "so bad it's good" and actually succeeds.  Although don't be surprised if you pop it into the DVD player and then end up watching it alone after the unenlightened have fled the scene.

QUEEN CRAB -- DVD Review by Porfle

DONNIE DARKO -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

(Originally posted 3/27/17. Information about public showings no longer applies.)

 

DONNIE DARKO (2001) is kind of like an ultra "Twilight Zone" episode by way of "The X-Files" as filtered through the mind of David Lynch and decorated by Tim Burton.  With some Robert A. Heinlein, Clive Barker, and John Irving thrown into the mix as well.  (The director has called it “The Catcher in the Rye as told by Philip K. Dick.")

And yet it's also its own unique, one-of-a-kind sort of funhouse mirror with all the giddy fear and dark exhilaration of a malfunctioning spook house ride.

Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, ZODIAC) gains our sympathy right away because he's a nice teenaged kid with a nice family, and he'd like to be a normal guy, but he isn't--I mean, really, really isn't--and he can't help it.

His befuddled psychiatrist (Katherine Ross) tells his parents he's schizophrenic.  Sometimes he skips his meds.  He knows he's "crazy", and that his attempts not to be are probably doomed. 

So, occasionally, he just goes with the flow and sets the fires and vandalizes the things that the tall guy in the scary-looking bunny costume and mask tells him to do. 

Why?  Because the scary bunny, who goes by the name of Frank, is a time traveler, helping Donnie to fulfill his destiny and maintain the space-time continuum by influencing the lives of everyone around him in very fundamental ways before the world ends, which will occur at the end of the month on Halloween night.

The incredible event that sets all of this into motion occurs early in the film, after we've met Donnie and the other Darkos and things have settled down for the night, and suddenly, there's a tremendous crash that shakes the house like an earthquake. 

That's the detached jet airplane engine demolishing Donnie's bedroom from above, mere minutes after he's been awakened and summoned safely out of the house by Frank.

For me, this weird and wonderful event is the sort of thing that just makes me fall in love with a movie right off the bat and stay with it every step of the way if it continues to be that wonderful, which DONNIE DARKO does the way a mindbending page-turner of a novel or comic book does.
 

Mary McDonnell (DANCES WITH WOLVES, INDEPENDENCE DAY, SCREAM 4, "Battlestar Galactica") and Holmes Osborne (THAT THING THAT YOU DO!, BRING IT ON, AFFLICTION) are ideal as Donnie's long-suffering but loving parents Rose and Eddie, and Gyllenhaal's real-life sister Maggie (THE DARK KNIGHT) is his sister Elizabeth.  Their younger sister Samantha is played cutely by Daveigh Chase (AMERICAN ROMANCE, SPIRITED AWAY).

Executive producer Drew Barrymore makes a strong impression as Donnie's progressive, perceptive English teacher, Miss Pomeroy, whose methods will be called into question by stiff-assed fellow teacher Miss Farmer (Beth Grant, OPERATION: ENDGAME, SPEED), an emotionally backward harpy whose classes seem to consist solely of videotapes by New Age self-help guru Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze, ROADHOUSE, DIRTY DANCING, GHOST).

Other supporting players in this very interesting cast include Noah Wyle, Seth Rogan, James Duval (AMERICAN ROMANCE, THE BLACK WATERS OF ECHO'S POND, INDEPENDENCE DAY), and Patience Cleveland (PSYCHO III) as Roberta Sparrow, aka "Grandma Death", a crazy old recluse who, it turns out, may know a thing or two about time travel herself.

High school life is a daily parade of the usual nerdy friends and scary bullies, as well as a pretty but troubled new student (Jena Malone as "Gretchen") who catches the eye of lonely but attractively enigmatic Donnie. 

I tried the lonely but attractively enigmatic thing in high school but it never worked for me.  It does, however, work for Donnie as he and Gretchen form a sympatico relationship that will become crucial in the scheme of things as time counts irrevocably down to Frank's mysterious end-of-world deadline.

As Donnie, Jake Gyllenhaal maintains just the right attitude throughout--bemused, puzzled, sad, resentful, fearful, and yet deeply intrigued by what's happening to him, because who knows?  It just might be real.

Visually, DONNIE DARKO is an eye-pleasing, idealized evocation of everyday life, sort of an updated Kodachrome version of Capra's small town in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE or the deceptive veneer of normalcy in Lynch's BLUE VELVET, all shot through with a warm nostalgia for the 80s. (Donnie takes Gretchen to see THE EVIL DEAD at the neighborhood bijou, while familiar 80s songs enhance the soundtrack.)

 

Richard Kelly directs the whole thing with the skill of a craftsman and the sensibility of an artist who likes to turn everyday things inside out and explore the beauty and mystery within, occasionally uncovering the ugly side of things as well. 

He also imbues the film with a sense of dark, magical fun that makes the serious aspects and underlying humanity of the story resonate even more.

This is exemplified by the loving but impishly humorous interactions between Donnie's parents, who sometimes act like a couple of kids, and between Donnie and his sisters.  It's nice to see a functioning family unit in a movie these days, even though this family does have one huge dysfunction, which is Donnie.

It's been a while since I was this totally caught up in a film and entranced by it until the very last frame.  DONNIE DARKO is like a big, juicy Tootsie Pop made of mystery and imagination, and you savor the act of seeing how many licks it takes to get to the chewy cult movie center.


Donnie Darko: English / USA / 113 min (theatrical) /
134 min (Director's Cut)


Here's our original coverage of the upcoming re-release:

Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko Returns to Theaters
Arrow Films Debuts 4K Restoration of Theatrical & Director's Cuts
 
Weeklong Runs in Los Angeles, New York and More

"Excitingly original indie vision" - Entertainment Weekly
"A mini-masterpiece" - Empire
   
Los Angeles, CA - Arrow Films has announced the March 31st domestic theatrical debut of the 4K restoration of Richard Kelly's cult hit Donnie Darko. Following a wildly successful re-release in the UK for its fifteenth anniversary, the film will return to theaters in cities across the United States. Fifteen years before "Stranger Things" combined science-fiction, Spielberg-ian touches and 80s nostalgia to much acclaim, Kelly set the template and the benchmark with his debut feature, Donnie Darko. Initially beset with distribution problems, it would slowly find its audience and emerge as arguably the first cult classic of the new millennium. The 4K restoration of Donnie Darko will premiere at the Vista in Los Angeles on March 30th, and officially open in Los Angeles at the Cinefamily and in New York at Metrograph on March 31st.

Described by director Richard Kelly as "The Catcher in the Rye as told by Philip K. Dick", Donnie Darko combines an eye-catching, eclectic cast: pre-stardom Jake (Nightcrawler, Brokeback Mountain, Nocturnal Animals) and Maggie Gyllenhaal ("The Honourable Woman", The Dark Knight), Jena Malone (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Neon Demon), the late heartthrob Patrick Swayze (Dirty Dancing, Ghost), Drew Barrymore (E.T., "Grey Gardens", "Santa Clarita Diet") Oscar nominees Mary McDonnell (Dances With Wolves, Passion Fish, "Battlestar Galactica") and Katharine Ross (The Graduate, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Stepford Wives), and television favorite Noah Wyle ("ER", "Falling Skies") and an evocative soundtrack of 80s classics by Echo and the Bunnymen, Tears for Fears and Duran Duran.

The brand-new 4K restoration was produced by Arrow Films from the original camera negatives and supervised and approved by Kelly and cinematographer Steven Poster. The 4K restoration premiered to a packed audience at the National Film Theatre in London on December 17th, 2016, with an introduction by Richard Kelly. A screening of the Director's Cut followed the next day. The re-release opened nationwide in the UK on December 23rd, eventually grossing £70,000.

Both the theatrical cut and the director's cut are being made available to venues via a partnership with Cartilage Films, and locations will vary. 

Donnie Darko will also return for weeklong runs in Denver, Columbus, Cleveland, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Tempe, Tulsa and San Francisco on March 31st, and in El Paso, Portland and Detroit on April 7.

Special screenings include Jacksonville, Austin, Dallas, Honolulu, Lubbock, Baton Rouge, Sioux Falls, Oklahoma City, Tucson, Durham and Stamford throughout March and April.  A full list of screenings is available at Cartilage Films.
http://www.cartilagefilms.com/donnie-darko.html?utm_source=Copy+of+Donnie+Darko+Theaters&utm_campaign=Outfest&utm_medium=email

March 31st Theatrical Release:
The Cinefamily
611 N Fairfax Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Metrograph
7 Ludlow St
New York, NY 10002

Donnie is a troubled high school student: in therapy, prone to sleepwalking and in possession of an imaginary friend, a six-foot rabbit named Frank, who tells him the world is going to end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds. During that time he will navigate teenage life, narrowly avoid death in the form of a falling jet engine, follow Frank's maladjusted instructions and try to maintain the space-time continuum.

DONNIE DARKO -- Movie Review by Porfle

THE SWAN PRINCESS: ROYALLY UNDERCOVER -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 3/27/17

 

I'm not that big a fan of the endless parade of digital "cartoons" these days, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy an engaging and pleasantly-rendered romp like THE SWAN PRINCESS: ROYALLY UNDERCOVER (2017) when it comes my way. 

Directed by former Disney animation director Richard Rich, it's the sixth direct-to-video sequel to his 1994 theatrical film THE SWAN PRINCESS which was done with old-school handpainted cel animation (which I sorely miss) as were the first three sequels. 

The main characters of that film were a beautiful princess named Odette and a handsome prince named Derek.  In the current sequels, they're older, married, and have an adopted daughter, Princess Alise. 

She and her friend Lucas, a shy peasant boy living with his parents on a tulip farm, are the new focus of our attention as they have colorful adventures in and around their mythical kingdom.  Here, they go undercover as spies to find out if ditzy Queen Uberta's dashing young suitor, a Count from a nearby kingdom, is really as nice as he seems or if he has ulterior motives that could threaten the entire kingdom and its royal family.

Alise and Lucas are the typical spunky, likable kids who get in and out of trouble by their own wits and also with the help of their talking animal friends.  Their grown-up ally is a grandfatherly Lord Rogers, an inventor with a secret subterranean vault full of cool steampunk spy gadgets.  He's sort of a Hans Conried type with the look of a sage old gentleman but the heart of a child, and he secretly loves the Queen.

Aside from some shots of him, the kids, and their animal friends wearing shades and walking in slo-mo RESERVOIR DOGS style (to accentuate the "spy" theme), there are refreshingly few "nudge-nudge" modern references barring a rather spectacular nod to GOLDENEYE in the pre-titles sequence. 

Moreover, this film really is G-rated, with no smirky double-entendres or unwelcome sexual innuendos of the kind that crop up in much of the so-called "childrens" entertainment these days.  Everything remains resolutely juvenile throughout--in a good way.

Adults should find it more than tolerable, especially in the second half when the kids infiltrate the Count's castle and all that spy stuff starts to pay off in a big way.  Alise and Lucas encounter a number of bad guys and dangerous situations, and the action and suspense are pretty much nonstop.

At this point in the series, the songs (what few there are) aren't that special and there are no celebrity character voiceovers, but I doubt if kids will really mind all that much. 

Characters are genuinely warm and caring toward each other, and the story puts forth various benevolent themes of togetherness, teamwork, and charity (a neighboring kingdom damaged by a flood receives emergency aid) in unobtrusive ways. "Don't trust kindly strangers bearing chocolate" is another subtle message.

The DVD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby 5.1 sound in English and French, and Dolby Surround in Mandarin, Korean, Spanish, and Thai.  Subtitles are available.  In addition to several trailers for other Sony kids' films, there's a brief featurette with singer Macy Kate recording the end titles song.

Online comments from fans of the series indicate that some feel THE SWAN PRINCESS: ROYALLY UNDERCOVER is inferior to its predecessors.  But it's such a colorful and brightly entertaining diversion that, not having seen any of the earlier ones, I found this sequel quite enjoyable.

THE SWAN PRINCESS: ROYALLY UNDERCOVER -- DVD Review by Porfle