Adventure Time: STRANGE WORLD

Strange World is Disney Animation once again returning to its least frequent mode: the cheery, red-blooded adventure film. We might get notes of that threaded through their usual animal antics or fairy tale musicals, but when they decide to go all out—the Atlantis: The Lost Empires, the Treasure Planets—the results can be quite entertaining. In the case of Strange World, we’re introduced to a family of explorers whose patriarch (Dennis Quaid) never returns from an attempt to cross the seemingly insurmountable mountain range that surrounds their expansive home valley. This leaves his son (Jake Gyllenhaal) to become a farmer instead. This is an imagined old world where electricity is grown on the vine, and thus allows an agrarian society to have sparkly sci-fi vehicles and gadgets run off of freshly harvested glowing orbs. Farming may not be as exciting as exploring, but it’s perhaps more important. Decades pass, and this farmer, who now has a son of his own (Jaboukie Young-White), is recruited to join an expedition. The crops are dying of a mysterious disease and a group is off in a hovering aircraft—that and the environmentalist bent make for a clear Miyazaki nod—to track down the source. And so off they go, reviving the old family tradition. The movie is told with a similar pluck, traipsing from one appealing cliffhanger to the next in true serial fashion, complete with a soaring heroic orchestra theme and a band of appealing characters.

There’s a Boy’s Adventure magazine aesthetic to the plot’s development, shot through with a refreshingly casual 21st-century diversity—there are men and women, with figures of every color and a couple orientations and it’s no big deal, which is, of course, the big deal. And the world the team discovers, deep in the roots of their prized crop, is a feast of vibrant colors and fluffy surfaces. They find towering Seussian trees and curling DayGlo cliffs, fields of koosh-ball tentacles and grasses, flocks of floating fish and herds of rolling blobs. There’s even a cute blue gummy glob that splats around with chipper personality and becomes the obvious critter sidekick. And guess who else has been trapped down there? In this swirling mystery world of topsy-turvy dangers, there is, of course, room for intergenerational caring and conflict as three generations of guys—a tough grandpa, a stubborn son, and a sensitive grandson—have to learn to work together and truly discover a new way to survive. (Having a great mom (Gabrielle Union) involved helps, too.) Writer-directors Don Hall and Qui Nguyen (Raya and the Last Dragon) weave this family story through the adventure quite naturally, in a charmingly busy picture of constant color and movement. By the end, it’s also brought into focus a parable of ecological collapse and a need to reform an economy around alternatives to destructive industries. All this and a breezy fantasy adventure with eye-pleasing visuals and the earnest ode to family togetherness? Why, that’s just about all you’d want from a satisfying family movie night.

Gotta Dance: FOOTLOOSE

Were we ever really supposed to believe that in 1984, even in the small Southern town setting of Herbert Ross’s Footloose, a law could be passed banning dancing? I don’t think so, which is just as well, since the idea grows even more unbelievable in 2011 as we see a modern version of the same story. No, this law is metaphor, pure and simple, for generation gaps, for the way parents try to hold on to their teens even as they pull away. That’s why this story worked in 1984 and why it still works now.  The first time around it was an agreeable, casually iconic piece of 80’s kitsch. This time, the material has been transmuted into a terrific piece of crowd-pleasing pop art.

The biggest reason for the improvement between the two versions is the director Craig Brewer. With his two breakout, decidedly R-rated, features Hustle and Flow and Black Snake Moan, he explored Southern life through the overlapping prisms of morality and music. Those films, gritty, dripping with an atmosphere of humidity, sex, and danger, portrayed the South in a fundamentally honest, if occasionally heightened way, treating the small town folks and their culture with clarity and honesty entirely devoid of condescension. These are films that get under the skin, that are so sharply written and performed that the reality of the stories are never in doubt.

He brings this skill to bear on the fundamentally silly bubblegum material of Footloose with the same lack of condescension and the same eye for detail. He doesn’t just remake Footloose; he makes Craig Brewer’s Footloose. This is a terrifically textured film, right from the opening scene in which a bunch of kids bop around to the same Kenny Loggins’s song that opens the original. Here, in what is clearly a secret, edgy, teen party of some kind, the kids’ feet are tapping and stomping on a sticky makeshift floor that wobbles a bit with each bounce, rattling the crumpled and half-empty red plastic cups that littler the ground. I could smell the drying drinks and feel the heat of the tightly packed dancers. But the fun they’re having won’t last long.

Speeding away from the party, laughing and singing, a group of teens cross the center line and slam into an oncoming truck. It’s a moment that plays out in quick visceral specificity of crunching metal and flares of fire. This was always the inciting incident for the town’s ban on dancing, but here, shown so specifically, it feels rawer and more convincing. A voice over that leads into a cut to a town meeting features the town preacher (played wonderfully by Dennis Quaid), whose son was among the dead, delivering a tearful speech advocating for the law. As he speaks in front of the townspeople, it’s as if he’s speaking directly to his wife (Andie MacDowell), promising to keep kids safe. It is a surprisingly moving and effective moment. The plot dictates that he is the authority figure that will be in opposition to the protagonist, but he’s also just a man who thinks that he’s doing what’s right.

This plot is familiar, but at every turn it feels pleasantly fresh, suddenly strangely relevant in ways it never has been. Brewer sets the film specifically in the now, referencing the financial difficulties of living in this recession, situating itself as being about the ways each new generation inevitably takes control of its own identity. This is not just a story of repression or reactionary ideologies and Brewer takes care to keep blame away from the small town itself. This is a story of young people learning when to accept and when to challenge the ways of the establishment. That may be communicated with a bit of a silly metaphor, but that doesn’t take away from the underlying truths expressed.

The remainder of the film unfolds as anyone who has seen the original (or the Broadway musical it inspired) will remember, with a few good changes (bus racing instead of tractor chicken) and musical callbacks. Big city boy Ren MacCormack (dancer Kenny Wormald, quite good in what is essentially his acting debut) shows up in town to live with his Uncle (Ray McKinnon) and his family. He finds small town life difficult to adjust to and is further stymied by his reputation as a hoodlum, a reputation seemingly earned just because he’s new, likes to play his music loud, and show off his dance moves and sarcastic attitude. This draws him close to the wild, rebelling preacher’s daughter (Julianne Hough), with whom he starts a tentative flirtation despite her thuggish boyfriend (Patrick John Flueger). But the sense of small town restrictions constricts Ren’s sense of agency. When his new pals (Miles Teller and Ser’Darius Blain) tell him dancing’s illegal, why that’s just the last straw. Something has to change. These kids need to dance!

The approach to the dancing in the film is fun. The illegal dancing in the film is furtive, and choppy, shot in ways that feels urgent, covered with sweat, even sexual. The big city escape, which ends up employing infectious line dancing (that’s the first time I’ve used those words in that order), plays out in lovely long shots that allow us to see the whole bodies of the dancers as they execute their movements. Later, a scene involving a group of little girls teaching some dance moves is awfully cute and a fun callback to the original. Finally, the dancing that ends the film is shot with a triumphal sense of natural energy. The world of the small town in the film feels so still and clamped down, that the sequences of music and dance burst out of the texture with a quick, volatile sense of release.

As with the dancing, Brewer’s textures keep this film lively and engaging, instead of settling down into rote remake mode. Along with stellar cinematography by Amy Vincent, this is a film that feels lit up with an inner glow and situated with great care in an environment that feels real and convincing. This is a sweaty, oily, film where the textures of every piece of the cars, the fields, and the characters’ skin are vividly apparent. When the teens cut loose, I could feel the energy, the heat, the effort, the exhaustion, and their fun.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

The storyline of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is so simple a four-year-old child could explain it to you. Lacking a four-year-old child, I will attempt to explain. You see, there are these elite military figures who work together in covert operations. They’re called the G.I. Joes. They’re the good guys. There are also these slimy scientists and weapons developers who are the bad guys. They want to use nanotechnology to, gee, I actually don’t know. Do they want to take over the world, or destroy the Joes, or impersonate the president (played here by Jonathan Pryce)? Maybe that four-year-old would know.

When I went to see the movie, I was handed a free starter pack of cards for a collectible card game called “Top Trumps” starring characters from the movie. I have these sitting next to my computer at the moment. Allow me to look at them and try to figure out what exactly is going on in this movie. As it played I could only tell that good people were fighting bad people and somehow that involved interchangeable nonsense names (like Ripcord and Snake-Eyes) and green super-missiles that release tiny metal-eating robots. I sure hope the cards help decode the film and I won’t have to Google my way to a G.I. Joe fan-site.

First up is General Hawk. He’s played by Dennis Quaid and I could tell he was the leader of the Joes. According to the card, he’s “infamous and inspirational” and also has “the skills and experience of a battle hardened warrior.” I couldn’t prove this by the evidence in the movie, but Quaid does talk with a commanding voice and often scowls.

Next, is something called Neo-Vipers. The card says these are super-soldiers. I remember now that they work for Cobra Commander (or is it just Cobra?) who’s played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Every time he came on screen, I would shake my head. What’s he doing? Collecting a paycheck, I suppose. Anyways, these Neo-Vipers are genetically modified. They’re the bad guys because they can’t feel pain or fear.

Now I’m looking at a card with a white-clad ninja and it looks like his name is Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee). He’s also a bad guy. In battle scenes, he’s usually paired up with Snake Eyes (Ray Park), a G.I. Joe who’s a black-clad ninja. Flashbacks tell us that they share a common history when they both – oh who am I kidding? I don’t care.

There’s a card for a G.I. Joe with the code name Covergirl. She dies early in the picture. Spoiler, I guess. There’s also a card for James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston), a weapons developer who thinks he’s the main baddie. The movie starts in 1600s Scotland with one of his ancestors getting punished for selling weapons to both sides of a conflict. The card says McCullen wants revenge for this, but to the extent that I do understand the evil plot, I can’t see how it will accomplish that goal.

At last we arrive to a card with the main character, a new G.I. Joe recruit who goes by the name Duke. He’s played by Channing Tatum. His best friend and comedic relief is Ripcord (Marlon Wayons). He shares some past with the beautiful villainess played by Sienna Miller. He has a square jaw and, like Quaid, scowls his way through the picture. The card says he’s “the best of the best…or so he thinks.” I’ll take its word for it.

As you can see the movie’s fairly confusing, playing out like a bad cartoon, which is exactly what the movie becomes whenever the action sequences start. I’m not talking brilliantly cartoony, like Speed Racer; I’m talking terribly cartoony, the kind of cartoony that throws all logical plot construction out the window for the sake of pure noise and candy-colored blurs. Admittedly, G.I. Joe is a bit better than Transformers 2, but only because it didn’t give me a headache. It’s also marginally better to look at and, if I’m not mistaken, a little more understandable, if only because human beings with actual faces are easier to tell apart than moving junkyards. There’s an equal amount of cliché-chewing hooey to be found, though, from a plane that can only understand Celtic commands to an evil plot so simple yet so confusing (McCullen sells the missiles, then steals them back in order to shoot them at three major cities). At one point the president marvels that no demands have been made. Same here, buddy.

There was a time, early in the run time, where I thought the movie would actually turn out to be an agreeably goofy time with the kind of dumb fun that director Stephen Sommers has brought to his previous movies like The Mummy or even, yes, Van Helsing. The promise of a good time is there in a chase sequence through the streets of Paris that manages to be fun despite most of it having appeared in the previews. That one sequence is the only glimpse of the promise to be found amongst so much bland and sterile carbon copies of concepts from better popcorn movies, everything from X-Men to the Star Wars prequels. G.I. Joe isn’t exhilarating, it’s just exasperating.