Tag: toddlers

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Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: Meet the Robinsons

Movie: Meet the Robinsons

Release year: 2007

This movie is always on the TV at the pediatrician we go to. (At least it used to be until Frozen came out on Blu-Ray and rendered all other movies irrelevant.) I had never seen it before, although I remember, back in 2007, seeing the commercial and thinking that the part with the T-Rex (“I have a big head and little arms”) looked funny. (I was right. It is.)

I was really impressed by this story. Drew called most of the ending, but I think it was still satisfying. There was a lot of heartbreak at the beginning – orphans are always heartbreaking, especially at the tricky age of 12 – and a lot of heart in the ending. I like really liked it. I even tried to pay really close attention so I would actually know if I liked it. I fully recommend it!

We definitely used the long holiday weekend to catch up on Disney movies – we watched three, so there will be a quick succession of posts about them. We’re in the home stretch now: just 4 more to go!

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Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: Home on the Range

Movie: Home on the Range

Release year: 2004

I have never seen this before. Have you seen this before? It’s actually pretty good. It has good music, a good Disney storyline, a good cast. There is a good amount of subtle adult humor. Roseanne Barr plays the main character, who might as well be named Roseanne the Cow.

When an adorable dairy farm, Patch of Heaven, is about to go bankrupt, the three dairy cows set out to raise the money to save the farm. They originally plan to attend a county fair to win the prize money, but end up going after the meanest cattle rustler in the land to get the bounty money.

Here’s hoping we have as much luck with Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, and Bolt.

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Categories
Children Movies

Disney Project 2014: Brother Bear

Movie: Brother Bear

Release year: 2003

I remember seeing this in the theatre, with a big group of friends. (I was passive-aggressively punishing one of them, and deliberately sat between another friend’s younger sisters, laughing loudly at their jokes and ignoring the transgressor. Ah, teenagehood.)

Watching it this time was obviously different. I feel like our pattern is to try really hard to follow the beginning of the movie, and then at some point in the middle it all breaks down and we miss big swaths of plot, and then we try to watch the end to see what happens. (Spoiler alert: Kenai remains a bear to be with his new brother Koda. More spoiler alert: When Koda’s mom and Kenai’s brother come back from the spirit world and, like, hug them, I was definitely tearing up. Oh Disney.)

Phil Collins came back to do much of this music, but it’s considerably less effective than in Tarzan, in my opinion.

Oh, also, we watched this on Netflix, and the sound is just awful. It’s so quiet. We turn it up so high and still can’t hear anything. What the heck?

And with that, we will now move into a bunch of Disney movies I’ve never seen, so this should be fun. Wilson is excited about all the animal faces on Chicken Little, so maybe he’ll enjoy it!

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Books Children Movies

Disney Project 2014: Treasure Planet

Movie: Treasure Planet

Release year: 2002

Yet another non-musical! I think I’ve seen this one time before, and it was in my adult life. However, we don’t own it, so I was delighted to find it was available for streaming on Netflix.

Treasure Planet: A retelling of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, but set in the future (?), on a planet where aliens come and go freely and space travel is the norm. Young Jim Hawkins wants to get out there and see the universe (and maybe find his dad who abandoned them when he was a kid?). When a turtle-looking alien delivers an orb-shaped treasure map to him before dying, he and his mother and this dog-faced professor barely manage to escape with their lives, heeding the words of the turtle, “Beware the cyborg.”

As far as I know, it’s a pretty faithful retelling of Treasure Island, although once I thought about it, my only knowledge of that book actually comes from the Alvin and the Chipmunks episode where Dave tells Alvin, Simon, and Theodore the story and they find themselves reenacting it. So I guess you could say I’m not super familiar with it. This did make me consider choosing Treasure Island for my book club, but I think I might just do that on my own. I like Stevenson’s other stuff so I think that this would be a fun read.

I’ll be honest though – I do miss the princess movies.

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Fun fact: This is my 500th blog post!!

Categories
Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: Lilo & Stitch

Movie: Lilo & Stitch

Release year: 2002

Thoughts: These last few movies have been great – this has been such a great post-Renaissance run. I really like Lilo & Stitch. Here are five things I like about it:

1. Stitch is a misunderstood “villain” who winds up being a good guy. (Footnote: In fact, is there even an actual villain in this movie? Not really. But it works.) I mean, look at this clever poster:

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I love Stitch’s concurrent destructive/cute nature. He’s much like…a 2-year-old. Hurling things to the ground one second, climbing into your arms the next.

2. Lilo’s deadpan sense of humor. She is an adorable, precocious child, but with a realistic edge of behavior issues stemming from her turmoiled family life. I just want to cuddle her and tell her she’ll probably be really successful when she grows up.

3. Nani, along with all the other 20-something women, is a little stocky. If Meghan Trainor wrote a song about her, she would say Nani has “all the right junk in all the right places.” There is no question – this is no lithe and willowy Disney princess. But she is gorgeous and wears a bikini with aplomb. I remember seeing this movie for the first time and admiring this fact. I still admired it this time through.

4. “Ohana means family. And family means no one gets left behind or forgotten.” Did I tear up when Nani thought she was going to lose Lilo to foster care? Yes, yes I did. I sympathize with her frustration of doing her best but still feeling on a daily basis like she is letting down her child.

❤ Lilo & Stitch. Check it out if you like children, aliens, music, Hawaii, love, Disney, family, Elvis, or surfing.

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Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Atlantis_-_The_Lost_Empire_Movie: Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Release year: 2001

Does this sound familiar to you? Or are you wondering what the heck I’m talking about? Because we are very definitely into that era of Disney that my generation was starting to miss out on.

It’s not a musical, and it has a different look to it than the animation of the “princess movies.” This one looks more like Hercules, but with a touch of 101 Dalmatians thrown in – I gather they were going for a “comic book” look which explains all the distinct angles, like Milo’s triangular fingernails.

Atlantis stars Michael J. Fox (then 40, but he definitely is voice-passing for 25) as Milo Thatch, a linguist and wannabe explorer, like his beloved late grandfather. He gets roped in to a mission to try to discover the lost empire of Atlantis, fulfilling his grandfather’s dream.

Imagine the team’s surprise when they actually reach Atlantis, but instead of crumbling ruins deep underneath the sea, they find a city still populated with people who are thousands of years old…and slowly dying. Milo wants to help them, but the captain of their team has different and more devious ideas about robbing the city of their power source in order to turn a profit aboveground.

It’s just occurred to me that I’m not sure how they were going to get back home (Washington, DC?). I thought their submarine was destroyed in a fight with a mechanical Leviathan. I must have missed something.

Don’t you want to watch this movie?! It’s filled with the early-2000s humor that I loved in The Emperor’s New Groove, and I’m a big Michael J. Fox fan anyway. Like when Milo is being seasick over the edge of the ship at the beginning, and he says, “Carrots, why does it always taste like carrots? I didn’t even eat carrots.” That’s bathroom humor at its best.

All in all, I’m a big fan of this one. This was a good weekend for catching up on Disney movies, so stay tuned. (And check out Atlantis: The Lost Empire!)

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(I don’t know what Drew is so shocked about here, unless it’s just the fact that we inexplicably own the 2-disc collector’s edition…)

 

Categories
Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: The Emperor’s New Groove

Movie: The Emperor’s New Groove

Release year: 2000

I don’t think that many people are familiar with this movie – so let me just say, it is actually really funny and a lot of fun. A great buddy story. In fact, I know someone who calls this is favorite Disney movie of all time – and I don’t think he’s crazy for saying so. (Fun fact: He just told me it’s the first DVD he ever purchased himself, and it cost $40. So that’s a fun glimpse into life 10 years ago.)

Just in case you have no idea what I’m talking about, The Emperor’s New Groove takes place in South America (Peru?). David Spade (remember him??) plays an incredibly self-centered 18-year-old emperor, who is turned into a llama by his scheming advisor (Eartha Kitt). He winds up in a small village outside of his kingdom, and with the help of a kind and charming villager (played by John Goodman, who I love), he has to find his way back to the castle to take back his empire and make himself human again.

Side note: My Emperor’s New Groove-fanatic friend just told me this is officially the first Disney movie to feature a pregnant character – the villager’s wife. She is a great character and that is another great fun fact!

Drew hadn’t seen this before, so I tried to get him to sit and watch it as much as possible, while I did the chasing portion of our movie-a-la-toddler-viewing. He said he liked it. I look forward to sitting down one day and watching it all the way through again!

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I took 40 pictures, this was the best I could do.

The Emperor’s New Groove is #40 on our list! For funsies, here’s what we have coming up:

Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Lilo & Stitch
Treasure Planet
Brother Bear
Home on the Range
Chicken Little
Meet the Robinsons
Bolt
The Princess and the Frog
Tangled
Winnie the Pooh (2011)
Wreck-It Ralph
Frozen

What have you seen? What have you never heard of?

Categories
Children Movies

Disney Project 2014: Dinosaur

Movie: Dinosaur

Release year: 2000

Let me answer your two questions right now: Yes, it’s been awhile since we fell off the Disney-movie-watching-train. But we were tracking down Dinosaur, which neither of us has ever seen, and which we finally got at the library (thank you, library!). And your second question: Dinosaur is a movie about a young iguanadon named Alador, raised by lemurs (I think?), who has to travel to the Great Valley Nesting Grounds when an asteroid destroys the island they live on.

It feels much like Disney’s answer to The Land Before Time. Except everyone saw and loved The Land Before Time.

Also, why do all of the dinosaur movies have to be about them combating asteroids and devastation and trying to cross deserts and volcanoes in search of water and green food? Because even if they find the Great Valley Nesting Grounds at the end, you know that this is really just a brief reprieve before they are extinct anyway.

Maybe that could be applied to any romantic comedy, in the grand scheme of things?

The animation is pretty impressive – it’s not what you see now, 14 years later, but it’s definitely a step in that direction. There are some amazing sweeping vistas, although according to wikipedia, many of the backgrounds were actually shot on location. But the dinosaurs are also very well-done.

Also, this is a pretty good ride at Disney World.

So that’s Dinosaur.

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Categories
Children Movies

Disney Project: Fantasia 2000

Movie: Fantasia 2000

Release year: 1999

Well, my prediction came true. I watched about 3 minutes of this – 2 minutes of the first piece, and then about a minute of the “Rhapsody in Blue” piece. This is (sort of) the second time I’ve watched this – the first time was when we first got it, as part of a 2-disc set with Fantasia, but that was years ago, and while I like the pieces, it doesn’t have the same classic feel as original Fantasia. But then, nothing does, especially not when it was made in 1999.

B did sit down and watch some with us, so maybe it’s just a matter of making it clear that we’re going to be in the living room watching this, not chasing him around the apartment. But that only worked for so long.

If you’ve seen Fantasia 2000, let me know how it was. Did you like it? What was your favorite piece?

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Categories
Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: Tarzan

Movie: Tarzan

Release year: 1999

I actually really like Tarzan. I like the Phil Collins music. I like the way the animators based Tarzan on a teenager with a skateboard. (It’s true!) I like the Tarzan/Jane relationship. I like the ending. I just really like this movie.

…From what I remember. Because I did not really watch it when it was playing at our house this weekend.

B just doesn’t want to have anything to do with any Disney movie that isn’t Frozen. It’s going to make the rest of this project difficult. Because we’re going to get into the movies that neither Drew nor I have seen (Home on the Range, Meet the Robinsons, etc), and I’m just not even going to be able to talk about them, because out of a 90-minute movie, I will have seen 8 minutes. Oh well.

I might have to rewatch this one, because I do really like it. Also, if you haven’t seen it, or haven’t seen it lately, Clayton has one of the creepier Disney villain deaths. Very well done, Disney animators.

Also, the less he’ll sit still for a movie, the blurrier our pictures are. This is literally the best picture we got.

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