Whoa, I guess I’m really not a critical viewer. Or else it’s just that wine inevitably accompanied pizza and movie night. But randian world view? I hadn’t noticed and would love to hear more
What about “UP” requires you to have extensive life experiences? Outside of the manipulative opener, it’s a children’s movie about talking dogs with silly voices for fuck’s sake!
I'm sorry but unless you've married your childhood sweetheart, grown old with her, then watched her die, before putting loads of balloons on your house and flying away, you simply can't have the perspective to comment on it.
The actual plot of UP is so fucking stupid. Even for a kids movie. Beyond the pandering first ten minutes:
- A ten year old kid likes an explorer and so does the woman he marries. They want to build a house on the same waterfall where this explorer has disappeared to (?) to find a bird (?)
- Guy's wife dies, he retires. Some shit happens, and this guy finds enough balloons to lift his house off the ground. He takes a cub scout with him. This is, as I note below, is a fun premise that will lead to a boring conclusion
- The house finds its way near the waterfall that the guy's wife wanted to retire to. They meet a talking dog. They meet a bird that we can call McGuffin. From this point forward, you probably don't remember anything about the movie because it's incidental to conversations about the film. We just finished the first act.
- Other talking dogs capture them and take them to the famous explorer, who's now insane
- They go back and forth with the explorer to see who can find and capture this big bird they met
- The explorer guy dies. They save the bird.
Please tell me about the part of the movie after they land near Paradise Falls that is interesting or fun even to a child.
The humans in Wall-E are beyond fat though, they can't even stand upright anymore! That's one of the major themes of the movie - humanity's over-reliance on machines and AI to do everything for them. Something quite important to think about right now I might add.
Ugh...what a weird hill to die on: let's not criticize people who are so ridiculously sedentary they can't be bothered to lift their sodas to their mouths. -__-
There are entire university departments dedicated to the idea that criticizing people who are so ridiculously sedentary they can't be bothered to lift their sodas to their mouths is a form of bigotry on a par with misogyny or white supremacy.
While I give this discipline little credence myself I have to push back on "entire university departments," as I'm pretty sure that isn't true. I couldn't readily find any "fat studies programs," which would enable you to graduate with a degree in fat studies, let alone /departments/. (It's far easier to offer a program than host a department!) You'll find a few acandemic journals of course, and university courses offered on the subject, but there's no Sonalee Rashawater Endowed Chair of Fat Studies, head of the Fat Studies Department at Serious University. It hasn't gotten anywhere near that far off the ground academically--unlike gender studies, eg.
In my grad school literary theory course, we spent more time talking about the importance of body positivity for fat women (exclusively women; in that class, men were just shitbags who oppress women) than we did talking about literature. Of course we also spent more time talking about Marxist economics, Freudian analysis, Lacanian analysis, post-modernism, colonialism, patriarchy, and racism than we did talking about literature.
Nature also is fat-phobic, unless you happen to be a bear or a manatee or something.
I wish mice and rats were fatter. They'd be easier to catch that way and probably taste better, to boot. Wild rabbits are so lean that humans cannot survive solely on rabbit meat.
You can pry my DVD copy of Wall-E from my cold, dead hands.
My husband and I have a game: whenever we watch a movie that is more than, say, 7 or 8 years old, we see how much time into the film something “problematic” happens, at which point one of us will usually shout, “You’re cancelled, sir!”
Turn this into a drinking game and plenty of people would be totally inebriated within 15 minutes.
Ha! That reminds me of the NPR drinking game I heard of recently. You have to take a shot every time they do a story about race or gender issues. You'd be drunk in an hour.
I had an idea called "Deserted Island Diet Camp" in which a human seeking to lose weight would be dumped off alone on a deserted jungle island and allowed to go feral for a month.
At *this* diet camp, you can eat anything you want! There's plenty of fish, freshwater and saltwater, shellfish, edible fruits and nuts in the trees and bushes and game in the jungle. Along with a small tiger and a leopard or two. And there are crocodiles. Not to mention the snakes.
You can eat anything you want. But you gotta catch it, skin it, cook it, start a fire, keep it going, dig a latrine, build a shelter, compete for your food sources with large predators, etc.. After a month, Deserted Island Diet Camp inmates would come back to civilization with a lean and hungry look in their eyes.
Thank you! I feel like I've been screaming into the void for the past two decades. Children don't need nostalgic movies about childhood, they're busy living it.
I haven’t quite thought about it that way, but I think you’re right. It’s another burden on this hyper burdened generation. They all feel it. My kids have that preemptive nostalgia, as do many I know. I didn’t realize that it might have come from this cultural soup.
What do you think about nostalgic books about childhood? House at Pooh Corner, Peter Pan…I feel like I grew up with this motif looming over me (I guess I like it better now?).
I always found Peter Pan very disturbing, perhaps for that reason, although it also contains the message of the importance of growing up which is lost on us now...
The original books make it pretty clear that being Peter Pan isn't that great. In the end, he forgets everything—from Captain Hook to Wendy to Tinkerbell—because he's a child and doesn't have a mature memory. His Lost Boys leave him to be adopted by the Darlings. Tinkerbell dies because fairies don't live that long. Peter Pan is going to be a solitary amnesiac for all eternity.
Yes. Nothing Peter Pan does or ever will do actually MATTERS, because in the end it's all just play, and the next day will be just play, and then the day after that... He's trapped in a juvenile version of Groundhog Day.
What makes childhood so special is that it ends. (The same can be said of life in general.)
I loved WtWTA as a kid because I was a whore for monsters; maybe I like other things about it now.
Sendak's Outside Over There I didn't read till I was a grown-up with kids, and it definitely entered the rotation as a book I and not the children would pick. Talk about creepy and weird! But I loved it so, and the children humored me.
I first read Wild Things as an adult, to my son, and I can't say I liked it at all. It has a reputation as a beloved classic, but I suspect that's largely through a parental lens. The sense of adventure is disingenuous; the subtext casts a suffocating pall over the book.
It was also surprisingly slight. I can't imagine how a feature-length movie was extrapolated from the material. Madeline was another classic which also seemed much less substantial than expected. But my son loves Madeline, at least partly on the strength of its memorably tortured rhymes.
The Wild Things movie is…different? It’s very much in the “nostalgic movie about childhood” vein, and it is very weird and slow. It’s pretty typical Spike Jonze fare, actually—if you like his other stuff, you’ll probably like WtWTA. I was mostly bored by it, but I can imagine liking it if I gave it a second chance.
I love your observation that critics seem so often to be talking themselves into an opinion they feel they are supposed to hold.
I think another reason for the raptures directed at Pixar films is that so much of kids’ programming is annoying and boring for adults. Some large percentage of film critics are parents who have suffered through these shows. The more kids love an annoying show and the more obsessively they watch it (Peppa Pig, Elmo’s World, and Dora all leap to mind), the worse it is for parents. Whenever a critic rhapsodizes about a mediocre Pixar film, I’m imaging that s/he is comparing it not with actually good films, but with the wretched stuff they usually watch with their kids. Pixar films always include winks and nods for the adults in the audience--because they work.
Yep, compare even a mediocre Pixar movie with Super Mario Brothers, which actually was made for kids (extremely successfully!) and is very annoying to most adults.
God that movie is awful. I have a pretty high tolerance for kids movies - three young kids; you have to be - but my seven year old asked to watch that movie with me and I was ready to just turn my face to the wall. It’s unwatchable, made more so by making a billion dollars in 12 hours or whatever.
It's fun to think of the harsher reviews of the more basic movies as frustrated parents indirectly venting their frustration at their kids' taste. By my 12th viewing of Cars it was cathartic to read all of its bad reviews.
Not only that, but I've found as a parent when you try and get kids to watch the actually good kids movies (like say the Secret of Kells, or the Iron Giant) they often have a pretty "meh" response to them, at least until they get older. My son is nine, and it's still hard to get him to watch anything with even the tiniest sliver of tension or danger because he gets so scared.
But once they get older, it is such a pleasure to watch these films with them! My daughter discovered The Secret of Kells when she was 13, and we watched it and the other films from that studio together many times.
My daughter around 10 years old loved Ratatouille. She didn't really like UP. Even for a kid the more adult themes in Ratatouille seemed to resonate (she loved the chef). I liked UP more than she did.
I remember really liking Star Trek TNG as a teenager, one of the main reasons for that being they all acted like adults I could aspire to. I liked emulating the grown-up depiction on that show, and the adult-ish dialogue and themes were something my YA brain craved.
I can still watch those reruns today and be entertained, because they were so maturely written.
Now when I try to watch something like Strange New Worlds, the dialogue and plot-lines are so very simple and childish I find it really hard to keep watching. The constant snark and one-up-isms are off the chart. I feel like TNG was a show about adults, for both adults and YA. Whereas SNW is a show about YA for YA.
Sorry for the sort of off-topic ramblings, but I think you're onto something with your Ratatouille comment. It's completely normal for kids to want to be older, but I feel like a lot of kids shows (and a lot of adult shows too) today kind of infantilize everything and it's depressing.
It's not the moralistic tone, that is indeed Roddenberry and I like that part. It's mostly the dialogue.
It's hard to describe. The crew members just tend to come off as know-it-alls who are constantly trying to have a clever come-back to each other's comments. And do so with this sort of 'gotcha' smirk on their faces all the time. And there's this large emotional aspect to everything that is quite a departure from the more rational-minded framework of its predecessors. To me it feels like a high school dramedy set in the Trek universe.
It's not nostalgia. I recently started watching Voyager for the first time. And while I think it's not quite as good as TNG, the dialogue and writing seem normal and adult and perfectly appropriate to the show and setting.
Case in point: my girlfriend never watched Trek in the 90's, or any sci-fi for that matter. A few years ago we slogged through TNG at my behest and she found that she kinda liked it. Same with DS9 and now Voyager. But when we tried watching SNW, it was her who first started complaining about the dialogue. She said they mostly came off as kids using way too much sarcasm and snark in normal everyday speech...especially for a show that's supposed to be set on a ship with a military command structure. It was just childish.
I've only seen the first episode of SNW, but I was struck by what seemed like an unprofessional level of banter among the crew. Not something I remember from TNG or even TOS.
Perhaps it's my own experience with serving on a military ship. That level of silly banter would get you thrown in the brig on bread and water.
Now Starfleet is sort of pseudo-military; with diplomacy, science, and exploration playing major roles as well. In times of peace the military aspect seems almost superficial. But in times of war (or any conflict for that matter) it is very much so the Federation's fighting navy in every respect.
Not only that, but the crew are all trained at Starfleet Academy...a very purposeful nod to our own US Naval Academy. And that means each crew member is not only steeped in all sorts of military training, but also behaves in a manner befitting a military naval organization. In short, they should look, talk, and act like any modern naval officer would.
TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise all adhered to this level of professional behavior in their normal daily interactions with each other...to varying degrees. But the new shows like Discovery, Picard, and STW all seem throw that formula out the window in favor of a much more informal, almost juvenile approach. There's much less respect for simple things like the chain of command or proper bridge etiquette, and a lot more random campy humor thrown in all over the place at times where it would otherwise seem inappropriate. Maybe I'm being overly critical here, but it feels like kids in a high school trading jabs with each other in the hallway between classes. It's like a cross between TOS and Saved By the Bell.
Modern dialogue is jarring and out-of-place in a setting like Trek - my theory on why they do it is because the dictates of Professionalism strikes most (ideologically lefty) TV writers as too similar to tone policing and respectability politics, which are Bad and reactionary. Arbitrary rules of decorum, formality and hierarchy are insufficiently radical. Therefore, the thinking is, "professionalism" is inconsistent with progressive characters and themes - they have to sound like a bunch of contemporary college students to be, ironically, politically correct.
Thank you for elucidating what's been lurking in the back of my head for some time now, and I really mean that. I thought I was the only one seeing this.
Two things I would dare push back on:
1) I would replace 'modern dialogue' with conformative progressive speech or something similar. Most people still don't normally talk like the SNW actors do, so I would say it's disingenuous to call it modern.
2) Those rules of decorum and formality are not really arbitrary, I think a lot of young people just think they are. They do have a purpose, and a good one.
Now...I think you are really on to something here, and it's quite depressing to say the least. If you're right, it means language itself is already well on its way to being captured by the 'woke', or whatever the hell anyone wants to call them. That is getting into dangerous territory here. And not only that, to so easily and casually discard language not considered 'progressively enlightened' enough is akin to denying your own humanity and identity...as much as I hate to use that word right here.
Thanks again for saying this Jordan...but it does scare me.
Interesting. Thinking back it seems that at least in my daughter's case you're right. She tended away from the sweet stuff. Our absolute favorite thing to watch together was/is SpongeBob. My dad and I similarly enjoyed watching Bugs Bunny.
I can see that with SpongeBob, lots of adult comedy winks in that. And old Loony Tunes are the best. I particularly like the one with Bugs and Fudd in that sort of Wagnerian opera. "Kill the Wabbit!!"
Also, I kind of feel bad for hijacking your comment with my Trek stuff. Sorry about that!
I had watched it as a late teen, seen some of it again in my late 20s or early 30s and found it wanting.
But as a parent, it was an outstanding series (not the movies). It's struggles were adult, getting teams to solve problems. It kept hitting the right themes, and demonstrated excellent leadership fairly consistently. It seemed ahead of its time socially, and yet totally a part of its era - an era when a show didn't have to be shot darkly, require internal conflict, and less thoughtful dialogue.
"Shot darkly" pinpoints one of the main aspects I appreciate about TNG. Obviously your futuristic starship utopia is going to be covered in low-pile carpet and flat fluorescent lighting, like a floating Holiday Inn Express. Not some shadowy blue-black dungeon. I'm serious!
Holiday Inn Express: lol. Agreed, no one wants to work in a dungeon, and they wouldn't.
First, they didn't turn their noses up at the CGI - we have the TNG Blu-Ray remasters, and they are amazing. This helped them dig into the episodes, because for them, low-res practical effects would have ended suspension of disbelief. They disliked the 'extras' on disc, generally avoided them, but I liked many of those.
The better episodes sparked some serious discussions, often several days later. Not just episodes about issues, but reflections about how one person or the team struggled. I think they liked that the characters were not dysfunctional, but also found them a little too perfect, highlighted by the more normie Barclay character.
They often touched upon how leadership succeeded or failed. The teamwork and leadership displayed (especially Picard's) also ties into themes they encounter as Scouts, a co-ed program both my boys and girls have gown up with, in Canada. I realized I could easily use clips of Picard to form a great leadership seminar series.
In season 4, for a while, my oldest, then 16, started losing interest. He disliked the lack of character and story arcs (more than his younger siblings, he's seen the benefit of long story arcs in newer TV series). But by the end of season 5, TNG improved that aspect a bit, and he appreciated that, again relishing it to the finale.
Totally agree that kids’ shows are more infantilizing. Take the gold standard of Sesame Street. Big Bird used to be the central character and lens for kids, and his “age” was 6 years old. Now it’s Elmo (age 3), and his speech is way more babyish and annoying.
Most Pixar movies have a really interesting premise, but then the actual story is nonsense. This is why the first acts and world-building in Wall-E and Up are mesmerizing and then the movies just become really boring and/or nonsensical. I like the Toy Storys because they actually do something with the premise, and even Cars as well, but as you mention, those seem to be the only movies from Pixar that are made for kids.
It kind of makes sense. My niece is six and watches the same movies obsessively. However, only the first 30-45 minutes of movies before she goes to bed. I think most kids are like this. Outside of the first time they watch, they're not appreciating the whole of the movie because they don't have the attention span or time. If you're going to focus on making a section of a movie hum for kids, it should be the first.
That said, she hates Up, couldn't get through Wall-E, doesn't like Inside Out... she just really loves Cars and Toy Story and the first Monsters Inc and then would rather watch Disney Animation or Dreamworks stuff vs. Pixar.
"Most Pixar movies have a really interesting premise, but then the actual story is nonsense."
To be fair, this is a common problem in lots of movies. Either the beginning is hilarious, but then the scriptwriters have to find a satisfying way to end it, or the premise is dopey but at the same time necessary to bring the characters together in a situation that let's 'em rip.
I’d say it’s a problem for storytellers in general. It’s relatively easy to come up with an interesting premise, much harder to come up with a satisfying conclusion, as anyone who’s started and not finished a novel can tell you. You also get a lot more practice at beginnings, so you get better at grabbing the audiences attention early.
The other thing with movies or plays, as opposed to books, or even TV shows, is that you have around 120 minutes, more or less, to develop your characters and tell your story. Your whole story. No breaks. One sitting.
At the same time, you've got your audience pretty much captive for that 120 minutes.
I am a big Ghibli fan but I think Fireflies was pretty awful. If you read the book the whole point is that the older brother basically killed his sister by running away from their caretaker's house in a fit of pique--they could have stayed behind and both survived. Instead his idiocy gets his sister killed and the guilt haunts him terribly for the rest of his life.
I've seen a few people contrast Pixar with Ghibli, but is Ghibli even a kid-oriented studio? Pixar's thing is they are, but they throw in some content for the parents.
I enjoy a lot of Ghibli movies, but quite a few of them are obviously not targeted at kids. There are no Bing Bongs in something like Only Yesterday, but it's clearly intended for people over 30.
Oh for sure, I don’t know if there’s any real contrasting to be done. It’s certainly not apples to apples, since Ghibli is not primarily a 3D kids’ enterprise, and also particularly Miyazaki is, in my opinion, in another league altogether.
Ghibli is split sort of down the middle: Kiki’s Delivery Service is totally for kids (and maybe Spirited Away for older kids, like I think 8-10 year-olds could handle it depending on their constitution). But something like Princess Mononoke has a ton of hyper-stylized violence and very cerebral, complex political themes.
Freddie, I fear you’ve fallen into rather very trap you identify here by producing a super sophisticated and complex adult review supposedly accusing Pixar of pandering to a very particular group of adults, to which…. you yourself belong.
I’m the actual mother of an actual 5-year-old child. We saw Elemental three days ago and had a blast. Do you know how much utter garbage is out there for kids? How much of this relentless crap relies on Exploding Galaxies and Armageddon because of a dearth of actual feelings? How much sexual innuendo is in movies for kids because, I guess, the script writers think that parents need to guffaw at sexual jokes while sitting next to their kids at the theater? How much superhero junk and claptrap pyrotechnic rubbish they pack into movies with no emotions at a normal scale that a young child can digest? I’m grateful for anything Pixar and Miyazaki churn out. The New Yorker and Guardian fans that pan these movies apparently haven’t taken the trouble to review, say, Sonic 2 or Puss in Boots. Because they write these reviews for overgrown kids, not for adults with actual kids.
For the parents on the audience: a friend recommended Common Sense Media as a good barometer of quality, and I find it’s usually on the mark.
Pixar films may be better than the average children's film, but nothing Pixar has ever created has even approached the magic and wonder of "My Neighbour Totoro".
My daughter between 7 and 10 was, by turns, bored by and frightened by Spirited Away and couldn't even get through it. She *loved* Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa was her absolute favorite. (Oddly she didn't find either of those scary, but Spirited Away was.) Now an early teen, she's rewatched Spirited Away and loves that too. She also loves the more common kid stuff like Frozen and Encanto.
I think kids have fairly individual tastes just like adults, and it can be hard to predict what they will like or not on an individual basis (though much less difficult in the aggregate).
"I guess it's genetic, because I've always felt I was failing to see what many others see in the Studio Gibli canon." If you also failed, it sounds more like passed on / learned, rather than genetic! Your tastes and curation set them up
My worry is that, with the acelerando and crescendo of Saving the Universe, marvels like Totoro will lose favor with my kid. It has emotion and magic he can digest, but I think the sturm and drang of the usual children’s fare will numb his sensitivity. I exercise some control over what we watch, and everything is so lousy that lesser flicks than Totoro must make the cut.
I think kids are also open to more things than we think they are. As much as my kids insist on repeat viewings of Frozen, Cars, and whatever, we've also now watched Marcel the Shell four times. Unknown depths!
Depends on the age. Need to hook them up while they're still small enough. Getting it to them as teens wont cut it.
Also need to restrict all the modern options, full of frantic editing, explosions, and dopamine tricks, so they can first appreciate something like Star Trek.
My Neighbor Totoro is my son's favorite film, and has been since he was a small child. I think it's a comforting film for small children because there's no villain, and relatively little in the way of danger. Relatively little in the way of plot really. Obviously there are elements of the movie (like Satsuki and Mei's angst regarding their mother's illness) which will go over kids heads, but I do think it more accurately reflects what it's like to experience childhood than a lot of other media aimed at children.
Parents can always help curate what their kid watches though, can't they? For a 5 year old, shouldn't the parent exercize all control over what is watched, rather than just "some"? Hooking them up on good stuff, gives antibodies for when they grow more and their peers are into "saving the universe" stuff
Even if lesser flicks than Totoro can make the cut, doesn't mean the bar needs to be set too low. There's also the option of re-watching (with smaller kids) and of course of not watching movies all the time!
That parents have a responsibility to populate their children's cultural lives with valuable things is, of course true.
Here is what is also true. My beloved father died two weeks ago on the other side of the world after a brutal battle with a rare lung disease. I have been supporting my mother, who is inconsolable, and taking 14-hour transatlantic flights back and forth throughout the summer to the point that I no longer know what time it is. When I am home in the US, I try to function as best I can. My partner is away and I'm solo parenting throughout this entire ordeal. A shitton of things around the house, that were neglected during my father's illness and my travels, need doing, and since while I do them I sob uncontrollably, my kid watches more screens than I would like and certainly more screens than I think are good for him. I just brought my kid with me to my mom's house, and we play with him all day long and occasionally, seeing as we are both exhausted and bereft, we need a break, and if my kid isn't sleeping, that break involves screens. The screens show whatever is on TV for kids at the moment. Not all of it is exquisite fare, I grant you.
This may be more than you wanted to know about my life, Nick, but then again you did opine about my parenting, so now you're better informed.
I don't know anything about Japan, so honest question, is something like My Neighbor Totoro considered a children's movie in Japan? Is that the audience there, where it generally isn't here?
For years there's been a bias in Japan that anime is for kids and nerds. That perception has been slowly shifting just as it has in the US--look at the box office triumph of comic book movies here.
For Ghibli I think you can see that by comparing something like "Mononoke Hime" to the studio's earlier films.
* I should point out however that in Japan manga is just a medium. It's widely understood that just as there are kids books and adult books, kids movies and adult movies, etc. that there are manga for kids and manga for adults.
"For years there's been a bias in Japan that anime is for kids and nerds."
Is this not true in the US? Because that's the impression I've always had of anime. I'm a bit of a "normie" and was once a sorority girl, for reference, and I always associated anime with the most out there group of extreme nerds at my high school. It's definitely grown in popularity since then but I wouldn't say it's really shed the nerdy image...
Out of Studio Ghibli's works, Totoro is probably the most "baby" of them, aside from maybe Ponyo. Very different from something like Spirited Away, or especially Princess Mononoke, which are absolutely more "adult" films.
I watched the original dub as a child in the early 90s on VHS and thus became a Miyazaki fan at a very young age. Adults might be a lot of the enthusiasts, but because some of us saw the films as kids.
The new Puss in Boots was very high on enjoyment for my kids and their parents. We love Ghibli and Laika's films, and a few of Pixar's, but Puss in Boots: The Last Wish has a combo of great style, gonzo cartoon action and lots of laughs.
And I'll take more Banderas as Desperado/Zorro/Puss in Boots any day.
Obviously clouded by youthful nostalgia here, but for me Toy Story through Wall-E really did feel like a golden age (Cars excepted). Something worth noting was that during this era there was a noticeable and often astonishing improvement in graphical quality with each movie, something that can't be recaptured now that we've hit a relative plateau in CGI quality.
I always find it amusing that Cars is considered the least of these films. My youngest son would watch it every day, given the opportunity from about age 6 to 8. Easily his favourite movie. It was actually made for kids, and for me, at least I get to hear Paul Newman's voice again.
I don’t disagree with you but I’d add Monsters Inc to the masterpiece list. That movie is funny as hell and the door chase at the end is thrilling. It’s my kid’s’ favorite.
Love your prose and POV on the world Freddie, but in terms of INSIDE OUT and the “Bing Bong” I think you genuinely got this one wrong and missed the OTHER half of the purpose of the character; and then, how it feeds back into the theme of the film. In terms of film and story structure his moment of enabling Joy to get back onto her mission back to HQ his act is one of sacrifice to and for the greater good - and love, that which all imaginary friends are created for. This moment is a wonderful example of the 2nd Act Midpoint, or “the Turn”, where Joy experiences for the first time the mixture of emotions that will come to dominate the rest of the film, as well as deeper emotional knowledge that an adult has, that a child does not: that with the good, comes the bad, and that is ok. Adult life is messy. Bing Bong’s act had this intention baked into it, and he too as a character was just as lost as everyone in the film is at that point. But HIS moment is transcendent (yes, I used that word) because he has genuine, bona fide purpose; and a deeper, adult meaning in his sacrifice to the girl’s and her emotions greater good. The death of the imaginary friend is both the literal and figurative start to becoming an adult, which the entire story is built around: growth and maturity; and that process really begins with his for-the-greater-good death that has a deeper meaning. A 180-degree reversal of the typical imaginary friend.
I’ve had friends say to me about certain great films after first viewing, “I love you, but I think you got it wrong about ______ film” and I too in turn would say this to you about INSIDE OUT.
It was somehow-too-perfect a turn, entering a form of uncanny valley of thematic writing. In my viewing, it destroyed the willingness to be manipulated so thoroughly.
Yeah I prefer to judge artists on their best work. Art is hard.
Whoa, I guess I’m really not a critical viewer. Or else it’s just that wine inevitably accompanied pizza and movie night. But randian world view? I hadn’t noticed and would love to hear more
Omg! I guess it’s been a while since I’ve thought about it, but you’ve given me a lot to think about. Thank you! And I love it, too. ❤️
If you're trying to feel demonstrate how Pixar fans use emotionalism to enforce their tastes on others, you're doing a great job.
What about “UP” requires you to have extensive life experiences? Outside of the manipulative opener, it’s a children’s movie about talking dogs with silly voices for fuck’s sake!
I'm sorry but unless you've married your childhood sweetheart, grown old with her, then watched her die, before putting loads of balloons on your house and flying away, you simply can't have the perspective to comment on it.
The actual plot of UP is so fucking stupid. Even for a kids movie. Beyond the pandering first ten minutes:
- A ten year old kid likes an explorer and so does the woman he marries. They want to build a house on the same waterfall where this explorer has disappeared to (?) to find a bird (?)
- Guy's wife dies, he retires. Some shit happens, and this guy finds enough balloons to lift his house off the ground. He takes a cub scout with him. This is, as I note below, is a fun premise that will lead to a boring conclusion
- The house finds its way near the waterfall that the guy's wife wanted to retire to. They meet a talking dog. They meet a bird that we can call McGuffin. From this point forward, you probably don't remember anything about the movie because it's incidental to conversations about the film. We just finished the first act.
- Other talking dogs capture them and take them to the famous explorer, who's now insane
- They go back and forth with the explorer to see who can find and capture this big bird they met
- The explorer guy dies. They save the bird.
Please tell me about the part of the movie after they land near Paradise Falls that is interesting or fun even to a child.
How is Wall-E problematic now?? That still is my favorite Pixar film to date.
"Fatphobic"
Oh man, really??
The humans in Wall-E are beyond fat though, they can't even stand upright anymore! That's one of the major themes of the movie - humanity's over-reliance on machines and AI to do everything for them. Something quite important to think about right now I might add.
Ugh...what a weird hill to die on: let's not criticize people who are so ridiculously sedentary they can't be bothered to lift their sodas to their mouths. -__-
There are entire university departments dedicated to the idea that criticizing people who are so ridiculously sedentary they can't be bothered to lift their sodas to their mouths is a form of bigotry on a par with misogyny or white supremacy.
While I give this discipline little credence myself I have to push back on "entire university departments," as I'm pretty sure that isn't true. I couldn't readily find any "fat studies programs," which would enable you to graduate with a degree in fat studies, let alone /departments/. (It's far easier to offer a program than host a department!) You'll find a few acandemic journals of course, and university courses offered on the subject, but there's no Sonalee Rashawater Endowed Chair of Fat Studies, head of the Fat Studies Department at Serious University. It hasn't gotten anywhere near that far off the ground academically--unlike gender studies, eg.
Fair, "entire university departments" was hyperbolic of me. Nonetheless, it is a real academic discipline with classes, journals and so on.
In my grad school literary theory course, we spent more time talking about the importance of body positivity for fat women (exclusively women; in that class, men were just shitbags who oppress women) than we did talking about literature. Of course we also spent more time talking about Marxist economics, Freudian analysis, Lacanian analysis, post-modernism, colonialism, patriarchy, and racism than we did talking about literature.
Nature also is fat-phobic, unless you happen to be a bear or a manatee or something.
I wish mice and rats were fatter. They'd be easier to catch that way and probably taste better, to boot. Wild rabbits are so lean that humans cannot survive solely on rabbit meat.
Apparently that's why you're supposed to eat the brains.
Rabbit brains aren't bad, I eat pretty much the entire bunny but "rabbit sickness" in humans is a thing.
You can pry my DVD copy of Wall-E from my cold, dead hands.
My husband and I have a game: whenever we watch a movie that is more than, say, 7 or 8 years old, we see how much time into the film something “problematic” happens, at which point one of us will usually shout, “You’re cancelled, sir!”
Turn this into a drinking game and plenty of people would be totally inebriated within 15 minutes.
Ha! That reminds me of the NPR drinking game I heard of recently. You have to take a shot every time they do a story about race or gender issues. You'd be drunk in an hour.
Love the name by the way!
I had never heard that but it (literally and perhaps suitably) turns my stomach. I find that very upsetting.
That's the neoliberal order; forbid letting anyone feel bad about themselves rather than take on the real problem, the "weight-loss" industry.
I had an idea called "Deserted Island Diet Camp" in which a human seeking to lose weight would be dumped off alone on a deserted jungle island and allowed to go feral for a month.
At *this* diet camp, you can eat anything you want! There's plenty of fish, freshwater and saltwater, shellfish, edible fruits and nuts in the trees and bushes and game in the jungle. Along with a small tiger and a leopard or two. And there are crocodiles. Not to mention the snakes.
You can eat anything you want. But you gotta catch it, skin it, cook it, start a fire, keep it going, dig a latrine, build a shelter, compete for your food sources with large predators, etc.. After a month, Deserted Island Diet Camp inmates would come back to civilization with a lean and hungry look in their eyes.
https://youtu.be/RywJSc3I6dU
Thank you! I feel like I've been screaming into the void for the past two decades. Children don't need nostalgic movies about childhood, they're busy living it.
I haven’t quite thought about it that way, but I think you’re right. It’s another burden on this hyper burdened generation. They all feel it. My kids have that preemptive nostalgia, as do many I know. I didn’t realize that it might have come from this cultural soup.
What do you think about nostalgic books about childhood? House at Pooh Corner, Peter Pan…I feel like I grew up with this motif looming over me (I guess I like it better now?).
I always found Peter Pan very disturbing, perhaps for that reason, although it also contains the message of the importance of growing up which is lost on us now...
But Peter himself is soooo tempting...we could, perhaps, stay in Neverland forever...
Oh no, that never appealed. I guess I was always an old soul.
The original books make it pretty clear that being Peter Pan isn't that great. In the end, he forgets everything—from Captain Hook to Wendy to Tinkerbell—because he's a child and doesn't have a mature memory. His Lost Boys leave him to be adopted by the Darlings. Tinkerbell dies because fairies don't live that long. Peter Pan is going to be a solitary amnesiac for all eternity.
Yes. Nothing Peter Pan does or ever will do actually MATTERS, because in the end it's all just play, and the next day will be just play, and then the day after that... He's trapped in a juvenile version of Groundhog Day.
What makes childhood so special is that it ends. (The same can be said of life in general.)
Where the Wild Things Are, man. That thing's the ultimate nostalgic book about childhood, and I *hated* it as a kid. It was creepy and weird.
Obviously, I love it now that I'm an adult and a parent. The mom is low-key the main character in that thing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I loved WtWTA as a kid because I was a whore for monsters; maybe I like other things about it now.
Sendak's Outside Over There I didn't read till I was a grown-up with kids, and it definitely entered the rotation as a book I and not the children would pick. Talk about creepy and weird! But I loved it so, and the children humored me.
“Whore for Monsters” is the name of my Lady GaGa cover band
I first read Wild Things as an adult, to my son, and I can't say I liked it at all. It has a reputation as a beloved classic, but I suspect that's largely through a parental lens. The sense of adventure is disingenuous; the subtext casts a suffocating pall over the book.
It was also surprisingly slight. I can't imagine how a feature-length movie was extrapolated from the material. Madeline was another classic which also seemed much less substantial than expected. But my son loves Madeline, at least partly on the strength of its memorably tortured rhymes.
The Wild Things movie is…different? It’s very much in the “nostalgic movie about childhood” vein, and it is very weird and slow. It’s pretty typical Spike Jonze fare, actually—if you like his other stuff, you’ll probably like WtWTA. I was mostly bored by it, but I can imagine liking it if I gave it a second chance.
I liked Being John Malkovich and that Weapon of Choice video, but haven't seen any of his nine Jackass movies. Maybe I'll give WtWTA a chance.
Pixar goes for the “fun for kids and doesn’t make adults want to puke” market and has an unusually high success rate.
I love your observation that critics seem so often to be talking themselves into an opinion they feel they are supposed to hold.
I think another reason for the raptures directed at Pixar films is that so much of kids’ programming is annoying and boring for adults. Some large percentage of film critics are parents who have suffered through these shows. The more kids love an annoying show and the more obsessively they watch it (Peppa Pig, Elmo’s World, and Dora all leap to mind), the worse it is for parents. Whenever a critic rhapsodizes about a mediocre Pixar film, I’m imaging that s/he is comparing it not with actually good films, but with the wretched stuff they usually watch with their kids. Pixar films always include winks and nods for the adults in the audience--because they work.
Yep, compare even a mediocre Pixar movie with Super Mario Brothers, which actually was made for kids (extremely successfully!) and is very annoying to most adults.
God that movie is awful. I have a pretty high tolerance for kids movies - three young kids; you have to be - but my seven year old asked to watch that movie with me and I was ready to just turn my face to the wall. It’s unwatchable, made more so by making a billion dollars in 12 hours or whatever.
It's fun to think of the harsher reviews of the more basic movies as frustrated parents indirectly venting their frustration at their kids' taste. By my 12th viewing of Cars it was cathartic to read all of its bad reviews.
Also, Peppa Pig is often hilarious!
And slyly commiserating with parents!
Not only that, but I've found as a parent when you try and get kids to watch the actually good kids movies (like say the Secret of Kells, or the Iron Giant) they often have a pretty "meh" response to them, at least until they get older. My son is nine, and it's still hard to get him to watch anything with even the tiniest sliver of tension or danger because he gets so scared.
The Iron Giant is a classic at our house. We watch at least once a year.
But once they get older, it is such a pleasure to watch these films with them! My daughter discovered The Secret of Kells when she was 13, and we watched it and the other films from that studio together many times.
Haven't seen this. Just added it to my list.
My daughter around 10 years old loved Ratatouille. She didn't really like UP. Even for a kid the more adult themes in Ratatouille seemed to resonate (she loved the chef). I liked UP more than she did.
This brings up an interesting phenomenon.
I remember really liking Star Trek TNG as a teenager, one of the main reasons for that being they all acted like adults I could aspire to. I liked emulating the grown-up depiction on that show, and the adult-ish dialogue and themes were something my YA brain craved.
I can still watch those reruns today and be entertained, because they were so maturely written.
Now when I try to watch something like Strange New Worlds, the dialogue and plot-lines are so very simple and childish I find it really hard to keep watching. The constant snark and one-up-isms are off the chart. I feel like TNG was a show about adults, for both adults and YA. Whereas SNW is a show about YA for YA.
Sorry for the sort of off-topic ramblings, but I think you're onto something with your Ratatouille comment. It's completely normal for kids to want to be older, but I feel like a lot of kids shows (and a lot of adult shows too) today kind of infantilize everything and it's depressing.
It's not the moralistic tone, that is indeed Roddenberry and I like that part. It's mostly the dialogue.
It's hard to describe. The crew members just tend to come off as know-it-alls who are constantly trying to have a clever come-back to each other's comments. And do so with this sort of 'gotcha' smirk on their faces all the time. And there's this large emotional aspect to everything that is quite a departure from the more rational-minded framework of its predecessors. To me it feels like a high school dramedy set in the Trek universe.
It's not nostalgia. I recently started watching Voyager for the first time. And while I think it's not quite as good as TNG, the dialogue and writing seem normal and adult and perfectly appropriate to the show and setting.
Case in point: my girlfriend never watched Trek in the 90's, or any sci-fi for that matter. A few years ago we slogged through TNG at my behest and she found that she kinda liked it. Same with DS9 and now Voyager. But when we tried watching SNW, it was her who first started complaining about the dialogue. She said they mostly came off as kids using way too much sarcasm and snark in normal everyday speech...especially for a show that's supposed to be set on a ship with a military command structure. It was just childish.
I've only seen the first episode of SNW, but I was struck by what seemed like an unprofessional level of banter among the crew. Not something I remember from TNG or even TOS.
Perhaps it's my own experience with serving on a military ship. That level of silly banter would get you thrown in the brig on bread and water.
Now Starfleet is sort of pseudo-military; with diplomacy, science, and exploration playing major roles as well. In times of peace the military aspect seems almost superficial. But in times of war (or any conflict for that matter) it is very much so the Federation's fighting navy in every respect.
Not only that, but the crew are all trained at Starfleet Academy...a very purposeful nod to our own US Naval Academy. And that means each crew member is not only steeped in all sorts of military training, but also behaves in a manner befitting a military naval organization. In short, they should look, talk, and act like any modern naval officer would.
TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise all adhered to this level of professional behavior in their normal daily interactions with each other...to varying degrees. But the new shows like Discovery, Picard, and STW all seem throw that formula out the window in favor of a much more informal, almost juvenile approach. There's much less respect for simple things like the chain of command or proper bridge etiquette, and a lot more random campy humor thrown in all over the place at times where it would otherwise seem inappropriate. Maybe I'm being overly critical here, but it feels like kids in a high school trading jabs with each other in the hallway between classes. It's like a cross between TOS and Saved By the Bell.
Modern dialogue is jarring and out-of-place in a setting like Trek - my theory on why they do it is because the dictates of Professionalism strikes most (ideologically lefty) TV writers as too similar to tone policing and respectability politics, which are Bad and reactionary. Arbitrary rules of decorum, formality and hierarchy are insufficiently radical. Therefore, the thinking is, "professionalism" is inconsistent with progressive characters and themes - they have to sound like a bunch of contemporary college students to be, ironically, politically correct.
Thank you for elucidating what's been lurking in the back of my head for some time now, and I really mean that. I thought I was the only one seeing this.
Two things I would dare push back on:
1) I would replace 'modern dialogue' with conformative progressive speech or something similar. Most people still don't normally talk like the SNW actors do, so I would say it's disingenuous to call it modern.
2) Those rules of decorum and formality are not really arbitrary, I think a lot of young people just think they are. They do have a purpose, and a good one.
Now...I think you are really on to something here, and it's quite depressing to say the least. If you're right, it means language itself is already well on its way to being captured by the 'woke', or whatever the hell anyone wants to call them. That is getting into dangerous territory here. And not only that, to so easily and casually discard language not considered 'progressively enlightened' enough is akin to denying your own humanity and identity...as much as I hate to use that word right here.
Thanks again for saying this Jordan...but it does scare me.
Interesting. Thinking back it seems that at least in my daughter's case you're right. She tended away from the sweet stuff. Our absolute favorite thing to watch together was/is SpongeBob. My dad and I similarly enjoyed watching Bugs Bunny.
I can see that with SpongeBob, lots of adult comedy winks in that. And old Loony Tunes are the best. I particularly like the one with Bugs and Fudd in that sort of Wagnerian opera. "Kill the Wabbit!!"
Also, I kind of feel bad for hijacking your comment with my Trek stuff. Sorry about that!
I just showed TNG, all 7 seasons, to my kids.
I had watched it as a late teen, seen some of it again in my late 20s or early 30s and found it wanting.
But as a parent, it was an outstanding series (not the movies). It's struggles were adult, getting teams to solve problems. It kept hitting the right themes, and demonstrated excellent leadership fairly consistently. It seemed ahead of its time socially, and yet totally a part of its era - an era when a show didn't have to be shot darkly, require internal conflict, and less thoughtful dialogue.
And what did they think?
"Shot darkly" pinpoints one of the main aspects I appreciate about TNG. Obviously your futuristic starship utopia is going to be covered in low-pile carpet and flat fluorescent lighting, like a floating Holiday Inn Express. Not some shadowy blue-black dungeon. I'm serious!
Holiday Inn Express: lol. Agreed, no one wants to work in a dungeon, and they wouldn't.
First, they didn't turn their noses up at the CGI - we have the TNG Blu-Ray remasters, and they are amazing. This helped them dig into the episodes, because for them, low-res practical effects would have ended suspension of disbelief. They disliked the 'extras' on disc, generally avoided them, but I liked many of those.
The better episodes sparked some serious discussions, often several days later. Not just episodes about issues, but reflections about how one person or the team struggled. I think they liked that the characters were not dysfunctional, but also found them a little too perfect, highlighted by the more normie Barclay character.
They often touched upon how leadership succeeded or failed. The teamwork and leadership displayed (especially Picard's) also ties into themes they encounter as Scouts, a co-ed program both my boys and girls have gown up with, in Canada. I realized I could easily use clips of Picard to form a great leadership seminar series.
In season 4, for a while, my oldest, then 16, started losing interest. He disliked the lack of character and story arcs (more than his younger siblings, he's seen the benefit of long story arcs in newer TV series). But by the end of season 5, TNG improved that aspect a bit, and he appreciated that, again relishing it to the finale.
Totally agree that kids’ shows are more infantilizing. Take the gold standard of Sesame Street. Big Bird used to be the central character and lens for kids, and his “age” was 6 years old. Now it’s Elmo (age 3), and his speech is way more babyish and annoying.
Great animated films: The Michells vs The Machines, Penguins of Madagascar, Into the Spiderverse
(None Pixar)
Into the Spider-Verse was the most psychedelic thing I've seen since Yellow Submarine. Looking forward to the sequel, just on the art alone.
I saw it in the theater with my kids — it exceeded my expectations! Be warned tho that it ends on a major cliffhanger!
Most Pixar movies have a really interesting premise, but then the actual story is nonsense. This is why the first acts and world-building in Wall-E and Up are mesmerizing and then the movies just become really boring and/or nonsensical. I like the Toy Storys because they actually do something with the premise, and even Cars as well, but as you mention, those seem to be the only movies from Pixar that are made for kids.
It kind of makes sense. My niece is six and watches the same movies obsessively. However, only the first 30-45 minutes of movies before she goes to bed. I think most kids are like this. Outside of the first time they watch, they're not appreciating the whole of the movie because they don't have the attention span or time. If you're going to focus on making a section of a movie hum for kids, it should be the first.
That said, she hates Up, couldn't get through Wall-E, doesn't like Inside Out... she just really loves Cars and Toy Story and the first Monsters Inc and then would rather watch Disney Animation or Dreamworks stuff vs. Pixar.
"Most Pixar movies have a really interesting premise, but then the actual story is nonsense."
To be fair, this is a common problem in lots of movies. Either the beginning is hilarious, but then the scriptwriters have to find a satisfying way to end it, or the premise is dopey but at the same time necessary to bring the characters together in a situation that let's 'em rip.
I never saw the movie, but I hated Watership Down the book.
The author clearly knew nothing about rabbits and didn't have the right attitude towards cats, besides.
My dad LOVES that Watership Down cartoon and made me watch it many times as a kid. It’s such a weird viewing experience.
I’d say it’s a problem for storytellers in general. It’s relatively easy to come up with an interesting premise, much harder to come up with a satisfying conclusion, as anyone who’s started and not finished a novel can tell you. You also get a lot more practice at beginnings, so you get better at grabbing the audiences attention early.
The other thing with movies or plays, as opposed to books, or even TV shows, is that you have around 120 minutes, more or less, to develop your characters and tell your story. Your whole story. No breaks. One sitting.
At the same time, you've got your audience pretty much captive for that 120 minutes.
There's no law saying you need to start writing a story at the beginning. Plenty of authors don't. Google "pantsers versus plotters".
Now I just wanna know how you feel about studio Ghibli. Is Grave of the Fireflies just one big bing bong? Etc
I am a big Ghibli fan but I think Fireflies was pretty awful. If you read the book the whole point is that the older brother basically killed his sister by running away from their caretaker's house in a fit of pique--they could have stayed behind and both survived. Instead his idiocy gets his sister killed and the guilt haunts him terribly for the rest of his life.
I've seen a few people contrast Pixar with Ghibli, but is Ghibli even a kid-oriented studio? Pixar's thing is they are, but they throw in some content for the parents.
I enjoy a lot of Ghibli movies, but quite a few of them are obviously not targeted at kids. There are no Bing Bongs in something like Only Yesterday, but it's clearly intended for people over 30.
Oh for sure, I don’t know if there’s any real contrasting to be done. It’s certainly not apples to apples, since Ghibli is not primarily a 3D kids’ enterprise, and also particularly Miyazaki is, in my opinion, in another league altogether.
The case could certainly be made that Ponyo, Totoro and Kiki’s delivery service are legitimate kids’ movies though.
Ghibli is split sort of down the middle: Kiki’s Delivery Service is totally for kids (and maybe Spirited Away for older kids, like I think 8-10 year-olds could handle it depending on their constitution). But something like Princess Mononoke has a ton of hyper-stylized violence and very cerebral, complex political themes.
At the very climax of Inside Out, my six-year-son leaned over and said 'I have no idea what's going on' so that failed
Freddie, I fear you’ve fallen into rather very trap you identify here by producing a super sophisticated and complex adult review supposedly accusing Pixar of pandering to a very particular group of adults, to which…. you yourself belong.
I’m the actual mother of an actual 5-year-old child. We saw Elemental three days ago and had a blast. Do you know how much utter garbage is out there for kids? How much of this relentless crap relies on Exploding Galaxies and Armageddon because of a dearth of actual feelings? How much sexual innuendo is in movies for kids because, I guess, the script writers think that parents need to guffaw at sexual jokes while sitting next to their kids at the theater? How much superhero junk and claptrap pyrotechnic rubbish they pack into movies with no emotions at a normal scale that a young child can digest? I’m grateful for anything Pixar and Miyazaki churn out. The New Yorker and Guardian fans that pan these movies apparently haven’t taken the trouble to review, say, Sonic 2 or Puss in Boots. Because they write these reviews for overgrown kids, not for adults with actual kids.
For the parents on the audience: a friend recommended Common Sense Media as a good barometer of quality, and I find it’s usually on the mark.
Pixar films may be better than the average children's film, but nothing Pixar has ever created has even approached the magic and wonder of "My Neighbour Totoro".
Agree with you that I was very underwhelmed by Spirited Away, though I adored Totoro.
My daughter between 7 and 10 was, by turns, bored by and frightened by Spirited Away and couldn't even get through it. She *loved* Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa was her absolute favorite. (Oddly she didn't find either of those scary, but Spirited Away was.) Now an early teen, she's rewatched Spirited Away and loves that too. She also loves the more common kid stuff like Frozen and Encanto.
I think kids have fairly individual tastes just like adults, and it can be hard to predict what they will like or not on an individual basis (though much less difficult in the aggregate).
"I guess it's genetic, because I've always felt I was failing to see what many others see in the Studio Gibli canon." If you also failed, it sounds more like passed on / learned, rather than genetic! Your tastes and curation set them up
My worry is that, with the acelerando and crescendo of Saving the Universe, marvels like Totoro will lose favor with my kid. It has emotion and magic he can digest, but I think the sturm and drang of the usual children’s fare will numb his sensitivity. I exercise some control over what we watch, and everything is so lousy that lesser flicks than Totoro must make the cut.
My kids have watched Totoro and Kikki's Delivery Service so many times and yet remain captivated by them. There is something so genuine about them.
I think kids are also open to more things than we think they are. As much as my kids insist on repeat viewings of Frozen, Cars, and whatever, we've also now watched Marcel the Shell four times. Unknown depths!
My experience with two kids is they're not open to watching new things at all.
You have no idea how many times I've tried to get them interested in watching Star Trek and been shouted down.
Depends on the age. Need to hook them up while they're still small enough. Getting it to them as teens wont cut it.
Also need to restrict all the modern options, full of frantic editing, explosions, and dopamine tricks, so they can first appreciate something like Star Trek.
My Neighbor Totoro is my son's favorite film, and has been since he was a small child. I think it's a comforting film for small children because there's no villain, and relatively little in the way of danger. Relatively little in the way of plot really. Obviously there are elements of the movie (like Satsuki and Mei's angst regarding their mother's illness) which will go over kids heads, but I do think it more accurately reflects what it's like to experience childhood than a lot of other media aimed at children.
mine too - it's probably the defining movie of their childhood and our family life through their childhood
Parents can always help curate what their kid watches though, can't they? For a 5 year old, shouldn't the parent exercize all control over what is watched, rather than just "some"? Hooking them up on good stuff, gives antibodies for when they grow more and their peers are into "saving the universe" stuff
Even if lesser flicks than Totoro can make the cut, doesn't mean the bar needs to be set too low. There's also the option of re-watching (with smaller kids) and of course of not watching movies all the time!
That parents have a responsibility to populate their children's cultural lives with valuable things is, of course true.
Here is what is also true. My beloved father died two weeks ago on the other side of the world after a brutal battle with a rare lung disease. I have been supporting my mother, who is inconsolable, and taking 14-hour transatlantic flights back and forth throughout the summer to the point that I no longer know what time it is. When I am home in the US, I try to function as best I can. My partner is away and I'm solo parenting throughout this entire ordeal. A shitton of things around the house, that were neglected during my father's illness and my travels, need doing, and since while I do them I sob uncontrollably, my kid watches more screens than I would like and certainly more screens than I think are good for him. I just brought my kid with me to my mom's house, and we play with him all day long and occasionally, seeing as we are both exhausted and bereft, we need a break, and if my kid isn't sleeping, that break involves screens. The screens show whatever is on TV for kids at the moment. Not all of it is exquisite fare, I grant you.
This may be more than you wanted to know about my life, Nick, but then again you did opine about my parenting, so now you're better informed.
Sure, but My Neighbour Totoro is an absolutely wonderful film that is mainly watched by adults. It really doesn't exist in the same category as Cars.
Mainly watched by adults in the US because anime has historically been imported by enthusiasts.
I don't know anything about Japan, so honest question, is something like My Neighbor Totoro considered a children's movie in Japan? Is that the audience there, where it generally isn't here?
For years there's been a bias in Japan that anime is for kids and nerds. That perception has been slowly shifting just as it has in the US--look at the box office triumph of comic book movies here.
For Ghibli I think you can see that by comparing something like "Mononoke Hime" to the studio's earlier films.
* I should point out however that in Japan manga is just a medium. It's widely understood that just as there are kids books and adult books, kids movies and adult movies, etc. that there are manga for kids and manga for adults.
"For years there's been a bias in Japan that anime is for kids and nerds."
Is this not true in the US? Because that's the impression I've always had of anime. I'm a bit of a "normie" and was once a sorority girl, for reference, and I always associated anime with the most out there group of extreme nerds at my high school. It's definitely grown in popularity since then but I wouldn't say it's really shed the nerdy image...
Out of Studio Ghibli's works, Totoro is probably the most "baby" of them, aside from maybe Ponyo. Very different from something like Spirited Away, or especially Princess Mononoke, which are absolutely more "adult" films.
I watched the original dub as a child in the early 90s on VHS and thus became a Miyazaki fan at a very young age. Adults might be a lot of the enthusiasts, but because some of us saw the films as kids.
Well, that, and it's 25 years old.
I mean anime in Japan is widely viewed as a medium for children and nerds.
my kids love those movies so much, and have since they were very little.
The new Puss in Boots was very high on enjoyment for my kids and their parents. We love Ghibli and Laika's films, and a few of Pixar's, but Puss in Boots: The Last Wish has a combo of great style, gonzo cartoon action and lots of laughs.
And I'll take more Banderas as Desperado/Zorro/Puss in Boots any day.
There being a lot of "utter garbage out there for kids", doesn't make merely average formulaic movies "masterpieces" though
Obviously clouded by youthful nostalgia here, but for me Toy Story through Wall-E really did feel like a golden age (Cars excepted). Something worth noting was that during this era there was a noticeable and often astonishing improvement in graphical quality with each movie, something that can't be recaptured now that we've hit a relative plateau in CGI quality.
I always find it amusing that Cars is considered the least of these films. My youngest son would watch it every day, given the opportunity from about age 6 to 8. Easily his favourite movie. It was actually made for kids, and for me, at least I get to hear Paul Newman's voice again.
I don’t disagree with you but I’d add Monsters Inc to the masterpiece list. That movie is funny as hell and the door chase at the end is thrilling. It’s my kid’s’ favorite.
Boo is honestly one of the most adorable child characters I've ever seen in a film.
Love your prose and POV on the world Freddie, but in terms of INSIDE OUT and the “Bing Bong” I think you genuinely got this one wrong and missed the OTHER half of the purpose of the character; and then, how it feeds back into the theme of the film. In terms of film and story structure his moment of enabling Joy to get back onto her mission back to HQ his act is one of sacrifice to and for the greater good - and love, that which all imaginary friends are created for. This moment is a wonderful example of the 2nd Act Midpoint, or “the Turn”, where Joy experiences for the first time the mixture of emotions that will come to dominate the rest of the film, as well as deeper emotional knowledge that an adult has, that a child does not: that with the good, comes the bad, and that is ok. Adult life is messy. Bing Bong’s act had this intention baked into it, and he too as a character was just as lost as everyone in the film is at that point. But HIS moment is transcendent (yes, I used that word) because he has genuine, bona fide purpose; and a deeper, adult meaning in his sacrifice to the girl’s and her emotions greater good. The death of the imaginary friend is both the literal and figurative start to becoming an adult, which the entire story is built around: growth and maturity; and that process really begins with his for-the-greater-good death that has a deeper meaning. A 180-degree reversal of the typical imaginary friend.
I’ve had friends say to me about certain great films after first viewing, “I love you, but I think you got it wrong about ______ film” and I too in turn would say this to you about INSIDE OUT.
Well said. Still don't think I agree.
It was somehow-too-perfect a turn, entering a form of uncanny valley of thematic writing. In my viewing, it destroyed the willingness to be manipulated so thoroughly.
Maybe if we had a reason to CARE about Bingbong; it's just some random plot device. Or maybe I'm too cynical.