The following review was written by Ultimate Rabbit correspondent, Tony Farinella.
I thought the first two “Magic Mike” films served two different purposes, but they were entertaining and fun in different ways. The first “Magic Mike,” directed by Steven Soderbergh, was more artistic and character driven. It was a good film with great performances and cinematography. In “Magic Mike XXL,” we got some comedic touches to the material, and it was a charming and fun journey. “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” features style but very little substance and almost none of the charm of the second film. Instead, we are left with a film which really serves no purpose. I really hope it is Magic Mike’s last dance because what else is left to explore with this franchise at this point?
Mike Lane (Channing Tatum) has fallen on hard times after his furniture business went under because of the pandemic. He is now a bartender in Miami and trying to keep a low profile. It’s not that he is ashamed of his past, it’s just that he is looking to leave it behind and move forward. While bartending, one of Mike’s former clients recognizes him, but she plays it cool because she is with her husband. This information gets passed onto Maxandra Mendoza (Salma Hayek Pinault) who offers him $6,000 for a dance. He initially asked for $60,000, but they were able to settle on $6,000. After he dances for her, she offers him a chance to earn that $60,000 in London, but she leaves out the details.
While in London, we discover Max is in the middle of a divorce and is now in possession of the Rattigan Theatre. She wants Mike to choreograph dance elements into “Isabel Ascende,” a play which was being run there before she arrived and shut it down. When Mike and Max come together, they come up with the idea of incorporating erotic dance into the production in a way which will spice things up around town. This, however, does not come without problems from her ex-husband, Roger (Alan Cox). Max believes Mike can find a way to put something magical out there, even if it is for only one night, as he really made an impression on her back in Miami with his dancing.
One of the biggest problems with this film is the fact it does not feature the previous crew of dancers such as Kevin Nash, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer and Adam Rodriguez. They are only shown here on a brief Zoom call, where Mike promises to get them their money back after the furniture business they invested in with him went out of business. The film was really missing their presence and chemistry together as a group. Overall, the film does have some great dance numbers, especially the one in the beginning between Mike and Max and some big numbers at the end. It is everything in the middle which just seems unnecessary and unimportant to the viewers.
I liked the chemistry between Tatum and Hayek Pinault. I wanted their relationship to develop more on screen from a character perspective instead of just being a physical attraction. I thought her personal assistant, Victor (Ayub Khan-Din), had some great one-liners and used his screen time wisely. More of his character would have been appreciated. Max’s adopted daughter, Zadie, played by Jemelia George in her first film role, also showed tremendous timing and screen presence. There is a genesis for an entertaining film here, but at nearly two hours long, it’s a real slog to sit through from start to finish. The first two films were better than I expected them to be, but this one is a drag. There is not a lot of enjoyment to be had here as this sequel is really flat and uninspired.
* * out of * * * *
Blu-ray Info: “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” is released on a two-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo pack from Warner Brothers Home Entertainment. It has a running time of 112 minutes and is rated R for sexual material and language. This combo pack comes with the Blu-ray, DVD, and a digital copy of the film as well.
Video Info: The 1080p High-Definition transfer looks really, really good here. I’ve always been a big fan of the look and feel of Steven Soderbergh’s films, and this is no exception here. It has a crisp, clear look, but it also knows when to light up during the dance numbers. This is a really, really good-looking Blu-ray.
Audio Info: The DTS-HD MA: English 5.1 audio transfer is also top notch with flawless sound. It also comes on the following audio formats: Dolby Digital: English Descriptive Audio, French, and Spanish. Subtitles are in English, French, and Spanish.
Special Features:
Magic Mike’s New Moves
Deleted Scene
Should You Buy It?
I understand they wanted to do something different with the third film. They took it to London and added Hayek Pinault. They had good intentions here. After all, this is Tatum’s baby, and he’s a producer on the film. However, they left behind the boys from the first two films, and they are such a big part of this franchise. They added the flavor and the fun factor. The film also takes itself too seriously with these voiceovers which come across as too self-important. There are good intentions here, as I mentioned, but the execution is very poor. There is no meat on the bone with the screenplay here. I did not feel like I knew any of the other dancers all that well, and I wanted to know more about Hayek Pinault’s character besides the fact she is getting divorced from a wealthy businessman. If this is on HBO one night, you can check it out. I would not go out of my way to see it or buy it.
**Disclaimer** I received a copy of this film from Warner Brothers to review for free. The opinions and statements in the review are mine and mine alone.
“Hot Fuzz” comes from the makers of “Shaun of The Dead,” one of the funniest comedies of the 2000’s. The great thing about that one is how it featured very well drawn our characters who we come to care about, and it makes the laughs all the heartier. Most spoofs and satires suck these days because they try too hard to make you laugh instead of playing it straight like the actors did in “Airplane!” Director Edgar Wright brings it back to this as it gives you characters to follow from start to finish while you laugh your ass off throughout.
“Hot Fuzz” proves to be every bit as hilarious as “Shaun of the Dead” as it mines genres for an infinite amount of glee while giving us characters to care about. This film’s main target is the Jerry Bruckheimer action movies of the 1990’s as well as others like “Point Break,” Silent Rage” and “Bad Boys II.” These films were also the target of the “South Park” creators when they made “Team America: World Police.” But while “Team America” held nothing back in its gleeful viciousness, this one is more well-intentioned and even funnier in the process.
“Hot Fuzz” stars Simon Pegg as Nicholas Angel, the best police officer in the London Metropolitan police force. Nicholas holds the record for the most arrests of any officer, but his superiors have decided to transfer him to the countryside. The problem is he is so good at his job that he has inadvertently made his fellow officers look bad in the process. This is bad for the department’s image, so they end up transferring him to Sanford, a town far off in the countryside where nothing much happens.
Sanford is a rather lax town where the police there easily look over such matters as underage drinking and shoplifting. Regardless of what they guilty have done, they don’t spend more than an hour in jail. Nicholas gets off to a quick start in a hilarious scene where he busts just about everyone in a bar because they are underage. But while he does the right thing, he also drives out the pub’s business. Whenever Nicholas does something right, being the stiff by-the-book officer he is, he ends up getting punished by doing the most menial duties an officer can do.
Along the way, he ends up getting partnered with an overweight and action film buff named Police Constable Danny Butterman. Played by Nick Frost, you could say he is playing the same character he portrayed “Shaun of The Dead,” but he is still hilarious here so, seriously, who cares? Danny romanticizes about living the life of action he sees in “Point Break” and “Bad Boys II.” When he meets Nicholas Angel, he believes Nicholas has come from a city where he has seen a similar kind of action. Nicholas, however, comes from a world where police work is nowhere as exciting and bombastic as it is in motion pictures. It’s serious work with very little action. That is, until several “accidents” end up occurring in Sanford which its residents are quick to easily dismiss. But Nicholas is too smart to pass these events off as accidents when it involves the value of the land and the fact that the evidence does not match up.
“Hot Fuzz” is an enjoyable movie throughout, and it never drags. Even the usher who introduced the movie to us when I saw it at Arclight Cinemas in Hollywood said it was the best thing playing there at that point. The usher was absolutely right as Wright and his cast and fellow filmmakers and actors prove to be more than up to giving us an endless barrage of laughs we can never get enough of.
What drives me nuts about movie comedies these days is you can see the jokes coming from a mile away, and this makes me constantly roll my eyes in severe frustration. Wright and company, on the other hand, give us unforgettably hilarious moments which sneak up on you when you least expect it. There are many movie references here which might have gone over the head of many in the audience. How well you can pick them out depends how big of a movie buff you are.
The most enjoyable part of “Hot Fuzz” for me was towards the end when everything turns into the bombastic and explosion filled action spectacular which is your typical Bruckheimer film. Everything blowing up around the characters, all the bad guys shooting guns and many bullets expended, but they somehow keep missing the good guys even when they have a scope on their rifles. Our heroes flying in the air while shooting their guns off like they somehow jumped into a John Woo movie. Seeing a lot of this was a huge kick and had me laughing endlessly. Completely over the top, and the movie does not take itself as seriously as Nicholas Angel takes himself as a police officer.
Of course, there are many other great performances here. Oscar winning actor Jim Broadbent plays Inspector Frank Butterman. He plays it with the kind of gleeful ease which has been on display in the many roles he has played before and after this one, let alone his scene-stealing turn in “Moulin Rouge” (“Like a Virgin” will never be the same).
One guy who is truly great here, and I was so glad to see him back in action after what feels like a long time, is Timothy Dalton. He of course is the short-lived successor to Roger Moore as James Bond, and one of the more underrated 007 actors if you ask me. He has one of the most comedically driest of roles here as Simon Skinner, whose guilt Nicholas can spot from miles and miles away while all the other police officers in town walk around with blinders over their eyes. The smirk on Dalton’s face is an image which stayed with me long after this film ended, and it makes me believe he would have given us a more well-rounded Bond in future installments had Pierce Brosnan not replaced him so soon.
As Nicholas Angel, Pegg plays a character who is very much the opposite of the one he played in “Shaun of The Dead.” He is a straight arrow here, one of the men who can’t help but have a huge stick up his rigid ass. For a while, it looked like he would be playing the same character over and over again after I saw him in “Mission Impossible III,” but he proved to us here that there is much more to him than what we had seen up to this point.
Steve Ashton of “The Ralph Report” was right, this film is full of a plethora of talented character actors. There’s Paddy Considine who does one of the best double takes here that I have ever seen any actor give. I first became consciously aware of Olivia Coleman when I watched her in “The Favourite,” but her appearance here as the sole female police officer in Sanford is probably the first thing I ever saw her in. and she is ever so delightful here. Then there is Martin Freeman who can play just about any character he wants to whether it is in this film or something like “Love Actually.” And as for Bill Nighy… Well, you can never go wrong with an actor like him.
Whether or not you think “Hot Fuzz” is better or worse than “Shaun of the Dead” or even “The World’s End” is irrelevant because it is a total blast from start to finish. The “Three Flavours Cornetto” trilogy has given us nothing but endless entertainment, and “Hot Fuzz” is merely one of several examples. Just remember this, when a character tells us “This shit just got real,” it has far more meaning here than it ever did in “Bad Boys II.”
WRITER’S NOTE: This is from a press day which took place in 2013.
With “About Time,” writer/director Richard Curtis once again proves that he is the master of making romantic movies. While romantic films are currently a dying breed in America, Curtis gives the genre a much-needed re-invigoration. This is the same man who wrote the screenplays for “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” and he also wrote and directed “Love Actually” which has become everyone’s favorite movie to watch at Christmastime. Curtis populates his films with characters we can all relate to, and he shows us how the simplest things in life can be so wonderful.
I got to meet up with Curtis when he appeared for the “About Time” press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, California, and he proved to be as charming and funny as many of the characters who inhabit his films. During the roundtable interview he talked about “About Time” differs from other romantic films, how he came to cast Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams, and why this will be his last movie as a director.
While these questions came from several reporters, I did take the time to put my name to the questions I asked Richard. You will find them eventually.
Question: Why did you not tear Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) and Mary (Rachel McAdams) apart in the middle of the movie only to bring them back together?
Richard Curtis: Well, I quite liked the idea in the film. There is a kind of habit in romantic films of getting people who hate each other when they meet; he’s a Nazi and she’s a member of the Socialist Worker’s Party (laughs), however will they fall in love? But most of us, when we bump into the people we are going to spend the rest of our life with, quite like them when we first meet them. I quite liked the idea that you could do something where people like each other, and then there was the time travel and then they liked each other again. I’m interested in if you can do it. I was writing about sort of a happiness in a funny way and writing about the interesting business of how things work rather than being really interested in the way things don’t work.
Q: Speaking of the time travel aspect, it’s something that people keep watching these movies for. They’re always keeping an eye out for the loophole or plot holes. Did that make it harder writing the script?
Richard Curtis: Look, you know you’re gonna fail, that’s the thing. I know where I failed in this so you just do your best and the people and the production keep you up to it, and anybody who spots anything that’s wrong will always say it to you because it’s a fun thing to spot when they’re reading the script. So, you know you’re getting closer to true without actually getting there, and it was fun to play with it. It’s also a thing where when you decide you’re going to do a time travel movie, it is something that is in your head as you’re walking around. The thing about not being able to go past the birth of your child was definitely the result of another conversation I was having with someone about how weird it is that you commit your entire life to people who you have no ability to choose, and then I thought that’s so true. And not only that, if I had sex four seconds later, I’d have a different child and then immediately I thought that would become a key plot point.
Q: This movie has two love stories in it. It has the father and son and it has the man and the woman. How were you able to find the balance so that one didn’t overshadow the other?
Richard Curtis: On the whole you try and rig films to make sure they turn out as you want them to turn out, but I think it seems as though perhaps the strength of the Bill Nighy story is more than I expected. It’s turned out to be more emotional than I expected, and I think that’s all down to the way Bill chose to play it. He chose to play it in such a sort of gentle way that I think, when you see the film, you can insert your own father into the space that Bill creates. Oddly enough, this film is in some ways less manipulative. If you’re doing a movie that ends in a big kiss and a romance, your kind of playing the cards all the way through to try and get the maximum emotion at the end. In this one I always knew that I was always aiming for this bizarrely simple final moment which was just gonna be a guy doing the most banal things in the course of an ordinary day. So, I didn’t think so much about the dynamics of the film, perhaps I have in others. But one of the ways of doing it was by getting them to get married halfway through, so that film’s done and there’s another film to rely on.
Q: Has it affected sort of the carpe diem qualities, or is that something you practiced before you started writing the script?
Richard Curtis: No. Oddly enough I think, and Bill and I talk about, because I’ve done the movie, I am thinking about that a lot more, I really am. My girlfriend, who never makes any concessions to me, says I always work far too hard and I always think that I’m not working as hard as I used to and always am. But even she is saying that she’s noticed that I seem to be creating more space and enjoying things a little bit more and making more time for normal things. So that’s why I have said I am not going to direct another film because I think that directing a movie is not a good way to have a happy life.
Q: Is that a Steven Soderbergh promise or are you just gonna keep coming back?
Richard Curtis: Anyone who says that, Steven is their hero because it means you can change your mind. It is becoming a great tradition; the great heroes like Jay-Z, doesn’t he resign? If I come back, I’m part of a noble tradition, but that is my intention at the moment.
Q: Can you talk about Comic Relief and how that came to you at a young age?
Richard Curtis: Wow, do other people know about that side of my life? Well, it started off by an almost comical mistake in that a girl I know asked if I would like to go with her to Africa, and I just said I would go to keep her company and then the charities decided to send us to different countries. They said we would cover more ground, so that was a mistake. So, I was in Ethiopia at a very bad time and that could not but change my life. That’s something I have to carry. We did a stage show and then we did a TV show, and the TV show made so much more money than was expected that I couldn’t not do it again, and I have just gone on doing it. Every time we do it, we make more money than I will earn in my entire career. I think of it as my difficult child, it takes exactly half my time, it changes its nature so I now, and after doing it now for 25 years I got a feeling that the money we’ve raised might be less important than the education or part of it. Kids in England have always grown up knowing a lot about poverty in Africa and problems at home, and that educational thing may have actually turned out to be the function of it. The next thing I’m doing is doing a year and a half trying to be part of making the new declaration by the United Nations in 2015 to end poverty, so it’s a never-ending big subject. I think the way it’s bounced off on my career is that I haven’t written my seven bad films. I do think a lot of times when people, when they finish the thing, say have I got any other ideas whereas I’m always a year behind. I thought of this film in 2005, and then I chose to do the pirate movie (“Pirate Radio”) because I wanted to be a bit older by the time I made it. It’s actually given me breathing time and let things stew longer, so I always believe quite a lot in the projects I do by the time I get to them.
Q: Fighting poverty seems like an even bigger challenge now with the gap between the rich and poor growing bigger and bigger. Do you feel sometimes like it’s a never-ending battle and how we are going to do this?
Richard Curtis: Well, you have to be realistic about that. Actually, statistically speaking, the lives of the very poorest people on the planet have never gotten better quicker than in the last 15 years. It’s been extraordinary so I’m paying more attention to that. But the rich and poor inside countries, I’d just think it increases your responsibility to try and make sure that people like me who do live in the bubble of comfort are really aware of how peoples’ lives are at the other end of the scale. I made all my children watch a documentary called “Poor Kids” the other day. It’s just a really brilliant, very sweet-natured documentary about four really poor kids in the UK, and they literally could not believe what they saw and that increases the desire to communicate this.
Q: You also focus a lot on the joy of real people like with the Heathrow Airport scenes in “Love Actually,” and then there are scenes in “About Time” that look like they had regular people in them. Where did you find those people?
Richard Curtis: Well with “Love Actually” we put up a little black box with curtains in Heathrow and just filmed and then sent assistants rushing around and saying do you mind signing this release. It’s very weird, you haven’t seen your mom for 17 years and somebody’s saying we’ve just filmed you crying embarrassingly. The strange thing is when we edited that, over half of what I wanted in that sequence I couldn’t use because it turned out we hadn’t got the permissions. The bit at the end of this one was sort of the same thing. Quite a lot of it was sort of staged. There are some things that weren’t. Most of that was directed by my girlfriend. That was the weird thing. It was the final day of the shoot. I woke up and I was in the most astonishing pain. I thought I had kidney stones or whatever, and she leapt out of bed in the highest of spirits and said she would ring a doctor on the way to the set (laughs). Some of the loveliest images there were got by her which I think sort of shows because she is full of an energy and joy about her. It was interesting how ordinary those images had to be. I didn’t shoot them at the beginning, so I didn’t quite know how it was going to end. When I thought that I would end with a series of just normal images, I took a film by a friend of mine called Kevin McDonald called “Life in a Day” which is a movie he made about YouTube, and I cut like ten favorite images from that in and showed that to friends and it was a disaster because they were good. They were so definitive, so beautiful, so picturesque, and everyone said the movie’s all been about ordinariness and you can’t then say that every day is a beautiful sunset and every day is an astonishing child framed perfectly in a window in Milan. So, I did try and keep those end bits as sort of banal as they could be, but still joyful.
Ben Kenber: “Love Actually” is my family’s favorite movie to watch every Christmas Eve. I love it too but I’m always hoping we can add “Bad Santa” as a double feature though.
Richard Curtis: Lauren Graham’s in “Bad Santa!” I love her!
Ben Kenber: I’m not usually a big fan of romantic movies, but what I love about your movies is that the people and what they go through feels so real and relatable. A lot of American romantic films are manipulative but your films never feel like they are. Your movies touch on issues that most other filmmakers don’t really take seriously.
Richard Curtis: Well, thank you very much. I don’t have an answer for that, but don’t down American filmmakers because I think there’s a kind of feeling that romantic films may not be in a good place at the moment. “(500) Days of Summer” I thought was an incredible movie, “Like Crazy” is an amazing movie about love, and “Lost in Translation” is the greatest ever romantic comedy even though it’s not a romantic comedy. I’ve been looking back because I’m thinking about finishing and thinking why did I write all these films on this subject and then suddenly realizing it is because it is the context of my life and what matters to me. How your family treats you, who you love, how you get on with your kids and your friends are what fills most of your emotional time, and I’m just trying to hang on to that and write about normal things because I never, never bump into serial killers.
Q: A lot of people don’t seem to realize that “Love Actually” is a Christmas movie because the holiday gets so pushed into the background.
Richard Curtis: I think the funny thing about “Love Actually” is the casting is now out of whack. Originally it was 50% well known and 50% not, and now the naked guy is in “The Hobbit,” January Jones is Betty Draper on “Mad Men,” and even the boy is now in “Game of Thrones.” Liam Neeson is the greatest action hero in the world and Andrew Lincoln is on “The Walking Dead,” so it’s a hell of a cast now.
Q: You are obviously a believer in love. Do you have thoughts on marriage?
Richard Curtis: Well in a way “Four Weddings and a Funeral” was a long way of explaining to my mum why I wasn’t married. She always found it hard to accept. I haven’t gotten married for particular, peculiar reasons, but I’m sure that marriage is a wonderful thing.
Q: You make great use of music and songs in your movies. Can you give us an insight into what your playlists are?
Richard Curtis: Well, the insight I would say is that I really do have to use music in order to get through the process of writing. It really is part of me learning what I’m trying to do, and sometimes that takes very specific forms. When I handed this movie in, it said on the front cover “About Time” or “The Luckiest” or “Golden Lapels.” I thought about those two so much and was so sure I was going to use them, and I thought I might even name the movie after them. So, in this movie, all the cues were there as I was writing and helped me write the right scenes and work out what I wanted to say. There’s a version of “Downtown Train,” a Tom Waits song, by Everything But The Girl, an English group which was all I listened to while I was writing “Notting Hill.” That was all I was trying to do in the whole of that movie was reproduce the emotional temperature of that song which I knew could not be in the movie, but it was my sort of guide. And then I just use pop music to cheer me up, so I got different playlists on my computer. I’m trying to make my tastes more modern. My sons are pushing me hard in that direction. My 16-year-old says he can’t listen to traditional pop music anymore because the lyrics of the songs he listens to by people like Jay-Z are so much better than normal pop songs. Normal pop songs are so thin and so repetitive, he says, that he can’t listen to them anymore.
Q: The scene in the underground subway station is one of the best in this movie. Your use of music in all your movies is great.
Richard Curtis: Well, thank you. That was a really interesting day because sometimes you hope something works but you don’t know how. I couldn’t work out as I was shooting it how it was going to be possible to edit it because he’s always going to be singing the wrong words of the song. It was never going to be correctly timed so I just shot all night and hoped the editor could work it out, and the editor said there was no problem when we got to it.
Q: Can you talk about casting the two main parts? How did that come about?
Richard Curtis: There are completely different ways that casting works. My friend, Mike Newell, said to me, “When the movie is cast, the movie is made.” He was extraordinary when we were casting Vicar #3 in “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” The guy came in and Mike said, “So tell him about Vicar #3,” and I said, “Well the leading character is trying to decide whether to get married and the vicar comes in and…” And Mike said, “No, no, tell me why did he join the church” (laughs). That level of detail and three dimensionality, I think that casting is hugely important. Rachel, having always loved her work and having picked up a sort of vibe about her as a human being and being very interested in this part about sort of contentment and in the idea of going from someone you meet on the first date and, by the end of the film, she is the mother of three, was based on trust and faith and things that she had seen and things I had also heard about her from the people who had worked with her. Domhnall on the other hand was seen as one of the top 25 young actors in the country, and I saw lots of them as often happens when I audition. Unless it’s the right actor, there doesn’t seem to be anything there at all. That was very much the case with the sister’s part until we found Lydia Wilson. It seemed as though there wasn’t anything there, and then we got Lydia with all her complicated emotions and Domhnall instantly made it funny which is absolutely key because he’s actually interested in comedy. So many young actors, you know, aren’t. They’re actually trying not to be funny and they’re trying to make people take them more seriously and think them cool or attractive, and he was really happy to be stupid and loving. He’s a lovely actor and a very sweet man. It was complicated because he was wearing his “Anna Karenina” beard so he looked like he’d stumbled out of the woods in “Deliverance” (laughs). The beard looked great if you’re wearing a military uniform, but if you’re wearing a t-shirt and jeans you look like you’re too fond of farmyard animals. It was a real act of faith, and then I made him do a whole day on camera, still with the beard, actually acting out the part and stuff. So, he worked very hard for it and was then sort of perfect.
Q: There’s a lot of Hugh Grant in Domhnall’s role, sort of like the younger version of him in “Notting Hill.” Was there any kind of connection made there?
Richard Curtis: I wasn’t aiming for Hugh at all. It’s obviously a voice that comes out when I write that part. I actually voted against Hugh in “Four Weddings and a Funeral” when it came down to it and I was, thank God, defeated 2 to 1 because Hugh was brilliant. But I think there’s something about Domhnall that’s much closer to my original inspiration when I started writing films. I was really inspired by “Gregory’s Girl,” “Breaking Away,” “Diner” and the guys in that except Mickey Rourke, and Woody Allen really. I was always looking for awkward, normal people, and I think when you first sit down with him at the party you don’t think that he’s the guy. You think he’ll be lucky to ever get a girlfriend. I like that side of him whereas with Hugh, girls would like him.
“About Time” is available to own and rent on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital. Please feel free to check out some other “About Time” interviews I covered for the website We Got This Covered by clicking on the names below:
“Christopher Robin” has been compared by many to Steven Spielberg’s “Hook” even before its release. Truth be told, this comparison holds a lot of weight as both films deal with characters we were introduced to as children who have since grown up and left behind the imaginary worlds they reveled in. Both get married and become parents, and we catch up with them as they have long since become consumed by their jobs at the expense of everything else. The question is, can they rediscover the innocence and wonder they once had? We go into these movies knowing the answer will be yes, but we how long will it take? In the case of “Christopher Robin,” this man is quicker than Peter Pan to do so, and this makes the film fare better than “Hook.”
The movie starts off with young Christopher (played by Orton O’Brien) being given a going away party by his furry friends in the 100 Acre Wood as he is about to head off to boarding school. Among his friends is, of course, Winnie-the-Pooh whom he promises never to forget about once he goes away. But as the opening credits unfold, we see Christopher being molded into what society expects of him. Seeing a teacher slam her ruler on his desk quickly brought to mind the lyrics of a certain Pink Floyd song (“we don’t need no education…”). Even worse, he loses his dad much sooner than anyone should, and this forces him to grow up much quicker as he is now considered to be the man of the house. And there is the sequence of him as a soldier on the battlefield, and while it does not include any exploding limbs a la “Hacksaw Ridge” (it’s a Disney film after all), we are shown enough to be convinced Christopher has seen his share of brutal combat.
When we catch up with Christopher as an adult (played by Ewan McGregor), he is married to the lovely Evelyn (Hayley Atwell), father to Madeline (Bronte Carmichael), and an employee at Winslow Luggages. It is no surprise to see he has long since become consumed by work as he makes the mistake of telling his boss, “I’ll do anything for this company.” Now this is something I have long since learned never to tell any employer as they will be quick to blackmail you emotionally, and this is compounded by Christopher’s co-workers constantly living in fear of unemployment. As a result, Christopher is forced to cancel his trip into the country with his family, and they do not even try to hide their disappointment to where Evelyn flat out tells him, “I haven’t seen you laugh in years.” Christopher ends up all alone, that is, until Pooh arrives in London seeking his helps. Pooh has lost all his friends in the 100 Acre Wood, and the two go on a journey which serves to save both of them from a world without love and imagination.
“Christopher Robin” is at its best whenever McGregor and Pooh bear share the screen together. Unforgettably voiced by Jim Cummings, the “silly old bear” remains one of the most lovable creations in literature as he keeps saying he doesn’t have much of a brain, but he proves to be full of Yoda-like wisdom throughout. Instead of being animated this time out, Pooh and his friends are brought to life through CGI effects to more closely resemble the actual toys A.A. Milne owned all those years ago. But as amazing as the effects are, it is Cummings who gives Pooh his heart and soul as he professes to Christopher how “doing nothing often leads to the very best kind of something.”
When it comes to the other furry friends from the 100 Acre Wood, some get more screen time than others like Tigger and Eeyore. Those who know me best know I am a die-hard Eeyore fan, and just as with the animated “Winnie-the-Pooh,” the infinitely depressed donkey steals the show thanks in large part to the vocal talents of Brad Garrett who gives Sam Elliott a run for his money in the baritone department. Eeyore has always been a wonderful supporting character in Milne’s stories as he marches on despite his gloomy state of mind, and Garrett makes him a source of incredibly dry humor throughout. Now if only Eeyore could get his own movie…
Directing “Christopher Robin” is Marc Foster, who at first seemed like an odd choice for this material. Foster previously gave us the devastating “Monster’s Ball,” the James Bond adventure “Quantum of Solace,” the Brad Pitt zombie movie “World War Z,” and “Machine Gun Preacher” (the title says it all). Perhaps it was his film “Finding Neverland” which snagged him the job as that one was about J. M. Barrie and his relationship with a family who inspired him to create “Peter Pan.” Like J.M. Barrie, Christopher is shown here to be a lost soul who needs to regain his sense of wonder before he becomes just another corporate drone. Foster navigates Christopher’s journeys through worlds real and imagined to where we are eager to see regain his sense of wonder, and he looks to remind us of the child within ourselves who hopefully has not been obliterated by society.
Along with cinematographer Matthias Koenigswieser, Foster gives “Christopher Robin” a rather bleak look which recalls the dirty visuals Spielberg gave “Hook” as the imagined world of 100 Acre Wood proves to be vert foggy and not as inviting as it once was. It’s like “Return to Oz” in which Dorothy travels back to the magical world she left behind, only to find the yellow brick road has been ravaged to where you wonder if it will ever be put back together again. Part of me wishes the filmmakers had worked a little harder to balance out the different worlds Christopher and his friends travel in an out of as this movie looks a little bleaker than it needs to. In the process of delving into Christopher’s life in the city as an adult, it threatens to provide more muted colors than luminous ones.
The story hits all the beats you would expect it to as, like “Hook,” we have a good idea of how things will end up. We know Christopher will eventually come to see how his family is a far more precious commodity than anything else, and things are resolved in ways which are not completely satisfying. Granted, Disney would never be quick to allow Foster or anyone else to make “Christopher Robin” a tragic tale of a man who discovers too late what he had after losing everything to where he becomes a real-life Eeyore. Plus, there’s all the merchandising to think about. But for what it’s worth, the performances by McGregor, Atwell and Carmichael succeed in keeping this motion picture from becoming an exercise in shameless manipulation. The cast, whether they are acting or voicing their characters, more than rise to the occasion to where the human element of this movie is never lost.
“Christopher Robin” pales in comparison to “Goodbye Christopher Robin,” one of the more underrated films from 2017. Granted, the latter is more of a biographical film as it deals with the real life A.A. Milne and of how he inadvertently robbed his son of his childhood, but the balance between the real world and imagination felt much stronger in that one. Still, I enjoyed “Christopher Robin” for what it was, and seeing Pooh, Eeyore and Tigger brought to life through CGI made this all the worthwhile for me. When it comes down to it, the moments Christopher shares with his cuddly friends really warmed my heart. While some let the child within them die, you have to admire those who succeed in keeping that part of themselves alive as it is never easy.
While watching “Christopher Robin,” I was reminded of what Stephen Rea said in Neil Jordon’s “The Crying Game:”
“When I was a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
Here’s hoping we never put away those childish things away permanently, Oh, and by the way, adults carrying stuffed animals is not a sign of mental illness. Trust me, I have been proving this wrong for years.
The Ultimate Rabbit 