REVIEW: “Happy Feet 2” “Breaking Dawn: Part One” “Tomboy”

‘Happy Feet 2’

The first “Happy Feet” movie was painful enough for me to watch, partly because my sister was obsessed with penguins at the time — so I was already on penguin overload — and partly because it was just a huge disappointment.

Let’s just say it was far less amusing than I had hoped it would be. And hiring Hugh Jackman to be in an animated movie is like hiring him to read to the blind. Can you say missed opportunity?

If the rule of sequels applies — and I am almost certain that it will, especially since this movie has fallen into the classic Disney trap of basing the sequel around the original main character’s child — “Happy Feet 2” will be even more excruciating.

This is partly because every time the trailer comes on, the blaring music and bright colors put me on sensory overload, and partly because Robin Williams is still involved. From what I can tell from the trailer, the plot is OK, then again I have no idea what’s happening in the plot based on the trailer.

As much as I sneer at this poor attempt to capitalize on a movie unworthy of a sequel that surely promises scores of merchandise just in time for Christmas, I do enjoy the occasional animated baby penguin as much as the next guy, just not enough to fork out 10 bucks for a movie ticket.

I pre-emptively roll my eyes at this movie.  

– m.van911@aggiemail.usu.edu

‘Breaking Dawn: Part One’

“Breaking Dawn: Part One” is the fourth installment of the successful “Twilight” series. I’ll call it part 4A, since like “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows,” it has been divided into two installments for the cinema.

The current installment features the culmination of three movies worth of fantasy-love-triangle buildup in which Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), the human female protagonist, weds her vampire love interest Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), much to the chagrin of Team Jacob — the real-life fans of Miss Swan’s secondary love interest and werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner).

As the will they or won’t they of Swan’s romance with her un-dead beau is finally put to rest, her pregnancy breeds new mutiny between Black’s pack, the Quileute — named for an actual Native American tribe, which the pack is a part of in the Stephanie Myer fiction the movie is based on — and a vampire coven known as the Volturi — an Italian coven charged with enforcing vampiric secrecy.

There may be some validity to the complaints found online the series promotes abusive relationships, but to pre-emptively hate this movie based on those might be akin to calling Harry Potter a manual on witchcraft and sorcery.

Thus, I pre-emptively hate this film for pulling a page from the aforementioned series and dividing the final book into two suspense-building, inevitable-prolonging, cash-cow finales.

 – cody.g@aggiemail.usu.edu

‘Tomboy’

I wish I knew French.

This film is about a family who recently moved to a new city, and it’s in French. The family has two daughters, the older of which looks about 10 years old with short hair and a flat chest.

Lots of people re-invent themselves when going to a new place, but this 10-year-old pretends to be a boy in the new city, which enables her to participate in games of shirts and skins.

The trailer shows this girl interacting with new friends who are boys and one new friend who is a girl. She seems like she fits in well and seems happy, but viewers get the gist that she’s keeping this secret from her family and keeping the secret of her real identity from her friends.

    As the trailer continues, one of her new boy friends sees her going to the bathroom in the woods. You want to know what he’ll say or do. Later, you see her mother crying, which makes you wonder even more.

Why does this little girl want to be a boy? Does she like other girls? Why does she feel she has to hide it from her family? How long does the family intend on staying in that city? Can she keep up the act until they leave? What would happen if everyone found out? How could this affect the rest of her life? And why don’t I speak French?

This movie is one that really piques my interest, because it’s about something that is not apparent on the surface. It’s about something that’s deep — a desire for acceptance, a place to belong, and attempting the forbidden. The trailer leaves me wanting more, in a good way. I am pre-emptively and extremely intrigued by this movie.

– m.noble@aggiemail.usu.edu