“Toy Story 3” vs. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”

Hello dahhhhhlinks.

Since this review is a double-header, it’ll be longer than usual.  I don’t have a ton to report on the psych front, so that’s all the better.  This post will be solely devoted to cinema.

For some time now, I’ve (perhaps insufferably) vowed to only let my (hypothetical) children watch Wallace and Gromit, Miyazaki, and Pixar movies.  This commitment deliberately excludes all non-Pixar Disney movies from the (hypothetical) child viewing menu.  When I attended a double-feature of “Toy Story 3” (2010) and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (2010) at a drive-in theater this week, I stood reaffirmed in my hard-assed non-Pixar anti-Disneyism.

In the grand Pixar tradition, “Toy Story 3” is both comfortably and surprisingly wonderful—comfortable in that it is fresh, lovely, genuine cinematic gold in a way all Pixar movies are, and surprising in that creating a third chapter of a winning franchise that stands up to the original is an almost unattainable feat, if you take the pool of other “Whatever Movie 3’s” as any indicator.  The first “Toy Story” was released in 1995, with the second installment arriving in theaters in 1999.  The 11 years it took to complete the current chapter in the “Toy Story” saga may seem excessive, but are actually commendable: It is clear that Pixar resisted the urge to rush to meet the significant demand for another installment of this highly successful series of films, and instead gave this movie its due time to percolate, develop, and be lovingly, beautifully animated with a finesse of which only they appear capable.  This film is emotionally rich and skillfully told, and stands as proof that Pixar is truly peerless in the world of computer-generated animation.   If they needed 11 years to make this fabulous movie, it was time well spent.

Another thing (of many) I love about Pixar is that they endeavor to make movies for families that are truly, uncompromisingly appropriate for children.  Their films stand as a testament to the fact that thoughtful, funny, and interesting movies can be made for kids that are nevertheless thoroughly enjoyable for adults—no stupid, cliché, poorly-veiled scatological or sexual jokes necessary.  Not only do I rarely find those nods to the grown-ups in the audience amusing, I also find them insulting to the intelligence of children.  While most kids may not completely *understand* those jokes, I wouldn’t be surprised if a good number of them are aware that *something* was just said that was expected to go over their heads.  Much like parents talking about “grown-up things” in front of their kids as if the younger people in the room didn’t have ears attached to their heads, I find this underestimation of the awareness of children obnoxious.  It’s rude to make inside jokes during a conversation and not make sure everyone present understands what you’re talking about—why is it any better to do that to kids in a movie that’s supposed to be for them?  In summary: I appreciate that Pixar lets kids’ movies be truly kids’ movies.   If you want “adult” humor, go see a Will Ferrell movie.  Or something.

(Caveat: I only very vaguely remember what appeared to be an attempt at an “ass” joke (as in alluding to the word “ass” by over-emphasizing the first syllable in a word like “assume” or maybe “ascot”), but I could have been imagining things.   If I wasn’t, I think it’s appropriate to give them a pass(ssssssss.... heh) given Pixar’s otherwise exemplary record of child-friendliness.)

Spoiler alert (this paragraph only): One particular part of “Toy Story 3” I personally appreciated was also the scariest.  After an almost-successfully escape from the horrifying Sunnyside Day Care, our little band of heroes is trapped in a garbage truck, deposited at the city dump, run down a conveyor belt of burnable trash, and dumped into an incinerator.  After running, clinging, and climbing in a failed effort to elude their own destruction, Jessie turns to Buzz, desperate for a solution, and asks, “What do we do??” His response took my breath away.  Wearily aware of their looming demise, he wordlessly reaches for her hand, accepting their destiny—and in so doing, showing her they don’t have to die scared or alone.   Following his cue, everyone reaches out to their nearest friends to take their hands and meet their end together.  This scene showed a depth of maturity and dignity in confronting death that I’ve seen far too rarely—a truly Zen moment.  It may have been a bit heavy for a children’s movie, but that is precisely what made me so proud that it was included in the film.   I think introducing people to the idea early in life that they can meet death consciously and calmly is a really beautiful act.

Finally, while I truly did love this movie, I was somewhat disappointed in one element of the story.  I know the lion’s share of this post is seemingly devoted to cementing my reputation as an overly analytical hard-ass, but I can’t help it: my progressive eyeballs are ever-watching, ever-searching for something to be annoyed about. In this case, I was annoyed with the ridiculing of Ken.  I thought the Ken-Barbie love story was hilarious and definitely giggled over the dress-up sequence (and subsequent interrogation sequence), but was still put off by how he was ridiculed by other characters for being non-gender stereotype conforming.  To be clear, I don’t think the treatment of his character should be interpreted as gay-bashing.  They paired him with a girl toy, so clearly Ken isn’t gay.  It has, however, been posited that many hate crimes (and other less violent acts of discrimination) committed against gay people are overreactions to a victim’s refusal to conform to gender stereotypes, so in a way this is a gay rights issue.  It’s also an issue within the gay community—as Dan Savage discusses with his usual fabulousness in the "Sissies" episode of This American Life.  That’s not quite the situation in this case, though.  I don’t like that a male character in a kids’ movie gets mocked simply because he likes clothes or has nice penmanship—in other words, because he acts “like a girl” (or, like “a girl’s toy”).  Overly rigid gender roles don’t serve men *or* women, so I wish they would’ve lightened up a little on the girly-man bashing.

Other than that, “Toy Story 3” is brilliant.  I gave it a 5.

Then I saw “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”.  God help me.

This movie embodies almost everything I utterly loathe about conventional Disney movies.  In saying that, a little background in my rejection of the movies of my childhood:

Look, who am I kidding?  I *loved* Disney movies when I was little.   Loved them.  I have very clear memories of waiting for “The Little Mermaid” (1989) to come out on VHS when I was in preschool, and pretending to be Ariel while swimming in our pool.  I had Aladdin and Princess Jasmine Barbie dolls and played with them all the time.  I’m not arguing that these movies don’t have powerful appeal for children.  Even so, I know my daydreams about being swept away by some rescuing dude as a too-young-for-those-kinds-of-daydreams girl are largely the responsibility of those movies.  There are some seriously damnable messages about romantic relationships and gender roles in Disney movies, and they’re so consistently present in most of them it makes me want to tear my hair out.  For the most part, women in Disney movies have three settings: helpless underage waifs, menopausal evil stepmother/witch hybrids, or plump and dotty old fairy godmothers.  The picture for men is better, but only slightly.

“The Little Mermaid” was roundly destroyed for me during a course on women in film in the spring of my senior year of college, when my professor asked us, “What’s the name of the movie?”  When we responded, she queried, “And who kills Ursula?”  When we warily answered correctly that Prince Eric killed the evil [menopausal] sea witch, she said, solemnly, “Right.   The Little Mermaid is at the bottom of a swirling vortex, utterly powerless, and the prince kills the bad guy.  Ariel isn’t even the hero in HER OWN MOVIE.”

I had nursed my feminist grudge against Disney for years before I took that class, but never had things snapped so clearly into focus.  Ariel doesn’t kill Ursula.  Not only does she not kill Ursula, but at an absurdly young 16, she “falls in love” with a guy she’s *never even met*, and subsequently makes a deal with Ursula whose outcome will be either that she runs away with Eric and *never sees her family again* (again, at age 16), OR she’ll become one of those little sad wormy things in Ursula’s hellish garden.  And she TAKES THE DEAL.  What kind of message does that send little girls?  Whatever happened to Option C: give Ursula the finger, go home, and I don’t know, finish high school??

Furthermore: Ariel has to get Eric to fall in love with her without her *voice*.  She must rely solely on her beauty to secure his affections.  Snow White and Sleeping Beauty aren’t even *conscious* when their respective princes fall in love with them.  Sleeping Beauty doesn’t even have a real name for Christsakes—she is literally defined by her appearance.  These movies are populated by young women whose only apparent joy is getting douchebags who only care about their attractiveness to love them, and who are so roundly robbed of their agency that they can’t even talk or *move*, let alone rescue themselves.  It’s nauseating, and it’s definitely not that kind of bullshit I want rolling around in the head of any daughter of mine—certainly not without a serious post-viewing debriefing.

These were precisely some of the issues at play in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” that made me insane. Don’t worry, there were others too: as a result, I gave the movie a 1.  Not just because of the theoretical/political/whatever issues I’ll elaborate upon shortly, but also because the lead character was annoying to listen to, the story was lame and predictable, and the dialogue was insultingly tired, cliché, and not-in-the-good-way groan-inducing.  This is one of those movies where I sat watching and wondered, Seriously, if the screenwriter clearly didn’t care about this movie, why should the audience?

Beyond all that, I had my first facepalm of the movie when the main character ran into his love interest before beginning a physics lecture for a class she is enrolled in.  After reacquainting themselves, she promptly admits that she doesn’t “get” physics—she loves MUSIC.

Sighhhhhhhhhhhhh

No offense meant to music, but as someone who knows blonde physics majors thank you very much, I could’ve done without the stereotypical hot blonde chick whose sweet little brain just doesn’t get along with SCIENCE and NUMBERS.  To make matters worse, she inexplicably appears to fall for our “hero” in spite of his painful social maladroitness and creepy apparent obsession with her.  She notices him stalkerishly peering at her through a cafe window while she hangs out with her friends, and instead of reaching for her mace, she *follows him to the dark roof of some rando skyscraper in spite of being afraid of heights*.  Later in the film, she risks her life moving a satellite dish on another rando skyscraper’s roof to divert an evil beam of ectoplasm (or something less cool) that she *can’t even see* because the dude *swears* he can see it—all after something like three dates.  And when he successfully vanquishes the [menopausal] supreme-o villainess, she TOTALLY agrees to be his girlfriend.

Sigh againnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

There were also other varieties of irritating crap.  First of all, the villains of the film are all either ethnic minorities with annoying accents or women, while the heroes are white American dudes (and not even cute ones).  The film’s apparent racism reaches insane levels when the dude who mugs the hero and his blonde love interest is, of course, a Black guy, and even the poor student/secretary who gets Jedi mind tricked by one of the villains is Indian.  It started to feel like the casting director selected racial and gender minorities for all of these roles without even *thinking* about how offensive and implicitly racist/sexist those decisions were.  I found myself wondering if Disney is aware of WHAT YEAR THIS IS, and also wondered if we can SERIOUSLY please move past this race and gender stereotyping bullshit now?

It’s incredibly, potently tiresome.  Especially displayed side-by-side with the much-needed nuance and substance of “Toy Story 3,” I honestly can’t wrap my head around the fact that the same company released these two films.  In THE SAME YEAR.  How is this possible??  Why does Disney persist in peddling this tired, cliché crap when they (or at least their subsidiary) is capable of repeatedly producing truly wonderful cinema of an entirely higher echelon AND making money while doing it?

According to Box Office Mojo, “Toy Story 3” made $110,307,189 on its opening weekend, immediately recouping more than half the cost of making the movie ($200 million).  “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” made a pathetic-by-comparison $17,619,622 upon its opening, and cost $150 million to make (ouch).  The total box office earnings to date for Pixar’s film have far exceeded the expenditures necessary to make it, which is not yet the case for “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”.  In fairness, latter film was released much more recently than its Pixar counterpart.  Even so, I think it’s fair to project it will be nowhere near as profitable as “Toy Story 3”.

This begs the question: WHY does Disney make this shit??  We know they can make good movies.  We know they can make film that is nourishing, smart, funny, progressive, and emotionally gratifying, that brings people together more than it drives them apart, that is free of saccharine, stereotypes, terrible dialogue and tired plots, and we know that the higher-quality films are *profitable*--arguably more so than the alternative garbage.  Why then, in the name of all that is holy, are they subjecting us to this tripe when it doesn’t even benefit them, let alone their audience?

God only knows.  But I’ll continue to vote with my box office purchases.  And until something changes, so will my [hypothetical] kids.

<3

"Obsessed" with Actually Getting Some Work Done

Hello beloved friends/strangers who might be reading this:

Here goes my attempt a preliminary posting.

So I’ve been home (the where-my-family-lives version) for the last week, and promptly after arriving got the final assignments (somewhat belatedly) for four papers for a summer course I took in hyper-condensed form in May.  The assignments were sent out on June 19th, and they’re due on the 30th.  Usually I'm pretty proud of my writing, but unfortunately given the time contstraints I do not anticipate these papers being my best work.

...In any event, this may give you an indication of whether I’ve done any work on my Master’s lately.

Anyway.

Before leaving for home, I went on a Netflix View Instantly binge.   Among other things, I watched “Obsessed” (2009), starring the fabulous Beyoncé.

Um.... yeah.  Well, I gave it a 1, if that’s any indication of how well that went...

Let’s be honest.  I watched this movie because Beyoncé is both hot and (maybe?) vying to be the next Pam Grier, and with that knowledge I wanted to see the chickfight scene at the end because I knew it’d be amazing.  And it was.   But I also felt like I had to shower after watching the movie, so it was kind of a net negative.

Basically, as far as I can tell, “Obsessed” is an updated version of “Fatal Attraction,” except with the protagonist couple cast African American instead of white.  I was hoping that would make for an interesting twist on an otherwise well-worn tale (much like the incredible performance of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” I saw in New Jersey a year or two ago, where the Loman family was African American and the supporting cast was white—not a word of the script was changed, but it added a wonderful new dimension to the story).

Yeah that didn’t happen.  This story is just as banal as it ever was, Beyoncé as would-be jilted wife or no.  The movie is so painfully predictable I started fast-forwarding through the brooding/foreboding husband-driving-places/seductive-villainess-plotting/etc. sequences just so the whole thing would end sooner.

To top it off, my hopes for some glimmer of thoughtful contemplation of race and/or class relations in this miserable little tale were cruelly dashed.  To the contrary, instead of a refreshing, nuanced portrayal of one minority group, the film merely resorted to stereotyping and scapegoating another: the male protagonist, a high-powered executive played by Idris Elba (who I already have mixed feelings about because he was mean to Jim in “the Office”), has a male secretary who is very flamboyantly gay.  Idris calls him a “lady” and everything, he’s *so* officially gay (because all gay men would go for that treatment from a superior in the workplace, right??).  This character unwittingly enables the evil temptress in her evil evil plotting by funneling her gossip about her love interest, helping her successfully invade and almost destroy Elba’s life, all because the secretary is incapable of keeping his mouth shut after being plied with “a few cosmos.”

Sighhhhhhhhhhh.

So let’s get this straight (no pun intended): While *I* was eagerly searching for a hidden progressive discussion of race in this movie, the filmmakers instead switched out what was historically an African American character (the silly, flamboyant, easily-manipulated servant) for a gay man.  Well that feels yucky.  I’m very aware that gay rights are the next frontier of civil rights, but if we could skip the part of this oft-repeated rights-winning process (formerly with women, racial minorities, etc.) where gay people have to be demeaned in film before we can treat them like real people (both legally and in our entertainment), that would be GREAT.

I’m not going to argue that we’re to a point as a culture where members of *any* minority group are consistently treated with equal deference and complexity as white people in movies.  The industry still has a long way to go before they really nail the notion that your movie can have a hero who isn’t white simply because heroes aren’t always white.  No excuses or explanations for their “unconventionality” necessary.

I’m also not going to argue that a group’s portrayal in cinema is the biggest challenge to be overcome on the path to equal rights.  Certainly the rights to marry, equal pay, freedom from discrimination in hiring, etc. are more important than how people like you appear in some crappy movie.  But as someone deeply interested in movies, I believe that images and the stories we tell about ourselves and others matter.   So I wish movies in general and casting decisions in particular could evolve a little, already.

There are certainly counterexamples.  To put in a good word for a favorite genre of mine, both “Night of the Living Dead” (1968) and “28 Days Later” (2002) have brilliantly cool African American heroes/heroines who refuse to offer apologies or explanations for their race.  They simply *are* African American, along with being brave, inspiring, and thrillingly badass.  But again, we have a long way to go before you can consistently count on nuanced, real characters in [non-zombie] movies of every race, sexual orientation, gender, etc.  And I’m getting a little impatient on the matter, as I’m sure many people are.

And with that, my flight back to my other home is descending.  Off goes the laptop!

<3