2009 Film Diary (2009 releases)

Excellent movie. Well written, terrfic choice of animation style, great vocal performances (especially Dakota Fanning), funny, creepy, poignant - just a great watch. See this movie. (FYI, may be too intense for the little little ones. PG for a reason.)

Dreadful. I thought it couldn't get worse for Dreamworks Amimation than Sharks Tale. I was wrong. A few actual laughs, but overall the jokes fall terribly flat, and it comes off like "Look how clever we are" and they just aren't. The extended Axel F joke was painful. Should be noted the voice cast did a great job, especially Reese Witherspoon and Rainn Wilson.

The movie is structured around an expecting couple travelling around to family and friends across the country (and in Montreal) to figure out where to settle to start their family, to find their home. And to me it was less about finding a home, that was the gimmick of the movie, but more a movie about parents - what kind of parents you want to be, what kind of parents you have/had, what kinds of parents there are out there, what kinds of parents your friends are - and it begs the question what does being a parent mean to you? I liked it fine, some sweet moments, some great performances, some wacky performances, and some thought-provoking content.

Disappointing. They did some great production design and special effects work here. Yet, a lot of talking while walking in the first act of this movie to get all the information out (couldn't they have found another way to do that?!) and so by the time it all goes down, amazingly enough, it lacks urgency. This story is set up to be all about urgency, and this movie, though a lot goes on, is just flat. They crammed the book into this movie, and just like The Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, missed what made the books such page turners.