Three children's films

[liv]

So my partners' children were asking me about my favourite film this year, which caused me to realize I haven't actually seen any 2017 films. (I saw Hidden Figures early this year, but it's actually a 2016 film, and I've not watched a film at all since March.)

This week I ended up watching a run of children's films, only one of them actually with the children. I saw Lego Batman as a date night movie with jack. Then Cars 3 which the children got on DVD as soon as they could after seeing it in cinemas, and they're rewatching it lots. And then yesterday I saw Paddington 2 in the cinema with jack, because I very much enjoyed the first one when I saw it with angelofthenorth (though I forgot to review it).

I should note here, I usually talk a little bit about social justice related issues like representation when I review films, and I know some people really hate reading those sorts of discussions, so please feel free to skip this if that applies to you. Also there will be mild spoilers though I'll try not to reveal any huge plot twists.

As it happens all three films are sequels or parts of series.

I wanted to watch Lego Batman because I enjoyed The Lego Movie and its somewhat parodied Batman character a lot. LB is by no means bad, but it feels a slighter and more simplistic film. Brooding Batman has to get in touch with his emotions and learn to work with other people in order to save Gotham City from the Joker. It's a gentle, affectionate parody of Grimdark Batman, but as such perhaps less interesting to me when I'm not really into the mythos in the first place. And yes, it's made of Lego, but unlike The Lego Movie it's doing very little interesting with the world and all its contents being constructed from modular, clickable plastic bricks.

I enjoyed it, I found it sweet and funny, but it didn't really stick in my mind. I definitely liked the way they handled Barbara Gordon / Batgirl's character; she definitely has agency and is awesome, and is very explicitly not a romantic prize for the hero. But I'm not sure the film as a whole passes the Bechdel test, even if it avoids some of the benevolent sexism that annoyed me about Wildstyle in The Lego Movie.

ghoti_mhic_uait described Cars 3 as intersectional, and it definitely is that. I hadn't seen the two earlier films, because I basically assumed the franchise was mainly a marketing vehicle. I really liked the plot of this one, handling Lightning McQueen ageing out of hyper-competitive racing, and how he handles that. I am always a sucker for mentoring stories, especially platonic cross-gender mentoring (which was my favourite thing in Pacific Rim too), and Cars 3 really delivers that. There were moments that were really moving, and I was impressed at how well the animation gives you anthropomorphic vehicles without falling into the uncanny valley or breaking immersion.

The film was perfectly pleasant for an adult viewer, and often funny, but didn't quite grip me in the way that some children's films do. I also found the crash scene at the beginning really hard to watch, because as a child I was watching Formula One on TV when Ayrton Senna was killed and it make a huge emotional dent, even though F1 is of course very different from the rally car racing in Cars. But that's not the film's fault, I wouldn't consider it too scary for most young children.

The thing I liked most about the film was how affectionate and respectful it is towards the southern US culture around rally car racing. The music and the landscapes are really lovely. It does deal with racism and prejudice and toxic masculinity, but it's not about how those awful hicks and rednecks are awful, like so many Hollywood products, it celebrates what's great about the culture as well as considering some of the negatives.

Paddington 2, in common with its predecessor, is absolutely delightful and heartwarming. And really well animated, with the bears being definitely animalish even though they wear (some) clothes and speak English. It's one of the best mixes of live action and animation since Roger Rabbit, though of course it's different with CGI. Both films are also very dramatic, unlike the books which are mostly about cosy domestic adventures, but they somehow keep the spirit of the Bond books even so. Much of the comedy comes from Paddington being a cultural outsider and physically somewhat inept, but it completely avoids cringe humour. And it mostly manages to update the setting so it seems natural in 2017, including making the background characters plausibly multicultural. The only updating that didn't quite work was the character of Mrs Bird; it really doesn't make sense for the Mr Brown's old nanny to be still living with the family in the 2010s as opposed to the 1950s.

jack said, it's hard to make a heartwarming children's film about prison brutality, and yet they've managed it. Paddington gets framed and arrested for a crime committed by Hugh Grant's delightfully smarmy villain, and his ability to find the good in everyone, even the most hardened of fellow prisoners, carries the day. There's a lovely, very gentle send-up of prison break films and other action film clichés like chases on train roofs.

That said, I liked the first Paddington better. Partly because it has more emphasis on how important it is to be welcoming to immigrants, and partly because it's set in the real Natural History Museum which is much cooler than a very fake Pentonville Prison. My main issue with P2 was that the humour relies a bit too much on comedy accents. Over-the-top Scottish Mrs Bird really only has about three lines, and it's very important to the setting that Mr Gruber has a central European accent. There are some Asians who don't have comedy sub-continent accents as well as some who do. But if you're going to have a character who is stupid and violent (though of course he gets his redemption arc because the whole point of Paddington is that he finds the good in everybody), why on earth go and make that character Irish? At least the actor is in fact Irish, which makes it less awful, but still. There's a beautiful subversion of the thief = Fagin stereotype, which made me grin when I'd barely had time to growl at it, but it's a bit spoiled by giving several of the minor bit character prisoners awful stage Cockney accents.

Also the villain is a bit more gay-coded than I would have ideally liked; not every posh, camp actor needs to be read as gay, but there's a clunky joke about how attractive he is to a male guard when he's in drag, and a cut scene at the end involving prancing about in bright pink flares and singing old music hall hits.

For a film that is specifically about being kind and welcoming to everybody and not being prejudiced against those who are different, this sort of humour is really extra disappointing.

Comments

[solitarywalker]

Hidden Figures was great. I've seen fifteen 2017 movies, the best of which was Okja.

[(Anonymous)]

Give Cars and maybe Cars 2 a chance. Yes, there are toys of the characters, but that doesn't mean it's an empty merchandising vehicle - compare Toy Story or Frozen. I liked Cars 1 a lot. It also has a mentoring plot and an affectionate treatment of small town America. Cars 2 wasn't as good, but was an entertaining Bond parody. (I haven't seen Cars 3 yet.)
Rachael / woodpijn

[alextiefling]

I'm sad to hear that Paddington 2 has an awkward drag scene; there was one in the first one, too, which really diminished it for me. It bothers me that film-makers are still using this convention these days.