Movie review | Page 5 of 23

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, good for ages 10 and younger

The Wimpy Kid book series is responsible for millions of children worldwide wanting to read. It’s a story that families of more than one child can identify with it’s only natural that movies be made from them. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul is the fourth film in the wimpy cannon and in this case it’s culled from the ninth book in the series. The Long Haul proves that the adage, “the book was better” is correct, but the film still offers laughs for middle school and younger viewers.

In The Long Haul the Heffley family is taking a road trip Meemaw’s 90^th birthday. Greg and Rodrick have a side plan to attend a con that’s happening a couple of hours away from it. Chaos fun, brotherly love, confusion, mistaken identity, fart jokes, sight gags and ultimately family bonding make up Dairy of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul.

We’re glossing over the plot because anybody reading this who is expecting the film to be a live action Pixar version of a family road trip will be disappointed. However, if you’re 10 or younger this is a film that will meet your entertainment needs and have you laughing on the trip home. It’s a movie that is entirely built for younger audiences-and that’s ok.

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Smurfs The Lost Village, better than you think and good for the kids

Know your role. My wife and I use that phrase as a way to slyly accept our greatest strengths and to play to them. In our case it’s not meant as a pejorative, rather a rallying cry to do something, establish a goal of doing better, as well as a subtle reminder that we can’t be great at everything. Smurfs: The Lost Village knows its role. After two previous films that brought the Smurfs to the big screen in a CGI/live action format, Smurfs The Lost Village is 100% animated.

It’s good animation, visually on par with a major motion picture. Because of that it looks world’s better than the TV counterpart that old school fans will remember and even the 2013 television short, The Smurfs: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

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The Boss Baby aims for laughs, succeeds for all who are 5 and up

Our 7 year old has been talking about The Boss Baby for almost one year prior to its release. In June 2016 he came into the office and asked if we could see The Boss Baby. How he got the inside tip on this film we don’t know. When he finally got to see it with the family it was a close call as to who enjoyed it more, the adults or the kids.

The plot of The Boss Baby is simple. An 8 year old boy gets a baby brother who is wearing a suit. Why is he wearing the suit? How can he talk? What’s the point of all this madness? Mild spoilers are below so if you want to have complete surprises when you see the film stop here….

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Tales of the TMNT: Super Shredder now on DVD

Tales of the TMNT: Super Shredder is out on DVD and it marks a change for our heroes in a half shell. For one it has episodes that haven’t even aired on Nickelodeon yet and it has a series of complete stories that bring back classic characters and new ones with completely different appearances.

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Sing-giveaway and review, it’s better encore

Sing does what many movies fail to do; it gets better with repeated viewing. We saw Sing in theaters and were pleasantly surprised. It’s not paced like a traditional film, much less an animated one, plus the humor and heart that are obvious in its first viewing are even bigger the second time around. Additionally our two boys (aged 5 and 7) loved it and picked on the lessons that characters taught.

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Is Kong: Skull Island OK for children?

This is a film that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time, but is Kong: Skull Island OK for children? It’s got that sweet PG-13 rating which can be a curse or a blessing, depending on source material. If it’s too gentle then nobody will want to see it and if it’s too graphic then middle school masses won’t be able to see it. Factor in that the monster genre has been criminally under-represented in movies and you’ve got a combination that could be a great thing for monster hungry movie fans.

Kong: Skull Island is a mild to strong PG-13 film. There is one f bomb, a couple S words and lots of monster fighting. The fight sequences range from the human to monster kind to the much more entertaining monster to monster fights. There’s no sex nudity or erstwhile mentions of love, everyone is too busy fighting monsters or getting through the jungle.

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Logan is just an X-MEN movie

Logan is just an X-MEN movie in the same way that The Dark Knight is just a Batman movie. Separate for a moment the different actor who portrayed Bats and consider that it was the same superhero from Batman Forever to The Dark Knight. Logan is the same character that we saw in The Last Stand, yet he’s so very different and so much better.

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The Girl With All The Gifts, an atypical zombie film that thrives

We read a graphic novel like this recently. It was something that I only knew the bare bones about and it succeeded in being wildly entertaining beyond our expectations. It’s not that there were low expectations; we just didn’t know enough about it on purpose. The Girl With All The Gifts is a zombie film like no other. It plays to a few zombie movie tropes while gathering up most of them and (thankfully) throwing them out the window. The result is an utterly original film that simmers at a low boil for a majority of the film, expertly weaving together a taut, disparate vision of the near future.

Suffice it to say that The Girl With All The Gifts is not for children. As a parent, in no way shape or form would I allow a child of mine 16 or under to watch this. It’s rated R for good reason due to language, graphic violence, disturbing images and perilous situations.

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