Sunday, June 26, 2011

MATER D-PLUS:  Things I enjoyed during our viewing of Cars 2 more than the movie itself:
  • The Toy Story: Hawaiian Vacation short. Witty, smart, classic Pixar.
  • The Lion King 3D extended preview. No, it's not necessary, but hot damn is it gorgeous.
  • That brief glimpse of Brave.
  • Holy crap, there's a 3D Morgan Freeman dolphin movie coming.
  • The brief nod to Ratatouille during the Paris sequence.
  • Closing my eyes and thinking of this picture of The Rock riding Splash Mountain, which remains awesome.
This is a loud movie which nevertheless put a 3 1/2 year old to sleep halfway through at 12:30 in the afternoon. It's real pretty, but in no way compelling.

14 comments:

  1. I've had to sit through the Dolphin Tale trailer entirely too many times in the past few months.  One thing that I found interesting when I saw Green Lantern in 2-D last weekend was that while there were a number of 3-D movies trailered, they made pains to state that the films would also be available in 2-D.  I think the feedback on 3-D and the strong performance of the 2-D prints of Green Lantern and Pirates is convincing studios that 3-D isn't a panacea, but should be reserved for films that really warrant it.  (Transformers may be one of those films.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous6:36 PM

    Loved the Hawaiian short, very lukewarm on Cars 2.  I figured out who the bad guy was almost right away.  My almost 4 yo loved it, it was her first movie theater experience.  

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jenn C6:37 PM

    oh, that was me.  I also want to add that I was happy that they did put in a small bit re: Doc Hudson.

    ReplyDelete
  4. isaac_spaceman8:44 PM

    One wonders whether they were anticipating the critical response to Cars 2 when they decided to trot out that gorgeous stuff from Brave.  Lasseter lasseter lasseter

    ReplyDelete
  5. The Pathetic Earthling11:03 PM

    Lasseter?  Say a little more.

    ReplyDelete
  6. isaac_spaceman12:08 AM

    I'm sure you already knew what I was going to say.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous7:13 AM

    Our 3.5 yo, who was very psyched to see it, began losing interest about halfway through.  7.5 yo said he liked it.  Mom & Dad? Underwhelmed.

    Hawaiian vaca?  So awesome I felt an echo of the verklempf from TS3.  The aqauatic treacle preview of Flipper loses a tail?  Actually induced anger from me.

    ReplyDelete
  8. We didn't get Brave or dolphins! Was this because we saw the low-class 2-D print?

    Cars 2 exceeded my lower expectations--it's at or near the bottom of my Pixar list, but still better than most everything else out there.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I snickered when I saw the fake advertisement for "Lasse-tyre" during Cars 2.

    ReplyDelete
  10. The boyfriend and I are with Jay on this one.  Plenty of witty, punny stuff in there, and the visuals were great, so we enjoyed it.  No, it is not a *great* Pixar film, but I'd still put it ahead of many other movies out there.

    On a different note:  we were a little disappointed with the TS short.  Don't get me wrong---I love the TS characters.  But normally, the short is about the Pixar future---some new animator who has been working on something different.  And this one was about the Pixar past.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Marsha4:41 PM

    The heroine of Brave is a redhead. I forsee much merch ending up in my house. I might even let the kids play with it.

    ReplyDelete
  12. AndreaJ9:31 PM

    We didn't get the Brave preview either, even in 3D. We had Happy Feet 2 and the dolphin movie and one more I can't remember. Lion King was a pre-preview not in 3D.

    ReplyDelete
  13. My issue with the Brave trailer is, in what little we see, we see her supposedly kill a bear.  Has a Pixar hero ever killed another breathing being before?  And does de-feminizing her (which I know a lot of people are rooting for) mean she needs to kill things, especially in a teaser trailer when it's the only thing we learn about her?  (And that she's probably Scottish.)

    ReplyDelete
  14. Melissa R.8:04 PM

    As the original working title for this film was "The Bear and the Bow," I think there's more to the whole shooting the bear thing than just "she needs to be defeminized."

    ReplyDelete