Avengers: Endgame Review (SPOILERS)

If you haven't seen "Avengers: Endgame," turn away now. This is a spoiler-heavy review because there is no other way to talk about this. Now, yes, the Russo Brothers wrote a letter asking everyone to not spoil the Endgame. It was shared by all of the MCU related Facebook pages and by many people on Facebook and Twitter, myself included. I am a strong advocate of not spoiling this movie for people. So what in the heck am I doing here? In my opinion, that message means that no one should openly talk about major spoilers, or even minor spoilers, openly on social media or on any internet chat sites where someone could accidentally come across spoilers when they weren't intended to. But that's not what I'm doing here. With this post, I'm not even going to post a introductory kicker on Facebook or Twitter that even hints at what my opinion is, let alone any spoilers for people to accidentally come across. I'm just going to say something to the effect of "Here's my review of the movie. Click only if you want to know." Thus I'm not going to spoil the movie for anyone. This is a review meant strictly for people who have seen the movie. If you choose to click on this and read it without having seen the movie, you are spoiling it for yourself. You have been warned.

With that opening paragraph out of the way, I feel that I have officially washed my hands clean and now I can talk openly about whatever I want. But just because I have that freedom, it doesn't mean that I'm going to talk about everything in this movie. It's a bit of a daunting task reviewing this movie even with the freedom to talk about whatever simply because this is a lot of movie. "Infinity War" was already a long movie at 160 minutes and now the Russo Brothers topped themselves by making "Endgame" 181 minutes. Yes, that clocks in at just a hair over three hours. Combine the two movies and you have a complete story that's nearly six hours long. I'm going to be here all day typing this review if I'm covering everything and no way would anyone read that full thing. Even my most devoted readers would get bored after the first 50 paragraphs and scroll down to the end to see my score. So I'm going to simply try to do this justice by giving my complete thoughts in a satisfying way to myself without worrying about touching every detail. And when you do read this and you want to respond to points I have made or bring up any points you feel I missed, don't comment publicly on Facebook or the likes. Contact me in private by whatever means suits you best.

I think it goes without saying that this has been quite the journey leading up to "Avengers: Endgame." A historic journey the likes of which we have never seen before and probably never will see again. A 22-movie arc that culminates with "Endgame" and will have Marvel sitting at $20 billion earned at the worldwide box office by the time this movie finishes its run. Now I do want to quantify something real quick. This is not the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. When you make $20 billion in 11 years with the theatrical releases alone, you don't just stop, especially not when you're owned by Disney. And this is not just me speculating. They've already reserved spots on the schedule for two MCU films next year, three in 2021 and three in 2022. They just haven't told us what they are. Plus there's "Spider-Man: Far from Home" in two months from now and a whole bunch of TV shows related to this universe heading to Disney+ starting in November. But this is the end of a chapter. An end of an era. They've been leading up to this Infinity Gauntlet story arc since "Iron Man" in 2008 and now it's complete. It feels like the series finale of this great show that is an end of sorts as well as the final movie for several beloved characters that I'll touch on later in this review.

As such, this was a very emotional film for me. Now I was on a mission for my church in 2008, so I didn't get to see "Iron Man" or "The Incredible Hulk" in theaters, but I caught up as soon as I could when I got home early in 2010 and since "Iron Man 2" I have seen every MCU film in theaters, usually on opening weekend or shortly thereafter. In my brain this isn't that big of an accomplishment. It's two or three movies a year, so it's not that hard to keep up on, even for those who aren't crazy about movies like myself. But going to the latest MCU film is something that I always enjoy and is something that I will continue to do until they stop making them, which might never happen, especially since Disney just barely got the rights to all of the X-Men characters, which on its own opens the doors to a whole lot more possibilities. No, I don't participate in this Marvel vs. DC war. I'll see all the DC movies as well, especially since I mostly grew up on DC and not Marvel. If you make me pick between the two, I'll pick DC. But I simply just like a good superhero movie and Marvel with their cinematic universe has provided us 22 movies that are on various levels of good. I don't fanboy out with every new movie, but I've not yet hated a movie in the MCU. Even the lesser ones have some redeeming qualities.

Because of all this, I felt like "Endgame" was a movie that specifically catered towards me. The phrase "fan service" is used a lot in critiquing films, usually in a negative light, but "Endgame" was jam packed with a whole lot of fan service that was done appropriately. Because the phrase has such a negative connotation to it, I'm going to mostly avoid it and instead say that "Endgame" is a movie that rewarded all of the faithful fans by giving us a healthy dose of pretty much everything we've loved about the MCU with just about ALL of the characters participating in some form or another. So many references. So many callbacks. So many beautiful moments. It's a movie that is best experienced ONLY after seeing ALL 21 previous movies. Yeah, sure, you can still enjoy the movie if you ended up skipping any of the previous movies. But even if you skipped something that you thought was insignificant, like "Captain Marvel" or "Ant-Man and the Wasp," there's going to be moments where the movie won't have the same effect as if you had watched them, especially "Ant-Man and the Wasp" since the Quantum Realm plays a HUGE part in this movie and you actually might kinda be lost if you haven't experienced what they cover in that movie.

How about the plot of this movie, though? Because I was mostly impressed with their marketing team here. They focused a lot on Iron Man and Nebula lost in space. Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Thor and company all being depressed at Avengers headquarters, then coming up with a plan to go get revenge on Thanos. That seemed like a decent plot for the movie and I was excited to see a movie about the original Avengers off to get revenge on Thanos while somehow managing to bring back the people who got snapped, because, you know, some of them have sequels coming up. I mean, Sony specifically would be quite nervous if Spider-Man stayed dead since "Spider-Man: Far from Home" comes out in two months. And you know we're going to get more out of Black Panther, Doctor Strange and the Guardians of the Galaxy. Sequels there are most likely part of the eight mysterious Marvel movies that they've yet to reveal titles for. But nonetheless, this main plot that had been advertised concluded in about 20 minutes or less. Iron Man and Nebula get saved by Captain Marvel. Then the remaining Avengers head off in a space ship to Thanos' retirement world, learn he's used the stones to destroy the stones, and after a brief conversation, Thor chops off his head in a moment of rage.

Say what? Thanos dead at the beginning of "Endgame"? I didn't see that coming. What's going to happen for the remaining 160 minutes of this movie? Well, we start with the dramatic reveal of five... YEARS later. Interesting. This is the part of the movie that's kinda slow, but it wasn't boring. I was actually fascinated by how each character dealt with the consequences of Thanos' snap being permanent. Or so they thought. Iron Man managed to go live a normal life with Pepper Potts. Thor became an extremely depressed recluse and is now fat Thor with a huge beard. Bruce Banner was able to somehow reconcile with Hulk, combining his two egos into one with Professor Hulk, or whatever we're calling him. Captain Marvel is off taking care of all of the other planets and thus is mostly M.I.A. for this movie. Hawkeye has become a psychopathic warrior of sorts after his whole family got snapped. Captain America and Black Widow have not done much of anything as they can't move on from what happened. And Ant-Man is still stuck in the Quantum Realm for the entire five years. That is until a rat crawls over the machine and accidentally frees him. But here's the catch there. From his perspective, it's only been five hours. Things work differently in the Quantum Realm.

And this is where we get to our ACTUAL plot. And it's one that I kinda predicted. I don't know if you noticed, but earlier I said that I was "mostly" impressed with their marketing effort. In the second trailer, there's probably one money shot that they shouldn't have shown. The Avengers walking through headquarters in the Quantum Realm suits. Because, yeah, if you've seen "Ant-Man and the Wasp," those suits that they're wearing in that trailer shot are the exact same suits they're wearing when they go to the Quantum Realm in "Ant-Man and the Wasp." That's why it's important to watch that movie before "Endgame" because you learn quite a bit about the Quantum Realm. Once it dawned on me that those were the same suits, I figured it meant that the Avengers were going to split up into teams and go to various points in the past to stop Thanos from snapping in the first place. Granted, I didn't expect Thanos to be dead in the first 20 minutes and I wasn't expecting a five year time jump, although Black Widow's different hairstyles in the trailers did suggest a time jump of some sorts, but yeah that shot helped me predict the main plot of this movie because this is exactly what happens. Perhaps it would've been nicer to keep that a surprise by not showing those suits.

But still, even though I kinda saw it coming, this was still a fun plot where us long time fans got rewarded the most because we're traveling back in time to three different MCU films in order to obtain the infinity stones before Thanos does. Those three films are "The Avengers" in 2012 where there's three infinity stones in New York at the time (space stone [the Tesseract], mind stone, time stone), "Thor: The Dark World" in 2013 with the reality stone and "Guardians of the Galaxy" in 2014 with the power stone and soul stone. OK, the soul stone doesn't show up in "Guardians of the Galaxy," but while Nebula and War Machine are dealing with past versions of Thanos, Nebula and Gamora at the beginning of "Guardians of the Galaxy," Hawkeye and Black Widow split off to pay a visit to Red Skull at Vormir. So yeah, three MCU films. And I was beaming as they all split up to go hunt down the six infinity stones in their various movies. It reminded me a lot of "The Flash" on CW when Barry Allen goes back to past seasons. Or, as "Endgame" actually references quite a bit, this was very much like "Back to the Future," specifically the second movie when they go back and visit the first movie and you have two of every character mixed into the plot trying their hardest to avoid their past selves.

While I did enjoy this quite a bit as there were a lot of scenes that just had me beaming as well as several emotional emotions, like with Thor and his mom or Tony Stark chatting with Howard Stark when him and Captain America jump back even further in time when they screw up getting the Tesseract, this time travel idea also presents my major concern in the movie. Their time travel rules confuse me. Granted, time travel is a bit of a tricky subject to begin with. There's a lot of different ways to approach it. You can go the "Prisoner of Azkaban" route where there's only one timeline. If you go back in the past and change things, it's as if they always existed. Harry gets hit in the head with a rock earlier in the book. We learn later that the culprit there was Hermione and himself hiding just outside. That's probably my favorite way to do time travel, but that requires a whole lot of planning ahead. You have to know from the beginning that you're going to implement that. That's why most people choose to do time travel like "Back to the Future" where changing the past can effect your future. Marty starts to disappear because he got his mom to fall in love with him instead of his dad. Or you can be like "The Flash" and create a whole bunch of different timelines.

However, "Endgame" decides to go with... none of the above? We're not like "Back to the Future" because changing the past doesn't change the present or the future. They straight up kill past Nebula at one point, but present Nebula is still walking around. They also kill past Thanos.. again, but that also doesn't change anything. Tony Stark screws up royally with his initial plan to steal the Tesseract, causing Loki to escape with it at the end of "The Avengers," so the go back further in time to steal a different version of the Tesseract. Combine that with the inconsistencies in "Captain Marvel" and that Tesseract basically just shows up wherever the heck the plot needs it to. So I think I've decided that going into the past just creates a carbon copy of the past. An alternate timeline that doesn't change the present timeline, but unlike "The Flash," jumping onto the original timeline is a piece of cake. When "The Flash" did their version of Flashpoint Paradox, Barry completely changes his present and is never able to fully get things back to what they were. That's not the case here. But yet when Captain America goes back in time to live out his life with Peggy, that means he's living on an alternate timeline, but somehow ends up back on the main timeline?

You see where I'm super confused? The more I think about it, the worse it gets in my brain. Maybe I need to see it again to sort it all out, but maybe that'll just make it worse. I think it's quite possible that they didn't think things through as much as they could've. Granted, they were very self aware as they reference a whole bunch of time travel movies. And perhaps the right mindset is to not think too much about it and just enjoy the tangled web of them revisiting past movies, but sometimes my brain has a hard time doing that. Even if I do, I still have to acknowledge the fact that there is a long list of movies that implemented time travel much more effectively. The rules of time travel for this movie weren't as interesting and the stakes weren't as high because the present isn't effected by changing the past. That loses a little bit of the emotional weight in my mind and we're left with what's essentially popcorn entertainment throughout this whole second act. Not a ton of huge stakes, but a whole lot of fun. And this is where all the references to past films and past moments come flooding in. I was surprised by how many characters they were able to bring back to give at least a cameo in the movie. They even had Natalie Portman make an appearance.

Whatever concerns I had with the second act of the film with either it being simple popcorn entertainment or being confusing with the way they implemented time travel, they all went away when we arrived in the final act of the film where we were rewarded with what is probably the most epic final acts in the history of, well, ever. This is certainly the best finale in the MCU and also probably the best superhero movie finale ever. A 22-movie arc story leads to this one moment and it couldn't have been more satisfying. The feeling here for me was akin to the finale of "Return of the King" where such an epic story builds up to the perfect resolution that leaves the audience in complete awe. I don't even know where to begin, but I suppose I should begin with the major event that happens right before this third act. The death of our first major original six Avenger. Black Widow. We all expected or anticipated this being the final movie of Iron Man and Captain America. But I could've sworn we're past the rumor stages with this Black Widow movie, so I thought for sure she was going to survive the movie. But instead I will be forever haunted by the image of her dead body lying at the bottom of that cliff after she sacrificed herself so that Hawkeye could get the soul stone.

That whole sequence was just devastating. The two of them were walking up to go see Red Skull and immediately I started getting nightmares of "Infinity War" when Thanos shoved Gamora off the cliff. This wasn't going to end well. Part of my brain was hoping that they would somehow trick Red Skull into giving them the soul stone without one of them having to be sacrificed, but I'm glad that didn't happen because this is where it was important to have stakes. Once they received the instruction that you have to sacrifice what you love most in order to get the stone, and once they sat and thought about it for a second, I thought it was absolutely beautiful that both of them arrived to the conclusion that they were going to be the one to be sacrificed. Black Widow had no family outside this team and she was willing to do whatever it takes. This was her sacrifice for the team and she was determined to die for the greater good. But Hawkeye came to the same conclusion because he had gone down such a dark path after his family died that this was his way to redeem himself. Then when they realized that both were determined to be the sacrifice, they fought each other to be the one in what may be one of the most heartbreaking duels. And Black Widow won.

Meanwhile let's fast forward. They all get back from their missions. Iron Man has created a makeshift infinity gauntlet. Professor Hulk snaps, almost dying, but survives. Everything seems to have gone back to normal, but as they are looking outside, Thanos massacres Avengers headquarters. This being past Thanos who has spoiled their plans by arriving in their time period after figuring out their plans thanks to the help of past Nebula when War Machine and present Nebula where getting the power stone from the "Guardians of the Galaxy" world. Initially we have Captain America, Iron Man and Thor fighting Thanos in what is an epic duel on its own, especially when Captain America summons Mjolnir. Loud epic cheers at that moment. All hope seems to be running out because past Thanos, even without the infinity stones, is just too powerful. But then, because of Professor Hulk's snap actually working, everyone shows up. And when I mean everyone, I mean EVERYONE. Well, everyone except those who died of causes not related to the Thanos snap. No Loki. No Vision. No Black Widow. But all the people who got dusted are now undusted and join up with those who are still alive to battle Thanos and his large army in the most epic battle known to superherodom.

You know how all of these Avengers movies, and most movies from the MCU for that matter, have the one moment where something big happens that causes the theater to erupt with cheers? And if a movie is good enough, there will be two or three moments like this? Well, this final battle was so epic that this happened at least once every 30 seconds in my theater. And even more often towards the beginning when they were reintroducing all of the previously dusted characters into the battle. And you better believe I was joining in with the applause. The sheer amount of characters in this battle was staggering. What's even more impressive is that the Russo Brothers were able to balance all of them so that they all got at least a few seconds to shine. I was so happy while watching this that I was close to crying tears of joy. I was like a kid on Christmas morning. And all of this built up to what has to be one of the most iconic moments in film history. Thanos again has the infinity gauntlet with all the stones. Or so he thinks. At this moment he says, "I am inevitable." Snap. Nothing happens. Turns out Tony Stark grabbed all the stones, puts them into his own makeshift gauntlet, and replies, "I... am Iron Man." Snap.

And that's it. The battle is won. Thanos and his army all turn to dust. Turns out the reason why Doctor Strange gave the time stone to Thanos in "Infinity War" when Thanos was about to kill Iron Man was because Doctor Strange knew that Iron Man was the one who was going to stop Thanos in the end. In the comics there are a lot of different ways that Thanos gets stopped. But in this incarnation of the story, it only makes sense that the ultimate hero is the man who started it all with "Iron Man" in 2008. Tony Stark. And after one final major applause from the audience, suddenly we're all stunned into silence. Tony isn't strong enough to take a snap like that. It almost killed Professor Hulk earlier in the movie and he's significantly stronger than Tony. Present Thanos at the beginning of the movie was able to be killed so easily because, after snapping once, then using the infinity stones to destroy the infinity stones, he was completely drained of all his power. There's no way that Tony survives. He's sitting there on the ground all fried, unable to talk or move, but still fighting for his life because that's who is. After several goodbyes, Pepper Potts tells him that it's OK. They're going to be OK. It's time for him to rest. So he does. Thus ends the life of Tony Stark.

There's not a dry eye in the theater at this point. There were so many sniffles going on as we moved forward through the extended funeral scene. I don't know if I physically cried. That doesn't happen to me too much. But you better believe that I was overcome with emotion. We may have all known that this was coming. Few people thought that Tony was going to survive this movie. But that still didn't make it any easier when the moment came. And to have him go out in this manner was beautiful. There was no deux ex machina in this movie to stop Thanos. We didn't have Captain Marvel show up and save the day. I mean, she showed up and had her moment, but she wasn't able to beat Thanos. We also didn't have a surprise appearance from Adam Warlock, who was teased at the end credits of "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" and is one of the Thanos killers in the comics. Instead it was Tony Stark making the ultimate sacrifice. And we got to send him off with a beautiful funeral procession. And yes, in case you were wondering, the kid that you didn't recognize at the funeral is the kid from "Iron Man 3." It's just been a few years since 2013, so the actor has gotten a bit older. I'm kinda sad that we didn't get a double funeral to honor Black Widow as well, but I get it. This was Tony's moment.

I'm sorry this review is so long, but there's another farewell in this movie that I have to get to. So bear with me. Or skim ahead. I don't really mind. But I need to get all of this out and this is my one moment to do so. In addition to saying farewell to Black Widow and Iron Man in this movie, this is also the final movie for Captain America. And that's a hard trio to say goodbye to, but I liked how they all had three very different farewell. Black Widow's death was more tragic, but an important sacrifice so that they could get the soul stone. Iron Man died right after becoming the ultimate hero and stopping Thanos. Captain America doesn't die. He survives. But when he goes back in time to return all the infinity stones to the alternate timeline they created, he stays back in time to live out his life with Peggy. My heart just melted when they showed this. Bucky, Falcon and them are a bit confused that he didn't come back when they summoned him, but then they look into the distance and see old Captain America sitting on the bench. With Bucky's stamp of approval, Falcon walks up, accepts the shield from Captain America, thus taking on the mantle as the new Captain America. Then we get to see the flashback of Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter finally getting to dance.

Again, the ending of this movie couldn't have been any more perfect. Yes, the movie drags a bit in the first act and the time travel is all sorts of confusing in the second act. Now that they've got the timeline all sorts of screwed up, I have no idea how they are planning on answering so many questions I have about it all. I guess we'll start by seeing in two months from now if anything is addressed in "Spider-Man: Far from Home" regarding this. But still, despite all of this, I am completely satisfied by the conclusion of this film. The Russo Brothers were able to pull off something special with this finale and I have to give a resounding round of applause to everyone involved. Now there's still plenty of stories to be told. Half of our original six Avengers are still alive. I don't know what the plan is going forward with Professor Hulk and Hawkeye, but Thor looks like he's joining the Guardians and I'm totally down with that. There's also a lot of potential stories that they set up and I'm excited to see where they take it next. Because, again, we're not close to being done with the MCU as a whole. But this specific saga that began with "Iron Man" and concluded with "Endgame" is complete and I am satisfied. So of course I'm going to give "Avengers: Endgame" a 10/10. 

Missing Link Review

It's a really sad day when I come to the realization that it might be the end of the road for a film studio that I really loved. Now I'm not relaying any official news here, but I'm just facing the reality that this very well could be the case for Laika Studios, who have just released their fifth animated feature, "Missing Link," to disastrous box office results. This following the fact that their first four films, "Coraline," "ParaNorman," "The Boxtrolls" and "Kubo and the Two Strings," weren't big hits, either. The reported production budget for each film was around $60 million and that doesn't even account for marketing and advertising or the incredible amount of time it takes to put together one of these stop motion films. Yet "Coraline" at $75 million is the only film of the bunch that even topped that $60 million threshold at the domestic box office. The other three earned around $50 million. And overseas totals haven't helped much, either. "Missing Link" this past weekend opened to less than half as much as what the previous four did, earning a meager $5.9 million. Best case scenario is that it holds well and winds up with $20-25 million. With continued diminishing returns like this, I don't know how Laika can justify moving forward, which absolutely breaks my heart.

My biggest question here is what went wrong? Unfortunately I think that the root cause of this is that stop motion animation is just not a genre people care about. The highest grossing stop motion film is "Chicken Run" in 2000 with $106.8 million. The previously mentioned "Coraline" total comes in second place. And even though "Missing Link" earning only $5.9 million in its first weekend, that's still better than the $3.2 million that "Early Man" opened to last year as well as the $4.03 million that "Shaun the Sheep Movie" opened to in 2015. Although not an apples-to-apples comparison, it also bested the $5.5 million nationwide expansion of "Isle of Dogs" last year. This genre never does well. People just don't give it a chance, which confuses me. I mean, if animated turdfests like "The Emoji Movie" and "The Angry Birds Movie" can make $86 million and $107 million respectively, why is it that "Missing Link" can't even open above $6 million? I mean, even "Wonder Park" last month opened to $15 million and that movie didn't even have a director. And I'm sure "Uglydolls" next month could do something similar. But yet parents won't take their kids to the latest stop motion animated film? This is an extreme injustice in my opinion that now might be too late to remedy.

In browsing various social media threads this weekend, a common thing I saw when it comes to "Missing Link" is that a lot of people weren't even aware of the movie's existence. That surprised me, but I suppose I do often take for granted how aware I am of just about every new movie's existence. I mean, I write a monthly preview for all the new wide releases and I also follow the box office numbers religiously. I even now have several years worth of Excel charts full of box office numbers. So yeah, you can say I'm a bit of a box office nerd. I often forget that most people aren't as weird as me in that regard. So allow me to attempt to come down to Earth a bit and explain to you what this "Missing Link" movie is. This is the second movie in an odd, unconnected trilogy of Yeti movies. Towards the end of last year we had "Smallfoot," a movie about a Yeti colony who have been told by their leaders that humans are a myth and there exists no land below them. The trailers made that look dumb, but it was a surprisingly charming little film. Later this year we will have DreamWorks' "Abominable," a movie about a magical Yeti who needs to return to his home. And in the middle of these two we have "Missing Link," a movie about Bigfoot wanting to find the Yeti colony.

If I'm being a little more specific with the plot of "Missing Link," it's a movie about a trio of adventurers being chased by a team of nefarious villains trying to stop them as they make their way to the Yeti colony. Sir Lionel Frost, voiced by Hugh Jackman, is a man who is overly obsessed with discovering urban legends like the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, Yetis, etc., but he seems to care mostly about his image and recognition. He desperately wants to be accepted by a certain club who happen to hate him. The leaders of this club are our nefarious villains who are out to stop him at any cost so that no one can learn of his discoveries and he can remain the laughing stock of the people around him. This setup leads to Frost finding Bigfoot, who turns out to be super nice and friendly. Frost names him Mr. Link because he believes that he is the missing link between man and ape. Mr. Link, voiced by Zach Galifianakis, can speak English perfectly and the script takes a page from "Guardians of the Galaxy" as he takes things super literally like Drax does. But Mr. Link is also super lonely. He has no more family around, which is why he wants to find the Yeti colony because he believes they are his cousins. So him and Frost agree to go find this Yeti colony.

I mention that we have three adventurers in this movie. The third one is Adelina Fortnight, voiced by Zoe Saldana, and she is an ex-lover of Frost. The reasons for her joining this expedition come at a more humorous note, but I'll let you discover those specifics on your own since that was one plot element that I didn't know of going in. Nevertheless, the movie is held up strongly by the chemistry of these three main leads. Hugh Jackman and Zach Galifianakis especially play off each other quite well while voicing these characters. Jackman's eccentric personality as Frost is super infectious and Galifianakis' lovable realism as Mr. Link had me cracking up quite often. There were a lot of these really dumb jokes that had me laughing way longer and harder than I think I was supposed. In hindsight, some of them weren't that funny. But I laughed like crazy anyways. Which is why I'm not going to give any examples because simply writing them down in a blog post wouldn't do them justice. The best way I can describe it is the puns or "Dad jokes" style of humor. That's definitely my cup of tea when it comes to humor and I will unashamedly laugh at a lot of that stuff. The Drax comparison is another good one. Mr. Link isn't as funny as Drax, but I'd say he's pretty close.

In addition to this movie being a fun adventure with a lot of dumb humor that is right up my alley, there's also an appropriate dose of emotion. A lot of that comes from Zoe Saldana's character of Adelina Fortnight. She's essentially the glue that holds the two others together. While they do have a lot of natural camaraderie, Frost has a lot of flaws that he's completely ignorant of. While Adelina starts the movie hating him, she eventually comes around and helps him see a lot of the error in his ways. While Mr. Link won't show that he's being hurt by Frost, and may not even consciously realize it, Frost's over-enthusiasm about his discoveries gets in the way of him developing the personal relationships with those around him. Adelina helping him realize that leads to him making an effort to treat Mr. Link much better and thus the two of them eventually are able to form a great brotherhood. It's a pretty strong bond that the movie does a good job of earning, even though you kinda see the end result from a mile away. This is a fairly predictable movie that doesn't put a lot of effort into being bold, but it's part of a genre of animation that doesn't  need to be, so the way it plays the notes so well makes it what I think is the perfect family movie.

I will fully admit that I have a strong positive bias when it comes to stop motion. The fact that so few people give it a chance makes me fight for it even harder, so if you're one of those who refuses to watch stop motion films because the style bothers you for some reason, I don't know if my review is the one to trust here in regards to "Missing Link." And I will admit that this isn't the movie that will convert you to the genre. It's a movie that plays things a bit safe. In comparison to Laika's other films, it's not as epic as "Kubo and the Two Strings." It's also not as fun and festive as "Coraline" and "ParaNorman." I'd say it's more in line with "The Boxtrolls" in terms of style. "The Boxtrolls" is a movie I found to be cute and adorable, but I know that it didn't win over everyone. The reaction was slightly mixed. I can see that being the case with "Missing Link." My personal biggest complaint is that the villains were cartoonish and useless. Their story arc felt more forced and quite honestly the movie would've been perfectly fine without it. But that aside, if you are a fan of stop motion like myself, I think you definitely need to go see "Missing Link," especially since Laika can use all the support they can get. I really want them to survive. My grade for "Missing Link" is an 8/10.

Pet Sematary Review

One of the most prolific horror authors ever is back on the big screen right now as we have yet another adaptation of one his stories. Yes, we're talking about Stephen King. While I don't think it would necessarily be an accurate statement to say that we're experiencing a Stephen King renaissance since adapting Stephen King stories has always been a popular idea, I will say that 2017's "IT" sparked a huge jolt of energy into the Stephen King brand after it opened to an insane $123 million in September 2017, finishing off its domestic run with $327 million, the highest grossing domestic total ever for a horror film when you don't adjust for ticket price inflation. Just for fun, when you do adjust for ticket price inflation, that honor goes to "Jaws," which made $260 million back in 1975, which adjusts to $1.1 billion with 2019 ticket prices and is the seventh highest grossing movie ever when adjust for ticket price inflation. Following closely behind it is 1973's "The Exorcist," which is ninth place on said all-time list. That tangent aside, what does Hollywood do when something like "IT" makes that much money? The answer is to figure out how to replicate that success. Thus is why, in addition to "IT: Chapter 2" later this year, we now now have our "Pet Sematary" remake.

The first thing about "Pet Sematary" that threw me off is that title. Something about it felt wrong. Then I realized that they spelled "cemetery" wrong. Yeah, I know it's done on purpose. But now my brain is still kinda confused, meaning I now have to think extra hard about how to actually spell it when I want to spell it the correct way. The other more notable thing here is that I had never seen the original "Pet Sematary," which was released in the year I was born - 1989. The book was released in 1983, but I haven't read any of Stephen King's books. It's not out of a lack of desire. I just don't read a whole ton of books. So it goes without question that I also haven't read the book for "Pet Sematary." I could've done some catching up by at least watching the 80's, but I decided to go into this new movie blind. Plus, I hear that 80's movie has a lot of issues anyways, even though it has a solid idea behind it. That's why I was hoping that this remake would fix whatever problems the original movie had by giving us a creepy and intense horror film. That's what the initial teaser promised and thus I was excited and on board. I liked the idea that we had this creepy Stephen King horror movie coming out that I had successfully managed to know almost nothing about. It was a fun level of excitement.

But then the full-length trailer came out and my mood completely changed about this whole thing because they made the decision to spoil all of the secrets behind what this "Pet Sematary" thing was. I was livid and quite frankly no longer excited for this. The idea of going into this mysterious movie having no idea about the mystery surrounding the film was an exciting prospect. On the contrary, having that completely deflated by the advertising of the film was upsetting. Yes, I know. It's 100 percent my fault. The movie has been out for 30 years and the book for 36 years. I shouldn't expect the secret to last that long. And I also could've chosen to not watch any of the additional trailers if I was excited about the idea of not knowing anything about this. But it's still upsetting. It's similar to my experience of watching "The Sixth Sense" for the first time. For some strange reason, that was one of those movies where I had missed growing up and didn't watch until recently. Well, at one point I was browsing around an IMDb board that had nothing to do with "The Sixth Sense" when I happened to stumble upon someone who thought it was funny to spoil the huge twist at the end. It was my fault for not having seen the movie, but I was still mad.

I'm sure you've all had experiences like that. For the record, when I finally watched "The Sixth Sense," I still enjoyed it. But I'm sad that I never got to experience the shock of the twist at the end. With "Pet Sematary," I tried my hardest to still go into this movie excited or at least have an open mind. I don't like judging a movie based on the trailers. I like judging a movie based on the movie itself. And this was one of those horror movies with a high critics score and a low audience score, which is usually gold for me. All the best modern horror movies are trashed by audiences online, so seeing those negative reviews had the opposite effect on me and made me more excited, especially when combined with the good critic reviews. So I went with high spirits, but despite trying my absolute best to be excited or even fake excitement, I was bored to tears for like the first two-thirds of the movie. There was some creepy images, intense music and some attempts at fake jump scares to get me excited. But it wasn't working. I just sat there in my seat waiting for the movie to get to the point, but that's the thing. This is one of those horror movies that takes you by the hand and slowly guides you through the film, spending as much time as humanly setting things up.

If you don't know what "Pet Sematary" is all about, you could already guess that I'm not telling you. There's a family consisting of Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz playing the parents. They have a young girl and an even younger boy and they make the decision to move from the big city in Boston to a small country town, buying a house in the middle of the woods. Near their house is a cemetery with a lot of pets buried in it and that cemetery has secrets to it that their older neighbor, played by John Lithgow, knows a whole ton about. That's all that I'm going to say. And that's all that the trailers needed to give away. Family moves to the woods and the woods are creepy and mysterious. That's all you need to sell your horror movie. You don't need to give away all your secrets in order to convince people to come see your movie. And there was also no reason to spend so much time building up to the main event. I guess they were going for a sense of realism here. There was a lot of mystical, supernatural stuff going on around this small country town and I suppose they felt the need to properly set things up to make it feel believable. In reality I am aware of the fact that I'm going into a Stephen King movie. I'm more than willing to suspend disbelief here, so this felt pointless.

While it's true that my situation here might be unique since many people have already seen the original "Pet Sematary," the question that kept crossing my mind was that if I was bored after simply watching a trailer that spoiled the main idea behind the movie, what are the people who actually are up to date on their "Pet Sematary" mythology going to think of the idea of a remake to take its sweet time in setting things up? Wouldn't that be a bit boring, too? Now all this aside, I didn't find things in this movie inherently bad. Even though Jason Clarke's character is a bit dull, everyone else was fascinating. Amy Seimetz's character was great as she's feeling haunted by certain things in her past while unsure of their current living conditions despite trying to be as happy as possible. The little boy is cute and the young girl in this movie is a treasure. She's so energetic and flamboyant that she becomes really easy to fall in love with. There was some excellent child acting on her part with a lot of great work by whoever was helping her out. Then we have John Lithgow as the neighbor being so warm and friendly, yet you know he's full of secrets. Thus we have plenty of well-written characters and good performances that it's easy to become invested when the movie finally gets going.

Even though I'm going to avoid specifics of the second half of the movie like the plague, I will say that the horror elements of the film were well-constructed. I always get weary that a horror movie is going to give into endless jump scares or other lazy horror tropes. The movie was sufficiently creepy. The camera work got slightly annoying at times as it purposely misguided you at points while trying to scare you by having the creepy image show up with you least expected it, even though it was super predictable. But outside that, the atmosphere is what really set the stage here. Thus we had a lot of lighting, set design and other elements of the cinematography that made things feel naturally creepy without the need for the music or loud noises to try to trick us into being scared. Instead, the music and sound was used as a tool to help set the tone rather than doing all the heavy work itself. Then we had decisions made by characters that everyone knew was bad, including said characters, but there was enough motivation behind those decisions that you knew why they were made instead of just being dumb decisions because we needed more scary scenes. There were consequences to these decisions that brought emotional weight that felt earned.

When all is said and done, though, I think the movie tried to have something to say, but didn't quite stick the landing for me. One of the many reasons why I've come to like the horror genre is that you can often get deeper and more real with the themes in a horror movie that you can't quite accomplish in some other genres. Not as effectively, anyways. Jordan Peele has done an excellent job at this with both of his horror movies, "Get Out" and "Us" as those movies have a lot to say and use the horror genre to effectively deliver those messages. "Pet Sematary" tries to do this, but I left feeling a bit underwhelmed in that regards. They couldn't quite get there with their message. I honestly think that a big part of this reasons circles back to the fact that they spent so much time setting up these scenarios that they didn't quite have enough time to give satisfying resolutions. Thus if we had fixed the pace a bit and got to the point quicker, it would've allowed for a more deep dive and also would've fixed this problem of me being upset at the movie spoiling too much if what they had spoiled happened a lot earlier in the movie. But I'm still feeling generous enough to give this movie a pass as it does provide a decent thrill to audiences looking for their quick horror fix. My grade is a 7/10.

Movie Preview: April 2019

After a miserable start to the box office in the first two months of the year that saw near decade lows, despite constantly increasing ticket prices. However, March was successfully able to turn things around, coming awfully close to being the second March on record to earn $1 billion at the domestic box office as it finished with $962 million, the second highest March behind only 2017's $1.17 billion, which was led by Disney's live-action remake of "Beauty and the Beast." This month is was also Disney coming to the rescue, but in the form of Marvel Studios as "Captain Marvel" made an astounding $353 million domestically, while also hitting $1 billion worldwide on April 2. Jordan Peele was also a strong contributor to March's box office success as his sophomore effort in "Us" took in $127 million in its first 10 days while February holdover "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World" added in another $85 million and "Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral" surprised with $70 million. April is usually the quiet month before the summer season begins, but that wasn't the case last year, nor is going to be the case this year with a trio of superhero films leading the way, led by none other than "Avengers: Endgame," so let's dive in and analyze what the month has to offer! 

April 5th - 7th-

Beginning the month is a very confident DC with their latest superhero film Shazam! opening. As opposed to some of their previous films where they've held back reviews until the weekend of release, "Shazam!" was first released to press audiences in early March, with Twitter reaction coming out immediately after. But not just that, they released the movie through Fandango on Saturday, March 23, giving it an early $3.3 million. This seems to have worked out well for them as the critics score now stands at 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes while the audience reaction has been very enthusiastic, guaranteeing that this movie will be a crowd-pleaser as audiences follow the story of orphan Billy Batson, who has bounced around from various Foster homes and has now come across superhero powers thanks to the ancient wizard Shazam. Even though audience reaction has been quite positive, the only struggle DC will have is that general audiences are very unfamiliar with this character and DC hasn't built up the same reputation that Marvel has recently, which helped "Captain Marvel" last month. Thus "Shazam!" might have to rely heavier on strong word of mouth for success rather than a giant opening weekend. That might make "Ant-Man" the best comparison here as that opened to $57.2 million in 2015 before experiencing a fairly leggy run, finishing with $180.2 million.

The other big release of this weekend is our first major horror film of the month in Stephen King's Pet Sematary. This began as a novel by Stephen King, which was written in 1983, and was adapted into a film six years later in 1989. The film got mixed reaction, but was a commercial success as it earned $57 million domestically off of a $11 million budget. It was successful enough to spawn a sequel in 1992, which was very poorly received and did a lot worse as the box office, only earning $17 million. The general idea with this story centers around a family who lives close to a cemetery (misspelled "sematary") that has a lot of weird mojo surrounding it. If you bury something there, it will come back to life, but in messed up zombie form. And of course this is a Stephen King story, so there's bound to be plenty of weird twists that those familiar with the book or previous movies are already well aware of. The movie opened at South by Southwest Film Festival in March to solid reviews, meaning it's primed for a good opening, perhaps the second best opening for a Stephen King adaptation, behind only the mega $123 million opening of "IT." The 2007 film "1408" currently holds the second best spot with $20.6 million. The biggest problem with "Pet Sematary" is that it's opening so close to "Us" that the two movies might eat at each other's audience a bit.

The final wide release of the weekend is a more moderate release, hitting about 1,600 theaters, and that is STX Entertainment's release of Best of Enemies, which is not to be confused with the 1933, 1961 and 2015 films of the same name. This is based on the book "Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South" by Osha Gray Davidson, which is about exactly what that subtitle infers. It's the true story of the feud between civil rights activist Ann Atwater and Kl Klux Klan leader C.P. Ellis until a court-ordered school desegregation order in 1971 forces them to work together. The lack of adult-targeted dramas in the market right now might help this movie be a sleeper hit. It also has the star power of Taraji P. Hensen and Sam Rockwell leading the way. This is the type of movie that seems prime for an awards push based on that premise and said star power, but an April release instead of a fall release suggests STX didn't have much faith in it in that regards and the lack of reviews two days before release is also a bit troubling. This isn't the type of movie where people rush out to see, so it's set for a debut somewhere in the single-digit millions, but whether or not it ends up on the high end or low end of that range will depend on how people respond to it.

April 12th - 14th- 

Barring a disaster, or a huge surprise, the second weekend of April should belong to "Shazam!" as well. If we follow the "Ant-Man" comparison, that movie fell 54 percent in its second weekend, earning $24.9 million. Although if we turn back to DC, both "Wonder Woman" and "Aquaman" had excellent weekend two holds, falling 43 percent and 23 percent respectively. If "Shazam!" does open around $57 million, yet holds closer to its fellow DC movies, that would suggest a second around $30-40 million. If it opens much higher in its first weekend, then that second weekend number gets boosted even more. But either way it goes, there's four new releases this weekend and none of them seem primed to upset "Shazam!," although it might be a bit of a dog fight for that runner up spot.

Perhaps the higher profile release of the bunch will be the R-rated reboot of Hellboy. As the second comic book release of the month, "Hellboy" seems to be the one in the most trouble. "Shazam!" itself might be in a bit of a tough spot in being between "Captain Marvel" and "Avengers: Endgame" on the schedule. So "Hellboy" being positioned between "Shazam!" and "Avengers: Endgame" seems to be an exponentially worse spot. There's been two "Hellboy" movies released in theaters previous, neither of which did that well anyways. The 2004 "Hellboy" film opened to $23.2 million, earning $59.6 total, while the sequel, "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," opened to $34.5 million, earning $75.9 million total. So yeah, not great totals. But there has been a strong cult following of these two films that has been clamoring for a third film for a long time now, but said fans were hoping director Guillermo del Toro would return with star Ron Perlman, neither of which is happening here. This comes from director Neil Marshall and stars David Harbour from "Stranger Things" as the title character. The R-rating could separate it a bit from the other two comic book movies this month. Or it could also completely alienate fans who were already upset at this reboot instead of sequel idea.

If "Hellboy" does tank hard at the box office, don't be surprised if it's actually beaten at the box office for the runner-up spot by the new Will Packer produced comedy Little. Oddly enough, this will be the second movie of the month along with "Shazam!" to take inspiration from the 1988 Tom Hanks movie "Big," wherein a teenage kid makes a wish to be made big and then wakes up the next day in an adult body. Or maybe we should say "Big" takes inspiration from "Shazam!" since those comics came out first? Either way, to have both of these movies come out this month is an interesting coincidence. "Little" takes the inspiration from "Big" and flips it on its head as an adult woman gets transformed into her younger self and thus has to figure out how to move forward from there. The movie doesn't have a whole lot of star power, with Regina Hall from "Girls Trip" being the biggest name here. And this is only the second directorial feature from Tina Gordon, whose only previous movie was the 2013 film "Peeples." But the premise is what might grab people's attention. And producer Will Packer has a great track record with his opening weekends as 12 of the 17 films he's produced have opened above $20 million, with this February's "What Men Want" barely missing that mark with $18.2 million. So the trends there highly favor "Little" to do well.

Next up for the weekend is the latest stop-motion animation film from Laika, Missing Link. Stop motion is a subgenre of animation that is never super popular with mainstream audiences for some reason, regardless of studio. The highest grossing stop motion film domestically is "Chicken Run" with $106.8 million and that's the only film that has cracked the $100 million mark. That said, Laika has been consistently in the mid-range mark as they've put out some well liked films with their previous four films being "Coraline," "ParaNorman," "The BoxTrolls" and "Kubo and the Two Strings." This latest film of theirs in "Missing Link" continues an interesting trend of animated movies with Yetis in them. Last year we had "Smallfoot" and later this year we'll also have "Abonimable." The movie stars Hugh Jackman as an explorer who's trying to find this Bigfoot. When he does, Mr. Link, as the the Bigfoot's name is, requests that Hugh Jackman helps him find his own kind. So the two of them, along with a few others, begin the adventure. All of Laika's films have opened in the $12-17 million range. With this one not receiving quite as much buzz, it's probably going to end up on the lower end of that range.

The final wide release of the weekend is Aviron's release of the teen romance drama After. This is based on the 2014 novel of the same name written by Anna Todd and stars Josephine Langford as a new college student named Tessa who falls for a "bad boy" going by the name Hardin Scott, played by Hero Fiennes-Tiffin. Both of these leads are fairly new faces. Langford has only been a few small films while Fiennes-Tiffin played 11-year-old Tom Riddle in "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince," but not much else. Director Jenny Gage is also only directed two small films, one being a TV movie. So with this movie completely void of star power, the movie's success will rely on fans of the book showing up and/or how hungry teens are for another romance drama shortly after last month's "Five Feet Apart." If this does manage to break out, it's notable that "Five Feet Apart" opened to $13.2 million. If "After" can come close to that mark, it might create quite the log jam as that's a similar range that our other wide releases will be opening to, not to mention the second weekend of "Pet Sematary" in play. However, a more viable comparison might be to a pair of romance dramas from last year in "Every Day" and "Midnight Sun." Those opened to $3 million and $4 million respectively.

April 19th - 21st-

Depending on how "Shazam!" performs in its first two weekends, in theory in could be in for a three-peat on top. However, it might have some strong competition this weekend in the form of the horror film The Curse of La Llorona. The intrigue behind this movie is that this is a horror film thatis based on an actual Mexican folklore tale. La Llorona, the weeping woman, is the ghost of a woman who drowned her children and now cries while looking for them in the river, causing misfortune to those who are near her. That's the short version. The legend has inspired quite a bit horror stories in pop culture, which includes the pilot episode of the hit series "Supernatural." The trailers for "The Curse of La Llorona" have garnered quite a bit of attention, which is why this has breakout potential. If it performs well, it could end up comparable to plenty of other supernatural horror films that have opened in the $20-30 million range. However, based on a popular folklore doesn't always equate to huge success. The infamous Winchester mansion was the subject of a horror film last year with "Winchester," but that movie could only manage a $9.3 million opening. "La Lorona" also opened at South by Southwest, but currently carries a 44 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

Speaking of movies that could break through, our second wide release opening this weekend is actually titled Breakthrough. This is a Christian film attempting to take advantage of the Easter holiday, which falls later this year on April 21. There's a lot of these Christian films that come out every year and most of them open quite small as they're only able to attract the niche Christian audiences. However, there's usually one or two of them that manage to do well and, outside being the only Christian film to open around Easter this year, a reason to believe in this one is that it doesn't come from one of our smaller Christian studios. This is being distributed by Fox. Which equals Disney now, I suppose. The last time Fox released a Christian film was "Son of God" and that opened to $25.6 million in 2014. Other similar titles from major studios taking on Christian films include "Heaven is for Real" ($22.5 million), "I Can Only Imagine" ($17.1 million), "The Shack" ($16.2 million), "Miracles from Heaven" ($14.8 million) and "Risen" ($11.8 million). The premise behind "Breakthrough" surrounds a young boy fighting for his life after falling through the ice and being trapped in the water for 15 minutes and having no pulse for 45 minutes. It's worth noting that this does open on a Wednesday, which could mute the actual three-day total a bit.

The third and final wide release of the weekend is the Penguins, the latest documentary from DisneyNature. This is pretty simple. It's a documentary about penguins. Specifically the trailers suggest that the movie follows a penguin named Steve. DisneyNature has been doing these documentaries since 2009 when they released "Earth." They started releasing them yearly, but recently it's been more like every other year. After "Earth" they released "Oceans," "African Cats," "Chimpanzee," "Bears," "Monkey Kingdom," and "Born in China." All of them have opened shortly before or on Earth Day, which is April 22. This year, that's the Monday after this opens. As far as the box office goes, "Penguins" will also be opening on Wednesday the 17th with "Breakthrough," meaning it'll have a five-day weekend to start things off, which again might mute the three-day numbers. The highest DisneyNature opening was "Chimpanzee" with $10.7 million in 2012. The three after that have opened to $4.8 million, $4.6 million and $4.8 million. So that's an easy number to pin "Penguins" at. And perhaps maybe a tad bit lower if we're stretching things out for the five-day weekend.

April 26th - 28th-

Regardless of how the rest of the month performs at the box office, this April is guaranteed to be a huge month at the box office for the sole reason that it will include the opening weekend of Avengers: Endgame. While films in the MCU will probably continue for the rest of time as long as people keep showing up, "Avengers: Endgame" marks the end of an era. A series finale for these current characters, if you will, before we open the books to whatever new chapter Marvel has in store for us. Ever since this began in 2008 with "Iron Man," they were building up to this Infinity Gauntlet story arc. The first Infinity Stone, which was the Tesseract, first showed up in "Thor" in 2011. As far as the timeline goes, the Tesseract played a big part back in the 1940's with "Captain America: The First Avenger." Thanos himself first showed up at the end credits of "The Avengers" in 2012. Ever since then, we've been slowly building towards the Infinity War, which finally began last April with "Avengers: Infinity War." And, well, spoiler alert, the Avengers lost. Thanos won. Half the universe got snapped, leaving audiences on quite the cliffhanger. But now in "Avengers: Endgame," the remaining Avengers will be out for vengeance for the fallen and they'll do whatever it takes.

On the financial side of things, it's no secret that this is set to make a whole bunch of money. But how high can it go? When tickets went on sale the other day, it shattered the opening day record for ticket sales in the first 24 hours, which was previous held by "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." In fact, the surge to buy tickets as fast as possible was so crazy that many ticket sites crashed and others ended up having long waiting lines for the sale to go through that normally doesn't happen for online ticket purchasing. The easy number to throw out here is the $257 million that "Infinity War" opened to last April, which set a new opening weekend record, previously held by "The Force Awakens" with $247 million. Logically speaking, there's only so many theaters in the country, so the number of seats available is not an infinite number. But how many screens will theaters put this on in order to push that number to the highest possible limit? One might also think that the massive 182 minute run time here (3 hours 2 minutes) might somehow effect things, but that might come to play with repeat viewings rather than the opening weekend rush. A safe bet here might be $260-265 million, but is it possible that "Endgame" becomes the first to open north of $300 million?

Dumbo Review

The Disney train keep chugging along as the first of their now four major live-action remakes has now hit theaters with "Dumbo." I initially went into this year calling this the big three with "Dumbo," "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" all hitting theaters in 2019, but now we have a fourth because "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil" got moved up to October 2019 after initially being scheduled for May 29, 2020. I guess Disney didn't like the idea of that being sandwiched directly between "Fast & Furious 9" and "Wonder Woman 1984," so they decided they were ahead of schedule enough to put it into a less crowded October. Smart move, I suppose. But anyways, there's a lot of pressure on these four movies to perform for Disney. If these movies fail, then it'll be time for Disney to rethink this trend of redoing all of their previous material. If they succeed, we might be seeing these movies for the rest of time. I have reservations on all the other three, but thanks to a strong advertising campaign I had reason to believe that "Dumbo" was primed to succeed despite me initially questioning how they were going to turn a movie as short as "Dumbo" into a feature-length film. But man, we're not off to a good start here because I am beyond stunned to reveal that "Dumbo" is a piece of trash.

Regarding the history of "Dumbo," the original animated film came out in 1941. It was Disney's fourth animated film and was coming off the two financial disappointments in "Pinocchio" and "Fantasia." Yeah, those two would obviously recover later, especially once Disney learned that they could keep re-releasing their movies in theaters until buying movies on VHS actually became a thing, which wasn't really until the 80's. But yeah, it's interesting to note that those two movies actually failed financially upon their initial release, thanks mostly to War War II. That was probably a heavy contributor to "Dumbo" being a much more simple movie made on a smaller budget with the intention of helping Disney actually make money. No, I'm not a Disney scholar, so if I missed anything there, feel free to contribute to that. The overall point is that "Dumbo" is one of Disney's shortest feature-length films, coming in at just 64 minutes long. And part of that run time comes with a lot of fluff that includes Dumbo getting drunk and dreaming about pink elephants, followed by a sequence involving some racist crows. Yeah, not all of it holds up in 2019, but it's still a charming little story about an elephant who feels lost and misplaced, but eventually learns to find his way.

Before Disney's advertising conned me into thinking this would be a great film, I did have some major concerns regarding this live-action adaptation. No, it had nothing to do with Tim Burton being the director. I think the man gets an unfair poor reputation. Yeah, he's a bit weird, but he made a lot of classic films in the 80's and 90's. Even though he has some harsh blunders like "Alice in Wonderland" and "Dark Shadows" this decade, it's not all been bad this decade. I didn't hear awful things about "Miss Peregrine," although I never bothered to see it. Also, "Frankenweenie" has plenty of fans, even though I myself was mostly bored with, but most importantly "Big Eyes" came out in 2014 and that movie is phenomenal. So I had hope that Tim Burton could do a fine job with "Dumbo" if he cared enough about the project. My concerns were more in line with the question of what in the frack are they going to do with "Dumbo" to fill space? As I said, the original animated movie is barely over an hour and even then Disney had a hard time filling space in the movie. But yet you're telling me that they're remaking "Dumbo" and turning into a two hour film? Because, yeah, the run time here is 112 minutes, eight minutes short of two hours. That's rather incredible for such a simple idea.

The answer to that question is rather appalling and is the reason it's so bad. Everyone should know the premise of the animated "Dumbo," but if you don't, I'm about to spoil a 78-year-old movie. Everyone at the circus makes fun of Dumbo for his giant ears. That causes his mother to lose her temper and go crazy, causing them to deem her as mad and toss her into a cage. Bad goes from worse when Dumbo's circus act goes horribly wrong after he trips on his ears. But little Timothy Q. Mouse becomes his friend, or his Jiminy Cricket if you will, helps him gain his confidence back and essentially teaches him to use his ears to fly. The movie ends with Dumbo back at the circus where he jumps off a tall platform and flies around the circus, becoming an immediate sensation. All of that exists in the movie, minus the Timothy Q. Mouse stuff as they go for a more realistic approach where animals don't talk. The role of Timothy Q. Mouse is instead played by the two young kids. No, Dumbo doesn't get drunk, although there's a pink elephant ode later in the film, and there's no racist crows. But what really surprised me is that all of that is crammed into the first 20 minutes of the film. Dumbo becomes a beloved sensation before we even get to the second act.

Granted, if we're going to keep remaking these Disney films, it's much better to go the route of "The Jungle Book" or "Pete's Dragon" where the filmmakers take slightly flawed source material and do something much different to improve it. Disney's original version of "The Jungle Book" is fun and nostalgic, but it's far from perfect and that original "Pete's Dragon" movie is quite strange. In both of these instances with the live-action remakes, I think the remakes ended up being better, which impressed. Yes, I did really enjoy the live-action "Beauty and the Beast," but in hindsight I will admit that making a mostly carbon copy of it means I'll probably never return and watch it when I'm in the mood for "Beauty and the Beast." I'll turn to the animated movie instead. That's why I'm also concerned about the upcoming "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" remakes because how in the world are they going to manage to top the original source materials there? I don't think that's possible. But "Dumbo" had potential because there's room for improvement. So I commend them for going in a completely new direction. It's just that the new direction that they took was so alarmingly bad that I became increasingly baffled at the long string of poor creative decisions that kept coming.

These decisions are so bad that Dumbo essentially becomes sidelined as a supporting character in his own movie. The movie is instead about a father, played by Colin Farrell, and his two kids. He's recently returned from war, World War I, I think. He's lost his arm, though, and his wife has passed away. So the three of them are having a really rough time. Thus there's room for growth and progression there. But they become increasingly uninteresting as the movie goes along, mostly because Colin Farrell doesn't seem to care about this role or this film. The little boy tried his hardest in the movie, but he doesn't get a ton of screen time. Instead a ton of the focus is on this little girl, and, well, bless her heart, but she is terrible in this movie. It's one of the worst child actor performances that I can remember. And I don't blame Nico Parker, the young actress here, for this. I'm putting all of the blame on Tim Burton for being incapable of directing children. There's only so much you can do as a kid when the director doesn't know how to help you out, which is a common critique of Tim Burton. Not helping things out is the introduction of Eva Green, who I think was supposed to act as a new love interest for Colin Farrell, but there is zero chemistry there.

Maybe on paper this sounded like a decent idea, but there's no life here in any of the performances with this family. No one cared and thus I was quickly bored of them. I also became increasingly angry seeing Dumbo, who was cute and adorable in this movie, continuing to be sidelined in favor of this family. But less you think I'm going to put all the blame on the Tim Burton here, while giving the writing a pass for trying to write a decent family drama, the main plot in this movie is an absolute train wreck. This involves Danny DeVito and Michael Keaton. First off, Danny DeVito is the ring leader of the original traveling circus that includes Dumbo, Collin Farrell's family and a whole bunch of misfits. After they discover the flying Dumbo, their little circus gets a ton of attention from people around the country, with one of those individuals being Michael Keaton's character. He's some sort of higher up dude who decides to hire DeVito as is partner in this mega circus thing so that Keaton can take care advantage of this flying elephant phenomenon. This is where Eva Green also comes in as Keaton's sidekick. Or, rather, the pretty girl who Keaton is taking advantage. Because, yeah, Keaton is the nefarious villain of the movie even though he's not convincing.

So that's your actual setup. Boring family drama and this circus shenanigans with Keaton and DeVito. From there it seems like they were just making things up as they went because all sorts of weird stuff happens from that point on. None of it feels connected. There's no pretty story arc. Any character development is forced. Things of course go horribly wrong at the circus. There's some sort of Nightmare Island thing with a heist or a rescue mission of sorts and a whole bunch of other nonsense that was even hard to follow. So many characters. So many story lines. No heart. No soul. No logic. No sense. This became a difficult watch where I was cringing at times and loudly laughing out loud at scenes that weren't supposed to be funny. There's one point where Alan Arkin shows up in the film and as Keaton's circus is getting destroyed by a fire, he looks at the flames, then turns to the camera and states, "This is a disaster!" I flat out lost it at that point. I think I was laughing for five minutes because that moment ironically described the whole film. So who's to blame for all of this? Well, I'm looking at the top to Disney executives for thinking this was a good idea in the first place. Then I'm staring right at director Tim Burton and screenwriter Ehren Kruger.

In researching whose idea this was, Wikipedia informs me that production on this began in 2014 when Ehren Kruger wrote a script for the film and gave it to Derek Frey, who is the head of Tim Burton Productions. Frey was apparently touched and green-lit the film, which was officially announced by Disney as being in production in summer 2014. Tim Burton was officially announced as director in March 2015. So it looks like Ehren Kruger is our initial culprit here. Looking at his filmography as a screenwriter, he is the writer responsible for the second, third and fourth "Transformers" films. And suddenly everything makes sense. But even if it was his idea, that screenplay passed through a lot of hands and I'm rather shocked that said people took a look at it and thought it was a good idea, so all of them get blame, too. And finally, I think Disney trusted Tim Burton because he created a $1 billion film for them via "Alice in Wonderland" in 2010, but it feels like he took the job as "Dumbo" director so that he could get a nice paycheck from Disney and use that for whatever his next personal project is. So yeah, combine an awful screenplay with an uninterested director a a studio thinking with their bank account and the result is "Dumbo."

I wanted to like this. I really did. I saw the slightly mixed critical reaction, but wasn't worried because a score that was hovering around 50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes means that about half of the critics gave this a pass (the dust has settled at 48 percent right now). I heard decent things from some other YouTube critics that I listened to that I was convinced that this was going to be just fine. Sure, I wasn't expecting this to be as great as "The Jungle Book" or "Pete's Dragon," but I was hoping for an experience like "Christopher Robin," which was a solidly charming nostalgic film. My idea was that some critics were being a little to Grinchy, which often happens for movies aimed at family audiences. But yeah, I was shocked. That 48 percent actually seems super generous as I'm now thinking of this as a strong contender for the worst live-action adaptation that Disney has done. That award might go to "Alice Through the Looking Glass" for me, but I think "Dumbo" is right after it, with "Alice in Wonderland" and "Maleficent" not too far behind. Now there's enough good from "Dumbo" with the production design and other technical aspects of the film that convince me to not go super low with my grade, but I'm certainly not positive here as I'm giving "Dumbo" a 5/10. 

Unplanned Review

I wasn't initially going to review this movie. I saw it on the schedule as another one of these Pure Flix films and I immediately rolled my eyes. I don't have a very good relationship with Pure Flix as they're notorious for making these awful Christian films. Perhaps they have good intent, but their messages are often so black and white that it drives me crazy. Not helping their case is usually the fact that they're flooded with bad writing, bad directing and bad acting. They're nothing more than religious propaganda that have no idea as to how to properly reach their target audience of non-Christians. At their best they're harmless and forgettable. At their worst, well, "God's Not Dead 2" rather easily won my award of worst movie of 2016. Last year they released six films and I only bothered with one of them, "Unbroken: Path to Redemption," which was yet another disappointing "Unbroken" movie. That's why I wasn't planning on seeing their first movie of 2019, "Unplanned," especially since it hailed from the writers of the first two "God's Not Dead" movies as they decided to tackle an anti-abortion story. That just sounded like all sorts of wrong. A can of worms that I didn't want to open. But here we are anyways. Thus we can call this an... UNPLANNED review?

Why the change of heart on my end to decide to walk into the theater and see it on a Monday afternoon? Well, that's a building list of reasons. It started with the fact that this got an R rating from the MPAA, which really threw me for a loop. Pure Flix doing an R rated movie? That sounds about as weird as Disney owning Deadpool. Then there was a lot of buzz leading up to the release with a lot of stations refusing to advertising this movie, despite Pure Flix trying their best to get the word out. They were willing to pay, but stations wouldn't bite, so they had to turn to more unconventional and creative ways to get the word out. Whatever they did, it worked. This past weekend "Unplanned" made a surprising top five debut at the box office, earning a total of $6.3 million. For context, out of Pure Flix's 17 movies they've released since they started distributing these films in 2015, "Unplanned" is their second highest opening weekend, behind only the $7.6 million of "God's Not Dead 2." Most of their movies open with less than $3 million. The $6.3 million it earned already makes this their 7th highest grossing movie total in just three days, so it was becoming quite buzzy. All of this combined together to make me curious enough to figure out what the deal was here.

With this movie being an anti-abortion piece of propaganda, this is obviously very sensitive subject matter wherein a lot of people have a lot of different opinions, so I want to tread lightly here. First of all, since I've already trashed Pure Flix quite a bit, I do want to emphasize the fact that I do consider myself Christian. I'm just not going to automatically give a movie a pass just because it preached a religious message. I require it to be a good film, too. I like to say that I'm super picky with Christian films because I want the Christian elements to be portrayed correctly. Good Christian films do exist. Just not ones distributed by Pure Flix. Since "Unplanned" also doubles as a heavy piece of political propaganda, let me also say that I am a registered Republican. That fact actually has surprised a lot of my Facebook friends when I say that, but it's true. It's just that I suppose I don't do a very good job of blindly preaching everything my party says I'm supposed to believe in. I'm a lot more moderate than some of my other Republican friends. I also take things on a case by case basis, looking at each issue separately. And I vote for a candidate, not a party. I'm not afraid to vote for anyone from any party if I think they'll do a better than the candidate from my own party.

All that said, based on me being Christian and Republican, logic states that I'm supposed to believe that abortion is pure evil and should be completely banned, but the issue makes me a lot more conflicted than I usually care to admit. Christianity in general has a statement of morals of what's right and wrong, but free will is something that's also heavily emphasized, so am I supposed to sit here and claim that "pro choice" is a completely evil stance? Sure, if it was someone that I knew, I would strongly encourage the girl to keep the baby and consider adoption if she doesn't think she can properly raise her child. But is it right of me to impose my personal opinions on every woman in the country? The immediate counter-argument to that is the idea that murder isn't something that we would legalize under the argument of allowing freedom of choice. And I totally agree with that. But I will also admit that I feel uncomfortable referring to abortion as murder. And if one claims that abortion is wrong in every scenario without exception, that doesn't align with the official stance of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which claims that abortion is acceptable in cases of rape, incest and when the mother's life is in jeopardy. So yeah, this is a very gray subject to me.

That's quite a bit of build-up to a movie review, but I feel that's very important for me to get out in this case because "Unplanned" is a movie that got under my skin for all the wrong reasons because it took what I feel is a very gray subject matter and turned it into a black and white issue. The movie's stance is simple. Abortion is evil. Everyone who gets an abortion is committing a sin and needs to repent. Planned Parenthood is also painted as the evil Empire that is practically ran by the devil himself. Everyone who works for them is taught to lie to all of the patients in order to trick them into getting an abortion because that's how the money is made and money is all that they care about. As our mustache twirling villain states (and I use that metaphorically - the lady has no mustache, but is evil for the sake of being evil), it's like a fast food restaurant. Selling a burger is simply breaking even. The fries and drinks are how they make the money. And abortion is Planned Parenthood's fries and drinks, so they should always be focusing on getting as many abortions done as possible, even if it requires lying to all of the patients in order to get that done. I don't know a lot about Planned Parenthood, but none of this sounded right to me. I felt so uncomfortable.

Where things get complicated is that this claims to be based on a true story, with our main protagonist of Abby Johnson being heavily involved in the production here. This is her story that she's telling and it's based on her personal memoir of what she experienced as a director of her local Planned Parenthood clinic. But is what she claims accurate? I have no idea. Planned Parenthood has come out with a statement saying the movie is full of inaccuracies, especially when it comes to the healthcare aspect that the film tries to portray. I mean, of course they would, right? They're the ones being portrayed as the evil Empire ran by the devil himself, so why wouldn't they try to make themselves look better? That puts me into an uncomfortable game of "he said/she said." Do I trust Planned Parenthood or do I trust Abby Johnson? The internet is certainly not helpful in the matter since both parties in this debate have a lot of harsh criticism, thus forcing me to rely on my own personal instincts, which I've already stated had me feeling super uncomfortable with the way this was being presented. Do I believe that Planned Parenthood is an angelic organization? I don't know. But all signs for me point to them being unfairly exaggerated to the extreme in this film.

The reasons why I ultimately feel comfortable in siding with Planned Parenthood on this situation is that I don't trust the writers of "God's Not Dead" to have a strong interest in creating an objective movie about an issue they feel strongly about. Said writers are Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon. They didn't direct "God's Not Dead," but the wrote the screenplay for the first two films and they're both wrote and directed "Unplanned." As far as "God's Not Dead" goes, that's a movie that tries to teach the message that God is still alive and is watching out for us. I fully agree with that message, but the way in which they chose to portray that message was very antagonizing. Everyone who is not a Christian in the movie is portrayed in a very dark and evil light, which made me feel gross. Meanwhile, all the Christians are stuck up and arrogant as if they relish in the idea that everyone around them is going straight to Hell for not confessing Christ in this life. When you take that type of angle for your Christian film, you're going to anger every single non-Christian and thus if your goal was to convince them to believe in God, you failed miserably. It's a very non-Christian approach to a Christian message, which in my opinion ultimately does more bad than good.

Not to mention the logic in the movie makes no sense and the filmmaking elements themselves are borderline atrocious. In "God's Not Dead," the movie centers around a debate between the atheist professor and a Christian student. Oddly enough, I think the professor won that debate in terms of providing more believable evidence to his points. The student did a horrible job of defending Christianity. In a real scenario, the professor would've laughed at him and failed him on the spot while all the class watching would've cracked up as well. But of course the professor cowered in fear at his stupid arguments and the whole class confessed out loud that they believe in God. Because, you know, why not? That's not even me addressing the fact that said scenario would've never happened in the first place at a University. To make things better, the movie ends with the professor getting hit by a car. While he's on his death bed, the preacher comes to him and tells him to confess Christ right now before he dies so that his soul can be saved. That scene was so awful that it's almost worth watching just to laugh at in a "it's so bad, it's good" sort of scenario, when in reality the filmmakers were trying their best to make a good Christian film that'll help non-Christians believe in God.

Don't even get me started on "God's Not Dead 2," which gets exponentially worse on every level. They made a third movie which I didn't even see because it failed so miserably at the box office that it didn't even expand for enough for me to give it a shot. In fairness, "Unplanned" isn't quite as bad as the two "God's Not Dead" movies, but I could totally tell it came from the same people as it had the same problems. The main villain lady is so unbelievably evil that her scenes are almost humorous. She has no heart, no soul, and she loves the idea of killing babies. It was ridiculous. Then she also has everyone in her clinic completely sold on this baby-hating philosophy, even our main protagonist, Abby Johnson, for about 90 percent of the movie. Abby is so cold-hearted and manipulative... until she actually sees an abortion take place. She's sitting there looking at the ultrasound and sees the little fetus squirming around trying to avoid the tube that's trying to suck it to its death. I'm clearly no abortion expert, but really? I don't believe that a fetus would ever squirm around like that when it's about to be aborted, yet the evil doctor claimed that happens every time, as if catching the scared fetus is a game to him. Again, I'm not expert, but this all just felt super bogus to me.

Then we have the curious case of Abby Johnson. I don't want to call her a liar, but I had a really hard time believing that her story was true. Sure, I can believe that she was a clinic director who left and became pro-life, but the specific details that the movie told as to what led up to this felt like she was lying and exaggerating in order to make her former company look as bad as possible. I really had a hard time believing that she had two abortions herself, then worked in the clinic for nearly 10 years before having a sudden and immediate change of heart the second she saw her first abortion. I mean, come on girl. What did you think an abortion was? And did you completely forget the two you had on your own? Even if all of those details were completely true and a weird, messed-up sort of way, the execution of by all of the actors involved did not do a good job of selling it. Abby Johnson is played by Ashley Bratcher. I don't want to put all the blame on her for her poor acting skills, but she did an awful job of portraying a complex and troubled young woman, which made the sudden transition from her being bad to good feel really awkward and unearned. I do feel comfortable blaming the directors, though. There's only so much you can do as an actress when you have poor direction.

Topping all of this off was an ending that took things from bad to worse. When you're trying to be sentimental and emotional with your story, there's an appropriate balance that you should be able to find because there's always the chance that you push it too far and become overly sentimental. This movie unashamedly ran past that line. There was a moment where I thought to myself, "OK movie, I get it." But I think the heavy emotional pounding went on for like 10 additional minutes. It was taking its emotional baseball bat and beating you to a bloody pulp, while making sure you didn't forget that the filmmakers believe that abortion is pure evil and everyone who doesn't repent is going straight to Hell. Not only was that stretched on too long, but after Abby was finished confessing all of her sins and repenting of this gross evil she had participated in, but then I thought the movie was going to end, we essentially began "Unplanned" episode 2, causing me to wonder if I had accidentally signed up for a T.V. miniseries instead of a movie. After she's converted to the good side and made amends with her family, we have to start a court case drama. I don't know how long that went on, but the whole thing was completely unnecessary as it served no purpose to the narrative of the film.

So yeah, I wasn't a fan of this at all. In fairness, though, I can see the appeal behind it. If you're one of those people who do think that abortion is pure evil in every situation with no exceptions, and you also think that Planned Parenthood is ran by the devil himself, this movie feeds right into your beliefs and you are going to walk out thinking that this was the best movie ever made. But the reality of the situation is that if you're not on that bandwagon, the only think that this movie accomplishes is furthering the political divide between the pro-life and the pro-choice crowd. This movie is an extreme piece of political propaganda put out by people on the extreme far right and their exaggerated approach isn't going to win over a single convert to their side. If you want to make an anti-abortion film, then fine. But if you're goal is to show the world why this is bad, then the appropriate choice would be to as objective and fair as possible, while making a good film in the process. But this movie didn't try. They go for the hellfire and brimstone approach. Just like no moderate or liberal is going to be converted by a Trump rally, no pro-choice individual or anyone somewhere in the middle is going to buy into this movie for one second.

My final word about "Unplanned" that I want to say is the discussion behind the rating. The directors were pretty appalled by the MPAA giving them an R and they immediately played the victim card, claiming that so much sex, violence and language is acceptable in a PG-13 film, but the MPAA is out to get them by giving their important anti-abortion piece an R in some sort of effort to sabotage their film because a lot of Christians don't see R-rated movies. That's a bunch of crap. The MPAA is not out to get them. They just made a really graphic, bloody film. There's three extremely graphic scenes in this movie that would've potentially made this movie R on their own. Combine them together and this is unquestionably R. There's one specific scene in a bathroom with so much blood and blood clots all over the place that I was grossed out. That scene, while brief, was way more graphic than plenty of other R-rated films. Yes, I have my issues with the MPAA as a whole and I'm not shy to point out the hypocrisy of the system, but "Unplanned" is not a movie where I'll question the rating. It easily earns an R. Feel free to still see it if you want, just beware of the content and don't come out complaining that the movie was victimized by the MPAA because that's stupid.

Super long review here, but I hope I got my message out loud and clear. I didn't want to rush things and I wanted to make my opinion absolutely certain so that you don't run out thinking I'm a pro-choice liberal. If anyone asks me my opinion on abortion, ultimately I'm against it. I just think it's a much more complex issue than some on the far right make it out to be and if we're going to do an anti-abortion movie, I would've loved to see a more objectively fair approach rather than an absurdly exaggerated hellfire and brimstone approach. No, not all propaganda is bad. The word often gets an immediate negative connotation, but there's a right way and a wrong why to approach a propaganda film. My argument here is that "Unplanned" does it the wrong way. It's a gross piece of political propaganda that's trying to hide as a religious film, which only makes it worse as it tries to guilt you into believing that their political opinion is the only correct way. Making things worse is the fact that the filmmaking elements are just not done well at all and I choose to put all the blame on writers and directors Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon for proving yet again that they have no idea how to properly make a film. My grade for "Unplanned" is a 4/10.