The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Michael Apted. Starring Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, Will Poulter.
The Pevensies return to Narnia on a boat ride to the uncharted edge of the world, learning wholesome Christian lessons about guilt along the way.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was arguably the best of the Narnia book series for the same reasons it would make a bad Christmas blockbuster: it was about wandering around on a mission of exploration rather than some valiant struggle between good and evil.
The producers' way around this problem is to add in an overarching plot about evil green mist and magic swords. The sense of wonder is replaced by a generic and poorly-defined villainous force.
So the film misses the point. But I'm a believer in taking adaptations as the standalone products they are, and as a children's fantasy film there's nothing seriously wrong with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It doesn't suffer from the rushed pacing that usually afflicts these releases, it has ample swashbuckling, and its talking rat character isn't even very annoying. The child (now mostly teenage) lead actors are talented and well-cast, particularly Will Poulter as the obnoxious Eustace.
Other areas of the production have a cheap feel to them, however. The adult actors all look like they were pulled from the local theater circuit. The sets are mostly computer generated: a shiny, brightly-colored sort of CG that makes Dawn Treader look like an animated film when the actors aren't onscreen. The fantastical creatures that aren't digital creations look suspiciously like people in furry costumes. The sets, props, and costumes all lack character-a problem that can be traced partly back to the project's origins in conservative british fantasy, and partly to a lack of imagination among the filmmakers.
It's not The Lord of the Rings, and it's not really Narnia, for that matter, but The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is still among the better choices for kids this year.
Rated PG for whimsical fights to the death.
3.5 out of 5
Little Fockers (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Paul Weitz. Starring Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba.
Feature-length bad sitcom starring the dead-eyed husks of formerly great actors.
Gaylord Focker (Ben Stiller) clashes with his father-in-law (Robert De Niro) over the same issues they resolved in the last two movies. Meanwhile, Focker's parents (Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman) engage in wacky and irrelevant antics on the side.
Yes, his name is Gaylord Focker. Better get used to it, because it's the punchline of most of the movie's jokes.
Little Fockers doesn't have a plot. What it has instead is Stiller's character doing increasingly stupid things and De Niro's character overreacting to them until the two of them find something stupid enough to call the movie's central conflict.
Stiller is a connoisseur of what I'll call "cringe humor": a brand of comedy that asks us to laugh at the repeated humiliation of its subject. Whatever room there is for amusement between the bouts of intense embarrassment-by-proxy these jokes induce in the viewer, it evaporates when the scenarios are as contrived as they are in Little Fockers.
Considering how disastrous the average stroll between the kitchen and the living room tends to be for Focker, are we really supposed to believe that he (innocently) thinks it's a good idea to have dinner and drinks alone with Jessica Alba in an empty house on the very same night he's been exiled there over suspicions about his relationship with her? No, scratch that. Are we really supposed to believe Jessica Alba would acknowledge Ben Stiller's existence at all?
Not unwatchable, but shouldn't be watched by anyone.
Rated PG-13 for graphic awkwardness.
2 out of 5
