1. The Good Dinosaur (Disney, 3,749 Theaters,100 Minutes, Rated PG for peril, action and thematic elements, Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer Ranking at press time: 85% Fresh [53 Reviews]): Normally, Pixar would be a worry free film going experience. However, there is cause for concern about this one.
This film was supposed to come out last year, but it became the first Pixar film to have such major problems in production that they had to scrap the script and start from scratch all over again. For any other studio, that would be disasterous.
However, it appears that by early reviews, the ground-up reworking, well, worked. But the film still has the distinct misforutune to have come out the same year as Inside Out, a film so good that any comparisons to it would not be favorable in the best of circumstances.
The film postulates that there is an alternate Earth where the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs missed and the animal survived until the dawn of man. A young dinosaur named Arlo must fend for himself n the wild with the help of a feral human child he names Spot.
2. Creed (Warner Brothers, 3,350+ Theaters,132 Minutes, Rated PG-13 for violence, language and some sensuality, Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer Ranking at press time: 94% Fresh [85 Reviews]): Few film franchises have had as interesting a life span as the Rocky franchise. Starting as a populist entry in the gritty, character driven 1970s, it became a simplified good vs. evil blockbuster with its third installment and added a jingoistic element for its fourth before trying out the Rocky as a trainer motif in the fifth installment. Sixteen years passed and Rocky went back in the ring for 2006’s Rocky Balboa, which rejuvenated the franchise.
Now Rocky goes back to being a trainer as the franchise passes on the baton to the son of Apollo Creed, and up and coming fighter named Adonis who seeks out his father’s friend to help train him to be the best around.
That Tomatometer score is impressive, and proves that there is still life in the 40 year old franchise. That’s a good thing.
Be sure to check out FBOL Head Honcho Rich Drees coverage of a recent Creed press event here.
3. Victor Frankenstein (Fox, 2,795 Theaters,109 Minutes, Rated PG-13 for macabre images, violence and a sequence of destruction, Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer Ranking at press time: 17% Fresh [30 Reviews]): Hey, it’s Professor X and Harry Potter creating the Frankenstein Monster!
Unfortunately, no, it’s just James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe playing Dr. Frankenstein and Igor receptively. If it was Charles and Harry, it would have probably made for a better movie.
Unless you have been living under a rock or were only born in the last decade, you already know the story. This film puts a hip and trendy gloss over the classic story, but the story is a classic because it doesn’t need any gloss. When the first thing they do is remove Igor’s hump, you know you are in trouble. And that Tomatometer score screams out “Gobble, Gobble.”
