Can you guess which of these is the August release stereotype?
The first 20 minutes of “Christopher Robin” are full of some
of the most heartwarming filmmaking that I have seen this year.
Directed by Marc Forster and following the adulthood of the
titular character’s return to the Hundred Acre Wood amidst a midlife crisis
brought about by struggling to balance his work life, family, and a slew of
overwhelming emotional baggage that he was never able to come to terms with,
the film opens up with Christopher’s final dinner with his friend’s in a
beautifully shot sequence that treats the larger than life personalities of his
childhood friends with the subtlety of the greatest series finale that you
never knew you wanted to a story you never realized you had so much love for.
Subsequently watching the innocence of childhood beaten out
of Christopher Robin not via extenuating circumstance but by the typical ups
and downs of life are all too relatable as his crossing of paths with Pooh once
more for the first time in decades hints at a slightly dark but ultimately uplifting
take on the childhood centric tales of Winnie the Pooh as a hardened
Christopher has to come to terms with his childhood in order to meaningfully
embrace the happiness being dangled in front of him as an adult.
It makes way for a deconstruction of the values of childhood
simplicity in a manner that is fairly straightforward and more than a little uneven
when asked to blend the characters of the Hundred Acre Wood with the backdrop
of a very real and populated London, ultimately effective and efficient thanks
to a prevalent and undeniable sense of charm. The voice cast nails all of their
roles and Jim Cummings continues to wear the role of Pooh as naturally as a
glove, with some of his reactions to a more mature and confrontational
Christopher Robin being downright gut wrenching to take in with the more subtle
expressions of CGI character model.
It’s just a shame that the powerful metaphor built up by the
movie, unintentionally or otherwise, about an overworked man cracking under
pressure and suffering a crisis that he can only overcome by accepting the
levity of his childhood as more than naiveté crumbles as it goes along into a
movie that opts to cop out of a sincerely heartwarming character study in favor
of a standard bombastic kids flick.
Shades of this rear their head throughout the makeup of the
entire film as Ewan McGregor plays an admirable straight man in an adult world
full of bumbling cartoonish workplace stereotypes that feel at odds with the
human story on display and far less subtle than the adventures of the stuffed
animals concocted by the runaway imagination of a child on display in the movie’s
opening.
Unfortunately, by the time the third act gives way to the
complete abandonment of the imagination metaphor, opting to portray Pooh and
friends as real and traversing a city with Christopher’s daughter, most of the
charm is thrown cleanly out of the window as the conclusion to the film’s
driving climax attempts to assess a complex problem with a childish solution in
the vein of thinking that such a simple mindset can solve the problem at its
core, with embarrassing results.
When “Christopher Robin” is at its weakest, it’s borderline
bad and no amount of nostalgia or charm can cover that up. What elevates the
movie is the greatness it skates by at its best, which is more often than not
on average.
However clumsy the screenplay may have proven itself to be,
Forster manages to make his cast members and technicians work ultimately for
the better. Rabbit, Owl, Kanga, Roo, Eeyore, Tigger, and Piglet don’t just feel
more human than the human cast members, save for an impressive performance by
young Bronte Carmichael as Robin’s daughter, because of the one note material
of the live action performers, they simply carry the essence and heart of the
movie magnificently.
At its best, the film feels like coming home to dear friends
you haven’t seen in years and despite the initial awkwardness of growing pains
to work through, you remember what made your bond so magical to begin with. It’s
that portion that stays worthwhile long after the film dips in quality.
Despite “Christopher Robin” not exceeding the sum of its
parts being almost tragic considering how much works within it, the movie is an
undeniably worthy experience for anybody with a soft spot for childhood days,
Pooh himself, or looking to have a well rounded afternoon outing with the
entire family, the children of whom will be in for an absolute treat.
6 Silly Old Bears out of 10
The "X-Men" film series has been a bizarre beast within the
cinematic landscape that has somehow managed to usher in an era of source reverent
superhero films unafraid to indulge in the spectacular nature of their genre
while simultaneously existing as deconstructive postmodernist takes on the same
era of the genre that it pioneered, while said era is underway.
I bring this up primarily because whatever goals “The
Darkest Minds” may have had of being some sort of contemporary and grounded
version of the “X-Men” narrative kind of goes clean out the window when not
only is said series already doing that on both the silver screen and on television
but even has its own teen version of that thing coming out next year, which,
for all of the rumors of production problems plaguing it, looks to have far
more personality than this movie based on the Alexandra Bracken YA novel of the
same name.
The superhuman abilities in this case, seem to be isolated
solely to children via a disease and powers in question are far more limited
but the allegory of a mundane majority, oppressing an extraordinary minority in
a coming of age narrative nevertheless stands.
Anybody that’s read my work for a period of time extending
back further than 20 seconds knows that the superhero genre is my favorite in
all of fiction and those that have gleaned a few of my more recent writing
projects would know that I have a weakness for the Young Adult genre.
I won’t pretend that every facet of its lowest common
denominator doesn’t lend itself to some occasionally embarrassing swaths of
storytelling but its general emphasis on character’s driving narrative and
accessibility in presentation appeal to my general preferences of clarity in
storytelling.
For these reasons, despite seeing all of the obvious signs
that “The Darkest Minds” was destined to be a bad and almost quintessential
August dumping ground release of a movie, I went into it happily hoping that if
it didn’t at least surprise me, it could at least successfully indulge me with
mindless pulp fiction to pass the time.
Unfortunately, the end result is a dud that only fails to
bore by being a fascinating relic out of time, bringing to mind the sort of bad
YA teen genre adaptations that ruled the roost roughly 5 or 6 years ago before
failure after failure killed their box office viability.
To the credit of “The Darkest Minds,” the film doesn’t try embarrassingly
to get by on spectacle that its budget can’t quite support. While large chunks
of the movie come across as dull because the powers of the protagonists on the
run aren’t utilized to full effect and samples of startlingly bad editing can
make it clear how miniscule their shooting budget was, the special effects are
mostly held back for maximum impact, even if said impact isn’t very astonishing
compared to similarly premised and cheaper contemporaries, such as films like “Chronicle.”
It’s the hollow screenplay that rehashes the teenage drama
aspects beat for beat in favor of properly exploring the implications of their
concept where the film truly falls apart, from set ups that are almost
laughably predictable in the straight laced manner that they are played to the
god awful dialogue that largely takes its own pitiful character building for
granted.
The ineptitude of filmmaking scattered about the production
is a real shame because these kids manage to act circles around their actual
terrible lines.
Skylan Brooks and Harris Dickinson manage to work wonders
with what little they’re given that manage to elevate them beyond the typical
smart mouthing black best friend and strong jawed male love interest archetypes
that they could have so easily fallen into.
Furthermore, the only thing more sobering about watching Amandla
Stenberg and reflecting on just how old I am watching the little girl from the “Hunger
Games,” a film that was in theaters when I had achieved legal drinking age,
headline a film as a young adult some half a decade later was realizing that
she has the chops to be a great actress, shining through material well below
her standard of performance.
The herculean efforts put forth by the cast are just about
the only unironically enjoyable thing to be found in “The Darkest Minds.” It’s
far from the worst thing that I have seen in any way shape or form but it has
so little to offer anybody that I can’t even bring myself to recommend it as a
rental for those of passing curiosity. I’d insult it by saying that I’ve seen more impressive original
productions from YouTube Red but even the free version of YouTube is host to
amateur productions that are at least more original.
4 Dim Minded Wastes of Potential out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment