DVD Review: American Exit (2019)

Now Available 

Say what you will about Dane Cook. If you've seen Mr. Brooks — where he managed to not only hold his own but actually steal a few scenes away from Kevin Costner — you know that with the right role and the right material, the guy can act.

And while we never buy him as an influential art dealer, Cook is quite good in a key scene late into American Exit where he takes his estranged son to his late mother's favorite place to paint and delivers a heartfelt monologue about art and life that's so strong, it's probably why he accepted the role in the first place.

I say "probably" because at some point he would have had to have read the rest of the script, which somehow takes a premise involving the theft of a million dollar painting originally stolen by the Nazis in WWII and uses it as a mere two minute long inciting incident for a half-baked melodrama.

Heist wise, watching Cook pull one over on his shady boss Anton (Udo Kier) is about as exciting as watching a kid try to steal a candy bar from a gas station. And while there's no gas station in sight, a kid is indeed involved as, before he boosts the painting, Cook's Charlie does the same to his teenage son.

A father at the end of his rope — plagued with crippling health problems and debt — in writer-directors Tim McCann and Ingo Vollkammer's Exit, after Charlie picks up Leo (Levi Miller) at school without his ex's permission, he uses him as a distraction with Anton before heading south on a road to nowhere.

Neither thrilling as a genre movie nor compelling as a drama, the film veers wildly from one moment to the next, unsure of not only what it wants to be but also who its main characters are. Asked to swing for the fences, within his first thirty minutes of screen time Miller inexplicably moves from hating his father on behalf of his mother to getting excited about thrift store clothing to insulting strangers to asking Charlie if he can drive with little to no warning.

It's so ridiculously uneven, it's like they told the kid to watch Three Faces of Eve about three hundred times in preparation for a character revelation that is never expressed on the screen. Although undoubtedly used to help drive not the car this time but the aimless film forward, the histrionic hoops that Miller is asked to jump through are so annoying that as a viewer, you actually get to a point where you wish Charlie would just leave the kid on the side of the road.

Trying his best to bond with his son amid the chaos (and what we quickly gather is his own failing health), the screenwriters build a fascinating backstory in Charlie's past centering on his own relationship with his parents and his ex that would've made a far more interesting tale than the one we see here.

Interrupting any attempt at dramatic momentum in a series of cliched mini showdowns with Anton and his fellow art goons, although Cook fares better than Miller (who deserves hazard pay for playing a new role at the drop of a hat), Exit continues its series of starts and stops for the rest of its eighty-six minute running time.

Unable to change lanes for longer than a few minutes at a time, sadly by the time we reach Cook's moving speech, most viewers will have already longed for a real exit and turned the damn thing off.


Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review - Planes: Fire and Rescue (2014)

Now Available to Own   
On Blu-ray, DVD, or Download

  Photo Slideshow   


Related Review: 
Planes (2013)

AKA: Disney's Planes: Fire & Rescue; Planes: Fire & Rescue

As the very embodiment of not just wishing upon a star but aspiring to fly among them to make his Disney dreams come true, in the first of three planned "World of Cars" spin-off Planes pictures, Dane Cook's ambitious crop duster ventured from humble beginnings as a farm flyer before overcoming enormous obstacles to take to the international skies as a world-class racer.

Yet just because the underdog made it to the top of our eye-line (in some gorgeously crafted CG sequences that helped distract us from the otherwise by-the-numbers plotline), it doesn't mean that he'll be smooth sailing in the sky for long as this time around, reality in the form of a faulty gearbox soon sends him crashing down from cloud nine.

Hoping to remedy the mess he’s made at home, Dusty cruises over to Piston Peak National Park for what he assumes will be a cakewalk compared to everything he's achieved.

However he quickly finds himself overwhelmed, outclassed, and — whether or not he wants to admit it — seriously impressed by the high precision flying, jaw-dropping displays of teamwork, bravery and lack of ego evidenced by the squad of true heroes whom he encounters.

And though it may be smaller in scope to the global scale of its predecessor, Planes: Fire and Rescue is vastly superior to the first film which ran out of gas and plot by the end of the first act.

Yet while the original Planes would have been better off wrapping up its entire storyline in the form of a short film as opposed to a feature, Fire and Rescue only gets better as it continues, particularly as witnessed by the coolly cinematic introduction to the crew (and what they can do) cut in time to AC/DC's "Thunderstruck."

Admittedly and much like the previous installment, Fire is a retread of the same character archetypes, storylines, style, and structure of Cars — this time with Ed Harris taking on the role as the mentor embodied by Paul Newman in the Pixar original.

However, the one bonus that this film has over the rest of the World series is a genuinely witty, against-type voice-over turn by Modern Family's Julie Bowen Dipper, the aptly-named new coworker of Dusty who's as dippy and she is determined to make Dusty her wingman.

While Dipper's overeager charm recalls Jessie in Toy Story 2 and Dory in Finding Nemo, a theme from another Pixar franchise film floats into the last half of Disney’s Planes that echoes the mature moral conveyed in Monsters University.

For just as Billy Crystal's Mike struggled to adapt his future plans and roll with the punches when he learned that the path he'd always imagined for himself wasn't in the cards, it's precisely the same ability-driven setback that Dusty faces in this film upon realizing that sometimes life doesn't always go the way you’d expect.

A rough patch of a plot twist that can also be viewed as a metaphor for disability, Dusty's role-defining character arc is universally relatable from multiple points-of-view.

Uniting the ambitious flier with his mentor on a more soulful level, viewers eventually discover that, like Dusty, the decision to join the Fire and Rescue Squad came later in life as a fallback career for the character voiced by Harris as well.

Predictably of course, Planes: Fire and Rescue takes a cheap way out by giving its characters another happily ever after solution in the nick of time. Nonetheless, even utilizing this plotline is an admirably responsible step in the right direction for Disney given that their entire empire is built upon wishing on a star and dreams coming true.

For fittingly, over the past thirty years there's been a definite paradigm shift at the House of Mouse in an important transition for not only the classic fairy tales that served as a foundation for the happiest place on earth but also in the underdog films that have replaced them as modern day wish fulfillment sagas.

Winningly, they’ve managed to infuse the works with more realism while still staying true to their roots by never taking away from the importance of optimistic dreams.

Thus, Disney has not only taken responsibility for the oversimplification of tales of old by showing us heroes that know they might need a backup plan to save themselves when times are tough but they also give the youngest generation filmic examples of these very lessons at the very same time.

While it's nowhere near as impactful or thrilling as recent Disney fare including the superlative Wreck it Ralph or Frozen, much like Dusty you have to admire the ability of Planes to bounce back from the problems of the first one early on to deliver something stronger and more successful all around.

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: Planes (2013)

Now Available to Own   


  
Photo Slideshow

   
Related Review:
Planes: Fire and Rescue (2014)

Alternate Title: World of Cars: Disney's Planes; Disney's Planes

Infusing the film with personal touches to honor the wartime heroics of his long-passed Navy flyer father, it’s safe to say that director Klay Hall’s “World of Cars” spin-off Planes is a labor of love.

And in easily the strongest bonus feature included in the Blu-ray Combo Pack of Disney’s latest new release, Hall’s infectious enthusiasm, vast knowledge of the subject and obvious passion for planes shines through. It’s just a shame that the movie itself isn’t nearly as engrossing as the anecdotes he shares onscreen while touring a plane museum with his sons.

 

Originally slated to revolve around trains and make its cinematic debut as a direct-to-disc feature before it was transferred into 3D and released on the big screen to cash in on the blockbuster summer box-office, Planes’s overwhelming familiarity and strict adherence to the underdog formula employed in so many of the studio’s features ensures a bumpy ride.

The first of a planned trilogy, while fortunately it can only improve as the series continues, unfortunately the first impression we’re left with for Planes is that it’s a virtually recycled retread of the Pixar smash which inspired it – Cars.

 

Additionally hindered by the fact that it bowed onscreen mere months after the release of DreamWorks Animation and Twentieth Century Fox’s vastly superior, topically similar underdog racer movie Turbo While the allure of Disney ensured a much bigger success given the company’s amazing track record, the novelty of Planes’s plot was lost on those who’d already seen Turbo.

Centering on a likable crop duster aptly named Dusty (voiced by Dane Cook) who longs to compete in the Wings Around the World Rally despite a serious fear of heights, Planes benefits from the top-notch vocal cast that diverts us from the predictable paradigm while bringing the scene-stealing supporting “ladies and gentle-planes” to life.

Taking a cue from the recent trend of color and ethnic-blind international casting to appeal to the hearts (and wallets) of a global box office, Cook’s predictable Rocky-inspired “vehicle interest story” themed character pales in comparison to the charm and comedic attention-commanding characterizations of Carlos Alazraqui’s cape-swishing El Chupacabra and Roger Craig Smith’s cocky champion Ripslinger.

Also featuring John Cleese, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Teri Hatcher, Stacy Keach and Priyanka Chopra, Planes makes a play for the children of the ‘80s now dragging their own children to the theater with cameos from Top Gun leads Anthony Edwards and Val Kilmer.

 

Though we can only hope that the next installment will move one of these supporting planes to the front of the runway so the series can really take off and keep us engaged, ultimately what we’re left with is a somewhat entertaining but mostly unimaginative hodge-podge of Pixar and Disney hits from years past.

While some would see fit to blame the small-screen ambitions of Planes’s origin, as its screenwriter Jeffrey M. Howard has proven in the past with his stellar work on Disney’s direct-to-disc Tinker Bell series (including its strongest sequel Great Fairy Rescue), there’s no room for narrow minds regarding which audience the project was originally intended.

 

Simply put, the only criterion for success (particularly when dealing with this market) should be whether or not you’re entertained from start to finish. And despite the cheerfully crisp, colorful animation that particularly dazzles whenever Dusty finds himself in new surroundings from the Far East or America’s east coast, most viewers big and small will find their minds begin to wander long before we’ve reached the second act.

Forgetful by the time you’ve made it to the final credits, while toddlers will probably happily fly along (at least for a little while), for slightly older race fans, the best bet is to go with Turbo or perhaps hitch yet another ride with Pixar’s transporting original people-mover Cars.    

Referenced and Related Reviews:

All Reviewed Disney Titles

All Reviewed Pixar Titles

Tinker Bell

Tinker Bell and The Lost Treasure

Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue

Rocky: The Undisputed Collection

Text ©2013, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

DVD Review: Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who (2008)

Coming Soon,
Available to All,
On DVD & Blu-ray,
You'll Have a Ball!

(12/9/08)

View the Trailer & Photo Gallery

In 2008 with the release of-- what could very well be the most wholly satisfying animated feature of the year-- Dr. Suess' Horton Hears a Who!, Fox's CGI divisional company Blue Sky Studios proudly announced to Pixar and DreamWorks Animation, "WE ARE HERE!"

Having already burst onto the scene with Ice Age as well as providing some truly spectacular bits of CGI for our pop culture landscape such as augmenting David Fincher's incredible Fight Club and the memorable "talking fish" episode of The Sopranos, Blue Sky has always been one of the best kept secrets in effects work and computer animation.



However, with this tremendous new release of Horton, which-- typical for computer animated works-- stuns in a visually eye-catching transfer to DVD and Blu-ray and in doing so we're actually let behind-the-scenes of the company to see the talented and impossibly young inventors at work. But before I delve into the extra features, here's a reprint of my original theatrical review of Horton.

Dr. Suess' Horton Hears a Who!

Alternate Title: Horton Hears a Who!
Directors: Jimmy Hayward & Steve Martino
Original Publication Date: 3/29/08

“I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful one hundred percent,” so goes the famous quote from Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hatches the Egg that seems to be even more poignant when scripted for actor Jim Carrey as he lends his vocal talents to bring children’s literature’s best loved elephant to life in Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! From the same studio that created the family films Ice Age and Robots, Blue Sky Studios of 20th Century Fox, directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino craft not only the best adaptation of Dr. Seuss brought to screen thus far but also the best family film of 2008 as of this review.

For years, I’ve been wondering if I was simply growing too impatient with animated features, having found myself bored by critical smashes such as the overly long Pixar hits The Incredibles and Cars and struggling to stay awake during films such as Curious George and Bee Movie and although there’s been a few notable exceptions (Surf’s Up, Over the Hedge), I’ve found myself steering clear of animation. However, it wasn’t until I saw Horton Hears a Who that I fell back in love with the concept of bright, magical animated family films that manage to blend positive messages with high flying entertainment and quality humor that gave at least this viewer the same kind of amazing theatrical experience that I had while seeing Finding Nemo or the Toy Story films years earlier.

While on one hand, the film, like several animated works filled with A list stars for better or worse (which take jobs away from voice-over actors), has a boast worthy roster that comprise a comedic dream team in the form of not only Carrey but also Steve Carell, the legendary Carol Burnett, Seth Rogen, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler and Isla Fisher, I found myself forgetting the magnitude of the stars after only a few lines by each were uttered as admirably they began to ham less and instead preferably stick with telling the terrific tale.



For those who, like myself, barely remember the book, I’ll bring you up to speed—moments into the film we meet our unlikely elephant hero Horton who hears a noise coming from a tiny speck on a clover flower, only to discover that he’s listening to residents of the tiny universe Whoville or more accurately, the mayor of Whoville (Steve Carell). Eventually concluding that “a person’s a person, no matter how small,” Horton tries to save Whoville by bringing the flower to a place where it will be protected from outside forces such as the disbelieving kangaroo (Carol Burnett) who feels Horton is becoming a dangerous agitator that must be stopped and hires the Russian vulture Vlad (Will Arnett) to do just that.

Touching, beautifully animated, fast-paced (refreshingly just 88 minutes) and undeniably heroic, Horton Hears a Who is the type of film that will entertain adults just as much, if not more than children as I found myself laughing frequently throughout by the increasingly wild situations and characterizations by the cast.

Note: The book, which was published in 1954 sent some readers and journalists looking at Seuss’ work as a political allegory and in a fascinating sidebar “Who are the Whos?” by Entertainment Weekly’s Adam Markovitz (3/21/08, p. 42) he chronicles three takes on the work, including the two likeliest which saw it as first a look at postwar Japan (which Seuss has admitted) and secondly as yet another 1950’s artistic offering that echoed the political climate of America during the devastating McCarthy hearings.

The DVD

Having seemed to been sent a combination of both the Single Disc and Two-Disc Special Edition of the film all included on one critical screener copy, I'm unable to dissect exactly which version I'm reviewing but wanted to deliver you the inside scoop on the bonuses included throughout. Containing an entertaining director's audio commentary with the filmmakers Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino-- both the single and two-disc versions also boast an all-new animated Ice Age short featuring the memorable characters Sid and Scrat, which is aptly dubbed Surviving Sid.

Reminiscent of vintage Warner Brothers cartoons, Surviving Sid is filled with misadventure and comical peril as little animals try to endure camp counselor Sid and while cute-- it's instantly outdone by two more memorable shorts included with animated features-- the brilliant BURN-E available on the WALL-E DVD as well as the bonus DVD Secrets of the Furious Five which came along with Kung Fu Panda.



Yet, the most fascinating extras for me all surrounded the making of the film. While sometimes we're overwhelmed by insistent and phony Electronic Press Kit styled interviews filled with pompous narration and interviews that nearly seem scripted, what's apparent right from the start of these extras is just how passionately everyone involved felt about the making of Horton. Also containing deleted footage and animation screen tests (with optional introductions and commentaries), it's an amazingly inspiring all-access pass to the dedication and tireless energy of the young animators who tried to stay true to Suess' trademark drawings filled with curves, wrinkles, swirls, and the struggle they had to make the short classic book into a compelling feature that still captured the same heart and spirit of the tale.



Ensuring they had the blessing of Dr. Suess' widow-- the filmmakers note that Suess had never been adapted as a feature length animated work and they discussed the trials and joys of translating the author's 2-D designs into a 3-D world, right down to certain shadings and even making their first version of the screenplay a book-like treatment with the original animation in tact when they made their presentation to the Suess family. Once they received the go-ahead to make the film, Blue Sky developed a critical style guide and complete set of rules for everyone involved to follow as they point out the various Suess qualities that animators had to reproduce faithfully.

And while it's a riot to watch the all-star cast record their scenes, which then sends the animators back to the storyboard panels to re-imagine and invent the animation yet again-- going as far as to literally act out the scenes themselves in front of computer cameras, just lip-syncing to the actors to get their movements, it's even more intriguing to watch the brainy, young animators themselves. Agonizing over different reads and styles of relaying a thought or action with varying body language by bringing in other colleagues to do an alternate "read" of their scene, one reveals they shoot twenty minutes of live video, then edit it until they have a usable tiny amount they animate to fit the right emotional core of the scene and stay faithful to the actor's voice work. And thankfully, they note that some of the actors allowed themselves to be filmed while they were in-house doing their voice-work, and the artists noted that they'd take some strange visual cues or movements possessed by cast-mates such as Steve Carrell, Will Arnett, and Amy Poehler and incorporate it directly into the drawings.

Horton also offers a treasure trove of features from elephant fun facts, interviewing kids about how the smallest of actions can help promote a more peaceful existence, to the importance of being open-minded and without judgment in others with "A Person is a Person: A Universal Message," along with games and cast interviews. Additionally, saving the best for last-- there is some terrific footage of Jim Carrey as he relishes in completing his first CG cartoon and what drew him to the part of Horton-- the innocent elephant and it's humbling and admirable to witness his own anxieties and perfectionism in wanting it to be a success. Moreover, it's a wonderful addition to an already superior year of animated DVDs and Blu-rays, along with the recent releases of Panda, WALL-E, Tinker Bell, Sleeping Beauty, and others.

Also available as a special gift set with a Horton plush toy available this coming Tuesday right in time for holiday shopping-- no matter which version of Horton you pick up, the result is anything but "small" as it's sure to become a modern, childhood favorite. Moreover, it's a highly recommended, life-affirming, positive, and inspiring film. And it's truly exciting to anticipate what Blue Sky and the other first-rate animation studios will release next to a world that desperately needs to be reminded right now that we're more alike than one thinks and in this time of conflict (as opposed to the brilliant yet bleak last forty-five minutes of WALL-E) that there's always hope if we band together. So clean out those ears, pick up a flower, and get ready to listen to some Whos.

Read the Books