Review: G-Force (Hoyt Yeatman)
Aug. 2nd, 2009 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nebroadweYesterday afternoon I went to see G-Force with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kanja177 and nateprentice's children. I'd seen the trailer with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince last weekend and wasn't expecting much. So I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be half kiddie movie and half deadpan send-up of all those eighties-nineties-oughties action flicks starring actual humans. Most of the A-listers in the cast (apart Bill Nighy) are responsible for the voice work and disappear respectably into it (I would never have recognized Nicholas Cage and realized who Steve Buscemi was only in retrospect). The B-listers, as the human protagonists and antagonists, shine by taking their limited roles for what they are and playing the clichés with a seriousness that occasionally put me in mind of Buster Keaton. The script has some perfunctory moments -- particularly the afterschool-special moral-of-the-week scene, which seemed insufficiently prepared for -- but mostly holds up. The kids only had to ask a couple of questions about what was going on, and I honestly didn't see the twist at the end coming (and was hard put not to howl with laughter at the revelation of the chief villain's motivation, looming father figure and all. kanja177, on the other hand, was reduced to tears of mirth at the juxtaposition of Orff's "O Fortuna" and a manic chase through a local fireworks display). I give the filmmakers props for NOT including a guinea pig romance, but instead spoofing the who-the-girl-really-wants cliché into oblivion. But that leads me to the one serious caveat I have with this film as children's entertainment. If you're an adult and have seen the action flicks this production is meta-ing into humor, you can recognize that the gender and ethnic fail is being played with an awareness of its inherent silliness, but if you're a child, you won't -- and there's the team led by the serious white guy, ably seconded by the sexy Hispanic chick and the loudmouthed black dude, with the computer nerd in the basement and a goofy white civilian who's drafted in by accident but turns out to be a hero after all. Um.
I can't recommend this film to adults for solo viewing -- there's really not enough entertainment for the mature mind to enjoy without a kid in tow -- but if you do take a kid to see it, you probably won't find yourself falling asleep partway through (if only because the soundtrack never lets UP) and may wish to clue said kid in to the nature of the humor, as appropriate.
kanja177, herself a guinea pig owner, would probably wish me to pass on the information that, despite what the film suggests, guinea pigs are not built to roll around in balls and wheels like hamsters; their backs won't take it. This has been a public service announcement.
kanja177 and nateprentice's children. I'd seen the trailer with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince last weekend and wasn't expecting much. So I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be half kiddie movie and half deadpan send-up of all those eighties-nineties-oughties action flicks starring actual humans. Most of the A-listers in the cast (apart Bill Nighy) are responsible for the voice work and disappear respectably into it (I would never have recognized Nicholas Cage and realized who Steve Buscemi was only in retrospect). The B-listers, as the human protagonists and antagonists, shine by taking their limited roles for what they are and playing the clichés with a seriousness that occasionally put me in mind of Buster Keaton. The script has some perfunctory moments -- particularly the afterschool-special moral-of-the-week scene, which seemed insufficiently prepared for -- but mostly holds up. The kids only had to ask a couple of questions about what was going on, and I honestly didn't see the twist at the end coming (and was hard put not to howl with laughter at the revelation of the chief villain's motivation, looming father figure and all. kanja177, on the other hand, was reduced to tears of mirth at the juxtaposition of Orff's "O Fortuna" and a manic chase through a local fireworks display). I give the filmmakers props for NOT including a guinea pig romance, but instead spoofing the who-the-girl-really-wants cliché into oblivion. But that leads me to the one serious caveat I have with this film as children's entertainment. If you're an adult and have seen the action flicks this production is meta-ing into humor, you can recognize that the gender and ethnic fail is being played with an awareness of its inherent silliness, but if you're a child, you won't -- and there's the team led by the serious white guy, ably seconded by the sexy Hispanic chick and the loudmouthed black dude, with the computer nerd in the basement and a goofy white civilian who's drafted in by accident but turns out to be a hero after all. Um. I can't recommend this film to adults for solo viewing -- there's really not enough entertainment for the mature mind to enjoy without a kid in tow -- but if you do take a kid to see it, you probably won't find yourself falling asleep partway through (if only because the soundtrack never lets UP) and may wish to clue said kid in to the nature of the humor, as appropriate.
kanja177, herself a guinea pig owner, would probably wish me to pass on the information that, despite what the film suggests, guinea pigs are not built to roll around in balls and wheels like hamsters; their backs won't take it. This has been a public service announcement.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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