Road Movies

5-Word 365 #321 – Alpha And Omega

Posted on by Ryan McNeely

Sometimes I am really concerned about the level of intelligence that the makers of films for children assume of their audience.

Alpha and Omega

From Easy Rider to this?

Two wolves from a pack living in Jasper National Park, Canada are captured and taken to Idaho to repopulate a park there. Kate is an alpha, destined to become the leader of the Jasper pack, while Humphrey is an omega. Think princess and stable-boy. Anyway, Kate and Humphrey decide to make their way back to Jasper to rejoin their pack and halt a brewing invasion from a rival pack. Will they fall in love on the way? Does anyone care? Did this really have to be Dennis Hopper’s last movie?

I don’t enjoy being mean about the films I watch. Okay, sometimes I do, but occasionally I feel like I’m shooting fish in a barrel. Tranquilised fish, in a really shallow and well-stocked barrel. With a rocket launcher.

This is not a good film. The animation is of a standard that would disappoint me in a Saturday morning cartoon. The story is trite and predictable with nothing new to say about class struggles or forbidden love. The actors – including Hayden Panettiere as Kate and Justin Long as Humphrey – don’t seem to be enjoying themselves, with the possible exception of Larry Miller as a French-Canadian, golf-playing goose named Marcel (yes, really). Danny Glover and Dennis Hopper both just sound bored as the rival pack leaders, Winston and Tony.

Setting aside for a moment that he can manipulate his feathers to grasp a golf club, Marcel also has a caddy. Named Paddy. That’s what we’re dealing with here.

If you have any five-year-olds at a loose end, then they might find something to keep them entertained here, but I wouldn’t recommend it for much else.

5-Word 365 #320 – Leap Year

Posted on by Ryan McNeely

I believe it was Einstein who defined insanity as carrying out the same action repeatedly and expecting a different result. On a entirely unrelated note, I’m still looking for a decent romantic comedy.

Leap Year

Top o’ the mornin’, begorrah!

Bostonian Anna Brady is keen to get engaged to Jeremy, her boyfriend of four years. After hearing from her father about an Irish tradition that a man cannot refuse a proposal from a woman on February 29th, Anna heads to Dublin to join Jeremy at a conference and ask him to take her up the aisle. Unfortunately, she gets a bit lost on the way, and ends up falling for the rugged charms of Declan, the innkeeper she hires to drive her across Ireland.

I think I’ll do this one as a list. I know it’s a bit of a cheat, but I really need to get some sleep.

The good:

  1. Amy Adams (as usual)
  2. Amy Adams’ contractually-obligated underwear shot (short but sweet)
  3. um…
  4. Ireland looks very pretty (well done, Newton Thomas Sigel)
  5. Adam Scott, as Jeremy, gives good smarmy git.
  6. They got the weather right.

Oops. Spoiler.

The bad:

  1. Matthew Goode’s “Irish” accent
  2. The sense of geography that puts a woman in Cork when she’s trying to get from Wales to Dublin (check a map if you can’t picture it)
  3. The distinct lack of comedy. Frankly, I expected better from the writers of Can’t Hardly Wait and Josie and the Pussycats.
  4. The fact that John Lithgow only gets one scene.
  5. All the wonderful cultural stereotypes.
  6. Pretty much everything else.

One scene! It’s shameful, so it is.

And my insanity lumbers ever onwards.