ANDREW WORSDALE searches for an interesting plot among the holiday glut of children’s movies.
Films about growing up don’t have to be stupid or simplistic — one only has to think of The Wizard of Oz, The Railway Children, My Life as a Dog or Toto the Hero. But with the school holidays upon us, we’re experiencing a bombardment of children’s movies — and, sadly, apart from Toy Story, most of them are utterly childish.
Released this Friday, Black Sheep is without doubt the worst of the bunch. It follows Mike Donnely (Chris Farley) as he spends the summer screwing up his brother’s race to become governor. From one-time cult director Penelope Spheeris (who gave us the cynical teens-in-revolt movie, Suburbia), this comes as a major disappointment. It has one joke about a fat guy in the beginning, which it keeps regurgitating, and plays like a Three Stooges for brain-dead adolescents.
A little better — also featuring a fat kid in the lead — is Angus. This time, the film’s problem is sentiment, as it tells the story of a talented but physically challenged teen (engagingly played by Charlie Talbert). When he is chosen as prom king opposite the crush of his life, Melissa (Ariana Richards), the scene is set for a prank that goes wrong, and justice is finally served.
This film has sympathetic showings from Kathy Bates and George C Scott as Angus’s truck-driver mum and his irascible uncle. But its laboured use of voice- over and its predictable, treacly plotting keep it on the road to boredom.
There’s more action in Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain, which stars Christina Ricci and Anna Chlumsky as best friends — one a city slicker, the other a tomboy. Together, they venture into the mountains to find gold. The movie is filled with pretty scenery, the usual plotting, scary stunts and homespun characters. Halfway through, you realise you’ve seen it all before; it’s Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in drag.
Perhaps the best of the new releases is the equally stupid but anarchic Dunston Checks In. This is basically Home Alone redone with an orangutan going on the rampage in the five-star hotel owned by a cold-hearted Faye Dunaway. The red-haired beast belongs to caddish cat-burglar Lord Rutledge (Rupert Everett), and is an expert assistant at stealing gemstones. The result is a pretty brainless but at times hilarious farce.
If you’re in Gauteng, you can drag the progeny to a festival of children’s movies at the Seven Arts in Norwood, starting on Monday. These productions, mainly aimed at the young ones, are all animated, independent productions — which could mean they’re imaginative and captivating, or dull Taiwanese paintings-by-numbers. There’s The Legend of Zorro and Little Zorro, The Snow Queen, The Phoenix and the Magic Carpet (a live-action adventure which boasts FX from the team of Batman Returns), and Cinderella and Simba the Lion King (not the Disney version).
Adults, at least, can look forward to Larry Clark’s Kids, a raw, corrosive look at the promiscuous, drug-addicted lifestyle of New York teens, to be released later this year. And in the meanwhile, one must ask why so much children’s movie entertainment is so banal. Are young viewers just being treated with kid gloves?
The Seven Arts children’s film festival runs daily at 12.30 and 2pm from July 6, with proceeds of the performances on July 6 and 7 going to the Mandela Children’s Fund