Quick Blurb Review: The Princess & The Frog

Okay, so I haven't really touched base on films intended for much younger audiences on either here or my YouTube account with exception of two posts. It may come as a surprise to some who read this, but I have a soft spot for kids movies. Many great films immediately come to mind: All Dogs Go To Heaven, The Land Before Time, the first couple of Shrek films, Aladdin, A Goofy Movie, An Extremely Goofy Movie (which is the only direct-to-video Disney sequel actually worth watching and could've done well in a theatrical run), Robin Hood, The Aristocats, Peter Pan. It's no coincidence that the last six films that I mentioned are Disney films because let's face it, there's a reason why people keep calling animated movies, regardless of what company produces them, Disney films, because Disney does it best. Lately, you can chalk that up to their collaboration with Pixar Studios to keep churning out well rendered hit after well rendered hit, but something about those films were missing something. Before you start sharpening your knives and flooding the comments with hate (provided you haven't closed this tab by now), I have a lot of respect for the Disney/Pixar films. Anyone who questions the impact that the Toy Story franchise has had on the animation world is a damn fool, even if the 3rd movie was a tad over-dramatic. Yet, after 5 years of CG Disney movies, the whole thing was starting get a little old. I remember saying to my brother, "The next generation doesn't know what they're missing with the older style animation films." Sure, Disney gave the hand drawn stuff a rest after the painfully mediocre Home On The Range but then they decided to dust off the drawing board and gave us The Princess & The Frog, Disney's first hand drawn film in five years.

The plot behind The Princess & The Frog is that Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) was raised in a work work work lifestyle and as an adult, she works two jobs to try and help bring her father's dream of opening a restaurant in New Orleans. Meanwhile, Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos) has come to New Orleans to try and find a wealthy wife to get himself out of a financial bind. There, he and his assistant are confronted by The Dancing Shadowman, Dr. Facilier (Keith David) who spins some voodoo magic to convince them that he can give them everything they ever wanted. Long and short of that, Naveen gets turned into a frog and in order to break the spell, he has to kiss a princess. At a costume party, he mistakes Tiana for a princess and makes her kiss him, accidentally turning her into a frog as well. They then go on a mission through the bayou to set things right.

Tiana is also the first Disney Princess to be African-American.

I'm not going to lie, I didn't really take a lot of notes of things to talk about while watching this movie because I was having way too much of a nostalgia trip with Princess & The Frog, so I'll talk about the movie as a whole instead. This movie continues the fine Disney tradition of leaving our main character with only one parent (father's gone seven minutes into the film. Wasn't surprised) but while it carries on this odd tradition, it also pulls out a lot of stops from the hand drawn Disney films that we loved. Elaborate musical numbers with people who can actually sing (Anika Noni Rose was in Dreamgirls), talking animals (including a Jim Cummings voiced Cajun lightning bug), really cartoony sight gags, large ballroom dances, wishing upon stars, it's all here. Not surprisingly, the movie takes a bit of a darker turn in the final act to bring in an element of peril and suspense, but when your villain is a voodoo twirler voiced by Goliath, then I'd be disappointed if it didn't get a little dark (seriously, the things that Fecilier summons to find the heroes are kinda freaky shit!). Watching this movie honestly gave me the sensation that I had back in 1992 when I first saw Aladdin in theatres.

Cynic Fun Fact: This was the first movie I ever saw in theatres. Too bad it was followed up by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III.

However, as much fun as I had watching Princess & The Frog, the film is not perfect. There's one scene where three hideously inbred hunters try and catch our heroes for supper that I felt was really stupid and not necessary. Being aimed at a younger audience, I can see why that scene was in there and will even let it go. There might have been a couple of parts trimmed down a bit to shorten the run time slightly and Tiana's friend was really annoying, but I think that was the whole point of her. Fortunately, those gripes don't overshadow the rest of the superb quality found in this film. If you've been wanting to revisit hand drawn Disney, give Princess & The Frog a shot. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

If nothing else, YouTube the song "Got Friends (On The Other Side)." It's quite the spectacle and shows that Keith David has a pretty decent singing voice, too.

Quick Blurb Review: Machete

So...did anyone think Danny Trejo was underused in Predators? Show of hands? Yes, the lot of you need to go watch Machete right now. Totally makes up for it.

The plot behind Machete is that Danny Trejo plays a Mexican Federale nicknamed 'Machete' and is betrayed by his boss along with crime lord Rogelio Torrez (Steven Seagal) on a rescue mission and his wife and daughter are killed in the process. Seeking asylum in America three years later, he's forced to try and assassinate Texan Senator John McLaughlin (Robert De Niro) but, surprise, he gets betrayed by the ones who hire him and he goes after them in a bloody rampage of fury and vengeance, with the help of an Immigration Officer (Jessica Alba) and a taco truck operator (Michelle Rodriguez).

Okay, who thought betraying a guy who looks like this was a good idea?

The casting is pretty solid in this movie. Naturally, Danny Trejo dominates every scene he's in because, well, he's Danny Trejo. The lovely Michelle Rodriguez seems to have fun with her role in this film as does Don Johnson and Robert De Niro. Jessica Alba was...okay in this movie, I guess. Sure, she's not the best actress but she does her job and this by far wasn't the worst performance I've ever seen. Lindsay Lohan (who actually looks pretty good in this movie, but maybe that's because she's naked) was pretty much a cameo in this film, but I'm certainly not complaining. Top all this off with cameos from Cheech Marin and actor/special effects artist Tom Savini and you have a pretty sweet cast on your hands.

Well, I can certainly think of WORSE people to get shot by.

Aside from the great cast and hefty doses of T&A, Machete features many over-the-top kills that are really more enjoyable than the law should allow. Stabbing a guy in the neck with a thermometer and seeing his temperature rise when the house blows up, many slit throats and decapitations, using intestines as an escape rope, crushing someone with a hydraulic truck (which used the Wilhelm Scream. Awesome!), it's so much fun. Two minutes into the film, there's already enough gratuitous violence to make the new Mortal Kombat game proud.

Minigun on a bike. You're pretty much fucked now.

Machete is a good old Mexploitation film. It's not the best exploitation film I've ever seen and actually felt to me like one of the more serious ones (not that there wasn't humorous moments), but this movie was still a lot of fun. Anti-immigration propaganda, Danny Trejo being a total manwhore (Michelle Rodriguez, Lindsay Lohan & Alicia Rachel Marek AT THE SAME TIME and Jessica Alba) and complete badass and Robert De Niro in a role that you can't wait to see him get blown apart, Machete is a nice balls to wall action flick that I'd recommend to anyone who needs their fixings of gore and wanton destruction.

Also, because this commercial is awesome, Machete in claymation:


-The Cynic

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Game Review

You know that old saying, "If you don't try it, you don't know what you're missing?" Ever been in a situation where you did know you were missing a good thing? That was my situation for the last two years after trying the demo for X-Men Origins: Wolverine prior to the film's theatrical release. Parenthood intervened and obtaining the game was put on the backburner until last Friday when I finally was able to rent the game and run through it. The demo had already left a sweet taste in my mouth but while I was playing the game, I was still asking myself, "Holy crap, why in the hell didn't I pick this up sooner?"

Sabretooth (played by a pixelated and voiced by Liev Schreiber) and Wolverine

Not surprisingly, you play as Wolverine, as portrayed by Hugh Jackman, and sort of retread the same story as the film. I do stress the term "sort of" because like many film-to-game transitions, a lot of extra things are thrown in that would either slow the film down or uproot it from trying to be as close to reality as a movie about an unaging, claw popping, occasionally streaking, homicidal Hugh Jackman can be. However, unlike most film-to-game adaptations, the extra stuff included makes the between the film and the comics it is loosely based on (reading the official Marvel.com bio on Wolverine, it seems like the movie messed up quite a few things), taking the best of both worlds and making, again, unlike most film-to-game adaptations, a good and fun game. In fact, I would say that this is probably the only game adaptation that was better than the film it was based on.

Example: Sentinel. Great in the game, but wouldn't work in the movies. Fuck the tease from X3.

Let's start with the look of the game, which is just enjoyable to look at. The characters are all very well rendered and the environments are well detailed to boot. The lip-syncing can be a tad off at times, but that not withstanding, X-Men Origins is one of the only three games that sport the Unreal Engine that I've played and have actually been impressed with it, the other two being Batman: Arkham Asylum and Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. I'll admit, X-Men Origins isn't AS impressive as the other two mentioned titles, but it's still impressive.

Sorry, Commander Shepard. You can grin all you want, I just wasn't as impressed with your graphics.

The gameplay is similar to Activision/Raven's X-Men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance titles with the four colored buttons being used for melee attacks, strong attacks, grapples and jumping. Holding the right trigger while pressing one of these buttons will trigger a special rage attack, provided you have it unlocked. However, it's not like the controls are a carbon copy from Ultimate Alliance. A few things have been added, most notably the lunge attack. This is one of the many attacks to help Wolverine rain sweet adamantium death upon his enemies by leaping across the area and plunging his claws into their faces. This is an attack that is fun to do and is actually useful, whereas usually moves like this are either one or the other. It's fun to see exactly how far you can jump to pummel someone into the ground and lunging is also useful for staying out of the crosshairs of your enemies. Whether you're ambushed by 20 troops, wanting to take out that annoying helicopter, or beating it into Weapon 11 that he is, in fact, NOT Deadpool but Barakapool, make sure your LB and RB buttons are in working order because you're going to be using them a lot, especially on the hard difficulty.

If the lunging gets boring after a while, don't worry. You'll get a few achievements out of it at least.

Finally, I want to address the rating of this game. How often is it that you get an M-Rated game for a PG-13 film? The xBox 360 and Playstation 3 versions are known as the Uncaged Edition and sport an M-Rating because when Wolverine takes damage, you will see the wounds open, bleed, expose organs & skeletal structure and eventually heal in real time. Since the main character at times will look like a bullet-ridden extra from a George A. Romero film, the game was rated M and developers went for broke and made the game as bloody as possible. The game allows Wolverine to show his true colors in ways he never could in the films because...well, let's face it: Wolverine fucking stabs people. Its what he does, and when someone gets stabbed, they bleed. Not only does Wolverine stab in this game, he dismembers, impales, decapitates, rips in half, sets ablaze, crushes with debris, stomps skulls and overall eviscerates every poor son of a bitch unlucky enough to cross his path in this game, and every pint of blood you'd expect alongside that is here too. Obviously I haven't tried the game on Wii, PS2, or PSP yet but I am interested in seeing what the differences between the T-Rated and M-Rated versions are.

The opening cinematic for this game paints a very pretty picture of how the rest of the game plays out.

Final Verdict: While the film had very solid performances but not much else going for it, the game is a far more enjoyable experience. Great voice work, wonderful environments, gleeful combat and more blood than a donation clinic, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a great game and a must play for fans of hack & slash style games. Even if you hated the movie, give the game a shot. If you have the same outcome I did, by the time the 3rd day of playing it rolls around, you'll have 45 of the 50 achievements and they aren't chores to get either. By the time I took the game back to Blockbuster, I had 48 out of 50.

"Clean Up On All Isles" being the most fun, in my opinion. Almost as fun as the "Destructor" achievement from Ghostbusters. Almost.

-The Cynic