Category Archives: Movies

DVD Review: Phineas and Ferb,”The Daze of Summer” and Wizards of Waverly Place, “Supernatural Stylin'”

If you’re like me and you wind up watching the same television programs as your children, then you know that most programming falls into two categories: Shows aimed at kids but filled with some adult (but not naughty) humor to elicit laughs from moms and dads, and shows that make you want to crawl away from the television to make the pain go away.  Two examples of these categories are the latest Disney Channel hits, Phineas and Ferb and Wizards of Waverly Place. Both series have new DVD collections that put together several episodes from their respective shows.

Phineas and Ferb
is a delightful animated series about two genius brothers who are always coming up with outrageous ideas (a circus in the backyard, a portal to Mars, you know, stuff that only works in cartoons) that rile their older sister, Candice.  Each 11-minute episode is rife with vivid colors, snappy dialogue, and there is generally a musical number.  Additionally there is always a subplot involving the boys’ pet platypus, Perry, who is a secret agent assigned in foiling the plots of a mad scientist named Dr. Heinz DoofenshmirtzPhineas and Ferb is innocent and goofy stuff made by artists who seem to enjoy doing their job.  On DVD the artwork of the show is much crisper and the sound is much better, plus you won’t have those annoying pop-ups that happen randomly throughout the show announcing what is coming up next on the Disney Channel.

This DVD collection, The Daze of Summer, contains ten 11-minute episodes, including the two-part story “Unfair Science/Unfair Science Redux,” about a science fair in which the boys build a portal to Mars and Candice get transported to the red planet and becomes queen for a day.  This episode in particular is very clever in that part one tells a complete story, then part two tells the same story from a different point of view.  My kids especially like “It’s A Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World.”  In it, Phineas and Ferb build a monster truck speedway to help Candice to learn of to drive.  Phineas and Ferb is the kind of hit show that deserves its success and as a parent; you’ll probably find yourself laughing at things your kids don’t understand, which is a good thing. Continue reading

DVD Review: “Oliver and Company”

Oliver and Company (20th Anniversary Edition) (2009, Walt Disney)
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We look back on The Little Mermaid as the movie that lifted Disney out of its long journey through the shadow of the valley of cheesy live-action features (like 1981’s Condorman) and subpar animated adventures (1985’s The Black Cauldron, natch), but the truth is that the process was really more gradual. Giving the fishtailed Ariel all the credit for the Disney revival leaves out a handful of quality movies, including 1986’s The Great Mouse Detective — and 1988’s Oliver and Company.

It’s been sort of swept aside in the second Disney golden era — it wasn’t even released to the home video market until the late ’90s — but Oliver‘s box-office success helped lift the studio out of its doldrums, and the movie was notable for a number of other reasons, too: It was Disney’s first animated musical since The Fox and the Hound, it marked the studio’s first use of extensive CGI (more on that later), and it helped kick off the era of big-name celebrities clamoring for voiceover work, employing the services of Billy Joel, Bette Midler, and Robert Loggia. (It also includes the voices of Dom DeLuise and Joey Lawrence, but hey, you can’t win ’em all.

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Fortunately for those who saw and enjoyed Oliver and Company in the fall of ’88, Disney is forever scouring its vaults for older features to reintroduce as “classics,” and now it’s Oliver‘s turn to receive the deluxe anniversary treatment. Yes, 2009 is technically the movie’s 21st anniversary, but why quibble?

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This beats another direct-to-video sequel, right?

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What you have here is the original, Oliver Twist-inspired feature — in which a cat named Oliver (voiced by Lawrence) makes his way through New York City with help from a gang of talking dogs (led by Joel, who plays Dodger) and eventually finds a home with the pampered-but-sweet Jenny Foxworth — and for the anniversary edition, Disney has added a handful of bonus featurettes, including videos for the big musical numbers (Joel and Midler make musical appearances, naturally, and they’re joined by Huey Lewis, who sings the movie’s opening number, “Once Upon a Time in New York City,” and Ruth “Mr.” Pointer, who takes the lead on “Streets of Gold”), as well as some behind-the-scenes promo footage that was filmed around the time of the movie’s first release. None of them provide much in the way of added value, although “Backstage Disney: The Making of Oliver and Company” is unintentionally humorous, as it includes a lot of bragging about the studio’s use of the same hand-drawn animation techniques that Uncle Walt helped pioneer, as well as promises that no matter how advanced computer animation got, Disney would never forsake the traditional way of doing things. Whoops!

The movie hasn’t aged as well as some of Disney’s others — the plot is pretty threadbare, and some of the dialogue is rather atrocious, particularly Cheech Marin’s work as a four-legged Mexican stereotype named Tito — and the studio’s vaunted hand-drawn animation was, at this point, a far cry from what it had been 40 years before; it really doesn’t look all that different, in terms of quality, from an episode of DuckTales. Still, there’s something to be said for animation that has a bit of a rough edge to it, and watching Oliver and Company may make you feel nostalgic for the days when cartoons had a more human feel — more recent Disney features are certainly prettier, but they have a hermetically sealed look to them that can’t help but create a certain emotional distance. Oliver, for all its many flaws, takes you back to the old days — or the end of the old days, anyway.

Those who purchased the last Oliver release, 2002’s “Special Edition,” will notice that most of the content remains the same, including the bonus features; the main difference here is that the film itself has been digitally remastered, which adds a slight coat of polish but doesn’t take your breath away. For those consumers, this edition probably isn’t worth the $25, but if you have young Disney fans in the house — or you are one yourself — this slight but enjoyable entry in the studio’s canon is a safe investment.

DVD Review: Princess Katie and Racer Steve, “Revved Up and Ready to Rock!”

Princess Katie & Racer Steve – Revved Up and Ready to Rock! (2008, RocketNYC)
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I’d never heard of Princess Katie and/or Racer Steve before my copy of Revved Up and Ready to Rock! arrived in the mail, but they apparently have quite a loyal following, and have released a pair of CDs (Fast & Feisty and Songs for the Coolest Kids), selected songs from which are collected on this live DVD.

Katie and Steve seem to have come to kids’ music the hard way — namely, after years spent fruitlessly trying to build careers in grown-up entertainment — and as a result, the PKRS aesthetic is pleasantly adult; because their move into this arena was gradual and organic, they use a smarter and more eclectic musical approach than some acts who self-consciously aim at the youth demographic. The Princess (nee Katie O’Sullivan) has a big, elastic voice, and doesn’t rely on cutesy antics to get across — then again, in a ball gown, corset, and tiara, she doesn’t need to; she’s got plenty of appeal for the kids (and, ahem, their dads). The band, led by Racer Steve (A.K.A. Steve Borne)’s lead guitar, hops nimbly between genres from song to song, mixing rock with jazz, swing, funk, and good-old fashioned uptempo pop. They have a horn section, too, which is more than most grown-up bands can afford. Best of both worlds, right?

The songs themselves are fun and varied, but none of them knocked me out, and after watching the DVD twice (largely without my daughter, who lost interest pretty quickly during both viewings), I can’t remember a single line or melody — but Revved Up and Ready to Rock!, like the songs themselves, seem pretty squarely aimed at the 5-8-year-old demographic, and both of us are outside that bubble. There’s no arguing with the energy of the show, however, or the way Princess Katie and Racer Steve smartly break things up between songs with an ongoing puppet show that deals with Katie’s wandering pet dragon.

The production values aren’t what you’d get from, say, a They Might Be Giants DVD, but they’re still impressively high; a number of cameras were used, and the editing cuts (a little too quickly, in my opinion) between angles during the songs. They even mix in a few special effects. For PKRS fans, especially those who have either been to a show or who are bummed out because they haven’t, it’ll be a wonderfully fun way to spend an hour. For the uninitated, it may be a little underwhelming, but that’s probably par for the course with something like this.