Watching Instantly
By Vijay Kumar
September 23, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Went Looking For…
Believe it or not, I sometimes do have a predetermined playlist while browsing for movie titles. Generally, there is a week between my adding them to the playlist and actually watching them. The movies under “Went Looking For…” are typically the movies that I had slotted as “Ended up with…” the previous week.
Imagine That
Eddie Murphy has played it very safe as an actor in recent years, churning out family movie after family movie with the odd musical thrown in. Imagine That follows that trend. He reuses the template that was successful in Daddy Day Care here. The template being that of a father having two issues to deal with at the same time - one being employment related and the other being an offspring (Son in Daddy Day Care, Daughter in Imagine That) with whom he is losing connection. As in Daddy Day Care, he makes use of the offspring situation to solve a work or income related issue.
In Imagine That, the solution is a little outlandish and fantastical in nature. I didn’t quite get it but there appears to be a magical blanket (later hinted at being a native Indian talisman of sort but not confirmed) that can help portfolio speculation for investors. This blanket is "interpreted" by Murphy’s daughter. Of course, he capitalizes on this and uses her as much as possible. Friends and ex-wife try to make him reprioritize daughter over work. He does so only after hurting her feelings and at a time when a big job promotion is on the anvil. This creates the requisite drama and some spoken words from Martin Sheen, nonetheless.
Thomas Haden Church, as the competing employee, provides some dry humor as his approach to investment banking channels his questionable native Indian roots. Eddie Murphy does well in the parts that require some physical comedy. He can pretty much sleepwalk (and yet be animated) in these situations. He does reasonably well in the serious scenes as well. Yara Shahidi is a major reason for the fantasy scenes to work. The screenplay requires the actors to narrate and react to imaginary creatures and no CGI is involved. Murphy and Shahidi execute this quite nicely.
Although this was a box office flop, collecting a little over $16 million during its entire run, it is good enough as Sunday afternoon fare for the family.
Astro Boy
My first impression with Astro Boy was that it could have been quite effective in a live action setup. After The Last Airbender debacle, I feel that it had better chance of becoming a mangled manga, Adapting famous cartoons or other literary works requires a peculiar blend of vision and loyalty. One cannot go entirely by the letter of the original. The first installment of Harry Potter (The Chamber of Secrets), for example, is too faithful and comes across as bland. At the other end of the spectrum is the aforementioned and decried Last Airbender, which lost the essence of a popular animation series.
As a story of origins, Astro Boy is as good as it gets. In my opinion, it is the anime and robotic version (or at least derives major influence) from the tale of Pinocchio, with super powers thrown in to suit growing demands of the global audience. When he loses his beloved son to a demonstration gone wrong, Dr. Tenema (Nicolas Cage) first creates a robot in his son’s image but quickly disowns it. The robot, Astro Boy, with the body and memories of the dead boy, struggles to come to terms with his powers and his emotions. He is bumped out of the hanging paradise of Metro city to the far more barbaric wasteland of robots. There, he finds both friendship and betrayal. As a good robot, he adapts to both, gaining the name Astro Boy in the process. He eventually returns to Metro City to defeat a more powerful enemy and regain his rightful place in his father’s heart.
The voice talents are of the highest order. Cage, Donald Sutherland, Fred Highmore and Kristen Bell find roles for their distinctive voices. It is with the Nathan Lane voiced Ham Egg character that I found immediate correlation between the animated version and the actor.
Astro Boy struggled to a box office revenue total of $20 million against a production budget of $40 million.
Ended up with…
Whilst checking out the above movies, I invariably end up fattening my instant watch queue with some new additions. These go into my “Ended up with…” list and the plan is to watch them during the week ahead. NetFlix keeps tempting me to move each one of them to the top of the queue but I resist. These are movies that I plan to check out in the days ahead.
Dead Man Walking
It looks like I do not have great regard for personal safety. I have delayed watching Dead Man Walking by a week. I had amused myself with the thought that Sean Penn will get upset over the fact that I am yet to watch one of his movies on Instant Watch. The more I entertained the thought, the more nervous I became.
The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
I watched the trailer for The Goods before a screening of The Hangover. I am quite keen to follow the antics of the bunch of comedians who have gotten together to tell this story of a car dealership’s last days.
The previous two weeks have found me in the august company of Mike Myers in The Love Guru and Eddie Murphy in Imagine That. It is to nobody’s surprise (least of all mine) that I’ve added Steve Martin’s The Pink panther 2 to my list.