Bolt
This comic animation stars a white German Shepherd superdog Bolt (voice by John Travolta). Except that he's not really super. He's just a dog in a man's world playing a part. The one slight glitch is that Bolt believes the show is real. That's because the director of the show has him duped. The shows director believes creating an artificial world around Bolt even off-stage will ensure that the dog provides an authentic performance. So Bolt is forever presented with scenes, characters and scripted situations from the show. That's just wrong to deceive a cute dog that way and the show's child star, Penny (Miley Cyrus) just wants to take Bolt home free from this deceit. But that's not possible because, well, the lawyers said so.
All goes well until Bolt is accidentally shipped off to New York City. That's where he finds out his "superpowers" don't really knock down the villains. He finds out for himself that he's just a dog in a man's world just like it says in the first paragraph.
He bands with a cat and a hamster in a bubble to find his way back to Hollywood. It starts off a road trip for some adventures and self realizations. But don't let those big sounding concepts worry you. It's a simple, clean, fun story with adorable characters (even the bad ones). The jokes are mostly fresh without deep stabbing pokes at pop culture. Good plot, memorable characters and a climactic ending make it a worthwhile one-plus hours.
Madagascar: Back 2 AfricaThis is yet another group of critters off on an adventure. In 2005 Alex the lion, Marty the zebra, Gloria the hippo and Melman the annoying giraffe escaped to Madagascar. They gave up their pampered lives and because it is a movie, did not die of starvation or get turned into expensive leather products. Of course, a group of super intelligent penguins helped.
They all want to head back because their New York zoo was so comfortable. Time meals, running water, attentions form people. They wouldn't have felt that way had they escaped from the Dhaka zoo. The penguins somehow fashion an old crashed plane into a slingshot projectile that they use to roughly slingshot themselves towards Manhattan. Calculation must have been off by a few feet cause they ended up in Africa.
Bedtime Stories
Lots of adventures, plenty of pop culture references and spoofs. Maybe a bit too much of the latter but as long as you know what they are spoofing, it remains funny. It's still an enjoyable movie. After all, the lemur leader King Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen) is back with his song "I Like to Move It."
Do the animals finally make it out with their multi-coloured hides intact? It's worth finding out. And now for a live action flick. You've got Adam Sandler so that means a lot of goofball antics. And who says goofball antics aren't fun?
Skeeter Bronson
(Sandler) is a hotel handyman that he sort of owns. He complains a lot about how his life is down in the dumps (lower actually) and how he hasn't been able to climb up the ranks of life. It could be because he doesn't every do anything about it. He's a man of a lot of talk and no action.
Things change one day when he starts babysitting his niece and nephew. He makes up wild stories of zero-gravity battle in outer space, cowboys (straight ones) and gladiators. The tales roughly parallel his daily life except these stories always end up with him as a winner. Life's good, at least in his head.
The kids start providing their own thoughts and not surprisingly (because it's a movie) the stories start becoming true. Yes, as you can see in the picture, gumballs can rain down among other odd activities. Skeeter may think he has it good but things start to go a little off track.
Add to this fantasy an evil rival hotel manager, a beautiful woman whose love he must win, his need to 'become a man' and a cute pet guinea pig with adorable expressions. There's a moral somewhere in this tale wrapped in a wacky, hilarious story with a lot of visual effects. Maybe a bit too much at times.
It's a dose of zany Adam Sandler antics without the outright potty humour. Some even dare say it could be a family movie.
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