Disney
Joseph Walsh
Whilst New Mutants slips surreptitiously into cinemas, Disney’s live-action spin on Mulan arrives with more fanfare on their streaming platform, even if it does come with a price-tag of nearly £20.Director Niki Caro (Whale Rider) and her cohort of screenwriters have ironed out the kinks of the ’98 animation, giving it a greater feminist spin, but losing much of the heart and humour of Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook’s original film. The story focuses on the young Hua Mulan (Liu Yifei), a free spirit who has to suppress her martial gifts for the sake of the Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
It hasn’t been an easy ride for Josh Boone’s New Mutants. Delayed production, reshoots, the acquisition of 20th Century Fox by Disney, Covid-19, and accusations of whitewashing, have all contributed to it being dubbed a ‘cursed’ film. Now, with little fanfare, this YA horror has finally limped onto cinema screens three years after production wrapped.Updated from the original 1980s setting, the film opens in the mid-90s in the spooky surroundings of Essex House, an asylum for unruly teenage mutants (far removed from the hallowed halls of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters). This Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
Welcome to New Mushroomton: a fantasy land that’s forgotten itself. This is how we’re introduced to Pixar’s Onward, which is set in a Dungeons & Dragons daydream of suburbia. Director Dan Scanlon’s film is a tribute to his late father, but it begins with a separate elegy. “Long ago,” we’re told, “the world was full of wonder.” Until the day that convenience killed magic — electricity was invented, spells cast aside. Today’s mythical creatures have become ordinary: trolls run tollbooths, gnomes are garden-variety.Such is life for Onward’s heroes, the elven Lightfoot family. There’s meek Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The cynicism of this film’s existence squeezes all the feeling from it. It approaches cherished childhood memories of the original The Lion King (1994) with a view to remonetising them. Technological advances apart, there’s no reason at all for this Lion King.The plot proceeds precisely as before, with lion cub Simba (the voice of Donald Glover once grown) pottering happily around the Pride Lands, an ecologically balanced Eden ruled by benign despot Mufasa (the returning James Earl Jones). Simba’s uncle Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor), pictured below, here ravaged and spectrally white, again plots Read more ...
Tom Baily
Next up in Disney’s parade of live-action revamps is: yes, Aladdin. The other recent re-dos – Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Dumbo – just about managed to overcome the remake challenge: be faithful to an original that will remain definitive for audiences, whilst updating the material enough to obtain contemporary relevance. A re-jigged plot with fresh surprises is an added bonus. Aladdin, like the others, just about does the job.And so we return to fictional Agrabah and meet the city’s most wily young street urchin (and his even wilier pet monkey). It’s the archetypal rags-to-riches tale: Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It's perhaps unfair to review a film through the prism of one that predates it by more than half a century, but even fans of Mary Poppins Returns (and I am one of them) can't help doing so. Mary Poppins (1964) has become such an established part of childhood film-viewing – whatever your age – that comparisons and reference to Disney's Julie Andrews vehicle seep into one's consciousness without bidding.But let me try to talk about Mary Poppins Returns (directed and produced by Rob Marshall) in its own right. The action takes place in Depression-era London, when the original books by PL Travers Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
This is a soundtrack with vast shoes to fill. Frozen, The Lion King and Aladdin may be the best-selling Disney soundtracks but, alongside The Jungle Book, the original 1964 Mary Poppins has the most beloved array of songs. It takes chutzpah to try and match a set that includes such childhood standards as “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, “Chim Chim Cher-ee” and “A Spoonful of Sugar”. That the music from Mary Poppins Returns makes a spirited and expertly calibrated attempt is a nice surprise.The man who took on what could have been a poisoned chalice is Hollywood showbiz orchestration Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite stretchiness… Time has been kind to Elastigirl, the superhero mom voiced by Holly Hunter and dreamed up by Brad Bird. Fourteen years have passed since The Incredibles seduced adult critics and children alike, but it might as well be yesterday for Elastigirl. She’s as bodacious as ever, nary a wrinkle on her animated face nor a sag to her ample posterior. And Elastigirl is still eager to fully extend herself and catch the bad guys.If only superheroes weren’t outlawed for causing chaos ("Politicians don’t understand people who do good just Read more ...
graham.rickson
The brightness and colour are deceptive; at its heart, Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina’s Coco is an affecting reflection on death, remembrance and the redemptive power of music, dressed up as a frenetic and gag-stuffed Disney comedy. I’d place it above recent hits such as Frozen and Moana; here, the music is integral to the film’s plot, and the closing scenes have an emotional impact comparable with the montage which opens Pixar’s Up. Have a box of tissues on hand, in other words, especially if you’ve had to deal with memory loss in an elderly relative.Set during the Mexican Día de los Muertos Read more ...
Veronica Lee
This is, as the voiceover has it, “a tale as old as time” – or pedantically one that goes back to 1740, when the French fairytale was first published – so maybe it was time for a modernising reboot. The stars – Emma Watson as Beauty and Dan Stevens as the Beast – have been keen to dismiss any psychology 1.01 readings of this Beauty and the Beast as a presentation of Stockholm syndrome, but the film’s makers, Disney, have been more than keen to trumpet it as having the first openly gay character. Of the latter, more later.So what is it? Well, foremost it’s a wonderfully lavish live action/ Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Slipped out in the Storyville slot without much fanfare, Life, Animated is the Oscar-nominated documentary which won a theatrical release and rave reviews in the US and UK last year. It’s a horribly clichéd word, but heart-warming is the best way to describe this tale of a young autistic man, Owen Suskind, who learnt to speak via his passion for Disney animations.We first see Owen in home movie footage, a chatty toddler play-acting Peter Pan with his dad. But soon after that footage was shot, he lost all his speech and began to display other worrying signs – problems with motor control, Read more ...
edward.seckerson
If anyone harboured any doubts as to how diverse the world of musical theatre can be, this past week will surely have proved an ear and eye-opener. While Richard Taylor and David Wood's poetic take on The Go-Between pretty much threw out the rule book on musicals, Disney's stage version of their blockbuster film Aladdin dutifully returns to the first edition, which is how a successful franchise works. As the old adage goes, "if I knew the secret I'd bottle it". Disney has – and pantomime has come early to the West End. There is room, of course, for everything, and I've been a Read more ...