Recently in Children Category

2009

Plot: Hurry UP and follow your dreams before the helium runs out.

Eric: I thought the first half of the movie was the best Hallmark Movie ever made, and the second half of the movie was the best Tomb Raider movie ever made. Not bad for a film based on thousands of miraculous toy balloons. Our niece got scared at a few points late in the film, but I have heard that other kids have no problem with it. The funniest part might have been my three-year-old nephew's feet flipping up in the air in the adult-sized movie theatre seat.

Kelly: The love story at the beginning was so beautiful I almost cried. Cool animation; great characters; and a fun story line. The talking dogs threw our niece over the edge, but she'll be fine after a little therapy. (The Cone of Shame works on cats, too, by the way. We've got pictures.)

2008

Plot: A man made out of vegetables helps a rat who loves soup save a mouse with dumbo-sized ears and can magically read books.

Eric: Cute mouse; dumb story. His name is impossibly hard to spell.

Kelly: I liked Ratatouille better. ("I keel a man...with deez thumb!")

2008

Plot: A giraffe falls in love with a hippopotamus, four penguins build an airplane with the help of ten-thousand monkeys, and other animal weirdness.

Eric: I watched this with my niece, nephew, and Kyle the cat. Once again I was the only one laughing. This movie had some nice messages about home, family, individuality, and acceptance. Too bad it was not as funny as the original; still, it was a cute movie. I say ditch the four annoying main characters and make Madagascar 3 Penguins vs. Lemurs: Rumble in the Jungle.

Kelly: I was in the other room talking to the adults . . .

No vote.

Jessica (age 5): It was silly.

Grady (age 3): It was just done and now it's over.

Kyle (age 13): Those lions were idiots.

2007

Plot: A lonely, geeky orphan travels forward in time to meet the wacky Robinsons and learns they are his future family.

Eric: This movie looked to me like what would happen if Tim Burton remade the Wizard of Oz. Slightly creepy. I have big arms . . . and a little head. I’m just not sure how well this movie was thought through—Kelly?

Kelly: I suspect the animators where on something when they created this movie, but I was fascinated and couldn’t look away, because the characters were fresh and unique. I have to recommend a movie where the hero marries a frog-lady and the villain has stick-legs!

2008

Plot: Aster-may Oogway ooses-chay at-fay anda-pay.

Eric: Cute movie, but not the best animated feature I’ve seen recently. (Think Ra-ta-too-ee.) However, this movie contains the most profound line of dialogue I’ve heard in a long time: “Panda, we do not wash our pits in the pool of sacred tears.” Those are words worth remembering. The panda's father is a goose.

Kelly: I was a little disappointed in this movie. We’ve seen several really fun animated films recently (Ratatouille, Bolt, Meet the Robinsons, Madagascar), and this one didn’t quite measure up. It had its moments, but let’s just say I got a lot more knitting done when we watched this one.

2008

Plot: A delusional dog, an angry cat, and an overweight hamster in a ball form an unlikely alliance during a cross-country adventure.

Eric: We saw this Thanksgiving weekend with my niece and nephew in an empty theater. I fell out of my seat laughing at several spots, and it was hard to pass Twizzlers to the kids from a prone position on the floor. The children didn’t understand the difference between Bolt’s reality and his TV show.

Kelly: I’m glad we were the only ones in the theater that night because Eric’s niece kept yelling at us, "WHAT’S SO FUNNY?" Mittens the cat was my heroine. Like her, I often feel “disturbed on a number of levels.”

2007

Plot: A clueless garbage boy pulls his hair out (with a rat) trying to become a chef.

Eric: This movie will become an all-time favorite of mine. I think it had the second biggest laugh of 2008 for me in the scene where Remy and Linguini were first learning how to cook together. (The first being the "Cone of Silence" in Get Smart.) Kelly is hilarious when she sticks out her thumb and says, "I keel-ed a man wid’ dees tumb!"

Kelly: Yep, this movie will be on my top-ten list forever, too. The animation was great; the story was hilarious; it had just enough over-the-top stuff to make you lapse into silent-ouch-it-hurts laughter at certain points. It was a kid’s movie that you really didn’t have to stop and pretend you were a kid again to enjoy. Does that make sense? (Eric: Not really.)