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By Ray Pride

I went into Rob Reiner’s “Flipped” fearing a coming-of-age romantic comedy that would live up to Roger Ebert’s notorious pan of the director’s “North”: “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it.” I love being wrong when foolish expectations get stamped out, and there are moments in “Flipped” to be loved, loved, loved.

An extended piece in the Los Angeles Times in July on the movie’s marketing left me fearful. “I wanted the story to feel timeless and pure, in a time before texting and Facebook,” Reiner told a columnist. “I thought it was important to strip away the technology so we could get at the true emotions and feelings and make it as innocent as possible. I guess you could say I wanted to make it closer to my own childhood.”

In a small town in Michigan along Bonnie Meadow Lane in the six years leading up to 1963, in the season before the murder of JFK, lives a boy, Bryce Loski (Callan McAuliffe) and across the street, a girl, Juli Baker (Madeline Carroll). The values of their respective families resonate through their behavior toward each other, from Bryce’s stodgy, frustrated father (Anthony Edwards, who throws away the line, “I hate cool”) to Juli’s (Aidan Quinn), whose strength and compassion comes from unexpected places. McAuliffe is Cera-esque in the ways that people who don’t like Michael Cera describe that actor: a milquetoast for Juli to invest her substantial imagination in. You wonder what this wonderful girl sees in him: hope, potential, pretty eyes? She’s a smart child, tomboy with pigtails: Carroll has a feline cast to her eyes, a little of the young Anna Paquin to her features. Read the rest of this entry »

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Five English kids get five lessons in manners from a nanny enhanced with a magic cane. By a peculiar logic, the bulky, snaggletoothed, hairy-moled Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson) loses one of her unsightly features each time her charges acquire a new degree of civility and character. Thompson reprises her role from “Nanny McPhee” (2005). She also writes the screenplay based on Christianna Brand’s three books originally published in 1964, 1967 and 1974. In the first film, Mr. Cedric Brown was a widower with seven unruly offspring. Now Mrs. Isabel Green (Maggie Gyllenhaal) may learn she’s a widow upon opening a telegram concerning her husband who’s away at a war with no name. (An aircraft labeled “Enemy Plane” will drop a jumbo bomb in her barley field.) Susanna White directs this welcome exception to American fare for families. Read the rest of this entry »

An evil cat conspired to unleash a virus that would make humanity allergic to dogs in “Cats & Dogs” (2001). In “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore” another evil cat conspires to broadcast an audio file via satellite to radios, TVs and cell phones that will drive all dogs mad so mankind will put down this “man’s best friend” business. “I will enslave mankind,” cackles the hairless, pointy-fanged Kitty Galore (voiced by Bette Midler). Tactical inter-petdom detente ensues as Cold War-style secret spy organizations of cats and dogs team up—”a first in our political history”—to take down this power-crazed cat before forty-eight hours go by. For this interminable PG-rated mixed-breed of live action, puppetry and computer animation, Ron J. Friedman and Steve Bencich write laugh-free riffs on James Bond and Hannibal Lecter films, along with lines that only connoisseurs of pet-food ad copy will get. There is an abject lack of wit about four-legged friends in this sub-Saturday morning kids fare directed by Brad Peyton. With the voices of James Marsden, Nick Nolte, Christina Applegate, Katt Williams, Neil Patrick Harris; and the voices and bodies of Chris O’Donnell, Sean Hayes, Michael Clarke Duncan, Fred Armisen. Reviewed in 2D; 3D in some theaters. 100m. (Bill Stamets)

“Suggested by” the segment of the same name in Walt Disney’s animated “Fantasia” from 1940, this PG-rated Walt Disney Pictures family-action-adventure is an enervating, overlong tale of a good sorcerer training a chosen one to exterminate an evil sorcerer. Then our hero wins over his childhood sweatheart for an all-night flight aboard a Chrysler Building eagle-style gargoyle to Paris for lattes and croissants. Compared to recent boy-with-powers-saves-world films, this Jerry Bruckheimer junk is far worse than “Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief” and a tad worse than “The Last Airbender.” Jon Turteltaub (both “National Treasure” films with a third one threatened) directs an uninspired screenplay by Matt Lopez and Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard set in CGI-NYC. Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage, “Kick-Ass,” both “National Treasure”‘s) is a 777th-degree sorcerer from 740 A.D. who searches for centuries and finds a 10-year-old New Yorker in the year 2000. The late Merlin designated a super-sorcerer to wear his magic dragon ring and stop evil sorcerers from “enslaving mankind,” although their labor needs would seem more easily met by a few waves of the wand. These evil ones are later said to aim to “destroy the world,” with no other world in mind. Sorcerers seem not so smart. The plot picks up ten years later. Now a NYU physics nerd, Dave (Jay Baruchel) is the badly cast apprentice. Cage is at his blandest. No good spell is cast by “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” Except for a minute or so of sparkly confetti effects in a Chinatown dragon bout, this never enchants. With Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, Monica Bellucci, Toby Kebbell. 110m. (Bill Stamets)

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Directors Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin, and writers Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio animate a fun PG-rated story with enough clever details to keep adults awake. There’s more than tossed-off signage for Bank of Evil (formerly Lehman Brothers). At the same time, in different places, kids can feel let in on ways grown-ups really see little ones when off-duty from good parenting. Calling bedtime storybooks unbelievably bad literature is the endearing meanie, the character cited in the self-aggrandizing title of “Despicable Me.” The villain Gru (Steve Carell, voicing his “Middle European” accent) conspires to acquire a gizmo belonging to a younger villain named Vector (Jason Segel). Pleasing his soul-stomping mom (Julie Andrews) keeps Gru going. This people-hating overcompensator thinks that kidnapping a miniaturized moon will impress the known world. He adopts a trio of orphaned sisters once he sees these plucky cookie pushers can furnish a tactical cover for penetrating Vector’s lair and grabbing his miniaturizer. But the crusty Gru falls for the tykes and an unlikely family takes form. The largely gratuitous 3-D CGI is an opportunity for a gag at the end wherein Gru’s impish, chirping minions compete at constructing bridges further and further towards the audience. WIth the voices of Russell Brand, Will Arnett, Kristen Wiig, Danny McBride, Miranda Cosgrove, Jack McBrayer, Mindy Kaling. 95m. (Bill Stamets)

Three seasons of Nickelodeon’s “Avatar: The Last Airbender” spawned three video games, and now M. Night Shyamalan (“The Happening,” “The Sixth Sense”) produces, writes and directs a 3-D live-action fantasy film based on the animated  series. Kids resist a genocidal, religion-intolerant tyrant to renew global harmony through spiritual healing, with an assist from a princess committing suicide. Adapting his three daughters’ favorite TV show, Shyamalan abandons his signature metaphysical terrors for pre-adolescent adventures. On a polytheistic monolingual planet, there are four nations named after four elements. Exceptional individuals in each nation can bend their respective element using telekinetic chi. These benders display little artistry bending air, water, fire and earth, primarily for military purposes. One bender is more exceptional than all others since he can bend all four elements. And he is the only intermediary with the gods. All tribes bow to this exalted one known as Avatar, reincarnated now as Aang (Noah Ringer), the last in a nearly exterminated line of Airbenders. But there’s injustice and imbalance due to evil designs of the Fire Nation. These mean imperialists dress in black and command soot-belching metal warships. Will that bald boy with a glowing downward-pointing arrow on his forehead emerge from a century-old iceberg and lead a popular front of the faithful to achieve a Grand Unified Theory of the four elements for geopolitical Gaia? Spoiler alert: yes. Even though “The Last Airbender” was partly shot in Greenland, the dim smear of CGI disguises any trace of that landscape. The 3-D is mostly used to float place names such as “Northern Earth Kingdom” and “Southern Water Tribe” somewhere over the heads of audience members ten rows in front of you. Character-bending and mind-bending are not happening anywhere. With Dev Patel, Jackson Rathbone, Nicola Peltz, Cliff Curtis, Shaun Toub, Aasif Mandvi. 103m. (Bill Stamets)

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An exponential increase in peril faces a community of toys who talk and walk when  people aren’t around. In 1995, the American boy Andy who owned the toys was only moving to a new house. In 1999, when Andy went off to summer camp, a collectibles dealer preyed upon toys destined for a Tokyo museum. Lee Unkrich directs the third Disney/Pixar G-rated animated adventure, and ratchets up the stakes for toy solidarity and survival. Read the rest of this entry »

Jackie Chan delivers the most impressive performance of his mid-career, far better than his embarrassing paycheck for “The Spy Next Door.” In “The Karate Kid” he’s a maintenance man at a Beijing apartment building who mourns the wife and son he lost in a car accident—a character rather like the Japanese-American maintenance man at a Reseda, California apartment building who lost his wife and daughter in childbirth in “The Karate Kid” released in 1984. In both movies, this character is a father figure to a fatherless American kid who moves into his building and knows a little karate; the Italian-American high school senior learns more karate in the original film, and the African-American 12-year-old learns kung-fu in the 2010 remake. Unbelievably, Chan thinks the two movies are “totally different,” as he told WGN-TV entertainment reporter Dean Richards. Maybe Chan is thinking of the differences between the number of bullies accosting the kid (five versus six) or the number of minutes the referee allots the injured kid before forfeiting the big tournament (fifteen versus two). Director Harald Zwart (“The Pink Panther 2,” “Agent Cody Banks”) and writer Christopher Murphey surpass the 1984 film and its 1994 remake titled “The Next Karate Kid” that starred Hilary Swank as the kid, a fatherless and motherless Boston teen who moves to neither California nor China. Read the rest of this entry »

The critters are anti-settler in this awful family comedy. A guerilla-style squirrel leads the insurrection against the bogus “green” development called Rocky Springs. For his first act of resistance, he triggers a woodsy IED that knocks a developer in his SUV off the road and over a cliff. Set in Oregon and shot in Massachusetts, “Furry Vengeance” comes with a potentially cute premise. Cuddly monkeywrenchers vocalize their communiques. Instead of subtitles to translate these chirps and yelps, thought-balloons with film clips inside visualize the messages for us. Excerpts from “Braveheart” will signal the climactic defense of homeland by the indigenous hawk, fox, bear, otters, skunks, turkeys and poop-bombing birds. Usually at the receiving end of the environmental pushback is Dan (a flabby Brendan Fraser). He’s the on-site construction supervisor who brought his wife (Brooke Shields) and 15-year-old son (Matt Prokop) from Chicago. Roger Kumble (“Cruel Intentions,” “Just Friends”) directs a screenplay by Michael Carnes and Josh Gilbert that shows none of the bite of that duo’s nasty “Mr. Woodcock.” Dan’s license plate reads “DIE 9317,” he exclaims “Miley Cyrus!” as a curse, and his lying boss is named “Neal Lyman.” The interspecies slapstick is painfully unfunny, including Dan’s three hits to the groin. This slipshod U.S.–United Arab Emirates coproduction employs the cinematographer from “Alvin and The Chipmunks” and editor of “Are We There Yet?” During the end credits, the cast spoofs music videos. The stretch for laughs continues after the film’s copyright notice with some free-floating cartoony voices. With Ricky Garcia, Eugene Cordero, Patrice O’Neal, Jim Norton, Skyler Samuels, Wallace Shawn. 92m. (Bill Stamets)

The Irish will always be with us, if you go by the clutch of  small Celtic tales on release this month in Chicago. Aidan Quinn plays a self-absorbed writer in the ghost story “The Eclipse,” which opened last week, and now in the period melodrama “A Shine of Rainbows,” he’s the reluctant, chilly stepfather of a stammering orphan. In a decade long before Ireland emerged into the modern world, on remote, picturesque Corrie Island Marie O’Donnell (Connie Nielsen) brings home little Tomás (John Bell), who’s captivated by this new world, even as the older Alec finds it hard to warm to the boy. The sights are savory, even as Bell fails to capture the necessary boyishness (and performance skills) to truly win you over. Alec’s reluctance to embrace the child seems a levelheaded reaction. Most notably, there are some worthy observations about the condition of shyness in the characters’ behavior. There are distant echoes of John Sayles’ “The Secret of Roan Inish,” especially in the invocation of local lore with seals and their secrets. Director-co-writer Vic Sarin is shameless, but in a well-intentioned way, if you like a little Celtic sentimentality. The rainbow motif? Let’s keep it to ourselves. Best wept over a jar of whiskey. With Jack Gleeson, Karl O’Neill, Niamh Shaw, John Bell, Fionn O’Shea, Joy McBrinn, Kieran Lagan. 101m. (Ray Pride)