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Calling this follow-up to the 2007 box-office hit a “squeakquel” is bad enough, but it also begs to be the answer to a question on Jeopardy, as in, “What 88-minute movie about a trio of talking rodents has more subplots than Spider-Man 3?”

I can still recall the resonant voice of Roald Dahl reading aloud his classic children’s book “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” on my oft-played book-on-tape version (yes, I was a cassette-tape-listening child of the 80’s). Since I, at one point, pretty much knew the book by heart, I had to fight hard [...]

Disney makes a much-heralded return to its 2D hand-drawn animation roots with The Princess and the Frog. The return to a medium considered dead (at least in the eyes of dimwitted studio execs) is historic enough. But it also marks the debut of Disney’s first black princess, Tiana. The setting for the [...]

Anybody reading this who knows the name Hayao Miyazaki probably won’t need any convincing from me to check out his latest film Ponyo. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Japanese master animator, he is widely and ever-increasingly recognized as one of the greatest filmmakers working today, and you owe it to yourself [...]

I don’t know if anyone was exactly hungering for a film version of Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, but this one from directors Chris Miller (Shrek the Third) and Phil Lord is a well-rendered and fairly entertaining CGI effort that might literally make you hungry.

The film 9 was originally presented as a graduating student short film by Shane Acker. The story of 9 follows a group of nine animatronic, tweed-covered puppets that have been brought to life by a “brilliant” scientist at the brink of humanity’s extinction. Why this is done or what is the bringer of such chaotic [...]

Once while I was in the 5th Grade, I wrote a story about a pair of kleptomaniacal chimpanzees who escape from the San Diego zoo and, after a series of adventures, end up flying around in a raft kept aloft by two parachutes filled with wind. When Pixar made Up, a tale of an old [...]

That my interest in this CGI kid-flick franchise has even been mild is mainly thanks to the somewhat off-kilter casting of Ray Romano, Denis Leary and John Leguizamo, and so it’s to my pleasant surprise that their presence is not the only reason I enjoyed the third entry as much as I did.

Monsters vs Aliens starts out where most Disney fairytales leave off-a wedding. Susan Murphy (voiced by Reese Witherspoon) is about to marry the weatherman of her dreams Derek Dietl (Paul Rudd). But alas, it seems that no one ever told the couple that it is bad luck for the groom to see the bride in [...]

Coraline is a collaboration between author Neil Gaiman and master animator Henry Selick. Big names in their respective fields, these stars come together here to create one of the most startlingly different pieces of animation I have seen in years.