Jessica McClellan

Who didn't laugh at some point? Who didn't smile at some point? Who didn't cry within the first 10 minutes? "Up". Such a simple title for an incredible, powerful, action-packed, emotional film. In all the animated films I've watched, I was so used to them being about young protagonists chasing their dreams and/or going on an adventure. So naturally I was quite pleased and surprised to watch a cartoon about an old man giving up on his dreams and ending up going on an adventure instead. It was a deviant but a successful deviant. Funny, well-written characters. Great plot twists without any massive nonsensical plot holes. One of the best storylines I've ever seen!

I enjoyed this movie from beginning to end. I love one of the lessons in this story: in a world where people and sometimes even yourself want and may even expect you to be okay, it's okay to not be okay. And a very good example chosen for this movie is the tween girl Riley and her very understandable and relatable emotions in response to moving away from home to a totally different place. For some of us, it's a lesson already learned. For others, it's a lesson to be learned. Not only does this movie portray that lesson but it paints a heartwarming yet heartbreaking portrait of growing up. It's realistic without being totally depressing. Again, it warms your heart and breaks it (I bawled near the ending). Great, funny characters. Excellent storyline with no disturbing plot holes. Overall a great cartoon and one of the best of the 2010s.

While this film was cute and entertaining every now and then, I didn't care too much for it. One thing, it's full of cliches. For starters, we have another story of animals going on a silly, supposedly epic adventure where the humans are totally oblivious to everything going on. Then, you have the young, independent protagonist who wants freedom and adventure and by the end of the story gets caught up in something even greater than what they anticipated, featuring someone who's always cynical of them and someone who always loves and believes in them. Then in each animal group you have at least the following two: the clown/idiot (I saw Tracy Morgan's camel and knew right away that I was going to hate him) who can't stop making obnoxious idiot comments and the serious/wise/grouchy one who always either reprimands them or grumbles quietly in response. Characters argue, then split, then in times of despair reconcile just in time for everything to lead to a happy ending. Oh, and puns/misunderstandings have rarely been funny and child friendly potty humor (butts in your face, crotch injuries, yada yada yada) have been totally overused years before this movie was created. For some people this might be just a silly fairy tale, or as much as a fairy tale as Cinderella, Three Little Pigs, or Alice in Wonderland or Christmas folklore like Santa Claus, Frosty, or Rudolph. But for others, this is a story held near and dear to their hearts. So to take the Nativity story and turn it into some cute, catchy, comedic kids' show that follows only part of original story line and/or add some good, funny, or stupid touches can be either great for kids or be a total piece of sacrilege. Imagine if they did the same for what legends and stories there are of Buddha or Allah or any of the Hindu gods. How do you think that would turn out? How would Buddhists, Muslims, or Hindu believers respond to that? This is generally something any kid younger than age 9 can enjoy, whether the viewer is religious or not. But that doesn't mean it's a good film. Having an all-star cast didn't cut it at all, let alone redeem this movie from being meh material. I'm not saying that removing the excessive "humor" and "adventure" would've made it a serious, lame-sauce story, but seriously though, if you're looking for an animated Bible story that's actually worth watching, go watch Prince of Egypt.

My sister watched this before I did and she claimed she never wants to see it again. An old friend of mine watched it around the same time as well, and it took her a week to get over it. Boy, were they right to. Very, very, very, VERY rarely do you have an animated film that stirs your heart and breaks it into a million different pieces even more than a live-action film, particularly if said film is based off history. This film is very sad, from the very beginning up until the credits start rolling, and it's the few small happy moments between a little girl's innocence and a teen boy's playful care that keep this film going. Grave of the Fireflies starts with a hope of everything being okay throughout the film as a young teen boy and his little sister gradually lose everything they have, from the loss of their home up until the final character death--and thus the death of hope. This film left me in a whirlwind of emotions. Slight humor in the stereotypes of a big-sibling-little-sibling relationship. Despair when the boy starts to break down under the weight of the world on his shoulders. Denial during the events of the final death of the story. In spite of being tragic, this is one of my favorite World War II films, and I recommend it if you're looking into any World War II films. Final warning: bring a tissue box. You'll thank me later.

Out of the range of World War II films I've seen, I've had a range of emotions regarding each one. Some were poorly made, leaving me with nothing more than a straight face and maybe a rolling eye or two. Some were heart-wrenching but had at least some type of bittersweet ending, leaving me with a good impression, a small smile, and maybe a couple tears. Some were heart-wrenching and nothing else, leaving me feeling downright awful and on the verge of tears. Spoiler alert: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas falls into the third category above. Other than a heart-breaker, it provides an unusual point of view of the Holocaust. While we're used to seeing undernourished, barely alive people in tattered, filthy prison uniforms being mistreated by well-dressed but cruel Nazis, we see more about these people in a different light. For example, a Jewish prisoner was once a doctor before he was imprisoned, and a preteen girl was once kindhearted and playful before being molded into the Nazi mindset. It starts out with a hope that perchance everything would turn all right in the end. Instead, at the end it squashes that hope into a lifeless pulp right before your watering eyes. The kind of impact of starting out with hope and watching that hope be killed by the end of the story is something I haven't felt while watching a film since I watched "Grave of the Fireflies", another great but terribly sad World War II film. With the story of a concentration camp commander's son forming a forbidden friendship with an imprisoned Jewish boy, I can't say this is a glorified Romeo-and-Juliet story. It could be, it could be not. Still, this was another good World War II film. It didn't have the greatest plot, but it provided a unique point of view of one of the greatest tragedies in the history of mankind.

Once upon a time, Frozen was a totally different story. Then everything changed when the songwriters created and brought up Let It Go. As a result, the story writers then had to do a quick, shoddy cut-and-paste job throughout the entire plot just in time to release it into theaters. And what do you get? A poorly written plot with poorly written sudden plot twists and poorly written characters that sing poorly written songs that get stuck in your head for years to come. Amazingly, it became so overrated and so popular it became a 3-4 year long fad. I'll say this much. It was cutesy but not the greatest. And if you've gone the past 5 years since its release and haven't seen it, consider yourself lucky. Thank God that the Frozen franchise's popularity has finally died down. And sorry, Disney, unless Frozen 2 is really good, your singing snow queen cash cow may never rise to her former glory because a Christmas special and a Broadway musical didn't quite do their jobs.

I remember being so excited when a live-action Beauty and the Beast was announced. I LOVED live-action Cinderella and Jungle Book and had high hopes that Beauty and the Beast would be just as good. Unfortunately, no. It was not. The one thing I loved about Cinderella and Jungle Book was that they may have followed the original cartoon's storyline but they had enough of their own few plot twists to where I felt like I was watching something new, even if I already knew how the story went. No musicals, a few direct references to the original cartoons, and that was beautiful. Not Beauty and the Beast. It felt like I was just watching an extended edition of the cartoon, like an almost total mirror of the cartoon. Same dialogue, same actions, all the musical numbers, even some of the same soundtrack (I died of disappointment at the Beast's transformation scene). Personally, I wish they would've used songs from the Broadway musical instead of adding new songs, although Evermore was an exception. And plot twists? The only one I really liked was the enchanted objects becoming lifeless. Everything else? No. Needless to say, this is another in Disney's line of new live-action movies: attempted cash cow (succeeded), saturated in CGI, bad acting (not terrible, but neither Emma Watson nor Luke Evans can sing), plotline with a poor backbone (even if it did follow the storyline of its cartoon basis), and all the while trying to propagandize some humanitarian agenda: feminism/female empowerment (Belle & teaching girls how to read), LGBTQ (gay Le Fou was a pointless change & I'm not even homophobic), racial diversity, yada yada yada, and not worth watching. As a closing note, I watched this and La La Land on the same week. Aaaaaaaand...I liked La La Land way better. I'm quite thankful Ryan Gosling turned down BatB and that Emma Watson turned down La La Land.

This film is, without a doubt, a masterpiece. The first half is a sweet romance story filled with laughs and warmth about a charming, gentle, yet humorous Italian-Jewish waiter who eventually wins the heart of the girl of his dreams. The second half is a heartfelt story of a father protecting his young son's innocence in spite of everything horrible going on within the setting of a concentration camp. A number of people complain that this is too happy for a holocaust film. I know very well that a concentration camp was no amusement park and that the film didn't mask what the Jews suffered before and during their imprisonment (within a PG-13 rating, not as severe as Schindler's List), but the fact that a father decides to protect his child's innocence from the horrors of a camp by pretending it's all one big game, from playing hide and seek to "making fun of" whatever rumors the son heard about what happens in the camp, is truly sad in itself. Each of the two stories in this film was heartfelt and well written. It's a film that warms your heart and then breaks it. A film that makes you laugh and then makes you cry. A film that wraps every emotion into one beautiful story. Roberto Benigni really outdid himself. I can't say it's the greatest film ever made, but I have a feeling that if anyone tried to make an English adaptation of this, it could never compare to the original.

I didn't enjoy this movie much at all. As much as I enjoy scifi and fantasy, I was disappointed in this poor excuse for a book-to-film adaptation. Bad storytelling, from directing to the screenplay. Bad characters, be it from the emo tween nerd to the tasteless mystics to the so-called evil force. If someone were to say this was as good as if not better than, let's say, Labyrinth or something other great scifi/fantasy film, that'd be like saying the Emoji Movie is better than Toy Story. Yeah, kudos to Disney for having a diverse cast and female empowerment (oh brother), but that's pretty much all what good I have to say. Needless to say, this is pretty much another in a line of many of Disney's live-action remakes/adaptations: saturated with CGI and possessing a badly written plotline with badly written characters, both of which have no backbone or taste. But I guess it must be okay cuz Disney can make 10+ flops in a row and still be sitting just fine. One last final note. If you're looking for a way to waste 2 hours of your time, then watch this failure.