This animated film came in and out in the blink of an eye and nobody really noticed it. It’s now on having a second life on Disney+, like most things today.
The basic plot of the lonely boy who’s befriending a Robot, who’s hunted by a big corporation is clearly nothing new: this is essentially “E.T.” for a new generation (though, they should probably watch Spielberg’s masterpiece first!).
Set in a future world where technology rules and pretty much every child has a B-Bot, which are essentially walking smartphone-like oval-shaped robots which help kids cross roads make connections with “friends” without the burden of social interaction.
It’s obviously a cautionary tale, not just for our children but for most of us grown-ups too (says a man who spends pretty much 16 hours a day in front a screen) about what it means to live online.
It’s not by chance that the B-Bots of this film seem to be designed by Apple.
The film has definitely high moral standards and ideals, but ultimately it doesn’t have the edge, nor the inspired comedic timing of “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” (one of the most pleasant surprise in animation from last year), nor the poignant and emotional weight of Wall-E, or the heart of E.T.
Eventually the film chooses an easier and just colourful route. It ticks all the “entertainment” boxes, all rather predictable and eventually muddles up and dilutes the central message, abandoning and pretence to explore the emotional fragility of children, preferring instead a route which is just fun and loud (My Goodness this film is is NOISY!)
I don’t want to sound too down on this. It’s a perfectly good film and definitely above the average, but with so much potential, I really wanted it to be better.
Richard Linklater, director of “Boyhood” and the “Sunset trilogy of film” has created a nostalgia-soaked collection of random intimate and heartfelt memories of his childhood (he calls this film “embarrassingly autobiographical”). They barely hold together as a narrative piece, but somehow they perfectly evoke the spirit of the American suburbs of the late 60s. Whether you lived through that period or not and whether you are American or not, the film has enough pop culture references to not just feel familiar, but also to charm the pants off anyone!
Mentions of Tv series, films, food, adverts, board games cram the film often in an intentionally listy way, all to create a charming time capsule of a bygone era, when things seemed simpler, especially when seen through the eyes of a teenager. With hindsight it’s a miracles some of us are still alive, unprotected as we were from any health and safety regulations (Linklater likes to poke fun at that).
The soundtrack alone has more songs than a whole Juke-box in a diner, with too many titles to mention, from the likes of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Johnny Cash and Pink Floyd (and many many others).
The rather obscure and silly title was a slight turn off for me, but the film uses a teenager’s obsession with rockets, space as well as the moon-landing of 1969 as a framing device to actually focus on what’s happening here on Earth and tell a beautiful coming-of-age story.
The rotoscope-style animation, in which sequences are filmed and then re-drawn over it, might take a moment to get use to, but it gives the film a warm dreamy quality that perfectly matches the mood and the feel of the time. In addition to that, the light-hearted narration by Jack Black, remembering his childhood, infuses everything with a sense of realism which at times makes it feel almost like a documentary .
This might well be an animated film, but don’t think for a moment it is one for children. In fact it’ll play best to those who WERE children back then. It’s meandering, at times all over the place and the lack of a proper story might be hard for some to swallow, but if you’re willing to let yourself go, you might just lose yourself in it and find little unexpected gems. It might just warm your soul just like it did to me.
Judd Apatow is now considered one of the hottest properties in Hollywood, not just as a screenwriter, which is how he started, but as a director and producer. His name has been attached to some of the most successful comedies of the last 20 years, both on TV and on the big screen, from “The Larry Sanders Show”, to the “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”, “Knocked Up” and “Bridesmaids”.
His most recent film “The King of Staten Island” came out just as Covid broke and forced all cinemas to close down: it ended up being one of the first victims of the pandemic in cinema terms, something which Apatow must have felt quite strongly about, because it’s first film after that is actually about Covid.
“The Bubble” is about a group of narcissistic and egotistical movie stars ( a concept quite easy to buy into), trapped on a pandemic-quarantined film set. Their attempts to finish filming the 6th sequel of a “Jurassic Park”-style franchise are constantly battered by Covid infections, restrictions and continuous lockdowns and production shut downs.
I must, on paper this had the potential to be absolutely hilarious and if I have to be honest I found myself laughing out-loud and smiling more during the first 10 minute of this film than in many other comedies this year.
This clearly wants to be a satire on show business, celebrity culture and
Hollywood in general as being out of touch with reality.
It’s also a film that deals with Covid itself and makes the madness of the pandemic part of the story.
There are indeed some funny moments at the start of the film, mostly playing on those frustrated feelings we’ve all shared during those endless lockdowns. For example there are some amusing moments when during some various zoom calls we’re shown a studio boss always in amazing locations around the world, a proof that some people had definitely “better lockdowns” than many of us. Alas the film fails at any attempt to give any clever insights or genuine reflection on the state of Hollywood during the pandemic.
A lot of the comedy is made up of too many “inside jokes” which might play nicely to those Apatow’s Hollywood peers, but will probably go over the heads of any member of the normal audience.
The film feels more like a collection of sketches, most of which way too indulgent, to say the list and too stupid to be funny. They’re also badly stringed together in an attempt to make them look like a coherent film (an attempt which fails miserably).
None of the people in the large cast of middle-to-big names like Keegan-Michael Key (Key and Peele), David Duchovny (The X Files), Karen Gillan (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) nor the many cameo appearances from stars like Daisy Ridley, James McAvoy, John Cena, John Lithgow and Benedict Cumberbatch help making this any better.
In fact after a while I just begun to feel sorry for all these actors, not for what they were going through in the film, but because they actually in this film and they were making complete fools of themselves and being generally very unlikeable.
The result is a very uneven film, which too often struggles to get a laugh and feels insufferable and interminable (A cardinal sin for a comedy, in my view).
It also reminded us of a time we’d rather forget… probably just like we should forget this film.
“Well at least we tried to make a movie in this difficult time. They can’t judge us for that” says one character just at the end of the movie. I wonder whether that’s Apatow realising he’s made a dud.
I’ve just came out of a screening of E.T. with live music played the Philhamonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall and all I want to do right now is talk and write about it.
My son and I watch this film pretty much every year and every time it’s the usual storm of emotions as we were watching it for the first time. And that’s one of the many powers of this absolute masterpiece. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve seen it: you’ll still laugh, you’ll still be thrilled… and you’ll still cry.
Watching it (probably for the 100th time as fast as I am concerned) with the clinical eyes of the nerdy film-maker I can only marvel at what Spielberg was able to achieve.
To me this is ‘pure cinema’. It’s most likely one of the main reasons why I feel in love with films and if today I’m the person I am and do the work I do, I have ET to thank.
This is Spielberg at his very best, with his unique ability to tell visual stories. His camera is always in the right place, at the right time: for this film, he brings it down to children’s level (or ET’s level) cutting off the faces of all the grown-ups, as if to enhance the power that children have and to get closer and closer to them. It’s incredible how for three quarter of the film we never see the face of an adult (except for the mother, who’s the only one ‘allowed’ in the children’s real). And yet, we never even wonder about it, because we are so invested in the story that we don’t even notice it. It’s a technique often imitated, but never quite matched.
Watching it tonight, with a live orchestra, I was reminded of how many sequences rely on just music and no dialogue (the whole beginning for example). If this isn’t the purest form of cinema as visual storytelling, I don’t know what is.
Some people call the film (and Spielberg) too sentimental, but actually the ability to manipulate people’s emotions so effortlessly, as if it was the easiest thing in the world, is a skill set that very few directors have.
The film is packed with great moments: of course the iconic shot of ET and Elliot flying across the moon, possibly one of the most enduring image in the history of cinema, but also great scenes like ET speaking (“ET phone home”), ET dying or the last goodbye, as well as dozens of little tiny moments, which go mostly unnoticed, but are so beautifully handled that should be studied in every film school: the sequence with the men from the government entering the house for the first time, all played through a series imagines with lights and shadows moving across the toys in the bedroom, or the beautiful cross cutting between ET at home and Elliot in school culminating with “a quiet man” played on TV and Elliot kissing the blond girl.
I adore the very odd blocking of the moment with Elliot facing a spotlight as ET’s hand lands on his shoulder, a scene which seen from the outside might look unnatural and awkward, but somehow in the hands of Spielberg, through his lens seems absolutely natural. I have a particular soft spot for the quietest moments too:
the scene where Elliot shows his toys to ET… or the two of them listening to the mother telling stories to the little sister (how spectacular Drew Barrymore was, y the way!
And then of course, last but certainly not least, the powerful Oscar-winning score by John Williams, which in the screening tonight took center stage, just as soaring and warm and you might remember, though interestingly I also noticed how crucial a good audio mix is. The music tonight played mostly all on the same level, making me very aware of it throughout and possibly undermining the moments where you really want it loud. I loved the experience of a live orchestra playing during the film, but if you watch ET for the first time, it’s probably better to see it as it was originally intended.
The screening tonight in the packed auditorium served as a little reminder of the kind of crowd pleaser this film is… Not that I need to be reminder anyway.
The audience’s reactions were a statement how powerful and magical this film still is.
Family entertainment has hardly been better than this. Children (and adults) across the world have been blessed with ET for 40 years (it is indeed it anniversary) and I urge you to find any excuse to watch it again whenever you get a chance.
Well, if you’ve read my previous review of what I thought of the first film you might be able to skip this one, because everything I said before sadly gets confirmed for “Fantastic Beasts Part2”
It seems J.K. Rowling has learnt nothing from the shortcomings of her previous film, but crucially she seems to have forgotten what made the Potter Series so special.
I’m afraid she really must take most of the blame for this muddled mess of a film.
The plot of this film is so convoluted that at some point I just gave up and stopped asking “who?” What?” “How?” and let the film wash over me.
What’s so frustrating is that there is so much potential here. There are indeed still some faint glimmers of that warmth and inventiveness from the original Harry Potter magic, but on the whole they are mostly eclipsed by everything that was wrong in the first one, to which I had given the benefit of the doubt, and which is by now amplified if not doubled.
We start off with one of the most confusing chase sequences I’ve seen in the last few years and then proceed to introduce characters over characters across a series of countless meandering subplots which not only lacked charm, suspense, mystery and humour but left me completely cold and actually a bit bored too.
For full disclosure, I actually watched an extended version with 7 extra minutes, none of which added anything to the previous (and already too long) cut.
Just like in the first one, Eddie Redmayne’ Newt is pretty much relegated to a side show: his character still remains a mystery to me, not so much in terms of plot, but mostly in terms of why should I care about him?
Meanwhile the best people from Part 1, Queenie Goldstein and Jacob Kowalski are now completely wasted.
Johnny Depp , in what turned out to be his last Hollywood blockbuster (He has been recast for the next film by Mads Mikkelsen ), is essentially playing Voldemort 2.0, with pretty much the same evil plan in mind (to rally as many followers as possible), but does a good job at being creepy despite the very few scenes he’s in.
Jude Law also does the best with the little material he’s given, though on a very superficial level I was annoyed by the fact that he’s wearing normal clothes and not wizard robes (as you can see I had time to let my mind wonder about these pointless details).
My heart skipped a beat or two the moment we were back in Hogwarts again for some of the best moments in the film, but those few fleeting scenes only served to reminded me how much happier I was there.
This franchise is sinking lower and lower and they’re going to have to make some real magic to un-dig it from the pit of boredom and make me excited again about the next 3 sequels!!
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