Ultimate 90’s Blogathon Kickoff: Robin Williams Triple Feature

Welcome to Ultimate 90’s Blogathon! 

We’re officially kicking off the blogathon.  It will run for the next few weeks from Monday to Saturday both here and on my awesome co-host, Drew from Drew’s Movie Reviews. Today, we kick off together with our own reviews. We will be alternating reviews here and over there from all of our fantastic participants. A huge thanks is in order for all the reviews we’ve seen. There are some great selections to look forward to. Over the next few days, I will be creating a page on the menu for Ultimate 90s Blogathon and will update the posts as they go so if you miss any, just head over there to find it.

Let’s get this started!

I was born in the mid 80s, meaning I did most of my growing up in the 90’s. Its where I can relate the most and also why this blogathon means so much more to myself. The 90’s was filled with iconic actors and roles/characters and some great movies. My childhood wouldn’t have been the same with this actor though. Life wouldn’t have as many laughs and happiness going on in our house. Robin Williams was a great comedic actor taking on fun and inspiring roles and there are so many that it is hard to choose from. It is why I decided to choose three that meant the most to me, be it memories of spending time with my family or just movies that I can’t get enough of today. These are iconic roles that he took on. I’m sure it will differ for each of you. I know Drew and I both had different choices as well. So will you. If you are a fan, share which of his movies you loved and which would be in your Robin Williams triple feature. Now, for my choices and they are in no particular order!

Aladdin (1992)

Director: Ron Clements & John Musker
Voice cast: Scott Weinger, Robin Williams, Linda Larkin, Jonathan Freeman, Frank Weller, Gilbert Gottfried

When a street urchin vies for the love of a beautiful princess, he uses a genie’s magic power to make himself off as a prince in order to marry her. – IMDB

Aladdin is a true Disney classics. It left us with not only a princess movie which it does have a male protagonist as a focus, many renowned songs including the wildly catchy Prince Ali or the uber romantic A Whole New World but also a fast talking somewhat silly genie voiced by Robin Williams. Aladdin is fun and fast-paced. It has a villain, Jafar with his goofy sidekick. The Sultan is kind of a clueless father with a pretty pure heart that really has the best intentions for his daughter, Princess Jasmine. While Jasmine is not one of my favorite princesses but she is strong-willed and I love tigers so her pet tiger Raj stole my heart. However, the showstopper is the dynamic and enthusiastic and incredibly funny Genie. Robin Williams uses his many voices to give this character life and makes him interesting to watch with a lot of fun moments.

Aladdin doesn’t only have a love story. Its more than that. It looks at greed and power. It has sneaky creatures and misguided authority. There is ignorance among some characters and only seeing and judging the physical appearance than the true nature. The dialogue itself is sharp and comedic and fun thrown in with hints of emotions as we learn out characters and how they change. The vibrant characters are not limited to their main players but even Raj and Abu, Aladdin’s pet monkey shows companionship and teamwork. Wrapped up in a fun package but still full of excitement and tells an adventurous story, Aladdin is excelled by Robin Williams but also is one of the great Disney offerings in the 90’s.

Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)

Director: Chris Columbus
Cast: Robin Williams, Sally Field, Pierce Brosnan, Lisa Jakub, Harvey Fierstein, Matthew Lawrence, Mara Wilson

After a bitter divorce, an actor disguises himself as a female housekeeper to spend time with his children held in custody by his former wife. – IMDB

The lengths that a desperate father would go to be with his children brings a lot of great moments, both comedic and heartwarming as he transforms himself into a housekeeper. Mrs. Doubtfire is an iconic role in itself. She was a feisty housekeeper that tried to classy but also stood her own because she was actually a he. Whether is Mrs. Doubtfire dancing around cleaning the house or burning up her breasts or even throwing a fruit at the back of Pierce Brosnan’s head, it all adds to how fantastic this character is. At times, we even forget about the man under the transformation.

Stepping out of Robin Williams iconic role, a cornerstone of 90’s child actors was Mara Wilson who plays the youngest child. Mara Wilson did a few roles in the 90’s, like Mathilda and Miracle on 34th Street. She is one of those unforgettable child actors that was so cute and smart. Of course, we also had our James Bond of the 90’s, Pierce Brosnan as their mother’s new love. And mom is played by Sally Field. Lots of big well known names here. The kids are incredibly fun to watch and everyone delivers a great performance paired up with some amusing and entertaining dialogue that really touches us and tugs some heartstrings at the end. Its really hard to not love. Mrs. Doubtfire is a film that I watch over and over again and still remains as entertaining every single time.

Jumanji (1995)

Director: Joe Johnston
Cast: Robin Williams, Jonathan Hyde, Kirsten Dunst, Bradley Pierce, Bonnie Hunt, Bebe Neuwirth, David Alan Grier, Patricia Clarkson

When two kids find and play a magical board game, they release a man trapped for decades in it and a host of dangers that can only be stopped by finishing the game. – IMDB

Jumanji is irreplaceable. It is adventurous and dangerous. There are scary things that can be summoned from the board game. Jumanji itself is a pretty eerie concept of having a board game that is alive on its own and has created a whole world of its own to thrive for its players. However, Jumanji is a Robin Williams favorite because he plays Alan Parish who comes back after twenty odd years of being trapped in Jumanji’s jungles and need to pick up the courage to get back into the game to finish it and hopefully reverse all the damage already done. Movies that feature someone in the past going to the present or the present going to the past will embrace changes from the sudden decade shift and usually, hilarity ensues. That is the winning formula of this movie.

Jumanji does also boast some great performances from Bonnie Hunt who plays as the girl who ran off in fear when Allan was sucked into Jumanji and has to finish the game also. Her fear and denial are the things that make her funny but we do see her character development as she finds the courage to be more. Kirsten Dunst plays the little girl, Judy who just moved into the old Parrish house with her aunt and starts the game without knowing that she is only continuing a previous game. Her brother, Peter, played by Bradley Pierce is a rather quiet character. Everyone in this movie learns to face their fears and find a deeper courage to keep going on and persevere towards your goal. There is a family theme as well. This action adventure keeps us on our toes as we watch each of them roll the dice and wonder what else can come out of this game. Even if I’ve seen it before, I still sit at the edge of my seat anxiously waiting for what happens as if I didn’t know before.

What 90’s Robin Williams movie do you like?

Remember to head over to Drew’s Movie Review to look at this Ultimate 90’s Blogathon Kickoff review HERE!

Three Quick Reviews: Fearless, FernGully & Choose

You all really don’t want to know what I’ve gone through this week but in short, its been just crazy.  All I’ve been doing is work, workout and have a movie playing in the background.  So I decided that I’d do a small review of a few movies I’ve seen over the past few weeks but didn’t get around to writing a review for  since I’ve been focusing on catching up on 2013 releases. Not that that was very successful either. I still have a good amount of 2013 movies left and well, not so much time left before Valentine’s marathon starts next week.  I’ll probably resume second half of February.  For now, I just need to survive tomorrow and get off work on time 🙂

Remember when I did the other 3 reviews 😉 If you didn’t see it, you might want to check it out HERE! Its kind of silly and funny and along the lines of sexy.  I really want to do another one of those but well, we’ll have to stick with this for now…

Let’s get cracking with those reviews! 🙂

FEARLESS (2006)

This is about the life of martial arts master and founder of Jin Wu Sports Federation, Huo Yuanjia.  Don’t start telling me how accurate it is, because I don’t know. I haven’t dived deep to read up on the man yet, but I do know of his existence.

I usually don’t particularly like to watch these sorts of movies unless its Ip Man but I’m a HUGE fan of Jet Li.  I never get too overly enthusiastic about them either.  Something about Jet Li portraying Huo Yuanjia really works for me.  Maybe its that I’ve never seen him do that who egotistical prick role who learned better. You know, took a hard hit for his mistakes and through those consequences, learned to be a better man.  The final fight was really something and you know, as much as I’m a Canadian, I’m also proud of these martial artists who really strive to teach us valuable lessons through what they’ve done.  Support our own and respect ourselves and the whole our biggest challenge is to beat ourselves.  I like all that and it makes me proud when I watch this. 🙂

FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST (1992)

FernGully: The Last Rainforest is one of those animations that I keep thinking I’ve seen when I was younger and then I realized that I actually never did.  I realized that I mixed it up with Once Upon a Forest which had a similar idea about human invading natural habitats and then said habitat habitants fight back.  This animation is really dated.  Its not even the older animation style.  I actually like that.  It just seems like if I was 10, I’d like it a lot more.  But you know whats the redeeming features of this one? Robin Williams doing the voice of Batty and Tim Curry doing the voice of the bad guy, Hexxus.  I respect those two a whole lot and honestly, this movie was alright 🙂

CHOOSE (2010)

My long awaited return to the horror genre.  Choose was going to expire Feb 9.  All you Canadian Netflix subscribers can keep that in mind if you want to see this 😉 Although, I’m not going to push you to see it.  I was working out at the same time so really watching the actual screen between doing sit ups and crunches and jogging in place and all those other things.  Its not great.  There’s a lot of unanswered questions to the ending but you have to give them applause for really stringing up the surprise ending.  I had a feeling maybe it would end that way but in my mind, the possibility was really like 10%.  There were some good scares, and creepy moments but thats probably because I’m really easily scared.  I also think its because they really use eerie music to accentuate the scene.  Its an okay horror for most.  I actually found it a tad boring in certain parts…so yeah, its alright 😉 I don’t think its horrible though.

I haven’t been watching very fascinating movies on Netflix these days.  I need to turn that around soon 🙂 I have a few more reviews to write.  I still owe a Bridesmaids and Mud review.  I just don’t want to do a crappy review so I’m going to wait for when I’m not brain fried from work and writing during my little break while stuffing my face with a quick dinner.

Out of the three, Fearless would be my recommendation though.  I love me some Jet Li and some action and valuable life lessons 🙂

Have you seen these? What did you think of them?

Robots (2005)

Its been a while (or so it seems) that I saw an animated movie.  My boyfriend picked up Robots the other day to replace the copy that was lent out and not taken care of upon return.

Director: Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha

Voices: Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Robin Williams, Jim Broadbent, Mel Brooks, Stanley Tucci, Amanda Bynes, Greg Kinnear

Rodney Copperbottom (Ewan McGregor) has always been used to being put together from birth from second hand parts but he isn’t scared to dream big because BigWeld Corporation’s owner Bigweld made him believe that “you can shine no matter what you’re made of.” As he grew up, he kept trying to make something that could be useful and then be able to show it to Bigweld (Mel Brooks).  When he finally succeeds in making a little gadget and decides to head out to the city, he meets Fender (Robin Williams) and his sister Piper (Amanda Bynes) who introduces him to the Rusties.  What originally starts out as a dream becomes a bit more complicated when he realizes that Bigweld is no longer running the corporation himself but rather it was Ratchet (Greg Kinnear) who with the help of his mom (Jim Broadbent) wants to turn the robot world to only have the choice of purchasing new parts and destroy all the spare ones.  With the Rusties, Rodney needs to find a way to change things back to how they were.

Robots is a super fun animation supported by awesome vocal talents. My favorite part of this flick has to be Robin Williams in the voice of Fender.  Robin Williams started his career almost on being able to do all these voices, at least thats how I knew him.  In this one, he is possibly one of the funniest component of it.  As much as the story is just a simple story, the fact that they try to incorporation puns and good dialogue pushes this story forward to be one of the better animations that I have seen.

Rusties

On a visual, the characters are done very good. Also, the scenes and design of the Robot City is actually very nice to look at it.  There is one particular part that I always love is the roller coaster type and in this one its like a ride to get from point A to point B.  I would faint if technology ever got to do transportation that way, but it was fun to watch especially paired up with the vocal talents of Ewan McGregor and Robin Williams.  Plus, the Rusties had a range of different with very personable characteristics and personality traits.

 

I always take a look at the villains to see if they are convincing.  In this one, it is an animation meant for children so they really make it fun and not completely in the evil zone. Ratchet was somewhat of a Mommy’s Boy where he was really a puppet for his mom, Madam Gasket’s evil plans.  I don’t know the deal with Madam Gasket and how she came to be so bitter, especially since her robot husband isn’t really in the best position (literally) probably thanks to her.  These villains brought a different vibe to the movie, maybe not completely evil but it gave us a few extra laughs as well!

 

Robots is full of laughs, little puns, a lot of uplifting fun and entertainment, but aside from all that, it has some nice heartwarming moments involving Rodney and his parents. It also had some nice moments when the Rusties and Bigweld decided to join forces to get back the reins of the corporation to bring Ratchet to an end.  Another part that I really liked was the positive messages behind it to dream big and that it doesn’t really matter where you come from, its what you make yourself out to be. Very encouraging message! Thats always a plus in animations 🙂

This is apparently from the same creators of Ice Age and I thoroughly enjoyed this one more!

What about you? Did you see this? Do you think Ice Age is better than this one?

Christmas Marathon: A Wish for Wings That Work (1991)

A WISH FOR WINGS THAT WORK (1991)

A part of my childhood was occupied by Opus and Bill.  This one was first aired on TV. Its one of the few that I haven’t grown to love as much when I grew up, although I did only get a hands on the DVD last year.  I watch it every year though because I think that the voice work is quite good.  Its a bit strange though, so I’m not sure whether Opus was popular.

The movie is quite short at about 30mins for the whole movie.  For those who don’t know, Opus is a penguin who wants to fly.  Its his absolute dream and for Christmas, he decides that its what he wants from Santa the most.  Bill is a cat that Opus rescued from a mad scientist (something like that) and he’s quite bizarre but very loyal to Opus.  He doesn’t really talk but makes random sounds.  We also have a fun cast with a pig called Truffles who thinks he’s a rhinoceros.  We have the Ducks who are like the clowns of the movie.

I can’t really say too much about the plot in case you do see it.  It is a fun movie and I think in particular, kids would enjoy it a lot.  I actually went to check out who did the voices, since I learned that even Robin Williams had a voice in the movie as a kiwi whose wife ran off with an albatross (silly, eh? I know).  That role was short but so hilarious.  Other than that, we have Joe Alsakey who did the voice for a movie I had looked at in Halloween, Casper as one of the three uncles, Stinkie.

Its definitely something that kids would enjoy a lot.  The characters are adorable and the story is really nice.  Opus and Bill has a nice duo dynamic.  I’d say this is a good holiday movie.

Have you ever seen this? Who knew about Opus and Bill before this?

Happy Feet Two (2011)

I’m back from vacation meaning I had another 16 hours spent on the plane watching movies.  This time I got around to another 5 movies.  There were a few failures where I just passed out watching two other ones in the middle and caught an incomplete movie so I won’t talk about those.  The first movie that I saw going back was a family animation called Happy Feet Two.  I don’t know how well Happy Feet was to the public but I enjoyed it for the upbeat music and dancing.  I loved it. Despite that, I still had this feeling that Happy Feet Two would be absolute crap as I had no idea how they’d do a follow up on it.  I was pleasantly surprised though, as I enjoyed it quite a bit.  A great movie to start off my long flight back home.

Happy Feet Two focuses on Mumble (Elijah Wood) and Gloria’s(Pink) son, Erik (Ava Acres) who doesn’t seem to know his place and his talents to find himself in Emperor Penguin world.  When he sees Ramon (Robin Williams) running off to find his world again, Erik and his two friends trail behind him and end up meeting Lovelace (Robin Williams) and the Mighty Sven (Hank Azaria).  The mighty Sven grows on Erik because he sees the possibility to achieve the impossible if you have the will.  Sven is actually a puffin that tricks everyone to believe that he is a penguin that can fly.  At the same time, we meet krills that want to escape the food chain and be different with Will the Krill (Brad Pitt) and Bill the Krill (Matt Damon).  They form somewhat of a side story.  Something in the environment suddenly changes and the Emperor Penguin world shifts lower and all the penguins are now stuck with no food.  The only ones outside are Erik and his two friends and Mumble who went out in search for him.  With the help of the penguins from Ramon’s world, they face this emergency and try to find a way out that they need everyone to help them out.

Its a pretty simple story.  Whats really nice and I think works well for Happy Feet in general is the musical elements.  We get upbeat music to match up with penguins dancing and singing through happy and sad times.  I’m not saying that we can all live through life and just forget our problems with dancing and singing but I have to say that its help me through a lot of tough times.  I think that has a factor on how much I did enjoy the movie.  It was just fun.  I don’t think its as good as the first one, but it does a pretty good job.  I think also another contributing factor to why I enjoyed it was the voices.  Everyone is top of the line.  Robin Williams did voices for two parts and it had hints of the voice when he did the Genie in Aladdin and I really liked it. As usual, Hank Azaria does a great job also as Sven.  Matt Damon and Brad Pitt join in as well for Bill and Will the Krills and they were quite fun to watch and listen to.  The only thing was that it seemed that they were trying to ride the popularity of Ice Age and the squirrel side story.  Its still entertaining for the Krills to have the stage but at times, it seemed a bit like it was trying hard to make sure it kept the movie in a uplifting mood even when it was meant to be slightly more serious. I wonder if it was really a necessary addition sometimes.

Overall, I did enjoy this movie.  It was a very pleasant surprise.  Did it give me any laughs? Not really.  What it did give me was a fun and musical time with a few heartwarming moments.  That was great for the beginning of the flight and it got me ready for the next one.  If you enjoyed the first one, I’d expect that you’d find some fun with this one.

Did you see this movie? Enjoyed it? Maybe you enjoyed it more than the first one?