It suddenly dawned on us that come the new year, the Disney company would no longer automatically farm out their big expensive feature films to Netflix.....where we could eventually get to them, if at all, at our leisure......
No, not anymore........with Disney spending billions to gobble up 21st Century Fox and creating its very own streaming service......
Many repercussions will result, including all the chest-bursters in the next "Alien" movie breaking into a rousing rendition of "Be Our Guest"......and no more Disney films on Netflix.
So in a daring race against time, the BQ hunkered down and watched 5 big-budget Disneys before the new Dis-Fox conglomerate reclaims them........
Word of warning:
don't try this at home. Nobody should attempt to watch these films in succession.......it's akin to swimming in a huge vat of soft-serve ice cream.....
Pete's Dragon (2016) Surprisingly, this turned out to be the most tolerable of the bunch, reducing the studio's 1977 animation/live action musical to a basic primal boy-and-his-misunderstood-pet movie........sort of "E.T." with a huge furry CGI dragon.
We laughed to ourselves at the thought of a whole generation of tykes who will only know Robert Redford as a kindly old codger in a Disney film......and thoroughly enjoyed watching the aerodynamically unsound dragon struggling to get up in the air. We rolled our eyes, however, at the carved-in-stone, mandated CGI shot of the lead child character (a Disney-fied version of the Feral Kid from "The Road Warrior")hurling himself off a cliff. Oh my.....what will become of him? Oh joy, the dragon caught him in mid-air.....what a relief......yawn. 2 &1.2 stars (**1.2).....mostly for the dragon......
Finding Dory (2016) Yes, we know it's heresy and blasphemy not to bow down and worship this movie for its stunning visuals and inventiveness. But unlike the rest of the known civilized world, we find Ellen Degeneres' short-term-memory-loss fish to be amusing for about 20 seconds at a time......after that, we want to forget about it, just like Dory. An hour and 40 minutes of it?
Sigh...... Adored Ed 'O Neill's octopus though.......best use of tentacles since "It Came From Beneath The Sea"......2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).....almost entirely for the octopus.
Alice Through The Looking Glass (2016) The bottom of the Disney barrel on multiple levels. One of those movies whose existence owes itself solely to naked corporate greed. It's a waste of time to discuss acting, direction or writing in an atrocity like this. It wasn't created in any sense....more like formulated by Disney accountants and board room executives.......then duly executed by vast armies of CGI digital scribblers. What a waste. What a mess. Zero stars (0). A candy-colored toxic waste dump.
The BFG (2016) Rest easy, we've neither the inclination or the strength to engage in yet another tiresome comparison of this film to "E.T.", the previous collaboration between Steven Spielberg and the late screenwriter Melissa Mathison. The most technologically wondrous of all the director's family films.........and the most strangely lifeless and paint-by-numbers of them. Here and there you can spot flashes of the old Spielberg magic in the shot composition and visual gags......but there's no spark here, no real enthusiasm. It just looks like more hard work for the teeming armies of CGI minions. And dare we say it, Spielberg's choice of child actress to anchor the film doesn't do it any great favors......she isn't terrible, but she's far from captivating.....a bland, uninteresting kid. 2 stars (**) and they're mostly for Mark Rylance's motion-capture BFG....
Beauty And The Beast (2017) Refer to our review for "Alice Through The Looking Glass." Everything applies.......except replace "dark" for "candy colored"...
As for the future Dis-Fox streaming services, we'll pass. They'll do fine without us, flush with the cash from their permanent Trumpian corporate tax cuts (as opposed to the fleeting ones for the rest of us....) They don't need our money......and we don't mind waiting until all their future live-action versions of animated films (98% of their agenda) finally come to rest on basic cable....
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