SCOOBY-DOO! MASK OF THE BLUE FALCON: The New, Updated, Darker, Edgier Blue Falcon

Scooby-Doo! Mask of the Blue Falcon (2013) – Directed by Michael Goguen – Starring Frank Welker, Matthew Lillard, Grey DeLisle, Mindy Cohn, Diedrich Bader, Jeff Bennett, Fred Tatasciore, John DiMaggio, Dee Bradley Baker, Kevin Michael Richardson, and Billy West.

SCOOBY-DOO! MASK OF THE BLUE FALCON is ridiculously good.

This is the first movie I watched after hearing of the passing of both Roger Ebert and Carmine Infantino, so perhaps I was ready made to be charmed by a delightful animated movie that featured two enjoyable parts of my childhood: Scooby-Doo and Dynomutt. Certainly, there’s a nostalgia aspect at play here. If you grew up on Hanna-Barbera cartoons there’s all kinds of old favorites hanging out in the background of BLUE FALCON: Speed Buggy, the Herculoids, Penelope Pitstop, Frankenstein Jr., Space Ghost, the Flintstones, Captain Caveman, the Jetsons, Black Lightning, Mightor, Apache Chief, Hong Kong Phooey, El Dorado, Johnny Quest, and a host more.

It’s more than simple nostalgia that makes BLUE FALCON such a fantastic movie, though. It’s fun, engaging, smart, colorful, beautifully paced, and just clever enough that I appreciated it without being turned off by it.

To be clear, this is not a continuation of the ’70s cartoons. In this movie, Scooby and the Mystery Incorporated gang are not former allies of Dynomutt and Blue Falcon, but rather exist in a world where they watched all of the Hanna-Barbera cartoons, too. Shaggy and Scooby are huge fans of Blue Falcon and Dynomutt, respectively, and they’re excited to head to an analog for the San Diego Comic Con where they discover the original Blue Falcon, Owen Garrison, has an autograph booth.

I won’t lie and act like I knew this before I started reading the Wikipedia page for the original Dynomutt TV show, but it’s clear that this film’s Owen Garrison is named after the original voice actor for the Blue Falcon, Gary Owens. That’s a nice touch and wasn’t shocking for me to discover given how much love for the old HB cartoons is in evidence throughout this film. I hope the animators were old Hanna-Barbera fans, too, or else they must have been mighty confused being asked to draw Quick Draw McGraw and Wonder Twins cosplayers.

When they get to the convention, they’re disappointed to find that Owen Garrison is kinda crazy and embittered. Turns out there’s a new Blue Falcon movie about to debut and it is, in Fred’s own words, a “new, updated, darkier, edgier Blue Falcon.” Full credit to the creators of BLUE FALCON for not only giving us the darker, edgier Blue Falcon, but basically using it to allow for some extended mocking of the Christopher Nolan Batman films. Check out this exchange between Brad Adams, the actor playing the new Blue Falcon, and Freddy and Shaggy:

Brad Adams: “I bring to the Blue Falcon a clean slate, seeing him as a divided soul in an endless debate over the choices he’s had to make in a very real and dangerous world.”

Freddy: “What does that even mean?”

Brad Adams: “That the Blue Falcon is an enigma living a life trapped within the impossibility of certainty. Makes you think.”

Shaggy: “You take that back! I don’t have the slightest idea what you just said but you’d better take it back, like, now!”

It’s nice to see Warner Brothers has at least some sense of humor about their multi-billion dollar franchise, and given that Blue Falcon and Dynomutt, the “Dog Wonder” were playful nods to Batman and Robin back then, it’s nice to see that connection continue.

What is a little surprising are the two big nods to Spider-Man. In one scene, Velma explains that she doesn’t like superheroes because they don’t make sense, that you wouldn’t really get superpowers if you were bitten by a radioactive spider. And later, after Scooby takes off his Dynomutt costume because he feels like a failure, he dumps it in a garbage can in an alley, a clear nod to Amazing Spider-Man 50.

The whole movie is a nod to kids’ cartoons, favoring the simple over the complicated, the vibrant over the dark. It’s done in a really smart, really fun way, and the story here about one of Blue Falcon’s old villains seemingly coming to life is well done. I love the scene where Fred, Daphne, and Velma sneack back into the convention dressed as the Herculoids, and I love how everywhere in the convention is a poster or cosplayer giving constant nods to Hanna-Barbera’s back catalog.

There’s only one letdown here and that’s the almost total lack of Dynomutt himself. With the film’s take being that Blue Falcon and Dynomutt weren’t friends of Scooby but characters on a TV show, it follows that there is no actual Dynomutt. Owen Garrison has a beat up Dynomutt next to him but we never get to see the actual Dynomutt hanging around.

It’s to Michael Goguen’s credit, though, that MASK OF BLUE FALCON is so good and so fun that whenever I started wishing Dynomutt would make an appearance, the film would give me something else that caused me to smile. I watched this movie via Netflix (the Blu-ray; it’s not streaming) but I like this movie so much I’ll be buying this Blu-ray in the future.

SHREK FOREVER AFTER: All I Want Is For Things To Go Back To the Way They Used To Be

Shrek Forever After (2010) – Directed by Mike Mitchell – Starring Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas, Walt Dohrn, Jon Hamm, Jane Lynch, John Cleese, Julie Andrews, and Craig Robinson.

SHREK FOREVER AFTER is a step in the right direction after the disappointing SHREK THE THIRD, but it’s also a sign that DreamWorks had run out of ideas to propel the SHREK franchise forward, so good on them for not making the planned fifth film.

It’s really pretty amazing that they wouldn’t make SHREK 5. FOREVER AFTER cost $135 million to make and brought in $752 million at the international box office, which begs the question if so many people are willing to turn up for a forgettably decent fourth installment of the franchise, why wouldn’t you come back for another round? Banking $600 million (give or take – these numbers never take the full financial picture into account) would fund another four or five CGI movies.

It drives certain filmmakers nuts that the public cares, let alone focuses, on budget and box office, and I can understand that. But when I hear that FOREVER puts $600 million in the studio’s coffers (just from the box office, let alone future, home-related profits), I do wonder if it’s financially responsible NOT to make another film. I think the same thing when I hear someone like Chris Nolan talk about how he refused to release Dark Knight Rises as a 3D movie – artistically, of course, I support Nolan’s decision (I have yet to see 3D develop to the point where the benefits outweigh the negatives) but when a studio is putting up $250 million for you to make a movie in a genre that has proven financially successful with 3D screenings, is it smart to leave that money on the table in exchange for the benefits of your artistic vision? It’s not like there still wouldn’t be a 2D movie, after all.

I’m not shilling for the coffers of DreamWorks and Warner Brothers. I just think it’s curious when an industry that plays for such huge financial stakes purposely declines to consume guaranteed additional money. Maybe putting out a 3D release of Dark Knight wouldn’t make a dramatic difference, but there’s no reason to think SHREK 5 wouldn’t be a guaranteed $500 million profit, is there?

Or maybe Jeffrey Katzenberg finally just couldn’t deal with the fact that they’d run out of SHREK stories to tell. Maybe that’s why we got a Puss in Boots movie instead of another SHREK film – and Puss‘ $400 million profit isn’t anything to sneeze at.

SHREK FOREVER AFTER takes on one of my least favorite stories to see in a movie: the alternate reality film. In comic books, I love the alt-universe stuff but I’m not a fan of it with cinematic releases because we get so few chances to see these characters in this setting that seeing them but not really seeing them isn’t my preferred way to experience a franchise film. By the fourth film in a series, however, we like these characters. I like Donkey and Fiona and Puss and I want to see Donkey and Fiona and Puss. I don’t really want to see Stranger Donkey and Warrior Fiona and Fat Puss.

Personal problems with this type of story aside, SHREK FOREVER AFTER isn’t a horribly film. It tells a pretty good story of how life might have turned out if Shrek (Mike Myers) never met Donkey (Eddie Murphy) nor saved Fiona (Cameron Diaz). In this world, Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohrn) makes a deal with King Harold and Queen Lillian (John Cleese and Julie Andrews) and as a result he becomes the King of Far Far Away. We get a nightmarish world where the ogres are in Braveheart mode and Shrek is desperate to undo the damage that he caused simply because he’s a selfish jerk.

It’s not bad, but it’s not memorable, either. The animation is once again top notch and Rumpelstiltskin is an interesting villain, but FORVER AFTER is the kind of film that if it was on TV during a lazy Saturday afternoon, I’d watch it if the remote was on the other side of the room, but flip past it if the remote was in my hand.

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My latest book, STUFFED ANIMALS FOR HIRE: THE CHRISTMAS OPERATION is now available for purchase in PAPERBACK and KINDLE formats.

SAFH is a kid’s espionage novella, but it’s also a tribute to the television shows I watched as a kid: The A-Team, Magnum PI, Knight Rider, Hardcastle and McCormack, Riptide, Dukes of Hazzard and generally any show where Post and Carpenter did the music. Recommended age? If you let your kid watch superhero cartoons or Knight Rider reruns, SAFH should be age appropriate.

Here’s the back cover description:

Jurgen the Gorilla. Throne the Lion. Bronze the Golden Eagle. Ray the Brown Bear. Bottle the Dolphin. Dev the Lynxwoman. 3 the Triceratops. Ptera the Pterodactyl. These eight stuffed animals make up the Return Squadron. For seven months they have worked together to return disconnected stuffed animals home. But now … on their final mission, the Return Squadron seek to steal the legendary Map of Everything. Before Christmas morning arrives, three of the Squadron will turn traitor, four will be stranded, and one will never see another Christmas.

PARANORMAN: I Wish I Understood You

ParaNorman (2012) – Directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler – Starring Kodi Smit-McPhee, Tucker Albrizzi, Anna Kendrick, Casey Affleck, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Leslie Mann, Jeff Garlin, Elaine Stritch, Bernard Hill, Jodelle Micah Ferland, John Goodman, and Tempestt Bledsoe.

PARANORMAN is a ridiculously dumb title, but that’s the only thing this movie does poorly.

PARANORMAN is a very good stop-motion movie about two kids, separated by three centuries, who are demonized and ostracized by their community because they can talk to the dead. I love it when kids’ movies are smart, and PARANORMAN is a cleverly constructed tale that starts rather predictable but gains momentum as it barrels towards its highly effective conclusion.

At the center of PARANORMAN sits Norman Babcock (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a kid who’s being ostracized by his town for being weird. Norman can see and talk to the dead, but the town doesn’t believe him, and thus mocks him for what they perceive as his strangeness. If it were just the kids in town, PARANORMAN would be following in the steps of numerous kids’ stories where our protagonist lives just outside of the normal path, but there’s a particular viciousness laid into Norman by his father (Jeff Garlin) that really sets this movie apart. Perry is all over Norman for being weird, and he delivers the most stinging attacks on Norman’s character. Kids are resilient, but when the harshest and most consistent abuse comes not from the school bully but your own father, it’s not hard to see why Norman spends much of the movie’s opening sequences with his head down. It’s a common theme in stories like this for the parent to not understand their child, but Perry is much closer to someone like Harry Potter’s Uncle Vernon than simply a parent who thinks he knows what’s best for his kid.

At school, Norman gets FREAK painted onto his locker, and is the main target of the school’s bully, Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). When we’re introduced to Alivn, I was not feeling PARANORMAN. It’s early in the film and while I like the twist of Norman’s opening scene revealing that his grandmother is actually dead despite her sitting and watching TV with him, Alvin is rendered as a cartoonish bully. The physical appearances of these characters was a bit of a concern – we have the fat dad, who’s a bully at home, and the fat older kid, who’s a bully at school. I get nervous when films fall into the “good guys are attractive, bad guys are ugly” bit, and luckily, PARANORMAN doesn’t fall into that trap. Part of the film’s charm is that it renders its characters as exaggerated physical types, but then lets the characters overcome that type. Alvin, for instance, goes from bullying Norman to partnering with him when the dead start coming back to life.

The return of dead corpses back into the realm of the living is surprisingly gruesome and, for a kids’ movie, surprisingly scary. Clearly, the filmmakers of PARANORMAN like scary movies, and not just because they dot the film with allusions to John Carpenter’s Halloween and Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th. I really think the filmmakers have set out to actually scare kids; PARANORMAN doesn’t just wink at horror movies – it is a horror movie. Scenes where the dead claw their way out of their graves, where the zombies attack Norman and his associates, and where reality is consumed inside powerful visions of the town’s past are actually pretty intense and much more forceful than I was expecting in a kids’ film.

I absolutely love how PARANORMAN uses history to set the foundation for the present. Blithe Hollow, Massachusetts is clearly an analog for Salem, the home of the most infamous American witchcraft trials, but the look of the town owes a great deal to Stephen King’s Maine or Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter. In the pure tradition of King and Hawthorne, Blithe Hollow is a town that looks quaint but hides a terrible secret. There are images of witches all over Blithe Hollow, but the images are largely of the wicked witch variety – big noses, green skin, cackling smiles. The town’s identity is built around the town elders catching and killing this witch 300 years previous, but when Norman gets to the truth of the matter through his visions, he learns that the “wicked witch” of yore is actually a scared girl roughly the same age as him.

It’s admirable that PARANORMAN has this reveal, because the way these “non-normative” stories usually go is that our protagonist is picked on, but over the course of the film overcomes the abuse to prove everyone wrong. Certainly, PARANORMAN offers this narrative through Norman’s arc, but with the little girl witch, Aggie (Jodelle Micah Ferland), the filmmakers show the dark side of that story arc, of what can happen if the protagonist can’t overcome the abuse – she gets unfairly singled out and murdered.

It’s interesting and telling about what the filmmakers want you to take from this story that Norman spends more time during this movie adventuring with Alvin than Neil (Tucker Albrizzi), the only kid at school that wants to befriend Norman. Neil gets picked on, too, by Alvin and his buddies, but he has a rosier outlook than Norman does about life. Norman, in fact, rejects Neil’s friendship advances several times before finally welcoming him in. The rest of the adventure crew contains Norman’s sister Courtney (Anna Kendrick) and Neil’s brother Mitch (Casey Affleck). Both Courtney and Mitch are physically attractive people, and Courtney spends much of her time flirting with a non-responsive Mitch. The jock is a bit low on the IQ scale, so the film could be suggesting that Mitch simply doesn’t realize what Courtney is doing, but then at the end of the movie, he tells her that he has a boyfriend. Non-normative characters are often coded in such a way to allow non-normative kids to identify with them, but this is the first time I can remember a kid in an animated movie being explicitly gay.

What really puts PARANORMAN over the top is the final showdown between Norman and Aggie. Norman doesn’t defeat her through a physical battle but by telling her the story of herself and allowing her to let go of her hate and anger and rediscover happiness. The animation through this sequence is top notch and the interplay between the two kids who can talk to the dead is outstanding. Norman clearly sees himself in Aggie, and when he learns the truth about her through a vision, he becomes her champion as much as her opponent.

PARANORMAN only did so-so at the box office ($60 million budget, $99 worldwide haul) and it’s easy to point the finger at bad marketing when a good film under-performs. This is a tricky movie to sell, though, because the things that make it great aren’t things you can put in an advertisement. PARANORMAN isn’t at its best in singular moments that can be cut out of the film and assembled together to make an effective 30-second TV spot; it’s at its best when it gets beyond the obvious and starts to open up its world and its characters to reveal that people (even dead people) are far more than their appearance.

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My latest book, STUFFED ANIMALS FOR HIRE: THE CHRISTMAS OPERATION is now available for purchase in PAPERBACK and KINDLE formats.

SAFH is a kid’s espionage novella, but it’s also a tribute to the television shows I watched as a kid: The A-Team, Magnum PI, Knight Rider, Hardcastle and McCormack, Riptide, Dukes of Hazzard and generally any show where Post and Carpenter did the music. Recommended age? If you let your kid watch superhero cartoons or Knight Rider reruns, SAFH should be age appropriate.

Here’s the back cover description:

Jurgen the Gorilla. Throne the Lion. Bronze the Golden Eagle. Ray the Brown Bear. Bottle the Dolphin. Dev the Lynxwoman. 3 the Triceratops. Ptera the Pterodactyl. These eight stuffed animals make up the Return Squadron. For seven months they have worked together to return disconnected stuffed animals home. But now … on their final mission, the Return Squadron seek to steal the legendary Map of Everything. Before Christmas morning arrives, three of the Squadron will turn traitor, four will be stranded, and one will never see another Christmas.