The Spy Next Door

I've reviewed Jackie Chan's work before on this blog [see link below] but most of his films are not suitable for kids.  Teens perhaps then?  Yes, for sure, they'll love them!   But not so much for kids so when we saw his face pop up on the kid's Neflix feed we were happy to have a film of his to enjoy with a younger audience.

Jackie plays a spy who masquerades as a boring accountant? type when off duty.  He has a soft spot for his very attractive single mother neighbour played by Amber Valletta.  They go on a few dates, he yearns to take the relationship further but she is reluctant on account of her children and the abandonment of them by her previous partner.  To prove he is a man worthy of her trust he offers to babysit the kids while she visits a sick relative.

Due to one of the kid's meddling his work and home life collide, threatening the peaceful weekend he had planned.  Things escalate to the point where he must take the children away thus destroying all trust his neighbour had in him and quashing their budding relationship.  How will Jackie redeem this hopeless situation?  Well with household appliances, a dashing smile and kung fu of course!!


Rating: I'm very sad to report that this movie is close to un-watchable.  The script has ALL the worst movie tropes and annoying characters it can fit in.  The acting is not good but I think the blame lies with the director and writers on this one.  The poor actors just didn't have anything good to work with.  We will not watch this movie in it's entirety again.  This is one best watched as a highlights reel of all the best fights on YouTube because thankfully Jackie and his team do not disappoint there.

Naughty bits:  This is a Jackie Chan movie so there is lots of kung fu fighting.  Things happen to characters which would definitely kill or seriously maim them in real life so if you have younger children who are likely to imitate things they see on TV then this is not suitable for them.  But for everyone else, the violence is played out with all the cartoonish exaggeration of the Home Alone series.  *No stuntmen were seriously harmed in the making of this movie*

Snacks: Dumplings

Family In-quotes: "Nice hypothesis, but ya can't prove it"

Related Goodies:
A more mature but classic Jackie Chan Movie: Who Am I

Princess Protection Program

Some little girls don't care what they wear, some little girls are little princesses from day one.  Pink!  Poofy dresses!  Tiaras!  Fairy Wings!  All at once!  Kid 2 is the little princess in our family.  She loves pretty things and all things sweet and magical, with a bit of Pokemon thrown in for good measure.  One always needs a trusty Pokemon sidekick on one's adventures.  But I digress, back to princess business; and the protection of them.

It was a cold night and I wanted nothing more than to cuddle up in bed with kid 2 and indulge in a chick flick on the laptop.  Kid 2 was all in so we found Princess Protection Program on Netflix and gave it a shot.

Selena Gomez is just a regular small town teenager with small town problems until her secret agent father brings home an unexpected housemate.  The housemate turns out to be the crown princess of an obscure South American? (think Cuba) island and Selena's father has been charged with protecting her.  Selena is roped into training the princess (Ariana Grande) in the ways of the American teenager.  Things are rocky at first but the girls come to learn from each other and grow together. 

Rating: PPP is not a great movie; the plot and characters are very cookie cutter, but it's good enough watch once with your little princess.  You can admire pretty things together and get all girl powered up.  The one plot twist is that Selena and Ariana resist the urge to break into song mid-movie!

Naughty bits: Some of the relationship/crushing moments are more suitable for teen/tween viewers; only because a younger viewer will not understand what they are talking about, and will therefore be bored.  The rest is as clean as Selena Gomez's pearly whites.

Snacks: Cereal - that you make yourself

Family In-quotes: "I will turn the other cheek, because that is what princesses do"

Related Goodies:
A fairly similar but much better Princess movie: The Princess Diaries

Peter Rabbit

aka General Hux's worst holiday ever.

The books are classics, the characters are beloved, what could go wrong?  Hmmm, where do I start...  To be fair kid 2 loved this movie.  But kid 2 is five and Peter Rabbit has cute animals, plenty of visual gags and bright colours so if you want your five year old to be entertained alone for an hour or so then Peter Rabbit is great!

But is Peter Rabbit good for the whole family?  Not so much.  We [parents and kid 1] were irritated by the random pop numbers which peppered the soundtrack, we were confused and bored by the abundance of obvious "comedians riffing with each other" scenes and the characters were SO contrived!  I would much rather watched a few episodes of The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends (link below) instead.
 
Rating: We will not watch this again and we are all secretly relieved that the youngest member is happy watching the Peter Rabbit TV series on Netflix and has not requested a re-view of the movie.

Naughty bits: There is much cartoon violence against CGI animals which very young viewers may find disturbing.  School age and above should have no worries unless especially sensitive to animals and threats made toward them.

Snacks: Carrot sticks and dip

Family In-quotes: "I've chilled out, man. I'm cool now"

Related Goodies:
The Peter Rabbit TV Series
Miss Potter movie
The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends TV Series

The Flintstones

Who here in internet land has fond memories of the TV show The Flintsones?  Yabadabadoo!  All of us, that's who!  The classic 1960's series was re-run well into our childhoods so why not watch the live action movie and introduce the fun to our kids?  Well, the idea was a good one...

Lets start with the casting: John Goodman as Fred and Rick Moranis (see our previous post) as Barney.  Great.  The set: A whole town set built to look prehistoric with "mod-cons" and dinosaur puppets.  Excellent stuff.  The costumes:  Authentic to the TV show and outrageous.  Good, good.  The plot:  Here's where things go horribly wrong.  The writers turn what was a fun, happy go lucky cartoon into a serious story about a corporate takeover and the ramifications.  They even split apart the Fred and Barney bromance!  But worst of all, it was B.O.R.I.N.G.  So boring in fact that the kid fell asleep and we fast forwarded through much of the last third.

Rating: Needless to say we did not enjoy The Flintstones and will be happy for it to be lost to history.  This was so sad because visually there was so much we liked about it but ultimately it was not worth our time.


Naughty bits: The Flintstones is as clean as Wilma's lil' white dress.

Snacks: Bronto Burgers

Family In-quotes: "Yabadabado!"

Related Goodies:

The Christmas Toy

Seeing as a new Star Wars movie is coming out at Christmas every year #RogueOne , does that make Star Wars Christmas movies now?  The debate that rages in our house every Advent is over whether a movie qualifies as a Christmas movie if it is simply set during this wonderful holiday season or must it be about Christmas to qualify?
 

Whatever side you fall on (feel free to comment below) The Christmas Toy can safely be considered a Christmas movie as it is not only set at Christmas but is about Christmas.  It is also about toys!  Which if you know anything about our family you will know us as the creators of the Toylympics .  Click on the link, share with your friends, subscribe to our channel etc.  OK plug over...  The Christmas Toy is a TV movie created by the legendary Jim Henson and is about a jealous toy who risks everything to remain the favourite toy but instead learns a good lesson about belonging and love. 

Rating: If you read a longer plot synopsis online and it sounds familiar to you, that's because it probably is.  It's the basic premise for Toy Story!  In our opinion Toy Story is a far superior film but it doesn't have puppets or song and dance numbers and that special Jim Henson something.  The kids were captured enough by the magic of the world he created but not enough that we will watch it again.  Let the debate rage again next year when we try to pick a Christmas movie.

Naughty bits: This is super clean and cute and suitable for all age children.  Nothing to see here.

Snacks: Milk and cookies!

Family In-quotes: "It's catnip! Just catnip!"

Related Goodies:
Click HERE to watch the Toylympics (suitable for all ages)
The Muppet Show

Chicken Run

It was another rainy Saturday afternoon so we decided to settle in for a movie as a family including No.2 this time.  Chicken Run sounded interesting and was made by the Aardman folks (famous for Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep) so we were excited.  But things sort of petered out from there. 



Chicken Run is a retelling of The Great Escape which is a great concept but the story and wartime in-jokes were lost on the kids and they were kind of bored by the end although there were plenty of visual gags to amuse from time to time.  We did enjoy the bad end that came to the antagonists but it felt like it took a long time getting there and the chemistry between the two leads was flighty.

Rating: It was an original concept but they somehow didn't quite pull it off.  We will definitely keep re-watching Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep but won't be watching this one again.

Naughty bits: The dogs could be frightening to very small children but the rest is as clean as Fowler's hut.

Snacks: Chicken Pie

Family In-quotes: "Why, back in my RAF days..."

Related Goodies:
Wallace & Gromit
Shaun the Sheep
The true story of The Great Escape

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

There are a couple of things we all think of when we think of the 1970's; psychedelic randomness and tight pants.  Star Trek: The Motion Picture does not disappoint on both counts.  We being more a Star Wars than Trek family were new to this universe and went into this movie with fresh eyes knowing little about the characters or setting.  Well I can now see the appeal of Captain Kirk; he was utterly fabulous.  The movie, not so much but was entertaining enough and has rounded out our pop culture education nicely we feel.

Captain Kirk comes out of bureaucracy to captain the Enterprise once again amidst some tension between himself and the new captain.  Despite this they shoot off into space to head off a massive threat to earth where danger and the unknown lurk.  *Spoiler Alert* they do save the day but I missed the last 20 minutes [sleeping] which kind of gives you an idea of the slowness of the proceedings.


Rating: We enjoyed this movie enough but it is quite slow and seemed longer than its 2hr 10min running time.  We wouldn't watch it again but we might try other Star Trek products.  We enjoyed Galaxy Quest (the parody) much better.

Naughty bits: This movie is as clean as Captain Kirk's tennis inspired outfit but there is a disturbing scene early on where the transporters catastrophically fail and you see the people die screaming horribly.  Not too gory but we all knew what was going on.

Snacks: Freeze Dried Icecream

Family In-quotes: "Any show of resistance would be futile, Captain."

Related Goodies:
StarTrek official site
StarTrek wiki

Finding Dory

We were pretty excited to see what Pixar would do with the sequel to Finding Nemo so we got ourselves off to the movies one chilly Friday night.

Finding Dory is about Dory (duh) and her mission to find her family in the hope she will discover where she belongs.  Marlin and Nemo chase her through many obstacles (and Finding Nemo references) on her journey hoping to convince her to come "home" again.  *Plot Spoiler*  It all works out alright in the end and they make more new friends along the way.

How did we find it though?  Well a little bit boring unfortunately.  Number 2 kid got a bit fidgety in the middle until the final action sequence and number 1 kid said she was a bit bored.  I think it was that there were too many emotional scenes between action scenes and that made it seem longer than it really was.  I also found it a little disturbing as a parent (Dory is a "missing child") as have other adults I spoke to about it.  So trigger warning if you are a parent of disabled (or not) kids, or you have memory issues.

Rating: We would rate this a watch once movie and we will go back to the classic (Finding Nemo) for our Dory fixes.

Naughty bits: No naughty bits but there is one scary scene involving a large squid so for younger viewers or sensitive kids they may want to cover their eyes for that one.


Snacks: Goldfish crackers (if you live in the States)

Family In-quotes: "Just keep swimming"

Related Goodies:
This real life circular fish tank

Spy School

When you hear the title "Spy School" does it spark your imagination to dream up images of kids learning how to be spies and then having to save the world from some dastardly villain?  Yes we were sucked in by our imaginations and chose this one hoping for great things.  We were disappointed.  Very disappointed.

Spy School is about two regular tweens (a boy and a girl.  Friends.  The girl is heavily friend-zoned) who attend a regular school.  The boy has an overactive imagination and tells tall tales to gain popularity.  However the tales are not tall enough to warrant any surreal imaginative sequences but they are tall enough to get everyone to reject him.

Then when you've almost gone to sleep the president's daughter turns up, almost gets kidnapped and the boy tries [pointlessly and improbably] to save the day.


Rating: We almost quit on this one half way through, it was sooo slow and boring.  Won't watch again.

Naughty bits: This movie is as clean as the science lab before the practical joke and purple sludge incident.

Snacks: Hors d'oeuvres

Family In-quotes: "You're so disturbed"

Related Goodies:
Spy School book series (not related to the movie but seems more like what you would expect from the title)