Change Your Image
bdwilner
Reviews
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
more faithful, but disturbing and dark
I assign six points because of the quality of the production and the acting: assuming that Johnny Depp set out to achieve what I detail below, then I suppose his performance was phenomenal.
But what he achieved was to portray Willy Wonka as a sadistic gay psychotic.
When Gene Wilder portrayed Wonka in the legendary 1971 production, Wonka came off as eccentric, but we always sensed that he enjoyed children (regardless of his sometimes questionable disposals thereof) and, of course, had a noble heart. In contrast, Depp's Wonka continually disses the children verbally; does everything in his power to convince him that he's disturbed, possibly even a child molester; and engages in strange, STRANGE behaviors.
Why, for example, was it necessary for Wonka to begin the tour with a self-immolating puppet show where puppets burned and melted and showed horribly disfigured faces with eyes melting and popping out? Was it solely to support the extremely weak joke--hours later (if, indeed, the viewer made the connection and "got" the joke)--that the "Puppet Hospital and Burn Center" was "relatively new" to the factory? Also, what was the point of the room where green-suited men sheared pink sheep, to which Wonka said, "I'd rather not talk about that"? When Wonka revealed that his intention was to give the factory to "the least rotten" of the five children, we learned all we needed to know.
When I saw Wonka's adventures begin with Prince Pondicherry and his ill-fated chocolate taj, I was excited by the evident faithfulness to the book, but that excitement was eventually dispelled by the last fifteen minutes of the movie--which had zero to do with the book--embarked on a foolish odyssey whereby Wonka reunited with his estranged dentist father (uncommittedly played by the great Christopher Lee). Wonka was a creep, a weirdo, a sicko, and, overall, just a most unpleasant character, motivating to ask, "Why on earth would anyone be interested in chasing THIS clod around to obtain his 'secrets'?" Keep this movie far away from your kids, and watch it only if you're interested in how a shambles can be made of a classic story by offering bizarrely unpleasant interpretations of fondly remembered characters and introducing weak, extraneous material. Further, inexplicable substitutions of characters were made, to wit, Mr. Salt was replaced with Mrs. Salt (very, very weak, as Mr. Salt contributed a strong comic touch to the 1971 production), while Mrs. Teevee was replaced by Mr. Teevee (leaving us with a weakly characterized Milquetoast in place of a truly funny overstressed mom {whom I always thought was Alice Ghostley but, in fact, was not}).
Yecch!
Cloverfield (2008)
foolishness
I apologize sincerely for not having been requisitely (and I do mean requisitely) impressed by this non-starter of a horror film. Frankly, there was not a single identifiable element of the plot or the setting that was not readily demonstrable as derivative of some previous B-movie or other. A purely technical inconsistency also plagues me from the start: how can an ostensibly ninety-foot creature (it looked much, much larger, but that's what the press releases all said) suffer from seven-foot parasites--and how can these be compared to whale lice? Whale lice are teeny, tiny creatures that infest the tiniest crevices, and whales have not the mechanical means (read as "hands") to remove them. A ninety-foot animal having seven-foot parasites equates to a six-foot human being having "parasites" five and one-half inches long: wouldn't the sufferer merely pick them off with his hands and toss them into the gutter? Jeez Louise!
Tinerete fara batrînete (1969)
fun, as I recall
... and the memories are dim, believe you me. I remember some gigantic fellow reclining on the hills with a spinning wheel, calling himself Father Time, whom we meet twice; I remember our hero capturing some fellow who protests, "You can't do this to me! I am the prince of liars! My father is the king of liars!!" to no avail. I remember someone climbing into a tower to rescue a princess, and something about a flower that changes color (shades of Korda's "Thief of Baghdad," as well as innumerable fairy tales worldwide, even the Tepozton cycle). That's about it. As best I recall, I saw it with my mother in either 1971 or 1972, and it didn't play in terribly many theaters. I never knew it was Romanian (!).
Drake & Josh (2004)
marginally humorous
Drake and Josh do work reasonably well together. Unfortunately, the humorless "plots" are more or less comparable to a Flintstones episode. I have yet to determine why Miranda Cosgrove is unable to deliver a single line without smirking throughout: perhaps it's because she gets away with everything while her good-hearted brothers get punished (tell me, Nick, what manner of message _that_ sends). It is marginally disturbing how little common sense the boys have (they allow themselves to be robbed by roadside bandits; Drake spends $2,500 on impulse to purchase a baby orangutan; etc.). Drake needs guitar lessons badly; kudos to Josh for losing so much weight after the first season. The movie was profoundly dreadful.
The Naked Brothers Band (2007)
poor, vapid, disappointing
There is precious little justification for this show being on the air other than that Polly Draper has sufficient power--and/or that Nickelodeon is sufficiently one-horse--that merely wanting her cute sons to have their own "television show" was enough to "make it so," to quote Captain Picard. I tried watching an episode of NBB as part of my ongoing experiment to determine why Nick and Disney aren't shut down by the federal government. What, pray tell, do these kids do other than mugg for the camera; change T-shirts every four seconds; and try to act forty years older than they are? There is nothing entertaining, intriguing, or endearing about the program. Even the name, frankly, is enough to catch in the throat of a religious rightist, and I'm surprised it hasn't yet. (Then again, the "Cory in the House" episode where two adult men were found hiding in the same bed seems to have sneaked past the religious right, so who am I to say "boo"?) You know, Nat reminds me of that fellow on "Fried Dynamite"--is that the name of Cartoon Network's brief live diversions--who possesses that grating voice and, once again, tries at the tender age of twelve to convince his teenybopper (or, more likely, six-year-old) viewers that he is "hot," "cool," "sexy," and such--as if they could begin to grasp those concepts.
Did I forget to mention that the young gentleman have zero musical talent? Nat's "songs" typically contain two or three lines of vacuous text and a chordal progression that a Sumerian would consider unacceptably primitive, while any six-year-old tattooing with a pencil on the breakfast table can outpace Alex's "drumming." Good grief!
I tried this one more time, just to give it a fair shake. Would you believe (are you securely strapped down?) that Nat and Alex were discussing ... dog poop. They wanted a puppy, but their dad wouldn't allow it, so they were stuck with an Internet e-puppy, which doesn't poop. This led to a detailed discussion of whether poop is disgusting; whether they would willingly clean up after their dog; and whether they should borrow their friend's Boston terrier, E.T. (I wouldn't lend those kids a Q-tip!) My Lord, how fr*ggingly disgustingly awful. This is, to be certain beyond the shadow of a doubting Thomas, the most alarmingly revolting drek ever to rear its face on a television set. O.K., so Nat is cute. Mazel tov: the fiends and the NAMBLA crowd can watch the show and revel at the gorgeous preteen.
All that's needed is a laugh track, and I'll take a 9mm Glock and blow my own head off.
Drake & Josh: The Peruvian Puff Pepper (2005)
Megan's pranks
I agree that the show is funny--although some of the jokes are obvious and thus stale--but I feel it is way past time that Megan got her comeuppance. Were she my little sister, I'd have hatched a plot to beat her senseless and then make it look as if she fell. Her behavior is an absolute outrage. Frankly, I don't know what's worse: a child that evil, or parents who are so oblivious to their own children's behavioral tendencies that they actually think that Megan is sweet and the boys are inveterate ne'er-do-wells. I think the episode where Drake masqueraded as a noted young surgeon and came within inches of actually operating on a patient was extremely funny. Much as was the case with the Honeymooners, one can readily trace the foundation of various "Drake and Josh" plots back to the Flintstones of the early 1960s.
Ivan the Terrible (1976)
funny, as I recall
I disagree with the majority: I enjoyed this series. I was also young when it aired. Two episodes stand out in my mind. In one, the government had chosen a family as a "model" to show off to some Western visitors. To this end, the familiar "KGB guy" showed up to move all sorts of fancy-shmancy furniture into the apartment--which was taken away as soon as the Westerners had completed their nickel tour. In another, the KGB investigated because Sasha scored a 99 on the state exam--something about science, math, transportation, etc. Re transportation in particular, he aced that section because his aunt--who lived with them--worked for the government train administration bureau or what-have-you. Oh, yeah, Ivan also had a dog that lived in the closet, and he kept kicking the closet door every now and then to shut the beast up.
The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962)
a monster that vile is definitely worth the seventy-minute wait!
There must be some reason they call them "B movies" and air them at 3:30AM.
This one was called "The Brain that Wouldn't Die" and hailed from 1962.
Some surgeon--collaborating with his surgeon dad--steals limbs from the discard pile to supply nefarious experiments at "the country house." Give Junior some credit: when dad's patient went Code Blue on the table, Junior's serum brought him back to life! (Dad mocked and mumbled about deleterious side effects, but Junior was like, whatever.)
Junior's fiancée (Jane?) wanted to know the scoop at "the country house." That, and Bill's earlier "emergency" call, motivated him to floor the pedal. Lo, curves ahead, and the fiancée burned to death--except for her severed head, which Junior saved (we see him wrap some treasure in his jacket, anyway), trudging uphill to the country house, conveniently located near the accident scene.
The emergency was that "it" became so violent that it almost broke out of the closet. "It," played by "Jewish Giant" Eddie Carmel, was the sum total of all of the surgeon's failures. Our first hint at the horror is Bill's withered, deformed arm. But Junior's interest lies more in saving his fiancée's detached head in a casserole dish of ducts, tubes, and Habitrails (sans hamsters, sadly) than in bemoaning his failed Heathkit. Though Jane repeatedly extols her telepathic capabilities, about all she can muster is to command her seven-foot pet, "Knock once for 'yes', twice for 'no'." You won't score a Ph.D. from Duke's famed parapsychology squad for THIS shoddy work!
So, what's up our surgeon's sleeve? He wants to kill a gorgeous prostitute as a host for Jane's head and brain. He discovers and befriends a gorgeous but facially disfigured girl, brings her home, and slips her a mickey. Zonk! Lights out!
Meanwhile, Jane has exercised her penchant for Schadenfreude. Bill calls Jane a 'monster' subsisting on hatred while "it" in the closet is more partial to roast chicken. How unfortunate that Bill forgot to lock the little latch that permits him to insert food and such into the closet (though I wonder how they extricate the urine and feces! man, it must stink to high heaven!): for, at a signal from Jane, the monster grabs Bill's good arm and tears it off. Now, when I last saw the movie in 1986, the surgeon clearly saw Bill's denuded humerus hanging from his scapula when he got home and checked out the lab, but good old TCM spared us this detail. Yet, the censors still permitted Bill to decorate the office for us (again, during our absence) with generous smears of blood as he writhed and contorted--all over the lab, up and down the stairs--kind of like the modern artist who proudly composes "Supine Apotheosis with Sausage Quintets; or, Multicolored Zapotec Boots" with his paint-smeared feet.
Well, back to the body-A-plus-cheek-F prostitute to whom the surgeon slipped the potion. He carries her unconscious form downstairs to the operating table, planning to decapitate her and sew on Jane's head, thereby building a new Jane. But, disapproving Jane engineers her surgeon hubby to a position right in front of the (still unlocked) closet door hatch and yells, "Now! Kill him!" The hatch ominously swings open. A huge, nicely manicured hand reaches through the door and grasps the surgeon's chin, simultaneously pulling and pushing with sufficient strength to rip the door right off the hinges and permit us to revel in the glory of grade-B 1962 costume work. Harryhausen would vomit; even Prohaska--who wasn't above playing an asbestos-skinned tunneler on Janus VI or a horned white gorilla on Neural--would gag.
Our seven-foot cone-head (IMDB insisted on the dopey comma) sports lumps and bumps; limbs of variegated sizes; teeth and lips that do justice to 1980's "Elephant Man"; one eye that points forward; and another eye, a good six inches north, that looks squarely at Rigel. Brrr! The monster knocks down the Bunsen burner and sets fire to the lab; he also knocks the surgeon to the floor and throws the door to the side. Thanks to the TCM censors, we miss another lovely 1986 scene, where the monster takes a generous chomp from the surgeon's neck. (I mean, even a dummy can recognize the discontinuity when the music suddenly jumps; the creature instantly rematerializes from this corner of the room to that one; the standing, cowering surgeon is suddenly motionless on the floor; and the monster's tunic sports a fresh blood stain beneath his chin. Whatever: the noble savage assesses the scene, rescues the prostitute, and trudges up the stairs on his way out of "the country house."
You know, I really wonder what a passing police officer would say of a horribly disfigured, seven-foot monster, dressed in blood-soaked surgical scrubs, carrying a girl (most likely, an incessantly screaming--once she's woken up--girl), but that's not our evident concern.
Ah, well away: in the interest of cinematic balance, we are treated to a closing philippic from Jane: "I told him to let me die!" Not exactly Ray Harryhausen for special effects, and, for plotting, certainly no Maupassant, but the disfigured dude was worth the wait. Other than that, the picture wasn't worth a zloty.
Camp Lazlo! (2005)
not impressive to me
I don't really understand how anyone can sing the praises of this lukewarm show. The writing is flaccid, the characterizations are weak, and the plots are virtually non-existent. True, Raj, the elephant with the Indian accent, is quite amusing, and Edward, the platypus with the chip on his shoulder, provides nice counterpoint to Lazlo, the overly cheerful spider monkey. But--and I speak here as a die-hard fan of the Cartoon Network who can stare at Billy and Mandy, Foster's, etc., for hours without end--I feel no compulsion whatsoever to watch even fifteen minutes' worth of Lazlo's lame doings, even if it is competently drawn. Sorry.
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)
simply awesome, Wilder's apotheosis
People are fond of saying "the book was better," particularly when they haven't read it but strive to sound erudite. In this case, it's true: by providing more detailed anecdotes expressive of Willy Wonka's encyclopedic knowledge base and earth-shattering sense of humor, the book scores eleven whilst the movie scored only ten. We all know how talented Wilder is--particularly, when he writes, not only when he acts, witness the astonishing creativity of "Young Frankenstein." This movie provided a vehicle for Wilder to sing, dance, jest, wisecrack, and even display the rare dramatic moment, typically centered around the emotion of love (even when seemingly busting on some child's self-imposed torment, e.g., blowing up like a blueberry or being micro-miniaturized during electromagnetic transport). Even Jack Albertson got a chance to sing and dance, but--as you may not have been aware--there was a time when a (young) Jack Albertson was nationally renowned as a soft-shoe dancer and vaudevillian. I frankly think that Charlie could have been better cast in a less humdrum figure than Peter Ostrum: certainly, he did not rise to the level of brilliant characterization that we discern in, say, Mike Teevee or Veruca Salt (BTW, quite apropos, as 'verruca' is Latin for 'wart'). This is one of my favorite movies of all time. Plus, the occasional quotes from classic English writers are immortal: "We are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams," or perhaps, "Where is fancy bred? // In the heart, or in the head?" Bravo, Gene!
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
not quite so disturbing, but very intriguing
Unlike another critic, I read the book well before I saw the movie. (I was too young for that sort of movie when it came out but, fortunately--by my teen-age years--it had ascended to the status of "cult classic" and ran ubiquitously in the Greenwich Village "art theaters.") Alex leads a gang that gets drugged out at the local "milk bar" and then indulges in orgies of violence, rape, and, eventually, murder. The Beethoven fascination that others have mentioned is, frankly, a relatively minor plot component: Alex is a big-time fan of the "Glorious Ninth" and enjoys playing it while "playing doctor" with girls he's picked up at the local record store. (Odd how, in 1971, the vision of a "future society" still included LP records, a technology we did away with decades ago--even though a CD is less flexible: you can't play your favorite part of your favorite song, and you can't play it at 45 to raise its frequency by four steps.) After murdering an old lady ("and me still only fifteen," Alex quasi-guiltily monologues to us), Alex is spirited off to a jail where he is treated to the experimental "Ludovico Technique" for curing violent offenders by forcefully subjecting them--eyes maintained open with surgical clamps, ears inobstructible--to non-stop barrages of extreme torture, rape, murder, etc. But Alex isn't exactly cured, and, after his return and "reintegration" into society, the movie--quite honestly--spirals downward in pace, consistency, texture, and, frankly, excitement. The end result is that Alex is still Alex, still a rapist, still a murderer, and still "triggered" whenever he hears Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" (a choral section of the Ninth Symphony).
What made the book much stronger than the movie, frankly, was its reliance upon Nadsat, the three-quarters-Russian lingo in which the teen-agers communicate. Thus, "heads" are "gullivers" (Rus. golowy), "friends" are "droogs" (Rus. drugi), "brains" are "mozgs" (Rus. mozaki), drinks are "peeted with vellocet" (spiked with speed, though "vellocet" obviously hails from the Romance family, not from the East Slavic), etc. It adds tremendously to the pace of the written story if you are quick enough to pick up on the language without having continually to check the appendix to see what is meant when Alex says, e.g., "I wasn't expecting the millicent, so I hastily slipped my nagoy nogas into my woolly pantoofles." That was missing from the movie--though it didn't have to be. I remember a cheapo, late '60s or early '70s flick called "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth": upon entering the theater, an usher handed you a card that essentially translated the troglodytes' language into English (yes, I know, cave men opposite dinosaurs: it clearly isn't a paleontology lesson), although Ringo Starr and John Matuszak's hysterical "Caveman" managed with only an occasional troglodyte word here and there, which you could always pick up from context.
TO THE EDITORS: MY "SPELLING ERRORS" (with the possible exception of inobstructible {please check the OED} and cheapo {well-known slang}) are not misspellings, but either words in Nadsat, an artificial language coined by Anthony Burgess for his novel, "A Clockwork Orange," or transliterations of Russian words into the Roman alphabet per Polish spelling rules. PLEASE DELETE THIS PARAGRAPH. THANK YOU.
Silent Running (1972)
touching story, never mind the putative Hippie links
I don't know what my esteemed colleague is talking about in claiming that Silent Running espouses a Hippie message. _Why_, pray tell, was Freeman Lowell a Hippie: because he liked trees? For heaven's sake, he was a _botanist_, remember? That was the _reason_ he was on the mission (and had been for eight years): he was curator of the greenhouses on the American Airlines cargo vessel "Valley Forge." Duh. Now, I don't presume to apologize for Lowell's actions: after he kills the first fellow crewman in a fight--accidentally beaning him with a spade in a minor squabble over the jettison-and-detonate orders--there was absolutely no reason to follow through on the particular greenhouse that he knew to contain the last two crewmen. But, Lowell indeed has a conscience: that's why we see him degenerate into insanity, talking to the drones as if they were people ("The man had a full house and he knew it! Ha ha ha ha ha!") and surrendering his formerly neat habits, gradually letting the ship take on the appearance of a pigsty, with unwashed food trays ditched here and there. (Actually, he doesn't seem to really lose it until the third drone, Louie, is lost during a meteor storm, leaving a solitary mechanical foot embedded in the gridwork for the other two to cogitate over.) But he knew he couldn't face the music (even though his alibi probably would have been bought) when the Berkshire came looking for him after he went into "silent running" on the far side of Saturn--where he was unreachable by radio until sunrise (he should have known that Saturn rotates in a mere 10:16, hardly enough time for the ship to take on such a careless look, but nobody said his orbit was geosynchronous)--and that's why he made his ultimate decision. The ticking clock toward the very end, while quite ominous, is also quite touching. I recall that, when I saw this movie as a nine-year-old, I cried. This gentle man wanted nothing more than to feed his rabbits or let the bittern alight on his arm, but the establishment wouldn't grant him those simple pleasures. His tortured reminiscences of Earth--with its steady 75-degree temperature, entirely mechanized surface, etc.--reminded me of Dr. Sevrin (the immortal Skip Homeier) in Star Trek's "The Way to Eden," lamenting over how the "synthesized, mechanized, homogenized" world was to blame for his contraction of Synthococcus novae. Pauvre petit, he was probably right, even if Tongo Rad and Irina Galiulin misread his message and failed to stop his mass-murder attempt. But Sevrin got his: the Tree of Knowledge on his new Eden was, after all, a Tree of Death.
Gigantor (1964)
oh, man, stop doing this to me!
Every time I come to IMDb, I want to crawl back into five-year-old-dom. I used to rush home from first grade to catch Gigantor at 3, followed by Kimba the White Lion at 3:30, hoping that the bus driver wouldn't be out of root beer lollipops that day. Now they show selected reruns of the original series (no, not the later, full-color "Tetsujin 28-Go" ["Iron Man No. 28"]: I can give you the kanji, too, but not with _this_ keyboard) on the Cartoon Network at 5:30AM, before reasonable people have awakened. I seem to remember that my favorite episode involved Gigantor fighting against an evil robot that could shoot lava bursts out of a slot above his forehead. Naturally, the robot was gigantic and could fly, etc. (They're everyday phenomena, no?) I always thought something was fishy about Jimmy Sparks's voice--only later to learn that it was a female--but, then again, Debi Derryberry does a fine, thoroughly convincing job as both Jimmy Neutron and Zatch Bell, so I can scarcely complain.
Equinox (1970)
a total blast, B movie characterization notwithstanding
This is one of those movies that you hunt through TV Guide (summarized, as I recall, "Low-budget flick about monsters, devil worship, and the supernatural") hoping to find. As it is, I haven't seen it in a goodly twenty years. That's O.K., though: I can remember most of the plot as though I saw it yesterday. It reminds me of a Ray Harryhausen flick: was he not involved? The cheap look of the cave man, the gorilla, the giant harpy, etc., reeked of Harryhausen's involvement. (And, don't forget that--in those days--Harryhausen was viewed as a genius. Consider, for example, his Talos and his Harpies and his Hydra from 1963's Jason and the Argonauts. Then again, 1963 to 1970 was a long time in the special effects world, though, quite obviously, neither year could reasonably compare to 2006.) I don't criticize the putatively inconsistent actions of the characters; it's a story, remember? As such, it was a great deal of fun, with lots of action. BTW, I wonder why nobody mentioned the Shadow World. I seem to recall that one of our male heroes--after reading some chant or other--ends up in a parallel world, with shimmering yellow air and a largely desert landscape (later stolen for the alien world in Phantasm, whither The Tall Man packs off his reaninated munchkins?), where Asmodeus's castle really resides, and very nearly gets trapped in there forever before someone (and I can't for the life of me remember how) rescues him. Come to think of it, the over-sized troglodyte also hails from the Shadow World. Equinox was unique. Equinox was a blast. Please don't criticize it, but accept it for what it was for the time frame during which it was presented.
The Point (1971)
yes, quite a piece of work
I'm really glad I stumble around IMDb.com. The memories are awesome. I almost fell out of my chair when I ran across "The Point" starring round-headed Oblio and his obnoxious contemporary, the count's son. Oblio ended up taking some journey of self-discovery, and I can scarcely recall what happened or how or with whom, though I recall that he returned home a dyed-in-the-wool hero. I was surprised to learn that Mike Lookinland--Bobby Brady, no?--voiced the title role. This unique cartoon--hitherto buried in the depths of my memory--afforded a beautiful lesson in individuality and self-respect worthy of a Johannine parable. I only wish the count's son got what was coming to him. (Rich kids tend to act that way, and they tend never to suffer for it.)
The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1968)
my, what memories
Yes, I remember this, too. I was only five. I have the vaguest memories: one of our heroes squeezing under a door into a closet, only to find a giant animated slave eating out of a bowl, which he throws at them, narrowly missing. I also vaguely recall some episode where either Huck or Tom is sentenced to death by being hurled off a high tower, and they quickly manufacture a scarecrow and drop it to the ground instead, making off just in time.
No, they certainly don't make television like this any more. I remember the excitement; I remember the contrast of the flesh-and-blood heroes and heroine against the animated villains and scenes; and I remember the aforementioned plot snippets; but everything else is gone, filed somewhere in my brain where I can no longer access it these thirty-seven years later. Too bad.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
fabulous (seen it six times)
I couldn't believe my eyes. Since when does a 42-year-old see a movie like this six times--twice in one day? The whole thing is outstanding. The only piece I could do without was the Santa Claus figure (I guess "Father Christmas," since it's British through-and-through except for Oreius the centaur)--it was just too smarmy. Then again, they certainly needed the not-so-peaceable "gifts" he provided. But everything else was wonderful. And never mind Georgie Henley--for my money, Skandar Keynes can out-act anyone three times his age. I predict four Oscars: male lead (Keynes), music, costumes, and effects. Also, I was just a tad disappointed that Aslan just came back to life with little or no attempt at explanation other than "Had the witch truly understood the meaning of sacrifice she might have interpreted the deep magic differently." I did not once get the idea that the witch was an imbecile! And she CERTAINLY could handle swords--who the heck trained her? Two at once against a guy with a shield?? Oh, and her chariot pulled by two polar bears was a cute touch . . . Several viewings later, it just keeps getting better and better. I can't imagine how some people find it "boring" when it's so chock-full of thrilling chases and hairbreadth escapes. Make sure you see it with an evening crowd so that they'll laugh heartily at the wisecracking of the Cockney beaver and the interplay between Maugrim and the fox ("Greetings, gents: lost something, have we?" "Don't patronize me; I know where your allegiance lies. We're looking for some humans," and so forth). I didn't even mind the obvious inconsistencies, e.g., the witch slaps Edmund on the right cheek but he develops a black eye on the _left_ side of his face. But I'm sure you can find Web sites offering far more "inconsistencies" than this obvious one, if that's how people choose to devote their energies.