Adults flock to cinemas as children's films come of age
Adults flock to cinemas as children's films come of age
JAKARTA (JP): A special mention goes to children's cinema this
year. Jumanji (directed by Joe Johnston, a special effects
specialist, with previous features including Rocketeer and Honey,
I Shrunk the Kids!) was the third most popular film in Indonesia
in 1996, certainly deservedly pipping Andrew Sipes' Fair Game and
Jan de Bont's Twister.
Jumanji is about a board game that magically whisks its
players off to the jungle (one character mentions Indonesia) or
brings tropical mayhem back home. It gives Robin Williams
another opportunity to act like a loon, this time he has been
released from the jungle after 26 years. Covered in large leaves
and skins, overgrown with beard, he bursts out of the undergrowth
looking for mum and dad, as though time had stopped still.
Thankfully he comes abruptly to his senses, shaves, puts on
decent clothes, and tries to manage the situation.
Chances of doing this are slim, even for Robin Williams. He
has a lot on his hands: stampeding herds of rhinos and elephants,
a nasty Great White Hunter, giant mosquitoes, monkeys that
terrorize the neighborhood and a rather languid lion that doesn't
seem to have its mind on the job. Like the 1991 movie Hook that
had Williams as a workaholic dad compelled to connect with his
childhood again, Jumanji is another Williams vehicle with the
subtext to tune into kids.
But it was Toy Story and Babe that were the best films to come
to Jakarta this year. Both received recognition internationally
well beyond their category, and if you didn't see them, you
missed out. Babe, awarded a Golden Globe for best comedy, was
one of the five nominees (against Braveheart) for the Oscar award
for Best Picture and Best Director. It won an Oscar for Best
Visual Effects while Toy Story won an Oscar for Special
Achievement.
John Lasseter's Toy Story represented a milestone in cinema
history as the first entirely computer generated film ever made
and Chris Noonan's Babe involved a seamless combination of
computer animation, puppetry and animatronics. But cinema
audiences gather for story-narrative and spectacle, not just for
virtuoso technological achievement. In the first place these two
films work on the former level.
Babe was audacious in its simplicity, proposing a story about
a pig that understandably wants to be different and manages it,
to public acclaim. To make such an innocent film in times such
as these, that is to find the financial backing and the market
for such a concept, and then to succeed -- well, that's
something.
In Babe the plot rested on the rivalries within the animal
community down at Hoggett farm, while in John Lasseter's Toy
Story we were engaged in the rivalries among the toy collection
owned by young Andy. Woody the cowboy, who has been Andy's
favorite toy to date, is displaced one birthday by a new toy,
Buzz Lightyear the astronaut, who has a few more tricks up his
spacesuit than his buck-skinned predecessor. They have to work
it out of course, beyond the safe world of Andy's room. On one
level, Toy Story is analogous with the bonding buddy movie, on
other levels, it suggests something about the challenge of new
technologies.
The year saw more quality children's cinema in The Hunchback
of Notre Dame and The Indian in the Cupboard. Hunchback may have
seemed on the face of it a difficult choice of subject for
Disney, but children's film excels (by definition) at rendering
the grotesque appealing after all. So why should we be surprised?
Simulated swooping camera movements around the venerable Notre
Dame cathedral and a barrel-chested protagonist who could swing
from gargoyle to gargoyle brought dynamic action and even levity
to the Victor Hugo classic lurking in the shadows.
Indian
The Indian in the Cupboard was very touching, and in difficult
terrain. In representing indigenous people it nimbly avoided the
pitfall of the turning itself into a lecture on political
correctness. The story is about a young boy who builds an
imaginative world around an Iroquois brave figurine that comes to
life after being locked in a magical cupboard. In this film, the
magic has another dimension to it which is hard to discern in the
frenetic Jumanji. As a device it evokes a sense of history and a
powerful sense of loss, theirs (the Indians) and ours, while in
the Robin Williams' film the magic is mechanical rather than
metaphysical.
The Adventures of Pinocchio rates at least a mention for being
good entertainment, and Little Indian Big City, something
different, rates at least as a good try. Not yet released as we
go to print, Disney's upcoming 101 Dalmatians augurs well with
Glenn Close in it as the villainous Cruella de Vil.
The other day while browsing through the titles in the
children's section of a local laser disc rental outlet, I came
across the cherubic features of Macauley Culkin. So what's new?
Culkin's well-known face was gazing out sulkily from the cover of
The Good Son, a violent drama that was withdrawn from theatrical
release in the United Kingdom when it coincided with news of a
horrific murder case involving youngsters. The same film
received an 18 (years) certificate in Spain. This is no kid's
movie, and neither is the Larry Clark film Kids, but that at
least was in the adults' section.
How to judge a "quality" children's film is no easy task
outside personal and subjective criteria, and is under-
researched. With the transformations in programming threatening
to open up access to every kind of program to every kind of
audience, young or old, and with the seepage of violence and sex
from adult cinema into the children's arena, anxieties about what
is good for children are very real. Careless filing in the laser
disc shop demonstrate how easy it is to slip-up.
-- Jane Freebury