Alphabetical movie - Curious George
When this movie came out in 2006, I took Minireggie, who was five at the time, to see it. Being a movie fan and wanting my kids to enjoy movies at least a little, I take them to a lot of films and we see just about every "family" movie that is released.
And most of them are awful. They are condescending, badly written messes that get released just so parents will take their kids to the movies (it works).
I fully expected Curious George would fall into that category. It looked like just another cloying kids movie that my son would love because he didn't know any better.
When he watches movies, they fall into two distinct categories - movies he thinks are awesome but couldn't have been all that awesome because he never sat still for more than a minute and movies he thinks are awesome and may even be awesome because he actually sat still and watched the darn thing.
Finding Nemo and Spirited Away are sort of the benchmark movies. For each of them, he sat still and payed attention multiple times. That is some pretty extraordinary filmmaking.
Curious George isn't that good.
But Minireggie watched the whole dang movie without squirming and jumping about. I remember exactly what he said when the movie ended. As the credits rolled, he said, almost to himself "I wish there was more."
And oddly enough, I thought "yeah - I wish there was more too."
The film manages to capture an innocence that is essential to the character of Curious George and it never felt like it was pandering to little kids. It certainly is not in the same category as the Pixar films in terms of their sophisticated stories that work for both children and adults but at least Curious George seemed to treat kids like they might be intelligent.
The watercolor-like palette they used for the animation really serves the material well. It is somewhat whimsical and only causes problems when they try to integrate computer animation into the scene. The pseudo 3D effect doesn't work well with the rest of the animation.
Now, there is no reason for an adult to watch this film without a kid around. If an adult does find themselves subjected to the film, though, it is at least worth noting that it will not be an endurance test. You may even find yourself drawn in because while it is not the best movie on the "family" shelf, it is so much better than what passes for family entertainment in the theatre.
So yeah, I wish there was more.
Next up, the final film in the C's, The Cutting Edge!