I thought while watching this movie that the correct title should have been “Finding Dory’s Parents” because that is what this entire movie is about – A baby fish with short term memory who loses her parents as a child and then spends the rest of the movie trying to find them. “Finding Dory” is the sequel after 13 years to “Finding Nemo”. While this movie has a good solid story and excellent computer graphics, after 13 years I was expecting more than this just above average cartoon about a cute fish with big eyes who has short term memory. Ellen Degeneres reprises her role as Dory and like she did 13 years ago, did a very good job with her part. As I always do, I had to respect the outstanding computer graphics work in this movie as every moviegoer has to. Somewhere they should publish the number of man hours it takes to put a 2 hour animated cartoon together, then add the script and the planning that goes into a project that takes years to produce.
I thought this movie was very good but not great and I do recommend it.
I was reminded how great a movie “High Fidelity” is the other day on HBO. What is most amazing about this film is that both John Cusack and Jack Black peaked with this movie which came out in 2000 and never hit that high a note again. Jack Black has never been funnier, and Cusack has never been better in any acting role he has done. This movie has everything , top notch humor, romantic story and great drama all in one film. One of the things I liked about the 3 guys in the music store owned by John Cusack’s character was their intense interest, knowledge and devotion to the subject of music. Their condescending attitude towards all others who were not into music as much as they were was very unique and at times very funny. There was an ongoing debate about obscure music trivia between Jack Black who worked at the music store and his co-worker played by Todd Luiso that represent some of the best scenes in this entire movie. Jack Black’s singing at the end of the movie was both funny and great singing at the same time. Perhaps his best singular performance in the movie.
Cusack’s character is at odds with his personal life from the very beginning of this film and at times, he narrates the stories and failures he has had with the women he has been with and talks about the depression, anger, and angst he has experienced during his life all the way back to when he was a teenager. Cusack’s talking about all these bad previous dating experiences is because of his break-up with his current girlfriend played by Iben Hjejle and the movie starts out with her leaving him for another man. All of us can relate to the intense pain of relationships and this movie covers this subject very well and relationship depression and angst is the central theme of the entire movie.
Lisa Bonet is also in this movie and her character has a short-term fling with Cusack’s character. It seems that High Fidelity could be the peak of her movie acting career as she was very believable in her role in this very high-quality film. Regardless, it’s been rare to see Bonet in any movies during the last 30 years.
If you are one of the rare people who have seen the movie “High Fidelity” you owe it to yourself to see it.
The movie “Maggies Plan” is a rare low budget movie with quite a few high-level actors in Hollywood. I often wonder how deals like this come about, perhaps friends get together and make deals for future collaboration, etc. This movie is entirely about relationships and because so many movies about relationships have been made, this one has a new twist: namely; a marriage breaks up because of another relationship but the woman in that marriage realizes that the man is better off with his x-wife so she arranges things so that he will get back with his x-wife. I have to admit I have never seen an idea like this before and this movie seemed like a Woody Allen-type romance movie although not as high quality. Several pretty important actors are in this film, starting with Julianne Moore, who had a rather strange Russian accent in this movie, Ethan Hawke, Bill Hader, Maya Rudolf and Gretta Gerwig who plays Maggie and considering the art house low budget of this film is highly unusual in my experience.
As far as the movie it was entertaining but not extremely so, mainly because it was too long and the story and scenes were never compelling enough to keep your riveted or laughing or entertained enough for the whole film. This movie just gets a mild recommendation.
