Just want to get in on the
Space Jam cheerleading before the moment totally passes...like Mr M. says, it was no
Roger Rabbit, but it doesn't deserve the bad rap it's had in recent years. OK, in retrospect I'll admit that the basketball crossover plotline was probably a story decision made more to boost audience appeal than because it was a logical setting to place the Looney Tunes into, but I was a British kid who didn't even know the rules of basketball or, Michael Jordan aside, have a clue who any of the sports stars were, but I enjoyed the heck out of it. Good effects, predictable but effective plot, good turns by the ever reliable Wayne Knight and Bill Murray...heck, Michael Jordan was was decent enough, from what I remember! OK, Lola Bunny was a working definition of "pointless token female character", but otherwise I loved this movie as a kid...don't believe the haters!
Pokemon: The First Movie though...I was a Pokemon obsessive back then, but I recall being really disappointed with that. The film started out moody, atmospheric and almost dark, but it faltered badly with its finale, which failed to deliver the expected all-action climax and instead opted to so for an emotional ending that just came off as mawkish and cloying. Maybe it's something to do with the fact that the unsubtle and OTT performances of the 4Kids dub actors, but the show was always at its weakest when it tried to be moving or emotional, and that flaw was magnified ten-fold in the movie's overwrought ending. That, and the fact that the Mewtwo vs. Mew battle that they'd hyped up on all the posters ended up being a total non-event, in which the two of them bounce pointlessly off each other in big coloured balls for about 90 seconds....I didn't buy it.
I continued wactching the show for a while, but didn't see any more of the movies after that...
EDIT: Oh, and I just watched
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory again; I do think it's a good film, but I can never help feeling somewhat conflicted about it. On the one hand, it's a Tim Burton movie, and as such is hugely imaginative, visually striking, incredibly idiosyncratic and imbued with a sense of dark humour; on the other hand, it's a Tim Burton movie, and is in no way the faithful adaptation of the classic book that it was kind of sold as. The opening twenty minutes or so come close, recreating the book's key scenes in an offbeat but reverential fashion, but as soon as Willy Wonka himself turns up, Roald Dahl's story takes a complete backseat to the altogether different sensibilities of Messrs Burton and Depp. Dahl's story was mischievous and underpinned by a hinted darkness, but was mostly defined by warmth and wonder; Burton's version, mostly thanks to Depp's reinterpretation of Wonka from a twinkly-eyed yet sly prankster to a detached and emotionally stunted manchild, is bizarre, sinister and a little oppressive. The most prominent new plotline (that of Wonka's father), meanwhile, is sweet enough, but it feels a little out of place both in Dahl's world (the moral of this story was never about the value of famiy) and in Burton's (it's a sentimental strand in an otherwise strangely cold movie). Overall, a curious film, one with many merits, and yet one that I admire more than really like....