Author: Shmee

The Reluctant Dragon is an old Disney movie a lot of people may have missed, or even forgot they had seen.  It is a guided tour of Disney’s old Burbank animation studio.

The movie starts as Robert Benchley is being read a book, The Reluctant Dragon, by his wife, and when she finishes she tells Robert that he should try and sell the book to Disney, because you can sell books written by other people I guess, but it was 1941 so who knows.  When he gets to the Disney lot he decides to skip out on the guided tour and check things out for himself while dodging his guide.  It also turns out that Benchley is a bit a perv.  He tries to sneak a peek at a model during an art class, but is disappointed to find an elephant instead of a girl, and then he steals a zebra centaur girl clay model that is nude from the zebra up.  There are also various Disney shorts that play while he makes his way around the lot.

It is an interesting film and considering it is not a full length animated movie it is surprising that RKO decided to distribute it to theaters.  It was fun and light hearted, but it did drag from time to time.  I hope if I ever get to go to Disney’s animation studio that everyone there will be just as friendly to me.  Maybe if I bring someone else’s book to sell they will be happy to see me.

I don’t think this movie is a must watch by any stretch of the imagination, but it was kind of a hard title to track down, so I am glad Disney put it on Netflix so people can take a trip down Disney’s memory lane.  I hope more forgotten classics come to streaming services like Netflix, so they don’t disappear from the public’s consciousness.

The Justice League: Doom is a animated straight to video movie that is based on the comic book story: JLA: Tower of Babel.  Much like a lot of other DC cartoon movies it is streaming on Netflix so I decided to give it a try.

Enemies of the Justice League are given the tools to defeat their foes by Vandal Savage, so he can carry out his nefarious master plan, and they form the Legion of Doom.  The Justice League characters featured are: Cyborg, Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter,  The Flash, and Wonder Woman.  For the Legion of Doom: Vandal Savage, Bain, Metallo, Star Sapphire, Ma’alefa’ak, Mirror Master, and Cheetah.

This was a pretty good movie.  It had plenty of action, and it used all the characters they selected well, but it was short, 77 minutes, so it never really developed a good story.  It was kind of like the Justice League was in trouble, and then not to spoil anything, but then they were better, and they substituted some of the major bad guys from the comic with some second tier ones. This may have been an effort to give those bad guys some screen time, but I will take Ra’s al Ghul over Vandal Savage any day.

I do have to say one thing about Wonder Woman in this movie, major spoilers, you can tell DC is doing anything they can to show how cool Wonder Woman is to launch her own movie or show, and she is cool, so the way they chose to almost kill her was to have Cheetah have nanobots on her claws that convince Wonder Woman that everyone she sees is Cheetah, so the plan to kill her is to have her keep on fighting until her heart gives out, so Wonder Woman’s major weakness is heart disease … well she is over 30.  End Spoilers.

Justice League: Doom was a good movie that could have been a great movie if they had taken their time to develop the plot a bit better, and had put in some higher profile bad guys.  DC has been doing a good job with these straight to video cartoons and I am sure I will watch more of them in future.

I have posted about Judge Dredd a lot on this site, and I have even told you to buy the DVD/Blu-Ray of the current film, not the Stallone version I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, but I decided I hadn’t reviewed the movie myself, and after this I promise (fingers crossed) not to type about Dredd so much.

Dredd’s basic story is that Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) is forced to try out a new rookie Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), and Judge Anderson decides to check out a triple homicide in the Peach Trees mega block, a two hundred story sky scrapper that houses seventy-eight thousand people, and while there they run in to the Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) Clan who locks the block down and the Judges are in for a fight for their lives.

I think why this movie works so well is that it keeps everything basic.  The story is simple: fight your way up the block and deal with Ma-Ma.  They could have thrown in an origin story or decided to create a Anderson and Dredd romance, but instead they kept is simple.  Dredd/Anderson vs. Ma-Ma Clan: Fight!  That may sound dull but it works. They keep the action exciting and don’t drift off in to things that don’t matter or make sence.  They also could have tried to make this movie an epic and had block vs. block warfare or something, but instead they made it a simple ride along and it works perfectly.

Unlike most movies Dredd doesn’t really change in this movie, he has no arc, it could be argued that he does a little at the end, but I don’t think so.  Anderson does change, she becomes more like Dredd understanding what needs to be done to keep this massive city (180,000,000 people) sort of under control.

The actors all play their parts well.  Urban who never takes Dredd’s helmet off really gives his jaw a work out.  His sneers and frowns are wonderful.  Thirlby does a great job playing a person that is way over her head, but is trying to cope, and when she finally understands what needs to be done, she hits just as hard as Dredd.  Headey plays Ma-Ma perfectly, she doesn’t care about anything except getting what she wants and is completely ruthless.

If you haven’t figured it out by now.  I loved this movie, and if you like action movies then you need to check this flick out.  If you don’t like violent movies then this probably isn’t for you, and if you don’t want to take my word for it you should check out Daniel’s review.