RING MAN

Even though I'm not the world's biggest Tolkien fan, for some reason I keep thinking about this today.

WITCH HITTER

Opening this weekend:

The Last Witch Hunter—Kaulder (Vin Diesel) a centuries-old warrior with miraculous regenerative powers, is the title character, enforcer of the uneasy secret truce between witches and humans. His liaison, a priest (Michael Caine) is placed under a death-like curse by witches seeking to revive their long-dormant Queen. With Caine’s priestly protégé (Elijah Wood) and a sympathetic young witch-woman (Rose Leslie) at his side, Kaulder stalks New York trying to prevent this, and to bring the old padre back to life.

I’m a sucker for this sort of nonsense, plus I’ve always liked Vin Diesel, so if this was going to work for anybody, I’d probably be a good bet. But this movie tried my patience. Despite—or maybe because of—the impressive wall-to-wall special effects, the movie generates little suspense or sense of awe. The actors, while too veteran not to be proficient, can’t find a way to make us invest in the characters.

The whole affair is reminiscent—too reminiscent—of earlier movies like Highlander and Blade. But with NYC as the backdrop to a story of the return of an ancient evil goddess, The Last Witch Hunter really came across to me like a less compelling version of Ghostbusters—it’s Ghostbusters without Bill Murray or the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. That’s not to say it’s without comedy, but most of its comedy is unintentional.

Jem and the Holograms—This one is based on a syndicated Hasbro/Marvel TV cartoon from the mid-‘80s. As far as I can remember, I never heard of it before I started hearing about this movie. In the cartoon, the heroine, Jerrica, was a rock star behind a holographic persona projected from her earrings. In this live-action adaptation, Jerrica (Aubrey Peeples) just hides behind a pink wig and shades to front a glam-pop quartet rounded out by her sister (Stefanie Scott) and two foster sisters (Aurora Perrineau and Hayley Kiyoko). The girls live with their kindly Aunt (Molly Ringwald), and the band’s mascot is a cute little bleepy-bloopy robot, Synergy, a legacy from Jerrica's late inventor father. The villainess is a record exec (Juliette Lewis) who is trying to separate Jem from her sisters.

Apparently the cartoon was a big deal to some girls back in its time, but it’s hard to imagine this slack, scattered movie having the same meaning for girls today. The young actresses are sweet, and the director, John M. Chu, shows some ingenuity is staging the numbers. A couple of the songs are quite catchy of their kind. But there aren’t enough of them. Bafflingly, this movie forgoes music in favor of more meandering complications to the silly plot, interminable narration and meaningless feel-good bromides about believing in yourself and following your dreams.

The movie also intercuts many of the big scenes with homemade online video clips—musicians performing, or Jem fans expressing their love. It’s an interesting idea, and while it doesn’t really work—it doesn’t add drive or momentum to the scenes—it should be said that the people in these videos are, on the whole, more interesting than the slick, artificial movie to which we keep going back. Jem’s characters aren’t much more substantial than holograms, and there’s something irksome about the free ride the movie takes on the real human beings in those videos.

HEROIC FEET

2006’s Happy Feet was a truly crazy movie, a blend of Pixar-style animation, Bollywood musical & a streak of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Set in a world in which penguins sing to connect with their soul-mates, the film focused on the unfortunate young Mumble, unable to carry a tune but endowed with a natural talent for tap-dancing.

It starts off, in short, as a fable about nonconformity & finding your own individual path—a good joke right off the bat, in the black-&-white uniformity of the penguin rookery (in The Far Side, Gary Larson once depicted a single penguin amongst the multitudes belting out “I’ve Gotta Be Me”). But by the end, director George Miller had spun the film from a sweet, if deeply eccentric, underdog tale into a grandiose environmentalist vision for which the word epic is hardly sufficient—“cosmic” would be more like it.

I’d be tempted to say it’s a one-of-a-kind movie, but as of this weekend, it’s not. A major box-office hit & an Oscar-winner besides, Happy Feet could hardly fail to spawn a sequel, & here it is, some five years later. In Happy Feet Two, Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood) has the penguins mixing some fancy footwork in with their stirring oratorios—the tiny feet often splashing in ominous melt-water—but alas his own son Erik, ironically enough, isn’t much of a dancer. Poor Erik runs away from the shame of this, accompanied by two loyal pals, & Mumble heads off to find them.

While they’re gone, a huge chunk of Antarctic ice collides with the rookery, sealing thousands of penguins, including Erik’s Mom Gloria (voiced by Alecia Moore, aka Pink, replacing the late Brittany Murphy), off from the ocean. So it’s up to Mumble, Erik & his friends to try to find a way to save them—from hunger, from marauding skuas, & from general despair. Their allies this time include the Latin-accented Adelie penguin Ramon (Robin Williams) & his colony, elephant seals, electric-guitar-playing human researchers &, albeit unwittingly, two nearly-microscopic krill (Brad Pitt & Matt Damon) who have broken away from their enormous swarm to strike out on their own existential search for identity.

There’s also, of all birds, a puffin—named Sven, & voiced complete with Nordic accent by Hank Azaria—who has somehow found his way to the other end of the world. He’s been mistaken for a penguin who can fly, which gives him the status of a sort of self-improvement spiritual leader.

In other words, like the first film, Happy Feet Two is another big helping of off-the-wall weirdness. But also like the first film, it’s funny & good-hearted, & the musical numbers—which, a la Bollywood, freely mix snatches of the Rawhide theme, grand opera & Queen & Bowie’s “Under Pressure”—are thrilling, both in their relentless rhythms & in Miller’s dazzling, undulating visual perspectives.

Miller’s apparent purpose, this time, is to stave off the sense of despair that many of us feel over the seeming futility of individual action in the environmental struggle. The moral which the movie asserts—it’s also on the poster—is “Every Step Counts.” To this I can only say: I hope so.