BUNNY BUSINESS

Hopping into theaters this weekend:

Could Beatrix Potter have imagined a movie adaptation of her Tale of Peter Rabbit with Eminem on the soundtrack?

No, I suppose she couldn't have. She died in 1943, after all, so she probably would have had a hard time imagining Eminem at all.

The question was rhetorical, anyway. That's what we've got, a new Peter Rabbit with CGI bunnies and other cute little creatures interacting with live-action human actors, engaging in broad slapstick and bickering family dynamics and slyly "meta" and "fourth wall" gags, all driven along by popular songs.

Even so, it's a little surprising how much of Potter's 1902 tale survives in this modern-dress version. Peter's siblings and cousin, the encouraging sparrows, Mr. McGregor (Sam Neill), the sieve, the flower pots in the shed, the blue jacket used as a scarecrow, even the grim backstory of Peter's father--these and other elements trace back to Potter's brief but effective heist thriller and juvenile delinquency drama.

But this story line can only take the movie so far. After that, director Will Gluck, who previously helmed the recent modern version of Annie, and his co-writer Rob Lieber concoct a deus ex machina for old man McGregor, then bring in his nephew (Domhnall Gleeson) and heir from London, a control-freak Harrod's employee. This guy goes to war with Peter and his pals as well, but must keep it secret from his neighbor Bea (Rose Byrne), a sweet painter who adores the rabbits.

Some of the battles which follow seem to owe almost as much to the Loony Tunes, if not to Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, as to Potter, and while at times they become a bit tediously repetitive, overall the film is visually deft and light-footed and enjoyably anarchic. Even so, some of the funniest passages are verbal rather than visual, throwaway gags like a store clerk's explanation of the human urge to anthropomorphize animals. The voice cast, led by James Corden as Peter--who also sings a pretty song over the end credits--includes Daisy Ridley, Margot Robbie, Elizabeth Debicki, Matt Lucas and Sia.

The kids in the audience with whom I saw this film seemed to find it hilarious, and on the whole I was pretty amused myself. I thought it struck a nice balance between edgy mischief and just the right degree of non-sappy warmth. If you remain unmoved by the sight of the rabbits apologizing by inclining their foreheads together, you're tougher than I am.

RUNDOWN

Opening this weekend:

Blade Runner 2049—As the makers of 2001: A Space Odyssey learned, it can be risky to put a specific year into the title of a futuristic sci-fi movie. Ridley Scott’s 1982 favorite Blade Runner, set less than two decades off, in 2019, showed us a Los Angeles in which special cops of the title moniker hunt synthetic humans called “replicants” who have gone rogue. The film’s smoggy, neon-lit vision of the future was scary, but it also had a garish glamour, and accordingly it was done in the style of an old-school film noir—in its original release, it even had hard-boiled narration by Harrison Ford’s title character.

That’s the version I saw back in ’82. I remember enjoying it enormously, but it didn’t become the cultural touchstone for me that it did for so many others. I remembered it less for its plot and more for its details—Joanna Cassidy and the snake, Brion James getting a bullet in the head, William Sanderson’s little guys wandering around the Bradbury Building, Daryl Hannah doing somersaults, Edward James Olmos doing origami. I never saw any of the various director’s cuts and alternative versions that became as complicated as the quarto-versus-folio textual history of a Shakespeare play. I think I may have only seen it the one time, and in any case I hadn’t seen it in decades when I saw this sequel.

This one is set thirty-some years from now, and the glamour is gone. The environment has collapsed, California is a hazy, snowy, defoliated wasteland, and farmers raise grubs for protein. But there are still fugitive replicants, and thus still blade runners. Our title character this time is K (Ryan Gosling)—a spiritual cousin of Kafka’s Josef?—and the twisty, violent mystery he chases unfolds against backgrounds that feel almost like expressionistic stage sets.

That’s about as much of the story as I feel comfortable describing, however. After the screening I attended, a studio rep read us a lengthy list of “requests” from the filmmakers about what we mustn’t reveal, even going so far as to suggest wording to us—they seemed to want to bioengineer replicant movie reviews.

I will say that while the script, by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green, shows influences ranging from Soylent Green to Logan’s Run to Cherry 2000 to Children of Men to Her to, just maybe, Kurosawa’s Ikiru, it’s ingenious and intriguing, and that director Denis Villeneuve, abetted by the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, gives the film a superb look. Villeneuve also gets strong performances, from Gosling, from Harrison Ford as Deckard, the now-reclusive hero of the first film, from Robin Wright as K’s boss, from Sylvia Hoeks as a relentless corporate operative stalking the same quarry as K, from Jared Leto as her satanic boss, and from the beguiling Ana de Armas as K’s roomie. There are startlingly erotic passages, and terrific touches of verisimilitude, like when Gosling stares in fascination at a dog, presumably a rarity in that world.

On the downside: As he showed in last year’s impressive Arrival, Villeneuve is great at generating a brooding sci-fi atmosphere. He does the same for Blade Runner 2049, but the result, this time, is that the movie is glacially paced. It feels almost an hour longer than it needs to be, and even the action and fight scenes, though often shockingly violent, feel oddly lacking in urgency. And the movie’s environmental bleakness, though marvelously realized on a visual level, also grows a bit oppressive over nearly three hours. I just wish that forecasts like this didn’t seem so plausible these days.

 

My Little Pony: The Movie—Not a whit less bizarre and immersively imagined than the Blade Runner flicks is this new animated feature realization of the Hasbro toy line from the early '80s. It centers on the relentlessly cheery equine inhabitants, mostly distaff, of Equestria, some of whom are winged, some of whom are horned, all of whom are colored like Jelly Bellies.

The story involves an incursion into the city of Ponyville by Tempest (well voiced by Emily Blunt), a sinister magical pony with a jagged stump where her unicorn horn should be. She and her minions are trying to corral four top Pony Princesses in order to steal their magic on behalf of the demonic Storm King (Liev Schreiber), in return for a restored horn.

Tempest imprisons three of the princesses, but the fourth, Princess Twilight Sparkle (Tara Strong), eludes capture. She and her friends, which include a manically upbeat pony, a fashion-and-design-obsessed pony, a Reba McIntire-ish "cowgirl" pony and a diminutive dragon, set out in search of help, with only the mysterious clue “hippo” to guide them. In the course of their quest they encounter everything from airship-borne pirates (Zoe Saldana among them) to a sly, dandified feline hustler (Taye Diggs).

For followers of the franchise, which I'm told include not just children but many adult fans, this movie may hit it out of the park, but I found it a trifle flat. The plot seems boilerplate, and with the exception of a witty line here and there so does the dialogue. The theme is the value of friendship, which is preferable, at least, to the believe-in-your-dream platitude that's usually shoved at us as the moral of this sort of movie. But the songs in which this ideal is extolled are insipid recitatives without a memorable melody in the bunch.

Well, I take that back. "Rainbow," the song that Sia co-wrote and sings at the finale, is quite pretty.  And the pony character through which she sings it has a mane that hangs down over her face. Nice touch.