Igor ** 1/2

Jupiter (age 4): ** two stars
I gave it two stars. Because I didn't really like it. (I wish it had) lots of women in high heels and pretty dresses.

James (age 6): *****five stars
I liked the evil bone. I liked the alligator mouth, downstairs. And my most favorite part was when they were in the Igor recycling machine and they were going to get chomped up into bits, and blades might stick through their skin. And he (Igor) was like, "I don't really want to be saved. This is what happens with all Igors." And, have you got the part where he was like, "Just scratching my invisibles?" Oh, remember when the cat guy was like, "You spent the whole time playing with a piece of ribbon." Oh, there was another funny part, when Igor was like, "Pull the switch." And the brain, or Brian, was like "Count to three," and then the cat guy pulled the switch on the count of one. And that is it. Oh, yeah, yeah. The battle. There was like a dragon, and there was like a gooey ball bouncing everywhere and the ball sprayed goo all over Eva, and Eva broke the goo and she killed the dragon, killed the bear, killed those other evil inventions, and she almost broke down the whole castle and all the people were like "Oh, look up there!" Psshht, psshhht and all the things were about to fall on them, but it (the castle) fell in the battle. Or maybe on the battle. And now, that's it.

Popi: * 1/2 (one and a half stars)
I give it 1 1/2 stars for concept. The world is cool, where downtrodden Igor's strive to fulfill their own dreams and our Igor hero creates a monster thespian and Steve Buscemi as an existential eternal cat was great. But the movie's execution in every instance, is wrong. The situations are overwrought, there are too many characters, there's no tension or drama and the characters aren't sympathetic. Sadly, the animation, composed in Vietnam, is flat. The backgrounds look like pencil drawings. This movie was really a short, blown up into a feature and at 79 minutes, they couldn't even bloat it all the way. It should be 22 minutes, stripped of all its foof, with nothing but characters and good dialogue. If that were the case, no one would even notice the animation. It could be drawn in charcoal.

Mama: ** (two stars)
Let's just put it out there, that we were supposed to watch "The Sound of Music." It's kind of Jupiter's turn after to all, to a have a movie with lots of pretty girls in pretty dresses in it--and singing? I had the kids all prepped for it--we'd watched some of the musical numbers on Youtube, we'd talked about how the Von Trapp children needed a babysitter, and I'd even told them about Austria, and Nazi Germany, and escaping into the mountains....and then through an error in communication, that probably had nothing to do with Adam grumbling about singing, and movies with singing in them, and we'll see if you like a movie with a lot of singing, James, it turns out neither Adam nor I had secured The Sound of Music for movie night. I sent Adam out into the cold to get us a four dollar movie, and he came back with Igor. When I read the back of the DVD it actually sounded like a really cute movie.

However, from the start, with Igor's voiceover explaining his world to me, I was never really sucked in. In Monsters, Inc., my gold standard, they drop us right down in the middle of the day-that's-going-to-change-things, and they provide all the rules for the monster world in the form of action, a monster-in-training flubbing up and getting to meet the great scarer, Sully. I can't put my finger on why this world (Igor's) didn't engage me. Was it the insect-like appearance of the characters? Was it the yakking? It was a very talky script, yet with little in the way of revealing character. Then there were the chase scenes. I've got nothin' against a good chase scene. My latest favorite show is Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and there's always a chase scene. But in Igor, I felt like I'd seen these chase scenes a thousand times before.

Justice fell asleep within minutes, which is probably a good thing, because the overall feel of the movie was probably too intense and grotesque for her. (About a family favorite, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Justice says, "I don't like that movie--it's really is creeping me out!") Jupiter never really engaged with this movie either. Though it was chock full of characters, there plain ole' weren't many girls. In fact there were only two. I think every script out there should be doctored by a female script doctor--there are just so many things a team of guys writing a script don't think about. I love the stories where a role originally written as a male character is cast with a female actress. Aliens is made so much more interesting because Sigourney Weaver plays Ripley instead of Harrison Ford. I think in Igor, one of the two sidekicks could easily have been female, and why not one female evil scientist amongst the many male evil scientists? Even the talk show host in Igor was male, for crying out loud! Jupiter can appreciate a creepy, gothy female character, with stitching around her neck, as much as anyone, so long as the character's pretty on some level. And I hate to say it, but in terms of character design, the assymetry of Eva the Monster was disturbing. With one huge arm/one skinny arm, one huge leg/then a skinny leg, a huge neck--and smaller head, she just seemed ill-suited for a four-year-old girl to fall in love with her. As for James, he woke up talking about the movie, and had more to say about it than any of the other movies he's loved recently. He even wants to add more to the blog about the movie, probably tomorrow. He even asked me if we owned this movie. He even cleaned up tonight, to earn money, to buy this movie.

As for me, I'm making a case for The Sound of Music next week.