There have been a lot of external stressors in my life lately, so I decided to take a break from the high-octane drama and action to settle down with some family movies.
First in the lineup was Angels in the Outfield. One of the few movies my sister and I could agree on back in 1994, I must have known even then that Joseph Gordon Levitt was the real deal. Have you ever noticed how many soon-to-be-famous-faces were in this thing? I mean, yes, there's Gordon Levitt and Danny Glover, but Dylan McDermott played JGL's father, Matthew McConaughey was an outfielder, Adrien Brody popped up as a pinch hitter, and I now know that Ben Johnson, playing the Angels' owner, was famous in his own right (recently mentioned/seen in The Last Picture Show). And did you know the film was a remake? Based on a 1951 movie of the same title, Roger is a ward of the state whose father pessimistically guesses that they'll be a family again when last-place hometown team the Anaheim Angels win the pennant. Roger longingly makes a prayer for the Angels to be able to do so, and nothing short of divine interference will help. It's good family fun, wholesome, if less-than-secular. If you want to boil it down to something secular, as they do toward the end of the film, it's about believing in something, even if no one else does, and finally, believing in one's self. Now, it feels like watching someone climb the Hollywood ladder. After Dark Shadows and before Third Rock from the Sun, Angels was a major cinematic role for Gordon Levitt. He has, of course, come a long way since then. In his directorial and screenwriting debut, the forthcoming Don John, Tony Danza plays Joseph Gordon Levitt's father. Life imitates art: in Angels, it's Gordon Levitt's character's idea to pull Danza's character off the disabled list and make him an active player.
(Note: I don't mean to imply that Danza's been disabled. Merely... inactive, in a cinematic kind of way.)
Anyhoo, I also (finally) caught How to Train Your Dragon, and I loved it. I remember shelving the books when I worked at Borders, and hoping that when I have kids that they will want to read them. I imagine the series is wonderful, basing this assumption on the fact that books are almost always better than their subsequent films. Ever since I saw the trailer, it was Jay Baruchel's voice work that intrigued me the most. Baruchel voices Hiccup, the weakling child of a viking leader, relegated to working in a blacksmith's shop instead of fighting dragons. Hiccup's entire village is frequently roasted by fire-breathing dragons attempting to steal the local foodstock, making dragon-slaying a matter of utmost importance to the viking culture. Hiccup manages to wound one particular dragon - and in pursing it in the nearby woods, finds it grounded, missing part of its tail, and unable to fly. Hiccup would seize the opportunity to kill the dragon and achieve fame throughout his village, but he recognizes fear in the dragon's eyes, and instead lets it go. They become friends, and Hiccup slowly but surely learns how to train the dragon. Meanwhile, he attends dragon-slayer training with his peers, suddenly the most skilled of the lot. But how will he reconcile his dragon-wielding ways with the viking's dragon-slaying mission? It's a deftly animated story, and Hiccup's experience with Toothless (the dragon) reminds me a bit of my experience with my cat. Except that my cat will not be trained, and is not likely to come to my defense... so maybe they're nothing alike.
I liked How to Train Your Dragon especially for its imperfectly happy ending. I'm interested to see what the already-slated second and third films will be like... hopefully more in the Toy Story vein than The Land Before Time, ie: more of a saga with developments than a straight-to-video, forgettable serial.
"Hey, it could happen!" - JP, Angels in the Outfield.
Notes:
- How to Train Your Dragon was nominated for two Academy Awards in 2011: Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score (John Powell) and Best Animated Feature Film of the Year. It lost to The Social Network (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) and Toy Story 3, respectively.
- Both films were based on existing stories. Angels in the Outfield was written by Richard Conlin and published in 1951, How to Train Your Dragon is part of the Hiccup Horrendus Haddock III series by Cressida Cowell.
- Baruchel starred in She's Out of My League with T.J. Miller, who voices Tuffnut in How to Train Your Dragon. Miller worked with Jonah Hill (voicing Snoutlout in HtTYD) on Get Him to the Greek. Hill worked with Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Fishlegs in HtTYD) in Superbad and with Kristen Wiig (Ruffnut in HtTYD) in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Any more connections you guuys know of that I missed? I love this kind of thing - with or without Kevin Bacon.
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