Back of the Trailer

Trailer Review: ParaNorman - Backyard Boos

Getting sick of holiday CG animated cheer? All the hyperactivity and snarky comments? Let me refresh your batteries. The trailer for ParaNorman is a creeping bliss, using Donovan's song "Season of the Witch" to catch you with a trippy groove about a story of a boy with scary things going on around him. Lots of skeletons, zombies, and other monsters are haunting Norman, a boy living in a secluded town with enough back woods to go wandering into the night with a cell phone light.

Another stop-motion picture made by the creators of the brilliant Coraline which was a scary kid's story about moving and parents, this movie shares a unique art direction with the handmade skill of woodcuts. Norman has a worried face in a spiky haircut. He's a depressed Calvin, except with no Hobbes. But this feels more than comic. This trailer is a mood instead of a story. A silent picture of growing up with an unlimited imagination. Looks fun and frightening. Now get through this cheer for some summer fear.

Opening August 17, 2012, Verdict: Must See

Trailer Review: Brave - Red Headed Warrior

When is the house of Pixar going to fall? Certainly, its competitors wish for it to blunder, but industry insiders are amazed at the run of hits that have lasted close to two decades. To moviegoers, it's no surprise. They make great stories, full of heart. But cracks showed with Cars 2 last summer that received the worst reviews for a Pixar movie. Many critics called it a cynical cash-in with a tie-in for toys (Metascore 57).

The trailer is out on their latest release with another simple one-word title: Brave. This movie breaks new ground by having a female, Merida, as the hero. She's a Scot in florid red hair with an oval face that looks grown from a cabbage patch. A story about a kingdom that is harassed by a beast in the surrounding forest, the village gathers fighters to decide who to send out to defend them. Merida is a gifted archer and a tomboy who wants to break tradition and become a warrior. She's not scared. She's brave.

The story is similar to the surprisingly delightful How to Train Your Dragon which was about a brave young boy befriending a dragon that pillages a town of Vikings. That was the first Dreamworks animation I ever liked. The studio dumped its trademark crude humor and immature jokes for a good story, ripping off Pixar's formula. But Brave looks like its copying some of the Dreamworks playbook. There are cheap laughs like kicking and showing off groins that make me groan. Is this an honest trade?

The catch is that Pixar's trailers are the worst pitches I ever see. They look like uninspired drivel. Wall-e was about a garbage collecting robot. Ratatouille was a talking rat who liked to cook. And Up was an old man who floated away with balloons. So what! Yet I've had fun watching all those movies, and some were inspiring in their soul searching empathy. So I can't make the call. This time, the back of the trailer will give you no indication of what's actually pulling this along in the front.

Opening June 22, 2012, Verdict: Wait for the Critics

Trailer Review: Cars 2 - Restart Your Engines

There's a little bit of nostalgia seeing the trailer for "Cars 2" here at Back of the Trailer. It was the first review we ever did. We gave it a must see, but when I went to the movies I was disappointed for the first time with a film by Pixar. The crass humor from Mater, voiced by Larry the Cable Guy, brought it closer to the celebrity egotism of a Dreamworks animation. But most of all, a world populated by talking cars looked a little strange. Where were the people? The machines had taken over.

"Cars 2" looks even worse than the first. Now it's a movie about Lightning McQueen and Mater touring the world in a Grand Prix and being spies along the way. The send-up of Bond films looks like a desperate attempt to jump a shark. It's hard to tell a story about cars that race in circles.

Opening June 24, 2011, Verdict: Wait for the Critics

Trailer Review: Rango - Fish Out of Water

I have to say I like this because it's lazy. Except for Pixar, so much CG animation is hyperactive and snarky. But the trailer for "Rango" about a wandering lizard, voiced by Johnny Depp, who comes across a ghost town inhabited by dessert animals looks fun because it's aimless. Adapting loosely the plot of "Seven Samurai," of a town threatened by bad guys, the lizard is given a sheriff's badge and put up to defend its citizens.

It looks like those citizens are equal stars to Rango. An owl, a shrew, and a toad are faces and voices just as memorable from their brief appearance in this trailer. It's no surprise to find out that the writer/director is Gore Verbinski who also made many memorable characters, major and minor, in his "Pirates of the Caribbean" series.

I'm always interested when live-action directors cross over into animation. I can't think it would be easy, but surprisingly a lot of them do it without a bump (Wes Anderson, George Miller). I'm sure they feel more in control. I chuckle when I see the lizard's crooked neck. Hopefully, it doesn't all come out straight.

Opening March 4, 2011, Verdict: Must See

Trailer Review: Toy Story 3 - This Day was Coming

I haven't written in a while for two reasons. First, is that I moved, and my life was upside down for a few weeks as I unpacked my way out of boxes and replugged my computer. The other, is that recent releases of summer movies and their trailers have been so uninspiring, that I'm not surprised Hollywood box office is short this season.

But things may change with the realease of "Toy Story 3" this Friday. It's been over 10 years since the excellent sequel to the landmark film that ushered in digital animation about a boy's toys and their precarious existence. All the favorite characters are back, including some new ones. Andy is going to college, so the toys are donated to a day care center and plans for escape are enacted. The plot looks a little too familiar to "Toy Story 2" that I wondered what is different this time around. But strangely, Pixar trailers are often dull. Some of their best films hide their magical charm until you watch the movie. Pixar doesn't like to repeat or cash in on their properties to make a quick buck. Supposedly, Disney was developing a cheap sequel, until Pixar took it back after they were bought and scrapped what was in the works. They like to improve and not rest on their laurels, so I'm confident in their execution of a third sequel.

What's always been on my mind and unsaid for these toys is their demise. Growing up and growing old, is a major theme for this series and Pixar has the storytelling prowess to address this subject. They showed loss so effectively in the first half hour of "Up" that it made the rest of the film unnecessary. "We knew this day was coming," says one of the toys. Don't we all.

Opening June 18, 2010, Verdict: Must See

Review: Fantastic Mr. Fox - I've Got a Plan

Ask someone to describe a Wes Anderson film and you get adjectives like precious, eccentric, and more recently annoying. I'm sure he likes the word auteur, and certainly his films are a recognizable collection of taste and aesthetic that I've always enjoyed. His last two films were going further from the dollhouse set pieces he had created earlier like "The Royal Tenenbaums" and I was looking forward to his next project. So it was to my surprise that instead of an original work he was adopting someone else's and it was going to be in stop-motion no less. But doing Roald Dahl's "Fantastic Mr. Fox" isn't that far off from the rare objects he's collected on film. I think if you look closely, this book was probably sitting on one of the shelves in the house of Tenenbaum.

After watching the trailer, I had to rewind to find out why Mr. Fox is fantastic? Is it because he's played by George Clooney? Is it his whistle and click sound he makes? I hope it's something more because I couldn't find it. The trailer also seems to be missing a story. We know Mr. Fox has a wife and child and is living a middle-class life with other animals when it's interrupted by three farmers who are trying to ruin his home. He recruits the help of friends and their plan to save themselves is never really explained. Instead we get scenes of introduction to his friends and family. The voice talent is superior with Meryl Streep, Bill Murray and Michael Gambon. The animation is charming because the stop-motion looks old fashioned with a slight enough jerk to give it a handmade quality. I'm sure that's Anderson's effect. The interest in character over story in the trailer is also Anderson's influence. But animation is a different medium and putting his adult attentions on a children's story may make this film more odd than heartfelt.

Opening November 13, 2009, Verdict: Wait for the Critics

Review: A Christmas Carol - A Classic Digitally Revisited

Christmas is coming early to Hollywood this Friday with the release of "A Christmas Carol" from Walt Disney. This is an ambitious attempt for studio to cement a holiday classic for the new century using motion capture and 3-D.

The impression one gets from the trailer is movement. Starting with a digital snowflake falling through a winter night sky, the camera flies through rooms, over rooftops and streets like a buzzing insect. The trailer avoids summarizing the story knowing that it doesn't have to. This is a preview of technology.

Director Robert Zemeckis is the salesman for motion capture which is scanning actors then printing them on the screen. He's done this with "The Polar Express" and most impressively with "Beowolf" where the old tale came alive with graphic splendor. Who could forget Angelina Jolie as a curvy demon. What this tech provides that traditional CGI does not is attention to human faces. There's a scene in the trailer where the camera zooms in on Jim Carrey's face and you can see his teeth, yellow and rotten. This is a clear advantage and something valuable to the movies since film flickered on a screen a century ago.

Faces and flying, flying and faces. That's the tempo one should expect when they strap into the theater.

Opening November 6, 2009, Verdict: Must See

Review: $9.99 - Words of Wisdom

It's good to see stop-motion animation still going in this twenty-first century cinema of digital animation. "Coraline" came out earlier this year to critical/commercial success. Now comes "$9.99" a film based on the short stories of Etgar Karat about a book someone orders through the mail that gives the answers to the eternal questions of the meaning of life.

The stories take place in the lives of the inhabitants of an apartment building in Sydney, Australia. The trailer divides into chapters from the book. "Pain", "Desire", "Redemption" are flashed across the screen to corresponding scenes of life. There is a sense of magic realism as one of the characters has wings. As the score becomes more pronounced and a vocal is added we get film festival awards and someone making a speech about love, and it was at that point, that I wondered if this isn't more than a traditional large cast feel-good movie about life with its packaged lessons.

But the fact it's animation and the story is for adults lets my skepticism drop because it usually means there's a serious filmmaker trying to tell something new and different. The trailer has a scene of a guy pushing another off his balcony and he unfolds his wings while falling. I hope he can fly.

Opening June 19, 2009, Verdict: Wait for the Critics

Review: Up - Travel and Adventure

What's surprising about recent Pixar trailers is that they aren't that remarkable as a pitch for the movie. They look great, but they don't reveal much of a story. In recent trailers, the studio touts its record, gives a few seconds to show scenes from the movie and that's it. Their trailers seem more gimmicky, a movie based on a simple concept - a rat in the kitchen, a robot picking up trash in the future. But when you get into the theater, you watch a movie with depth of character, a rich story, with beautiful design and look. The trailers don't live up to the film.

I thought "Cars" was their low point, and feared it was a sign that the studio was going down into commercial crassness. But since then, they've turned out some of their finest pictures. The trailer for "Up" tells a story about an old man who lifts his house into the air with balloons with a young stowaway. So what. Yet I'm sure when I go into the theater it's going to be much more than that. The scarcity of description, tells me Pixar is not lacking imagination, but withholding tons of it. They're not trying to be mysterious. It seems their stories are centered less on plot and more on character, which is harder to convey in a trailer, so they just skip it. Which is why their trailers are so unremarkable. Judging from their recent bad trailer, "Up" should be magnificent.

Opening May 29, 2009, Verdict: Must See

Review: Monsters vs. Aliens - Get Out Of The Way

A bureaucrat runs down the hall to the top secret war room where the government is monitoring another alien invasion. A large robot has landed from space and is surrounded by the army and reporters. An alien with many eyes interrupts the television screens threatening to take over the earth. Looking for solutions, one general briefs the president with an answer: Monsters.

Classic monsters from Hollywood's movies of the fifties. A giant moth, a blob, a mutated fly, swamp thing, and a very tall woman are presented to save the day in the trailer for "Monsters vs. Aliens." With no visual boundries, this high concept pitch is a great idea for computer animation. It certainly looks right. I got a chuckle when I saw a g-man drinking a cup of coffee with his bloated face, square framed glasses and permed hair. A direct reference to dozens of actors who played military commanders in b-films whose faces you memorized, but could never name. Other touches are nice: The "Dr. Strangelove" command center, the "Day the Earth Stood Still" landing sight. Clearly, the creators have sincere respect for the material they're making fun of.

But the film is filled with sophomoric toilet jokes, which lessens expectations that this could be as good as "The Incredibles." I expected this type of film to be out this summer, so the current release makes me wonder if it's being 'dumped' early. One relief is that trailer doesn't showcase voice talents, which may mean more effort was put into a good story.

Opening March 27, 2009, Verdict: Wait for the Critics