ParaNorman ☆☆☆☆½

This is the first time in a looooong time that I’ve watched an animation not done by Disney and said ‘that was excellent’. And this was excellent. Truly.

The story follows Norman Babcock, an eleven year old living in a small town in Massachusetts who has an unusual gift. Norman can see and converse with ghosts. His family and the whole town know this, or at least they know that Norman ‘believes’ he can see them. And for this Norman is bullied, ignored, shouted at, and generally mistreated. Its actually very sad and any kid who has ever been bullied will identify with Norman.

However Norman’s ‘gift’ means one important thing – he has a Destiny. This destiny is relayed to him by a crazy old guy called Pendergast who can also see ghosts, so unsurprisingly Norman is reticent to fulfil said destiny which is to go to the grave of a witch who cursed the townsfolk who sent her to her death 300 years ago, and read a book on the anniversary of her death.

But of course things aren’t going to go smoothly for Norman and he and his new friend Neil, his sister, Neil’s brother, and bully Alvin have to battle zombies and crazy and murderous townsfolk before the night is done.

So I’m going to review this with the voice cast going first, the story second, and then the animation to round it off, so here goes with the voice cast.

Genuinely talented bunch of voices in here. You have Kodi Smit-McPhee (Let Me In, The Road) as Norman, whose youthful tones are not lost but serve to really power the animation, his voice really brings Norman to life. Anna Kendrick (Pitch Perfect, Up In The Air) finds her inner cheerleader as Norman’s older sister, fawning over Neil’s older brother, and trying to work out her little brother. The older brother is played by Casey Affleck, which I didn’t pick up at all, probably because I wasn’t expecting a 30 something year old to be voicing a teenage beefcake.

Jeff Garlin who voiced Norman’s father is no stranger to voice work, having been part of Pixar’s Cars and Wall-E, and I love how exasperated he can make his voice sound in such a quiet way. Leslie Mann who is more famous for being in anything her husband makes (she is the wife of Judd Apatow who made Knocked Up etc), was again unrecognisable, but that may have been because I was more fascinated with how the mother was animated than her tone of voice.

Rounding out the cast are the voices of Pendergast (John Goodman), zombie leader (Bernard Hill), Alvin the Bully (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and finally little Neil who is voiced by a young actor I do not know of called Tucker Albrizzi.

This actually moves me on nicely to reviewing the story, because Neil was definitely my favourite character. He was this chubby kid who is also picked on, but for a plethora of reasons that he outlines to Norman without a trace of anger or resentment, just a calm acceptance of his fate. I just wanted to squeeze his animated chubbiness, especially when he shows up to Norman’s house wearing a hockey mask and is just stood there, like a mini Michael Myers. Which is EXACTLY the creators intention.

This wasn’t an animation that dumbed down any dialogue or lessened the scariness to benefit the smallest people. If I had been seven years old, or even eleven, I would have been terrified. Actually if I had been in a cinema on my own I probably would have been scared, watching something on your laptop in the daylight does take away the atmosphere.

The speech was fabulous, intelligent and funny, whilst also kind of breaking your heart at times. Norman’s facial expressions were beautiful, he does this tiny smile that real people do when they have been complimented but have never let themselves believe anything about them is good.

The animation overall was stunning. I love stop-motion and this really captured the heart and soul of the story and characters. It allowed the animators to create extreme looking persons to reflect their characteristics, or just to put a huge bum on a cheerleader. Visually arresting I guess you could say, especially the final big sequence.

I’ve read reviews that say this is good but not as good as Coraline, but then again these films are exploring two different kinds of dark, but both are scary. The difference is ParaNorman goes for the funny too, and I enjoyed the humour being put out there because its there to stop the kids freaking out. It is childish humour, and you know we all like to see the bully hide behind the kid he’s been picking on sometimes, its poetic justice and quite funny.

Of course the thing to always remember about my reviews is this is just my own humble opinion. Raising expectations never does anyone any good, so don’t take my word that this is funny, scary and beautifully animated, go watch it and decide for yourself.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower ☆☆☆☆½

He wrote the book. He wrote the screenplay. He even directed the movie.

Stephen Chbosky is a talented guy.

First thing I'd like to say about this is that it is extraordinarily hard to review because the author did all the important stuff, he would even have had a say in the casting. So I cannot make comparisons to the book (which of course I reviewed on my other blog) because any differences were totally done to make it translatable to screen which the director handled amazingly...this is gonna be a gushing review.

SO the plot. We focus on Charlie, played by Logan Lerman (Percy Jackson, 3:10 to Yuma), a young man who has had a difficult time in life and is somewhere on the autistic scale. This is reflected in his behaviour and extreme social awkwardness. We meet him on his first day of high school and the film charts his life throughout that first year, where he makes friends and discovers hidden talents, screws things up in spectacular fashion, but then makes his way to recovering what has been lost.

The people in Charlie's life include his mother and father, Dylan McDermott (American Horror Story) and Kate Walsh (Private Practice), whose small amount of screen time was just brilliant. I didn't even recognise Kate Walsh at first.

There is also Candace, Charlie's sister, played by The Vampire Diarie's Nina Dobrev who also impressed me. Mostly I think because I have become incredibly annoyed by TVD and her character, so it was good to see her playing a human in a human world. Her boyfriend, Ponytail Derek, was a lot different to how I had imagined him in the book, mostly because I don't remember the ponytail...however this is Chbosky's show
so it must have been what he intended, so I went with it.

Charlie has an older brother who pops up at Christmas, time restrictions meant leaving out the deeper worries and wishes of Charlie to be in more contact with his big brother, but I was quite touched by their scenes together.

Charlie's first friend, his teacher Mr Anderson, was almost exactly as I imagined him from the book - I just didn't realise I had been imagining Paul Rudd. Its good to see him in a serious role for once, where he gets to play the mentor and person pivotal to Charlie 'participating'.

Now to the people you've seen in all the trailers, Miss Emma Watson as Sam, Ezra Miller (We Need to Talk About Kevin) as Patrick and of course Logan Lerman as Charlie. All three were perfect. Perfect. I know this only my humble opinion but genuinely, the way that Sam was written in this film meant that any expectation I had from the book was broken down and rebuilt in the form of Emma Watson. I'd love it if any North Americans out there could tell me if her accent was really bad, but to me it sounded fine. Akin to Dakota Fanning's British accent I think Watson was doing the generic American twang that to a local would sound a bit odd, but it worked for me.

Ezra Miller was Fab-U-LOUS! His Patrick was just, well read the book you'll understand it was just so very Patrick. And he and Watson worked well together and completely pulled off their step-sibling relationship. There is all sorts of seriousness happening with Patrick, his sexuality, relationships and some violence. And it was all brought to the screen magnificently.

The most important character though is of course Charlie and I'll admit I had reservations when seeing Lerman on the trailer. But, the kid can ACT. He was funny without meaning to be, engaging, heartbreaking, and ultimately utterly believable as Charlie, this kid I fell in love with only a couple of months ago. So if you've seen, say, The Three Musketeers, please don't judge Lerman on that, judge him on this film.

What I was concerned about was that I wouldn't react the same way watching the film as I had whilst reading the book. But I did. I was forcing myself to watch the screen when a truly embarrassing to the core and heartbreaking at the same time moment happened, the same as I had forced myself to read on. I was in pieces in an important 10 minute period toward the end of the film, and I think the amount of tears was equal to those that flooded my kitchen table when reading the same scenes.

If all authors had the talent that Chbosky has, then maybe I wouldn't get so mad at book adaptations. Because how can you argue with something that has clearly had the same level of attention and passion put in to it as the original source? Yes there are some minor changes but these are not deal breakers to the enjoyment of the film.

I hope those who have seen the film are encouraged to go on and read the book, because the story achieves so much more in terms of really getting to know the characters. However because of the superior quality of this film and the depth it manages to reach, I won't be too unhappy if you only spend an hour and a half with this amazing boy and his world.

Now Is Good ☆☆☆½

I think I might be a sucker for a film about a dying girl, these are the ones I’ve wept through prior to this Dakota Fanning movie:

• A Walk to Remember (with Mandy Moore dying)
• Love Story (1970s original weepy)
• Restless (an amazing and original story with Mia Wasikowska)
• My Sister’s Keeper (though not really a love story it ticks most of the boxes)

So with the above list in mind, I’m not going to delve too deeply into the plot, this is the trailer if you’d like to know what the story is about, but really its about Dakota Fanning putting on a British accent and playing a 17 year old who is dying and makes a list of things to do before she dies, but falls for the boy next door in the months leading up to her death.

Along with My Sister’s Keeper, Now Is Good is a film that made me feel faint because of the hospital/brutal reality of the illness. Luckily I was watching NIG at home so could pause to put my head between my knees (genuinely I get quite ill, seeing me give blood is probably hilarious). During MSK I was in the cinema and missed about 4 minutes of the hospital scenes because I felt so awful and had to hide my head somewhere near the floor.

However, aside from feeling poorly, Now is Good made me an emotional wreck. Paddy Considine broke my heart as the Dad, simply called ‘Father’ in the cast list, and just thinking about one particular scene is making my eyes well-up once more. Then again he is a phenomenal actor and now director who is pretty good at tugging on your heart-strings (watch Dead Mans Shoes or Tyrannosaur). But he also could produce some comic relief as the disapproving Dad of the boy next door.

Olivia Williams as Mum was something of a shock, the Mother who couldn’t handle her childs illness and had no idea about hospital appointments, treatments, and avoided as much as she could. She also had extraordinary hair – bottle blonde with some fabulous roots, a clear indication of her frame of mind and where her real worries lie, not with her appearance but with her child.

Onto the dying girl herself, Miss Dakota Fanning as Tessa Scott, the girl who has decided to stop chemotherapy after leukemia returned after a four-year battle. Fanning was demonstrating her ability to do an English accent…and you know it wasn’t terrible. Perhaps a little too posh and clipped sometimes, a lot of ‘yes’ when a more relaxed ‘yeah’ would have been a natural response, but overall if I didn’t know she was from the USA I reckon I could have been convinced. Fanning is a pretty good actress and she dies quite well, I think she must have been channelling her inner Brit to be so deadpan about the whole thing, even her eyes were unforgiving about sentiment.

Jeremy Irvine is the required boy next door, but this one isn’t the jock who needs to be taught a lesson in humanity (A walk to remember) or a strange young man who gate crashes funerals (Restless), Irvine’s Adam has lost his father the year before and has been something of a recluse ever since. Despite the reservations he has he goes for it, cos hey Tessa is a pretty inspirational person. Irvine puts in a much better performance than War Horse…that may be unfair as I have no idea what his War Horse character is supposed to be like but I found him a tad unbearable all the same. So he proved to me he is a decent actor, and he meshed with Dakota quite well.

I really loved Tessa’s little brother, played by Edgar Canham who only has this film to his name. Basically Cal is the kid who makes ‘inappropriate’ comments such as ‘when Tessa is dead can we go on holiday?’ which make Tessa smile because he is the one person who truly accepts what is happening, likely because he doesn’t comprehend the effect it will really have on him and his life.

Kaya Scodelario, of Skins fame, plays the best friend who is helping Tessa tick things off her list, and their friendship was easy and believable.

This is a really good version of the dying girl movie. Restless is my absolute favourite because of the originality of the characters, but this is definitely very good and that comes from a strong cast and an equally strong script and direction. Ol Parker the director and writer keeps a firm hold and does not lose any focus, but also manages to balance the light with the dark very much as he did with The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

However if, like me, you are a bit of a weepy person, your tear ducts might get some serious exercise. Like I said above, Paddy Considine broke my heart, I challenge him not to break yours.