Tag Archives: Kids Movies

Return to Oz Picks Mood and Metaphor over Plot and Progression on the Darker Side of the Rainbow

Posted on January 15, 2019 by Andrew Bloom


Conventional wisdom holds that stories should be held together by “but”s and “therefore”s instead of “and then”s. Each new scene, each beat in the narrative, should be motivated by what came before, either as cause and effect or as a change and reaction, rather than a random series of events. That approach is supposed to preserve the weight and momentum of your story, giving the actions taken and the choices made more meaning within a greater whole.

Return to Oz, however, is squarely an “and then” movie. As I discussed on the We Love to Watch Podcast, the nearly-half century late sequel to The Wizard of Oz brings back the iconic Dorothy Gale, and it shows her making a few key decisions here and there. But the film is mainly an accumulation of events that simply roll into one another, with minimal connective tissue between them. It roundly violates those dearly-held storytelling principles, which should consign it to the scrap heap of the languid or unsatisfying.

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Posted in Classic Films, Movies | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Why “How Were They Built?” Is the Dumbest Criticism of Pixar’s Cars

Posted on June 26, 2011 by Andrew Bloom

Cars is Pixar's seventh feature film and was released in 2006.

Cars is easily Pixar’s most poorly-received film. The movie, featuring a world of anthropomorphic automobiles, completely rankled fans of the studio. These detractors view Cars as a rare misstep amidst Pixar’s otherwise unblemished offerings. While movies like A Bug’s Life may have underwhelmed, and those like Ratatouille flown under the radar, no Pixar film has engendered as strong a negative response from the faithful as Cars. With a sequel coming out soon, these doubters have renewed and redoubled their critiques.

Personally, I generally enjoyed the film as a bit of harmless popcorn entertainment, and I believe that Pixar is, in many ways, a victim of its own success. The studio has a remarkable track record of releasing uniformly outstanding feature films, from its initial offering of Toy Story to classics like Finding Nemo to recent triumphs like Up. When held up against these lofty brethren, Cars status as merely “pretty good,” makes it seem overly lacking by comparison. It’s a solid, but unspectacular film, doomed by the company it keeps.

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Posted in Animated Films, Movies | Tagged , , , , , , , | 13 Comments