Curious George
A fellow movie reviewer of my acquaintance recently spent some time railing against the habit some of us have of canvassing our own spawn for opinions when reviewing a kids' movie. Sentences like "the little critic sitting next to me thought 'Madagascar' was a brilliant addition to world cinema" drive her nuts, reeking as they do of both exploitation and smarmy parental indulgence.
I feel her pain, but sometimes it's just unavoidable. To wit: Having seen the animated "Curious George" in the company of two daughters and a borrowed friend, I feel duty-bound to report that the 5-year-old loved it, the 8-year-old loved it, and even the 10-year-old adjudged as how "the monkey was so cute." Dad, meanwhile, was climbing the walls.
The celebrated children's books of Margret and H.A. Rey have been brought to the screen in as toothless, trivialized, and disarmingly pleasant a manner possible, which is a small miracle when you consider the damage executive producer Ron Howard wreaked on Dr. Seuss with "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."
The filmmaking team, headed by director Matthew O'Callaghan and production designer Yarrow Cheney, aims for the gentle simplicity of the books. The movie uses old-fashioned hand-drawn animation with lots of bright colors, plus a generous helping of surfer-dude singer Jack Johnson's bouncy pastel lullabies on the soundtrack. It also throws in an actual plot, with actual bad guys, and it makes the mistake of turning the Man With the Yellow Hat into a comic boob instead of a trusted and trusting father figure. The nerve.
I suppose you have to have some sort of story line if you're dealing with a running time longer than the "Curious George" cartoons that aired on HBO in the 1980s. Ted (the voice of Will Ferrell) is a doofus staffer at a natural history museum who gets sent to Africa by his elderly boss (Dick Van Dyke) to find the giant prehistoric monkey statue that will save the beleaguered institution from closing. Sent on the wrong trail by the boss's jealous son (David Cross of "Arrested Development"), who wants to tear down the museum and build a parking lot, Ted discovers an alternate, pint-size version of the statue as well as a playful chimp companion (George's coos are voiced by Frank Welker). The latter follows him back to New York for various shenanigans and saving of the day.
Somehow Drew Barrymore figures into this, lending her voice to the role of a winsome schoolteacher, as well as Joan Plowright as a pompous dowager, Eugene Levy as a wacky inventor, and Ed O'Ross as a massive Russian doorman. They're diverting enough, but don't the ads for the movie say "Show me the monkey"? They do indeed, but "Curious George" spends an awful lot of time with the humans, and a little bit of Ferrell goes a long way.
Very young children love the Reys' books for an obvious reason: George is a toddler who's more resourceful than they are, gets into worse trouble, yet is never in any real danger. Put the character in a room with a pot of paints and a light bulb over his head, and kids squeal in delightful expectation of messy payoff. The movie includes that scene and is much the better for it -- the theater I was in lighted up with happiness -- but quickly returns to frenetic kids-movie business as usual. Fans of the books will find George's balloon flight above the city turned into something approaching an action sequence, but I for one missed the piercing, multileveled drama of the character's interaction with the baby bunny in "Curious George Flies a Kite."
The animation is oddly soothing -- the traditional 2-D animation has been inventively lighted and shadowed, so that every scene feels like it's taking place at sunset -- and adult viewers might feel narcotized into submission (the better to accept the product placement for
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.
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