Sox (2013)

With the exception of the incompetent, mostly excessive, occasionally lewd bad guys, this film is unmemorable. The dog doesn’t even properly talk!

Adult score: 1/5

Child score: 4/5

Bound By Movement (2019)

An interesting film about some Parkour professionals touring the US, exploring what they get up to, their relationships, their accidents and why they do what they do. They go to some interesting places and get up to some entertaining hi-jinks but beyond that there isn’t too much to take away from this film. Parkour is a great athletic, energetic endeavor that kids and adults alike can harmlessly enjoy but this film is more focused on a pro just having fun with like-minded people. Whilst there’s nothing wrong with that it doesn’t add up to any sort of repeat viewing and the lack of learning anything else from the film leaves you feeling a little empty at the end.

Adult score: 3/5

Child score: 4/5

Christmas Break-In (2018)

Hmmm, there’s a whole lot of contrivances in this one and that’s meant in the context of most children’s films requiring absurd contrivances. 

The parents are dodgy and that’s ignoring the fact that these two look so unsuitable as a couple, and to add to that they are plain irresponsible. The older brother is dodgy and quite what ‘Drone Club’ is expected to achieve is absurd and only seems to exist so that it can be used as a later plot device. Said plot device demonstrates some poorly rendered CGI and leads to perhaps the only moment of levity in the film when, in the outtakes, there are numerous efforts to correctly land the snowboard. And above all that is that the main character is an annoying girl who dreams of being a rock guitar goddess but by the end you really hope she fails. 

Throughout the film you are left wondering who has the compromising photos of Danny Glover because it makes no sense why he would turn up to such a demeaning gig. He may be best known for Lethal Weapon and those days are long behind him but even Mel Gibson got better scripts after his public infractions, so Glover needs to fire his agent. 

And finally, the bad guys. They have read the manual on bad guys in kids films and rewrote it in spectacular fashion achieving a mark of Poor – Must try harder, in every category.

Adult score: 1/5

Child score: 4/5

Puppy Swap (2019)

Even writing about this film makes you squirm uncomfortably.  Two dogs, a hick, a city girl, life changing event, dogs try to contrive a reunion, the end.

It's awful and even a push for the little one to like. She's just a sucker for a talking dog or two, irrespective of the plot around it.

Adult score: 1/5

Child score: 4/5

2:Hrs (2018)

This film is cheap trash, made on the cheap in the back streets of London with some cheap sets and presumably some poorly paid actors, one of whom includes Keith Allen who must have been doing someone a favour. The premise, of a schoolboy with just two hours to live trying to achieve a bucket list, could have been so much better and yet the writers created such an unimaginative bucket list that if you still cared at that point in the film you instantly lost interest. The lead character starts off being unlikable, presumably so we see him go through a story arc we can empathise with, but 80 minutes later he was still obnoxious and irritating and was seemingly, too simply forgiven. Keith Allen looked to have literally web dialed in his performance, barely leaving his office to take part. The ‘bad guys’ were contrived from two local journalists and instantly became part of a criminal enterprise, driven by a story or money, quite frankly I couldn’t have cared and it didn’t matter anyway. They took the remit of displaying incompetence to new heights that must have been difficult to watch being filmed. This is the British film industry at its worst.

Adult score: 1/5

Child score: 4/5

Bingo (1991)

This film is not a good film and yet it is hard to give it anything lower than a mediocre score because there are some amusing moments. Yes, the talking dog story is unoriginal and in this case it's all done telepathically to avoid having to use primitive 90s CGI. Yes the plot is emphatically awful. Yes, the bad guys are appalling stereotypes of these sorts of films, and then turned up to 11 in an effort to pretend it's not just to pay the bills. 

But above all that, respect it was made in the early 90s and Lassie and the Littlest Hobo have been and gone, and appreciate that talking dogs still work for kids, even today.

Adult score: 3/5

Child score: 5/5

Toy Story 4 (2019)

It’s hard to dislike the Toy Story characters so the studios are on to a winner before they even started, however, with this one it feels like they stumbled on the character of Forky. I didn’t care for him and just found his whining and desire to be considered trash annoying. I appreciate the attempts to address mental health issues in a children’s film but it felt like it was a relentless whine-fest whenever the character was on the screen. There were some other entertaining moments and the standout new characters were the ventriloquist’s dummies and the chick and rabbit, whose anarchic behaviour deserved more screen time.

At the conclusion it felt unsatisfactory, in the way that Toy Story 3 wasn’t, and it felt unnecessary. It didn’t seem to add anything to the overall story of the characters and was just emphasising that everyone needs to move on, a point TS3 made more than sufficiently. The fact that the outtakes provided more amusement to the child watching this than the film as a whole is usually quite a damning situation, so read into that what you will. 

Adult score: 3/5

Child score: 5/5

The Lion King (2019)

We hadn’t watched the original Lion King animation so the story was a new one, albeit nothing original, and we did not have any baggage as far as the songs were concerned. This film is not about the story though, or even about the songs, it is about the incredible photo-realistic creations on the screen. 

The animal mannerisms have been rendered remarkably well, even if some of the behaviour (male lions rarely hunt) is unrealistic. Obviously putting to one side that they sing! Always a good judge of how impressive the CGI has been done is the behaviour of water on-screen and this does look very special. 

Although the film is unlikely to live long in the memory for its story or songs, because that moment has past, the CGI cannot be ignored.

Adult score: 3/5

Child score: 5/5

Sk8 Dawg (2018)

Whilst it should be hard to like a film with a skateboarding dog in it but this is a poorly written film, with wooden acting and the entire 90 minutes is a lead in the said SK8 Dawg.

It's not just the actors themselves who should be ashamed of their performance, but even the dog needs to attend acting classes.

That all said, it's got a talking dog so that always plays well with the children.

Adult score: 1/5

Child score: 4/5