20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)

A chance to watch a classic novel on the big screen and for its time they didn't do too bad a job. The submarine and the underwater sequences look half decent. Perhaps the weakest link in the film is Kirk Douglas himself, or rather the character he plays, Ned Land. He plays his role too much for laughs and not for the trauma or distress of the moment. That really detracts from the tone of the film, which should have focused more on the madness of Nemo and the claustrophobic nature of the Nautilus and its mission.

Nemo is presented as a misunderstood genius but with this film little effort is made to demonstrate why this is the case and even at the end it's not particularly clear why he's sailing around sinking ships, it all seems a little bit of a stretch.

That said, it's an enjoyable enough film trying to bring the great novel to the screen, but with Douglas playing the fool and too much dependency on the sea lion for on-screen chemistry, it won't live long in the memory.

Adult score: 3/5

Child score: 4/5

Adventure Boyz (2019)

The poster for this film suggests an action-packed adventure so the artists did a great job in setting expectation levels to 11, before disappointing everyone. The story is the usual, single parent trying to achieve salvation through bold and unimaginable actions from the kids. It is usually the dad who's been killed off either by illness or a car crash so it makes a change that it's the mother. That said, I think we would have preferred the father to have met with a misadventure to avoid being subjected to a spectacularly wooden acting performance. It's all fairly awful and bears all the trademarks of a film-school assignment cobbled together one summer. The less said about the plot the better, some of the contrivances leading the kids to the diamonds are quite awfully down to last minute, fag-packet planning. Even the BMX racing scenes are poorly conceived and as for the bad-guy on the race track, a sneer does not work as his only menacing trait.

Adult score: 2/5

Child score: 4/5

Robinson Crusoe (1997)

I'm sure Damien Lewis would be happy if this one was scrubbed from his biography because his screen-time is minimal, uninspired and then he dies in a painfully poor display of acting school antics. Brosnan conjures up a Scottish accent which the less said about or experienced the better.

It tells the tale and ticks the smallest of boxes with its representation of the book but there is an unnecessary and inexplicable regularity of naked bottoms, which the child found most off-putting.

Adult score: 2/5

Child score: 4/5 - too many bottoms, too much kissing and too little of the dog

The Princess Bride (1987)

The wife loves this, friends love this, but I can't quite share the love. It's got some good lines and above all Andre the Giant but otherwise little else. It's tongue in cheek and obviously has all of the tropes of a fantasy fun adventure film with outlandish characters but it I can rarely get away from the What and more the Why.

Having watched the documentary about Andre and the pain he was in when he made this film, the efforts they went to to cater for his size and back issues, there is a tint of sadness it is hard to get over. He seemed like a kind and misunderstood man, the film was a big break for him and yet his condition would eventually beat him.

Arguably, you could just forget all that...."My name is....." remains a great line.

Adult score: 3/5 but the wife would give it 5/5!
Child score: 4/5

Cecil (2019)

This film will not live long in the memory and that's a good thing because there is nothing positive and any film which focuses on a lisp causing a child to change his name should be confined to the deepest, darkest archives. Obviously the writing had some childhood trauma to exorcise and we have been made to endure it.

It's hard to recall anything positive, certainly the acting is of a quality not often seen but then if you sign up to be part of this drivel you know what to expect.

Adult score: 1/5

Child score: 4/5

Life Is Ruff (2005)

This is a made for television Disney movie and it shows. The plot is drivel and the acting is incredibly poor. The lead character proves to be both unrealistic and annoying right from the beginning and it even seems that the others in the cast find him equally irritating so have little sympathy.

There is a plot, involving comics, selfishness, dog training and friendship, but all in all it is tedious and difficult to find anything to celebrate.

With a Disney television film you go in expecting little and never really rise beyond that low bar. Watch at your peril.

Adult score: 1/5
Child score: 4/5 Despite the plot being weak, it's got plenty of dogs!

The Boy, the Dog and the Clown (2019)

This is a strange film that would never have gained any traction anywhere, and yet there's nothing to dislike about it. The boy plays an odd character who fails to engage with anyone and that includes the viewer. It's hard to empathise with his plight and at times that makes you want to just give him a slap in the face to buck up his ideas. For some reason this seems to give him the authority to talk to strangers at the beach and who better to spend time with than a tattered old clown and his dog. On any day an adult would tell him to steer clear and even the most disobedient of children would struggle to think spending time with the clown was a good idea.

The mother gets sucked in and when the family go on a camping trip, with the clown and dog as companions, we're are asking the same questions, her friends are - Who is this guy? Through a series of ridiculous moments we are led to a contrivance involving a mass of butterflies, redemption, a new life, new beginnings and a new confidence.

It's all perfectly harmless, and the director clearly felt the need to stretch things out with an overlong butterfly eye-opener scene, but you'd have to go a long way not to miss the message being hammered home.

Adult score: 2/5
Child score: 4/5 it had regular cameos from the dog!

Soul Surfer (2011)

I knew this story, but didn't realise there was the devout theme running so deeply within. The actual incident is played down, and in fact the reaction of Hamilton is all played in a low key. There is a hint of feeling sorry for herself but Hamilton never really loses touch with her roots in surfing, something which would be hard to do when you live on Hawaii and have a view from your bedroom of the crashing waves.

The story is a typical sports recovery/redemption tale, low-level villains within the piece and the challenges she faced but that's okay. We are even given a sports montage as she re-engages and runs through a training regime to turn things around for the national championships.

The original documentary footage at the end adds a nice sheen of authenticity and all in all it is hard not to respect Hamilton's achievement since the accident.

Adult score: 3/5
Child score: 4/5 because you didn't see much of the dog!

Onward (2020)

The latest effort from Pixar focuses on the relationship between two sons and their dead father. They attempt to complete a quest to ultimately spend one more day with their father but in doing so our protagonist learns that he didn't need the time because he'd had his older brother all along.

There are some clever ideas and the typical couple of set pieces with some nice characters but it falls a long way short of the likes of Inside Out and Toy Story. The lead characters are generally hard to empathise with, despite it being targeted at fathers and sons, but there were plenty of tropes to initiate emotions in the closing scenes.

No doubt kids will enjoy it, particularly the older brother and his wacky ways, and the adults who played Dungeons & Dragons will recognise a few nods, but ultimately this falls short.

Adult score: 3/5
Child score: 5/5

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

Dolphin Kick (2019)

This is no Free Willy, it's not even Flipper, it is a poorly made imitation. Whilst the story is not necessarily awful, the production is appalling. The editing is disjointed, the soundtrack seems to be from a different film and the sequence of images just don't hang together. The acting is poor, the beefcake widowed father unnecessary and the bad guys are just textbook. The climactic sequence is just plain dreadful, including the denouement where the baddie finds redemption. Allegedly the dolphin finds its pod and yet there's no evidence of this and to make matters worse, the boat the kids are on runs out of fuel and yet in the next scene it powers off into the sunset - such an obviously poor piece of plotting that the child noticed it immediately.

Stick to Free Willy.

Adult score: 1/5

Child score: 4/5

The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box (2013)

A stellar cast in a ludicrous adventure that has all the makings of spawning a series of films which was thoroughly enjoyed by the child. There's kids, magic, gold, evil, and whilst it's all over the top it is an enjoyable romp with Sheen as a mysterious hero saving the day. This is all about the drama, no japes to amuse, but it works and when it finished the child wanted more.

Adult score: 3/5

Child score: 5/5