Here I go again

A family-friendly S[as in Savoy, or suburban]3

The end-of-vacation multiple-film day debuted two Augusts ago, when my son-in-law and I caught the comically awful Snakes on a Plane early and my daughter (days after motherhood) saw the poignantly comic Little Miss Sunshine in the afternoon. This time around, we started with all four of us (including granddaughter Veronica), then sent Mom home with the kid so that the boys could watch one, then sent Dad home with the kid for the father-daughter-fake granddaughter (long story) finale. And if there was no LMS on the itinerary, there was at least a gloriously bad flick--much more fun-bad than SOAP--on the docket.

Surf's Up

Savoy

Yeah, OK: animated penguins on surfboards (or, lacking the real thing, ice floes). Veronica loved it, her parents liked it a lot, and Grampus was generally amused (and gratified when he finally figured out, near the end, that that was Jeff Bridges's voice he'd been puzzling over for the past hour.)

Space Chimps

Savoy

Who the hell is Neil Genzlinger and why does he get the opportunity to declare, in The Paper of Record, a piece of ape poo like this "hilarious"? Civilians on the Times website should get his paycheck: "Both my kids hated it. Not funny, they said. I agree"; "The critics who love this movie might be suffering from a case of the low-setting bar"; "Stereotypical 'kid's movie' . . . the visual equivalent of Doritos and Diet Coke." I confess I laughed a few times--"I picked the wrong week to quit eating bananas" was a nice nod to the grown-ups, though of course it whooshed over the heads of the primary audience--but yeesh, mostly borrrr-ring. To quote another Times poster, you, Mr. Genzlinger, "have lost all credibility for every review hereafter."

Mamma Mia!

Savoy

Oh, golly! Here, in contrast, the Times (in the person of one of their front line, A. O. Scott) got it just right: it's a pretty awful flick, but if you're concerned about that, you are so missing the point. I mean, for god's sake, the end-credits musical numbers alone provide your recommended annual allowance of pure helium fun. My only complaint is that they should have bagged the 25% or so of the film that features spoken dialogue; it drags painfully (not that "drag" is necessarily a bad thing in an Abbanian context), and it would have been better just to go whole-hog opera. Of course, that would have meant scraping the barrel ever harder for a couple more songs, and they'd already exhausted everything even marginally listenable, but still: art requires sacrifice!