The Family Filmgoer: Kid-focused reviews of ‘Zoolander 2,’ ‘Kung Fu Panda 3’ and more
"Kung Fu Panda 3." (Dreamworks)
Ben Stiller, left, as Derek Zoolander and Owen Wilson as Hansel in a scene from "Zoolander 2."
6 and older:
”Kung Fu Panda 3″ (PG): Po (voiced by Jack Black), that cheery kung-fu-kicking panda, continues his search for his family and his true calling in this third animated adventure. It should entrance kids 6 and older, with eventful twists and turns, much humor and gorgeously rendered tributes to Chinese landscapes, art and calligraphy. The wise master, the red panda Shifu, tells Po to stop resting on his laurels and be a martial arts teacher to his Furious Five compadres – Tigress, Monkey, Mantis, Viper and Crane – with comically bad results. Po also meets his long-lost father, Li, which sets up a mild rivalry between Li and Po’s adoptive dad, the goose Mr. Ping. Li takes Po to see his ancestral panda village, but the reunion is interrupted with word that an evil spirit, Kai, has risen from the dead, intent on absorbing all the energy, or chi, within Po, his fellow fighters and pandas. Po must train the pandas to fight Kai and his zombielike jade warriors. (95 minutes)
THE BOTTOM LINE: The villain Kai looks like a giant yak, with huge horns. He could be quite scary to younger kids, especially in 3-D. His minions, as noted, are zombielike, and he can freeze opponents into stony stillness. The fights, even in animation, involve sharp objects being hurled amid the kicks and punches. Children with snake phobia might recoil at the sight of Viper and a cobra.
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PG-13:
”Zoolander 2″: Teens who keep up with pop culture, fashion and celebrity gossip – but who don’t miss the irony of their attractions – may find this sequel to Ben Stiller’s 2001 comedy a minor hoot. However, they may need to catch the original film, if they haven’t already, to help them follow this one’s tortuous plot. Fifteen years after we left him, former male supermodel and notorious dim bulb Derek Zoolander (Stiller) has been living in seclusion following the collapse of his “Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good.” The disaster killed his wife, made him a pariah and placed their young son with social services. Zoolander’s best pal and fellow out-of-fashion model Hansel (Owen Wilson) lives with an orgy group and practices yoga. When the world’s most powerful fashionista, Alexanya Atoz (Kristen Wiig), invites the pair to an event in Rome, they assume their trademark pouts and go. When in Rome, they learn that it could all be a trap and mayhem ensues. Movie spoofs and cameos by the likes of Justin Bieber, Benedict Cumberbatch and Anna Wintour add to the worship-and/or-satire vibe. The chuckles are frequent, but the main joke gets old. (102 minutes)
THE BOTTOM LINE: There’s a visual sexual innuendo and verbal sexual slang, but a lot of it may go over the heads of middle-schoolers, because it’s so euphemistic and off-the-wall. The dialogue includes mild-to-midrange profanity. The occasional lethal violence is bloodless and played for laughs.
”Hail, Caesar!”: Subtler references to the 1950s and the Red Scare may be lost on teen audiences watching this newest oddball confection from filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen. Even so, true-blue teen cinema buffs are bound to enjoy the brothers’ dead-on spoof of old Hollywood, when all-powerful studios controlled actors’ private as well as public lives. The film is plenty droll without all the subtext, but a quick online dip into the early 1950s in America would add to teens’ enjoyment. At the center of the tale is Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), an executive with Capitol Pictures whose main job is to put out scandals before they ignite. A devout man who goes to confession every day, Eddie must try to make proper the unwed pregnancy of a street-smart synchronized-swimming star. He must soothe the nerves of a director forced to use a twangy cowboy actor in a posh British drama. And most urgent, he must track down Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), who has been kidnapped right off the set of the biblical epic “Hail, Caesar!,” in which he’s the lead. Is the movie-musical star Burt Gurney involved? Will the dimwitted Whitlock’s captors brainwash him? It’s all fun. (106 minutes)
THE BOTTOM LINE: The dialogue includes almost no profanity, but there is a mild homophobic slur. Characters smoke lots of cigarettes.
”Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”: Swords pierce zombie ribs and muskets blow up zombie skulls with relatively little graphic blood and gore in this riotous and surprisingly smart spoof. Teens familiar with Jane Austen’s classic or the 2009 novel “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” by Seth Grahame-Smith, on which the movie is based, will have fun with this deft adaptation. Some middle-schoolers may, however, find the zombie and horror aspect too gross. Happily, the movie doesn’t nod or wink, but rather hews to the tone, wit and language of Austen’s plot and characters – the spirited Bennet girls; their nattering mother; their ironical father; the arrogant Mr. Darcy, sweet-natured Mr. Bingley, conniving Mr. Wickham, etc. It’s just that in this version, England has been overrun by the undead, making ordinary life impossible. Strong-willed Elizabeth Bennet (Lily James) and her sisters studied the deadly martial arts in China as their father wanted them adept at fighting zombies. The ball where Elizabeth first meets Darcy (Sam Riley) is interrupted by a zombie onslaught, during which each admires the other’s fighting skills. Yes, it’s ridiculous, but it works, and with a zesty feminist lilt, too. (108 minutes)
THE BOTTOM LINE: The battles with zombies, while not gory in an R-rated way, give a strong sense – often with crunchy sound effects – of brains being eaten and of zombies, their faces half decomposed, blown away or run through. The Bennet girls must kill former-friends-turned-zombies. There is comical, slightly bawdy sexual innuendo.
”Race”: As the deliberately ambiguous title implies, the story of Jesse Owens is not just about breaking world records, although the track and field star did plenty of that. It’s about race in 1930s America and Nazi Germany. Owens, who’s played with honesty and intensity by Stephan James, was a hugely talented African-American high school athlete from Ohio in the early 1930s. He went on to run for a still-segregated Ohio State University with the support of the school’s track coach, Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis). Able to tune out racist slurs and slights, Owens broke world records on his college team and in spectacular fashion at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. That greatly displeased Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, who wanted their “master race” to get all the gold. Teens may be inspired to do a little research afterwards, since the film hints that American Olympic official Avery Brundage (Jeremy Irons) didn’t speak up when Goebbels slighted Jewish athletes and tried to slight Owens. The portrayal of German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl as amorally ambitious while shooting her documentary about the ’36 Olympics might also pique teen interest. (134 minutes)
THE BOTTOM LINE: Harsh racial epithets, including the n-word, are shouted at Owens. In Berlin, the film includes street scenes of German police dragging Jews out of their homes and forcing them into trucks. Early in the film there is discussion about Owens and Ruth Soloman, the woman who became his wife, having a daughter out of wedlock.
”Risen”: Teen believers and teen skeptics alike can get into this unpretentious and relatively unpreachy biblical epic, told from the point of view of an unbelieving Roman military tribune stationed in the Holy Land at the time of the crucifixion. A handsomely rendered Judea of two millennia ago, literate writing and subtle acting all make “Risen” work as a sort of spiritual mystery. Although the film’s point of view is never in doubt, it lets historic and spiritual events unfold and never becomes an airless sermon. Joseph Fiennes plays Clavius, the tribune. Pontius Pilate (Peter Firth), the Roman emperor’s man in charge of Judea, faces unrest in the streets, made worse, he feels, by the vocal followers of the supposed Jewish messiah, Yeshua (Cliff Curtis), aka Jesus, who has just been crucified. Rumors of Yeshua’s resurrection and the mystery of his missing body make Pilate nervous. He sends Clavius in search of Yeshua’s body to disprove the resurrection story. Instead, Clavius finds mysteries and possibly miracles. (107 minutes)
THE BOTTOM LINE: Scenes of the crucifixion are grim and intense, with soldiers adding lethal spear wounds to Yeshua, but the scenes do not get overly graphic in terms of wounds or blood. Battlefield scenes are slightly more up-close and gory but still not in R territory. The film shows pits full of the bones of the executed. After the crucifixion, soldiers dig up decomposing bodies in search of Yeshua to prove that the resurrection did not happen.
