One of the benefits to dating a woman who has a 6-year-old daughter is that the odds that I will have seen the latest craptastic kid-movie is much higher than it would normally be. This is okay by me, not only because the two of us see a great many movies on our own as well, but because sometimes there are some movies that are actually halfway decent, or dare I say, good. Like Ratatouille.
This is not about Ratatouille.
Underdog does not have a special place in my heart. I do not remember the cartoon, I do not largely care about flying superhero dogs (this includes Krypto, by the way) because it seems like a waste to give superhuman powers to a creature that lacks opposable thumbs. I am however a fan of the Underdog theme song, so there's that.
Most of the youth-oriented movies I am "forced" to see aren't actually all that bad. I get to avoid the seriously deranged (Happy Feet) and the too-pathetic-even-for-a-kid (Bratz). But I did see Underdog last weekend, and I'm sad to say that it was not good. Even from a "dumb kids' movie" perspective.
First of all, what the hell are Underdog's powers? If you have a superhero movie, you have to explain this. Somehow. They explained where he got them (DNA splicing, and I'll ignore the fact that splicing in eagle DNA would not give a non-winged creature flight) but never what they really were. Strength, to be sure, and flight. And super-hearing and speed -- he flies around the world fast enough to catch a frisbee from the opposite direction. That's seriously fast.
But then, Underdog uses his skills in wildly incongruous ways. He seems to be invulnerable -- he can survive a fall from high-Earth orbit -- but 4 sticks of dynamite seem to scare him off. I am not a physicist, but I am pretty sure that if you can survive the extreme stresses of atmospheric reentry, a bundle of TNT isn't going to faze you. The writers routinely seemed to forget what their creation was capable of solely to make cheap (and incredibly lame) jokes.
This may seem like much ado about nothing. It IS a kid's movie, after all. But to me, the most serious violation of a science fiction or fantasy work is when said work violates its own rules. You have to play in the fake universe you create--failing to do so means not only have you made a poorly-scripted and plot-hole-ridden movie, but it's undeniably stupid to boot.
And what the hell happened to Jason Lee? I think I liked him better when he was just a Kevin Smith misanthrope.
2 comments:
The writer's have to make Underdog scared of TNT but able to withstand falling to the earth. Otherwise children will think TNT is cool and start experimenting with it, etc. After all not too many kids have the bankroll to fly on the SpaceShipTwo. However TNT, well, shucks, I can get at the local 7-11.
THAT... is not a bad point. Damn. It still violates my rule of adhering to your own universe's reality, but it could at least explain the stupidity.
On the other hand, they're just lazy if they can't think of better ways to write around that problem.
Maybe Underdog is just an idiot. Like Superman, if Superman kept forgetting that he was invulnerable and could fly.
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