Disney BFFs Turned Frenemies

Let me first start off by saying that I couldn't be happier that Netflix has finally reached a deal with Disney which will allow them to stream many of the Disney Studio's classic films, films I would much rather watch than the current crop of animated movies from Disney and other studios. "The Fox and the Hound" (1981) was always one of my favorite of Disney's older films and so I had to watch it again after having not seen it in years. I didn't realize the movie was based on a book and in reading up on the movie after watching it again, I realized the book was a little bit darker for all the characters concerned. Disney, of course, played it safe and created a light, family friendly version that appealed to kids and adults. Tod, the fox, is so named by the lonely Widow Tweed because, according to her, he's 'such a little toddler'. He's rambunctious and always getting into mischief as foxes like to do, I suppose. Copper, the hound dog, gets into trouble of his own, much to the annoyance of his owner's older hunting dog, Chief, who bellows 'you can't tell these young whippersnappers anything.' The pair (Tod and Copper) meet in the forest and soon become inseparable, frolicking and playing without a care in the world. Other woodland animals, such as Big Momma the owl can see that the two friends are 'such a funny pair' even though they can't see it themselves. After all these years, I always remembered the line where Tod says 'Copper, you're my very best friend' and Copper responds with 'And you're mine too, Tod.' Little do they know, their friendship will fall by the wayside because that's how nature dictates it should be. Copper is being groomed to be his owner Amos Slade's new hunting dog. He'll become 'a real killer' say the other animals, but naive Tod reassures them, 'oh no, not my friend Copper, he won't ever change.' Wise Big Momma tells him 'time has a way of changing things'. The dialogue in this film was very good for an animated film, which is probably why I am repeating so much of it here. As the animals grow up, they grow apart. Copper knows they can't be friends anymore. 'Those days are over,' he warns Tod. Tod's owner abandons him in the forest where he is left to fend for himself among the other forest animals. He doesn't do such a great job of this until meeting Vixie, a fellow fox. She's Tod's new friend, but his friendship with Copper is put to one final test before the film's conclusion. This film had an interesting attitude towards women, I thought. While Big Momma the owl is thought of by the other animals as wise and all-knowing, even singing her lessons to the other animals (in singer Pearl Bailey's voice) at times, Tod's owner Widow Tweed is called a 'meddling female' by the hunter Amos Slade. He also calls her 'female' and 'woman' as he blows his top at her and her mischievous fox. Tod himself, upon first meeting Vixie, calls her a 'silly, empty-headed female'. It's interesting that he thinks of her that way. Also, there is the fact that Tod's mother abandoned him at the start of the film and this made me think the character is supposed to resent females. He feels further abandoned when the female he does trust, Widow Tweed, leaves him on his own in the forest. Maybe the hunter feels the same way. He's alone, aside from the company of his hunting dogs and he likes to be by himself, so he resents the interference of his widowed neighbor. I enjoyed hearing the voices of the recognizable voice cast, most of them Disney Legends who had contributed voice work and in some cases, live-action work, to different films in the studio's library over the years. Mickey Rooney ("Pete's Dragon") played Older Tod and Kurt Russell (whose Disney legacy includes films too numerous to mention) played Older Copper. Paul Winchell ("Tigger" from the Winnie the Pooh films) voiced a wacky woodpecker doing his best to capture a green caterpillar for his breakfast in a small subplot and Winchell's Winnie the Pooh costar John Fiedler ("Piglet") who died a day after Winchell in 2005, voiced a timid porcupine who took Tod in during his rainy first night in the forest alone. Sandy Duncan (the live-action studio film "Million Dollar Duck") voiced Vixie and John McIntire (seen in the live-action "Herbie Rides Again") voiced an angry badger who turned Tod away before the porcupine came to the rescue. And lastly, Pat Buttram (heard in everything from "The Aristocats" to "Robin Hood" to "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?") played Chief, the older hunting dog who resents young Copper, the new dog in town. This film, always one of my favorite Disney classics, was a lot of fun to revisit. Luckily, there are more Disney classics in the Netflix queue waiting for me to rediscover them.

Touched By A 'Christmas Angel'

"I'm not an angel." Della Reese, arguably one of TV's most famous angels from her nine-year stint on one of my favorite TV shows, "Touched By An Angel", barks this at a curious little girl several times in what is certainly not the first and probably not the last movie called "Christmas Angel" (2012). The little girl lives with her single and happy that way mother (Teri Polo, from the "Meet the Parents" films) across the street from a decrepit house with boarded up windows and a strange glow coming from behind the boards. Reese's character, a grumpy former jazz diva, a role I've seen her play on episodes of TV's "Picket Fences" and "That's So Raven" (two more favorite shows of mine), lives inside the otherwise uninhabited eyesore. The young girl, Olivia, convinces her friend and classmates to place wishes in a self-created box outside of the house and those wishes will come true in time for Christmas. Her own personal Christmas wish is that her mother will get a husband. Her fiercely independent, sports-loving mom doesn't really show any interest in finding anyone, until a doctor (Kevin Sorbo, formerly TV's Hercules) shows up. He owns the house with the strange glow, the one that appears to be granting wishes. Olivia's friend, Lucas, tries to plead Dr. Nathan's case, saying "he's a doctor, I thought girls liked doctors", but Olivia sets her sights on other men for her mom until realizing Nathan just may be the one. Nathan comes with his own baggage, past and present, that prevents him from truly wooing Olivia's mom, which feeds Olivia's own mistrust of the man. The movie was less than two hours long, but I thought it crammed a lot of small subplots and characters into that time and most of them didn't get resolved or if they did, it was all too quickly before the credits rolled.  Issues like alcoholism, throat cancer, kidney transplants and a mother-daughter reunion took place, but most of these themes seemed unnecessary to me when compared with the larger story of the mysterious house and the wishes that were being granted. I won't give anything away by saying which specific characters were affected by these issues. The actress who played Olivia, Izabela Vidovic, gave a great performance, I thought, and I usually don't like the performances of child actors, especially in sentimental Christmas movies like this one. Della Reese got to sing a little bit in this movie, which is something I always enjoyed when she did it on "Touched By An Angel." This was a good movie and one that apparently aired on the same Christian TV network as "The Heart of Christmas" (2011), which I watched last week. God is mentioned in this movie several times, including by Reese, which coupled with the angel talk made me have major "Touched By An Angel" deja vu. Several characters also hold hands and say grace before eating and Olivia prays before drifting off to sleep. It doesn't get any more wholesome and family friendly than that.

Missing

Nathan (Taylor Lautner, the "Twilight" movies) is a typical teenager and the star of 2011's "Abduction." He lays back on the hood of the car while his friend cruises down the street a la something out of "The Dukes of Hazzard", attends out of control parties and wakes up shirtless and drunk on the lawn the next morning, and finds himself dealing with a strict father and more sympathetic mother. His father (Jason Isaacs, "Nine Lives") spars several rounds with Nathan in his hungover state to teach him discipline. It is said that Nathan has rage issues and the boxing with his father and wrestling at school help him to deal with those issues and so do sessions with a caring therapist (Sigourney Weaver, "Aliens"). When assigned to do a 10 page research paper (who didn't love those in school?) about missing people with his pretty female neighbor (Lily Collins, "Mirror, Mirror"), he finds a picture of a boy that looks like himself on a missing kids website. The missing kids website is a cover for a group of Serbian criminals dealing in stolen government secrets. When agents come to the house looking for encrypted documents containing these secrets, Nathan's "mother" (Maria Bello, "A History of Violence") and "father" are killed. His therapist helps him to get away from the criminals even though he is also being trailed by the head of the CIA (Alfred Molina, "Spiderman 2"), who states "the currency of this war is information" (the documents Nathan has that the criminals want). When Nathan comes face to face with Koslow (Michael Nyqvist, an actor I've never heard of before), the head of the criminal group, the man threatens to kill everyone from Nathan's boring teachers to all his Facebook friends to get what he wants. This is also the same man who, when meeting Nathan at a Pirates game to talk about the documents, says "I don't understand this game at all, but I like popcorn" as he munches away. I won't give away any more of the plot or the ending. It's somewhat complicated, but not terribly so, however, I don't want to reveal anything else to ruin anything. I liked how Nathan's exasperated father in one scene mumbled the word "teenagers" as so many parents have done before him, but the CIA head does the same thing and uses the word "kids". Clearly, Nathan is a teenager, but it's interesting that he is referred to as a kid and in a movie of this sort you do expect someone older to be the leading actor (someone like Bruce Willis maybe or more recently, Liam Neeson). When Nathan's friend Karen goes to kiss him, she remarks "and no braces, either" which also references to the "kids vs teenagers" theme. Most kids would have braces whereas a teenager may not anymore. She happened to be referring to an encounter they had when they were younger. I enjoyed this movie. What started out as a "face-on-the-milk-carton" movie turned into a nice edge-of-your-seat thriller where no one was who they seemed. I'm sure "Twilight" fans will appreciate the fact that Taylor Lautner has a shirtless scene in the film. Oh yeah and he cries in one scene, tears running down his face as he says "I was dreaming about [my parents]", the same parents who were just bumped off. Aww, buff and sensitive, what a combination.

A Close to Home Christmas Story

The 2011 TV movie "The Heart of Christmas" isn't just any sickly sweet Christmas movie like the ones found on Hallmark and ABC Family every December. It is sweet at times, but also very sad, and it's based on a true story. It's based on the true story of a little boy who lived not far from me in Washington, Illinois. Dax Locke, a cancer patient, spends month after month in the hospital going through chemotherapy and radiation. His overwhelmed mother, Julie, finds support from other mothers whose children are also struggling with the big "C." She finds even more support from St. Jude's Children's Hospital, which takes care of her son as he fights the disease. Her neighbors also come to the rescue helping to speed Christmas up a couple of months early because Julie doesn't think Dax will live to see his second Christmas. The only real stars of the movie are Candace Cameron Bure ("Full House"), still as beautiful as ever, as an overworked wife and mom who finds herself touched by Dax's story and tells Julie this during a vigil; and George Newbern ("Father of the Bride") as a sympathetic doctor, or as he refers to himself, "a tone-deaf Jewish doctor" during a round of Christmas carols outside of the family's home. A less caring doctor steps in to help the family through the most serious parts of their ordeal and Julie's mom (the actress playing her looks to be nearly the same age or only a few years older than Julie herself) is there to offer love and support at those difficult times. Matthew West, the singer of the film's theme song (also called "The Heart of Christmas") also has a small role as one of the neighbors who helps decorate the Locke's house for Christmas in late October. The movie is very sad, but inspirational as well. It gives hope and teaches a great lesson, which is 'cherish the moment'. I especially enjoyed it because I know people that know Julie Locke and are familiar with the Locke's story. It definitely hit close to home.