TheRetroCritic

Some time before the Beethoven movies took the whole slobbering dog movie concept to mindless levels while, at the same time, making an immortal musical icon synonymous with drool, we got both K-9 and Turner & Hooch  the same year. Produced by Disney, the 1989 film starred Tom Hanks as a neat police investigator stuck with taking care of rambunctious dog Hooch after its owner is suddenly murdered. Turner (Hanks) sets off on a search for the culprits but, first, he has to turn his life upside-down looking after his new slobbering pet. Of course, this leads to several scenes in which the dog destroys every inch of Turner's house much to the cop's horror. Hanks is reliably good as Turner and he elevates a role that, in lesser hands, could have easily fallen flat. Hooch (real name Beasley) is every bit as destructive and messy as you'd expect but the titular characters still bond and the movie makes that relationship convincing. In fact, we spend probably a bit too mu

One Disney film I always regretted not seeing at the cinema back when it was released in 2002 was Treasure Planet , a steampunk animated take on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Treasure Island story with added rocket-powered surf boards, robots and aliens. The whole thing sounded like a fun, creative take on a familiar pirate story but that was apparently not good enough to drag audiences, including me, into theatres: the film was a box-office bomb losing almost $40M altogether. Perhaps it simply came out at the wrong time, only months after Studio Ghibli delivered their latest masterpiece Spirited Away and so soon after Disney's recent hit Lilo & Stitch , released that same year. Looking back, the film certainly has a lot going for it so it's a shame that it did as poorly as it did, especially since the company would then steer clear of sci-fi for a while and focus on safer, lesser material while Pixar thrived with hit after hit. Animation-wise, Treasure Plane

As Disney puts the final touches on its upcoming remake of Pete's Dragon , it's about time I look back at a film I really enjoyed as a kid but did not get the chance to revisit... until now. This is certainly one of Disney's more dated live-action films: it's a pretty stagy Mary Poppins -style musical with an extremely earnest main character and most of the others hamming it up big time. It's also one of the Mouse House's most adorable movies ever and Elliott the dragon (animated by Don Bluth) is quite simply a joy from start to finish and even if the rest of the film is not your cup of tea it's likely you'll still fall in love with this endearing animated creation. I should point out it was ambitious of Disney to mix live-action and animation back in 1977 and, while it doesn't always merge that well, Elliott is so likeable that it doesn't matter how smooth that mix is plus younger viewers won't care, I sure didn't. By essentially

I talk a bit about Disney's new live-action sequel Alice Through The Looking Glass .

In this 66th episode of  The Big Rewind , we review The Jungle Book & The Huntsman: Winter's War , talk about Prince, superhero movie sequels and Studio Ghibli. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE EPISODE Email us here if you have any questions, requests or contributions:  bigrewindpodcast@gmail.com Or simply comment below :) Oh and you can also find us on  iTunes ,  Stitcher ,  Soundcloud  and  Player FM  where you can subscribe to the podcast and download every episode thusfar! @TheRetroCritic #TheBigRewind retrocriticblog.blogspot.com thebigrewind.blogspot.com youtube.com/TheRetroCritic youtube.com/Cablogula

A mere week after the release of The Jungle Book , we are given yet another live-action Disney movie to swallow, The Huntsman: Winter's War being the follow-up to Snow White & The Huntsman , a film which received mixed reviews from critics and audiences upon its release. The marketing for this sort-of sequel was nothing short of puzzling with trailers and posters not exactly clarifying whether this was meant to be a straight-up sequel, a prequel or just a mostly unrelated spin-off. With the likes of Charlize Theron and Chris Hemsworth returning (Nick Frost also) but no-one else, this looked set to be a wholly unnecessary, confusing mess so it's no wonder Jungle Book, as bland as that remake may be, is currently trashing the film at the box-office. As it turns out, The Huntsman takes place both before the first film and after with Snow White getting a mention but no screen time. Theron's witch now has a sister (played by Emily Blunt) who becomes The Ice Queen follo

I talk a little about The Huntsman: Winter's War in yet another Disney-centric Vlog. The iceman cometh!

I talk at length about Disney's new version of The Jungle Book .

I check out Super Hunchback on the original Game Boy.

Disney continues its merciless rampage of adapting every single one of its classic animated films into live-action remakes and, this time, it's The Jungle Book 's turn. Jon Favreau directs an all-star cast of voice actors and a young newcomer in what promises to be a CGI visual treat. Indeed, pretty much everything in this movie is CGI from the talking animals to the jungle itself so if it's "realism" you're looking for, you might want to go for the 1994 live-action retelling instead. The film follows certain key plot points from the original 1967 animation but it definitely takes a lot of liberties with both the story and its characters. Mowgli (Neel Sethi) willingly walks away from his wolf pack before wondering why he has to leave and later comes back to fight Shere Khan which leads to a very different ending. Speaking of which, the unnerving build-up to Shere Khan (voiced by Idris Elba) is now gone and we see the villainous tiger pretty much straight-

As Disney once again attempts a live-action version of its own 1967 masterpiece based on Rudyard Kipling's classic story, I take a look back at the original The Jungle Book . Growing up, this was one of my favourite old Disney films along with Alice In Wonderland and Robin Hood and, to this day, it remains one of the best. Right off the bat, the opening titles show off beautiful drawn depictions of the titular jungle and an excellent, timeless score. What follows is the tale of Mowgli, a human child raised by wolves who is led by panther Bagheera (voiced by Sebastian Cabot) towards the human village so he can be protected from the evil tiger Shere Khan, who has returned to the jungle and who famously hates Man. Along the way, a reluctant Mowgli shows he can't really look after himself as a run-in with hypnotist snake Kaa (Sterling Holloway) almost ends very badly for the "man-cub" and he is later kidnapped by monkeys. He meets friendly, lazy bear Baloo who tak

When Pixar announced Inside Out , a film mostly taking place inside a kid's head, it sounded insane but promising in that it's something that hadn't been done before and it had the potential to be the animation studio's most affecting film since Up . The film's big concept is explained to us little by little as we see young Riley's early years develop from a single emotion, Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), to several including Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling). When Riley and her parents move to San Francisco, this jumbles up her emotions to the point where Joy and Sadness find themselves out of the loop completely. The film follows the latter two as they desperately try to get back into Riley's head through any means possible. This is arguably the most surreal Pixar adventure since Monsters Inc. , which was also directed by Pete Docter, and the gimmicky concept once again doesn't distract from

In some extra audio from  episode 59 of  The Big Rewind  podcast , Jamie and I wonder about Disney's recent addiction to live-action cartoon adaptations.

If the success of Guardians Of The Galaxy confirmed one thing it was that Marvel could, indeed, get away with making the most out-there, obscure comic book movie adaptations and turn them into gold. The plan was certainly to do that with Ant-Man but the departure of director Edgar Wright last year seemed to suggest that this was a troubled production doomed to not make Avengers -style zillions. The horror! And so, while Ant-Man certainly didn't wow audiences and critics quite as much as some of the (literally) bigger superhero movies, it still did a good job and put ants (and wasps) on the map! Paul Rudd, known mostly for his reliably goofy work in Judd Apatow-led comedies, turns out to be a solid choice to be the Ant-Man despite the fact that one feels the man, who gives a restrained performance here, was holding back from cracking all sorts of inappropriate jokes on set during the course of the movie. It should make for some inspired bloopers on the Blu-Ray, for

I review Disney's latest George Clooney-starring flopbuster Tomorrowland .

Disney's new expensive venture Tomorrowland , which is based on their very own theme park attraction, was all set to become a brand new Pirates Of The Caribbean money machine with early word-of-mouth being positive and released stills looking pretty good. Sadly, the film flopped and that even ended up costing us Tron 3 . Add to that critics not exactly raving about it after the film's international release and you've got yourself another big disappointment for the Mouse House. You'd think that spending $200M on the likes of The Lone Ranger and John Carter would have taught the company some restraint but no. Once again, here we have a relatively enjoyable kids' movie with fab visuals but not much else. The idea of a parallel dimension with some perfect futuristic utopia that may not be all that perfect after all was a good one and the ambition director Brad Bird brings to the table is commendable. You can tell there was a genuine attempt here to take the far

Another Disney animated classic gets the live-action treatment as, surprisingly soon after Into The Woods , we get another interpretation of Cinderella . This time, the Mouse House is taking a more traditional approach by telling the story without updating it too much or adding too many surprises. Unlike last year's Maleficent which felt the need to turn one of the studio's most iconic and frightening villains into a misunderstood hero (urgh...), this Cinderella is basically a straight-up retelling. Minus the talking mice, though they do sort of talk throughout. While this means very little in the way of new elements to talk about, it's also somewhat refreshing to see a classic fairytale told without any forced irony or lame attempts at modernising a story as old as time itself. This is the Cinderella tale at its most earnest and, admittedly, this makes parts of it pretty darn corny and predictable. The opening 5 minutes where Ella's youth is so crazily happy all

There's biopics and then there's sort-of-biopics which don't exactly go through a person's entire life's work but which instead focus on one specific, iconic event. Think Capote , Hitchcock or, more recently, Saving Mr. Banks : a look at how Walt Disney obtained the rights to Mary Poppins from the story's writer P. L. Travers. This one isn't even really a making-of movie as we see none of the filming for Mary Poppins or (wisely) meet any weird Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke lookalikes. Saving Mr. Banks limits itself to a few recording sessions with Travers (Emma Thompson) and The Sherman Brothers, who came up with all of the film's catchy songs, intercut with flashbacks depicting some of the writer's early life and conversations she had with Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) as well as Paul Giamatti's chatty driver. Finding out why Travers resisted Disney's offers to buy the movie rights to Poppins for so long and why Disney was this insistent

With all the many movie versions of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" out there, it's rather difficult to pick one to talk about but, growing up, one of the most stand-out versions for me personally had to be Mickey's Christmas Carol , a 1983 Disney short feature with, obviously, Scrooge McDuck (voiced by Alan Young) taking on the role of the iconic grump Ebeneezer Scrooge. Of course, many other classic Disney characters portray key roles from the story: Mickey is Bob Cratchit, Goofy is Jacob Marley, you've got Donald Duck as Scrooge's nephew, Daisy Duck as Scrooge's old flame (which is weird when you think about it), Minnie Mouse as Cratchit's wife, Jiminy Cricket as one of the ghosts, even Chip and Dale show up for a cameo. Pete pops up near the end as the ghost of Christmas future, mostly to terrify younger viewers. As a kid, that last part, Scrooge falling down a fiery pit inside his own grave as a hooded Pete laughs his butt off, nearl

What's this?! A movie that's both perfect for Christmas AND Halloween, not to mention a treat for Burtonites and Oingo Boingo aficionados? What. Is. This? It's The Nightmare Before Christmas , of course. Henry Selick's stop-motion Disney classic based on the gothic surrealism of Tim Burton who contributed the story and the characters while Danny Elfman not only took on the music and the lyrics but voiced the Pumpkin King himself, Jack Skellington, during the songs with Chris Sarandon on voicing duties the rest of the time. The film quickly became a Christmas and Halloween tradition since its plot cleverly merged both holidays in a unique way without coming off as overly gimmicky. After a thrilling opening number, "This Is Halloween", which introduces us to Halloweentown and its spooky inhabitants (vampires, witches, you name it), we finally meet Skellington, the bony showman who has been making the best out of every single Halloween, wowing the to