Cynical Cinema

Alliance Films is releasing Blue Elephant on November 4th. The cover of the DVD makes it look cutesy and kiddy, the trailers made it look cutesy and kiddy, and it’s produced by the Jim Henson Company. And it’s cutesy and kiddy. At first. There is a baby blue elephant, born into the jungles of Siam, I guess in the years when Thailand was still known as “Siam”. Their country is being invaded by Burma, I guess in the days when Myanmar was still known as “Burma”. The main reason, it seems, to place this movie in such a historical context, is so that there is a reason to have elephants participating in warfare. The Thai (or, Siamese) people and elephants are good and noble and strong and brave, the Burmese people and elephants are treacherous, vile, despicable and cartoon evil.

But we don’t see this at the beginning. At the beginning, the emphasis is on CUTE. Cute little elephants with big ol’ eyes and smiling faces, cute little birds who carry messages from the king and wear ancient oriental straw hats, and cute little set pieces where elephants fall into mud and frogs get blown up to be used as beachballs. There are also some nondescript green creatures who live in a pond, which at first I though were frogs until the actual frogs showed up. I guess they are not really frogs. But boy, are they ever cute, whatever they are. The little messenger bird ought to be familiar to many audiences, he seems to have showed up in some shorts that come on before kids’ movies in theatres (specifically the Port Elmsley drive-in, I’ve noticed). The elephants have cute Asian names, which leads me to believe that this was in fact an Asian movie. And it is. This is actually a movie made in Thailand, where it is called Khan Kluay.

Khan Kluay is the name of the elephant in the film, the only thing (other than the setting itself) that carried over from the Thai version of the movie. The English voices are done by English actors, among them Carl Reiner, Martin Short, and Miranda Cosgrove. The big eyes and the cute characters are, at first, well…cute. After a while though, it becomes a little tiresome, as this little elephant gets separated from his herd and wanders alone through the jungle of Siam, getting into one cute adventure after another. (Including a bizarre confrontation with a pack of wolves who literally vibrate.) Soon though, the cute stuff begins to disappear, as Khan Kluay ends up in a Siamese village, rescued by a friendly female elephant and some kindly old Siamese people. The elephants are still cute, but the humans (especially the human babies) are UGLY.

While in this village, Khan trains to become one of the battle elephants of the Siamese army. His father, a mythical figure that Khan has never known, is the most famous and fearsome of the Siamese war elephants, and Khan wants to live up to the legacy of the father he has never known. This leads to a very long training montage, which appears to be the sort of tutelage Pai Mei provided in Kill Bill Vol. 2, and leads to something resembling an NFL scouting combine. Only for elephants. Throughout this story, the prince, and then king, of Siam appears to spout new-age type wisdom and spin morals in vaguely creepy speeches. Were he a character in an American movie, he would have a pony tail and quote Buddha and Confucious, and eat alfalfa and drink green tea smoothies. And he would be SO wise and yet still kick ass in battles. In short, he would be Steven Seagal. See? Vaguely creepy.

The cuteness disappears almost entirely toward the end of the movie as young Khan becomes the leader of the Siamese army, the king’s own elephant, and he will be tested in battle against the Black Elephant, the leader of the Burmese army. The Black Elephant is the embodiment of evil, in elephant form. His epic clashes with Khan’s father have become the stuff of legend, and Khan will of course face this evil beast down in the final showdown and exact some revenge. This whole father, war, revenge thing is pretty standard in Thai movies. In fact, so are elephants - think The Protector. Which means that The Blue Elephant follows the story arc we all expect.

Well, it follows the arc we all expect when it actually gets going. It certainly didn’t follow the arc I expected when I looked at the cover of the DVD. The cute stuff is in there, but it leads to something far more entertaining and interesting. It’s predictable, it’s standard fare, but rarely is stuff like this done for children, and that makes The Blue Elephant pretty cool.

The first actor we see in The Spiderwick Chronicles (out June 17th from Paramount Home Entertainment) is David Stratharin. He is writing a book about creatures in our midst, beings that exist among us always, that we can’t see because they choose to remain hidden. Through his book, we catch glimpses of drawings of these creatures, but we don’t see enough of them to know what’s coming. Strathairn, you see, is Arthur Spiderwick, the man who discovered this realm existing in tandem with our own. And he recorded all the secrets of this realm in a giant book, the Spiderwick Chronicles. We learn fairly fast that this book was never meant to be read by anyone, ever, because reading it could bring about the end of the world as we know it. Of course, someone is clearly going to come by and read it anyway.

That someone is Freddie Highmore (Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), who actually appears as twins in the film. The two have very distinct personalities, and Highmore does an excellent job making sure that we always know which twin is which. Simon is a bookish, nerdy pacifist. His twin brother Jared, however, is the trouble-maker. The bad apple. The one kid the family doesn’t understand. Right away, we know Jared will be the star of the movie, because it’s always that kid who ends up being the star. The bookish intellectual is nowhere near as interesting as the angry rebel, we suppose. Jared’s anger seems to stem from several sources, like an absentee father, a sudden move to a new town and a new house. It must be summer, because the kids don’t have a new school or anything, and are allowed to roam about the giant house alone while their mom’s off at work.

Pretty soon, of course, Jared finds this book. And he opens it and reads it and unwittingly brings forces of evil down on his house and his family. His older sister is a fencer, which comes in handy when she has to slash up some goblins. His mother is never home during the film, so she is going to be in for a big surprise when she gets there. Simon rarely leaves the house, and when he discovers this world of goblins and evil-doers that exists right outside the door, he sets his brain to work devising defenses against the bad creatures. And Jared hits things, yells at his mom, hates the world and fights with his siblings, even in the middle of the most dire circumstances. Which becomes kind of annoying. Jared, through a lot of this movie, despite being the hero, is not very likeable. Highmore does a terrific job with the character, but he’s written in such a cliche’d “where’s may father? I HATE you” sort of way that it’s a little distracting.

Also irritating is the fact that the creatures have names we have already heard. We already know about goblins. We’ve heard of elves and griffins. We may well be familiar with those things. So why include things like that, and then make up three or four creatures of your own? I think the answer to that may well lie within the books. My youngest step-son tells me that the books are FAR different. I think what he means (if I understand correctly) is that the movie leaves out a lot of what is in the books in terms of detail. But then, what kids’ movie doesn’t? Eragon, Chronicles of Narnia, even How To Eat Fried Worms. They are all forced to skip large chunks of the story because of time constraints, and the challenge is keeping the story intact and understandable while trimming it to that hour-and-a-half running time.

And for the most part, the director, Mark Waters, does a good job of this. Not only does he get a high-calibre performance out of Freddie Highmore, he manages to craft a terrific alternate universe with charming and interesting characters, and he keeps the pace moving along briskly. The only time the movie slows down is when Jared has one of his distracting temper outbursts. It’s nice to see David Strathairn in a kids movie like this, his presence adds a certain amount of credibility to the whole proceeding. Also cool is the presence of Martin Short and Seth Rogen as the voices of two of the friendly creatures, and the very brief but very bizarre cameo from Nick Nolte. The Spiderwick Chronicles is one of the better movies aimed at kids around ten years old. It’s no classic, but it’s above-average. And when it comes to kids’ movies these days, that is certainly good enough.