Wake Up, Aurora!

I was a bit thrown at first, but it should be noted that Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar is not a MILF porn. It is, however, another nature documentary. I thought I was done with all of these, but I guess I was wrong. This one has more of an actual storyline than most of the other ones I’ve watched, but it’s still basically about….nature. That said, I’ve previously mentioned that these nature documentaries have a tendency to being a “realness” to a lot of Disney’s animated movies. While Charlie was a cougar helplessly trying to make it in the human world, we could look at The Jungle Book and compare Charlie to Mowgli, who was a human helplessly trying to make it in the jungle world. Everyone always eventually ends up where they belong.

Thoughts:

• You could tell that much of the cougar/human interaction was filmed separately, thus making scenes just look sorta cheesy. But this really wasn’t meant to be a super serious Discovery Channel special, so I guess it’s ok.

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Pretty recently before watching In Search of the Castaways, I happened to see Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. (Yes, I seriously paid money to go and see that. Let’s not get into it.) Upon watching Castaways, I couldn’t help but notice how incredibly similar the overall premises of both films were. Both include a group of people going on an adventure for pretty much no reason, both have a “note” sent from a long lost parent, both had two younger characters that end up hooking up at the end, and both have an older character that pretty much has no idea what’s going on the whole time. Well it makes perfect sense, since both of these movies were based on novels by Jules Verne. But at least with Journey 2, we got a little of that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson pec poppin’ fun, whereas Castaways was just plain boring. Seriously, not even Hayley Mills could save this thing.

Thoughts:

• Hayley Mills is starting to get really pretty. Good for her!

Finally! A movie that’s not a package film! If only I had better things to say about it, though. So Dear to My Heart is the story of a little boy named Jeremiah from Indiana in the early 1900s, who dreams of owning a champion race horse. When his family’s sheep gives birth to a black lamb (which he names Danny), he decides instead to do his darndest to make him into a County Fair winner. Jeremiah’s granny won’t let him pursue this (at first), and the little boy has some conflict with the townspeople as  Danny proves himself to be quite accident prone. But in the end, all is well. Along the way, there are some animated sequences where an old owl gives some encouragement and advice to Jeremiah and Danny. These parts feel very forced, as if Disney was entirely too convinced that their audience loved when they mixed animation with live action, and would shimmy it in there any way they could. But the movie itself doesn’t feel very genuine or crucial. Perhaps it’s because the acting isn’t all that good, or maybe it’s because I’m a city girl from 2011 trying to appreciate a little boy’s County Fair dreams in 1903…? Either way, I’m not sold.

Thoughts:

• Jeremiah’s voiceover narration feels a lot like what’s heard in A Christmas Story. This movie was made way before A Christmas Story though, so I guess I should say A Christmas Story reminds me of this movie…?
• It took me a while to realize this, but the little boy and girl in this movie are the same as the ones in Song of the South. The little girl is also in the “Pecos Bill” portion of Melody Time.
• Jeremiah’s granny seems appalled when the lamb is born black. I can’t help but feel that there is yet another Disney racial undertone in there somewhere.

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