DATE REVIEWED: 12/1/22
TITLE: Parental Guidance
BOX OFFICE RATED: PG
PRODUCTION YEAR: 2012 20thCentury Fox / Walden Media / Chernin Entertainment
Face Productions
RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1
REASON: This movie is about two grandparents, Artie and Diane, who live in Fresno, California. Diane was a retired television weather lady. Artie was a minor league baseball announcer whose dream job was to be an announcer for the Giants. At a baseball game in the beginning of the movie, a man named Nate was in the crowd and on the jumbo-tron it appeared like Nate was about to propose to the attractive Britney Spears-type hottie female sitting next to him. However, Nate then turned in the other direction and gave the ring to a woman who Artie negatively commented looked like a man, Jerry Garcia. His manager that suddenly wanted all new logos, uniforms, and music then fired ole Artie. The employer no longer liked Artie’s audience and their old school (old people) sponsors who weren’t the cool kind but the sad kind. Not to mention the manager wasn’t pleased to hear that Artie wasn’t wired to Facebook or Twitter, didn’t have apps or a favorite Angry Bird, and hadn’t poked anybody or used hashtags. In the next scene when Artie came home, his wife Diane was doing a pole dancing class in the living room with her gal pals. Artie and Diane were then called up by their adult daughter living in Georgia, Alice, who asked them to babysit her three kids (twelve-year-old Harper, eight-year-old Turner, and Barker the youngest) while she and her husband, Phil, left on a week-long trip to the Hilton Head hotel for Phil’s work. Diane agreed, but the kids weren’t excited about being watched by the “other,” grandparents who they hadn’t seen in almost a year. Artie and Diane took a plane to Georgia, and when they arrived at the house they gave the kids toy guns as presents. The family lived in a prototype house because Phil invented a fully automated, voice activated, facial recognition, state of the art program that made it a “smart” house. Artie and Diane then accompanied the family to the Healthy Tiger Asian restaurant, where the owner explained that he was Pan Asian because his mother was Japanese, his father was Chinese, and his kids were Korean and went to Hebrew day school. Alice explained their parenting methods to Artie and Diane, which involved never telling the children “no,” or “don’t,” but instead “consider the consequences,” “try this,” and “use your words.” Alice and Phil later left to go to the hotel, but Alice returned shortly after and said that she worked for ESPN and got a call from her client and needed to come back home to fix the problem. Arty didn’t even know his daughter had been employed at ESPN for the past few years. Alice said she would take a later flight to be with Phil. Harper had HAS Syndrome (High Achievement Syndrome) and was currently practicing for a violin audition to switch to a new school that would give her the opportunity for Julliard and end her up in the Berlin Philharmonic where she wanted to play. Turner had been to many speech therapists for his stuttering problem, and his new therapist wanted him to solve peer conflicts (bullying at school) on his own without adult help. Artie took Turner to one of his sessions, and then Artie told off Cassandra the therapist because he didn’t see how teaching the children not to speak was going to help them overcome their speech problems. Artie said he had expertise in the field of speaking because he was a baseball announcer, but Cassandra said that didn’t really compare to her PhD in speech therapy from Yale. Turner felt embarrassed by Artie talking to Cassandra like that, so when they got home, young Turner said that the only way Artie could make up for it was to watch the “Saw,” horror movie with him that his parents didn’t let him watch, which Artie did. Meanwhile, Diane and Alice took Harper to the mall to buy a dress for her music audition. Diane said on the escalator that when she was Harper’s age she used to go to her friend Heidi’s house after school where they would smoke. Phil and Alice also had a “no sugar,” rule for the kids because of their out-of-control beyond crazy behavior when they ate it.Artie gave Turner and Barker tiny slivers of cake, and when he left the room Diane and Alice arrived back at the house to find the boys running all over the place and making a disastrous mess of the kitchen with cake everywhere. Harper then crawled up on top of the counter acting like a wild animal and, with cake all over her face and pouring out of her mouth, screamed that her mom lied and yogurt was not like ice cream. Alice also ended up covered in cake when she attempted to take the rest of it away from her out of control children.The systematic robot (but not hack proof) taking over the house with her British accent voice then came on the TV screen asking if Artie and Turner wanted to watch the rest of Saw, rated R for strong graphic violence, nudity, and language. Diane took Harper to her violin lesson, where the teacher scolded Harper. Diane threatened the teacher that if she ever talked like that to Harper again there would be nothing left of her but red hair and an accent. Diane then walked away talking Russian to the teacher. At Turner’s baseball game, Artie had a fit about there being no outs in the game and the kids striking until they hit the ball.He got the crowd of parents involved, some of whom agreed with Artie that there was no point to this simplified version of baseball where nobody wins and everyone ties, while some parents were angry that Artie questioned the coach who believed that the kids shouldn’t be exposed to competition because they have their whole lives for that. Artie yelled at the kid who bullied Turner at school, and then the boy hit Artie in his private parts with a steel baseball bat. Phil called Alice and said that he won the award at his work conference for creating his robot software program and they were presenting it the following night, but he wasn’t happy that Alice decided not to leave her kids alone with her parents because Artie and Diane wouldn’t follow her questionable and failing miserably parenting rules. The other grandparents weren’t available to babysit because they were currently on the cruise Phil and Alice bought them for their anniversary.Diane gave Alice the guilt trip for not wanting to be with Phil and then drove her to the airport because Diane really wanted to bond with her grandchildren. Alice showed up at Phil’s hotel door talking in a British accent. Phil and Alice had a weird romantic thing about talking to each other in British accents and singing, “I’m gonna love you till the police come,” songs. One morning, Artie was supposed to take Barker to his play date, but Artie instead took Barker to the X Games to interview for a job as a skateboard announcer. Skateboarding champion Tony Hawk was there to skate. Barker had to go to the bathroom really bad, but Artie ignored him. Barker climbed to the top of the half-pipe and started urinating, and Tony Hawk, who was currently on the half-pipe, fell hard when his skateboard slipped in the puddle of pee. When Artie and Barker returned home, Diane was mad that Artie told Turner to stick up for himself against the bully at school and the bully’s little sister gave Turner a black eye. Meanwhile, Phil and Alice saw Tony Hawk on TV talking about Barker’s incident. Diane ordered the Healthy Tiger for dinner one night after she failed to cook an edible meal (the children were all used to having separate meals that their parents prepared for them individually and not one family meal they all shared). Artie told Barker that he needed to take charge and not let his imaginary kangaroo friend, Carl, tell Barker what to do. Barker did as Artie said, and then little Barker ran out the door after Carl because he said Carl was running away and never coming back. Barker was then upset when the Healthy Tiger restaurant owner drove up outside the house and hit Carl with his car, killing the imaginary character. The police drove by and stopped because they heard the alarm the smart home set off when Barker went out the door without adult supervision. Phil and Alice also showed up. The officer was flabbergasted to learn that Carl was imaginary and nobody had actually died and then he left (but not before getting an explanation about Turner’s black eye from school). Harper, wearing makeup and a cocktail dress Diane had insisted they buy for her at the mall, had been about to go to a birthday party a boy at school invited her to. Alice didn’t think Harper should go to the party because her audition was tomorrow, and then Harper told Alice that she hated her and she wished anyone else was her mother. Phil and Alice later realized that they needed tough love to raise their children, which the grandparents taught them. Artie then told Alice the truth that he got fired from his job and that was why he went to that interview at the X Games. Backstage at Harper’s violin audition, Alice realized that Harper was no longer happy playing her instrument and told Harper that she didn’t have to do the audition. Harper apologized for the hateful words she said to Alice and told her mom she loved her and never meant what she said in anger. Then, Turner overcame his stutter permanently and went up on the stage to recite the “Shot Heard ‘Round The World,”baseball game which Artie had told him was the deciding factor when he figured out he wanted to be a baseball announcer. In the end, Artie and Diane moved to Georgia to be closer to their grandchildren, where Artie became the announcer for the “Pee Wee Giants,” kids baseball team played the competitive way. This movie was released on Christmas Day in 2012 and made $119 million at the box office on a $25 million budget.
DATE REVIEWED: 11/30/22
TITLE: Wish For Christmas
BOX OFFICE RATED: PG
PRODUCTION YEAR: 2016 Pureflix / Mustard Seed Entertainment / Universal Pictures
RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1
REASON: This movie is about the MacLaren family (Luke the dad, Elizabeth the mom, and their seventeen-year-old daughter Anna) who live in the Boston area. Anna’s uncle, Paul MacLaren, was the pastor of the local church that the family attended (Anna showed her dislike of her parents’ devout religion by always texting her friends, Rachel and Meredith, inside the holy building during church service) because Luke and Elizabeth were acting Christians. Mr. and Mrs. MacLaren claimed that their law practice, Bringing Light to the Law, was pro-bono, but that was hard to believe based on how obviously rich they were with their million dollar luxury house, high dollar wardrobe and spoiled out of control teen daughter. Anna and her friends planned the theme for the upcoming community winter dance held on Christmas Eve, and Anna took control and decided against Rachel’s Santa and the North Pole idea to instead have a royal ball where Anna and her boyfriend, Colton Smith, would be queen and king and everyone else would be assigned titles such as duke and duchess, which Luke and Elizabeth gladly accepted in their across the pond accents. Anna bribed her girlfriends and ordered them around like slaves; even controlling the gang of friends’ individual votes all because Anna had all the money and financed their Starbucks fixes as well as bought the props for their upcoming dance. Anna claimed her funding made her the person in charge (queen bee) so everyone had to do what she said. There was a girl named Ava at school that Anna and her girlfriends picked on, and did hateful things to for their own enjoyment. Anna wasn’t happy that she received a carnation on school property instead of a red rose from Colton when he asked her to the dance (Anna specifically told one of her girlfriends to tell Colton the rose flower to get her so Anna was upset with the girl after for messing the flower up), and so Anna gave the carnation to Ava and told her that Justin meant to give the flower to Ava because he wanted to go to the dance with her. However, when Ava walked over to Justin and his friends to accept his invitation, Ava then embarrassed herself after learning that Anna and her friends had lied (Anna and the other mean girls had already fled the scene). Anna later on tried to make up for this in the school cafeteria. Rachel and Meredith told Anna that in five minutes a group of other kids were going to splatter bomb Ava’s lunch table where she sat alone. They said that the kids wouldn’t do it if the popular girls were sitting at Ava’s table, and so Anna got up and sat next to Ava. At one point, Rachel got herself and Meredith and Anna invited to a college party through Rachel’s brother’s college friend. It was there that Rachel almost got raped by one of the male college students before Anna intervened when she heard her friend yelling inside the house as she sat alone with Colton outside to property. Anna was mad when she found out that her parents wouldn’t let her get out of attending the Christmas Eve church service to go to the dance. Anna stormed off to her bedroom, where she wished that her parents didn’t believe in God. To Anna’s delighted surprise, her wish came true and in the morning she noticed that her parents had taken down the nativity scene in the house and replaced it with Santa and Mrs. Claus decorations. Luke and Elizabeth said they were no longer Christians, so they changed their firm name to MacLaren and MacLaren and also changed the office rules to keep God separate from their work. A bank employee, Turner, had been trying for some time to recruit the husband and wife lawyer team to the dark side so the bank could make more money and turn the Christian people into greedy attorneys concerned only about money and their own needs versus the needs of the innocent who cannot afford legal representation. Turner was successful only after Anna made her cruel wish, and Luke and Elizabeth joined the bank. The MacLaren’s receptionist, Rebekah, wasn’t pleased by Luke and Elizabeth’s sudden change of ungodly behavior, including the fact that she was no longer allowed to say Merry Christmas over the phone to the clients and instead had to say Happy Holidays. One day she stood up to Luke and Elizabeth and spoke her mind, and they fired her. Rebekah then applied for a job at an art museum to support herself and her young daughter, Hazel, which she never would have done if she hadn’t been fired from the firm. In the midst of everything, Alex, Colton’s father, had previously spoken to Luke about getting help because he lost his job and their house was going into foreclosure as they were behind on mortgage payments. Luke and Elizabeth had promised to try and help Alex, but after the “wish” they refused to help and instead kicked the Smith family out of their house just before Christmas giving them only a couple days notice to vacate the property. Colten and his parents were forced to temporarily move in with Colten’s grandmother. Luke and Elizabeth took Anna car shopping to buy her the expensive convertible Anna had wanted since before the “wish” happened, but Anna then decided she didn’t want the expensive car anymore and knew it was only because of her “wish” that her parents no longer lived with God on a daily basis and allowed her to have anything she craved and do anything she wanted. Anna finally realized that she needed to fix her mistake because her wish had done more harm than good. Anna often visited Uncle Paul to get advice in the movie, and one time he told her that Jesus’ mother, Mary, was pregnant with Jesus when she was (13) thirteenyears old (which is a total myth as Mary was much older). At one point, Anna met a homeless man in a Santa suit who was on the streets like a Salvation Army bell ringer. Anna befriended the man, who slept on a bench outside in the cold. Anna told the homeless man that she wasn’t going to go to the dance because she came to her senses and no longer liked the theme, but the man told Anna to go anyway and make the dance what she wanted it to be. Anna’s father had given the man $100 before the “wish” and Anna brought homeless Santa pizza and some of her dad’s clothing that her father was going to sell (used to donate before the “wish”). At the winter dance, with many adults and elderly people in attendance, Anna almost gave her speech about being queen but instead decided to improvise a different speech, ending by telling everyone that Christmas was about the birth of Jesus Christ. She announced that now she was going to go to the Christmas Eve church service. She walked outside to the church in the cold December New England weather on Christmas Eve wearing only her strapless baby blue Cindrella princess dress. A group of people from the dance (including Rachel and Meredith) showed up at the church a few minutes later, eventually followed by Luke and Elizabeth. Now apparently back to their normal Christian selves, the powertrip attorney couple apologized to Alex and promised to help him save his house in any way they could. Luke and Elizabeth also said they were quitting their new bank attorney jobs (even though they had signed contracts).The movie ended with everyone in church, including Anna, Rachel, and Meredith who were now actually paying attention to (uncle) Paul’s sermon and choir instead of texting each other on their cell phones like during previous services. The Dove Foundation gave this flick a “faith” seal of approval and awarded it 5 out of 5 Doves.
DATE REVIEWED: 11/29/22
TITLE: Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas
BOX OFFICE RATED: PG
PRODUCTION YEAR: 2000 Universal Pictures / Imagine Entertainment
RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1
REASON: The movie began with a young Grinch raised by old biddy grannies (later on in the story the adult Grinch was not happy to be reunited with the elders and had thought they were already dead). As a little Grinch, he ran away from the village after being bullied and ganged on by other kids at a school party because of his appearance. Obviously that treatment alone put hate in his head for everyone, made his heart to turn to stone, and caused him to seclude himself away from civilization. However, Martha May was the only female who showed affection toward the Grinch throughout childhood and kept that affection throughout her life knowing that he was not really a Grinch but just an innocent victim of social injustice. The Grinch lived every day of his life hating and eating glass (not something you want kids to copy). Early on, a band of teenage Whos decided to invade the Grinch’s lair but the Grinch scared the “whovenile,” delinquents away from his safe home. As retaliation, he sought revenge against the Whos and disguised himself to go to the village, where he disorganized the mailroom. It was here that Cindy Lou, the young daughter of Lou the mailman, came across the Grinch. She fell into the mail machine, which was going to crush and pound her like a package. The Grinch would have left Cindy Lou to that fate if his dog, Max, hadn’t been there to stop the Grinch from leaving and instead rescue Cindy Lou. Cindy Lou then got it into her head that maybe the Grinch wasn’t so bad as everyone thought he was because he saved her. At the village Whobilation celebration, Cindy Lou nominated the Grinch to be Cheermeister, much to the mayor’s displeasure because the mayor wanted to be the Cheermeister and then announced that if the Grinch didn’t show up, then the mayor, as the runner-up, would get to wear the crown. Cindy Lou went to the Grinch’s lair and managed to convince him to come to the village only after she told him there was an award. The Grinch traveled through a tunnel to the village, where he landed face-first in Martha May’s breast area. As Cheermeister, the Grinch was paraded around as he taste-tested different foods. However, things went downhill from there when the mayor proposed to Martha May game show style and even offered her an expensive ring along with a brand new car if she married him. The mayor then wickedly gave the Grinch his award, which was a razor. In his anger, the Grinch set the village Christmas tree on fire and then returned to his lair. It was there he had the idea that could “steal,” Christmas from the Whos. So on Christmas Eve, right after Santa made his deliveries, the Grinch went down to the village and stole everyone’s presents and raided their fridges of the food for their Christmas feasts. However, on Christmas Day, the Grinch had a change of heart and realized that Christmas couldn’t be bought from a store in the form of presents and meant something more when he realized the Whos still gathered to celebrate even after what the Grinch had done in his attempt to ruin Christmas. Now a changed person, the Grinch went down to the village and made peace with the Whos, and then he celebrated Christmas with them. Martha May also turned down the mayor’s marriage proposal and told him that her heart belonged to the Grinch. The budget for this movie was $123 million and it made $345 million at the box office. Jay Carr with The Boston Globe deemed this “An Instant Classic,” on the movie’s packaging.
DATE REVIEWED: 11/28/22
TITLE: Akeelah and the Bee
BOX OFFICE RATED: PG
PRODUCTION YEAR: 2006 Lionsgate/2929 Productions/Starbucks Entertainment/Out Of The Blue Entertainment/Reactor Films Production/Cinema Gypsy Productions, Inc.
RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1
REASON: This movie is about an eleven-year-old African American girl named Akeelah Anderson who lives with her family in Los Angeles and attends Crenshaw Middle School. Akeelah skipped school and didn’t do her homework, and so she failed in her classes. Tanya (mom) worked hard as a single parent to provide for her family after losing her husband when Akeelah was six years old when the dad was shot dead on his way home from work. Akeelah had an older brother in the Air Force, Devon. Akeelah also shared her home with an elder brother, Terrence (who hung around drug dealer Derrick-T and brought that scene to the house with police visits) and also her teen older sister, Kiana, and Kiana’s small child. Tanya was racist in the film as she made a comment to her military son to send whites up in the planes (to do battle) after Devon told his mom he had no orders yet and was working behind a computer screen in Nevada. Miss Cross, Akeelah’s teacher, brought it to the attention of the school principal that Akeelah kept getting all of her spelling words correct without ever practicing for the tests. One day, Principal Welch broke up a fight between Akeelah and other girls when they outside on school grounds skipping class. The principal singled out Akeelah and told her to come to his office, and inside the office was the principal’s friend, Dr. Joshua Larabee who used to work as a teacher at UCLA but now had his own issues the doctor dealt with. The visiting man, Joshua, sat in the principal’s office and listened in on the entire conversation with the student and school official, even though the man didn’t even work at the school. Joshua sensed that Akeelah was not being honest, so he quizzed her on his own to find out the extent of the intelligence that she hid because she didn’t want the other children in school to keep bullying her and excluding her from activities for being smart and so she dumbed herself down to survive the ordeal of school. Joshua had Akeelah spell some big words and told Principal Welch that Akeelah had potential and needed a mentor to help her develop her skills. Akeelah could not understand why the school wanted national recognition for a spelling bee and invested time and money into the competition when the school couldn’t even afford to have doors on bathroom stalls. Later that day, Akeelah won the school’s spelling bee competition, which led to another spelling competition. Akeelah thought she could study by herself and do it her own way. She didn’t want help from Josuha at that time. At the regional competition, Akeelah’s older sister with her finicky crying baby that disrupted the speller’s concentration was sent outside into the hallway. From that viewpoint, the elder sis saw a mother in the audience cheating to help her son spell the word he was given by mouthing the letters to him from her seat in the audience. If the boy got away with it, he would have taken the last spot available to get to the next level of the competition. So, the sister marched through the door with her baby and interrupted the competition by bringing the cheating Caucasian American family to the attention of the judges. As a result, the boy admitted he got help from his mom and his mom made an outburst from her seat announcing that her son knew that word but the son replied that he did not. The cheating boy was disqualified and Akeelah made it to the next round of competition then. Akeelah and her school chum, Georgia Cavanaugh, often walked through the dangerous city streets alonewhere drug dealers and criminals lurked about in broad daylight (with no police in sight). The gangster brother, Terrence, who came home wearing high dollar watches with other stuff, at one point told Akeelah as she studied in her room that in the spelling bee Akeelah would just be going up against some rich white kids that would only tear her butt up. That wasn’t true as one child was Hispanic American (Javier) and another Asian American (Dylan) that made it far in the spelling competition. Akeelah trained alone for another spelling bee with Doctor Larabee at his house as he figured out Akeelah learned best with timing exercises while spelling and thus had her jump rope. Inside the doctor’s house, Joshua had Akeelah read what he believed was an inspiration poem to help Akeelah in her endeavers in life that he had framed on the wall written by Oprah’s spiritual advisor, Marianne Williamson, that included verses such as, “’It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us…as we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Akeelah spent Six months training at the doctor’s personal home without her mother (who dropped out of college and wanted to be a doctor herself) even knowing about it for a spelling bee that Tanya didn’t want her daughter to participate in because of Akeelah’s failed grades in many subjects. Akeelah even took buses to the suburb without her mother aware to study with kids from other schools. It was there, in the suburbs, where she met Dylan, the mean boy who told Akeelah she didn’t have what it took to win, but that was only because of Dylan’s overly competitive dad forcing his son to constantly study when his own dad never won a competition in his life but required his son to sacrifice everything in order to beat everyone.
During their alone time, Akeelah found out that the doctor lost his nine-year-old daughter to a sickness and then he divorced his wife because the marriage fell apart when the young daughter died. At the Scripps National Spelling Bee final competition in Washington D.C., Tanya found out that Doc Josuha paid for the four extra plane tickets and expenses for Georgia, Devon, Tanya and himself to attend because the school only paid for two expenses (Akeelah’s and Principal Welch). In the end Dylan had a choice to either win the competition as his dad wanted him to do because it was his last year he could compete or help Akeelah because she messed up on purpose so he could win as Akeelah witnessed how abusively competitive Dylan’s dad was. Dylan then messed his word on purpose and the two finalists agreed to do their best in the remainder of the competition and as a result Akeelah and Dylan tied for first place in the Scripps National Spelling Bee (hopefully the prize was a full scholarship to a college/university of his or her choice, otherwise, what is the point?). Doctor Larabee decided to go back to teaching at UCLA.
DATE REVIEWED: 11/26/22
TITLE: Kavik The Wolf Dog
BOX OFFICE RATED: NR
PRODUCTION YEAR: 1980 GoodTimes Entertainment
RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 2
REASON: This movie is about an Alaskan sled dog named Kavik. In the beginning of the movie, after seeing Kavik win a prestigious sled dog race, a wealthy man named George Hunter bought Kavik from his owner for $4,000. However, the plane Kavik was traveling on to George’s estate in Seattle crashed in the wilderness on the way. A twelve-year-old boy named Andy Evans happened upon the plane crash because he was walking in the woods by himself as he usually did. Andy used his gun to scare off a mountain lion lurking near the crash, and then he found the pilot dead and Kavik barely alive with three broken ribs and a broken leg and pelvis. Andy and his Dad (Dad went out in the dark to look for his missing son) brought Kavik to his house, where his dad, Kurt, was pessimistic about the dog’s chance of survival and thought that Andy should have put Kavik out of his misery when he first found him. The family medical doctor, Dr. Vic Walker, treated Kavik. Many weeks later and after the dog made a full recovery from the nonstop care of strangers, George showed up at the house and took Kavik to Seattle because he owned the dog (Where was George when Kavik was on death’s door?) George was then angry to learn that Kavik was no longer the same dog he purchased before the plane crash because the accident left Kavik cowardly and frightened of other dogs. Kavik became homesick for Andy’s love and the real family that Andy’s parents provided the despondent four-legged child, so Kavik eventually ran away from George. Kavik made a 2,000-mile journey back to Alaska (part of the way by boat), where he found himself lost again in the woods. Kavik got into a fight with a wild wolf and killed the wolf. Andy found Kavik and was overjoyed to see his four-legged sibling again. Dr. Walker, who was not in the medical business to get rich, treated Kavik’s injuries from the fight knowing he probably wasn’t going to get paid the absurdly high going rate, like nowadays, for his time and care. George again arrived in Alaska to retrieve Kavik after Kavik was healed. George reluctantly agreed to sell Kavik to Andy’s family for $250 as Kurt suggested because Kurt no longer thought the dog was worth the high dollar price that George initially paid since Kavik had so many physical and emotional challenges in his short lifetime that affected his mental state in a negative way, especially around fakes. Kavik surprised everyone when he then stood up for himself against a pack of dogs and bravely fought them off. When George heard about this incident, he confronted Kurt and accused him of being a cheat and buying Kavik for less than he was truly worth knowing all along that the dog was okay. Kurt told off lying George, who came to his senses and left knowing that the Evans family now legally owned Kavik, stood beside the sick pup and nursed Kavik back to health multiple times and because of that Kavik’s real family (the Evans) would win against careless George who only tried to claim the dog after the family already spent endless hours healing their injured and abandoned by George (several times resulting in permanent injury) four legged family member. Father Kurt knew HIS family would win in any courtroom battle because of the long-term loving and eternal commitment they made that forever-bonded Kavik to their family, which was GOD’s way to save a lost soul.
DATE REVIEWED: 11/25/22
TITLE: ELF Day
BOX OFFICE RATED: NR (This movie is not suitable for GOD’s children.)
PRODUCTION YEAR: 2020 WOWnow Entertainment/ITN Distribution
RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1
REASON: This awful excuse for a children’s cartoon takes place in the North Pole in spring. The main characters are five elves, Tingle, Jingle, Bingle, Dorabelle, and Cheer. In the beginning of the movie, Dorabelle suggested to the other elves that they put the E.L.F. Detective Agency (which they quit last year) back in business even though there was no more crime to solve at the North Pole.The elves didn’t all agree to get the agency back together again until Santa found his Christmas tree missing from his cottage and asked the elves for help. Dorabelle then confessed to stealing Santa’s tree because she claimed to have woken up outside Santa’s cottage where the tree was found missing. Cheer promised Dorabelle that justice will be had and the truth revealed, and that if she were found guilty of the crime then she would be held accountable and do the time. Tingle, Jingle, and Bingle went to Lorcan the all-knowing and all-seeing caterpillar and learned that Dorabelle had confessed to a crime she didn’t commit because she had been under the influence of dark magic. Lorcan revealed that the “sinister Minister of the North Pole dark magic,” was behind the spell cast on Dorabelle. Dorabelle was worried that she was still under the influence of the spell and couldn’t trust herself. When Santa learned of the news and asked Dorabelle why she confessed, she replied that she hadn’t been in the right state of mind and was being controlled without knowing it. The other elves explained that the sinister Minister put Dorabelle to sleep (knocked her out) and filled her head with fake memories before transporting her to Santa’s cottage right after the burglary to frame her for stealing the Christmas tree. They split up to search for the sinister Minister, with Lorcan watching the underground in case the unknown evil being decided to tunnel to China to escape. Meanwhile, Grumper (who looked like a male elf in the movie but whose voice was played by a female) was an exiled and unemployed elf who was really just the sinister Minister and banned from the North Pole by Santa after the elf tied the reindeer’s hooves together before they made their Christmas flight. Grumper (sinister Minister) plotted his revenge against Santa with his dragon, Gruss, in a castle. Grumper made it clear that he basically owned Gruss, who couldn’t do his free will but only what Grumper said. Not to mention Grumper was always putting Gruss down by calling him dumb as rocks and telling the dragon he had a minuscule mind, and Grumper admitted that he didn’t keep Gruss around for the dragon to question his authority, but instead to agree with Grumper and tell him how great he was. By the power invested in the sinister Minister, Grumper called upon the most awe-inspiring, cringe-creating, terror-inducing fiend ever to stalk the snowdrifts. However, this turned out to be a talking pumpkin surfer dude named Jacques O’ Lantern who wanted Gruss to go surfing with him at Charred Fossil Beach. The elves went to the castle, where they discovered that the sinister Minister was none other than Grumper. Grumper asked how he was supposed to be evil when he was surrounded by a bunch of wishy-washy do-gooders. He put a spell on one of the elves and almost caused him to step off the rooftop, but the other elves stopped Grumper and said that they would let bygones be bygones and Grumper could walk away scot-free if he released their elf friend from the spell and returned Santa’s Christmas tree. Grumper did as the elves asked him, only for Santa to immediately put his tree back in the box for next Christmas. At one point in the movie, the Christmas carol “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” played in the background.
DATE REVIEWED: 11/22/22
TITLE: Mia and the White Lion
BOX OFFICE RATED: PG
PRODUCTION YEAR: 2018 Galatée Films/M6 Films/Film Afrika/Outside Films/
Studiocanal (France)/Shout Studios/Pandora Film
RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1
REASON: This movie is about the Owen family (John the dad, Alice the (French) mom, Mick the eldest son, and Mia the young daughter) who moved from London to a lion-breeding farm in South Africa. Mia was a troubled child and got into fights at school because she didn’t want to be there on the farm, away from England, so she hated on everyone around her because she didn’t get her way. Mia still kept in contact with a friend of hers in London via Skype. One night, Mick woke up after a nightmare (he was regularly seeing a psychiatrist for help with his panic attacks and nightmares) and Alice told Mick the story of the white lion prophesied by the African Shangaan tribe to be born on Christmas Day. Sure enough, according to legend, a white lion cub was born that Christmas. He was named Charlie, and he lived in the house like a pet and developed a connection with Mia. However, as Charlie grew up, he began to show signs of aggression, such as inflicting minor scratches on the hired help and even attacking them when tourists came to the farm. Charlie was moved into an outdoor enclosure, where the other young lions ganged up on him. John and Alice became worried that Charlie was becoming too dangerous when he wrecked the house and played a little too rough with Mia. Despite this, Mia continued to spend her time with Charlie, until her parents forbid her from ever going near Charlie again after she brought Mick into Charlie’s enclosure. John and Alice witnessed this from the house and started shouting to Mick, and on his way out of the pen Mick tripped, hitting his head on the ground when he fell and suffered a head injury as a result. John told Mia that he would not sell Charlie unless Mia disobeyed her parents again which of course she did. Mia acted more like the older sibling in this movie even though she was said to be the younger and Mick even look like an older brother. When Charlie was three years old, Mia went into Charlie’s enclosure and, with Mick videoing her on a phone, she admitted that every day since she had been forbidden to go near Charlie she secretly snuck out of the house to be with the now full-grown lion. However, John discovered the video when he was using the phone and prepared Charlie to be sold. Mia found Charlie. Mia hid on top of another lion’s truck, which was driven to a client. Mia watched from her hiding place as John released a lion from the truck into an enclosure, where a high paying ungodly female client hoping to bring a lioness trophy back to her demon gang of no friends and claim bragging rights used a bow and arrow to shoot the innocent lioness that had been caged her whole life and was finally released only not knowing what to do with freedom so stood right in front of heartless female like a deer in the headlights taking the arrow until a man finished the animal off by shooting it. Mia then figured out that her parents were operating a farm that participated in “canned lion hunts,” by raising lions and then selling them to wealthy clients for a great deal of money for their “kill the innocent” sport that is inhumane and cruel to GOD’s animals. Mia realized that Charlie the white lion was next in line to be shot, and so in the middle of the night she snuck downstairs. The housemaid and cook, Jodie, helped Mia by giving her the keys to the enclosures. Mia ran off with Charlie after releasing other lions, which trapped the rest of the family in their house the next day inside their home while the wild animals roamed free on the their farm. Once the lions were taken care of, the Owens and the police went out in search of Mia. However, Dirk, a contact of John’s who was in the same business and purchased the lions for his clients, was also on the hunt for Charlie. Mick stayed in contact with his “younger,” sister by two years, Mia, using their phones and he was the only person who knew that Mia was headed to the Timbavati River Reserve where she planned to give Charlie to the Shangaan tribe, who considered the white lion to be sacred. At some point while trekking through the South African wilds with Charlie, Mia spotted John sitting in his truck nearby with the door open. John saw Charlie and reached for the tranquilizer gun that was propped against the side of the truck, but he was shocked to see his fourteen-year-old daughter was holding the gun on him. Mia confronted John about what he really did with the lions, which he told her was legal in South Africa and the way it had always been and would always be. Mia shot her dad in the leg with a tranquilizer dart meant for large animals, and then she left him lying unconscious on the ground so she could steal his truck and drive with Charlie the rest of the way to the reserve. She contacted Mick and told him where John was and to pick him up. However, it turned out that Mia had been following an outdated map and discovered that the China Shopping Mall stood in the way of the reserve. Mia ditched the truck and ran through the crowded China mall to the back door, scaring everyone who saw the huge lion half to death. Mia and Charlie almost reached the reserve, but then her family and the police showed up with a helicopter hovering above waiting to shoot Charlie. Mia begged her dad to save Charlie, and he stood in front of Charlie to block everyone’s line of fire while the lion walked calmly towards the reserve, where the African Shangaan people welcomed Charlie. Mia seemed to be the only family member in the movie whose appearance didn’t change much over the years, while Alice cut her hair into bangs, John’s style of beard facial hair changed, and Mick shaved his hair short and then let it grow until it was almost shoulder length by the time he was about sixteen, even though he still looked like a young child no more than twelve or thirteen years old compared to Mia, who looked her age. Some things didn’t change, though, such as Mia’s delinquent behavior, law-breaking actions, and constant lying and disobedience to get her way of being with a large and dangerous lion who likely would have killed or severely injured Mia because despite Charlie being raised as a pet in the household, he still had wild instincts.