Insincerity spoils Dear Evan Hansen. The disconnect happens early and no infectious melody can quite reset the system. There is something to be said of miscasting Ben Platt – too broad, too muscular to convince as a timid teen – in the fault of this. But that’s just one piece of the puzzle. Let’s not forget the likes of James Dean and John Travolta, beloved before him. More problematically, Stephen Chbosky’s is a film that fumbles challenging issues and raises dilemmas without ever taking sides or laying blame. Instead, a blunt script by Steven Levenson responds ‘it’s complicated’. At well over two hours, the result is a plethora of highs and lows and drags on for forever.
The spirit of transient youth ripples through Pixar’s latest and it’s infectious. From Enrico Casarosa – whose La Luna surely only narrowly missed out on the Oscar for Best Animated Short in 2011 – Luca is lovely. Certainly, in its opening act, the film could almost pass for un cortometraggio itself. A self-professed homage to Federico Fellini, Luca pays tribute to those halcyon days of never ending Summer. In a golden haze and fifties aesthetic, Casarosa finds adventure. Most winning is the film’s homespun quality. It’s in the memory born identity of the Italian’s intrinsically personal conceit but also very literally so in the fact that much of the production was completed in the animators’ own homes. You’d never guess.
Less kiddie fare than cultural landmark, PAW Patrol seemed almost to leap from obscurity to phenomenon overnight when in launched in 2013. You may not know their names but there can be few left who don’t recognise the pups from Adventure Bay on sight. Now graduating to the big screen, Chase, Skye, Ryder and crew show no signs of slowing their domination. It’s not hard to see why. They’re cute, likeable and kinda cool. While youngsters will lap up the film’s slapstick humour and derring-do, parents may find comfort in the pups’ more thoughtful approach to saving the world.
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