Jacob Two Two Meets the Hooded Fang

This 1999 remake of a 1970's film was much better than the original. Gary Busey puts in (as usual) a great performance. The supporting cast of Ice-T, Mark McKinney and Miranda Richardson all give equally good performances. The kids in the movie give marginal performances but are acceptable.

The plot involves a young boy who gets hit on the head and finds himself in court where he is sentenced to slime island, a place where the hooded fang imprisons children for such offenses.

It also has a heart warming ending that teaches a moral lesson. Not bad for a kid flick these days!

If you liked Nightmare before Christmas or James and the Giant Peach, this one has that same Burtonesque feel to it.

Your kids under 8 will thoroughly enjoy this one. You may not. Look at it this way -- kids adore the purple dinosaur and the blue dog, but wouldn't you just like to beat the snot out of both of them? Bottom line is that if you watch it with your kids you'll enjoy it but if you took your saturday night date to the theater to see it, you will probably want to write a vicious, myopic review on IMDB.

Although I haven't seen this movie, I saw the 1970's version as my first movie theater outing on a school trip when I was only seven years old. Jacob Two-Two is a cultural icon in Canada. Children are told this story and study it in school, as it is one of the most famous of Mordecai Richler's writings. He was a well-loved Quebecois writer.

Don't diss the actors in this movie because you are not aware of the background of the story. One could make similar comments of depressing scariness involving children about any number of stories that children clearly love, for example the Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events series, or even the modern remaking of any fairy tale! And as you know, children are not concerned with costumes or plot on the same level as older people. They love things that seem strange and cheesy to adults -- witness the success of Barney and The Power Rangers.

I think it's great that there is a new version of Jacob Two-Two for today, and I am looking forward to watching it.

I actually did see the previous film version of the classic children's book as a child - in fact, it's one of the few Canadian films I have seen in a theater. I don't remember too much about the previous version, except that it stuck pretty close to the book. When the opportunity came to see this remake, I decided to give it a chance - especially since it was a chance to see it free, and I have been burned too many times from other government-funded Canadian films.

I didn't think this version worked for a number of reasons, mainly the following three:

(1) It's pretty cheap. Now, I will admit that the production values of this movie are superior to the no-budget original movie, but the movie still looks pretty shabby. Even the scenes that take place outdoors in the "real world" look undernourished.

(2) The child actor playing Jacob Two Two was very uncharismatic. I suppose some people will give him slack because he's just a child, but I have seen over the years a number of child actors his age who could easily beat him at the acting game.

(3) The decision to make this as a musical was a bad one. Now, it COULD have worked. But the songs in this movie are HORRIBLE. There is not one song that is memorable or catchy enough that you'll be humming afterwards There is a faint pulse of life with the scenes involving Gary Busey. But even then, he seems to be phoning in a lot of his dialogue. I suspect that he felt defeated by being in this low-budget foreign (to him) production, and decided to quickly get through his scenes without working at making his role REALLY memorable and campy. I suspect that even kids who watch this movie will notice this, and the movie's other problems.

Mordecai Richler is a Canadian legend who write many timeless books with the "Jacob Two Two" books being his best books for children. The first "Jacob" book got transitioned into the big screen in the late 1970s that nobody remembers. Twenty years later, a weirder, more disturbing version comes out with a memorable cast that includes Gary Busey as the Hooded Fang.

Jacob Is the youngest in a big family that is scared of everything and us always ignored. He is so used to repeating himself that it becomes habitual, hence the nickname Jacob Two Two.

One day, he sees a professional wrestler called "The Hooded Fang" on tv and his fears reach new heights. Wanting to show he's more grown up, he convinces his parents to let him buy two tomatoes from the local grocer. Jacob is polite, but the mean owner (Maury Chaykin) jokes around with him claiming the six-year-old is harassing him. Jacob makes a run for it but gets knocked out. The majority of the movie is Jacob having a dream of the people he recently encountered.

Jacob is found guilty (by a judge played by Ice T) for harassment and is sent to Slimers Island where all bad children go. Head of the prison is the Hooded Fang. Jacob must overcome his fears and get off the island once and for all. Full of cruelty and scary people, the movie is not a very nice watch. And Slimers Island looks like somewhere familiar to stoners.

You could say that this is a good story about courage and kindness and whatnot, but this 1999 film is not pleasurable. The grocer is mean for his prank, the Hooded Fang is mean, his sidekicks (Mark McKinney & Miranda Richardson) are mean, and all else is extremely bizarre. It is as if the director hates its characters that Richler made. His hatred rubs off into us.

I was 2+2+2 years old just like Two-Two when I first saw this. As a child that young, I liked what I saw. Fast forward, and I see that this is the opposite of good.

1.5/4

I love the movie. Gary Busey does an excellent villian. The producer and the writer did an excellent job. The plot was good too. The songs are good in here. Ice-T does a good rap song. It's a kid movie, that's for sure. I would show it to my kid. It's pretty weird and pretty good.