JerryP-2

We bought the DVD so that the grandkids would have something to watch when they came to visit. It turns out that Madagascar is more for adults that children. Like most animated features in recent times, this one likes to rip scenes from any number of films. The Great Escape, Planet of the Apes, Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone," and a few others (whose titles escape me at the moment) were represented. Amazingly, the animators went to great pains to accurately depict the kinds of animals that are endemic to Madagascar -- although the fossas behaved more like a pack of hyenas rather than the solitary beasts that they are. Even the rainforest background was pretty accurately depicted. All of that, however, was lost on a 7-year old and her 5-year old sibling. I thought the movie had some good lines, but that went way over the heads of the kids, and the action didn't suit them at all.

This is a feel good movie at a time when the Cold War was winding down (although most people didn't know it at the time). The acting is just awful, the characters are flat, and the plot already has been done (See "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming" http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0060921/). It has its James Bond moments, probably intended, but they do little or nothing to help get this turkey off the ground.

On the other hand, the first time around for this plot, "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming", benefited from both a great cast and great writing. "Russkies" pales by comparison. I have to wonder why they bothered to make the film.

The Big Red One isn't so much a war movie as it is a message, sometimes obscure, of what war is really like. There is much symbolism in this movie, for example the human arm, with a wristwatch on it, washing in the bloody surf of Omaha Beach. If you want realistic detail of combat, watch Saving Private Ryan. If you want to the voice of experience, blurry from the passage of time, The Big Red One is a movie to see.

Keep in mind that this movie reflects the life experiences of some survivors of WWII. That Lee Marvin was cast as the grizzled sergeant is part of the symbolism: Marvin was a combat Marine who participated in the invasion of Saipan; he is cast as a survivor of WWI who is retracing part of the path he took during that conflict. I found some of the scenes from the movie barely believable, for example, the French insane asylum, but you must keep in mind that there is a message from the survivors of that war in each and every scene. How you take the message, apparently, is up to you.