meebly

An 8 out of 10 for me, an old-timer. And a 9 or 10 for pre-teen viewers.

For three years I was the program scheduler for Starz Kids, a movie and shorts channel devoted entirely to G- and extra mild PG-rated films. This means that I basically determined what went on the air and at what times of day. I hope that credential speaks for itself.

"Curious George" is, in my opinion – both as an industry pro specializing in content, and as the very involved uncle of two wonderful boys, ages 5 and 3 – one of the very best animated movies to come along in years.

I'll freely admit that I was drawn to the film because the animators made George so irresistibly cute, even more so than in the books, where he was still adorable. But what a breath of fresh air! First, and perhaps most notable, is that George doesn't need a voice. Like so much classic slapstick from the silent era, he elicits huge belly laughs from children and adults alike with nothing more than his physical comic antics. True, his actions are sometimes a bit fantastical, but there's no running commentary. He derives sheer joy simply from discovering new things in the world, much like so many small children who haven't yet been corrupted by the more anti-imagination media of today (video games, music videos, those hand-held devices that become mutated appendages, etc.). Every new discovery is magical, and brings a huge smile to his face just by its sheer newness. This is the same type of smile I see on children's faces that gives me some of my greatest joys in life.

So instead of sarcastic remarks, which I admit can sometimes be hilarious coming from cartoon animals, we get the same sort of innocent, sometimes mischievous, but always good-natured fun the books provided. And unlike much of the canon of Disney cartoons aimed at small children (and often, nowadays, their parents), no one dies in this film.

As for the human characters, they come off as endearing and genuine, especially the beleaguered Ted (the man in the yellow hat, now with an accompanying yellow jungle outfit) and his intended paramour, the sweet, understanding schoolteacher who takes her class on an inordinate number of field trips to the museum where Ted works. Their relationship is gradual and innocent, slowly building to their first kiss, which keeps getting interrupted by George's latest misadventure.

The voice cast is as ideal as any outside of Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres in "Finding Nemo". Will Ferrell is excellent (four words I never thought I'd utter) as Ted, and Drew Barrymore perfectly cast as Maggie. Also ideally cast are Dick Van Dyke as elderly museum owner Mr. Bloomsbury, Eugene Levy as wacky mad scientist (a friendly one) Clovis, and David Cross as Bloomsbury's conniving son, a character drawn specifically to resemble Cross, who wants to turn the museum into a parking lot.

But the star, of course, is the ever-lovable, ever-hungry, ever-cooing title monkey. The filmmakers retained all of the character's sweetness and heart from the books, and while yes, the film is somewhat overrun with product placement (mainly from Dole, big shock), the end result is a children's' movie from a series of children's' books that plays to children, with their love of animals and physical comedy and their endless curiosity.

For my part, I laughed out loud repeatedly, and for an hour and a half, I was a little kid again. And even if parents won't get the same "adult" subtext they'll find in "Toy Story", "Nemo" and the like, the trade-off is 85 minutes of their time given to a movie they can truly be glad their kids are watching, laughing at and loving.

Sounds like a pretty good bargain in today's climate.

I'd looked forward to this one, as most attempts at satirizing Hollywood life in the last two decades, both from studios and indies, have ranged from mediocre to unmitigated disasters. This one offered Naomi Watts in a starring role, and I've adored her since "Mulholland Drive", both as a terrific, versatile actress and as an unqualified beauty (they all seem to come from Australia and the U.K. these days, don't they?).

Well, Ms. Watts does shine in the title role, and she's in every scene, but somehow the film still falls flat. I'm not a big fan of film-making on digital video -- it always comes across to me like I'm watching someone's home movies, an experience I should be paid for, not that I should have to pay for -- but I understand why it's done in certain cases. In this case, it was a mistake.

Writer-director Coffey appears to be going for verite-style realism (I'm assuming he's not so arrogant as to place himself in the uber-pretentious Dogme 95 school), but he doesn't seem to realize that in order for any film to work, the result shouldn't come across as a home movie or, in this case, a student film.

Too much time is spent on Ellie in her car, doing all the things that Angelenos do in their cars because they're just too busy to do them elsewhere (applying makeup, changing clothes, practicing their lines, and the universal asshole-identifier, talking on their cellphones) and too self-absorbed to care how it affects their driving or those around them. This works as satire for one scene -- the next four times it occurs it feels just like being stuck in a car behind one of these narcissists, and it's not an enjoyable feeling. There's a related scene about halfway through that's amusingly ironic, but not worth the endurance test.

Just as with the interior car shots, much of the satire is overripe, pushing the irritation factor of nearly every character to its limits, testing the thresholds of both humorous exaggeration and simple tolerance. No satire should leave you wanting to burn the characters and their milieu to the ground (apart from "Day of the Locust", in which Hollywood does in fact burn, deservedly, but in context).

(As an aside, and for a chuckle, this may be the first time Keanu Reeves isn't the most annoying element of a movie he's in. But then, he appears only as a member of his band Dogstar, playing in a club, and he has no lines.) The other key problem is often endemic to film satire: it moves at a snail's pace. Unless you're the rare individual who's both an struggling thespian in Hollywood AND a caring, thoughtful individual, you will probably find yourself yawning a lot more frequently than laughing during this 95 minutes.

For all its drawbacks, though, this is a showcase for Naomi Watts to show how versatile she is, with the verisimilitude of her having to switch between characters, accents, moods, etc. The overall comment, that she doesn't really seem to be herself very often and has no idea who that self really is within the realm of all her "performing," is funny and worth exploring, but Coffey (or someone else) needs a vehicle that's more engaging, clearer about its objectives, and at least somewhat watchable.