Brijes 3D

I'll start by confessing I didn't see this movie personally, but we found it on a popular online streaming video service and thought we'd give it a try with our kids on a rainy day. And my 8-year olds loved it, they have been asking to see "Brijes 2" which, sadly for them, doesn't exist. From the bits I saw wandering in and out it's a fantasy film mixing up some traditional and invented Mexican fables with more modern history, but I certainly saw nothing that wasn't age appropriate for them, and they loved the fantasy-modern mash up. And it's great to see the Mexican animation film industry 1) making enjoyable films 2) in their own style and not just trying to ape Pixar/Disney and 3) doing so in a culturally sensitive and inventive manner.

My kids also loved Nikté, which is also worth tracking down if this type of film is your thing, or if your kids already saw it and liked it.

We watched Guardians of the Lost Code on Netflix, so it was certainly not in 3D. My seven year old son loves shows like Digimon and Pokemon; stories that seem to be letting us in on secrets about magic in the world. So he *really* wanted to like this movie and definitely gave it a fair chance. But even he made mention of how bad the voice-overs are. They were so monotone, it was actually distracting from the storyline. After the movie was over, when I asked my son if he liked it, he said "I guess so." Not exactly a ringing endorsement from a kid who raves about new flavors of popsicles for hours at a time. I deleted from our Netflix queue; there is no way I can tolerate watching it a second time.

It is a very forgotten movie; the plot is decent, the animation is passable and the voice actors are very good; it's not a horrible movie, but it's not great either; Mexican animation has a lot of potential.