The Great Movie Review: The Neverending Story

So in case you forgot in our Holiday Hiatus, the current theme is Movies Based on Books. Val brought Treasure Planet (Treasure Island) and I brought the Neverending Story (Die unendliche Geschichte). It's based on a German fantasy novel published in 1979. Which put the movie being made in a five year turn around.

This movie is ridiculous. We start with this kid named Bastion. Which is a terrible name for a child. It's no wonder that he's getting picked on and thrown into dumpsters. Secondly, he's a thief. Sure he leaves a note, but he clearly steals the book containing the Neverending Story. He then skips school to read this book even though he knows for a fact that he has a math test. He then decides to STAY AT SCHOOL to continue reading this book he stole, while his Dad goes insane and calls the police and such. All of these qualities make him a hero. Because nothing says Valor like theft, playing hooky and worrying your parents (parent, his Mom is dead. Had she been alive she might have died from embarrassment.)

Now lets get to what i actually want to talk about, and that is the pedophile flying dog they are trying to pass off as a Dragon.




Seriously? This is what you came up with! Instead of this:

This:

or This:
At least Mushu can breathe fire! This is the type of dragon who would get his underwear run up the flagpole in high school and then in college, and then probably at work after he graduated.

Valerie said she kept thinking of this the whole movie:



And in a bit of acting that rivals sad Keanu, "It's so far away." (Start at 3:30)



So in short ... we don't recommend this movie. Unless you just really want to.

Notes on a Theme: Indiana Jones

So we've been talking about Indiana Jones a lot here at The Great Society of Movie Watchers. Micah's been walking around our house (Micah and I are roommate's) waiting for me to pick up things so he can belt them out of my hand. It's starting to get annoying.

References to these movies are everywhere. Here are two examples:

Scrubs (Awesome Show BTW)



Family Guy



There are tons more examples but I'm feeling lazy and don't want to look for more.

So yeah, Raiders is pretty good. It's probably the most well known of the three in the trilogy. This movie lays the base work for the other two. It sets up his character, the style of the films, and the tendency for poor female leads. Poor as in bad characters, not poor as in financially lacking.

So i know that Raiders sets up every thing for the movies, but Tod still takes a wide divergence from the first film. It's incredibly dark. Short Round is annoying. The female lead is even more terrible than the first, and it just sucks by comparison.

I love Last Crusade! They took all the good stuff from Raiders and added more greatness to it. Sean Connery for one. A good female lead for two. And character development for Indy. For the first two films he doesn't grow as a character. They tried to in Tod by trying to make you care about Short Round, but it just doesn't work. The relationship that they create between Indy and his Father is wonderful. It is an incredibly satisfying way to end the trilogy.

If you want to see more Indiana Jones movies the pickings are slim.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)























They tried really hard with this movie. They stayed true to the style and tone of the old film, but ultimately they failed. I have to recommend against seeing it. You're not missing much.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones (1992)






















Now I haven't seen all of these. But I remember one where he was trying to find out something about a cult that was mummifying people alive. There were dudes in black hoods shooting people with psychotropic poison darts and they would hallucinate themselves to death. For example this old guy sees this small stone dragon statue comes to live and crawl into into his coat sleeve. So he freaks out and starts stabbing himself to death. I was around twelve at the time and it was intense.

Thus ends our adventure with the man with the hat. Tune in next week when Micah* kicks off our new theme. Which should be an adventure in and of itself.

* I have to tell this story. Micah doesn't have a strong track record for bringing stuff. When we were still doing Oscar winners he brought The Conversation one week. Which was a great movie, but was only nominated for an Oscar, it didn't actually win. That same semester he also brought us the choice between Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby. Which are both shoot me in the face type movies. So that was strike two. We're not mad at him, it's just really funny to us.