Category: Genre: Children’s Film
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The Emperor’s New Groove. Dir. Mark Dindal. Walt Disney Pictures. 2000.
Disney’s animated comedy feature The Emperor’s New Groove follows the journey of a selfish Inca Emperor, Kuzco, who is transformed into a llama by his megalomaniac royal advisor, Yzma. In order to revert back into his human self and stop Yzma from taking over the Inca Empire, Kuzco persuades the gullible yet good-natured peasant Pacha…
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Surf’s Up. Dir. Ash Brannon & Chris Buck. Columbia Pictures. 2007.
Released in 2007, during the surge of penguin movies, Surf’s Up is a unique animated mockumentary exploring how penguins are the ‘real’ inventors of the worldwide sport, surfing. A documentary crew (ironically, Brannon and Buck cast themselves) follow the journey of Cody Maverick (Shia LaBeouf), a Rockhopper penguin from Antarctica who dreams of becoming a…
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Dumbo. Dir. Tim Burton. Walt Disney Studios. 2019.
Magic. Mayhem. Friendship. Freedom. Come on down to Medici’s circus, where the newest attraction is an adorable baby elephant with ears too big to handle. Watch him soar above and follow his heart as he dreams of being reunited with his mother, so tragically torn apart! Follow him to Vandevere’s circus, where he is a…
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Ferdinand. Dir. Carlos Saldanha. 20th Century Studios. 2017.
Part of the core ethics depicted within Saldanha’s Ferdinand (2017) is that the exploitation of animals, whether bullfighting or meat production, is unacceptable. However, the opening scene of this film depicts the bulls as having the agency to use their power to choose to fight and vie for the attention of the matador. By representing…
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Wolfwalkers. Dir Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart. Apple TV+. 2020.
The woods are getting smaller every day. At the core of 2020’s Wolfwalkers is a fable about environmental degradation: the mounting destruction of the natural world, and the subjugation of those who live in tune with it. From its very beginning, the film seeks to examine and even disrupt the human/animal boundary in a unique…
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Nanny McPhee and The Big Bang. Dir. Susanna White. Universal Pictures. 2010.
Susanna White’s Nanny McPhee And The Big Bang (2010) introduces Mr Edelweiss as Nanny McPhee’s mischievous sidekick. Mr Edelweiss is a Jackdaw crow, a member of the Corvid species, who are known for their thieving habits. This scene is particularly interesting as the human-animal relationship portrayed causes a shift in the predicted stock characters of…
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Dumbo. Dir. Tim Burton. Walt Disney Studios. 2019.
“Fly, Dumbo! Fly!” Did you know that the story of Dumbowas based on a real elephant, Jumbo, in PT Barnum’s circus? While the beloved baby elephant found his happy ever after, the original was not so lucky. Awfully abused and in declining health, at the age of 24, Jumbo was killed by a train when…