“If that’s the Sheriff’s Office, this [movie] rocks!”

I was in the theatre at 11:30 in the morning for the first showing of the day and I had the time of my life. The movie was hilarious, the story was touching, and the music was beautiful. Alan Menken may have missed out on the last couple of films (you get the sense he had trouble working after Ashman’s death) but he makes up for it in spades with this movie. The basic plot is that three dairy cows (voiced by Roseanne, Judi Dench, and Jennifer Tilly) set out to capture a cattle-rustling bandit named Alameda Slim (Randy Quaid). While the music in this film is similar to the recent Disney films in that none of the characters sing them, the big production number of the movie involves the yodel-licious vocal stylings of Alameda Slim, who uses his “art” to hypnotize the cattle and lead them back to his secret lair. Slim is aided by his nephew’s, the Willy Brothers, who are inherently amusing (“Maybe they just don’t appreciate art. Philistines!”). My favorite part of the entire movie is the sequence where Slim tries to show his nephew’s that Yancy O’Dell (Y. O’Dell) is just a disguise he uses to buy up all the rustled cattle land. His disguise is just a hat and glasses, but every time he puts them on, the brothers scream in terror and say “Who’re you?” and “What’d you do with Uncle Slim?” Another amusing character is Lucky Jack the Rabbit, who has the memorable line, “Bovine bounty hunters. Now I’ve seen ev’ry thing.” He helps the girls find and capture Alameda Slim and save the farm. Yeah, it’s an age-old plot, but the characters and music give it new life. So now that I’ve told you my memorable moments, go see the movie and tell me what you think. Hey, if we give it enough attention, maybe it won’t be Disney’s last 2-D feature animation.

“How big can it be?”

Hellboy, based on the Dark Horse comic series by Mike Mingola, appeared to have suffered from the same malady as “The Hulk” in that for every action packed moment, you had 15 minutes of drawn out dialogue moments that were necessary to set up the movie. I didn’t mind, because every time there was a fight scene, Hellboy (Ron Perlman) would say something incredibly funny. Like when grappling with a demonic creature with a frog-like tongue, he grabs it and says “Second-date: no tongue!” Or after the demon lays eggs in Hellboy’s arm he complains that “[it] didn’t even buy me a drink.” It’s these kind of glib statements that made the movie so enjoyable. Every time that you feared for a character’s life, Hellboy would make you laugh. So while the movie suffered from sequel-itis (where so many characters and concepts need to be introduced that you can only truly enjoy a sequel) it was very amusing. Another highlight is that the movie was adapted beautifully from the source material, which was Mike Mingola’s first trade paperback collection of Hellboy stories. Things obviously had to be altered (in other words watered down for the less intelligent audience members) but the alterations all occurred within acceptable limits. Like the fact that Professor Broom is killed very late in the movie, or the very existence of a junior member of the team, so that the movie is about is training. I have no problem with this, especially when David Hyde Pierce works his way into the role of Abe Sapien’s voice. In short, all this means that the movie kicked a lot of ass and I can’t wait for the sequel. I mean, compare the original X-Men to X-2 and you’ll understand what I mean. Enjoy!