Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Colorful and lively. Magical and whimsical.

I have not been much of a fan of the Disney live action retellings of their classic animated films. One was horrible and the others range from just fine to decently made. So when I saw that the blue cartoon genie made popular by the voice of Robin Williams was going to be reprized by and equally blue live Will Smith, I, like the rest of the interwebs, met the news with mockery. To be fair, the early previews really did make Will Smith look silly in the completely wrong way and there are still moments in the movie where there is a bit of creepy weirdness to CGI Genie, but for the most part Will Smith absolutely nailed it. He gets back to his roots as a singer and dancer and hams up Genie just so in a way that would surely have made Robin Williams proud.

The story of this “Aladdin” is pretty much the same as the cartoon one only with an added Oscar bait original song (and it will likely be nominated) and a much more woman empowering theme throughout. There are plenty of other minor changes, but nothing terribly important. The only real disappointing part is that Jafar (Marwan Kenzari) seems more watered down than I remember him in the cartoon. The third act where Jafar’s evil plans come to fruition seems kind of hurried and anti-climatic. Besides that, though, everything was absolutely delightful! The musical numbers were incredibly well choreographed. Aladdin (Mena Massoud) was remarkable in all acting and singing and dancing. Jasmine (Naomi Scott) was maybe a bit off at times, but still brought lots of magic and strong-willedness. Dalia (Nasim Pedrad), the handmaiden to Jasmine who wasn’t in the cartoon was also a wonderful addition to the story with her comedic touches.

The movie was directed by Guy Ritchie of all people. Not remotely who you would expect to be directing a Disney musical, but he did quite a wonderful job. The movie also pretty seamlessly blends true live action with CGIed moments throughout, not just with Genie, but all the moments where Aladdin is doing his acrobatics that even stuntmen couldn’t pull off. It would be very interesting to slow motion parts to see if the transitions are more apparent.

If you haven’t taken your kid to see this movie yet, you should. It is a wonderful delight and will hopefully replace “Frozen” (ugh) as the movie of choice for children everywhere for the next few days. The movie is beautiful in both costume design and art direction and the scope and color of the scenes make it well worth watching it on the big screen with a good sound system.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: All the excellent stylized violence you’ve come to expect from John Wick movies. Gets a bit too bogged down in trying to develop a plot.

John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is back and movie number three starts out where movie number two left off. John has just been declared excommunicado for violating the rules of The Continental, a hotel for assassins, and killing the bad guy from the second movie on Continental grounds. A $14 million bounty has been put on his head and he has just a one hour head start before all the assassins will be after him.

The first “John Wick” movie was the essence of stylized violence. The second “John Wick” added 20 minutes of plot that detracted from its core mission, but was still quite fun. The third “John Wick” movie adds yet another 20 minutes of plot that makes much of the movie drag. There is some more good John Wick backstory that is interesting, but the whole rigamarole with The Table is a little boring and doesn’t really go anywhere interesting. There is also a switch from the up close quick takedown violence of the first two films to more elongated fights that tend to go on for uncomfortably long minutes. The quick violence is still there and when the show sticks to that it really shines. Imagine John Wick getting into a fight in an antique store filled with knives or fighting in a horse stable. The extended violence stuff is mostly people getting smashed into glass case after glass case and passing up on the easy and quick kill opportunities for..reasons.

The end of the movie sets up an obvious fourth “John Wick” movie. I can only hope that they return to the roots of the first movie and keep it at the hour and forty minutes length and cut out much of the boring extras. There’s still a lot of fun in this movie, but with each successive one, the quality slips a little.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Yes, I went to see this movie. No, it wasn’t bad at all.

I do not know how this movie was made. I imagine a pitch meeting where someone had spiked the water with LSD. The entire premise is ridiculous. A guy loses his father and discovers that he and his father’s Pikachu Pokemon can talk to each other and they team up to solve the mystery of his father’s death. Oh, and this all takes place in a live action environment. Oh, and we’ll somehow get Ryan Reynolds to play Detective Pikachu. It’s preposterous on its face. Yet, it kind of works. This is not stellar movie making by any stretch of the imagination and it is clearly marketed as a vehicle to stretch the Pokemon brand into a new generation of young minds, but it’s kind of fun for what it is.

The star of this show is clearly Ryan Reynolds. He seems to know he is in something silly and just goes with it. He has lots of asides and comments that are easy to miss between the rest of the dialogue that is happening, but you really want to pay attention to him. Imagine Deadpool were a sweet, innocent Pikachu and you have Reynolds’ performance in this movie. The rest of the cast is fine. Justice Smith is a bit uneven as Tim Goodman and is more believable talking to a fake Pikachu than when talking to other actors. Kathryn Newton does an acceptably over-the-top job as Lucy Stephens.

The story tries to throw some plot twists into the mix, but none of them land terribly well and much of that is even thrown completely away when the final evil plan is revealed. None of it really makes sense and it detracts greatly from the movie, but up until that point, it’s pretty fun.

If you’ve got nothing else to do, this is a fun and stupid movie to go see. Not being a Pokemon person, I cannot say if they got all the Pokemon references correct or if there were lots of little Easter eggs for Pokemon fanatics, but they give you enough information so that even if you’re a Pokemon novice, you can tell what’s going on with all the different creatures. Pika pika.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: A satisfactory ending to a sprawling epic. Ugh, time travel.

Here we are at the end of a Marvel era. “Avengers: Endgame” is kind of a reset point for the Marvel Universe. Some stories are ending and some are just beginning. The journey to get here has been a lot of fun. Let’s dig into it and see what “Endgame” has to offer.

When last we left our hero, Thanos (Josh Brolin) had used the Infinity Gauntlet to snap half of the universe’s population into non-existence and retired to live out the rest of his existence in peace and harmony. A renegade group of super-powered individuals took exception to this new utopian universe and plots to find Thanos and steal the Infinity Gauntlet from him and reverse what he has done leading once again to the overpopulation of the universe and all the societal ills that go along with it. These “heroes”, as some misguided people call them, selfishly concoct a scheme using time travel that could put the entire universe at risk and will drastically alter the lives of the trillions of people that have been living the new reality for years. All because they think their own sorrow at missing their companions is greater than all the others’ happiness that they have newly discovered.

What’s great about the Marvel universe is that while the stars are superheroes, they are only nominally so. Mostly they’re just vain and self-important and only play well with others when it suits them. Clearly, Thanos isn’t the hero, but wow does it take some major lack of introspection to think that bringing back everyone five years after they were all turned to dust and everyone still alive has lived five years of existence without them is a good idea. And they do this mostly because they want their own people back.

What’s not great about “Endgame” is the time travel. I mean they do a decent enough job as far as time travel plots go, but there are just so many things that don’t make sense and so many questions left about how everything turned out. But that’s time travel. The biggest flaw with the time travel in this movie was how they spent so many lines of dialogue talking about how the vagaries of time travel aren’t at all like they are in the movies (and they mention a bunch of time travel movies that get it wrong) only to make their time travel exactly like those movies.

This was a fun movie and a fitting ending. It will be interesting to see where The Avengers go from here and what new adventures await. At least one baton has already been passed and a few others are left to be received.