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Meet The Robinsons (Steve Anderson) . .DISNEY'SMeet The Robinsons, directed by Steve Anderson, is a science fiction fairytale on a sugar high. Lewis, abandoned orphan and an inventor with the brains of a young Einstein, designs a brain scanner that will help find his mother. But it's robbed by Bowler Hat Guy, an evil grown-up with a Daliesque moustache. Meanwhile, Wilbur Robinson, a kid from the future, turn up to help. It crams in a dinosaur, Rat Pack singing frogs, time travel and 1950s diner fashion with hyperactive frenzy. But it's only intermittently funny, and it never amounts to classic Disney: any real fairy tale depth is lost in a baddy who is a figure of fun . . . a transparent parody of evil.
Paul Lynch
The Last Mimzy (Bob Shaye) Timothy Hutton, Joely Richardson, Rainn Wilson, Running time: 96 mins .WHIMSICAL sci-fi fairy tale in which a brother and sister (Chris O'Neil and Rhiannon Leigh Wryn) discover a strange box washed up on the Seattle shore and unlock its mysterious powers . . . naturally State Security and the Pentagon take a close interest.
The film's basic strategy is to load a bunch of ideas into the blender and hope for the best: telepathic bunnies, Tibetan mysticism, palmistry, worm-holes, psychokinesis and a smidgen of Lewis Carroll (so much to answer for) fight for attention.
Concerned parents Timothy Hutton and Joely Richardson try to look awed by their genius children, but they're not kidding anyone.
Anthony Quinn
The Hills Have Eyes 2 (Martin Weisz) Michael McMillian, Jessica Stroup, Daniella Alonso, Jacob, Va rga s Running time: 89 mins .ACCORDING to the press notes this film lasts just 89 minutes. I refuse to believe it.
Nothing that short could feel so interminably long. Taking into account the standard law of diminishing returns that applies in Hollywood, fair warning is given by the fact that this is the sequel to a remake of a horror film that wasn't any good in the first place.
The plot, for what little it's worth, concerns a place in the desert called Area 16 which was used as a nuclear testing site by the American military in the past and is now populated by deformed mutants, who kind of look like amiable monster Sloth from The Goonies but instead are blood-thirsty savages. For reasons too boring to get into, a group of the most inept National Guard trainees even turn up and end up being picked off one by one.
They're so irritating you'll end up cheering for the mutants. There's no atmosphere or tension, and the gore is piled on to such a degree that you become inured to it. You might be able to laugh at how terrible it all is were it not for the fact that it's so meanspirited, complete with a rape that is gleefully sign-posted from the first minute.
Irredeemable rubbish. Pat Nugent
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YOU ARE HERE: 11 November 2007 / tribune.ie / 2007 / 04 / 01
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