Submit your Article

ANIMATION, ADVENTURE, COMEDY

Peter Rabbit

CAST: James Corden, Domnhall Gleeson, Rose Byrne, Margot Robbie

DIRECTION: Will Gluck

‘Peter Rabbit’ is the big screen adaptation of British author Beatrix Potter’s much-loved children’s book featuring the adven­tures of a naughty country rabbit and his family, whose adventures includes running havoc in the gar­den of their grumpy old neighbor. Potter’s first Peter Rabbit book hit the shelves in 1906 and has since gained tremendous popularity as a bedtime storybook. This modern retelling by director Will Gluck, who also co-wrote the screenplay, is a mixture of CGI ani­mation and live action. Throughout the movie, Gluck relies on a rather puerile display of violence to elicit humor. This backfires as the story doesn’t give us enough space to show affection towards its protag­onist, Peter Rabbit. His slapstick antics are far from hilarious and rather mark him as an annoying character.

The movie begins with Peter Rab­bit (voiced by James Corden), his three sisters—Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail—and his cousin Ben­jamin intruding on (and stealing from) the vegetable garden of old Mr. McGregor.

The cat-and-mouse game between Mr McGregor and Team Peter con­tinues until, one day, the old Mr. McGregor dies and his estate is transferred to his nephew Thomas McGregor (Domnhall Gleeson), a Londoner who intends to clean up the place and sell it. With that money he intends to open his own toy-store opposite the toy-store that fired him.

But when Thomas reaches his uncle’s house in the countryside, he discovers it’s in a sorry state. Unbe­knownst to him, after Mr. McGre­gor’s death, the place is being used by Peter and his friends for wild parties. Thomas makes it his mission to cheer the place up and keep it free from intruders, especially those devilish carrot munchers.

Not all humans are baddies in Peter’s eyes. Bea (Rose Byrne) is a cheery next-door-neighbor who is like a mother figure to Peter. She’s a struggling water-color painter and the rabbits regularly pose for her pieces. With Thomas waging war against Peter, the plot shifts gear when both Thomas and Peter start envying each other for Bea’s affec­tion. From then on, the movie nar­rows its focus to a ‘romantic rivalry’ between Thomas and Peter.

Adults or childen?

While watching the movie, I was curious: Who was this movie made for? It doesn’t play out like the typ­ical Pixar animated movies with themes that captivate both adults and kids.

Peter Rabbit reminded me more of the old Wiley E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons that churned out laughs by putting its characters in physical danger and blowing things up spectacularly. The makers whole­heartedly adhere to the principle that kids will laugh if the film is filled with Tom and Jerry clichés.

So we have people stepping on rakes and knocking their foreheads, and those accidently getting their foot caught on mousetraps. There’s also a sequence where a dynamite ambush is set up inside a rabbit hole. These tricks feel cheap and repetitive.

Peter Rabbit isn’t ambitious enough to give deep layers to its characters. The humans in the movie feel cartoonish and wacky, while the animated characters aren’t given enough scope to make us care about them. Thus their interplay only pro­vides few comedic moments. The rest of the film tries too hard to please the audience.

1 and a half stars.

 FICTION

Home Fire

Kamila Shamsie

First Published: August, 2017

Language: English

Pages: 264, Hardcover

 ‘Home Fire’ is essentially a sto­ry about love and the lengths we go to for those we hold dear. A contemporary reimaging of Antigone, a tragedy written by Sophocles in or before 441 BC, Home Fire explores what happens when love and loyalty are pitted against each other. Shamsie, who has previously writ­ten six novels, has based Home Fire on two Pakistani emigrant families from completely different commu­nities in London. On one side of the spectrum is the devout Isma Pasha, daughter of a jihadi fighter, and then there’s Eamonn Lone, son of the British Home Secretary who is a secularized Muslim.

Eamonn’s family has the power to save Pasha’s family from a horrible fate and that’s what Aneeka, Isma’s sister, initially has in mind when she initiates a relationship with Eamonn. Aneeka wants Eamonn to help bring her twin, Parvaiz, back to London.

Narrated through the perspectives of five different people, Home Fire that tells the haunting tale of what happens when love and politics col­lide was longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize.

Review by APEX BUREAU

Black Panther

CAST: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira

DIRECTION: Ryan Coogler

 In the months leading up to its release, ‘Black Panther’ had been hyped as a turning point in the superhero genre of movies. The superhero film production giant Marvel Studios for the first time fea­tures a black superhero. Introduced by Marvel comics in the 1960s, Black Panther had to wait 50 years for its long-awaited screen debut in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War. If Civil War was a perfect launch pad for the character, director Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther does some­thing greater. Not only is it a techni­cal marvel, it gives us a superhero who appears every bit human, filled with emotional complexities and vulnerabilities. After the death of the reigning king, his son T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), aka Black Panther, is crowned the new king of the fiction­al African country named Wakanda. To others, Wakanda is a poverty- stricken Third World country that declines foreign aid and makes no attempts to involve itself in interna­tional trade. But behind this façade, Wakanda is actually a golden, tech­nologically-advanced city.

This reality is concealed from the rest of the world for the fear that outsiders may discover the real rea­son behind Wakanda’s prosperity—the metal Vibranium. This metal is found only in Wakanda. The natives have been using it to come up with cutting-edge technology and devices that would take the outside world thousands of years to develop.

As T’Challa ascends the king’s throne, he is skeptical about his ability to fill the shoes of his father and protect Wakanda and its secrets. As the story unfolds, he’s made to fight off terrorists who are bent on stealing Vibranium. At the same time, he encounters a surprise vil­lain who might pose a major threat to T’Challa’s throne.

Apart from Boseman as T’Challa, the film has a terrific supporting cast with the likes of Lupita Nyong’o, Daniel Kaluuya, Danai Gurira, Andy Serkis, Martin Freeman and Sterling K Brown. But the ones that truly stand apart are Michael B Jordan playing the villain Killmonger and Letitia Wright playing T’Challa’s sister Shuri. Killmonger feels fully realized. He isn’t your cardboard cut-out villain, hungry for world domination. There’s tremendous effort in the screenplay to human­ize the villain, and it works. Like­wise, technology expert Shuri is a wisecracking sidekick to T’Challa who provides some really funny moments.

Director Ryan Coogler’s oeuvre includes 2013’s ‘Fruitvale Station’ (which chronicles the final hours of a young African American man before he was unjustly shot dead by a white cop) and 2015’s ‘Creed’ (a spin-off boxing movie to the Rocky series). In all his films, protagonists have been African-American char­acters tackling themes like racial prejudice and stereotypical image of African-Americans. Black Pan­ther gives Coogler a bigger playing field. It may look like a formulaic Marvel superhero movie peppered with exotic African symbolism but Coogler’s storytelling isn’t slave to the established Marvel aesthet­ics. He delivers an entertainer that expertly portrays, on one hand, the rich African anthropological legacy and, on the other, the African-Amer­ican ghetto life.

Black Panther lives up to its expec­tation. It is a game-changer and will pave the way for bolder stories and voices that have heretofore not found proper place in mainstream Hollywood cinema .