Charming (2018) - Movie Review

Our understanding of classic fairy tales has changed substantially over the last two decades. Once the vanguards of the popular contemporary takes of Happily Ever After, studios like Disney and Dreamworks have been taking a long, hard look at the olden tales and applying the thematic scalpel. From Shrek to Frozen to the slew of live-action remakes Disney has been churning out, and will continue to do so for quite a while yet, revisionist fairy tales have provided a lot of food for thought about how much perceptions have changed. Of course, with that trend comes the unavoidable cash-ins, those who see dollar signs in the act of revising and retelling these old stories but never manage to figure out why these revisions are happening. Charming, in all ways possible, fits that mould.

Smurfs: The Lost Village (2017) - Movie Review

I probably have the worst first impression of the Smurfs possible, as my first full-length encounter with them was through the 2011 film. Directed by the numbnuts that gave us the ever-popular comedic classic Beverly Hills Chihuahua, the live-action Smurfs film is easily one of the hardest films I’ve ever sat through. Thankfully, it didn’t fall into my purview for reviews, because I’m fairly certain it would’ve just been “fuck this movie” repeated 300-some times. I completely skipped the sequel, wanting to keep what little sanity I have left, and then the trailers for today’s film hit… and you cannot possibly imagine how much relief washed over me when I saw that this was not only a full CGI production but that it was a reboot of the series.

 

Going against what most would consider common sense, those two prospects combined with the phenomenally low bar the Raja Gosnell films set for the IP actually made me hopeful that this would be good. Given how this is the year that has audience expectations in a 24-hour shooting gallery, I can only hope that my optimism isn’t proven worthless.