Flubber (1997)

[Movie 222 / Day 237]


Robin Williams plays Philip Brainard, an absent minded professor who forgets to attend his wedding. Three times. His fiancee, understandably, is a tad upset and leaves him. An academic rival swoops in to steal her away and it's down to Brainard to use his latest invention, Flubber, to save both his fiancee and the college they both work at.

It's silly but amusing in places - and the kids loved it.

My rating: 5.0 / 10
IMDB rating: 4.6 / 10
Running time: 93 mins
IMDB link

Race to Witch Mountain (2009)

[Movie 208 / Day 220]


Dwayne Johnson plays a Las Vegas cabbie who gets caught up in a race against time, the government and an alien race when two kids get in the back of his cab, claim to be from another planet and ask for his help to recover their spaceship so they can return to their own planet in order to save both it and Earth.

It's an average kids actioner.

My rating: 5.8 / 10
IMDB rating: 6.0 / 10
Running time: 98 mins
IMDB link

The Incredibles (2004)

[Movie 126 / Day 109]


Possibly my favourite Pixar movie, it's a brilliant comedy revolving around a family of superheros. It's clever and it stands up to repeat viewings. Love it.

My rating: 8.3 / 10
IMDB rating: 8.1 / 10
Running time: 115 mins
IMDB link

Ratatouille (2007)

[Movie 104 / Day 67]


My favourite Pixar movie to date, Ratatouille is the story of a rat that wants to be a chef. It's not as child friendly as other Pixars, partly because it's not as funny. However, I really like it for its simplicity and I prefer it to the over-rated Wall-E.

My rating: 8.2 / 10
IMDB rating: 8.2 / 10
Running time: 111 mins
IMDB link

Bolt (2008)

[Movie 86 / Day 52]


Bolt the superdog is a character in a TV show. Unfortunately, the dog that plays Bolt hasn't been told and thinks that he actually has super powers. When he escapes from the studio, he is on a mission to rescue Penny, the little girl in the TV show.

It's OK, but lacks humour for adults. Some bits are nicely done and Rhino the hamster is a brilliant character. The kids enjoyed it lots though.

My rating: 6.9 / 10
IMDB rating: 7.6 / 10
Running time: 103 mins
IMDB link

National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007)

[Movie 79 / Day 47]


For pure enjoyment, the National Treasure movies are hard to beat. It's like Indiana Jones met The Da Vinci Code in a dirty bar, had a knee-trembler in the back alley by the dustbins and 9 months later, Nicolas Cage was cast as a treasure hunter extraordinaire.

Following on from the first movie, Book of Secrets deals with another hidden treasure, this time a Native American 'City of Gold'. Cage has to clear his great-great-(great?)-grandfather's name and in order to do this, has to find the fabled City to prove his ancestor was a stand up guy after all. In the course of the hunt, we visit Paris, break into Buckingham Palace and the Oval Office and kidnap the president.

All of the original cast return and we get a shiny new bad guy in the gruff form of Ed Harris.

It's nothing special, and yes there are bits that stretch the suspension of disbelief you need for a movie like this (mostly technical things in my case, like a traffic camera taking a massively high resolution picture, or the zoom on the model helicopter). Having said that, it's much, much better than Indy 4 and it's one of those movies that's just fun to watch. I hope they make a third (and they left it open for one with the mysterious 'Page 47' chat with the president).

It's a pity that George Lucas didn't sit down and watch the National Treasures before he sat down and ruined the Indiana Jones movies.

My rating: 7.1 / 10
IMDB rating: 6.6 / 10
Running time: 124 mins
IMDB link

Enchanted (2007)

[Movie 42 / Day 25]


Disney movie about a fairytale princess that gets banished to the real world by an evil witch. It was OK, lots of references to classic Disney cartoons. The only two bits that I found good were the CGI chipmunk acting out the evil henchman's evil plot and the evil henchman himself, Timothy Spall, who is in top form.

Otherwise, nothing special.

My rating: 6.3 / 10
IMDB rating: 7.6 / 10
Running time: 107 mins
IMDB link

Herbie Goes Bananas (1980)

[Movie 24 / Day 11]


The fourth installment of the Herbie movies is really scraping the barrel. With no real explanation of how it got there, Herbie is for sale in South America somewhere when a pair of Americans buy it in order to enter it into a race. Long before they can do that, however, the car saves a young street boy and smuggles him onboard the cruise liner the Americans are using to get to the next leg of their journey.

The car then spends the next 20 minutes driving around the hold, being chased by a variety of seamen. Then the slightly mental captain decides to make it walk the plank, in the middle of the ocean.

Cue very sad little boy. Wait a minute... What's that? It can't be! It's Herbie! He's SWUM ASHORE. Yes, it's as stupid as that. And while the exterior of the car is all rusted up by the seawater, the interior is absolutely pristine.

Then bad guys chase the little boy, Herbie saves him several times (including by having a bull fight which features some of the worst blue-screen ever), Incan gold is involved, Herbie manages to drive into the middle of the jungle in about 5 minutes (after it's taken the bad guys hours to fly there), then they cover Herbie in bananas (clearly the best way to hide a Beetle), then Herbie throws the bananas at the bad guys and thwarts their evil plans.

It's terrible. Bears no relation to the original, bar the fact that it has a Beetle called Herbie in it. It feels like it's never going to end too.

My rating: 3.8 / 10
IMDB rating: 4.5 / 10
Running time: 100 mins
IMDB link

Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo (1977)

[Movie 23 / Day 11]


The third Herbie film brings back Dean Jones as Jim Douglas. The film starts out in Paris, where Douglas and his new mechanic have decided they are going to take Herbie and make a comeback. They enter a race that involves driving from Paris to Monte Carlo. Before the race starts however, a pair of bungling burglars steal a huge diamond from a Parisian museum and hide it in Herbie's petrol tank.

Then, during qualifying, Herbie falls in love with the pretty Lancia in the screenshot.

Madcap hilarity ensues. Or at least, I'm sure that's what the Disney execs were hoping for. What actually ensues is plenty of sped up footage of racing (fairly well done though, it's nowhere near as obvious as in The Car - probably because they were driving fairly fast and haven't sped it up massively). In between racing segments are bits like Herbie wooing the Lancia with flowers, lots of gurning by the new mechanic and probably the gayest fist fight ever committed to film. Oh, and the French police inspector is like the bastard offspring of Hercule Poirot and Inspector Clouseau, which is slightly irritating.

Not as good as the second, and that's really saying something - it's pretty ropey in places.

My rating: 5.3 / 10
IMDB rating: 5.2 / 10
Running time: 105 mins
IMDB link

Herbie Rides Again (1974)

[Movie 22 / Day 11]


The first sequel to the smash 1969 hit, The Love Bug, none of the original cast made a return, apart from the car. Which was probably a different one anyway.

In this installment, Herbie helps to stop an evil developer from turfing an old lady out of her house to make way for a skyscraper.

Oddly, it seems that Disney decided that if one little car with a mind of its own = big money at the box office, then lots of items with minds of their own would only increase their take. Obviously, they didn't realise that the reason the original did so well was because of its charm, and I imagine being released in 1969 when most of the people that went to watch it had ingested some kind of narcotic probably helped.

Adding a jukebox that plays tunes relevant to the situation unfolding on screen, a trolley bus that beeps in response to the batty old woman's chatter and a whole army of Beetles driving themselves didn't help this movie to live up to the original. It's still fun, but not a patch on The Love Bug.

Still, I can remember watching these movies over and over again as a youngster, so they still make me misty eyed and nostalgic.

My rating: 5.9 / 10
IMDB rating: 5.4 / 10
Running time: 88 mins
IMDB link

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

[Movie 16 / Day 9]


Everybody knows the story of Sleeping Beauty. It's nice. Looks amazing on the new bluray too.

My rating: 7.8 / 10
IMDB rating: 7.4 / 10
Running time: 75 mins
IMDB link