Sometimes movies earmarked for kids are a lot more nuanced, sophisticated, and mature than the ones that are allegedly for grown-ups. As a nonparent, I often avoid PG fare, but Howl’s Moving Castle and The Adventures of Sharkboy & Lavagirl in 3-D suggest that maybe I shouldn’t. Conversely, during the two long hours of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a deeply stupid and offensive action comedy-romance, I kept feeling I was being addressed as an obnoxious, heartless, and nihilistic grade-school brat.
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Maybe Kinberg and director Doug Liman were trying to be satiric, but the results are strictly generic. The only major character besides the Smiths is Pitt’s wimpy boss (Vince Vaughn), and no matter how many thoughtless murders the Smiths commit or how many lies they tell we’re supposed to slobber over them as if they were deities. By contrast, every character in Howl’s Moving Castle—derived from an English novel by Diana Wynne Jones—is both lovable and seriously flawed, and though a war does rage around them, the only villains are the faceless forces on both sides that keep it going.
There are heroes as well as villains in Robert Rodriguez’s Sharkboy & Lavagirl, written with his son Racer, but the movie is mainly about a boy named Max (Cayden Boyd) whose overactive imagination gets him in trouble. The title characters and the 3-D sections, set mainly on the planet Drool, are products of Max’s fantasies, though the characters are based on people at his home and school. As in The Wizard of Oz and The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T., we encounter both the twisted dream characters and the original models.
Miyazaki, now in his mid-60s, has a refreshing and persuasive way of relating youth to old age and callowness to wisdom. Rather than presenting them succeeding each other and fighting for supremacy, he shows them coexisting peacefully. And he does this with characters so nuanced and real one keeps discovering new things about them at every turn.
Directed and Written by Hayao Miyazaki
With the voices of Jean Simmons, Christian Bale, and Lauren Bacall
The Adventures of Sharkboy & Lavagirl in 3-D ★★
Directed by Robert Rodriguez
Written by Rodriguez and Racer Rodriguez
With Cayden Boyd, Taylor Lautner, and George Lopez, Jacob Davich, David Arquette, and Kristin Davis
Mr. and Mrs. Smith • (worthless)
Directed by Doug Liman
Written by Simon Kinberg
With Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Vince Vaughn, Adam Brody, Kerry Washington, and Keith David
