The Bad Guys 2 (2025)

Huh, once again, I watch an entry in the series when it's newly streaming on Netflix. The two are almost tied in general reception, with possibly a slight advantage to the sequel. And I was in the mood for a cartoon.

Even if you didn't watch the first movie, you shouldn't have trouble catching up to speed or be surprised that the titular five friends -- Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), Miss Tarantula (Awkwafina), Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), and Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos) -- are trying to be good, but their criminal history hurts their job searches. Things get worse when someone frames them for a set of high-profile thefts. The so-called "Phantom Bandit" turns out to be three Bad Girls, who want the quintet's help to steal a rocket. Their leverage: a video that reveals the dark past of Governor Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz). The Bad Guys reluctantly agree to "one last heist," but will they be tempted back to a life of crime?

Flushed Away (2006)

The very starting premise of a rat going down a toilet turned me off, but an acquaintance assured me the excremental gags are very few and relatively tasteful. He also found the movie moderately funny, especially for the running(?) gag of a cappella slugs. I still didn't get the gumption to watch until Netflix said it would stop streaming at the end of the month.

In modern Kensington, ratty Roddy (Hugh Jackman, playing at least two Brits that year) seems to enjoy life as a pet who gets the ritzy apartment to himself for most of the day. Then a slovenly sewer rat (Shane Richie) moves in, and Roddy's attempt to return him to the sewer backfires. Roddy ends up in a bustling underground town with a mostly rodent population. He takes advice to seek the assistance of sailor Rita (Kate Winslet) in getting home, but first they must contend with having run afoul of The Toad (Ian McKellen), a mob boss with a chronic hate-on for rats despite some of them (Andy Serkis, Bill Nighy, and Christopher Fairbank) being his underlings.

The Wild Robot (2024)

With no home Net connection last night, I could think of no better way to pass time than by going to a movie theater. And no other showings at that time tempted me. The premises of this one didn't sound particularly creative, but the reception has been magnificent, even if I happened to have the theater to myself.

An accident in transit leaves a commercial robot, ROZZUM Unit 7134 (Lupita Nyong'o), stranded on a forested, seemingly North American island with no human residents. She studies and masters the language of the animals but still gets no takers on her offer of assistance. She prepares to signal her manufacturer, Universal Dynamics, for pickup, but then an orphaned gosling runt (Boone Storme, later Kit Connor) imprints on her, effectively assigning her to raise him until he can migrate. The gosling, eventually called Brightbill, becomes almost as much of a misfit as his widely feared "mom." But as the task requires protocol overrides, "Roz" learns to care about him as much more than an obligation, and Brightbill can't resent her for long.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)

I had liked the 2011 Puss in Boots better than anything else associated with Shrek, so I was a little disappointed at its reception. The Netflix series, which has the same IMDb rating at the moment, didn't sustain my interest for long. When TLW came later than any other DreamWorks sequel, I had to wonder why it was so much more popular. So I finally got the gumption to go to a theater again.

When the Zorro-like feline bandit (Antonio Banderas) loses his eighth life, he finally starts to fear death -- which, indeed, approaches him in the form of a red-eyed, sickle-wielding wolf (Wagner Moura). He decides to live like a normal cat for a crazy cat lady (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), until Goldilocks (Florence Pugh) and the Three Bears (Ray Winstone, Olivia Colman, and Samson Kayo) come hoping to enlist his help in swiping a magic map to the legendary Wishing Star in the dreaded Dark Forest. Rather than join them, he sets out to claim the one wish for himself so he can gain extra lives. But the Bear crime family aren't his only rivals. Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek Pinault) returns, still sore at him for jilting her. And then there's insatiably greedy magnate Big Jack Horner (John Mulaney), who has no special abilities of his own but has hired a Baker's Dozen of minions he regards as expendable and purchased an impressive array of fairy tale accessories.

The Bad Guys (2022)

It's not often that I think to watch a movie because Netflix advertises it as newly streaming, especially when I wasn't particularly sold during its theater run. But there's been plenty of fan art since, and enough people in my circles check out such fare, if not the book series on which it's loosely based, that I wanted a more informed opinion.

Before getting into the plot, let me describe the setting. For the most part, it resembles generic modern America, except that some anthropomorphic animals mix with the human population. We're not talking Bojack Horseman-level diversity here; only seven anthros appear at all, yet one of them is the state governor. They also evidently subscribe to different nudity taboos by species. I'd find it more awkward if I hadn't watched The Underdog Show as a kid.

Triple Feature: Smallfoot (2018), Missing Link (2019), Abominable (2019)

When I realized that I could watch all three of these dueling movies on one flight, I couldn't resist. They all came out within a year of each other and are animated adventure comedies involving humans who discover that bigfeet of some sort not only exist but are hardly monsters. Now I would know my personal preference among them.

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019)

After how much I enjoyed HtTYD2, I decided that if the threequel was any good, I would not wait long to see it -- this time in a theater. This being an evening show, I avoided the noisy brats who detract from some family features while still getting reinforcement of positive reactions from older viewers.

There's less of a time jump from the second movie than there had been from the first. Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), now 21 and chief of Berk, leads successful viking raids on dragon captors' ships. This presents two problems: Their isle is running out of room for newcomers, and they've gained the attention of powerful enemies. When the most accomplished dragon hunter, Grimmel (F. Murray Abraham), demonstrates how dangerous he is, the Berkians pull up stakes. They want to make their next camp their new permanent home, but Hiccup has designs on reaching the fabled hidden world his late father (Gerard Butler in flashbacks) spoke of, where dragons should be safest. Unfortunately, his personal alpha mount, Toothless, gets distracted by the first female of his species to appear in ages, which is what Grimmel has in mind.

Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016)

Having enjoyed the first two in the series, I was rather dismayed to sense a lukewarm reception for this. Sure, it blew away Norm of the North in its first duel, but even weeks before Zootopia stole its thunder, few people seemed interested in it. Even the dumb-looking Sing is ahead by a majority of estimates. Well, as one of the minority of viewers who preferred the second movie to the first, I thought I might beg to differ again. Besides, I saw nothing to lose by streaming.

You've likely seen ads indicating that fanboy-turned-champion Po (Jack Black) finally reunites with other pandas, whom he had presumed wiped out. As hinted at the end of KFP2, the first one to find him is his original father, Li (Bryan Cranston), provoking the jealousy of adoptive father Mr. Ping (James Hong). This is not as incidental to the main conflict as you'd think, for the latest national menace, the oddly solid spirit of a bull named Kai (J.K. Simmons), can be defeated only by a "master of qi" -- pandas' historical area of expertise. Po accepts Li's invitation to the hidden panda village, where, if he doesn't master qi in time, at least he'll learn more about his identity, the question of which is plaguing him once more.

How to Train Your Dragon 1 & 2

I was going to review only 2 here, since I saw 1 four years ago. But this sort of sequel seems hard to evaluate without making many references to the original.

DreamWorks continues to move up in my estimation. The HtTYD film series is not its most original effort, but both entries to date hold their own against at least half the output of Pixar. They are more likely than anything else to make viewers, young and old, male and female, want a pet dragon.

Rise of the Guardians (2012)

By now some of you may be thinking, "What's with all the 2012 animations on this blog?" I couldn't tell you. I moved this one up in my queue because it was the only one I knew to have anything related to Christmas in it. It's actually set on and around Easter, but with all the attention given to Jack Frost and Santa Claus (herein called "North" for some reason), that hardly matters.

Yes, I hate the title. Even if it didn't come between Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole and Guardians of the Galaxy, you could hardly guess what sort of guardians were involved. Besides, there have been quite enough movies with "Rise" in the title in the last, oh, decade, and it's not especially appropriate herein. But I moved past the title and enjoyed the movie, for the most part.