Children’s Movie Reviews

Secret of the Wings

Tinker Bell (Mae Whitman) lives in the perfect place. In Tinkers’ Nook, the light is bright, the sunshine is warm, and she’s happy spending her time tinkering with her fellow fairy friends, as they make baskets. But still... at the beginning of Secret of the Wings, Tinker Bell has a sense that something’s missing. She’s adventurous and sprightly, yes, but she longs especially to visit another place. And not just any place, but the Winter Woods, located across a log bridge. Here, the summer animals go each wintertime, and their coats turn white and they burrow down for hibernation. And here,…
Frankenweenie

Young Victor Frankenstein (Charlie Tahan) loves his dog Sparky. Each day the boy survives school while looking forward to his afternoons with his dog, in the backyard or even better, in the attic, where Sparky dutifully plays assorted parts in Victor’s movies. Mostly, he plays monsters, outfitted with tinfoil and paper wings, delivering cheerful chaos to humans played by plastic army men and dolls, in super-8 sagas that inspire Mr. and Mrs. Frankenstein (Martin Short and Catherine O’Hara) to ooohs and aaahs.
Hotel Transylvania

Mavis (Selena Gomez) is a vampire. She wears black miniskirts and crawls on the walls, hangs upside down, and has cute little fangs that she doesn’t use to suck anyone’s blood (she drinks synthetic, as it’s safer). And she’s spent all her young life in the castle her father, Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) turned into a hotel for monsters back in 1895. Now that she’s turning 118 years old — a mere teenager in vampire years — she’s yearning to see the world outside and meet some people beyond her father’s circle of friends/hotel guests. It’s true, these friends…
ParaNorman

Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) loves zombie movies, monster movies, and all other kinds of movies about dead people, the grosser and gooier the better. His grandmother (Elaine Stritch) watches with him, or more accurately, she sits on the sofa and knits, so she can watch him.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days

When you’re a wimpy kid, you want to be a less wimpy kid, or least appear to be a less wimpy kid. This is the premise of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and movies, all of which feature the narration of the titular kid, as he both observes and tries to control what goes on around him.
The Dark Knight Rises

As The Dark Knight Rises begins, Batman (Christian Bale) hasn’t been seen for eight years. That is, not since the end of The Dark Knight, when he didn’t kill the insane District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). Still, most Gotham citizens believe the lie that Batman is the murderer, and for that, Police Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) feels terrible guilt over it. You know this because he almost tells the truth at the start of the new movie. But he doesn’t.
Ice Age: Continental Drift

Sid the Sloth (John Leguizamo) has never been especially quick, but near the start of Ice Age: Continental Drift, he comes up with a zinger. The occasion is a surprising visit from his parents, Eunice (Joy Behar) and Milton (Alan Tudyk), during which he tries to convince them that he’s led a worthy, adventurous life since they abandoned him. “We fought dinosaurs,” he announces, alluding to the previous Ice Age movie’s plot. “It didn’t really make sense, but it was fun.” And with that, his parents abandon him again.
The Amazing Spider-Man

You already know that Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is a high school student, that he’s bitten by a spider, and that he learns to use his wall-climbing, web-slinging superpowers to save his city from villains. The Amazing Spider-Man reminds you of all of that, plus the violent death of Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen), shot by a random robber on the sidewalk, the stoic courage of Aunt May (Sally Field), and the life lesson Ben imparts to Peter, such that the fretful, fatherless boy must become a responsible, principled young man.
Brave

The flamboyantly redheaded Princess Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald) is unhappy to learn that she’s supposed to be wed to a suitor she doesn’t know. She argues with her mother, Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson), and pleads with her father, King Fergus (Billy Connolly), to no avail. Merida must follow the rules, even though she’d much rather be out riding her huge black horse Angus, wielding the bow and arrows her father has taught her to use, and enjoying the magnificent 10th-century Scottish countryside surrounding her family’s castle. She’d even rather play with her much younger three…
Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted

Madagascar 3 begins in a dream. More specifically, it begins in Alex the lion’s (Ben Stiller) dream, in which he imagines he’s finally going home to New York, only to be thwarted by the lemurs, again. It’s not exactly clear, even when he wakes up, how he’s come to be unhappy in Africa, when he was happy in Africa at the end of Madagascar 2. It might be that he’s worried about growing old, as he dreams that his friends — Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), and Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) — are looking variously ancient, in wheelchairs and on…