Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Walt Disney knew, animation is more than sublime trickery; the word means giving life. With a different kind of mouse, Lasseter does just that as his film finds its heat and heart. The plot matures handsomely; the characters neatly converge and combust; the gags pay off with emotional resonance. And at the end, the movie tops itself with comic outtakes, undoubtedly the funniest finale of any cartoon feature. Antz may have amused viewers with its sidewise wit, but as a comprehensive vision of computerized moviemaking, Pixar's dream works. And when A Bug's Life hits its stride...
There's a plausible explanation--well, all right, a plot line that made some kind of sense to producer Jerry Bruckheimer--for the troubles visited on this perfectly nice chap. What he doesn't know, but we do, is that his pal has dropped a computer disc into one of his shopping bags. On it is irrefutable photographic evidence that a Congressman has been murdered by agents of a faceless government security agency for opposing its plan to destroy privacy as we know...
...Congress and among Bush Administration advisers who passed up the chance to remove the Iraqi dictator in 1991, when U.S. troops were in his neighborhood. But it's not a serious topic in the Pentagon tank, the top-secret meeting room in which the Joint Chiefs of Staff plot strategy. In fact, Marine General Anthony Zinni, who as chief of the U.S. Central Command would oversee any U.S.-led attack on Iraq, thinks it's a dubious scheme. "Saddam contained," he says, "is far better than an Iraq that implodes or explodes and ends up like an Afghanistan...
...nerdy sociopath who learns to channel his rage into an acceptable format: winning a spelling bee, playing golf or tackling football players. "You don't have what they call the social skills," he is told in The Waterboy; that is Sandler's gimmick and, for many, his charm. The plot is a competition for which our hero is utterly unqualified but which he always wins, over some smarmy exemplar of the status quo and in a climax tinged with sentiment and demagoguery. After a Sandler speech in Billy Madison, the principal sagely notes that "everyone in this room...
...Waterboy opened to a critical drubbing and the highest three-day box office of any nonsummer movie in history. It seems Sandler's films need neither credible plot, big-name co-stars nor production values. He just needs new ideas. Perhaps this week's headlines can help...