The world of Merchant and Ivory

   The documentary Merchant Ivory may not be the place to look for definitive critical analysis of the work of Ismail Merchant (producer) and James Ivory (director, the duo that made a staggering 43 films between 1961 and 2007.

   Instead, director Stephen Soucy gives us an intimate look at a team composed of the meticulous, Oregon-bred Ivory and the audacious Merchant, born in India and raised as a Muslim. Soucy takes us on an informative, often revealing journey into Merchant/Ivory world. 

 Merchant and Ivory were best known for highly regarded costume dramas based on literary works such as A Room With A View (1986), Howards End (1992), and Remains of the Day (1993).  They brought a sense of literacy to art house audiences, as well as to a larger public that found the team's work beautiful and edifying. 

   Although the movie contains interviews with both Ivory and Merchant, who died in 2005 at the age of 68, it also brings insights from what could be called the Merchant/Ivory repertory company: Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Rupert Graves, Simon Callow, Vanessa Redgrave, Hugh Grant, Anthony Hopkins, and more.

  Packed with detail, Merchant Ivory's accomplishments are twofold: to serve as a reminder of the scope of what some regarded as prestige cinema. The documentary also reveals how two men -- often working with writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins --  struggled to bring their pictures to the screen. 

   Not surprisingly, Merchant emerges as the dominant personality. He's described as a lovable rascal and conman with the nerve and faith required to begin productions before the money to complete them had been raised. Merchant charmed actors who hadn't been paid, and cooked for casts and crews as an act of endearment meant to convince them they were part of a family.

      Merchant and Ivory lived together as a gay couple. Few talked about their gayness, but it was understood by those who traveled in their sphere.

     It's a bit of a stretch, but when we contrast Ivory with  Merchant, we might say that skill (Ivory) makes interesting things; flamboyance (Merchant), on the other hand, tends to be interesting in and of itself.

   Soucy assembles impressive clips from the Merchant/Ivory catalog, snippets of a varied filmography that should encourage viewers to revisit favorites or discover movies they may have missed.

    It's possible that the Merchant/Ivory names no longer speak to younger audiences, but Ivory, now 95, still works. In 2018, he won an Oscar for adapting the screenplay of Call Me By Your Name, and the body of Merchant Ivory work remains impressive.

     Whatever you think about the Merchant/Ivory movies -- some saw them as stodgy, conservative throwbacks -- the two were responsible for some of the most impeccably cast and best-acted movies of the 1980s and 1990s. That’s quite an achievement.

‘Cruella’ adds new flair to a Disney stalwart

    Watching Emma Stone and Emma Thompson clash provides sufficient reason to see Cruella, a lively, surprisingly mordant story about how the famed Disney villainess Cruella De Vil became such a narcissistic queen. 

   Set in London during the 1970s, Cruella may be one franchise-based Disney movie that leans decidedly toward adult appreciation with its sharply drawn characters, lavish production design, and costumes that have been created with irresistible flair.

   Normally, costumes shouldn't trump the actors but, in the case of Cruella, they assume the status of a character. You might even say that the movie is about two women and the clothes they wear.

    Designer Jenny Beavan does a terrific job creating the movie's fashions, which are shown at parties, balls, and in the daily flow of the Baroness's life. Inventive and almost plausible, the costumes become testimonials to sartorial wit and imagination.

    Director Craig Gillespie (I Tanya) fuses coming-of-age tropes with a story that evokes memories of The Devil Wears Prada, meaning that the movie has a kind of insiders kick you won't find in the 1961 animated original, 101 Dalmations. 

    In this case, the movie's giant-sized supply of narcissism resides in the ostentatiously attired person of The Baroness (Thompson). An imperious fashionista, The Baroness's iron-fisted rule over haute couture remains unchallenged, even as punk culture and thrift-store chic begin their ascendance.

    Looking as if her face has been cast in bronze and sporting a bee-hive-sized mound of hair, Thompson creates a character of sharp edges, venomous bite, and casually expressed sadism. Let's just say that she takes the idea of being dressed to kill a little too literally.

   Egotism aside, the Baroness has an eye for original talent, especially if she can exploit it. She's quick to spot the latent genius in Stone's Estella, the young woman who -- as the story unfolds -- morphs into Cruella.  

    Early on, Estella can be found working in a department store where she scrubs floors. During a drunken evening locked in the store, she creates a window display with enough originality to impress the Baroness. Estella's rise to stardom begins.

     But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Cruella's plot kicks off with a young Estrella defying school rules. After the death of her mother, the newly orphaned Estella finds a London-based support system built around two larcenous characters, Joel Fry's Jasper and Paul Walter Hauser's Horace. This comic duo eventually serves to tweak Estella's diminishing conscience.

   Once Estella becomes an employee at the Baroness's fashion house, we know that she'll eventually eclipse her mentor. Born with two-tone black and white hair, Estella dons a wig until her metaphorically divided mop-top emerges and she fully  transforms into Cruella.

     Stone handles the transformation well as Estella happily learns to focus her more vindictive impulses.

     This shift and a predictable plot reveal trigger the melodramatic revenge saga that dominates the movie's final act, which suffers from a bit of bloat. But kudos to Disney for not forcing Gillespie and a strong cast into Disney straitjackets. 

    Among other things, Cruella dedicates itself to the notion that there's something both ridiculous and amusing about clothing that eschews function in favor of ornamental arrogance. 

    I'm not saying that Cruella trashes Disney. The movie acknowledges its Disney past but mostly succeeds in taking it to entertaining new levels. 

     

       

Intermittent amusement in ‘Late Night’

Mindy Kaling and Emma Thompson team in a comedy about women in the world of late-night network TV.

In the new comedy Late Night, Emma Thompson portrays Katherine Newbury, the only woman host of a long-running late-night show that airs on network TV. Icy of temperament and cruel to her staff, Katherine is supposed to be a stand-up comic with a cutting delivery. Jokes aside, she tends to prefer serious guests to refugees from reality TV.

Katherine presides over a stable of male writers whom she believes may be letting her down. Her once-popular show is on its way to becoming an afterthought. The station's new head (Amy Ryan) already has made arrangements to replace Katherine with a comic (Ike Barinholtz) who happily wallows in the sort of crude material Katherine abhors.

What to do? The screenplay by Mindy Kaling (of TV's The Office and The Mindy Project) brings fresh blood to the rescue. Kaling portrays Molly Patel, a woman who works in a chemical plant but secretly dreams of becoming a comedy writer.

As part of a desperate attempt to diversify her staff, Katherine insists on hiring a female. Molly fills the bill and, even better, qualifies as a low-expectation hire. Molly's male counterparts believe the inexperienced wannabe will vanish quickly.

Of course, Molly won't be so easily dispatched. Turns out she has fresh ideas and isn't afraid to talk about them at writers' meetings over which Katherine presides without calling any of the contributors by name. She assigns them numbers.

Two strains of assertion drive the story. Can the old dog (Katherine) learn a few new tricks and can the newbie (Molly) become a legitimate presence in helping to engineer the transformation?

Underlying both of these questions is another imperative, the one that says, it's best to be yourself and allow the chips to fall where they may.

Katherine, who's supposed to be too smart for an era of dumbed-down TV, also qualifies as too unpleasant to win many off-camera fans. Her devoted and nearly invisible husband (John Lithgow) remains a loyal supporter. Thompson's performance doesn’t skimp on scorn for Katherine’s supposed inferiors while also suggesting that she knows her fastball has lost some of its zing.

Both likable and amusing, Kaling gives a performance that helps soften Katherine's sharp edges.

Among the writers, Reid Scott (Veep), Max Casella (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) and Hugh Dancy (of TV's Hannibal) make some impact. Dennis O'Hare portrays the show's besieged producer, a fellow with the unenviable job of soothing Katherine's ego and keeping the staff from withering under the glare of her imperious gaze.

All of this might have worked well enough save for a couple of problems -- not the least of which is that Thompson, a brilliant comic actress, never seems like someone who'd find her place on a stand-up stage. It's a crucial distinction: Comic acting and stand-up don't draw on the same skills.

Laughs are a matter of taste, I suppose. For me, Late Night provided intermittent amusement until it reaches its predictably affirming conclusion. So, another movie in which promise exceeds fulfillment? For me, yes.

'Beauty and the Beast:' One more time

Disney's reprise of its 1991 animated hit should please old fans and make some new ones.

The idea that love can break the spell of a powerful curse sounds as familiar to us as fairy tales themselves. In the case of Beauty and the Beast -- as imagined by Disney in a new live action version of its 1991 animated edition -- the Beast, a callous prince who has been cursed by a haggard old woman, must find love before the last petal drops off a rose kept in his dank castle. Absent such a love, the Beast and a gaggle of courtiers who've been turned into inanimate objects forever will be doomed to their cursed fates.

Disney's lavish remake its 26-year-old animated classic, Beauty and the Beastt, created little by way of anticipatory excitement for me. I'm no fan of remakes that take advantage of advances in digital technology just to wow us, in this case with talking versions of a clock, a teapot, a candelabra and a feather duster. And, yes, these digitally created do-dads probably show more personality than some of the story's human characters.

Having said that, this version -- starring Emma Watson (Beauty), Dan Stevens (Beast) and directed by Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) -- has enough whimsy and amusement to satisfy those who also will be buoyed by reprises of the Alan Menken/Tim Rice musical numbers -- with a couple of new additions.

Much of the credit for the movie's engaging collection of talking bric-a-brac goes to the actors who supplied the voice work: Emma Thompson voices Mrs. Potts, the teacup; Stanley Tucci gives life to as Maestro Cadenza, a harpsichord; Gugu Mbatha-Raw adds her vocal prowess to Plumette, the feather duster. The voice behind Cogsworth, the clock, belongs to Ian McKellen; and Ewan McGregor can be heard as Lumiere, a dashing candelabra.

Condon spices things up with references to Busby Berkeley, a ton of production design, a major investment in costumes and a generally capable cast that includes Luke Evans as the impossibly conceited and ultimately duplicitous Gaston and Josh Gad as his loyal sidekick LeFou.

You've probably read that Disney has made LeFou a gay character. That may be daring for a Disney version of Beauty and the Beast, but nothing in this upbeat entertainment seems designed to take the glow off the movie's mass-appeal luster.

The film even neuters the Beast, who has been given a leonine countenance -- with horns and bad teeth added for the sake of fright. This Beast makes threats on which he fails to deliver, and isn't quite as self-assured in his menace as you might expect.

Still, he's softened by Beauty, and by the end, it's difficult to say that anyone would mind if the Beast remained a beast rather than returning to his more Disnified form as a devilishly handsome prince.

In a nice touch, Beauty and the Beast begin their rapprochement when Belle (Beauty) discovers that the Beast has a well-stocked library. She's an avid reader, evidently the only one in the tiny village she and her father (Kevin Kline) call home.

There have, of course, been numerous versions of this 18th century tale from Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Velqleneuve, including Jean Cocteau's landmark 1946 version, but classic stories seem capable of enduring as many retellings as anyone possibly could desire.

This one opts for a visual razzle-dazzle that plays against Watson's plucky but somewhat ordinary Belle. I wouldn't say that Condon and company achieve perfection, but they've provided a lively, entertaining version of Disney's animated entry from the 1990s.

If we were going to have another Beauty and the Beast, I'm not sure what more we could have justifiably asked or expected.

Lame drama, but food looks great

Burnt features Bradley Cooper as a narcissistic chef.

Someone needs to explain to me why I should want to spend time with an obnoxiously narcissistic chef who's trying to make a comeback in London after having undermined a skyrocketing career in Paris.

But wait, maybe the answer has something to do with the fact that said chef is the main character in a movie called Burnt, and he's played by a fashionably bestubbled Bradley Cooper.

Burnt, the plot of which I've just described, can't rise above its many problems even with Cooper portraying a culinary hotshot who thinks he's better than everyone else -- and probably would be if it weren't for the drug and alcohol problems that derailed his rise.

Turns out the best thing about this John Wells directed movie, set in the upper echelons of London's foodie culture, is the food, photographed with glossy slickness by cinematographer Adrinao Goldman.

When the camera focuses on the meals that Cooper's Adam Jones prepares, the movie has the allure of a beautifully photographed gourmet magazine, and it affords us a glimpse into the kitchens of the kind of gastronomically praised establishments that serve up minuscule portions for astronomical prices.

Is there an unwritten rule that all highly praised food must never touch the edge of any plate?

Wells supplies the kitchen scenes with the heat and bustle you'd expect, and I'd have been content if food preparation -- complete with tension, yelling and the occasional dress-down -- had completely wiped out the plot.

The screenplay by Steven Knight (Locke, Redemption) doesn't have much to offer once it convinces us that Jones' character is a jerk.

Because he's a talented jerk, others -- Sienna Miller as a saucier with a big future and Daniel Bruhl as a gay Maitre-D -- tolerate Jones and try to help him, even when they're frustrated by him.

Additional support comes from Omar Sy (The Untouchables), as a sous chef whose business in Paris was ruined by the then drunken Jones, and Matthew Rhys , as a rival restaurateur who also dislikes Jones intensely.

Subplots involving Jones' indebtedness to drug dealers and the late-picture introduction of one of his former lovers (Alicia Vikander) add little to an undernourished script.

Functioning as a kind of garnish, Emma Thompson appears as a doctor hired by Jones' employer to monitor his blood-alcohol level, and, occasionally, to offer sage advice.

Celebrity chefs Marcus Wareing and Mario Batali are credited with having served as consultants on the movie, so the kitchen environment presumably has some authenticity.

Truth be told, I'd rather watch the two of them work than be force fed another helping of Burnt.

If you're hungry for a more appetizing food movie, and haven't seen Chef, well ... there's always Netflix.

This 'Walk,' hobbled by low-grade material

Robert Redford and Nick Nolte search for laughs on the Appalachian trail.

One of them is a trim 79-year-old whose still-spry voice and white teeth don't seem to have aged at the same pace as his weathered face. The other is a 74-year-old who seems to have aged to the point where his face and body stand as a harsh rebuke to every trace of youthful grace.

I'm talking about Robert Redford and Nick Nolte, the unlikely pair of actors who try out their version of a Grumpy Old Men routine in A Walk on the Woods, a comedy in which an aging travel writer decides to take a re-invigorating 2,118 mile hike on the Appalachian Trail.

When Redford's Bill Bryson can't find a partner to join his adventure, he settles for the company of Nolte's Steve Katz, an alcoholic who only recently put aside the bottle. As young revelers, Bryson and Katz once traveled in Europe together.

The duo long-ago parted company. Katz continued his dissolute life in Iowa. Bryson stayed in England where he met and married a nurse (Emma Thompson). The couple now lives in New Hampshire, where Bryson tries to avoid funerals, treats the world with cynical indifference and occasionally writes a forward for someone else's book.

At one point, Bryson's wife suggests that he talk to people.

Bryson says he doesn't like to talk to people, an unlikely trait for a supposedly great travel writer and an indication of missteps to come.

Under the uninspired direction of Ken Kwapis (He's Just Not Into You and License to Wed), Walk in the Woods turns into a broadly conceived comedy that wanders a long way from the kind of chemistry generated by Redford and Newman in movies such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1968) and The Sting (1973).

I can't imagine what Walk in the Woods would have been had Newman lived long enough to play opposite Redford again, and I'm glad that I can't. I really don't want to think about it.

Beyond that, I'm a little surprised that Redford, who served as one of the movie's producers, was attracted to material that required him to cover himself with mud, fall into a rushing stream and tumble over a cliff that brings him and his slovenly partner to the brink of a death defying leap which -- unlike Butch Cassidy and Sundance -- Bryson and Katz wisely avoid.

Even though Nolte's voice has devolved into a cross between a garbage compactor and a growl and Redford's chops don't necessarily stretch toward the movie's occasional displays of physical comedy, both actors know how to handled themselves on screen. Still, they can't overcome a trail of second-rate material that -- like the Appalachian -- could stretch from Georgia to Maine.

The movie's more serious moments -- Bryson and Katz sharing thoughts on what their lives have meant -- feel worn out. Every now and again, Bryson stops the story in its tracks to deliver a small lecture on the fate of disappearing varieties of trees or the staggering multiplicity of stars in the heavens.

Aside from a few brief appearances by other actors, A Walk in the Woods remains a two-hander. Kristen Schaal plays a female hiker whose presence grates on Bryson and Katz's nerves, and ours, too. Mary Steenburgen brings her luminous smile to the role of a motel owner who flirts with Bryson.

A jokey bit about an overweight woman who becomes the object of Katz's lascivious desires takes on an ill-fitting antic quality.

At times, A Walk in the Woods seems like a goofy east coast version of Wild, the movie in which Reese Witherspoon played a woman who took a solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail.

In some respects, A Walk in the Woods could have taken its title by going in the opposite direction from Wild. This one is harmless, and that's a shame for Redford and Nolte, both of whom are capable of better.

The story behind 'Mary Poppins'

Emma Thompson proves the highlight of Saving Mr. Banks

The late Walt Disney was no stranger to the public eye. As the regular host of many of his company's TV shows, Disney became an avuncular presence in America's living rooms: He was the super nice neighbor, the friendly guy at the corner store, as well as the man who helped sell America on dreams.

In the new movie -- Saving Mr. Banks -- Disney is played by Tom Hanks, who tries hard to be as Disneyesque as possible. But it's not really Uncle Walt who occupies the center of a movie about how author P.L. Travers's Mary Poppins became a Disney classic.

That spot belongs to Travers, played with a major helping of disdain by Emma Thompson.

From the start, Thompson's Travers expressed disbelief and mistrust about Disney's motives. She very much doubted that Hollywood would do justice to her story.

But Travers also needed money, and her agent pushed her toward Disney, warning her that she might lose her London home if she didn't make a deal.

Travers agreed, but insisted on having final script approval. She also ruled out the inclusion of any animation. (Here, Disney bested her: He managed to get a chorus of animated penguins into the movie, which starred Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews.)

Disney and Travers couldn't have been more different. True to his folksy ways and easy informality, Disney insisted on calling Pamela Lyndon Travers by the diminutive, "Pam." Travers was appalled. She insisted that Disney call her Mrs. Travers.

Even with Thompson expressing Travers's distaste for all things Disney, the screenplay by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith comes off as a somewhat bland and sanitized version of Hollywood history. Disney, who died of lung cancer, tried to hide his addiction to cigarettes from the public. The film acknowledges Disney's nicotine cravings, but not much more.

The movie is at once a rudimentary guide to the making of a much-beloved family movie and a look at Travers' difficult early life in the Australian outback.

Her charming father (a fine Colin Farrell) was a hopeless alcoholic: Her mother (Ruth Wilson) became his unlucky wife. Annie Rose Buckley plays the younger Travers in flashbacks that alternate -- often in ungainly fashion -- with the story of Disney's fitful attempt to bring Mary Poppins to the screen, a goal he accomplished in 1964.

If there's any compelling reason to see this movie, Thompson supplies it. She's flinty and aloof as Travers, although she she does thaw by the end, at least a litte. Travers eventually overcomes some of her resistance to the cuddly Disney machine, partly because she strikes up a friendship with her Disney-supplied chauffeur (Paul Giamatti). He has a disabled daughter who loves Travers's books.

Travers objected when Disney proposed turning her story into a musical, so it's no surprise that she exasperated Robert and Richard Sherman (B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman), the brothers hired by Disney to write the Mary Poppins' score.

Despite Thompson's performance and a bit of behind-the-scenes allure, Saving Mr. Banks -- directed by John Lee Hooker (The Blind Side) -- is only intermittently entertaining and not entirely devoid of that once inevitable hallmark of many Disney efforts: sentiment.

Those who've been hankering to know exactly how Chim Chim Cher-ee entered the big-screen musical vocabulary will find out -- along with a variety of other things that rank low on the scale of cosmic importance, but -- then again -- what doesn't? I watched. I shrugged.

This teen romance goes South

Beautiful Creatures comes on like a Twilight wannabe, but turns into lushly photographed drivel.

A small-town southern boy, he yearns to experience the world beyond the stultifying, church-dominated confines of Gatlin, South Carolina. New in town, she's more worldly than any of her high school peers. Oh, and by the way, she has supernatural powers that, at age 15, have yet to be harnessed.

Despite their differences, these two -- Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes by name -- are kindred spirits. We know this because they both read books that the have been banned from the town's library. He's into Kurt Vonnegut. She carries a Charles Bukowski paperback with her, a signifier that underlines her status as an outsider with a capital "O."

Together, Ethan and Lena try for epic romance in Beautiful Creatures, an apparent Twilight wannabe that asks the now-familiar but still preposterous question: Can humans and fantasy beings find true and maybe even lasting love?

In this case, the fantasy beings aren't vampires; they're witches who prefer to be called "casters," as in spell casters. Ethan (Alden Ehrenreich) and Lena (Alice Englert) try to make a go of it, he with his curiosity, sensitivity and aw-shucks grin and she with a protective layer of teen superiority.

Ethan is easy-going. Lena, on the other hand, is not one with whom one wishes to trifle. When she's angry, she's liable to furrow her brow and create a psychic vibe that shatters every window in her high school classroom.

Lena's mysterious uncle, Macon Ravenswood (Jeremy Irons), has brought his niece to Gatlin to protect her from a family curse dating back to a Civil War battle.

For Lena, the stakes couldn't be higher. When she turns 16, she stands a chance of being claimed by the dark forces that claimed her mother Serafine (Emma Thompson) and her flirtatious cousin (Emma Rossum).
Yes, you read right. This lush bit of young adult blather features appearances by Irons and Thompson, both of whom sport southern accents. Irons brings out his inner aristocrat; Thompson seems to be enjoying herself as an arch and malicious "caster" who's able to inhabit the bodies of otherwise upstanding folks. Rossum, too, seems to have found a way to remain lively amid the story's Southern Gothic moodiness.

If the presence of Irons and Thompson weren't cause enough for concern about possible cinematic decline, the movie also makes room for the gifted Viola Davis, who plays Amma, the town librarian, a woman who has been looking after Ethan and his reclusive father since the boy's mother died.

To make matters worse, writer/director Richard LaGravenese (evidently intent on trying to provide a new big-screen fix for withdrawing Twilight addicts) seems to take his adaptation of Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl's young-adult novel seriously. Cinematographer Philippe Rousselot follows suit with lots of lush imagery -- at least when the movie's functioning in its idea of the real world. The special effects associated with the world of casters prove considerably less captivating.

But back to our young lovers. Ehrenreich lays on as much charm as he can muster; Englert (the daughter of Australian filmmaker Jane Campion) sometimes seems to be channeling whatever sullenness Winona Ryder left behind when she exited her teen years, but softens enough to keep her character from curdling.

Ehrenreich and Englert do not make for the most memorable big-screen couple. Whether you consider it a low bar or not, they're no Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, the last actors to try to find happiness as characters from different dimensions.

I suppose there are some pleasures here, though for me they were mostly inadvertent. Macon Ravenswood lives in a vine-covered derelict cliche of a mansion that's modern and spare on the inside. At one point, Davis' Amma brings food to the gravesite her late Uncle Abner and asks for guidance. LaGravenese even manages to work a Civil War re-enactment into the movie's inflated finale. All of this might have been more fun had LaGravenese spiked the entire concoction with more daffy spin.

I don't know if young adults will turn out for Beautiful Creatures. If they do, perhaps more of these books will find their way to the screen. As for me, I was happy as barbecue sauce on a well-cooked rib to say goodbye to Gatlin, where it seemed as if I had spent far too much time and found far too little reward.

A 'Brave' new world for Pixar

Brave finds a female lead, but loses some of the expected magic.


When it comes to wildly successful animation, Pixar's track record is difficult to beat. Pixar films such as Finding Nemo, Up, and Toy Story have transformed the animated landscape, appealing broadly to both adult and kiddie audiences.

Brave, a story centered on a young princess, is a slightly different Pixar animal. It's good enough to attract a crowd, but can't be ranked among the studio's best.

Although all technical aspects are first-rate, Pixar's Scottish-based story feels less committed to off-kilter creativity than previous efforts. Brave seems to have been conceived to celebrate a girl's courage while, at the same time, teaching her a lesson about the perils of selfishness.

The film's early scenes introduce Princess Merida (Kelly Macdonald) and sets up one of the story's basic problems. Free-spirited Merida, who receives a bow and arrow as a birthday gift from her father (Billy Connolly), is being encouraged by her mother Elinor (Emma Thompson) to assume her royal responsibilities; i.e., Merida's supposed to act like a bona fide princess and prepare to marry one of three suitors who'll be competing for her affections at a pre-engagement tournament.

Brave earns comic points with this preposterous trio of suitors, all of them obviously unsuitable for the movie's red-headed main character.

For her part, an adamant Merida insists on maintaining her freedom, which -- as we see -- riding horses through beautifully drawn forests, chasing glowing will o' the wisps and establishing herself as an ace archer and all-around free spirit.

A pivotal plot twist arrives when Merida encounters a witch (Julie Walters) who promises to change her mother's mind, but brings about other changes that burden Merida with a new responsibilities.

Brave plays like a fractured fairy tale with a mild agenda, increasingly becoming a story about the relationship between a determined, conventional mother and her equally determined, but unconventional daughter.

Pixar peppers the movie with enough comic relief to keep kids happy and propel the little ones past a few scary moments, but for all its animated marvels, Brave comes up short in the magic department.

A palatable reprise of 'Men in Black'

Early in Men in Black 3, Emma Thompson -- who plays Agent 0 -- delivers a eulogy for Zed, a character played in the previous movies by Rip Torn. Claiming that she's paraphrasing an alien, O speaks in a bizarre, screeching language that gives new meaning to the word "shrill." Thompson's offbeat moment marks one of many amusing bits in director Barry Sonnefeld's often imaginative reprise of a series that began in 1997.

Men In Black 3, available in 3-D, boasts a high degree of creativity, a serviceable enough story and the expected bickering between agents K and J (Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith). The movie may not score a bull's-eye, but it's no dud, either.

The first Men in Black movie caught audiences by surprise. Released in 2002, the second didn't do much for me and most other critics, but sold a fair number of tickets. The third is ... well ... a bit of a conundrum.

What I liked about No. 3, I tended to like a lot, but sporadic enjoyment doesn't entirely compensate for the fact that the various pieces that Sonnenfeld has assembled don't always translate into big-time fun.

This edition involves time travel. In brief: Agent J -- part of a black-suited force that monitors alien activity on Earth -- travels back to 1969 to kill Boris the Animal (Jemain Clement), an alien who has a plan for wiping out the Earth or conquering it or something.

J's arrival in 1969 allows Sonnefeld to do a few time-travel jokes, one revolving around J's encounter with a couple of bigoted policeman. Despite such annoyances, J soon meets a younger version of Agent K. Enter Josh Brolin, who seems to have stolen Tommy Lee Jones's voice, mastering Jones's every clipped, sardonic inflection. I don't know if Brolin's giving a performance or a doing an impression. Whatever it is, it's dead-on.

For his part, Jones appears in the opening and closing scenes that bookend the main part of the movie. In short, he's not required to do much heavy lifting, which is fine. I'm betting the always imposing Jones rather would have been elsewhere.

In 1969, J also meets Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), a dithering alien who's able to see a variety of versions of the future. J also learns a secret about himself, which adds a bit of unexpected poignancy to the story, which is credited to five writers. The multiple authorship sometimes shows. Men in Black 3 doesn't seem to know where it's headed.

So be prepared to enjoy Men in Black in bits and pieces:
-- An opening sequence in a Chinese restaurant is funny in a downbeat sort of way. It also assembles an appropriately disgusting collection of alien life forms, including a giant alien fish about the size of a small tugboat.

-- To travel through time, Agent J must leap off the Chrysler Building, a feat that gives Sonnenfeld an opportunity to apply some vertiginously effective 3-D, an opportunity that repeats itself during the movie's finale, which takes place at Cape Canaveral, Fla.

-- A joke involving the late Andy Warhol (Bill Hader) doesn't quite pay off, but the filmmakers deserve credit for advancing a novel explanation for Warhol's strange personality.

You get the idea: Men in Black 3 puts lots of ingredients in its bag and shakes them up to mixed effect.

Smith sometimes works a little too hard to ignite an old spark, and there certainly was no pressing reason for anyone to revisit these characters.

Having said that, Sonnefeld & company deserve mild praise for bringing a palatable version of an old favorite into the summer of 2012, where I hope the franchise finds its eternal rest after patting itself on the back for at least trying to hit some strangely amusing notes.