Family Movies

Steven Spielberg’s War Horse is now on DVD and Blu-ray, and even without watching it again, its bonus disc reminds me just how much the movie comes so close to being great, but completely misses the mark. To call War Horse hollow is unfair – the movie is technically beautiful and not without heart – but it definitely lacks the emotion and grit expected from a Steven Spielberg war movie.

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After nearly a year since it came to theaters, the Easter-themed movie Hop bounded its way onto DVD last week, understandably timed to take advantage of the religious holiday once again. An animated/live-action blend, Hop is more tolerable than other recent films in the sub-genre, though comparing the movie to the likes of Garfield and Alvin and the Chipmunks doesn’t say a whole lot. In other words, the movie will entertain very young kids and not insult parents, but is no comedy classic.

Read FilmJabber’s full Hop movie review.

From the director of the quirky but flawed Eagle Vs. Shark comes another quirky but flawed drama-comedy called Boy, about a boy named Boy who is excited to see that his absent father has returned – and then less excited when he realizes his dad is an incompetent hoodlum.

Read FilmJabber’s full Boy movie review.

Mirror Mirror, a new twist to the classic Snow White fairy tale, is a family film enjoyable for children and adults of all ages alike. The movie debuts in theaters everywhere March 30. We’re giving away a great prize pack in anticipation of this adaptation, which stars Julia Roberts as the evil Queen who ruthlessly rules her captured kingdom.

Just make sure to enter before Snow White (played by Lily Collins) bites the poison apple.

The hit comedy The Muppets comes to DVD and Blu-ray on March 20, 2012. Because you like the Muppets because you are cool and know a fun ride when you see it, we’re giving you the chance to win the family comedy. We’re not only giving away free copies, but we’re giving away

the Wocka Wocka Value Pack edition, which contains the movie on Blu-ray, DVD and digital, and a code to download the soundtrack!

Why are you still reading? Enter to win The Muppets now.

Scrat and the rest of the gang are back in yet another unnecessary sequel to the lackluster Ice Age movies
, which is nearly assured to make a boatload of money and keep this franchise afloat for another several years. We gave the first Ice Age movie a C+, its sequel The Meltdown the same grade, and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs a scathing C-.

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Leave it to Steven Spielberg to make the massively disappointing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull only to follow it some years later with a motion-capture adaptation of a beloved European comic book that is more Indiana Jones-esque than anything we’ve seen in two decades. The Adventures of Tintin is an entertaining, fun and superbly detailed action-adventure film that people of all ages will enjoy.

Read FilmJabber’s full The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn movie review.

Just when you thought Neil Patrick Harris was the coolest straight gay guy around, he goes and stars in The Smurfs, a live-action adaptation of the popular 80′s cartoon series. Like so many other attempts to find new magic in old children’s material, The Smurfs comes up short. Kids may be marginally satisfied by the adventure at hand, however.

Read FilmJabber’s full The Smurfs movie review.

Martin Scorsese is responsible for several of modern cinema’s greatest masterpieces. He’s an exquisite filmmaker, one with an uncanny eye for drama, suspense and unearthing raw emotion. Inexplicably, he’s also responsible for the children’s movie Hugo, one of the most boring and pointless movies of the year.

Read FilmJabber’s full Hugo movie review.

It’s worth celebrating when Hollywood produces a Christmas movie that’s actually worth watching. There’s a reason why the most popular holiday movies are from yesteryear: it’s hard, apparently, to make a movie that sincerely captures the Christmas spirit. Over the last decade, Tim Allen and Vince Vaughn have combined to almost singlehandedly destroyed the genre, giving us such disasters as Santa Claus 3, Christmas with the Kranks, Fred Claus and Four Christmases. There hasn’t been a good holiday-themed movie since 2003′s Elf.

Read FilmJabber’s full Arthur Christmas movie review.

“It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights…”

I’m a child of the 80′s.  I grew up watching classic Disney, “Fraggle Rock”, and “The Muppets”.  So, needless to say, I was really excited to see The Muppets, their first theatrical release in over a decade.  And with all the positive hype it was getting, my hopes were set pretty high.  I was not disappointed.

Read FilmJabber’s full The Muppets movie review.

The good news is that Mirror Mirror looks considerably different from its competitor Snow White and the Huntsman, to the degree that no one will confuse the two movies. The bad news is that the trailer pales in comparison in every possible way to the other movie’s trailer that debuted just last week.

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