Sea Level dvd review

This animated film featuring a bamboo shark who can breathe air and a larger shark who eats tires is over-the-top with the eco message.   In this film, only the 'bad guys' eat.  Pup, the bamboo shark is small and bemoans that fact several times in the first half of the film.  None of the characters is developed enough to empathize with them much.  The humans are stereotypical shark fin soup restaurant suppliers.  Many of the characters sigh a lot and look at you with their big fishy or chickeny eyes hoping you will give them what they want without having to describe it.  (Just like some bad relationships)  This movie could have done a lot more with the ecology theme but chose instead to present an extreme completely non-realistic hope about how they would like nature to be rather than how it really is.  A shark would not live long enough to become bulked up eating only tires.  There were way too many fortunate coincidences in this film.  I showed it to a room of 10, 11, 17 year olds and only one ten year old watched the film through. The older youth considered the beginning a cheap copy of 'Finding Nemo' without the interesting characters.

Hogfather dvd

Colorful british holiday tale based on Terry Pratchett's Discworld.  Death's grand-daughter, Susan, has taken a job as a nanny and finds that getting away from family ties is difficult.

The Auditors have hired an assassin, Mr. Teatime (pronounced Tee-a-teem-a) to 'take out' the Hogfather and spoil Hogmass for all the children of discworld.  Death does his best to act festive and learn the arts of 'ho-ho-hoing' and gift giving while giving Susan time to find out what has happened to the Hogfather and how to save Hogmass. 

The action moves around discworld from a shopping mall to the tooth fairy's castle to the unseen university. Humorous and fast action.

Wall-E

Heavy ecology theme with a robot romance.  The major emphasis on overweight indulgence with lack of physical activity seemed a little unrealistic.  The simplistic view that all the passengers would be inactive overlooks people's varying interests.  The movie is entertaining for one watch through but heaven help the parent whose child decides to make this a weekly or daily favorite.