(Reviews of Radical; Duchess; Kensuke's Kingdom; Ozi: Voice of the Forest; and Gracie and Pedro: Mission Impossible)
RADICAL.
A couple of weeks ago, we added a new title to the list of films about bad teachers. Film-makers, however, have always preferred inspirational educators and Mexican Christopher Zalla's Radical is latest picture to profile a zealous, if unconventional newcomer who strives to engage kids on whom everyone else has given up.
In the Mexican border town of Matamoros, the 2011 autumn term is about to begin at José Urbina López Primary School. Despite the best efforts of Principal Chucho (Daniel Haddad), the institution is known as the `Place of Punishment' and the demotivated teachers barely register the arrival of Sergio Juárez Correa (Eugenio Derbez), who believes that every child has a chance to fulfil their potential. However, when his sixth grade students turn up to see their desks upturned and Sergio urging them to treat them as lifeboats that can only save so many people, they think they have a nutcase on their hands.
Passing with a pastry and a mug of coffee, Chucho also thinks the class is out of control and bursts in to remonstrate. But he finds himself in the middle of a problem-solving exercise that culminates in the poorly resourced school library, where Sergio tells his pupils that he wants them to learn to think for themselves and not be afraid to fail. This approach intrigues Nico (Danilo Guardiola), who walks home with Lupe (Mía Fernanda Solis) and her younger siblings. Even the class mean girls ponder Sergio's methods, although they still taunt Paloma (Jennifer Trejo), who scavenges on the nearby rubbish tip to bring cash home to her ailing father (Gilberto Barraza), who disapproves of the books she has found to create a little library behind her bed.
Reminded by Chucho that passing the ENLACE test is the school's sole goal for sixth graders and warned by disaffected colleague Alfredo García (Erwin Veytia) that he can never teach without discipline, Sergio informs the class that they will only learn things that interest them. They fall silent before one kid asks to do more on why ships float and Sergio leaves them to it for a while so they can debate the topic among themselves. Returning, he commends them on considering aspects of mathematics and philosophy that demonstrate their intuitive intelligence. However, Chucho is still baffled when he finds the class experimenting with rocks and balloons in a water-filled dumpster in the playground.
Realising that Paloma is a bright spark, Sergio encourages her to speak up in class and he will help her work towards becoming an aerospace engineer and, possibly, an astronaut. This gives her the confidence to correct the junkyard man when he tries to cheat her father, while Lupe surprises the librarian by asking for a book on John Stuart Mill. Inspired by the lesson, Nico attempts to repair his father's old boat and asks his older brother, Chepe (Victor Estrada), if he can stay in school rather than coming to work for the local drug dealer, Nacho (Manuel Cruz Vivas).
Nettled by Sergio, Alfredo checks up on his past record and finds that he quit his old school under a cloud. Coming to his house to meet wife Laura (Claudia de Bernal), Chucho learns that Sergio had had a eureka moment on discovering the teaching methods of British educational technology professor, Sugata Mitra. Chucho is sufficiently impressed to give him his head and even agrees to participate in a water-displacement experiment. He also chases the grant for computers that had mysteriously gone missing in the system.
Meanwhile, Lupe ventures into town to borrow some books on philosophy from the university library, while Nico steals a TV satellite dish to make a magnifying glass that can burn through wood. Paloma also thrives, as she involves the class in a lesson on the solar system and how the planets rotate in conjunction with each other. Everyone enjoys learning on their own terms and Nico even develops a crush on Paloma. When he asks Sergio how to impress her, however, he lets slip that he has contraband in his haversack and pleads with his teacher not to open it or report him, as he and Chepe will get into serious trouble.
Covering for Nico (while also telling Chucho that he has let a student off a serious offence), Sergio continues to inspire the class, particularly Paloma. She shows Nico the rocket base across the US border with telescope she had found on the landfill tip and he is more smitten than ever. But Lupe's mother bursts her balloon by telling her that she will have to quit school to care for the baby she's expecting, as she will have to go back to work.
As the class receives laptops after Chucho chases the missing grant, Alfredo slips Sergio an advance copy of the ENLACE test and cautions him that he can't afford to have scruples over cheating because their bonus depends on each class passing. When the laptops fail to appear, Sergio confronts the local administrator (Enoc Leaño), who is so offended that he comes to the school to watch Sergio teach and decides that he is depriving the kids the chance to pass the test by straying from the basics. He picks on Nico and calls him an ignoramus for not knowing rote answers (which Lupe and Paloma do know) and the boy flees the classroom in embarrassment before Sergio is given a fortnight's suspension until after ENLACE is over.
Worse follows when Paloma's father tells Sergio to stop filling her head with hopeless aspirations. She feels sorry for Nico and gives him a peck on the cheek to make him feel better. As that moment, Nacho rolls up and orders Nico to make a drop or face the consequences. He grabs Paloma and asks if she's a virgin, just as Lupe walks past with her siblings and Chepe comes up to defend his brother. Back at the school, Sergio hears gunshots and he rushes up to find Paloma and Lupe cowering, while Chepe and Nico lie dead in the dust.
Distraught, Sergio takes to his bed, while his students stay away from school. Chucho tries to coax him into returning, but he can no longer see the point in trying to beat a system predicated to fail. On hearing that Paloma has given up, Sergio visits her on her tip and tries to convince her that she has the intelligence to succeed. But she laments that reality will always mitigate against those in the margins and Sergio is about to leave when her father tries to return the telescope, which he thinks she has borrowed from the school. Overwhelmed at hearing that his daughter has built it, he encourages her to sit the test. Lupe, however, has no option but to babysit her brother and hope that she can pick up where she left off when he goes to kindergarten.
As closing captions reveal that results shot up thanks to Sergio's teaching - with Paloma being among the brightest kids in the whole of Mexico - this orthodox, but heartwarming saga reaches a satisfying, if slightly anaemic conclusion. Based on Joshua Davis's Wired article, `A Radical Way of Unleashing a Generation of Geniuses', the story follows the familiar To Sir With Love (1967) format, while the casting of Eugenio Derbez binds it to another `overcoming the educational odds' drama in Sian Heder's Oscar winner, CODA (2021). But Zalla embraces the Capracorniness of the situation to remind us that not only is fact often more affectingly curious than fiction, but also that everyone is unique and has the potential to do something special, given the right chance.
Drawing on his inner Edward James Olmos from Ramón Menéndez's Stand and Deliver (1988), Derbez is typically winning and forms an appealing comic duo with Daniel Haddad, when not performing his one-man classroom rebellion with idealism, humanity, and charisma. Danilo Guardiola does well as the scamp who discovers there's more to life than struggle, while Jennifer Trejo brings poise to the equally stereotypical role of the blossoming brainy beauty. But it's Mía Fernanda Solis who proves the most touching, whether she's peering over counters at librarians in the hope of gaining access to previously imagined knowledge or resigning herself to being a good sister/daughter - or does she take the baby to school and sit the exam in spite of the hall doors being locked?
Segueing neatly from breezy to bathetic while also finding room for an a capella snatch of canto cardenche, Pascual Reyes and Juan Pablo Villa's score perfectly conveys the tonal shifts, while Juan Santiso's production design and Mateo Londono's photography captures the contrasts between the dirt poverty in which some of the children live and the cosseting simplicity of the classroom, where self-discovery counts for more on the curriculum than definitions, dates, and declensions. The direction is equally accomplished. A long time has been allowed to elapse since the Kenyan-born Zalla took a prize at Sundance with his debut feature, Padre Nuestro (2007). Let's hope we don't have to wait as long for his next excursion and that not too many mules fall into wells in the interim.
DUCHESS.
Newcastle's Neil Marshall has made some fine films in his time. Kicking off impressively with Dog Soldiers (2002) and The Descent (2005), he failed to build on his cult status with Doomsday (2008) or Hellboy (2019) after a lengthy spell directing for television during which he completed the underrated Centurion (2010). Working in tandem with actress and off-screen partner, Charlotte Kirk, he bounced back with The Reckoning (2020) and The Lair (2022). But Marshall hits rock bottom with Duchess, a BritCrime knock-off that makes you pine for the bad old days of Craig Fairbrass and Danny Dyer.
Flashing back from Scarlett Monaghan (Charlotte Kirk) posing as a prostitute to avenge herself on a lecherous slob, we learn how she left her pickpocketing life in Peckham behind - along with brother Dave (Alex Morgan) and Aunt Nellie (Judy Donovan) - in order to romance Robert McNaughton (Philip Winchester), an American diamond smuggler who operates with loyal old muckers Billy Baraka (Hoji Fortuna) and Danny Oswald (Sean Pertwee).
Having left his oppos to pummel her boyfriend/boss, Adam (Harvey Dean), after he beats her and pal, Michelle (Mellissa Laycy), Rob beds Scarlett and promises her a new life so that she can forget the abuse jailed father Frank (Colm Meany) meted out to her late mother. Turned on by watching Rob triumph in an underground car park gun battle, Scarlett readily comes along for the ride when he goes to sell a 168 carat uncut diamond to Charlie (Stephanie Beacham), the biggest wheeler-dealer in the dark, dirty, and dangerous world of gem trading.
As she handles herself with decorum during the £15 million exchange (particularly during a brutal tongue-cutting execution), Scarlett earns the nickname, `The Duchess', and she heads to a fresh start in Tenerife with a sense of closure after visiting Mad Frank in jail and disowning him. At their hilltop home, she meets his sidekicks, Tom (Colin Egglesfield). Johannes (David Chevers), Santiago (Iván Hermés), and Marcos (Jota Jota Ramos), as well as Maria (Giada Falzoni), the maid she declares will be her new best mate. She also gets to meet the tiger Rob keeps in an outhouse pit, as a flashy split-screen montage shows him taking care of business and her running on a treadmill, learning how to shoot, and flouncing around in lingerie.
No one knows who ordered the failed hit in London and Tom suggests it might have been an inside job. But it seems too much like a coincidence when Rob and Baraka are ambushed at the forest factory where diamonds are picked out of smuggled oranges. They get away, only to find Scarlett has shot Marcos after he tries to molest Maria in the kitchen. His corpse is fed to the tiger, but Santiago wants revenge for his brother's death and Tom uses the incident to make a power grab for the gang.
Danny prevents Baraka from becoming tiger food, but Tom sends Rob and Scarlett away by car rather than shooting them there and then - thus, enabling Scarlett to survive when henchmen Lee Roy (Boris Martinez) and Nacho (Jota Ramos) botch the execution. She buries Rob under some stones in the wilderness before grabbing some stones and clothes from the house before returning to London to cut a deal with Charlie, who is impressed by her moxey, even though she doesn't think she can succeed.
Scarlett has Danny and Baraka on his side, however, and she goes from the opening scene ambush of Nacho to hide out at Maria's bar and recruit Michelle and Baraka's nephew, Jono (Boré Buika), to torture Tom and Johannes's underlings, Camp Fredo (Pau Poch) and Riff (Emanuel Felix), into betraying their whereabouts. Scarlett kills Lee Roy by covering his face oil, igniting it, and stabbing him with a crowbar. However, Johannes captures Baraka, Jono, and Danny, and she agrees to surrender to save them.
Tom enjoys giving Scarlett electric shocks as he taunts her for daring to challenge him. But she turns Johannes against him and, as they pull a Mexican stand-off, Dave and some stealthy masked gunmen burst in to save the day. Tom fronts up to Scarlett in a fist fight, but she knocks him out and he wakes up in time to be pushed into the ravenous tiger's lair. Reclaiming the Tenerife mansion, she leaves the gang to enjoy the life of Riley, while she ends her pact with Charlie and drives off in Rob's British Racing Green motor. However, Riff tries to blow her up with a remote controlled bomb and she confronts him on the roadside after leaping to safety in the nick of time.
Few will be hoping that Marshall makes good on his threat to make the sequel trailed in this feeble finale, because - hard as Kirk tries - Duchess is not a character worth revisiting. The film is competently assembled. But it lacks wit, novelty, style, and nuance. Scarlett narrates with a Mockney inelegance that carries through to the full-movie rewind, the split-screen montage, and the fact that each character (no matter how minor) is treated to a captioned freeze frame when they first appear.
Notwithstanding its plethora of contrivances and inevitabilities, the plot (co-authored by Marshall and Kirk) is creditably busy, even though the dialogue is dreadful, as is some of the acting. Yet Marshall and co-editor Adam Trotman piece together the shootouts with some aplomb, while Paul Lawler's score lurches hilariously between pastiches of the incidental music in The Sweeney and Dynasty.
Speaking of which, what a shame to see Stephanie Beacham in a film of this calibre, although she and Colm Meaney are by far the best things about it. Crime isn't Marshall's métier and he cleaves too closely to the formula associated with Guy Ritchie and his ilk. But he's proved a dab hand at suspense in the past and the complete absence of anything approaching a thrill from this tiresomely overlong farrago is as disappointing as the thudding obviousness of the entire enterprise.
KENSUKE'S KINGDOM.
Long before they came together to adapt Michael Morpurgo's Kensuke's Kingdom, Neil Boyle and Kirk Henry had been amassing impressive animation credits. Boyle started out collaborating with Richard Williams on Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and The Thief and the Cobbler (1993) before serving as supervising animator on Space Jam (1996). Between making commercials and contributing to Hollywood features in various capacities, he has since directed the shorts, The Last Belle (2011) and Made Up (2016). Like Boyle, Hendry has spent time abetting Sylvain Chomet, notably on Belleville Rendezvous (2003) and the forthcoming Marcel et Monsieur Pagnol, as well as animating commercials and pop promos. The New Zealander has also completed the short, Junk (2011), but seems set to be best remembered for this pleasingly traditional tale, which combines mixed-media backdrops with hand-drawn 2-D graphics.
After his parents (Cillian Murphy and Sally Hawkins) decide to sail around the world after losing their jobs, 11 year-old Michael (Aaron MacGregor) soon gets tired of not being trusted with important tasks like his older sister, Becky (Raffey Cassidy). He's told off for having smuggled the family dog, Stella, aboard The Peggy Sue. But his mood improves after she's allowed to stay and he fills the logbook with happy sketches of their progress.
When they encounter their first storm, however, Michael gets swept off the deck while fetching Stella from the hold and they are lucky to wash up on a desert island. Sheltering in a hollowed log they find on the tideline, the pair are reluctant to venture into the jungle. But fruit and water miraculously appear overnight and again the next day. However, the supply dries up after Michael annoys Kensuke (Ken Watanabe), an elderly Japanese man living on the island, when he tries to catch the attention of a passing plane by lighting a bonfire.
A rapprochement is reached after Kensuke rescues Michael from jellyfish and they begin to muddle along without a common language in the treehouse that Kensuke has fashioned (complete with running water and a shower). Michael is also awed by the watercolours on the study wall and curious about the people in a small photo, while Kensuke learns about his guest's voyage from the log that had somehow made it to shore.
While exploring the waterfalls and caves after recovering from his stings, Michael sees Kensuke abases himself to offer fruit to some gentle orangutans in the depths of the jungle. However, he falls into the nearby pool and upsets his host when he defends himself with a pointed stick from a one-eyed ape protecting its infant. Apologising on returning home, Michael learns that Kensuke was a stranded after his ship was sunk in the Indian Ocean around the same time that his wife and child perished in the atom-bombing of Nagasaki. Seeing the boy is fearful that he might never see his family again, Kensuke formally introduces himself and starts teaching Michael how to survive in the wild.
He also shows him how to rescue baby turtles from seagulls and pop them back in the water. But poachers pose a greater threat, especially when the trio trapping exotic birds catch sight of a baby orangutan and chase its one-eyed mother to the waterfall. Michael bravely rescues the youngster and returns to the treehouse to find that Kensuke has been shot while escorting the other apes to safety.
Tending to his wound, Michael makes a walking stick from bamboo and takes care of the baby after burying its mother. He also follows the ritual of offering fruit to beckon the apes and Kensuke is proud of what the boy had learned. After the old man recovers, the pair enjoy an idyllic interlude before Kensuke spots The Peggy Sue and bows in farewell after lighting a beacon to ensure Michael is rescued. Promising to keep Kensuke's secret and handing him the baby ape, Michael runs off with Stella for a reunion on the beach.
Wafts of Johann Wyss's Swiss Family Robinson (1812) and Michaël Dudok de Wit's The Red Turtle (2016) susurrate through this beautifully realised castaway saga, which offers an array of life lessons with sincerity and finesse. Despite struggling with the frankly implausible opening premise, Frank Cottrell-Boyce does a typically solid job of adapting the text to create a tonally nimble narrative that touches upon its diverse issues with brevity, wit, insight, and compassion.
One thing missing, however, is a sense of passing time, as it surely wouldn't take Michael's parents too long to find the island, as the boy could not have survived being swept away over anything more than a short(ish) distance. Yet this is a pardonable contrivance, as such a degree of latitude is required for the story and the character dynamics to develop. Stuart Hancock's score very much helps in this regard, as it switches emotional register with an adeptness that is most keenly felt during the poaching incursion and the leave taking.
Young Aaron MacGregor also deserves credit for the precision pitching of his vocal performance during Michael's rite of passage, while Ken Watanabe exudes a dignity and intuition that reflect Kensuke's humbling blend of karmic acceptance and eco consciousness. Flitting inspiredly between simple pencil lines, ink wash reveries, Hiroshige-like ripples of fluidity, and magisterial flashes of Audubonian colour, the visuals reinforce the latter, while also evoking a timelessness that feels apt for a good old-fashioned family adventure that took the co-directors a decade to realise. They have created a fable with much to teach young and old alike. But they leave the most important detail for the audience to decide - what happens next.
OZI: VOICE OF THE FOREST.
It's one of the laziest lines in criticism, but the old adage about waiting ages for buses has its uses, especially in a week in which two films
featuring animated orangutans come along at once. While less visually or thematically sophisticated than Kensuke's Kingdom, Tim Harper's Ozi: Voice of the Forest still has its appeal and may well be more suitable when it comes to introducing ecological concepts to younger children.
Ozi (Amandla Stenberg) lives in the rainforest with her orangutan parents, Jojo (Djimon Hounsou) and Sema (Laura Dern). Life is good until a logging company decimates their habitat and Ozi believes that her parents have perished in a fire. Fortunately, she is rescued by Kirani (Marissa Anita) and Robert (Ivanno Jeremiah), who run a simian orphanage, where Ozi is befriended by the mischievous duo of Jelly (Kemah Bob) and Peanut (Josh Whitehouse).
As time passes, Ozi begins to show signs of great intelligence and she quickly learns sign language. Moreover, when fitted with a special electronic glove, she is able to communicate in human speech and becomes a media sensation when she cheeks a well-known chat show host. Kirani is very proud of her, but loses Ozi's trust when she refuses to allow her to keep a tablet that has been sent for her to make social media posts by Greenzar, the company behind the deforestation so that it can plant trees to produce its Mr Palm brand of palm oil.
While Ozi is sulking, a monkey named Chance (Dean-Charles Chapman) takes refuge in the orphanage from a ruthless hunter. Ozi takes a dislike to him because he's so cocky and greedily eats all the food he can find. But she is intrigued because he boasts about being free to go wherever he likes and knows the forest like the back of his paw. Persuading Ozi not to give him away to Kirani, Chance helps her find the tablet that had been hidden out of reach. She watches the welcome greeting from Mr Palm and sees Jojo and Sema in the Sama Sama biosphere sponsored by Greenzar. Determined to reunite with her parents, Ozi talks Chance into showing her the way.
When Ozi insists on bringing a heavy backpack full of things she uses everyday, Chance teases her for being pampered and says she needs to lose the stuff in order to survive in the wild. She is cross when he leaves her with nothing but the tablet, which she insists on keeping because it always has the answers. However, she struggles to climb trees and swing on creepers and a bonobo trio perched on a branch titters as she strains to master the basics.
As Kirani and Robert discover that Ozi is missing, they reach Chance's home near a waterfall. He shows off the plentiful supply of food and the comfiness of his hammock. But he admits that this is the latest in a number of adopted habitats because humans are forever destroying things and `these days, you've got to enjoy it while it lasts'.
The peace is disturbed by a muffled cry from the jungle and Ozi and Chance join forces to pull a rare spotted rhinoceros named Honkus (Urzila Carlson) out of a mud wallow. Cheerful and chatty without being particularly bright, she claims to be in Chance's debt for life and confuses him by failing to understand that the debt has been repaid after she saves him by charging the hunter who is still pursuing him and knocking him out.
Agreeing to come with Ozi now that his hideaway has been compromised, Chance sympathises with her when she recognises her old home, which has been razed to the ground. But he can't understand why she keeps taking photographs of everything she sees, even though she explains that she is an influencer and wants her followers to see what is happening to the forest.
Back at the orphanage, Robert spots the posts online. He and Kirani had been driving round trying to find clues to Ozi's whereabouts. But they don't recognise the charred landscape and decide to sit tight until they get further updates. But Ozi becomes preoccupied when they reach Sama Sama and she has to find a way inside. Once again, Honkus proves accidentally effective and Ozi finds Jojo and Sema, who introduce her to the albino alligator who runs the park, Mr Smiley (Donald Sutherland).
He welcomes Ozi to the `gatored community', but allows Gurd (RuPaul Charles) to adopt her as a pet. Initially, Ozi is just pleased to be part of a family again. But, as one identical day follows another, she begins to grow bored and asks her parents why they don't challenge the repetitive routines in the artificial habitat. They shruggingly admit that safety is a small price to pay for conformity and admit that life is easier without having to worry about where the next meal is coming from. When Ozi asks about why they are not more concerned about the fate of forest, she is shocked when they confess that they don't think about it because `it's not happening here, it's not happening to us'.
Giving Gurd the slip, Ozi hooks up with Chance and Honkus in an effort to discover how Sama Sama is run. Following some camera drones into an air vent, they find a control room, where Ozi watches a video in which an animated Mr Palm informs the watching world that he is conserving nature by opening the reserve and planting trees to repair the damage to the forest. She also realises that the drones are recording images to be live streamed to give the impression that the animals are residing in a paradise.
Returning to the enclosure, Ozi and her friends are caught by the collaborationist Mr Smiley. Chance and Honkus make themselves scarce, but the orangutans are imprisoned in a cage and Smiley turns on a large tap to drown them for rocking the boat. Yet again, Honkus comes to the rescue, as she swims underwater to open the cage and help the apes to safety. As Smiley informs everyone that the family has died, Ozi appears to give a presentation using her tablet to convince the animals that Greenzar has deceived them and that Smiley is on their side.
Furious at being exposed, Smiley tries to capture Ozi, but she manages to hide in a truck carrying palm fruit. She gets a signal to post online and Robert picks it up, just as Smiley appears to chase Ozi along a conveyor belt at the oil factory. They tussle, but she evades his clutches and is rescued by Chance and Honkus, who have followed her. Karina and Robert arrive to shield her and everyone is made aware of Greenzar's duplicity - although that doesn't stop Mr Palm from launching a new campaign in which he claims to be at the forefront of environmental protection. Reunited with Jojo and Sema, who realise how wrong they had been to stop caring, Ozi and her friends live happily again, as she had demonstrated that one heart can change the world.
Memorable primarily for affording Donald Sutherland a last chomp at some succulent villainy, this is a film with its heart in the right place, as it alerts younger viewers to the threat facing the world's wildlife and the hypocrisy of major corporations when it comes to the environment. Screenwriter Ricky Roxburgh was clearly sufficiently on message to coax eco activist Leonardo DiCaprio into joining the producing roster, but the story also celebrates family and friendship, as well as acceptance, honesty, and integrity.
In essence, it's another addition to the long list of `no place like home' films for children and that's no bad thing. But a story in which a special glove allows an orangutan to vocalise sign language and become a social media superstar is frustratingly more interested in connecting with kids on their privileged First World level than on introducing them to the realities of living in an imperilled place where finding a decent signal and getting likes aren't major priorities.
The backdrops created by the French Mikros studio are admirable, but the character design isn't of the same standard. Despite the best efforts of Amandla Stenberg, Ozi is a generic CGI ape, who has little of the furry tactility or affecting personality of those in Kensuke's Kingdom. Chance is no more visually innovative, although he's made even more resistible by Dean-Charles Chapman's decision to voice him via a Russell Brand impression. Yet, at least he hangs round longer than Hugh Bonneville's narrator!
The Groundhog Day montage, in which Ozi realises that Sama Sama is a scama scama, is a neat touch, while Harper and Roxburgh (who respectively boast Roary the Racing Car [2007-10] and Tangled [2017-20] on their CVs) wisely resist any songs. But they might have found a bit more to do for Honkus, the ditzy rhino who is splendidly voiced by New Zealand comic Urzila Carlson and doesn't seem to appreciate the sad significance of the fact that she's the last of her species.
GRACIE AND PEDRO: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.
Director Kevin Donovan has largely been making shorts, promos, and TV episodes since debuting with the Jackie Chan comedy, The Tuxedo, back in 2002. Indeed, the animated adventure, Gracie and Pedro: Mission Impossible, is his sophomore outing and his first feature in two decades. He shares the gig with Gottfried Roodt, whose sole previous credit was as the creator of the TV show, Noodle and Bun (2020). Yet, despite their lack of experience in a specialised field, the pair have managed to attract a stellar vocal cast.
Pedro (Cory Doran), the rescued alley cat, and Gracie (Claire Alan), the pedigree English pup, are too busy fighting to realise that the Bannister family is moving to Salt Lake City. They do their best to help mum, dad, Gramps (Al Franken), and kids Gavin and Sophie (Bianca Alongi), with packing, as everyone sings along to a song Sophie strums on her guitar. But Laurence (Danny Trejo) the goldfish posits that, instead of fighting like cat and dog, Pedro and Gracie should realise that one day they might need each other.
That day comes sooner than expected, when they bounce their pet carrier off the luggage conveyor belt at the airport and miss the flight. Having given up their collars to runway rats, Rasputin (John Stocker) and Camilla (Shoshana Sperling), Gracie and Pedro narrowly escape a stray catcher before following the advice of a monitor lizard to catch the bus to Salt Lake. In their hurry, however, they wind up on a coach to Las Vegas with Shades (Susan Sarandon), a white magician's rabbit with a taste for carrot martinis.
Wowed by her tricks, the pets find themselves in the penthouse suite of a swanky hotel, where they feed their faces before trashing the place in a fight over the last cocktail sausage. Plunging several storeys into the hotel pool, they are spotted on the CCTV feed by Sherlock (Mike Nadajewski), a sleuthing ferret who works with a doltish human sidekick, Doyle (James Kee). Gracie has to bite him to evade his grasp and Pedro is impressed by the fact that his pampered companion can bare her teeth when necessary.
Meanwhile, mum and dad have gone in search of the missing animals, leaving Gramps in charge of the kids. They post a pop video online appealing for help in finding Pedro and Gracie, who have agreed to a truce after she had saved him from Sissy-Chrissy (Alicia Silverstone), a two-headed rattlesnake in the desert. Aided by Willow the galloping horse (Brooke Shields) to dodge Sherlock and Doyle, the pair rides the rails before being captured by a vulture named Conrad (Bill Nighy). Confessing to past sins relating to favourite toys and birthday cakes, Gracie and Pedro realise they haven't really taken the trouble to get to know each other. But they're soon on the move again, when they use a convenient box of magnets to trap Conrad's beak, steal his keys, and jump on to the first passing platform.
Here, they re-encounter Rasputin and Camilla, who sing a song of apology before revealing that they've come to return the collars in order to claim the reward being offered by the People First airline for the return of Pedro and Gracie after the viral video had an adverse effect on ticket sales and share values. No sooner have the rats posted a video on a scavenged mobile phone than Sherlock and Doyle arrive and the pets only just manage to elude them by venturing into an abandoned funfair.
Gramps sees the video and takes the Gavin and Sophie in his buggy, only for them to get trapped on a runaway rollercoaster. Luckily, Gracie and Pedro manage to push the right buttons in the control centre to bring it to a halt just before the track runs out and there's a happy reunion. Ironically, it turns out that Sherlock and Doyle work for the airline and were simply trying to get the pets home safely and had no idea that their behaviour seemed in any way sinister. As the pets play fetch in the backyard, Camilla chomps the cheese she bought with her share of the reward money, while Rasputin sits at a white grand piano and shows off his new grillz.
Abandoned pets have been learning about collaboration while striving to be reunited with their owners since dogs Luath and Bodger teamed with Tao the Siamese in Fletcher Markle's live-action Disney adaptation of Sheila Burnford's The Incredible Journey (1963). Pedro and Gracie may not be in their league, but this eventful adventure is nowhere near as bad as certain broadsheet reviewers would have you believe.
Admittedly, the CGI graphics are serviceable at best, while the perils the pair endure provide little by way of spills, let alone thrills. But the character design is decent enough and the voiceover all-stars sportingly resist upstaging Claire Alan and Cory Doran, who do well enough as the prissy pooch and peevish puss. It's never explained why the family is moving or why Gavin speaks with a voicebox. But there's little to be gained from delving too deeply into the dynamics of a world in which a ferret can be the boss of a Dan Aykroyd-alike who doesn't understand his squeaks.
Screenwriters Jaisa C. Bishop, Bruce A. Taylor, and Kelly Peters dot the action with useful lessons about acceptance, perseverance, family, and friendship. But they need to work on their wisecracks and insults, which lack wit and zing. Similarly, while they pace the story admirably, the co-directors are prone to chucking in video game-style set-pieces like the rollercoaster ride to pep up proceedings when they think they're getting too chatty and cosy. Someone should have talked them out of the songs performed by Bianca Alongi, however, as they are truly excruciating.
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