Last night I saw a Sneak Preview of Zathura.
Actually, and I am a teensy bit surprised to say this, I found it pretty good. Not terribly awesomely great, but all in all quite solid. The film avoids some of the major issues associated with other children’s films by simply using children to the exclusion of almost everyone else. There are only five characters in the whole darn movie:
Walter (age 10 going on 25), Danny (his kid brother), and his older sister (Lisa, who is exactly at that teen age when you sleep till 6 pm), his dad (Dad), and a stranded astronaut.
Dad: Time Robbins. Solid as always. Gives a very good impression of an overworked, just-divorced father trying to keep himself from smacking his annoying children into the next millenium.
Walter: I actually found his tiny little pride charming. I can exactly imagine little kids like him desperate to grow up and wanting to be so much older than they are.
Danny: He is annoying. But at the same time, he’s annoying in a very realistic way. It reminds me of my own kid brother, and the fights we used to have.
Lisa: Poor girl gets little screantime, but she doesn’t mess anything up. For what she gets, she’s believable and likable.
Dad: Poor Tim Robbins gets even less than Lisa. But that’s OK. Dad is the movie’s framework.
Astronaut: I have never heard of Dax Shepard before. Checking the IMDB, he seems to be bootstrapping himself up the Hollywood ladder - and pretty quickly, too. He’s not the greatest looker ever, but he has a certain rustic charm.
(Sadly, there was no Zathras. Poor Zathras.)
All in all, it’s certainly going to be better for the kids than the parents, but the parents won’t feel bored by the production. It hits just enough cliches to be familiar, but doesn’t go so overboard that they become strained and irritating. I admit, I didn’t like the ones I saw, but then, I am pretty hard on cliches. All in all, a decent family film, which is hard to come by.
