G-Force

On Monday, after several days of false starts, I was finally all packed up and ready to go. Every last item had been crossed off my pre-trip to-do list.

It also happened to be the fourth birthday of my twin nieces, and as the last bit of fun before leaving, I followed my sister and her kids in their car to Mirror Lake on the old army post at Devens, and we spent a hour or so relaxing on the little sandy beach beside the lake.

It was weird to finally say goodbye and drive off, considering that my sister is also leaving. I am very thankful, to say the least, for having gotten the opportunity to stay at her place, and experience life in New England, for these past months. Now it's on to new places.

As always, I wasn't even sure which direction I was going to take when I left. As I told my sister, I had the intention of heading up to Maine for a few days of camping, before turning south to visit friends in the Mid-Atlantic states.

When I was finally alone on the road, I had the urge to head up to Tyngsboro for one last matinee at the AMC there, since after Leominster, it had been my most regular haunt for movies during the last nine months.

I had no idea what the schedule was. I rolled into the parking lot about three pm and walked up to the box office. G-Force, the new semi-animated Disney release about a team of commando rodents, was showing in just twenty minutes, so I figured it would be good to cross it off my list.

Ah, good old Disney. You are always going to get a quality, watchable product, even if the premise is rather stupid, which this one was.

The story moved along very rapidly, getting into the action in the first scene. We get to see the rodent commandos in operation from almost the first minute. This is the way to tell a story like this.

The narrative had a nice compact feel. The rodents botch their mission and the program is cancelled by the FBI. The rodents wind up in a pet shop, where they meet other animals, all the while attempting to reunite and complete their original mission (which has a classic "ticking clock"). At stake is something involving a world-wide evil plot, the nature of which is not revealed until the end.

I have no complaints about the story, nor about the animation, or most of the acting. As usual, the best voice acting for the animated characters was done by the non-famous actors. My only beef in this regard was having to put up with PC-ness of having an obviously hip-hop black character and an obviously Latina character. I know they had to do it, but it always sticks out when something in a movie is done for political reasons, other than pure story reasons.

But I could stomach it. I was a kid's movie, and it thankfully zoomed along through the story without bogging down in any particular place. There was even a big twist at the end that I didn't see coming, but should have.

The only truly stupid part of the entire story was the romantic triangle subplot involving the Latina guineau pig (voiced by Penelope Cruz), and the two male guinea pigs (voiced by Tracy Morgan and Sam Rockwell).

What we get is the ultimate in degraded Postmodern romance. Namely, the two male guinea pigs obsess over trying to figure out "what the woman wants." Which of them is she interested in?

That is, instead of stepping up the plate and saying "I desire you," the job of the male is to figure out what is going on inside a woman's mind, and to minutely parse her words and actions for what her intentions and desires are.

Yecch. Get this crap off the screen. I could brush it off my saying "we're dealing with rodents here, not men and women." But come on, this is Disney. If anyone should be able to get rodents right, it is them!