Avalon High-Spoiler Free Review

Avalon High was a made for TV, Disney channel production. It is based on the novel of the same name by Meg Cabot (Princess Diaries). The premise of the story is that the characters of Arthurian legend are reborn into a group of high schoolers.


Plot-They had to play around with the characters and plot from the original and the remakes and crafted something pretty original. The target demographics are teens so it isn’t too deep. The story makes some nice twists and turns that I wasn’t really expecting. Overall it was a fun interesting take on a story that shouldn’t be original.

Characters- This is your stereotypical high school with stereotypical archetypes. The characters do grow somewhat, but none of them really ever surprise you with any transformation. The actors for this movie were not big names and most of them not even Disney channel staples, so that may have added to already shallowly written characters coming across even more one dimensional. I have not read the book, so I can’t comment on the source material.

Overall- it was a fun movie and a great way to introduce a younger generation to Arthur and his knights of the round table. It wasn’t great, but for YA it was pretty good. My wife loved it and my oldest daughter really got into it, too. So, it may be more of a girl movie. My review might be tainted by the fact that I had just finished reading Mists of Avalon a couple of weeks before seeing this. Last I checked this was free on Disney On Demand, and I am sure they rerun the heck out of it. I would suggest this to movie for ages 7-16 primarily, adult women will likely enjoy it more than adult men.

I Saw Tangled and It Was SciFi

We all know the story of Rapunzel.  I even know the original version that is much more violent.  I have never thought of it as science fiction, but Disney's movie Tangled may have changed that.  Warning, here there be spoilers.

I finally got around to watching this.  I was on a father/daughter date with my youngest (the oldest is mad because she wanted to see it too), and I kind of wanted to see something else.  Boy was I mistaken.  It might be my new favorite Disney Princess movie.  Tangle was very good and very funny. 

On the way home, as my daughter was nodding off, I came to the conclusion that Tangled was a scifi movie.  "A drop of the sun" falls from the sky and up blooms a "magical" flower.  The flower makes the witch young and is found and harvested to save the life of the pregnant queen.  The queen is healed but the baby is born with a head full of blond hair (king and queen are dark headed).  Turns out the hair is "magical as well."  You have to sing to the hair to make it heal.  If the hair is cut, it dies and the hair still attached the the head turns brown. 

A drop of the sun is obviously a meteorite with a seed of a otherworldly flower.  Singing to the flower makes it happy and it then releases some sort of rejuvenating radiation.  When the flower is turned to tea, the organism living in the flower's DNA is released and embeds itself in the fetus of the queen.  Rapunzel has a symbiotic organism that lives inside her.  I guess the alien symbiote needs its own oxygen or it uses photosynthesis to live as it expresses itself through the hair.  As these tendrils are cut the whole branch dies.  When all of Rapunzel's hair is cut the organism can no longer exist.  It dies, but with its remaining strength forces some healing essence through a tear drop. 

Want more proof?  The hair grabs and lets go of things.  It is able to move on its own.  Usually only when Rapunzel wants it too.  So the symbiote is acting in concert with Rapunzel's wishes.  A side effect of the symbiote would be Rapunzel's ability to talk to chameleons. 

Sure the movie takes place in the fantasy kingdoms of Happily Ever After, but that does not change the fact that it is a scifi movie.  Arthur C. Clarke said it best, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  What the characters see as magic is really just an alien organism.

In closing,  Tangled is a great movie whether  it is SciFi or not.  It is clever and funny and just a whole lot of fun.  Disney hit a home run on this one.  I would suggest going to see this one and you don't even have to have a kid with you.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice-Spoiler Free Movie Review

Went to see this with the girls and a family from church.  Wasn't really looking forward to seeing it or excited about it in any way and only knew that it was based on the scene from Fantasia. 

Nick Cage plays Nick Cage in this movie and he is a sorcerer of the Merlinian Order,  he is looking for evil Morganian sorcerers and a successor to Merlin that can end Morgan once and for all. 

I swear the roommat and the girlfriend, with a combined total of 10 minutes of screen time are the best actors in the movie.  Nick Cage gets to play himself so he isn't that bad, but you never forget that you are watching Nick Cage.  The kid that got to be the apprentice was aweful though.  a twenty year old with a cracking, screech (saved by the bell) voice and look. 

The movie had some funny parts and set up the back story pretty well, but the plot was fairly predictable.  There were some opportunities to do some things differently and they didn't take them.  They could have given the movie a lot more heart.  It wasn't bad, but it wasn't particularly good.  It was a kids movie. 

Yeah, it was a kids movie.  What else did you expect from Disney.  Well, I remember some movies called Pirates of the Caribean that were fun for the whole family, or at least the first one was.  But disney decided this one would be for kids.  If you have kids between the ages of 7 and 14, they should really like it.  Everyone else will be entertained but the movie isn't going to blow them away.