We finally got around to seeing The Secret Life of Pets, which has been out for a month. But it seems to be doing well enough; the theater last night was packed. It’s a funny, goofy movie, anarchic and chaotic. Really, it’s essentially a Keystone Kops movie; built on multiple chase scenes, making no sense whatsoever. It’s the kind of froth that had darn well better be funny, because it doesn’t have a lot more to offer than yucks. I mean, it does built on the genuine affection people have for their housepets, so there’s that. But the pets here do all sorts of things pets don’t/won’t/can’t do, so our enjoyment of it depends on how bothered we are by absurd implausibility.

Max (voiced by Louie CK), is a terrier, and his owner, Katie (Ellie Kemper), a single young woman and dog lover. Their life together seems idyllic, and during the day, when she’s at work, he hangs out with the other dogs and cats and birds owned by her neighbors. It’s a nice little dog/cat/bird community. Then Katie brings in a shaggy brown mutt, Duke, declaring him Max’s brother. And initially, they don’t get along. Duke eats Max’s food, sleeps in his pet bed, and is generally good-heartedly rambunctious in ways Max can’t relate to. So, we think, that’s going to be the movie–Duke and Max learning to get along.

Then an overburdened dog walker misplaces Duke and Max, and they’re unsupervised in a threatening urban environment, first attacked by a street gang of feral cats, then a group of sewer-dwelling ‘flushed pets,’ led by Snowball (Kevin Hart), a fluffy, cute, white bunny, who is also a psychopath. So there’s a chase scene involving the cats, then several other chase scenes, involving Max and Duke and Snowball’s troops. Meanwhile, Max’s friend Gidget (Jenny Slate), a poodle, gets worried about Max and mobilizes the other pets in Katie’s apartment building, and they head off on a search for their friend. Leading to further chaos and more chase scenes.

In the best Keystone Kops tradition, the chases that constitute 80% of this movie’s playing time are imaginatively conceived, and pretty amusing, if you’re able to suspend your disbelief sufficiently to remain untroubled by the spectacle of a teeny white fluffy bunny driving a city bus. And crashing animal control vans. And various other stunts and dodges. Eventually, we discover that terriers can use keys to open cages, which thing I had not previously supposed possible.

The movie is cleverly done, which means that it’s appeal depends on how willing you are to entertain its essential absurdity. I went back and forth. I’d think ‘oh, please, that’s preposterous.’ And then I’d think, ‘why is that more ridiculous than the rest of the movie?’ And give myself to the next silly chase scene. Overall, I’d say that I enjoyed it. The cartoon short, in which Minions try to do yardwork, was more fun than the main movie.

But I want to go back to the film’s title: The Secret Lives of Pets. When we leave for the day, and our pets remain behind, well, what do they do? And I’m sure we’ve all experienced those moments when we come home from work and discover that our pets have been up to all kind of mayhem. If comedy is built on truth, then this is a promising premise.

So for me, the funnier gags in the movie were not those precipitated by chase scenes, but those that felt more truthful. The well-coiffed dog who contentedly listens to Vivaldi while the master is home, then flips the stereo to death metal the second the master leaves. That’s funny. The cat overcome by temptation for the turkey in the fridge–funny. The more overtly comical moments in the film, for me, worked less well.

Still, it’s an amusing movie, a slight but agreeable confection, and, as it happened, just what my wife and I were in the mood for. At least the children in the theater last night seemed to like it, if that recommendation helps you decide.

It showed up in our mailbox, via Netflix/DVD. (Yes, we still do that). An action movie starring Samuel L. Jackson, set in Finland. Some good actors in the cast: Felicity Huffman, Jim Broadbent, Victor Garber. We wondered why we’d never heard of it; an action movie, with Sam Jackson, surely it deserved some marketing muscle behind it. Worth giving a try, anyway. So we watched it.

And we discovered the Finnish Luc Besson.

This is very exciting for me. If you’ve followed my reviews, you know how much I love all things Luc Besson, the auteur responsible for the Taken movies, plus Lucy, plus The Fifth Element, plus the Transporter movies, plus a whole passel of crappy action flicks. Besson films always have three elements: terrific chase and fight scenes, moments of family values sentimentality, plus plots that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. As Pauline Kael used to say, if movies can’t be great art, they can at least be great trash, and Besson has made it his life’s mission to keep the B-movie tradition alive.

And now, there’s another one. Meet Jalmari Helander. Meet Big Game.

Samuel L. Jackson plays the President of the United States. He’s in Air Force One, en route to a summit in Helsinki. Meanwhile, a kid named Onni Tommila, plays Oskari, a twelve-year old going through what seems to be a rural Finnish rite of passage. He’s supposed to go out alone in the woods, with a tractor and some supplies, but armed only with a bow and arrow, which he’s not physically strong enough to use very well, and bring back some ‘big game.’ A deer, a bear, a moose, something.

Meanwhile, though, the head of the President’s Secret Service detail, Morris (Ray Stevenson), has turned traitor, apparently because he has no respect for the President’s level of physical fitness. (“He can’t even manage a push-up,” Morris sneers to a fellow terrorist). So he’s giving POTUS up, to a terrorist named Hazar (Mehmet Kurtulus). Hazar has several fellow terrorist mooks working for him, who Morris just randomly shoots occasionally, without warning or, as far as I can tell, a reason. Anyway, Hazar doesn’t have any particular ideological point to make by kidnapping/killing the President. (He goes back and forth on which he intends). He wants to stuff him and mount him, and put him on display. Yes, a terrorist plot involving Presidential taxidermy.

So, Air Force One gets shot down, the President escapes in his escape pod, ends up in the deep Finnish forest, where young Oskari finds and rescues him. The rest of the movie is about the relationship between POTUS and this young Finnish kid (who speaks darn good English, turns out), as the kid rescues Sam Jackson repeatedly and increasingly implausibly, from terrorists.

If I’m making it sound good, I’m not describing it well. Everything about the premise of the movie screams implausibility, which then gets ratcheted upwards. Meanwhile, back in a Washington situation room (the design based on Dr. Strangelove, I think), Victor Garber, playing the Vice-President, emotes unconvincingly over this terrible thing that’s happened to our poor country, and Felicity Huffman (an advisor of some kind), brings in Jim Broadbent, a CIA analyst, who instantly figures out exactly what’s going on and what should be done about it. Which involves scrambling a SEAL team to Finland. Which would seem to render the Finnish kid a trifle unnecessary. But the movie isn’t worried about illogic. In fact, that’s mostly what it’s selling.

Okay, this is a SPOILER, so don’t read this paragraph if you don’t want to know, but it’s just so wonderful, I have to tell you about it. At a climactic moment near the end of the movie, Morris is in a helicopter. Morris saved the President years ago, took a bullet for him, but the doctors couldn’t remove a shard next to his heart. The President and the kid are dangling from a parachute, also up in the sky. (Don’t ask). The kid pulls out his bow and arrow, and shoots at Morris. The arrow flies true. It hits Morris in the chest. It doinks off and falls harmlessly away–the kid just isn’t strong enough to do much damage with his bow. Morris smiles evilly and pulls out his automatic weapon. And grabs his chest. The arrow gave him a heart attack! It doinked off, and dislodged, the bullet shard! I’m watching with my wife and daughter, and all three of us were in stitches.

And that’s the thing about movies like Big Game.  Bad movies can be fun. A certain kind of clunker can actually entertain. And this is exactly that kind of crap. It’s ridiculous, of course, and completely implausible, but it’s also sort of fun. It’s not Taken-level trash, of course, but this is also Jalmari Helander’s first feature film. I expect great things from his future.

The acting . . . I don’t know Ray Stevenson at all–just not familiar with the man’s work–but based on this, I’d say he’s a scenery-chewer of the first order. He also postures nicely. But then, it’s not like the character he’s playing makes a lick of sense. Sam Jackson does Sam Jackson things, including almost, but not quite, getting to say the ‘Sam Jackson word.’ The kid, Onni Tommila, was actually quite good. Victor Garber, I think, was directed to over-act–he’s a solid pro, and is usually better than this. Jim Broadbent clearly figured out early on what kind of movie this is, and fitted his performance to that reality. I hope the check cleared. For all of them, really.

Oh, my goodness. It’s truly terrible. And also, truly entertaining. Funny how that can happen with certain kinds of movies. And if you do check it out, Finland looks lovely. So there’s always something to look at. Movies don’t always give us even that amount of pleasure.

I saw The BFG a few weeks ago, but did not review it–it happened at a time when I was without computer access. I saw Pete’s Dragon this morning. Narratively, the two movies are very similar. They’re both about orphans who become friends with very very large magical creatures. Both the Giant in The BFG and the Dragon in Pete’s Dragon are generous and kind, but both are badly mistreated by gangs of dolts, and both need help from grown-ups–either the Queen of England, or Robert Redford. And both films are beautiful. They’re both paced a little slowly for children’s movies, but only by the frenetic standard of so many noisy, busy ‘family’ films. They both take the time to appreciate loveliness. But they’re both playful when needs be, too. They’re both beautifully designed and lighted and shot. And both films feature terrific child actors.

BFG stands for Big Friendly Giant, played by Mark Rylance, who seems to have become Steven Spielberg’s new favorite actor. Sophie (Ruby Barnhill), lives in an orphanage, a lively place, but a desperately lonely one. The Giant sees her see him, and can’t bear it; Giants have to remain invisible. (Invisibility is a trait of Pete’s Dragon as well). He collects dreams, and that requires trips to the city, but only if he can stay unspotted. His home is absolutely splendid, with a Rube Goldberg ingenuity to it, and all sorts of odd pieces of equipment that enable his life’s work. He also has a wondrous way of talking, employing, not the right word, but its second cousin.

The Giant would never hurt little Sophie, and protects her as best he can. Because, you see, he’s a very big Giant by her standards, but an absolute runt by Giant standards. And his fellow Giants are loutish, stupid brutes. Ruby decides she needs to protect her big friend, and needs help to accomplish it. Well, where would an orphaned English girl turn for help? To the Queen of England (Penelope Wilton), of course. (When the Giant meets the Queen, he says “your madjester, I am your most humbug servant.” She’s charmed).

I think for some smaller children, The BFG might be a little hard to follow, not because the story’s all that complicated, but just because it’s an unfamiliar sort of tale. We’re used to wisecracking anthropomorphic animals–we expect to see chase scenes. This has neither. You have to pay attention. But it’s so eccentrically lovely, so lyrical and sweet-tempered, it’s worth the effort.

Pete’s Dragon did not interest me at all, until too many friends told me how good it was. I saw it today, and was entranced. Pete, as a precociously reading three-year-old, sits in back as his father navigates a narrow forest road. Pete reads his favorite book, Elliott Gets Lost, about a wayward puppy. He sees the word ‘brave,’ and asks his mother about it, and she tells him she thinks he’s the bravest boy in the world. And then, swerving to avoid a deer, their car overturns, and Pete’s Mom and Dad are killed. (That scene, so awful, was beautifully but heartbreakingly filmed–not violent, but lyrical, and all the more affecting for it). Pete wanders into the woods. Wolves gather. And then are frightened away. By a massive green dragon. Who befriends, and saves, and raises young Pete.

Six years later, Pete (Oakes Fegley), is a wild child, blissfully happy and well cared for by Elliot, the Dragon. (Of course, he named it Elliot). And we get the most beautiful montage, showing Pete running through the forest, leaping from trees, completely confident that Elliot will catch him. It was my favorite scene in the movie, and one that did not advance the plot in any way, but was just purely joyful. Then we cut to Robert Redford, playing a woodworking codger named Meacham, who entertains children with his stories about an encounter he had in the woods with a big green dragon. His daughter, Grace, it turns out, is a forest ranger. She’s played by Bryce Dallas Howard, and she’s in constant conflict with a company of loggers, who ignore her proscriptions over which parts of the forest can be clear-cut. And that gets tricky, because her fiancee, Jack (Wes Bentley), runs the logging firm, and his main foreman is his brother, Gavin (Karl Urban). Jack’s daughter, Natalie (Oona Laurence), is an adventurous nine-year old. And she’s the one who spots Pete.

So Pete is brought back to civilization, his history explored, and plans are made to turn him over to Social Services. And Pete’s miserable. He misses Elliot. He can’t figure out why he can’t just keep living in the forest with his dragon.

Gavin is the villain of the piece, I suppose, and his loggers serve as his gang. But there’s never a moment in the film when we don’t completely understand why he’s doing what he’s doing. He’s not malevolent, just a normal human–a little selfish, a little uncaring. Not a bad person, though, of course, Pete hates him.

The movie does turn, in its last twenty minutes or so, rather Disney. There’s a comic car chase. There are moments of sentimentality, not unearned, but a trifle saccharine. But most of the movie is exquisite. Elliot’s forest is just a normal Northwestern US forest (though in fact, it was filmed in New Zealand). But director David Lowery has an eye; he lets us see the forest the way Pete sees it. He takes the time, to linger on a forest stream, to let Elliot play with a butterfly.

I’m an old guy; my children are in their twenties and thirties, and we have no grandchildren. But I’m so grateful for movies like these two, for family-oriented movies with some lyricism and sense of magic. I know that The BFG is considered kind of a flop, but it’s a Spielberg film; it will be remembered, and reevaluated in time. Pete’s Dragon is in theaters now, and is doing well. I well remember how difficult it could be to find good, appropriate films for children. Here are two excellent ones.

The difficulty in writing a screenplay about any famous eccentric, is battling the temptation to make fun of them. You know, in a funny, but also kind of mean way. Florence Foster Jenkins’ life was eminently mockworthy–she’s mostly famous for being the most atrocious opera singer to ever perform in public. Which is why I was so delighted to see that Stephen Frears’ new film about her is so splendidly generous and open-hearted and kind.

It helps that Jenkins is played by Meryl Streep, who brings a remarkable combination of confidence and vulnerability to the role. And yes, when she sings, it’s incredibly funny–my wife, my daughter and I were doubled over. But there’s more to her than bad singing. Her husband, St Clair Bayfield, could well have been played as the smarmiest sort of git, especially since that’s a characterization easily in Hugh Grant’s wheelhouse. Instead, he gives the most sensitive and complex performance of his career. And Simon Helberg, from Big Bang Theory, could have made Jenkins’ accompanist, Cosme McMoon into a comic caricature. Instead, Helberg imbues McMoon with an undercurrent of loneliness that became deeply touching. (That name, Cosme McMoon, is, astonishingly, historical–that was the actual name of her actual accompanist).

The film is set in 1944, when Jenkins presided over The Verdi Club, a society of wealthy patrons of the musical arts, mostly all women. They enjoyed evenings of dramatic recitations (by Bayfield, who had been an actor), and tableaux vivants, in which Madame Florence would dress up as a muse or something and be lowered into a scene by ropes. This was what passed for entertainment back in the day before we invented fun.

St Clair and Florence had, um, an unusual relationship. Her house was where she socialized, featuring her collection of chairs-in-which-famous-people-had-died, which no guests were allowed to sit in. There was also a bathtub kept full of potato salad for parties. At night, they have a routine; he recites, to help her sleep, then replaces her wig with a turban, kisses her gently, then heads off to his apartment. Which she pays for. Which he shares with his girlfriend, Kathleen (Rebecca Ferguson).

But Miss Florence had a yen to sing again. So St Clair hires a voice teacher, the associate conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, Carlo Edwards (David Haig), whose job it is to keep reassuring Florence how splendidly she’s singing. And St Clair begins auditioning accompanists. Cosme gets the gig because he plays softly–Miss Florence abhors bombast.

And that’s one of the directions this film’s narrative could have chosen. It’s Florence as victim, and St Clair as a hustler. As long as he indulges her every whim, he has everything he could ask for–a pretty girlfriend, a nice apartment, plenty of money. But he has to keep scrambling. When Florence gives small subscription recitals for her club, St Clair has to keep unsympathetic newspaper critics at bay. He has to hand-pick every invitee. Nothing can be allowed to intrude on her serene self-confidence. Toscanini stops by–he wants to feature a young coloratura in a recital, but needs another thousand bucks, which Florence happily forks over. After all, she’s supporting the musical arts–nothing makes her happier. Cosme’s in on the hustle–he is being overpaid for his services and knows it, and if that means offering no criticism of Florence’s ambitions, so be it.

So that is a story the movie tells. But there’s more than that going on. St Clair is well-compensated, sure. But he also does genuinely love Florence. He protects her from bad reviews, because he has to–the con depends on her being happy. But he also wants to protect her out of affection, out of love and loyalty. Cosme doesn’t want to perform in public as her accompanist; he has a musical reputation to preserve. But when she comes over to his tiny, crummy apartment, scolds him for its untidiness, and sets about doing his dishes, and he’s touched by it. He likes her. He even admires her, for her persistence. And they play a Chopin prelude together. And it’s lovely.

So that’s another story; a story of love and friendship and mutual respect. And yes, Florence thinks she’s a marvelous singer, and she’s atrocious, and it’s really funny when she sings. The film is a comedy, and a richly humorous one. But she’s also worthy of our respect.

There’s one character, I think, who personally embodies the journey we go on with Florence. One of her Verdi Society acolytes is a wealthy older man named Phineas Stark. As has been known to happen with old rich bald guys, he has remarried, to Agnes (Nina Arianda), a cutie-patootie forty years his junior. Bad blonde dye job, gum-chewing, Brooklyn accent. (Arianda is spectacularly funny in the role). Anyway, her husband drags her to one of her subscription recitals. She’s reluctant, but goes, expecting to be bored. And when Florence begins singing, Agnes perks right up. She loves it. It’s the funniest thing ever! Overcome with laughter, she has to be physically hauled out of the recital hall.

Spoiler paragraph:  Florence’s life ambition is to sing at Carnegie Hall. She has enough money to make that happen, and does. And when a recording she’s made begins playing on local radio stations, her Carnegie appearance gets some buzz. She’s becoming famous, as the worst singer anyone’s ever heard. She decides, patriotically, to give a thousand tickets to the concert to Our Boys in Uniform; a thousand tough marines descend on Carnegie Hall, primed to laugh. And when they do laugh, it’s Agnes, converted by Florence’s courage and grit, who shouts them down, gets them applauding, and gives Florence, already faltering because of the laughter, to continue.

Is it admirable to pursue one’s dreams no matter how unrealistic they are? Is there power in perseverance, even when it’s preposterous? Is it better to have sung really badly, than to never sing at all? Florence Foster Jenkins, the movie, insists that the answer must be yes.

It’s a wonderful movie. Prediction time: Meryl Streep will receive her twentieth (20th!) Oscar nomination for this movie, and will win again for it. Hugh Grant will win his first, for Best Supporting Actor. (Although actually, St Clair is the movie’s protagonist, now that I think about it). And when you go see it–and you must–you will laugh a lot too, and be moved by the end. It’s a lovely movie.