Ticket to Paradise (2022)

The only reason I had any interest in this film is it is set in Bali. This, as I expected, turned out to be a huge disappointment. The only scene in the whole film that may have been flimed in Bali, was when they went to Tanah Lot. Other than that, the film appears to be shot entirely in Australia. This is a hollywood ideal of Bali / a tropical island, with nothing but nature, no infrastrcuture. Once again, Hollywood has created an idealize view of a tropical paradise, and picked and choosed parts of the culutre, which is extremely sparse in this film. While the subtitles listed the characters as speaking in Balinese, I highly doubt they were speaking in Balinese, but were more likely speaking in Indonesian, as I recognized a few words, when they were speaking. Scenes of the landscape and temples were basically nonexistant, along with the culture, as the didn't show any Balinese dance nor any gamelan music, and only a slight bit of the trasitional clothing. While they did show the groom getting his teeth filed down, and this is a cultural practice, I thought this was done when Balinese people were much younger, an not releated to getting married in anyway. Also, while they had a great opportunity for the white bride to dress up in traditional Balinese wedding attire, they choose instead to have her wear a western wedding dress, which while appropreate for a wedding in Hawaii, would be consider highly inapprorate for a Balinese wedding. And while the main actor who played the Balinese groom, was actually half Indonesian, and a few other actors were actually Indonesian, the majority of the actors were of other Asian races. And it appears that none of the actors were actually Balinese. Nearly all of those actors spoke perfect English, without any Indonesaian, or Balinese accent, once again sanitizing a potential internatioanl experience for American audiences. After watching the film, I was suprised that Billy Lourd was in the film. I didn't recognize her, but I am not that familar with her, and she did appear like that she was in her 30s in the film, and perhaps a little bit too old for this role. Actually, I wasn't really aware of her when she appeared in the Star Wars sequels, thought I do hope the daughter of Carrie Fisher has a prosperous career. This film is merely a vehilce for George Clooney and Julia Roberts, with all the other characters being minor background characters, including Bali itself. Julia Roberts is past her prime, and I don't know of any film she has made since Pretty Woman that I would even consider worth watching. I think she has just been riding out the sucess of that film, to keep her career going, and I don't know of anyone who is a big fan of her work, especailly anyone who is male. You would do much better watching the Road to Bali (1952), if you want even the smallest taste of the real beauty and culture of Bali.

Cats Don't Dance (1997)

This is one I have wanted to watch for a while. It came out just after Toy Story, which I think signaled a new age of animation, as it was made with computer graphics, and led the way for a large number of computer animated films to follow and even some of which still used the look of handdrawn films. Prior to that, and with hand drawn animated films becoming a ratity, due to the amount labor needed to produce them and of course cost, there were much fewer animated films being released. That being said, I think this film was created with the help of computer animation, but I am not sure. So, I really an interested an any animated film made before the realese of Toy Story, and while this was realease just after, it still was unknown to me, and it took a while to track it down, as I don't think it is well known, nor has it been given a lot of publicity. The film has quite a notble cast, at least to me, due to my being aware of them from other shows, such as Scott Bakula and René Auberjonois both of whom I know of from Star Trek (and Scott from Quantum Leap) and as far as I know have never voiced characters in an animated film before. I was impressed that Scott Bakula did his own singing parts, as most of the other voice actors in this film did not, and I don't ever recall hearing of Scott Bakula signing in any other film. Don Knotts also lends his voice to character, though I would have nearly not noticed, if I hadn't seen his name assocated with the film before watching it. John Rhys-Davies also voices a character. I know him from playing Sala in the first and third Indiana Jones film, and from Flash Gordon, but I haven't seen him in anything else I can recall. The film was directed by Mark Dindal, who worked on a number of Disney asnimate featurs, before going on to direct The Emperor's New Groove and Chicken Little. The film was okay, but the story didn't really stand out, nor were any of the songs all that remarkable. It was interesting, as it was set in the 1930's and featured a large number of cameos of actors from that era, much like the old Looney Tunes also did, though those actors were current at the time those were created.