Celestine the mouse lives underground in a mouse metropolis. Anthropomorphised bears run the city above, and Celestine and her brethren regularly sneak into their domain at night to steal as many bear teeth as they can find. Strong and sharp teeth are, you see, of imperative importance to your average mouse – without them, they can’t gnaw and will quickly die. Everyone knows that bears have formidable fangs, so they are the most sought-after of items. As it so happens, bears teach their children about the mouse fairy who replaces their baby teeth with a coin, so this arrangement works out just fine. Until Celestine, that is. Despite having been taught from an early age to fear bears, this little mouse can’t shake the feeling that there are friendly and kind ones out there. When she meets down on his luck Ernest, both the bear and the mouse world will be turned upside down.

The animation is beautiful. Based on the original illustrations, it boasts a simplicity that I associate with picture books of my youth. The colours are subtle and backgrounds messy and vaguely impressionistic. The voice acting is brilliant also, particularly from the titular characters, and there possibly isn’t anything cuter than a mouse’s voice sounding like that of a French child.

Some might complain that there are no sly winks to adults watching this with their kids, but I don’t see that as a bad thing. If it’s a clever story told well, then I don’t necessarily need gauche wink, wink, nudge, nudge references aimed at adult viewers à la the Shrek movies. Having seen Ernest & Celestine in French, however, I can only hope that any future English dub does the original voices justice (as much as I hate dubbing, I can understand why kids wouldn’t be up for reading subtitles).

Ernest & Celestine highlights the significance of traditional 2D animation just like The Illusionist (L’illusionniste) did a couple of years back. Despite the fact that Disney’s most recent hand-drawn outing, Winnie the Pooh, only got a very limited release on Australian cinema screens, I hope we can continue to enjoy this art form for many years to come.

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Based on a short story by Richard Matheson (of I Am Legend fame), this kinda sci-fi tale is set in the near future when human boxing has been replaced by robot boxing. Apparently humanity’s lust for violence simply couldn’t be sated by pugilists’ limitations of the flesh, and thus we get giant robots beating the cogs out of each other. Ex-boxer Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) lives hand to mouth, entering robots into any fights he can find. After the death of an ex-girlfriend, he’s lumped with his 11 year old son, Max (Dakota Goyo), and before you can say “life lessons”, the two of them manage to make something of themselves in the robot boxing world.

It’s hokey as all get out, but the reason that Real Steel succeeds is because of the dedicated performances, assured direction and sincere approach to the material. It’s basically Rocky with robots, complete with emphasis on the underdog taking on the bigwigs, and in the end it comes together rather wonderfully.

The robots look fantastic. Easily the best example of CGI I’ve seen in years, they blend seamlessly into the physical world and, quite frankly, put Transformers‘ ‘bots to shame. The mix of animatronics and CGI is practically flawless, and often I wasn’t sure which of the two I was looking at.

Jackman is in great form here. He also happens to be ludicrously bulky, though seems way too top heavy to be a boxer. He certainly sells the part, even if it’s hard to believe that a lazy drunk somehow finds the time and dedication to work out every day. His chemistry with Evangeline Lilly (as Bailey Tallet) is great, and their kinda-sorta romance has some surprising undertones, considering that the two of their characters apparently grew up together. A lot of the film’s success rests on the shoulders of young Goyo, and he manages to put in a solid performance without being too cutesy.

After Super 8, this is another Spielberg-produced film on which he clearly had an influence. The old Spielbergian focus on the father/son relationship is just as apparent as it was in J.J. Abrams’ film, and is equally successful. The film has its fair share of cartoonish villains and there are practically no surprises, but on the whole, Real Steel is good family fun and is never caught on the back foot.

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