Gilbert Gottfried

  • Problem Child 2 (1991)

    Problem Child 2 (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2021) The early 1990s were the heyday of the evil-kid comedies (in between the Home Alones, Dennis the Menace and Problem Childs, plus The Good Son) and those haven’t all aged very gracefully. Problem Child 2, in particular, was a quick cash-grab follow-up to a substandard film, executed as fast as possible before the lead star (Michael Oliver) aged out of his screen persona. It didn’t help that the screenwriters consciously set out to make the film as distasteful as possible in teaming up their hellion with another one — there’s even an extended sequence featuring vomit flying off from a carnival ride, causing a chain reaction of spewed bodily fluids. When such a thing becomes one of the showpiece sequences of the film, there isn’t any point in appreciating the more subtle jokes about having Gilbert Gottfried unexplainably reprise his character from the first film in another state and another line of work, nor seeing Amy Yasbeck play another role as the father character’s true new love rather than the shrew of the divorcing wife she played in the first film. There’s some amusing interplay in seeing the problem child of the series meet his distaff match and bonding with someone as devilish as him, but let’s not make this a reason to consider Problem Child 2 as anything but a low-class, low-budget, low-imagination attempt by the studio to go for easy money despite predictably terrible reviews. I’ll acknowledge that the screenwriters had some provocative notions going into the sequel — if you thought the first film was inappropriate for its age bracket, prepare for more of the same in the sequel. But that doesn’t make Problem Child 2 any easier to appreciate as anything but a (disappointing) perversion of a kid’s comedy.

  • Aladdin (1992)

    Aladdin (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, April 2017) This is not quite a “first viewing” review. I have, after all, seen quite a lot of Aladdin by sheer virtue of being a dad. But living with a preschooler-in-chief means that most kids’ movies have to be seen in bits and pieces, always in French and in-between fetching, cleaning or food-prepping. Over time, I have grown accustomed to the ever-growing DVD library of kid’s movies that I’ve seen but never really watched. Well, it’s time to remedy that. (My daughter was scandalized that I would want to watch one of her movies in the original English while she was busy playing—note to self; for The Little Mermaid or The Lion King, wait until after bedtime.) Now that I’ve had the chance to watch the movie from beginning to end, let’s acknowledge a few things: It’s a tight take on the Aladdin story, filled with enough humour, action, suspense, romance and adventure to entertain everyone. The animation is pretty good, with an impressive early integration of CGI and 2D animation at a time when such a thing was only becoming possible for top-notch studios such as Disney. The film is worth viewing in the original English if only for Robin Williams’ remarkable tour-de-force vocal performance at the genie. Not only does the film come alive when he’s on-screen, but his rapid patter is typically Williamsesque to a point that gets lost even in the most well-meaning translation. I’ve long suspected that Jasmine is one of my favourite princesses, and this film confirms why—you can clearly see in her nature the template for the feisty female characters that would form the core of the Princess archetype during the Disney Resurgence period that continues even today. At roughly 90 minutes, it’s a film that doesn’t have a lot of dull moments. (Although I would redo the introduction: Not only does it come across as a bit racist, it inelegantly contextualizing the film as being “from somewhere else”, contrarily to the approach taken by more recent film such as Frozen or Moana that takes us inside the other culture from the first few moments.) Small nice moments abound, such as the two-faceted nature of the villain animal sidekick (another performance worth savouring in English, by Gilbert Gottfried), or the surprisingly deep bond of friendship between Aladdin and the genie. Musically, I like Aladdin’s introduction songs (both of them), and the effective “Friend Like Me”. All in all, Aladdin remains quite satisfying for the kids, pleasantly funny for the adults who can catch the anachronistic references, and a family film in the best sense of the expression.