Stuart Little 2 Review
by Eugene Novikov (eugenen AT wharton DOT upenn DOT edu)August 9th, 2002
Stuart Little 2 (2002)
Reviewed by Eugene Novikov
http://www.ultimate-movie.com/
Starring Geena Davis, Hugh Laurie, Jonathan Lipnicki. Featuring the voice talents of Michael J. Fox, Nathan Lane, Melanie Griffith, James Woods.
Directed by Rob Minkoff.
Rated PG.
"If more people gave up, there'd be fewer wars."
Hollywood has long purported to make animals act like human beings, and as technology evolves, so does its approach. The Adventures of Milo and Otis, made sixteen years ago, used only a narrator and some talented animal actors to convey ideas like friendship, loyalty and tolerance. Homeward Bound had Don Ameche, Sally Field and Michael J. Fox voicing the parts of two dogs and a cat, though the animals' mouths never moved. Dr. Dolittle was one of the first films to use CGI to make animals talk, though it permitted them to keep their respective characteristics even as they cracked wise and made fun of Eddie Murphy. But it took the Stuart Little franchise, and E.B. White's story about an urban family that adopts a little mouse for a son, to plumb the depths of movie anthropomorphism.
Stuart Little 2 accomplishes the difficult feat of successfully expounding on its predecessor without attempting to reinvent the series. In some ways it's more of the same, but it's also more, and that's important. This time, Stuart (voice of Michael J. Fox, again), living under the comfortable care of Mr. and Mrs. Little (Hugh Laurie and Geena Davis) begins to worry that he doesn't fit in among his family, and that his adoptive brother George (Jonathan Lipnicki) only wants to play with friends who are his size.
Stuart's loneliness is temporarily assuaged when a little bird named Margolo (voice of Melanie Griffith) literally drops into his little convertible on the way home from school, Margolo is on the run from a malicious falcon named Falcon (voice of James Woods), who is chasing her for yet-unspecified reasons. The Littles take little Margolo in, but when the bird disappears along with Mrs. Little's wedding ring, Stuart and Snowbell the family cat (voice of Nathan Lane) go to rescue her from what they think was an ambush by the falcon Falcon.
Upon the original's release, some people were put off by he nonchalance with which the inter-species adoption was treated, but I found that the most charming part of the film: how wonderfully strange that the only words of caution or surprise the Littles receive when they decide to take Stuart home are "inter-species adoptions tend not to work out." Stuart Little 2 continues that same attitude: the casual indifference with which the movie dismisses the fact that these are talking cats and birds and mice living in a human household is disarming.
Director Rob Minkoff keeps all of this from getting stale by filming some surprisingly imaginative action sequences, from a unique aerial dogfight to an interesting little ditty that sends Stuart to a trash barge bound for New Jersey. The plot is suprisingly well thought-out, with a twist I didn't guess, and the screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost, Deep Impact) keeps things from getting too treacly (incidentally, the first Stuart Little was co-written by current Hollywood it-boy M. Night Shyamalan... store that away for future games of Trivial Pursuit).
Though Stuart Little 2 seems innocent, both it and its predecessor have surreptitiously taken Gen-Y hyper-irony to a new level by entirely doing away with the gee-whiz incredulity that tends to accompany adventure movies about talking animals. They aren't outwardly sardonic or sarcastic, but they're self-aware to an absurd degree, summarily dismissing everything that would anywhere else be greeted with wide-eyed disbelief. This has a two-fold effect: it gives the films the aforementioned charming weirdness, but also an odd feel of detachment. Because Stuart's existence is treated so casually, he never quite feels real.
But never mind. The target audience for Stuart Little 2 will hardly be concerned with such matters, and the movie is clever enough to make it a painless sit for those footing the bill.
Grade: B
Up Next: Nine Queens
©2002 Eugene Novikov
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
