George Miller (11) (1943–2023)

If you can manage to ignore the non-stop onslaught of plot holes caused by the central protagonist's poorly defined wishing power, this is surprisingly watchable. It isn't the immersive, evergreen classic the first one was, having dated much more poorly, and it has a largely wooden cast (the protagonist (in spite of consistent overacting) and his father are decent, as is Nimbly, and they are just about the only ones who are), but the sets and background paintings are beautiful, and the central plot has a good amount of memorable moments. The story overall is (to put it mildly) unfortunately not very interesting, but the film is short enough that this isn't as big of an issue as one might assume, and I feel the core relationship of the son and father is reasonably engrossing and carries my interest. Overall, it is a film which somehow manages to be a good bit more entertaining than the sum of its parts should suggest. Don't go see it if you never have before -- I suspect nostalgia value is adding half a star to my own rating -- but if you saw this as a kid and have a slight interest in revisiting it, there are much, much worse ways to spend 80 minutes.… (més)