[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in SoHo. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I am really grateful you're here. On today's show, Hulu's limited series, Black Twitter, explores the rise and cultural impact of Black commentary on social media. WIRED senior writer Jason Parham will be here to discuss the series, and how Black Twitter might affect the 2024 presidential race. There's still time to catch an exhibit called Give Me a Sign: The Language of Symbols. It's showing now at the Cooper Hewitt. You'll learn all about it. Ann Powers has written a new biography of iconic singer songwriter Joni Mitchell called Traveling. We'll listen to some of her music, and we will take your calls. That is the plan. Let's get this started with some films for the whole family.

[music]

We know this is the summer of Glenn Powell, as well as Deadpool & Wolverine, but according to Box Office Mojo, out of the ten highest grossing films, three are geared towards kids. Inside Out 2 is number one, Despicable Me 4 is number three, and Kung Fu Panda 4 is at number six. Up at number eleven, Garfield. Kids are leading the charge at the theaters, and with them come the adults to buy the snacks, and sometimes they might enjoy the film, too.

On today's Big Opinion, Small Stakes, we are asking you, what is your favorite childhood movie of all time? What does a family movie need to keep the adults entertained? How do you feel about the plethora of sequels that are out there?

Our phone lines, they are wide open. 212-433-969, 212-433, we want to hear your favorite childhood movie of all time. Call to us at that number. You can also text to us at that number, 212-433-WNYC, or you can hit us up on social media. My ride along for this segment is NPR co-host of Pop Culture Happy Hour, Stephen Thompson. Hi, Stephen.

Stephen Thompson: Hello, Alison.

Alison Stewart: I got the idea for this segment by listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour, and your review of Inside Out. We're going to get to that in a moment. First, when you think about a family movie or a kids movie, how do they go about attracting adults to come, so they're not just rolling their eyes, but they actually might enjoy the film?

Stephen Thompson: Well, I think the answer is inside the question. You make the film for a young audience, but you're doing it in such a way that it can appeal to grown-ups at the same time. Sometimes that's just like jokes that kids won't notice but that will make adults laugh. Sometimes it's just with really solid, warm character construction, storytelling. I think of something like The Princess Bride, that is very much a story that appeals to kids and adults at the same time.

Alison Stewart: What do you think makes a kids movie fail?

Stephen Thompson: Oh, boy. Pandering. One trait that I think a lot of bad kids movies have is that they're doing references instead of jokes. This is a problem we talk about on Pop Culture Happy Hour that we describe as the "You the ant" problem. If you remember when A Bug's Life and Antz came out at the same time, and they were like dueling kids movies about insects, and Antz had this moment in the trailer where the Sylvester Stallone ant says to another ant, I've never seen Antz, says, "You the ant!" It's so clearly like, of whatever year that was, what, 1998 or something like that, where you're carbon dating your comedy in such a way that you're making these stale jokes. It takes years to make a movie, and so if you're putting in pop culture references, that movie can often seem stale by the time it comes out.

Alison Stewart: We want to know what your favorite movie of all time is. What does a movie need to keep the adults entertained? How do you feel about the plethora of sequels out there? Give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can call that number, you can text that number, or you can hit us up on social media @allofitwnyc.

Let's get into Inside Out 2. This is a big success. It's a film that discusses the new emotions that have lived inside the head of Riley, who's entered adolescence. Forbes has said it's the biggest animated movie of all time. It was released in June. What have writers David Holstein and Meg, I think it's LeFauve. What have they done with Inside Out 2?

Stephen Thompson: Well, they've managed to take a movie that really seemed like it was entirely freestanding. The original Inside Out in 2015, it's my favorite Pixar movie. It's one of my favorite kids movies of all time. Really one of my favorite movies of all time. They took the ideas from that film and kept the spirit of it alive while advancing the story to explain the way childhood becomes more complicated as you get older. Do I think it's as creatively successful as the first film? No, but I think it's very much in the spirit of the first one. I think that the enormous success of the film speaks to how effectively it carried that story on, but it also speaks to how much residual affection there was for the first film.

Alison Stewart: The new emotions that Riley's feeling, envy, ennui, and anxiety. It's an extraordinary turn by Maya Hawke as anxiety. Let's play a little bit. This is a clip of anxiety meeting the rest of-- Oh, we don't have the clip? Oh, we don't have the clip. Oh, it's amazing. Oh, it's an amazing track. Anyway, this is how Pop Culture--

Stephen Thompson: If you want to hear the sound of anxiety, you're already talking to me.

Alison Stewart: That's what happened on Pop Culture Happy Hour. It was described as a really accurate representation of anxiety. What does Maya Hawke get right in this clip?

Stephen Thompson: Well, one thing that she gets right, and one thing that the writers get right is that anxiety is not a villain. Anxiety is within us in order to try and protect us. It's not something that can or should be entirely vanquished or defeated. It's something that needs to be worked into, a cocktail of emotions that work together. I think part of what Maya Hawke really brings to that role is this human quality is good intentions, even if they're being carried out in ways that are harmful. I think that is so important to why that movie works.

Alison Stewart: I went to this movie by myself, and I was not alone. I was not. There were a lot of adults at this screening. It wasn't even screening. I paid for it. Why do you think this is resonating with adults?

Stephen Thompson: Well, because we've all been kids, whether or not we have kids ourselves, and I was lucky enough to get to see the original Inside Out with my daughter when she was roughly the age of Riley in that film. I took her to a press screening of Inside Out 2. Now that she's 20, films aren't made at the same rate that people age. I think that all of us have kind of come to terms with the emotions that are inside us and figuring out how to juggle them. I think a lot of us are still on mental health journeys ourselves. A lot of us are in the process of being diagnosed-- I personally am in the process of being diagnosed with ADHD at age 52, and I'm figuring out how my emotions interact with each other. I think this is a kids movie that is nothing just about kids. It's about all of us.

Alison Stewart: That's Inside Out 2. We're getting a lot of text. "Sound of Music all the way, Sound of Music, Mary Poppins." "My favorite childhood movie is Spirit. It's also my kid's favorite movie." "My Neighbor Totoro is a perfect movie for both kids and adult, amazing magical realism."

Let's see. "The first movie I ever saw in a theater, The NeverEnding Story. Many years later, Dick Tracy." A text, "No doubt the first Willy Wonka with Gene Wilder is the best children's movie of all time." Any thoughts on that?

Stephen Thompson: Well, one thing I love about that is you get a sense of what were the predominant films when somebody was a kid. I always say, your favorite year for music is whatever year you were 19 years old, whatever your favorite “Weird Al" Yankovic song is whatever came out when you were 13 years old. There's just art that comes along for people at the exact right time. I think those are excellent picks, but they also speak to what's really personal to the people sharing those picks. Like my choice, a kind of reflective of my age, and when I was a kid, I would go with some cross between The Princess Bride and Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Those were movies that were huge in the mid-'80s, and that really captured my imagination, but I also like the listener who mentioned Willy Wonka. That was huge for me as well.

Alison Stewart: "I'm not a rebel, Dottie." I love that one. Oh, I'm a rebel, Dottie.

Stephen Thompson: I'm a loner, Dottie. I'm a rebel.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: So good. Stephen Thompson is co-host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. We are talking about your favorite children's movies of all time. Let's take some calls. Laura on line 1. Hi, Laura.

Laura: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. My favorite movie of all time, which I think is because it was personally significant for me, is The Muppet Movie. I mean, you can't get better than that.

Alison Stewart: So great. Let's talk to Adrianne on line 2, from Rhinebeck, New York. Hi, Adrienne. Thank you for calling All Of It.

Adrienne: Hi, Alison. My favorite children's movie of all times is Babe. I took my nieces when I was 40, and they were like six or seven. I didn't know anything about it except that it had a talking pig in it. I went with my now ex-husband, and we roared and we looked at each other at the end and said, "Did you see what I just saw?" Then we went to all these adult parties where people were saying, "Have you seen this movie Babe? It's so good. It is so well-constructed. It's so well-acted. There isn't a moment in it that does not connect in some way to the bigger arch of the story. It is brilliant.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling in. Let's go to Despicable Me 4, Universal Pictures. It's a follow-up to what was the most animated film of all time, most successful, Minions: The Rise of Gru. You got Gru on the tough side. He's faced with an old rivalry. Now he has to hide his wife, three girls, and a baby boy. Believe it or not, Gru has been with us since 2010 [chuckles]. Does this movie live up to three previous sequels?

Stephen Thompson: No.

Alison Stewart: No? [laughs] I love it.

Stephen Thompson: At the same time, I think it checks a lot of boxes. I think that it's a perfect example of a franchise that has accumulated a ton of goodwill over the years and where audiences know exactly what they're going to get from these films. I don't think the story in Despicable Me 4 is nearly as resonant or even as existent as it is in Despicable Me's 1, 2, and 3, which especially the first one, I think is really quite good.

I also think the second Minions movie is a lot better than I kind of went in thinking it was going to be. For me, Despicable Me feels a little bit more like a collection of shorts, kind of mashed together to add up to a 90-minute runtime, but there's a reason it's made three quarters of a billion dollars worldwide. Audiences love these characters, know what they're going to get from these characters, and clearly came away happy enough that a lot of them kept going back with their kids.

Alison Stewart: All right. The Minions make me laugh. They honestly make me laugh. Do you think that it's actually funny or is it just a sight gag?

Stephen Thompson: You know what? If it makes people laugh, that's the ultimate honest response. I'm not going to try to yuck somebody's yum or interrogate why they think that these sort of odd banana/pill-shaped characters make people laugh. They're doing universally funny stuff, right? They're doing universal antics. You can watch the Minions in any language and know what's going on, and that's one reason that these movies are a worldwide phenomenon. They don't have dialogue that makes any sense, and yet, people quote them. That is the sign of a very sturdily constructed set of characters, whether you or I think they can watch a scene and say it's funny or not.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to some more callers. Let's talk to Toby on line 6, calling in from Brooklyn. Hi, Toby.

Toby: Hi. My favorite movie of all time, not just my favorite children's movie, is Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. I'm glad that that's been spoken about, not only because it doesn't pander, it's salty, it's smart, it's full of life lessons, the costumes, but also the music. I'm a music therapist. If you can come up with a better song for childhood than Pure Imagination, I don't know. I'd arm wrestle you over that.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Toby, thanks for calling in. Let's talk to Spencer on line 7, calling in from Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. Hi, Spencer.

Spencer: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. There are a lot of really good movies out there that appeal to both kids and kids at heart alike. Almost every production by Laika Entertainment, every production by Aardman Entertainment, they're all wonderful films I can watch over and over again. I would have to say that for me, my favorite kids, or kids-like movie is The Iron Giant, which is an animated from, if I recall correctly, early the mid-'90s, one of Brad Bird's first big productions. The movie does a really good job of epitomizing how, through the eyes of a kid, you can look at all of the big problems that the adults have all made and say, if you were to act more like a kid, it would be easier to address them.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling in. That was an enthusiastic yes from you, Stephen.

Stephen Thompson: Oh, Allison. This is one of my favorite movies of all time, period. This movie came out in kind of a late summer doldrums, made about a buck and a half in theaters, and all of it was for me.

[laughter]

I ended up seeing this movie three times in theaters, and it was in theaters for, like, I think, two weeks. I sat there laughing and blubbering, and if I walked into Vin Diesel on the street, and he said Superman to me, I would burst out crying. Love, love, love, love this film, and it's never had a sequel. It's a perfect freestanding movie, and I'm so glad that people have found it and love it as much as I do.

Alison Stewart: I want to talk about Garfield. Garfield, starring Chris Pratt, is the cat who loves Italian food. He's got a father who left him behind, played by Samuel L. Jackson. Now their names are above the title of Garfield. Does celebrity casting work at all?

Stephen Thompson: Well, clearly. I mean, clearly it helps get people into the theater. The Garfield Movie has made a quarter of a billion dollars at the box office worldwide. I'm sure that Chris Pratt, who has helmed a lot of animated juggernauts, he's the voice at the top of The Lego Movie. He's the voice at the top of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which made more than a billion dollars last year.

He is definitely a bankable animation star, and that's no doubt helped. I think it's very tricky to voice Garfield. People my age who think of Garfield as having a voice will assign the voice of the great Lorenzo Music to Garfield, and the fact that Chris Pratt has been able to put his own stamp on that franchise says a lot for his talent. I will confess I have not seen The Garfield Movie.

Alison Stewart: Don't need to. Don't need to. [chuckles]

Stephen Thompson: I will say word of mouth has not been super kind to it, but it is a sign that a lot of what people are looking for in kids movies today is just something sturdy, something expected, something that fits into a certain box, and clearly, The Garfield Movie has done that for a lot of people, even if it's not necessarily the one that I would come to this conversation the most excited about.

Alison Stewart: We got a text saying, "Fantasia!!", two exclamation points. "Not seeing enough love for Labyrinth over here." I just gave you some love. "Rugrats in Paris. Wept at the scene as Chuckie wishes for a mom. Loved those characters."

We love hearing for you. What's your favorite childhood movie of all time? 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We'll have more with Stephen Thompson, co-host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour after a quick break.

[music]

This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Stephen Thompson, co-host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. He is our ride along for this Big Opinion, Small Stakes, our segment. What is your favorite childhood movie of all time? This one I'm not going to get it right, but I'm going to do my best. You might have to help me out here, Stephen. It says, "Princess Bride is our family favorite, so much so that my son's wedding ceremony started with Mawa--

Stephen Thompson: Mawage.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: "Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us together today." [laughs] I understand thousands of weddings across the country start the same way. That's funny.

Stephen Thompson: Yes. That is such a magical film. It's really rare to see a movie made in the 1980s that really doesn't feel like it's aged at all. I just think that's a beautiful film. That's one I trot out and revisit every few years just for fun.

Alison Stewart: Kung Fu Panda 4. The users on IMDb said, "Not awful," and that seems to be the result. Not awful? For the fourth time around, do you have to-- How many times can the panda keep doing things?

Stephen Thompson: Oh, man. I'm coming to you, Alison, as a true Kung Fu Panda Stan.

Alison Stewart: All right.

Stephen Thompson: I love this franchise. The first three films are really among my favorite, certainly among my favorite kids movies. I actually reached a point with my kids where we'd be like, what are we gonna put on? I'd be like, how about the Kung Fu Panda movies? The kids would be like, "Dad, we've watched the Kung Fu Panda movies so many times."

That thing where you have kids, and your kids are like make you watch the same movie 30 times, it was like that in reverse with the Kung Fu Panda movies. For me, Kung Fu Panda 4, it is the weakest of the four films. I don't think it is nearly as big a drop drop off in quality as Despicable Me 4. It is still the animation is really lovely. You've got a nice vocal voice performance from Awkwafina, who's been in so many things.

I think there's a drop off in part because there's some turnover in the voice cast, which is kind of a shame for me as a fan of the first three films, but honestly, I could watch that silly panda do his business [laughs]. I have spent so much time with this franchise. I have a Kung Fu Panda doll in my living room. I have no shame here. I recommend it.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about Frank from the Bronx on line 7. Hi, Frank. Thanks for calling in.

Frank: Hi, everybody. What a great program for the summer. I'm thinking back of all the movies I watched with my kids when they were young, and the one that always comes back is Toy Story. That whole storyline, my kids are grown now. We still love the movies. It was just hit every note for every age group. It brought me back to my childhood at the same time as I was raising my children as a parent, as looking back at my childhood, to see it in my kids eyes, it was just amazing.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for calling in. Let's talk to Lindsey on line 8, calling in from Summit, New Jersey. Hi, Lindsey. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Lindsey: Hi. I have a recommendation. A while ago, I got one of those big SUV's with a DVD player in the back. A friend of mine gave me a stack of DVD's, and I never heard of this movie. I had never heard about it in the theaters, but it's called Over the Hedge, and it's animated, and it's got a stellar cast. It's got Steve Carell and Bruce Willis, Eugene Levy, Wanda Sykes. It's about animals, but the message in it is about how humans are so gluttonous, and we just want and want and want. It's pretty funny for adults. The best part of the movie is that the whole soundtrack is done by Ben Folds Five, and it's just a phenomenal soundtrack to listen to, and it's just like a neat movie. It's just well done.

Alison Stewart: Cool, Lindsey. You sound like you recognize it, Stephen.

Stephen Thompson: Yes. I haven't actually seen that particular film, but I was waiting for her to mention the soundtrack, and I'm glad she did, because I remember being like, where'd this soundtrack come from? Had a little bit of the same reaction to the Minions: Rise of Gru, which has a surprisingly phenomenal soundtrack. I really love it when the makers of animated films decide to elevate some component of their film that they could have easily phoned in. I think the soundtrack to Over the Hedge, even though I haven't seen the film and can't really comment on it, speaks to that phenomenon.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Patti from Somerset, New Jersey. Hi, Patti. Thank you so much for calling in.

Patti: Yes. I worked with a camp for abused and neglected kids for about 20 different years. We did a kids movie as the theme. We were trying to provide them with some easy way of talking about difficult subjects, and the movies worked like a charm. They would sit down and watch a section of the movie and discuss how the characters were approaching different life questions or issues.

I was an English major at one time, and these kids were every bit as sophisticated when guided in finding meaning in the subject matter and the events that happened in the movie and the characters, and so we would discuss. Then we would actually have an individual question that would involve writing, which was very difficult for most of these kids. When the question was related to the material they had discussed, they could individualize what they heard and bring it down to their own lives.

Then we did a craft, because kinetic learning, so decorating, glitter, sequins felt, foam, paper, all that stuff. An example would be for-- We did Aladdin. I was a little concerned about the romance of that, but Aladdin was great when they entered. Oh, and we decorated the room so that it was life size for the kids to be in. When it was Nemo, we were in the ocean. When it was Aladdin, when you went into the room, you were entering the cave of treasures.

Alison Stewart: You know what? I'm going to dive in here really quickly. Patti, that was such a great message that she gave Stephen. Almost movie club. It sounded like a little bit. They took it to the next level, which is a really interesting way to think about kids movies.

Stephen Thompson: Well, yes, movies are like music are a pathway to emotions. They're a way to access emotions that can be hard to talk about. I think that it sounds like a wonderful project that is really taking advantage of that wonderful, wonderful attribute that movies have.

Alison Stewart: I want to ask you about Harold and the Purple Crayon. We all read this as kids. In the film, he's grown up. The slugline is inside of his book. Adventurous Harold can make anything come to life by simply drawing it. After he grows up and draws himself off the book's pages and into the physical world, Harold finds out he has a lot to learn about real life.

Stephen Thompson: Yes--

Alison Stewart: Yes, go ahead.

Stephen Thompson: Yes, I haven't seen the film. It does definitely seem and feel like a labor of love. It did not perform well at the box office. It doesn't seem to be finding audiences. I'm very curious to see how a film like that does on streaming, where people who are curious about the book and might want to spend some more time with it how people feel.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Carmen on line 2, as we're starting to wrap things up. Hi, Carmen.

Carmen: Hi. When you asked the question, I thought about it and realized that my favorite movie was made in 1939, and when I saw it first, it started in black and white, and then burst into color on the yellow brick road, The Wizard of Oz, and its many iterations. As I've grown older, I have loved every one of them.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling in., By the way, I saw The Wiz on Broadway just because it was great. By the way, that was a tangent. Before I let you go, Stephen, is there any film that you really wanted to shout out as a favorite of yours?

Stephen Thompson: Oh, man. I've talked a little bit about Pee-wee's Big Adventure, but boy, that is one that I've been able to go back to with my kids again and again as they've gotten older. I think the early films of Tim Burton have really meant a lot to my family. My daughter grew up to become a huge, huge horror fan and an artist, and Beetlejuice was really important to us. I'm a little skeptical about the sequel. We'll see. Films that cater to kids who are a little bit older and getting a little more sophisticated, I think you have the potential to make some really, really beautiful stuff there, and so I wanted to shout out those films as well.

Alison Stewart: Everybody listen to NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Stephen is a co-host of the show. Stephen, thank you so much for taking the time.

Stephen Thompson: Thank you, Alison. This is a pleasure.

 

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.