‘Goat’
With the N.B.A. Finals underway, June is the perfect time for children to watch this new animated comedy about Will (Caleb McLaughlin), a goat with a passion for “roarball.” The sport is like basketball at hyperspeed, and all the players are animals. Will has been a roarball fanatic since he was a kid, and his favorite team is the hometown Vineland Thorns. Even though everyone says he’s too small, he doesn’t let that stop him.
When a video of Will shooting baskets with a professional player — a stallion named Mane Attraction (Aaron Pierre) — goes viral, the Thorns owner, Flo (Jenifer Lewis), gives him a chance to breathe some energy into her flailing team. Still, the star player and Will’s idol, Jett Fillmore (Gabrielle Union), is dismissive of the small newbie. There’s also a giraffe on the team voiced by the N.B.A. legend Stephen Curry, a producer on the film.
It’s a classic underdog story with wildly distinctive visuals and a voice cast that also includes Patton Oswalt, Nick Kroll, Nicola Coughlan, Jennifer Hudson and David Harbour. Tyree Dillihay (“Bob’s Burgers”) and Adam Rosette (story artist on “The Wild Robot”) directed. The screenplay was written by Aaron Buchsbaum and Teddy Riley, who created the animated series “Fairfax.”
‘Spies in Disguise’
Lance Sterling (Will Smith) is an arrogant, well-dressed secret agent who can do almost anything in this 2019 action comedy. He stops evil assassins, soars into hovering helicopters and completes top-secret missions all over the globe. He looks down on his agency’s young gadget genius, Walter (Tom Holland), who hates violence and just wants peace on earth; his inventions incorporate glitter and rainbows instead of deadly ballpoint pens.
When Sterling is framed as a traitor and fired, he turns to Walter to make him invisible so he can find Killian (Ben Mendelsohn), the baddie who set him up. Instead, Walter’s potion turns Sterling into a blue pigeon, leaving Sterling no choice but to complete his mission and clear his name as a bird, and he eventually bonds with Walter before returning to his human form. It’s a silly but fun premise, and a new spin on the odd-couple buddy movie.
The voice cast includes Reba McEntire, Rashida Jones and Rachel Brosnahan. Nick Bruno and Troy Quane (the team behind “Nimona”) directed, and Brad Copeland (“Ferdinand”) and Lloyd Taylor (“Nimona”) wrote the screenplay.
‘Emi Martinez: The Kid Who Stops Time’
We’re entering World Cup summer, so soccer-loving youngsters should appreciate this new documentary about the Argentine player Emi Martinez, one of the greatest living goalkeepers. It’s a mix of animation (by the Argentine cartoonist known as Liniers), and enlightening, emotional talking-head interviews with Martinez and his family, friends, coaches and teammates, as well as archival footage. Much to my son’s delight, there are also appearances from greats like Lionel Messi. Martinez, who plays for Aston Villa, led Argentina to a dramatic win at the 2022 World Cup final against France.
The film — about perseverance and drive, and pursuing your passions even when you’re being underestimated — starts with his childhood, when he dreamed of being a famous goalie. It’s a good lesson for any young athlete, and kids who love the sport will find plenty of inspiration here.
The animation sequences are whimsical and a little odd (young Martinez has a switch that stops time where his bellybutton should be). Gustavo Cova directed, and Hernán Casciari and Christian Basilis wrote the script.
‘Twisters’
In this 2024 follow-up to the 1996 action hit that starred Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as storm chasers, we meet Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a meteorologist who stopped chasing after a traumatizing experience. She’s now working an office job in New York — that is until her old buddy Javi (Anthony Ramos) coaxes her to ditch the city and go back into the field to test some military prototypes that generate 3-D scans of tornadoes. Kate has a sixth sense about tornadoes (“data doesn’t see what Kate sees”), and she takes the work seriously.
Because of that, she immediately despises Tyler (Glen Powell), a good old boy with swagger and a million-dollar smile, whose crew sells merch and posts videos online. They’re “hillbillies with a YouTube channel,” as one character says. Older children and tweens will be so wrapped up in the storm sequences that they probably won’t care about the predictable parts, especially Kate and Tyler coming together in the end. It’s a fun summer flick for anyone who likes their downtime action-packed. The Oscar-nominated filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung (“Minari”) directed. Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant”) wrote the screenplay from a story by Joseph Kosinski, who directed “Top Gun: Maverick.”
‘Epic Tails’
In this 2023 French production, a mouse named Pattie (voiced by Ellie Zeiler for the U.S. release) lives in the same ancient Greek town as her idol, Jason (Terrence Scammell), as in Jason and the Argonauts. Jason is now an elderly man well past his adventuring prime, but Pattie worships him all the same, and she dreams of being a great adventurer herself. Her best friend, a rat named Luigi (Wyatt Bowen), also has big dreams. He wants to join the ranks of the ninja rats, a hilarious army of dancing, fighting rodents.
When the town unveils a giant statue of Zeus, Poseidon (also voiced by Scammell) gets jealous and tells the town they must erect an even bigger statue in his honor in the next seven days or he’ll unleash a “cataclysmic event.” So Pattie, along with her buddies, gets her chance to become a great adventurer at last.
It’s an offbeat way to integrate Greek mythology into children’s animation, and Pattie’s saga shows little ones that not all heroes are big and powerful. Sometimes they’re as tiny as a mouse. David Alaux (“The Jungle Bunch”) directed from a script by Alaux, Éric Tosti and Jean-François Tosti, who also wrote the screenplay for “Pets on a Train.”
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