GOOSEBUMPS

★★★

I’m an older brother of three, each of whom have taken up my old viewing habits―they have more or less seen all of the TV shows and movies that I watched when I was their age because, well, that seems to be how it goes for big families. An essential component of childhood media consumption was the campy, low budget, cringeworthily acted TV series, "Goosebumps." Jump forward 20 years (the show aired from ‘95 to ’98), and original creator of the series, R.L. Stine, and director Rob Letterman helm a 125 minute, Jack Black-starring reboot of the series that, at the very least, demands our attention.

Black plays the everwatchful father whose new next door neighbor, a teenage boy who’s just trying to fit in, stumbles upon what he believes to be Black’s character abusing his daughter. This, of course, just turns out to be nothing, and, over the next few hours, one thing leads to another, and the two teens wind up nosing their way into Black’s character’s things, which includes a sacred Goosebumps book collection that, if opened, can summon all of the evil characters to life. This, naturally, is exactly what happens.

Now, it’s obvious that Goosebumps never tries to reinstate the same scares that Stine did back in the day, and it’s obvious that the same mood, that claustrophobic sort of inescapability, is never achieved. Despite this, the charming cast, made up of Dylan Minnette, Black, Odeya Rush, and countless others, along with the largescale CGI, make it an enjoyable enough family moviegoing experience.

Having made its DVD release in late January of this year, Goosebumps is currently hunkered down into most DVD hubs and On-Demand streaming services. Ultimately, it’s worth a rent, just as long as the family keeps in mind the roots of Stine’s genius. This 2015 entry is a playful companion to the enduring series, despite the fact that this spectacle doesn’t quite feel like it did when we were young and witnessing the horror of the “Cuckoo Clock of Doom."

- Written by Cole Pollyea

FINDING DORY

★★★

As far as animated movie sequels go, "Finding Dory" is far from a letdown. It’s a vibrant, often times hilarious sequel that successfully incorporates the characters we grew so fond of inits predecessor, "Finding Nemo", and manages to add new ones that are easy to fall in love with. And needless to say, it is also a perfectly enjoyable viewing experience for all members of the family.

Taking on a familiar plot, "Finding Dory" follows the adverse tasks taken on by Dory in her herculean attempt to find her long lost parents. Why adverse or herculean? Because, for those of you who haven’t seen “Nemo” since its release in 2003, remember that Dory suffers from short term memory loss, but since this was early onset, as the movie reveals, this also means that she has forgotten many aspects of her childhood, which could be considered long term memory loss as well.

This attempt starts one day in the quaint life that she leads with Marlin and Nemo,

exactly one year after Nemo’s rescue. Dory has an epiphany and all of a sudden can remember the address of her parents, which happens to be in California. This is on the other side of the world, however, and so, because of her condition, she enlists the help of many to get there, including Marlin and Nemo, the turtle Crush, an octopus named Hank, a whale shark named Destiny, a neurotic bird named Becky, among others. It’s a pleasure to watch and cheer on our beloved Dory in an effort that we can all hold near and dear if for no other reason than for the emotional plight that we were a part of in "Finding Nemo".

But as far as animated movies go, "Finding Dory" is not on par with its wildly imaginative and unequivocally sentimental predecessor. Since it is more or less a retread of the same story,it doesn’t have the originality of “Nemo”. Since the movie’s climax is out of place and since its ideals are just not as compelling, its conclusion is simply not as impactful as “Nemo”’s. The bottom line is that "Finding Dory" is neither as grand nor as rewarding as one might hope. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not a fun ride.

- Written by Cole Pollyea