Remember the good old days of enjoyable computer-animated films? As I sat watching Everyone's Hero, the last project of the late Christopher Reeve, I couldn't help but reminisce. Ever since the 1995 debut of the completely computer-animated movie Toy Story, these films seem to have gone downhill. Of course, there are the occasional successes like Shrek or Finding Nemo, but sometimes I think the studios feel that they can put out any piece of trash just because it is cheaper than regular animation.
Everyone's Hero is a perfectly innocent movie with a positive message for its target audience, six-year-olds. Set during the Great Depression, America's favorite pastime, baseball, is center stage. The cliché yet cute main character is Yankee Irving (Jake T. Austin), a little boy who dreams of becoming just like his hero, Babe Ruth.
Unfortunately, he is too small and scrawny and can't hit a ball to save his life. One day, Yankee visits his father (Mandy Patinkin) at Yankee Stadium where he is a janitor, and while he is there, the Great Bambino's bat, Darlin' (Whoopi Goldberg), is stolen by Lefty Maginnis, a has-been pitcher of the Chicago Cubs. The brainpower behind this theft, however, is the Cubs president, the villainous Napoleon Cross (Robin Williams).
As a result, Yankee's father is fired, and thus he sets out to retrieve the bat and get his father's job back. With a wise-cracking baseball named Screwie (Rob Reiner), Yankee begins his pursuit of Lefty. Miraculously, even for a movie, he finds Ruth's bat and takes a slight detour to Chicago to return Darlin' to her owner for the final game of the World Series.
Yankee is something of a 10-year-old Odysseus: On his eventful journey, he learns to not to give up his dreams from his stitched companion, how to hold his own against bullies from a young girl (Raven-Symone) and, finally, how to bat from a team in the Negro League. All this leads up to the World Series, which features a guest voice appearance by current Yankees manager Joe Torre as a past Yankees manager.
Though its heart is in the right place, Everyone's Hero is unoriginal and dull. Children's movies depend on comedy that coming in the form of one-liners to keep the attention of a very demanding audience. People in the kid-dominated theater rarely laughed, and when someone did, it was more of an unenthused chuckle.
Studios always underestimate the intelligence of their young audiences and usually resort to ridiculous physical comedy. Its victim in this film is Lefty who while hopping from train to train in an attempt to get Darlin' back from Yankee manages to injure himself at least 30 times. To top it all off, he ends with the ever-popular hit to the groin.
Even with all my complaints, it is a harmless movie that any parent could take a child to with no worry about content. That said, I think viewers also deserve more. Computer animation is still relatively new, so producers and directors have a lot to work with. CGI has very few limits because of its nature: Fantastic characters can pretty much do anything in a lifelike manner in any setting. Take Shrek and The Incredibles, both critical and box-office hits, whose main characters are an ogre and a family of superheroes.
But what made these movies such successes are their commentaries on human nature and life done in outrageous, hilarious situations. Shrek had never been done before: a movie that centers around a grouchy, mean ogre who lives in a swamp. He befriends a talking donkey and bratty princess. How is it possible to relate to this? Shrek is also the story of love, friendship, loneliness and happiness. And of course, it is littered with hilarious lines that keep both kids and adults laughing throughout the entire movie.
Everyone's Hero is harmless and safe and that is exactly my problem with it. The story centers around a little boy's love of baseball and of family. I would much rather have seen this movie in live action; then I would at least have cared a little more about the characters. Audiences want to be surprised, and when they can predict exactly what's going to happen next, there is really no point in seeing the movie.
Computer animation really gives directors and producers no limits, so please take chances! That's what audiences have come to expect, and I think they deserve it. When these risks work out, they do so really well. Everyone's Hero was not one of these risks and it shows. Now if it had been about a family of superhero ogres, maybe I would have enjoyed it more.
