Posts Tagged ‘CoolCanucks Blog Contest ~ MIA AND THE MIGOO DVD Review & Giveaway’
CoolCanucks Review of MIA AND THE MIGOO DVD!!
Thursday, August 30th, 2012
What’s the story?
Mia (voiced by Amanda Misquez) hasn’t heard from her father, Pedro (Jesse Corti), in a long time and has a vision that she should go look for him. He’s actually trapped in an underground tunnel at his work site, which is run by a luxury real-estate development firm headed by Mr. Jekhide (John DiMaggio), who must take his own young son, Aldrin (Vincent Agnello), to a tropical island where he plans to build an exclusive vacation club. Aiding Mia on her trip to the remote island are her dead mother’s good luck charms, a sorceress (Whoopi Goldberg), and eventually by the Migoo, a shape-shifting, marshmallow-like creature (Wallace Shawn) that can multiply into various versions of itself and whose job it is to protect the Tree of Life, a special “mother tree” that resides in the middle of the proposed development. Aldrin and Mia band together to both attempt to find Pedro and to try to stop Jekhide from destroying the tree.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
From the distributors of the Academy Award®-nominated The Secret of Kells, comes MIA AND THE MIGOO, the gorgeous second feature from renowned French animator Jacques-Rémy Girerd. A fable-like journey of a young girl who must overcome her fears on a quest to find her father and save the world from destruction, MIA AND THE MIGOO was created from an astounding 500,000 hand-painted frames of animation. A stunning work of art, breathtaking to behold, with backgrounds that invoke Van Gogh, Monet, and Cezanne, it also features the voices of Whoopi Goldberg, Matthew Modine, James Woods and Wallace Shawn.
Following a premonition, Mia sets out on a cross continental journey, though mountains and jungles in search of her father, who has been trapped in a landslide at a construction site on a remote tropical lake. In the middle of the lake stands the ancient Tree of Life, watched over by innocent, bumbling forest spirits called the Migoo, who grow and change shape as they please, morphing from small childlike beings to petulant giants. The Migoo have been disrupting the construction to protect this sacred site – and now together with Mia they join in a fight to find Mia’s father and save the Tree, with the future of life on Earth hanging in the balance.
Mia and the Migoo isn’t just beautiful to look at it, its an entertaining and thoughtful story. I hesitate in using the word, as people have the impression a movie can’t say anything of substance without being preachy, but it also contains some nice messages about respect: self-respect, respect for others, and respect for the world around you. While some might bridle at the rather subversive idea that the environment and caring for those around you is more important than turning a profit, considering how so much popular entertainment aimed at children these days celebrates consumerism it makes for a refreshing change. The only problem is the message is so subtle it will probably be lost on most of its audience. While Girerd and company are to be commended for creating something which doesn’t assume its audience is stupid, when people are used to being bludgeoned over the head they might not respond to a gentle tap on the shoulder.
The story is a combination of a classic road trip and adventure as young Mia leaves her village to look for her father, Pedro. He has taken a job far from home on a construction site building a resort in a remote wilderness area. Strange accidents have been happening on the site, cranes have fallen over and there have been land slides. When Pedro hears an odd noise in one of the tunnels they are building on the site he goes to investigate and is trapped by a cave in. Hundreds of miles away Mia wakes up from a dream of her father in trouble. With her mother already dead, she’s not prepared to lose her father and after visiting her mother’s grave heads out to find him.
Aldrin lives in a world so completely different from Mia it might as well be on another planet. His mother and father are divorced and his father, Jekhide, the businessman behind the development project Pedro was working at, is a workaholic who ignores him. His mother is a scientist studying the effects of global warming on the Antarctic ice-cap, so in some ways Aldrin spends the film in much the same way as Mia, looking for his father. For even though he ends up travelling with Jekhide to the construction site to investigate the mysterious accidents, they might as well be hundreds of miles apart even when they’re in the same room. In so many ways Aldrin is the parent in their relationship as he’s always having to take his father to task for his self-centred and selfish behaviour.
CAST
· John DiMaggio (Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Little Fockers, Bee Movie)
· Whoopi Goldberg (Ghost, For Colored Girls, Sister Act)
· Matthew Modine (Full Metal Jacket, Married to the Mob, Cutthroat Island)
· Wallace Shawn (Toys Story 1, 2, 3, The Incredibles, Monsters, Inc.)
· James Woods (Once Upon a Time in America, The Virgin Suicides, Casino )
BONUS FEATURES
· “Making of” Featurette
· Interview with the Director
PROGRAM INFORMATION
Type: DVD
Catalog #: EOE-DV-7081
Running Time: 91 mins. + extras
Genre: Animation
Rated: PG
Aspect Ratio: 16 x 9/1.78:1
Audio: 5.1 Dolby Digital
Language: English w/English SDH Subtitles
For the latest breaking news on MIA AND THE MIGOO and other releases, follow Entertainment One on Twitter: http://twitter.com/eOneHomeVideo
Tags: Blog Contest, canada, canada contest, canada contests, canadian contest, canadian contests, Canadian giveaways, canadian online contests, contest, contests canada, coolcanucks, CoolCanucks Blog, CoolCanucks Blog Contest, CoolCanucks Blog Contest ~ MIA AND THE MIGOO DVD Review & Giveaway, coolcanucks giveaway, enter, free canadian contests, free canadian giveaways, MIA AND THE MIGOO DVD, MIA AND THE MIGOO DVD Review, online canadian contests, Review, win, win canadian contests, win canadian prizes, win prizes
Posted in CoolCanucks Blog Contest, Giveaways Canada | Comments Off