Movie · Netflix · 2006

Flushed Away

A comfortable pet who finds a city. The jokes are bathroom jokes. The loyalty arrives late and counts.

Flushed Away spends too long on the joke of the drain and then does one decent thing: a mouse who had a perfect room gives it up for a boat full of rats who needed him. The film is gross on purpose. Older children, not the preschool row it is sitting in. If you put it on, the conversation is the room he left, not the toad.

The eight

Industry
4/10
The rats work the sewer. He has never worked.
Household
4/10
A lonely pet learns he was not a family.
Piety
2/10
No reverence. A lot of toilet humor.
Courage
6/10
He stays for people he could have left.
Republic
5/10
An underground city with a tyrant and a resistance that is mostly a family boat.
Temperance
4/10
The gag is the sewer. It is constant.
Truth
5/10
Comfort is shown to be a cage, which is true, and then played for a laugh.
Stewardship
5/10
He chooses a people over a cage. That is the part worth keeping.

Live historicallySkip it for the under-sevens. The sewer is the product.

Movie · Netflix · 2000

Bring It On

A light movie that accidentally tells the truth about stolen work. The rest is a pep rally.

Torrance is the head of a machine that has been stealing from a Black squad in East Compton, and the film is sharp enough to make that the problem rather than a background joke. It is not sharp about much else. The romance is nothing. The body jokes are dated. The one scene worth a house is the one where she admits the trophies were not theirs.

Older children can watch it if you are willing to talk about credit: who did the work, and whose name went on it. Do not pretend it is a serious picture.

The eight

Industry
6/10
Practice is the plot. The theft is treated as a real offense against someone else's labor.
Household
4/10
Families are offstage. Teammates are the household, for better and worse.
Piety
2/10
No reverence. The spirit stick is the idol, and the movie half knows it.
Courage
5/10
She tells her own squad they are cheats. That costs her the room she liked.
Republic
5/10
Two schools, and the richer one has been living off the poorer one's skill.
Temperance
4/10
The film is horny in the way of its year, and proud of it.
Truth
5/10
The confession is the plot turn, not a footnote.
Stewardship
4/10
A routine is a thing you owe to the people who made it. The movie gets that far.

Live historicallyPut someone else's name on a piece of work they actually did, somewhere it will be seen.