Trying Too Hard, Dahling...

Or not hard enough, maybe.

Looby Loo and the ravens went to the cinema to see Tooth. We'd rather have visited the dentist.

It was definitely aiming at a Roald Dahl universe--feckless parents, downtrodden, imaginative child protagonists, unexpected twists on fairy tale/fantasy tropes--and missing through a lack of imagination and effort: things were sketched in but not fleshed out. It probably meant is was almost entirely incomprehensible for a small child: indeed LL has since asked what the story was. The setting, the kind of mythic America, where it's both today and simultaneously a rather musty 1950s was familiar. The villain was the usual put-down-by-a-dominant-mother baddie, the morality aspired to the clever curve that Dahl (note we're not particular fans of Dahl, but appreciate what he could do) could bowl and instead was lazily not thought through. The cast--Vinnie Jones, Stephen Fry, Richard E Grant (not even having to work at parodying himself), Phyllida Law, Harry Enfield--were wasted. The kids, all good, were wasted. Even the choice of musical tracks was obvious and boring.

LL claims to have enjoyed it. She wasn't rapt throughout and wasn't scared very much at all.

The one good joke was the scary animal in a cat carrier, which we never got to see.