family Archives - Virginia Madsen

Ahhhhhhhhhhh. Stuart Little 3, the raggedy little scamp of a mouse. Now. I won’t lie, before all of this Virginia Madsen site stuff I hadn’t seen the movie, and, honestly, had no real desire to either.

I saw the first one a looooooooooooooooong time ago, it was amusing, but not for me. The third film always seemed a bit odd to me. The third movie see It change to a fully animated affair compared to the previous two mix ups of live action and CGI. It also skipped the cinema entirely and went straight to DVD.

We still have Michael J Fox doing the mouse thing, Geena Davis doing the Mom thing and Hugh Laurie doing the Dad thing though, all is not lost.

In Stuart Little 3 we find Stuart and family heading off on a camping trip to Lake Garland. The whole family, including the cat, Snowbell Which, I guess is a bit odd, but we’re talking about a film about a talking mouse here.

Not long into their trip Stuart meets a skunk named Reeko (Wayne Brady) who isn’t the most favourite animal in the forest due to his association with “The Beast”, a female Cougar who is the leader of the forest around Lake Garland. The Beast is the character who sounds remarkably like Virginia Madsen.

I’m pretty sure there’s a joke to be had somewhere around here but I shall refrain from attempting any…

Stuart and Reeko end up making friends, with Reeko even being invited to the family dinner. But, it’s not long before Reeko Is showing everyone just why he’s not the most popular animal in the forest and after deciding that the food he got from the Little family wasn’t enough he hatches a plan to lure Snowbell into the forest for The Beast.

Stuart is obviously having none of this and sets off to save Snowbell, and cartoon based shenanigans ensue.

Virginia Madsen seemed to have a lot of fun making this movie. I guess it’s kind of a different role for her to be the out and out villain in a story. Well, not including her early femme fetale roles anyway. The Beasts character comes from a dark place, snarling, commanding and power hungry. Quite the contrast to most of her other roles around the same time period, and those both before and after. I’d quite like to see her play this kind of ‘evil’ role in live action at some point. I mean, this is a kids film and she manages to pull off evil in a family friendly way, imagine her let loose.
I mean, it’s not the first time she’s taken the role of the villan in something animated, look at her Silver Sable in Spider-man, or Roulette in Justice League Unlimited. Let her have some proper live action over the top villany I say!

The movie itself, well. I’m a grown up and don’t mind the odd “kids” film when there is something in there for the adults as well. But this isn’t one of those films.

And, I have to say it was disappointing on a few levels, I don’t think that even as a kid I’d enjoy this film as much as the other ones. I don’t quite know what it was missing, but, something.

One for the collectors of Virignia Madsen to put on their shelves and possibly never watch, heh – One for most people to put on their shelves and never watch I’d imagine.

Availability:

You can trip over copies on eBay, Amazon and wherever else you normally shop if you aren’t careful.

Trailer:

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Ha. No. This one, no.

Not seen it, I own it and I’ve skimmed through it to get the captures – BUT – No. This one isn’t for me, Virginia Madsen or no Virginia Madsen. I felt bad even buying this one. I might have even ended up on some kind of list because of it.
It’s a film, based on a range of dolls from Mattel known as “American Girl”. The range represents “all girls” from all cultures, faiths and ethnicities. Not a bad thing to have in the World, but something I have zero interest in personally.

Grace was the thirteenth doll in a series called “Girl of The Year”, her back story is told here in the form of film. It’s the 9th film in the series.

The blurb…

It’s Summertime and young Grace fantasizes about starting a new Business making cupcakes with her friends so she can buy herself a new bike. But, her Mother (Virginia) has other ideas and takes them away for a family holiday to Paris. Once in Paris she meets up with the French side of the family, who wouldn’t you know it – Have a bakery business themselves, so all is well with the world again. Adventures abound with Grace trying to save the family’s French Bakery amid a family friendly film environment.You know the kind of film this is. One for the kids, and kids alone. The only reason an adult would watch this movie would be with their kids. They have their place, there is nothing wrong with using movies to get good, wholesome messages across to kids. They aren’t close to reality but that doesn’t really matter. Try and get some optimism into the little ones before they are too old to realise any different and have to deal with the horrifying reality of it all.

Though, reading through some of the reviews on iMDB.com while researching tells me that these points are missed by some.

I’m completely the wrong demographic for this film. I’d imagine I was furthest away from the Marketing Team’s thoughts when it came to this one. My opinion is basically a mute one when it comes to this film.

The few bits I did see with Virginia were perfectly fine, I mean – She is doing exactly what she should be in a film like this. Looking for the positives here, even that’s impressive considering some of the films and roles she’s been involved with over the years, to go from those to this. I’ll bet not every actress could do it convincingly.And, that’s about all I have to say on this one. It is what it is.

Availability:
Easily found on Region 1 (US) DVD but I couldn’t find any evidence (other than a “U” BBFC certificate) that it’d even been released outside of America.

For the USA Market you can find it streaming to buy and rent, well everywhere from the looks of it – Again, outside of the US – Not so much.

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