Best New Video Releases - Recommended July 2002 Releases on Video and DVD

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Home Video/DVD: Recommended July Releases

July 2

"Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius" (2001)

This is an animated action-adventure film aimed at grade school kids, but many adults won't mind watching it. The central character is a nerdy boy named Jimmy Neutron, who lives with his parents and his robot dog Goddard in a town called Retroville. Jimmy, who spends all his free time inventing gadgets, modifies a toaster to become a satellite intended to communicate with extraterrestrials. Unlike many of Jimmy's inventions, this one works, and egg-shaped space aliens abduct all of Retroville's adults and prepare to sacrifice them to a chicken-like deity. Accompanied by other kids, Jimmy sets out to rescue the grownups and has a series of remarkable adventures along the way. Seventy-five percent of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes liked "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius."

July 9

"The Royal Tenenbaums" (2001)

Eighty percent of the Rotten Tomatoes critics liked this sophisticated comedy, which was coscripted and directed by Wes Anderson and stars Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller, and Gwyneth Paltrow. The film tells the tale of the talented, but dysfunctional, Tenenbaum family. By 2001, the father, Royal Tenenbaum (Hackman), has lived apart from the rest of the family for many years. Over those years, the children (Stiller, Paltrow, and Luke Wilson) grew up as prodigies, but in adulthood their lives fall apart, and all come home to live with the mother, Etheline (Huston). When financial difficulties force the aging Royal to reinvolve himself with his estranged wife and adult children, the results are surprising and amusing. But is it too late for him to achieve a measure of redemption?

July 16
"Amelie" (2001)

Nominated for five Academy Awards, "Amelie" is a character-driven French-language romantic comedy. Amelie (Audrey Tautou), a shy young woman who works as a waitress in a small café in a romanticized Paris, has no friends and lives alone. But this changes when she stumbles across a long-forgotten box of boyhood mementos left in her apartment by a previous occupant. She tracks down the owner—now an adult—and gives him the box, bringing him happiness. This incident sends Amelie off on a series of imaginative acts of kindness intended to amuse herself and make others happy. Along the way, she is attracted to Nino (Mathieu Kassovitz) and expends a lot of effort in trying to approach him in her quirky, indirect way. Eighty-eight percent of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes liked "Amelie."

Related Home Video/DVD Features of Interest:

2002 Recommended Releases on Video and DVD

Recommended July 2002 Releases on Home Video/DVD