Jacob Two Two Meets the Hooded Fang

This 1999 remake of a 1970's film was much better than the original. Gary Busey puts in (as usual) a great performance. The supporting cast of Ice-T, Mark McKinney and Miranda Richardson all give equally good performances. The kids in the movie give marginal performances but are acceptable.

The plot involves a young boy who gets hit on the head and finds himself in court where he is sentenced to slime island, a place where the hooded fang imprisons children for such offenses.

It also has a heart warming ending that teaches a moral lesson. Not bad for a kid flick these days!

If you liked Nightmare before Christmas or James and the Giant Peach, this one has that same Burtonesque feel to it.

Your kids under 8 will thoroughly enjoy this one. You may not. Look at it this way -- kids adore the purple dinosaur and the blue dog, but wouldn't you just like to beat the snot out of both of them? Bottom line is that if you watch it with your kids you'll enjoy it but if you took your saturday night date to the theater to see it, you will probably want to write a vicious, myopic review on IMDB.

A friend and I were surfing the digital cable the other night and ran into this obscure little film at about 3 a.m. on HBO. Intrigued by the premise, and the title, we decided to watch a bit of it, and were sucked in. Jacob Two-Two is absolute fun--it has cuteness but with enough darkness to keep it from simply being fluff.

The first thing that caught us was the song that accompanied the opening credits (!), a slow, gravelly song about Jacob--the narration in the film is also done by the singer of this song (not sure who, although the music was done by Tim Burns and Jono Grant), which gives it an off-kilter quality from the start. The actors are good and are used wisely, and constitute a surprising list of talent: Miranda Richardson, Maury Chaykin, Gary Busey (appropriately grotesque as the Hooded Fang), and Ice-T as a rapping judge. Oh, and Matt McKinney of Kids in the Hall fame. Many of these characters are real people that Jacob Two-two encounters in the real world, and become (a la Wizard of Oz) warped players in his hallucination/dream of a world where children are tried and convicted of minor crimes and sent to Slime Island, a place where there is no fun or laughter.

It's a bit creepy, a bit hokey, a bit funny, a bit sad--it's a lot of things, really, and is definitely a film that more people should see. And, last but not least, the young actor who plays Jacob, Max Morrow, is a real find--a better and more naturally sweet child actor than any other I've seen (Jonathan Lipnicki and the Lloyd kid from Episode One come to mind). He makes Jacob cute without being treacly, and this is a delicate thing which could have ruined the film for me. Get him in more good movies, please! And check this movie out--whether for adults or children (I'd say not under eight years old, though--it could be too scary), it works.

Although I haven't seen this movie, I saw the 1970's version as my first movie theater outing on a school trip when I was only seven years old. Jacob Two-Two is a cultural icon in Canada. Children are told this story and study it in school, as it is one of the most famous of Mordecai Richler's writings. He was a well-loved Quebecois writer.

Don't diss the actors in this movie because you are not aware of the background of the story. One could make similar comments of depressing scariness involving children about any number of stories that children clearly love, for example the Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events series, or even the modern remaking of any fairy tale! And as you know, children are not concerned with costumes or plot on the same level as older people. They love things that seem strange and cheesy to adults -- witness the success of Barney and The Power Rangers.

I think it's great that there is a new version of Jacob Two-Two for today, and I am looking forward to watching it.

I probably came across this at the best time - 3 a.m. while channel surfing. I could not believe this was Gary Busey. And, then, imagine my surprise when I also learned it was Miranda Richardson. What? Were these people at the work house? Had they fallen so low as to do this dreck?

One might possibly term this a warmed over Captain Hook story where for some reason (all right, I did miss the beginning) children were imprisoned by a demented ex-wrestler who demanded that they keep a fog machine in operation so that their prison could remain hidden.

I know this is a children's movie but I don't even think a 5-year-old would have bought this story.

For shame.

Jacob Two Two is the best movie I have ever seen! I am stunned that it did not even get an oscar nod..Gary Busey plays the role of a lifetime, and Jacob is super cool. ICE-T drops some funky raps too! All in all, I have not seen a better movie since The Langoliers. Truly a film for all ages.