With colorful sprinkles everywhere and everything shaped like kitties, “Gabby’s Dollhouse” has enchanted preschool Netflix viewers for most of the decade.
Now there’s “Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie,” DreamWorks Animation’s first live-action/cartoon hybrid. It brings to the big screen the series’ human star Laila Lockhart Kraner and all of her feline friends who live in the titular plaything, then sends them out into a wider world of more people, critters and ever-so-gentle jeopardy. Songs and jokes and a surprisingly psychedelic sensibility make for a safe, kooky and sometimes even adult-amusing good time.
On the show, Gabby pinches her headband’s cat ears to shrink down to an animated doll avatar that can enter her birthday cake-colored dollhouse. Inside she does interactive, craftsy activities with the living toy residents: MerCat, Kitty Fairy, CatRat … you get the drift. That happens in the movie too, but there’s much more real Lockhart Kraner time as Gabby.
Gabby (Laila Lockhart Kraner), left, and Gigi (Gloria Estefan) in DreamWorks Animation’s “Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie.” (DreamWorks Animation)
The story follows Gabby and her baking-happy Grandma Gigi (Gloria Estefan) on a road trip to the exciting city of Cat Francisco. With the dollhouse in tow behind Gigi’s van they come into view of the Golden Gate Bridge – except its towers are pink with pointy ears on top -and skyscrapers capped with whiskery faces.
But outside of a puss-roofed Victorian the dollhouse unhitches and rolls down the hill into traffic. It’s Vancouver standing in for the city, but still a persuasive enough source of runaway slapstick to evoke pleasant memories of “What’s Up, Doc?”
Gabby (Laila Lockhart Kraner) in DreamWorks Animation’s “Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie.” (Leah Gallo/DreamWorks Animation)
The dollhouse winds up in the hands of Vera the Cat Lady, a wealthy entrepreneur who made her fortune selling Pretty Glitter Kitty Litter. Played by Kristen Wiig as an unholy fusion of Cruella de Vil, Miley Cyrus and a leather Purple People Eater, Vera is pretentious and selfish but not really evil. She just wants to add the dollhouse to the collection of arty cat objects that fill her glass-and-chrome hillside home.
In her quest to rescue the kidnaped kitties, Gabby may also help the “grown adult and busy businesswoman” recapture the sense of play that made Vera fall in love with all things furry and purry when she was a girl.
In this and other ways, the movie is kind of a reverse-angle “Toy Story.” What if humans were as concerned about outgrowing their playthings as the toys were of being left behind? Not the most profound theme, but a thoughtful one to plant in the heads of little ones and the hearts of their parents.
Vera the Cat Lady (Kristen Wiig), left, and Gabby (Laila Lockhart Kraner) in DreamWorks Animation’s “Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie.” (DreamWorks Animation)
Director Ryan Crego (“Arlo the Alligator Boy”) imbues the Gabby Cats with palpable, childlike glee, while giving a new bunch of Garden Gnome Kitties just enough weirdness to indicate how new they are to this moving and thinking business. An abandoned stuffed cat named Chumsley, spoken for by vocally versatile Jason Mantzoukas, provides both poignance and menace.
Nothing young kids can’t handle, though. Throughout the movie, Gabby breaks the fourth wall and encourages the audience to sing along, dance, talk back to the screen and otherwise act in ways you’d normally shush a child for doing in a theater. If they’re watching “Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie,” I’d worry if they didn’t.
More Information
3 stars
“Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie”: Children’s adventure. Starring Laila Lockhart Kraner, Kristen Wiig and Gloria Estefan. Directed by Ryan Crego. (G. 98 minutes.) In theaters Friday, Sept. 26.
Bob Strauss is a freelance writer.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
