Kristen Wiig<\/a>), a high-camp, high-vamp cat lady who has lost touch with the child within. I could tell you about how the movie, which bounces off the idea that playthings will feel abandoned when their child owners grow up, is like \u201cToy Story\u201d meets \u201cTrolls\u201d meets a confectionary version of \u201cCloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.\u201d (I should add that it\u2019s wispy enough to make each of those look like a Dickens novel.)<\/p>\n\n\tReally, though, \u201cGabby\u2019s Dollhouse: The Movie\u201d is about the textures \u2014 the fun of spending 90 minutes in a child\u2019s universe that feels like it wasn\u2019t so much animated as baked. Going into the movie, I knew nothing of the DreamWorks Animation series that premiered on Netflix in 2021. But by the time \u201cGabby\u2019s Dollhouse\u201d was over, I felt like the Gabby Cats were my friends too. The movie, make no mistake, is a genial throwaway that skitters through incidents with a G-rated innocuousness that makes it perfect for a very pint-sized demo. Yet the design of it is captivating, and so, in a minor way, is the affection with which the film\u2019s director, Ryan Crego, embraces childhood things. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tGabby starts out as a live human, played by the series\u2019 star, Laila Lockhart Kraner, who is now 17, but it\u2019s a bit awkward having someone who looks like they\u2019re getting ready to apply to college interfacing with three-inch-high cat toys. So as Gabby embarks on a road trip with her Grandma Gigi (Gloria Estefan) to the city of Cat Francisco, she becomes a girlish animated version of herself. Standouts in the cat-boutique vocal cast include Donovan Patton as the acerbic CatRat, Julien Donenfield as Cakey the cupcake, and Maggie Lowe as the innocent Baby Box, who\u2019s got a head like a small house.<\/p>\n
\n\tAs for Kristen Wiig, in white hair and a purple turban and an outfit dominated by billowy purple leather sleeves, she does a version of the stylish misanthropic kitsch camping that has served actors from Emma Thompson in \u201cCruella\u201d to Gal Gadot in \u201cSnow White.\u201d Wiig\u2019s Vera, the CEO of a kitty-litter company, isn\u2019t such a villain \u2014 her crime is that she\u2019s forgotten how to play and wants to turn the Gabby Cats into collectibles (which, in a way, is just what they are).<\/p>\n
\n\tThe antagonist who comes to the fore is Chumsley (Jason Mantzoukas), the orange cat with pink yarn for whiskers, who was so hurt when Vera grew up and abandoned him that he has become a wounded megalomaniac, speaking in a lisp of anger. The resolution of this that takes place in that winter wonderland, atop a rickety footbridge made of sugar wafers, is mildly touching, though it\u2019s such a knockoff of the \u201cToy Story\u201d films that that becomes part of the candified simulacrum of it all.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn a funny way, kiddie adventures where animation meets live action are becoming more and more about their own world-building. \u201cGabby\u2019s Dollhouse\u201d is the definition of slight, but like \u201cA Minecraft Movie\u201d it invites the audience to imagine itself into a universe where objects have to be imagined to life. The Dollhouse, a four-story Victorian with a shingled roof topped by oversize kitty ears, is portrayed as an ever-expanding attic of wonder. You never know what, or who, you\u2019re going to find in there, or how your next friend could be turned into a piece of exquisite design, or vice versa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Golden Gate Bridge that\u2019s a glowing shade of lavender. A cupcake that cries not tears but sprinkles.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,31013,61,60,31014,270],"class_list":["post-41051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-gabbys-dollhouse-the-movie","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kristen-wiig","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}