Patrick Meehan Movies

An American astronaut believing himself to be the first person ever to set foot on Planet 51 gets the shock of his life in this animated adventure comedy featuring the voices of Dwayne Johnson, Jessica Biel, John Cleese, and Gary Oldman. Captain Charles "Chuck" Baker (voice of Johnson) was on a mission to boldly go where no man had gone before, a remote celestial body dubbed Planet 51. The scientific community had surmised that Planet 51 was uninhabited, so when Captain Baker steps out of his spacecraft to discover a race of tiny green people living in quaint communities reminiscent of 1950s America, he can't quite believe his eyes. Unfortunately, the tiny extraterrestrials suffer from a universal fear that their utopian community will one day be overrun by alien invaders...just like the extra-large astronaut who now stands before them. As General Grawl (voice of Gary Oldman) and Professor Kipple (voice of John Cleese) attempt to capture the peaceful visitor so they can dissect him and learn more about his anatomy, Captain Baker must count on his robot companion, "Rover," and his new friend, Lem, in order to navigate this strange new world and find a way back home before it's too late. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A young girl (Saoirse Ronan) is caught in a feud between a captain (Pierce Brosnan) and his crew while on a transatlantic voyage in this adaptation of novelist Avi's young adult best-seller, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. Danny DeVito writes and directs the Jersey Films 2nd Avenue film, with Morgan Freeman heading up the rest of the cast. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

Lynn Redgrave, Alan Cummings, Cynthia Nixon, and Tim Curry all lend their voices to this wide-eyed tale of adventure and awe in the exciting world of Tinseltown. Adapted from the popular series of children's books by Kay Thompson, Eloise in Hollywood finds everyone's favorite six-year old Plaza Hotel resident setting out on a mischievous adventure through the star-studded streets of Hollywood. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

It's Halloween, and The Plaza's most notorious poltergeist is coming out to play. But when Eloise is accused of trying to scare the guests and the staff at the stately hotel, she realizes that the only hope of clearing her name lies in solving the mystery of a frightening phantom. Everyone in The Plaza knows the name Diamond Jim Johnson, but few believe that he has really returned from the dead to haunt them as the legends claim. While Eloise does her best to convince everyone that Diamond Jim's ghost is currently drifting through the hallways of The Plaza, no one believes her. Later, in order to reverse Diamond Jim's curse and save the hotel from some very real monsters, Eloise draws on her own supernatural powers of investigation. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Created by author/entertainer Kay Thompson in 1955, precocious six-year-old Eloise, who lived in the Plaza Hotel with her long-suffering nanny, her dog Weenie, and her turtle Skipperdee, was the heroine of several delightful children's books written by Thompson and whimsically illustrated by Hilary Knight. The charm of the "Eloise" books has proven elusive whenever the property is adapted for another media, as witness a disastrous musical version which aired live on Playhouse 90 in 1956. On this occasion, Eloise came off as a spoiled obstreperous brat, which was as much the fault of the child actress cast in the role (Evelyn Rudie) as the adapters. Disney decided to give little Eloise another chance 47 years later with the location-filmed Eloise at the Plaza, a two-hour movie presentation of ABC's The Wonderful World of Disney anthology. This time around, Sofia Vassilieva played the title role, with Julie Andrews as Eloise's nanny (something of a full-circle for Andrews, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of a rather different nanny in the 1964 Disney theatrical feature Mary Poppins). The plot finds Eloise insisting upon attending a debutante ball at the Plaza and further conniving to have a runaway foreign prince (Denis Akiyama) -- who isn't much older than she is -- as her escort. Our heroine also mends fences between a reluctant teenage deb and the girl's pushy mother. Jeffrey Tambor is typecast as the Plaza's supercilious concierge Mr. Salomone, whose dithering efforts to keep Eloise from nosing into other people's business avail him not one bit. Hilary Knight appears in a cameo role as himself. Eloise at the Plaza first aired April 27, 2003. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide