''Stuart Little 2'' is a 2002 American live-action/animated

comedy film The comedy film is a film genre that emphasizes humor. These films are designed to amuse audiences and make them laugh. Films in this genre typically have a happy ending, with dark comedy being an exception to this rule. Comedy is one of the o ...

loosely based on E.B. White's novel ''

Stuart Little ''Stuart Little'' is a 1945 American children's novel by E. B. White. It was White's first children's book, and became recognized as a classic in children's literature. ''Stuart Little'' was illustrated by the artist Garth Williams, also his f ...

''. Directed by Rob Minkoff and screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin, the film stars

Geena Davis Virginia Elizabeth "Geena" Davis (born January 21, 1956) is an American actor. She is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. Davis made her acting debut in the satirical romantic comedy ''Toots ...

Hugh Laurie James Hugh Calum Laurie (; born 11 June 1959) is an English actor, comedian, singer, musician and writer. He first gained professional recognition as a member of the English comedy double act Fry and Laurie with Stephen Fry. Fry and Laurie act ...

, and Jonathan Lipnicki, alongside the voices of

Michael J. Fox Michael Andrew Fox (born June 9, 1961), known professionally as Michael J. Fox, is a Canadian and American actor and activist. Beginning his career as a child actor in the 1970s, he rose to prominence portraying Alex P. Keaton on the NBC sitcom ...

Melanie Griffith Melanie Richards Griffith (born August 9, 1957) is an American actress. Born in Manhattan to actress Tippi Hedren, she was raised mainly in Los Angeles, where she graduated from the Hollywood Professional School at age 16. In 1975, 17-year-old ...

Nathan Lane Nathan Lane (born Joseph Lane; February 3, 1956) is an American actor. Since 1975, he has been Nathan Lane on screen and stage, on stage and screen in both comedic and dramatic roles. He has received List of awards and nominations received by Na ...

, James Woods, and

Steve Zahn Steven James Zahn ( ; born November 13, 1967) is an American actor. In film, Zahn is best known for his lead roles in '' That Thing You Do!'' (1996), '' Happy, Texas'' (1999), '' Joy Ride'' (2001), ''National Security'' (2003), '' A Perfect Geta ...

. The sequel to the 1999 film ''Stuart Little'' and the second installment in the ''Stuart Little'' trilogy. In the film, Stuart (Fox) and Snowbell (Lane) meet a canary named Margalo (Griffith) before she is captured by Falcon (Woods), and Stuart and Snowbell must team up to find her and defeat Falcon. ''Stuart Little 2'' premiered in Westwood on July 14, 2002, and was released in theaters for the rest of North America and the United Kingdom on July 19 by

Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Trade name, doing business as Columbia Pictures, is an American film Production company, production and Film distributor, distribution company that is the flagship unit of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group ...

, and grossed $170 million against a $120 million budget, with it also receiving positive critical reviews. It was followed by a third film, a

direct-to-video Direct-to-video or straight-to-video refers to the release of a film, television series, short or special to the public immediately on home video formats rather than an initial theatrical release or television premiere. This distribution strat ...

sequel titled '' Stuart Little 3: Call of the Wild'' in 2005.

Plot

Three years after being adopted by the Littles and defeating Smokey, Stuart Little has settled into family life with his parents, older brother George, and baby sister Martha, who has yet to say her first words. Stuart is becoming tired of his adoptive mother Eleanor's overprotectiveness due to his small size, and is finding himself lonely when George would rather play with his own friend, Will. When playing by himself, Stuart accidentally wrecks George's toy plane while trying to fix it, prompting George to furiously throw it into a trash can at Eleanor's request due to it being much too dangerous. Stuart is upset about the situation but his adoptive father Frederick tells him there is a 'silver lining' to every bad situation, and encourages him to find a new friend of his own. When driving home from school in his roadster, Stuart meets Margalo, a canary who falls into his car. Margalo states she has injured her wing being chased by a predatory Falcon, and Stuart takes her home to recover. Unbeknownst to the Littles, Margalo is in fact physically healthy, and is working with Falcon to steal precious items from households. However, she soon bonds with the Littles, and feels immense guilt over what she is planning to do; Falcon warns her that if she does not complete their plan, he will kill Stuart. Margalo steals Eleanor's ring, prompting Stuart to venture down the Littles' kitchen drain in an unfruitful attempt to find it again. He soon finds himself in trouble, but Margalo rescues him; realizing the danger she is putting him in, she leaves the next morning. Stuart becomes convinced Falcon has kidnapped her, and sets off to find her with the family cat Snowbell, convincing George (who initially wants to go along with him) to conduct a series of elaborate (and extremely unconvincing) lies to Eleanor in order to cover for him. Stuart and Snowbell seek out Smokey's right-hand street-cat Monty, who tells them that Falcon lives at the top of the Pishkin Building, and warns that he is an extremely dangerous foe. Stuart uses a balloon to fly to the summit of the Pishkin Building, but is taken aback when Margalo reveals her alliance with Falcon. Falcon traps Margalo in a paint can, and attempts to kill Stuart by dropping him from the sky; Stuart instead lands in a garbage truck and is taken to a garbage barge out at sea. Initially devastated at the series of events, Stuart soon remembers the time he saved Snowbell from Smokey and finds his silver lining by rediscovering and subsequently repairing George's broken toy plane, which he uses to fly back to land. Meanwhile, George, after being reprimanded by his parents for his deception and interrogated on Stuart's true whereabouts, confesses where Stuart is to them, prompting them to head out and look for him. Back at the Pishkin Building, Snowbell makes his way to the top and frees Margalo from the paint can, only to become trapped in it himself. Margalo breaks free from Falcon's control, and flies away with Eleanor's ring, prompting Falcon to give chase. Stuart arrives in his toy plane, and a furious chase occurs through Manhattan, with the Littles and Snowbell following from behind. Stuart ultimately wins the battle by using the ring to blind Falcon's vision, before jumping out from the plane and allowing it to crash into Falcon as he falls into a trash can and is presumably eaten by Monty. The day saved, Frederick and Eleanor forgive Stuart for running away, George for lying to them, and Margalo for taking the ring, telling them they are extremely proud of them for their bravery. Later, Margalo fulfills her dream of flying south for the winter, planning on returning to the Little household in the spring. Martha stuns everyone by using her first words to say goodbye to Margalo.

Cast

Live-action cast

as Mrs. Eleanor Little, the

matriarch Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of power and privilege are held by women. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege, and control of property. While those definitions apply in general English, ...

of the Little family and Frederick's wife. *

as Mr. Frederick Little, the

patriarch The highest-ranking bishops in Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Roman Catholic Church (above major archbishop and primate), the Hussite Church, Church of the East, and some Independent Catholic Churches are termed patriarchs (and ...

of the Little family and Eleanor's husband. * Jonathan Lipnicki as George Little, the eldest son of the Little family and Stuart's older brother. * Anna and Ashley Hoelck as Martha Little, the infant daughter of the Little family and Stuart and George's younger sister. * Marc John Jefferies as Will Powell, George's loyal best friend. * Jim Doughan as Stuart and George's soccer coach. Doughan previously voiced Lucky and played the role of Detective Allen in ''

''. *

Brad Garrett Brad H. Gerstenfeld (born April 14, 1960), known professionally as Brad Garrett, is an American actor and stand-up comedian. Garrett was initially successful as a stand-up comedian in the early 1980s. Taking advantage of that success in the la ...

as Rob, a

plumber A plumber is a tradesperson who specializes in installing and maintaining systems used for potable (drinking) water, hot-water production, sewage and drainage in plumbing systems.

called to find Eleanor's ring in the kitchen sink's pipes. * Amelia Marshall as Rita Powell, Will's mother. * Ronobir Lahiri as the unnamed

Indian-American Indian Americans are Americans whose ancestry originates wholly or partly from India. The terms Asian Indian and East Indian are used to avoid confusion with Native Americans in the United States, who are also referred to as "Indians" or "Am ...

taxi driver *

Maria Bamford Maria Bamford (born September 3, 1970) is an American actress and stand-up comedian. Her work often uses self-deprecating and dark topics, including her dysfunctional family, depression, anxiety, suicide and mental illness. Her first comedy alb ...

as Stuart and George's teacher * Angelo Massagli as Wallace, one of Stuart and George's soccer teammates. * Kevin Olson as Irwin, another of Stuart and George's soccer teammates.

Voice cast

as Stuart Little, a young

anthropomorphic Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics to ...

mouse A mouse (: mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus'' ...

adopted as part of the Little family. *

as Margalo, a young anthropomorphic yellow canary whom Stuart meets on his way home from school and becomes his love interest, though it is revealed that she is actually in cahoots with a falcon, who adopted her when she was only a fledgling and forced her into slavery to steal objects from households in exchange for a home. *

as Snowbell, the family's

Persian cat The Persian cat, also known as the Persian Longhair, is a long-haired breed of cat characterised by a round face and short muzzle. The first documented ancestors of Persian cats might have been imported into Italy from Greater Khorasan, Khoras ...

who is Stuart's best friend. * James Woods as Falcon, a

peregrine falcon The peregrine falcon (''Falco peregrinus''), also known simply as the peregrine, is a Cosmopolitan distribution, cosmopolitan bird of prey (raptor) in the family (biology), family Falconidae renowned for its speed. A large, Corvus (genus), cro ...

who served as Margalo's master as well as being the main

antagonist An antagonist is a character in a story who is presented as the main enemy or rival of the protagonist and is often depicted as a villain.Steve Zahn Steven James Zahn ( ; born November 13, 1967) is an American actor. In film, Zahn is best known for his lead roles in '' That Thing You Do!'' (1996), '' Happy, Texas'' (1999), '' Joy Ride'' (2001), ''National Security'' (2003), '' A Perfect Geta ...

as Monty, a gray

tabby cat A tabby cat, or simply tabby, is any domestic cat (''Felis catus'') with a Cat_coat_genetics#Tabbies , coat pattern distinguished by an M-shaped marking on its forehead, stripes by its eyes and across its cheeks, along its back, around its leg ...

who is Snowbell's best friend.

Puppeteers

* Greg Ballora * David Barclay - supervising animation puppeteer * Kevin Carlson * David Greenaway * Greg Manion * Drew Massey *

Karen Prell Karen Leigh Prell (born July 26, 1959) is an American puppeteer and animator. She is the performer of Red Fraggle in ''Fraggle Rock''. Early life and career Prell was born on July 26, 1959, in Florida but grew up in Seattle, Washington. She a ...

* Michelan Sisti

Production

After the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

, parts of the

Twin Towers Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of Twin Last Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two e ...

soon ended up digitally removed and a number of scenes were reshot. However, World Trade Center Building 7 still appears in some parts of the film.

Reception

Box office

The film had an opening weekend gross of $15.1 million, ranking in second place narrowly behind '' Road to Perdition''. The domestic total was $65 million and the worldwide total was $170 million against an estimated production budget of $120 million, less than its predecessor.

Critical reception

On review aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 81% based on 124 reviews, with an average score of 6.90/10. The critical consensus reads, "''Stuart Little 2'' is a sweet, visually impressive sequel that provides wholesome entertainment for kids." On

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, the film has a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

score of 66 out of 100 based on 29 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by

CinemaScore CinemaScore is an American market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts from the data. Background Ed Mintz, who ...

gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale. Ann Hornaday wrote a positive review in ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'', noting how the film's idealized setting makes it family-friendly. Hornaday praised the vocal performances of Fox, Griffith, and Woods in their roles as Stuart, Margalo, and Falcon, respectively, as well as the characters' computer animation: "The animated characters engage in such natural movements and, more important, exude such subtle emotional expression that they mesh seamlessly with their live-action counterparts." Tom Shen of the ''

Chicago Reader The ''Chicago Reader'', or ''Reader'' (stylized as ЯEADER), is an American alternative newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. The ''Reader'' has been ...

'', described the film as "fairly formulaic", but praised its jokes as "hilarious", especially those coming from the character of Snowbell, the Littles' cat.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack, ''Music from and Inspired by Stuart Little 2'', was released by

Epic Records Epic Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), cong ...

and

Sony Music Soundtrax Epic Soundtrax was an American record label. A division of Sony Music's Epic Records, it was established in 1992 as an imprint for soundtrack albums. It was founded by Epic's then executive vice-president, Richard Griffiths, and Glen Brunman ...

on July 16, 2002 on

Audio CD Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA or CD-DA), also known as Digital Audio Compact Disc or simply as Audio CD, is the standard format for audio compact discs. The standard is defined in the '' Red Book'' technical specifications, which is why t ...

and

Compact Cassette The Compact Cassette, also commonly called a cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at the Dutch company ...

. The tracks in bold do not appear on the film and the final two tracks are score cues composed by

Alan Silvestri Alan Anthony Silvestri (born March 26, 1950) is an American composer, conductor, orchestrator and music producer of film scores. He has received two Grammy Awards and two Primetime Emmy Awards as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and two ...

. Another album features the entirety of Silvestri's orchestral score for the film. Source:

Video game

Three different video games based on the film were released. One was developed by

Magenta Software Magenta Software was a video game developer based in Liverpool, England. History It was founded in 1994. The company specializes in developing family friendly video games based on various films as well as the ''Buzz! Junior'' and ''Invizimals'' ...

and published by

Sony Computer Entertainment Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC (SIE) is an American video game and digital entertainment company that is a major subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate Sony, Sony Group Corporation. It primarily operates the PlayStation brand of video game co ...

for the

PlayStation is a video gaming brand owned and produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), a division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. Its flagship products consists of a series of home video game consoles produced under the brand; it also consists ...

. A second game was developed by Creations and published by

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...

for the

Game Boy Advance The (GBA) is a 32-bit handheld game console, manufactured by Nintendo, which was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, and to international markets that June. It was later released in mainland China in 2004, under the name iQue Game Boy Advanc ...

. A third was developed by Hyperspace Cowgirls and published by

Infogrames Atari SA (formerly Infogrames Entertainment SA ()), also known as Atari Group, is a French holding company headquartered in Paris that owns mainly video gaming-related interactive entertainment properties. Atari SA's core subsidiaries include ...

for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Accolades

Home media

''Stuart Little 2'' was released in the United States on

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

and

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

on December 10, 2002, by Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment, and in the United Kingdom on November 25, 2002. In 2008, the film was re-released as part of a double feature with ''

''. ''Stuart Little'' and ''Stuart Little 2'' were released in a combo on

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

PSP's UMD format on January 3, 2006. A

Blu-ray Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-defin ...

combo pack was released on June 28, 2011, alongside the first film by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Notes

References

External links

* * * {{Sony theatrical animated features 2002 films 2000s adventure comedy films 2000s children's adventure films 2000s children's comedy films 2000s children's fantasy films 2000s English-language films 2000s fantasy comedy films American adventure comedy films American children's adventure films American children's comedy films American children's fantasy films American fantasy adventure films American fantasy comedy films American films with live action and animation American sequel films Animated films about birds Columbia Pictures films Films about cats Films produced by Douglas Wick Films produced by Lucy Fisher Films directed by Rob Minkoff Animated films about mice Films scored by Alan Silvestri Films set in New York City Films shot in Los Angeles Films shot in New York City Films with screenplays by Bruce Joel Rubin Impact of the September 11 attacks on cinema Stuart Little (franchise) Films based on novels by E. B. White 2002 comedy films 2000s American films English-language fantasy comedy films English-language adventure comedy films