posted 05-25-2011 05:46 PM                

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Admit it. You think the Candy Land movie is one of the worst ideas in Hollywood history. A movie based on the children’s board game that itself seems specifically designed to numb the adult mind with its winding rainbow path past the domains of the nefarious Duke of Swirl and Lord Licorice and into King Kandy’s scrumptious kingdom. But what if the Cupcake Commons were, say, the Shire, and the Chocolate Mountains were Mordor? Because that’s what the Candy Land writers have in mind. Jonathan Aibel, who co-wrote Kung Fu Panda 2 with Glenn Berger, told EW at yesterday’s Hollywood premiere that they have ambitious plans: “We envision it as Lord of The Rings, but set in a world of candy.”

The Lord of the Rings. In a world of candy.

(Hmmm, land of candy.)

“We don’t see it as a movie based on a board game, although it has characters from that world and takes the idea of people finding themselves in a world that happens to be made entirely of candy where there are huge battles going on,” Berger says. “We are going for real comedy, real action, and real emotions at stake.”

I assume Berger and Aibel have played Candy Land, but just in case, let’s refresh. The game is for children who can’t read or count, as the players move through the board by picking color-coded or confection-pictured cards. There’s no strategy — other then the parental strategy of keeping the kids quiet for 15 minutes so they can down another Tylenol. So I wonder if the screenwriting team is overshooting with its LOTR ambition. Are they risking alienating their core audience, i.e., kids with runny noses? Can’t they settle for the yucks of something like Yogi Bear?

What do you think about their LOTR link? Is this the way to get any board game turned into a movie: “We envision Twister as Ocean’s Eleven, but set in a secret world of rainbow dots.”

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