Tag: Animated

Dory, Dory, where do we begin?

I am not the biggest fan of Finding Nemo. Now, I was a pretty nerdy student in high school, who obviously liked movies, but I hated watching movies in school. It felt lazy to me and I wanted to learn things! So I was annoyed having to watch Finding Nemo, for the first time, in my 10th Grade Biology class. And then also for my 10th grade Coastal Marine Biology class. I also was annoyed at it, because now when people say Nemo, they think of that movie and not the great classic Little Nemo!

So yeah, my reasons are bad. In time I have come to see how good the animation is and like the humor and story, but it never was my fondest Pixar movie.

And now we have Finding Dory. It unfortunately is the first of many Pixar sequels over the upcoming years, including the dreadfully approaching Cars 3, another strike against it.

Also a couple years ago, after Blackfish came out, a very biased documentary that kind of irked me, but gained praise everywhere else, they announced they would be making changes to the films plot. For reasons. As to what the movie was like before the changes, no one will really know. But if they went from showcasing sea parks from good to bad, then that is super kind of awkward.

Oh well, let’s just keep reviewing, just keep reviewing.

Oh shit, is that an Octopus? I love octopuses in film!

In this film, we get to find out about Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) when she was a cute little baby Dory (Sloane Murray), with big eyes and kid voice. This is where we meet her parents, Jenny (Diane Keaton) and Charlie (Eugene Levy), who have made it their goal to teach Dory about her short term memory loss, the dangers of the sea, and what to do if she ever gets lost. And I think you can tell what happens. A few minutes of some of the saddest shit I have ever seen in a Pixar movie, especially as a new parents.

Anyways, a long time later, she meets Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo (Hayden Rolence). The majority of the film takes place a year after Finding Nemo, where Dory is kind of a pain on Marlin and Nemo’s lives, but they love her anyways. Things happen and she remembers that she has parents, she lost them, and a rough name of where they live, off the coast of California!

Hells to the yeah! California with a couple of Clownfish, across the entire Pacific! And the journey isn’t the issue. What they find when they get there is that Dory used to live in a Sea Park! Not one that super exploits animals. But one that takes in sick animals, helps make them better, and eventually releases them back into the wild.

And inside, Dory meets Hank (Ed O’Neill), a septopus (because he is missing a leg) who doesn’t want to return to the ocean. And Destiny (Kaitlin Olson) an old friend and a nearsighted whale shark. Bailey (Ty Burrell), a beluga whale who has no echolocation. And and and Idris Elba and Dominic West voicing a couple of sick sea lions. And Sigourney Weaver as a mysterious role!

We also have Crush (Andrew Stanton, also the director) and Mr. Ray (Bob Peterson) returning, because why not.

Yep, this is the closest thing you will get to a The Wire reunion in a long time.

Oh, let me also mention Piper. It was the animated short. It had crazy amazing graphics, was very cute, about birds on a beach, but it had a problem with a shit ending. Mostly, that it didn’t know how to end.

As for Finding Dory, being a feature length film, the animation is not the same hyper realistic quality of Piper, but similar to Nemo in style (which makes sense). We aren’t given a lot of new cool environments like Nemo though. We have a small dark crash site, a kelp forest, and a lot of rooms and tanks in a Sea Park. So in terms of visual pleasantries, Finding Dory feels mostly darker and bleaker in terms of scenery.

Unfortunately, Dory also feels really repetitive. In Nemo, her memory for the most part was a big joke and led to a lot of laughs. But given the cry inducing intro (damn birthing hormones) and the constant problems, this joke was turned into a very sad issue. A crippling problem for Dory that prevented her from trying new things knowing she would get distracted before she finishes. It was a good thing to acknowledge her issue and ramp up its seriousness, but it takes away a lot of joy for a problem that just, well, keeps being a problem.

The ending also feels like a complete jumbled mess, with a no way at all realistic final few scenes that turn our once scientifically accurate fish series into a Looney Tunes cartoon. I hated the ending and it dragged as the issues were never solved in an easy manner, leading to more and more issues that made me indifferent to what would actually finally happen.

Ignore the controversy. This couple have 2 seconds of screen time and are not a reason to hate/support a movie.

Despite all of this, I didn’t hate the movie. I was just mostly disappointed, expecting a certain level of plot greatness from Pixar. I loved most of the new characters, mainly the septopus, the sea lions, and the Clam whose name they didn’t say and I can’t find in the IMDB credits. (They also didn’t say the sea lion names in the movie, quite annoying when you think about that). Beluga whale started out fine, but they made him real annoying by the end.

And you know what? The message of the film is a good one. Disabilities change your life. They can make life scary, they are serious, and they affect more than just a single person. But fish (/PEOPLE) with disabilities aren’t useless creatures. Practically every new character, along with Dory, has a problem and they are able to overcome their problem, or learn to live efficiently with it. Hell, there was even a weird plot about a frazzled bird and Marlin learning to trust her to do things correctly. It is about acceptance and friendship.

It is also just a film that has weird issues about sea parks, a lot less humor and not a lot of originality. On an unrelated note, I was also annoyed that despite taking place a year later, all of the fish kids are still fish kids. Come on Pixar, grow those bad boys up.

Happy Marcho-wene! For those who read this months from now, I quite lazily decided to finally review Hotel Transylvania 2 in March. Hell, it even came out to DVD in January. No excuse valid, not even a busy Oscar season.

I thought Hotel Transylvania was only okay and really wasn’t surprised it had had a sequel. The animation isn’t top tier, so it is probably relatively easy to throw together a movie. And you know everyone in the voice cast is available for work. They keep busy, but they keep busy together.

Except for one person. CeeLo Green! He voiced the mummy in the last movie, but this time he is nowhere to be found. Instead they got Keegan-Michael Key to voice the mummy, keeping their “token black role” to one I guess?

Oh, and now old people might be voicing characters!

Mavis (Selena Gomez) and Jonathan (Andy Samberg) are getting married! But that isn’t the important plot point. They invite all of the family over, on both sides, except for Mavis’ Grandpa (Mel Brooks). He apparently doesn’t like humans. That will come back later.

Then they have a kid. A little ginger kid (Asher Blinkoff), gross I know. Because he is a male, Dracula (Adam Sandler) assumes he has inherited the vampire DNA (because his genetics is weird) and can’t wait for him to go doing Monster stuff. But instead, he can’t fly, has no fangs, can’t turn into a bat, and does a lot of normal baby things. Mavis is now very protective of the baby, living in the harsh Hotel monster environment. Jonathan just wants her to trust a babysitter and let them spend some time alone together.

Now it is like, five years later and it is still the same. Mavis wants to move to California, where Jonathan comes from, to live a normal and safe life. So Jonathan agrees to take her on a trip, but he likes the hotel and likes working there. So Jonathan and Dracula agree to hatch a plan: While they are gone checking out Cali, Drac will take the kid and go on a fear-adventure with his friends (Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, David Spade, Keegan-Michael Key) to scare him into going full vampire. Jonathan will try and make her think California is terrible so she won’t want to leave. Can’t go wrong.

Also featuring the work of Rob Riggle (Which was great), Fran Drescher, Molly Shannon, Megan Mullally, Nick Offerman, and Dana Carvey.

Jonathan fucked up. How could you go back when you get rainbow teeth?!

Hotel Transylvania 2 doesn’t live up to its predecessor. It also doesn’t improve anything along the way, with the exact same quality of animation.

First of all, it takes a long time to really understand just what this movie is about. Sure, vaguely it is about the family the whole film, but that isn’t a plot, those are just characters. A good third of the movie happens at least before we find out that the plot is a dad and husband lying to their daughter/wife, on a very ridiculous idea.

Secondly, it is all over the place in terms of applying its own rules. Namely I want to talk about vampires. They early on make the joke about how vampires can’t have their reflection, commonly shown through mirrors, but also any other thing that would capture their image. So of course, the wedding photographs are a bit funny. But then they let the vampires use skype and appear on video cameras, like they are really anything different. And of course, if they were wondering if the boy had any vampire in him, all they had to do was take a picture of him and see what happened. Unless in this world the vampireness just can develop all at once, and literally zero traits show up before hand.

Finally, the ending is a complete disaster. It ends with a complete brawl, all of our main characters versus an army of other characters (I wouldn’t want to spoil it). But yeah, it basically ends the same way that Grown Ups 2 ends. The fight is unnecessary and a bit nonsensical. It is unnecessary because it is the type of thing that could have been prevented and stopped at any moment by one of the characters literally just saying something. The bad guys wouldn’t have a beef with most of the monsters either, so they’d have no reason to attack them. And it was nonsensical, given the extreme powers that apparently exist in tiny bat forms. They just wanted to end it on a silly note, and kids like brawls I guess. But it is a shit move.

There were the occasional funny jokes. But this film had no focus and had no great conclusion. Mavis should take the baby and leave her husband and family behind, I think.

2016 has a sizable collection of animated movies coming out this year. I’d list them, but that makes for a boring read.

A common theme I see is the classic “Animals doing human people things.” We technically had it with Kung Fu Panda 3, but it was at least set in the past. This year there are at least three major films with this theme in modern times. Zootopia, The Secret Life of Pets, and Sing. It seems excessive, so it probably is.

Needless to say, this made me worried for Zootopia. I had only seen the first teaser trailer, and a lot of posters. It looks un-original. It looked like last year’s The Good Dinosaur. Something they slapped together after a few years, but instead they are anticipating their other film to win awards. That one being Moana.

But then again, Walt Disney Studios hasn’t let me down since The Princess and the Frog. Clearly I should just shut up and watch the movie.

Obligatory Non-Animated Sloth Related Clip.

Despite most of the advertisements I have seen, our main character is not the fox, but actually a bunny! A female bunny, Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin), with big dreams and aspirations. She wants to leave her farm and small village and become a cop! She wants to work in Zootopia, the main mammalian metropolis where so many life forms come together to live and work together to build something great. Of course there has never been a bunny cop before and her parents (Bonnie Hunt, Don Lake) will miss her a lot, but she wants to help other animals!

You see, in this world, humans never happened, all the mammals evolved to be human-esque and resist those primal urges to kill or be killed. Somehow still, despite the hundreds of years, stereotypes still exist for predators and animals. Go figure.

Well she makes it, but Chief Bogo (Idris Elba, an Ox) doesn’t care and makes her a meter maid. After getting herself into trouble and being extremely pushy, she is eventually able to join the big case. Quite a few animals, all predators have gone missing and no one has any leads on any of them. So Judy has only 48 hours to try and find Emmett Otterton, or she will resign from the job. Sucks.

To help her, she blackmails a fox named Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) to help her follow up on some leads. And of course, they become a completely opposite duo that is able to miraculously solve the case and do what no one imagined they could do.

And of course this is a big cast. So let’s not ruin it by talking about who does what and just give the list of names: J.K. Simmons, Jenny Slate, Kristen Bell, Raymond S. Persi, Maurice LaMarche, Nate Torrence, Tommy Chong, Octavia Spencer, Shakira, and of course Alan Tudyk,

And this guy is our new Olaf/Baymax/Horse from Tangled.

Somewhere, a little cartoon mouse with ears as as big as his head is slowly lighting a cigar, laughing to himself. Walt Disney Animation studios has been in the game for eons at this point and they know what they are doing. Sometimes their advertising may be suspect, but their current main line of films since the CGI era has not had a bust yet, and it was apparently wrong for me to think otherwise.

Zootopia for the most part was a very well done and enjoyable film. Scenes were incredibly detailed, especially during a night time rain storm in the jungle. There was incredible detail put into the streets of the main city and from what it looks like, they may have gotten an accurate scale of all the animals big and small. That is a huge undertaking in a film, instead of everyone just being of similar height ranges to human, a rhino or ox or giraffe appear much larger than our normal bunny point of view. In fact, I first thought something was wrong and things were being exaggerated by the animators because the reality is quite jarring.

Better yet, Judy Hopps is an awesome character. She is inspiring, she is funny, she does more than what anyone expects of her. And hey, Nick Wilde ends up being a complete character as well. A great dynamic duo, both with their own dreams and goals and neither being a cheap stereotype (although, yes, a lot of characters are cheap stereotypes).

Your mom’s a cheap stereotype.

And the movie is funny as well, it had jokes for everyone. Meta Disney jokes were there, especially when it came to Alan Tudyk’s character, movie/TV references (Breaking Bad!) and clever puns. I was almost dying during the Sloth scene, but apparently they turned 80% of that entire bit into a trailer. I’d suggest not watching that and letting it happen naturally during the movie.

It also happens to be about racism/prejudice or even a poor/rich sort of dynamic. It handles the topic with care and kids will be able to understand what is going on and the consequences of these sorts of actions.

Despite how much better it was than my imagination, it did still have some annoyances. The Gazelle played by Shakira, named Gazelle, felt incredibly cheap every time she was on screen or playing the new song just for this movie. More of a money grab than the Trolls from Frozen, but they were mostly just boring. The twists in the plot are relatively easy to catch far in advance. Not the minute small details, but figuring out who is behind the disappearing animals. A disappointing amount of time is spent pre-reveal, when an earlier reveal would have done wonders for building up the bad animal.

CGI movies take a long time to make and come out. But I don’t want to wait a long time to see more of these characters. They should turn this into a TV show, but not a cheaply done one. And fast. It easily works as a police procedural, and they’d have great content for years. Zootopia on its own is definitely recommended, and gives me a small amount of hope that maybe some of the other animated films this year won’t suck too much.

Not all animated films are created equal. Disney and Pixar make a shit ton of content now, but for the most part, none of it anyone would really describe as experimental. The closest main stream somewhat experimental film I could come up with is Wall-E, just because of the lack of dialogue for a large chunk of the movie.

So for the most part, we have to look to other smaller companies to try and break the mold on the story front. And some times those other companies come from different countries.

That brings us to Boy & The World, a film that technically first came out in 2013 in Brazil as O Menino e o Mundo, but took awhile to get to the US and other parts of the world. It was however nominated as Best Animated Feature for this latest Academy Awards ceremony, and the last one on my list to watch. Despite its language being Portuguese, it has almost no dialogue and is entirely an 80 minute story for those visual lovers out there.

It goes from extremely simplistic, to slightly more than extremely simplistic.

This is a story about a boy named Cuca. They don’t say it in the movie, but you know, the the info about the movie lets us know. He is a small kid living in a small village in a weird world. It isn’t Brazil, this isn’t a real place, but if you want it to be in Brazil I won’t stop you.

Cuca likes to dream. He has a lot of imagination, because you know, he is a kid. He lives with a mother and a father, but times are tough, and the dad has to leave the village to go to the big, emotionless city to find work. Once he gets paid, he could return maybe. But for now, Cuca feels like his whole world has come crashing down.

So, fuck it. He decides to go on a journey and find his dad. And he meets a lot of people and friendly strangers along the way. And a dog! But the further he journeys, the more corrupt and crazy things get. Simple village life is definitely preferred. More fun, more imagination, more love.

And less depressing colors.

Boy & The World is rated PG, but you know what? Kids might not enjoy it. Both of my kids who are old enough to see things and think only watched it for a little bit as I did, then wandered off to do something else. If it was a typical movie, they would usually never do that, because they have simpler story structures to follow. To a kid, this will look like a lot of moving pictures but they won’t know why anything is happening and easily get distracted.

That is me saying that this is not the type of movie you can half ass watch and get anything out of it. You have to pay attention, to see the details, to see the changes, and if you put in the effort, you probably will still be a little bit confused at times. So many characters, but basically no names and dialogue. Just people interacting and living and working.

The art style in this movie is fantastic. It is all quite simple, but it has a lot going on at the same time. It feels like I every frame is taken directly out of a children’s book. We haven’t had a unique art film like this since The Tale of Princess Kaguya, which felt like a moving painting.

The film also goes into some pretty deep stuff. Pretty anti-capitalism and wasting your whole life at work. It isn’t subtle about any of this, especially when it brings in the government oppression. And yes, this is still a PG movie, it just has a lot to say about the world (coughAndBrazilcough).

A fantastic film, one definitely worthy of its nomination.

Hayao Miyazaki, remember that guy? Famed animated director at Studio Ghibli who made a shit ton of great animated films and then retired after The Wind Rises?

Well, Studio Ghibli was basically all up on that Miyazaki hype train, so the didn’t really know what to do. Yes, they did The Tale of the Princess Kaguya which was incredibly different (and still amazeballs), but they decided they should take a break to figure out what the hell they were going to do.

Right after When Marnie Was There, which was already in development. Yes, after that, THEN they would take their break and figure shit out.

So here we are. Ho hum. Feels like a filler movie knowing these details.

When Marnie was there, Anna was still a good steps from the finishing line.
That slow running bitch.

Anna Sasaki (Hailee Steinfeld) is a 12 year old girl, a bit of a loner, and a lot of a tom boy. She isn’t going to the mall or teeheehee-ing it up with the other girls. She just wants to draw and be left alone (thus my use of the term loner). Either way, she has an asthma attack, so her Foster mom (Geena Davis) sends her to her relatives over the summer to get a refresher on life.

There she stays with Setsu (Grey Griffin) and Kiyomasa Oiwa (John C. Reilly), still feeling weird. Anna gets in a fight with a girl about her blue eyes (not knowing her real family), so she runs off to the mysterious mansion across the Marsh that used to have foreigners live there. It is not abandoned. JUST KIDDING. Marnie (Kiernan Shipka)is there, and so is her whole rich family. Funny, it used to look abandoned and shit.

Marnie and Anna agree to keep each other secret, so they can be friends but let no one know.

Overtime, with Marnie, Anna is able to find out the truth about her life and her family, even though she doesn’t know it yet.

Also having the voices of Ava Acres, Vanessa Williams, and Catherine O’Hara.

When Marnie was there behind the bushes, we could see everything. EVERYTHING.

Just so we are clear, I totally watched the English Dub, thus the actors/actresses tagged. I couldn’t even find a subtitled version if I wanted it.

And just so we are clear again, this film was nominated for an Oscar for Animated Films, as the Studio Ghibli movies tend to be. But this one just doesn’t do it for me on any level.

Ghibli in recent movies have had the sexiest animation, although going in many different directions (see the two movies I tagged in the intro). This one just felt so bland and old. It felt stylistically like a step back in the wrong direction. It wasn’t completely shit, it just wasn’t up to the standards that I have become accustomed to.

The voice acting from the English cast felt pathetic. The first half of the movie, everyone seemingly just talks in a monotone voice. It makes the story drag on and on. By the end, I didn’t give a crap about the mystery of who Marnie was. It felt like the characters were bored with it all, and the emotions were just pitiful. I wonder if the voice work was all done in one take with never any context.

As I already mentioned, the story was a big meh from me. It could never grasp me or make me care about those involved. It felt way too long, without enough happening to push the mystery closer to its conclusion. The entire mystery is told by the end of course, but if there were clues along the way to let you know what was happening, I didn’t see any of them.

Ghibli is taking a break to figure shit out. This is good. I am sad they ended the note on this film, which I almost feel like was nominated because the Academy is used to their films being so much better.

Animated films can take a long time to make. It takes years to get all of the CGI right, and pretty. It does not take a lot of time to record dialogue, or figure out the plot (Unless you are The Good Dinosaur). But all the technical work making sure every frame is wonderful and all the characters are as you had hoped. Years and hundreds of people at work.

Technically it only takes years if you care about the final product. That is why we had Planes and Planes: Fire & Rescue less than a year apart. The animators didn’t care.

There was a five year gap between Kung Fu Panda 2 and Kung Fu Panda 3. And you know that is not because the voice actors were too busy for lines. Kung Fu Panda 2 in 2011 was the prettiest film of all the CGI movies. Prettier than Rango and Puss In Boots. If they wanted to not just recipricate the second movie but surpass it, you can bet your ass it would take them years of work.

I am rambling. All I am trying to say is I expect this film to shit rainbows and make my eyes bleed in wonder. A sweet villain would also be delightful.

Creepy and promising! Me likey.

As we know from the end of 2, there is a secret panda village somewhere and Po (Jack Black) doesn’t know about it. He won’t care about it until a mysterious panda, Li (Bryan Cranston) shows up to the valley. He is looking for his lost son. Could it be?! Yes, yes it could be.

Great news! Now Po can show his dad all the cool dragon warrior stuff, and make his Foster Dad, Mr. Ping (James Hong) feel incredibly sad and jealous. Also Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) plans on retiring so he can focus on himself and find his Chi to do even better Kung Fu, leaving Po in charge of training the five (Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, David Cross, Jackie Chan). But he can’t teach.

Even worse? Well, Kai (J.K. Simmons) has escaped from the Spirit Realm! Who? He used to be a friend of Master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim) 500 years ago, even saved his life! But he got jealous of Oogway when he was taught to harness Chi from the mystical Panda village and wanted the power for his own, so he had to be put down in a jealous fury. Well, he eventually figured out how to steal Chi in the spirit realm, defeating all former masters and now he is back to the real world to defeat any and all would be challengers.

Jeez. Now Po has to learn Chi to defeat Kai. But it took Oogway 30 years! And Shifu can’t! Time for Po to go to his homeland. To determine how he can be the most Panda he can be, to learn what he has been missing all his life. To really become the Dragon Warrior.

Also featuring Kate Hudson as a ribbon dancing Panda.

And of course this rhino panda bird metal hybrid warrior! Don’t forget about him!

This part of the review is actually really hard to write. How many times can I say how beautiful this movie is? I don’t want to look in a thesaurus but I believe everything I say about the CGI and art style will just sound repetitive. Gorgeous, detailed, beautiful, wonderful and wunderbar, eye orgasmic. The best part that this Kung Fu movie is animated is they can show amazing fight scenes and nothing gets lost to blur or shaky camera. We can see every punch and kick. Every fantastic movement. And it is awe inspiring. Just like the previous films, the entire thing isn’t just CGI, they have other art styles to show within back stories which give it more traditional feels.

Fuck its so pretty.

Okay. Sorry. I will stop.

Kung Fu Panda 3 is sadly not perfect. A lot of the early film is wasted. Part of the charm of sequels for action films like this is that we don’t have to waste our time with origin stories. But this film has us sit through Po being bad at teaching, then he is has to do the long Panda training. The Panda training in particular, discovering his family and friends, just takes so much time and makes me lose interest in Po. The twists that show up during the village are also quite obvious, so we don’t even get the benefit of a nice shock.

The villain is awesome, although we don’t get to see enough of him doing bad things. The spirit realm was awesome and allowed the film to add more magical components to the franchise. Making “Chi” the big new thing feels a bit strange. I think KFP2 added that he needed Inner Peace and the Chi concept just feels like the same thing again. I don’t want each film to be Po learning something bigger to defeat a new threat. That isn’t original. Although I don’t know if there will be any more films after this one, given the ending.

Oh well. Pretty franchise. Pretty good. Not perfect.

Norm of the North? What in the flip is Norm of the North?

What? You didn’t hear about the Lionsgate animated film coming out mid January? What? Did you also not hear about Strange Magic last year around the same time, which ended up as my #2 Worst Movie of 2015?

Norm of the North has also not received many trailers or TV spots. It is the type of film they are releasing and not expecting much. And let’s not forget that the critic screening of the film is Thursday night, at a time when normal people can already pay money to see it. That is where you put movies you don’t really want the critics to ruin.

But maybe they do expect something out of it. After all, two sequels have already been announced. The sequels are only planning to be 45 minutes long and straight to DVD, but they are still planned!

Here is the real question I wonder though: The Nut Job 2 was also scheduled to be released on the same day, but it has apparently moved its date. However no one out there knows where it was eventually pushed. It has disappeared off the map. Did Norm of the North somehow eat it?

He is looking kind of chunky.

So, we have a polar bear named Norm (Rob Schneider. And now you know what you are working with here). Lives in the arctic. And he can speak Human. We learn this when he tells a seal his life story about why he cannot eat the seal because he is a terrible hunter and doesn’t do polar bear things anymore. Just humans. He in particular likes to dance, of course. He calls it the Arctic Shake. Remember that. That will be important later.

The only other animal who could speak Human was his grandfather (Colm Meaney), the king of the Arctic, but he has disappeared. Speaking of shenanigans, there is a house suddenly on the ice! Fully furnished and ready to be lived in. Apparently it is a model home and some group is shooting a commercial, hoping to sell homes to get people to move to the Arctic. It is an untapped reservoir luxury gold mine. Or something.

Norm tries to get them to flee but only helps them make a good commercial. The owner, Mr. Greene (Ken Jeong) just wants to rip people off. He also has the idea to use an actor to dress up like a polar bear to sell their idea to the world. Of course Norm sneaks to NYC to become that actor and put a stop to everything. But he also feels bad for the PR lady, Vera (Heather Graham) who just wants to get her daughter (Maya Kay) into a good school.

Time to Arctic Shake his way into America’s hearts and stop the Ice take over from happening.

Also featuring the voice work of Bill Nighy, Loretta Devine, Gabriel Iglesias, and Michael McElhatton.

And these little fucks.

Oh where do we begin. Sure, the lemmings. That is what those tiny things are, and three of them join Norm on the adventure. They are apparently indestructible and can do anything, making them a perfect plot device to solve any and all problems. Except for tense moments near the end when characters decide to not use them to untie them for some reason. Oh and they are vulgar too. They pee a lot on things and fart and burp and teehee. They are going for the fucking Minion market and it is despicable.

The plot is paper thin. Points move too fast without a lot of explanation. For some reason none of the animals will believe Norm about the house, despite it being a physical thing anyone can go to, and a lot of witnesses (The Lemmings) and a respected community member. They just laugh at him…for some reason. And in the conclusion, despite none of these same animals going on the journey, they totally believe everything because The Lemmings say so, which is totally contradictory to how they behaved earlier. There is no sense to any of it.

Part of the plot involves getting America to like him shown by some fancy real time approval ratings graph that everyone can just access about things. And after going on a talk show, says one thing, he dances, dances in the street, and everyone loves him. Yay resolution! Well done bear. It is ruining Shut Up And Dance for me now.

The animation was poor and blocky. A final storm scene was almost painful to look at. The Coca Cola polar bear commercials have better overall quality to them

I can’t find any real pictures from them in NYC, just promo art.
But at the same time, look at that background bear and see how terrible it all is.

The director had his button on a fade out button and used it constantly to go between scenes. I was going to vaguely describe an example of it being used improperly, but it hurt my head trying to describe the scene.

I kid you not, my four year old step daughter turned to me twice during the movie and told me this was a bad movie. She didn’t laugh at all. I laughed at a joke that could be misconstrued as a pedophile joke. It also had a decently offensive gay joke, to throw the whole thing more under the bus.

I don’t feel like I am done. There was a love interest. But I didn’t even link her above because she had all of three lines throughout the film and ended up being not important, despite literally marrying her at the end. The final plan of the bad Mr. Greene, which he kept secret, was simply recording Norm talk and changing his words around. And after that happened, Norm basically gave up. “Oh ho, they heard me say something else now. Nothing I can do about it!”

Just. Fuck. This was bad.

Animated can be a weird thing to define. Sure, hand drawn and colored films are animation. Classic example. Sure.

CGI films? They are new an exciting, but technically like, all films have CGI in them now. How much CGI needs to be in the film in order to count as animation? Apparently 75% according to the Academy*. Technically 300 might qualify.

So what about stop motion? Anomalisa is a film done with puppets, like Team America: World Police. Except instead of being puppets on strings walking around, it was stop motion, like The Boxtrolls. I still feel strange calling puppets stop motion animated, but for some other reason, claymation seems perfectly fine as animation.

This hurts my head. Let’s get this movie going!

The puppets tell me to burn things.

Michael Stone (David Thewlis) is a lonely man. He is an author, a self acclaimed expert on customer service. So yes, he writes books telling people how to be great with customers. So now he is on the road, doing a few conferences, giving speeches, selling books.

Now Michael is on the last leg of his tour. Cincinnati. According to the cab driver (Tom Noonan) there is a nice zoo sized zoo there. But he doesn’t care. He just wants to be lonely in his hotel room. He tries to contact an old flame for sex (Tom Noonan) but it doesn’t go so well. Crap, back to his shitty room.

That is until he hears a voice. Someone different. Someone that isn’t spouting the same bullshit. Her name is Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh). He could listen to her talk all day. Or all night, if he can manage it.

Sure he has a wife (Tom Noonan) and kid (Tom Noonan) at home, but they are naggy and annoying. Lisa could change his life if he could convince her to run away with him.

Because she is different. She doesn’t sound like everyone else. Get it? Get it?! Tom. Noonan.

The Knights Who Say Tom Noonan run the world now.

It has been seven years since Charlie Kaufman has released a film he has written, and this time he was also co-director! He has written some great films, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Being John Malkovich. You know, he really likes the human mind.

So it is unique for him to want to do a story with puppets to convey more human emotion on screen, but it really works out. I know I made it obvious, but having only three unique voices in the film really drove the point home. Some could call it heavy handed, I would just call it smart.

Basically life sucks and depression sucks. The end.

Yes, there is more to it than that. The conversations seem real and the situations are incredibly awkward. I think my only real complaint about the movie is how long it really took for me to get going. I also wasn’t a big fan of the dream sequence.

I am most interested in the fact that this was actually a play first that was performed with real people in London. It is basically the same as this movie, including only three people throughout it. It sounds like an exciting** version of this story.

Great movie, but I still like Inside Out more.

* – I heard this once before and I am not checking my sources. Suck it.

** – This isn’t sarcastic, despite the fact that exciting doesn’t explain the film at all.

I know I know, why would someone review Chipwrecked when it is in the middle awards caliber movie time? Why something from 2011 at the end of 2015?

Well, I like to review anything I watch that came out within the last 5~ years, that way my recreational viewing isn’t completely “wasted.” And I had to watch a bunch of these movies to prepare for Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, coming out soon! I can’t go into that movie without knowing what happened in the first three movies. I’d be missing out on hours of plot!

As a quick recap, I liked the first movie enough because of the Christmas and Witch Doctor songs. Classic, not just new pop music all chipmunky. It had a bad acting love interest though. The second film was bad, it felt like an episode of a TV show and very little happened. And Zachary Levi was downright terribad. Now we have Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, which I thought was…oh wait. Yeah. Review.

Hmm. Yeah, review. Let’s get on that. This is what the people want.

The gang all here? Dave (Jason Lee) is actually in this movie and not awkwardly replaced by someone who looks like a younger Dave. That’s good. And they are going on a vacation cruise to then go to some vague foreign country for an International Music festival! Huzzah!

We have Theodore (Jesse McCartney), Simon (Matthew Gray Gubler), Eleanor (Amy Poehler), Jeanette (Anna Faris), Brittany (Christina Applegate), and of course Alvin Alvin Alvin (Justin Long).

But guess what, they get annoying and bad things happen. Next thing you know, they are all stuck on a kite and headed out to sea! Oh no! Not Dave, he can’t be on a kite. But he does jump in after them to save him, getting himself into a pickle as well.

Next thing you know, they are on a deserted island. Not super deserted, because the chipmunks meet Zoe (Jenny Slate), who apparently is a female version of Cast Away and has been on the island for 8-9 years. She is very clean and has a sweet hut.

Eventually a volcano will happen and some other bad things. Simon gets bit by a poisonous spider, which changes his personality to the outgoing Simone (Alan Tudyk), who yes, apparently needs a new actor to speak for him.

Also David Cross is in this one, again, because they need more boring plot lines I guess.

Not to be confused with their sexually confusing plot lines.

The third Alvin and the Chipmunks movie ends up being everything I expected. Which was very little and and bad plot.

But hey, at least some of the songs were good. They packed a bunch in the first half, because they were too busy to sing when “scary” things were occurring. The songs are the only real redemable part.

The villain was lazy and dumb, especially when they already had a volcano. Bringing back Cross was a complete waste, although he ended up having the best lines. I am stoked he isn’t in the next film.

Technically this film seems like it is more about Simon and Jeanette, which is a good change from the Alvin/Brittany show. This makes me hope that the spotlight shifts towards Theodore/Eleanor in the next film, which would make its existence at least a little bit worthwhile.

Hopefully they make it more entertaining than just some catchy song choices and an actual good plot.

Pixar! What are you doing? This seems highly unusual!

They had Inside Out come out earlier in the year. The year being 2015. But this is another Pixar movie, The Good Dinosaur, coming out in the same year. Don’t they know that this will mean they are competing against themselves for animated film awards?

Oh well, that is because this Pixar film was supposed to come out in 2013. But delays occurred. Serious delays that pushed it back a year, and then another. The whole story had to be redone from what they initially thought about, as there were apparent serious problems with the script. Not only that, but the entire voice cast, except for Frances McDormand was replaced earlier this year. Some crazy shit went down into getting this film out.

Either way, this is the first time that Pixar has released two films in the same year. The next time they do this is in 2017, with the release of Coco and Cars 3. That year, however, they won’t be competing against themselves since they know that there is no way Cars 3 will win anything.

Oh no, there are 3 T-Rexs here. This just make me think of how bad Cars 3 will be, noo!

What if the asteroid that hit the earth 65 million years ago didn’t happen? Well, then the dinosaurs wouldn’t have been wiped out. And lots of other things would have happened, like we would never have had the rise of mammals, humans probably wouldn’t exist, and no one would be able to make lame Nickelback jokes anymore. But let’s ignore the many things that would change, assume they stay the same, but also dinosaurs still exist.

That way we can meet Poppa (Jeffrey Wright) and Momma (Frances McDormand), some sort of “long neck” dinosaur species (Apatosaurus). They have three eggs and they are about to hatch! We have little Libby (Maleah Nipay-Padilla, who I assume does the voice the whole time, not just the baby. Shitty IMDB stuff going on), strong Buck (Marcus Scribenr), and Arlo (Raymond Ochoa), the runt. Having kids is great, because they work a farm, and now they can expand their corn farm and get even more corn food to survive winters and have a wonderful home!

Let’s just say, eventually, some tragedies occur, due to the very explicit foreshadowing, so next thing we know, Arlo is far from home and on his own! Well, there is also this random human toddler, Spot (Jack Bright). See his name? He is basically a really smart dog.

They have to get back to the farm before it is too late. Before what is too late? Well, basically death. This area has a bit of volcanism, large bugs, scary winged dinosaurs, scary big mouthed dinosaurs, scary cryptic dinosaurs, and giant ass storms that make shit flood and get all sorts of scary. SCARY!

Also featuring the voices of Peter Sohn, Steve Zahn, A.J. Buckley, Anna Paquin, and of course, Sam Elliott.

Sam Elliot plays the whisper of the wind on the grass. Or at least that is how smooth his voice is in my mind.

Cutting to the chase, The Good Dinosaur is a very safe movie from the Pixar perspective. It was just a journey film between two unlikely entities. A buddy road trip movie. Sure they had their differences, but working together, their strengths were doubled and their weaknesses were, lets say cut down a small bit.

Early in the film was a bit dull, and I was worried it would finish with an average rating. Then we started to meet a few characters. The triceratops scene and the bad fruit scene were basically back to back and had me in stitches. Then we had the scary flying things (I don’t know if they were pterodactyls, so I won’t call them that). They were cool. But the T-Rex’s were just cowboys and a bit boring at that. Elliot voice be damned.

The Good Dinosaur had a few touching moments, but only made me barely cry just once. I was never able to connect to it emotionally like I could Inside Out. And hey, there was a death scene, and it was intense as fuck. About the same level of intensity as when Mufasa kicked the bucket in that one movie.

I was weary of the animation style, with cartoony dinosaurs/people and hyper realistic backgrounds, but it was amazing to watch it on the screen.

Again, The Good Dinosaur has some amazingly funny parts. The animation was great, but the story overall was very plain, not very original. Given their production problems, it is clear they just really wanted to do some dinosaur film. Through all the rewrites the film probably gradually became simpler and simpler, until we got the mostly unoriginal story line. It’s a shame, but at least we have Inside Out.