Tag: Animated

Walking With Dinosaurs gets the benefit of being the last big animated movie of 2013. It also is one of the worst.

It was made in part by the good folks of BBC Earth, because of the TV show from 1999, Walking With Dinosaurs. It was a state of the art TV show, CGI mixed with real world scenery, and made people like Dinosaurs again.

This. This was a piece of shit.

“She likes my hole!” Actual line of dialogue.

First surprise of the movie, is that there is a live action sequence involved at the beginning and end. Uncle Zack (Karl Urban) is taking his niece (Angourie Rice) and nephew (Charlie Rowe) to an archaeological dig area (as he is an archaeologist) to show them cool stuff! But thew nephew is too COOL for fossils now. What’s the point? Who cares about this dinosaur stuff?

Well, a raven does. Which totally morphs into a bird from 70 million years ago, Alex (John Leguizamo). Apparently that gorgosaurus tooth has a story, and we are going to hear it, damn it.

This is a story about Patchi (Justin Long), the runt of the litter of a group of Pachyrhinosaurus. Yes, his parents named him after the species, they apparently aren’t creative. Even if the dad is the head of the heard, and they name other children better, like the brother, Scowler (Skyler Stone). Huh, they gave him a very villainous name. Interesting.

Well, Patchi gets a hole in his…head flap thing, so he stands out even more for the viewer. Good friends with the bird Alex. They go on migrations, back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. That seems to be all that is going on for a dinosaur like him. Just moving. And eating. Eventually his brother is in fact a dick, and bad things happen. Parents die. They don’t give too many fucks. But Patchi! Patchi is smart! And he wants to win the affections of a girl, Juniper (Tiya Sircar).

Oh boy, I hope everything works well?

Ah, vomited up food. Better than this movie.

Hey, you might be wondering. What the fuck does any of that have to do with a gorgosaurus tooth? Well yeah. Patchi grows a pair at some point, and head puts the t-rex looking mother fucker, who loses some teeth. We get a long complicated story full of poop jokes and un witty banter, when arguably, if they were actually going to tell a story about the gorgosaurus tooth, they would tell it from his point of view. Not 75 minutes of some other coming of age Patchi story that had nothing to do with gorgorsaurus teeth.

But that isn’t the only issue, no way. Only four of the dinosaur/birds get voices, the four listed. Apparently no one else can talk, as everyone else grunts and nothing else, no conversation at all.

The talking itself did not come from the characters mouths. It was just an awkward voice over, where the characters talked, but their mouths didn’t match or even attempt to math. So it was some sort of telepathic communication I guess.

One of the cool aspects was when the movie literally paused, to give us the name of a new dinosaur, what the name meant, and what it ate. It was interesting. Early on, it did it a lot real quick, like five times. Then it basically stopped and didn’t do it anymore. I have no idea why.

The dialogue was horrid. Everything felt cringeworthy. The story was not at all special. It cared a little bit about scientific accuracy, but not enough to give us feathers on the gorgosaurus.

I need to say gorgosaurus again.

Either way. By far, one of the worst movies of the year, and a complete waste of time.

0 out of 4.

Snow Queen? A CGI film? If you got to see the film cover, it had a tagline at the bottom that states “A Magical Adventure in a FROZEN Land!”

It also states that it is “From the Legendary Hans Christian Andersen, Author of The Little Mermaid.”

I haven’t reviewed a cheap knock off Disney movie yet, unless you count Chop Kick Panda, but Dreamworks isn’t Disney. But this one clearly has to be right? It capitalizes the word Frozen in its ad, and also makes a true but misleading claim about where the story comes from.

I can’t wait. I can’t wait.

Eh. Maybe I can wait a bit.

For those of you who actually know the original Snow Queen story, this one basically seems to follow that exact same plot. Down to a letter. Nothing new about this one, just an animated tale of a famous story. So I guess, its like any book to film adaption. Since I don’t know the Snow Queen story, it is basically a new plot for me.

Basically, mirrors be crazy. This woman got so mad, she became a Snow Queen (Cindy Robinson) and tried to put the world into an endless winter. She also wants to destroy all art, for some reason. She really hates this glass maker dude, who has mirrors that reflect the soul. So she kills them. Whoa.

Well, he had children too, so the threat to her rule isn’t gone. Boy, Kai (Marianne Miller) and girl, Gerda (Jessica Straus) become orphans and don’t even remember each other. Eventually, the Snow Queen realizes that they are a threat, and sends a troll named Orm (Doug Erholtz) who has the power to turn into a black weasel only, to kidnap the boy so she can presumably kill him too.

Gerda, just realizing she has a brother, gets rightly pissed off, and journeys across the land, with the troll and her own weasel, to try and save him.

On the way they run into land pirates, crazy plant ladies, and just bitter harsh cold.

I am now going to imagine that as the face of every troll on the internet.

Alright, turns out I was wrong. This movie is NOT a cheap Disney knock off. Besides the fact that it is a movie of the actual story, it also was made by Wizart Animation. Who are they? A new CGI film company out of Russia (making this film foreign), and this is their first release. It came out last year and was in development for awhile, so the Frozen thing is basically a coincidence. Obviously not their advertising of it, they are still trying to latch on to its fame, but the idea wasn’t a copy cat. Heck, they also are already working on a sequel.

Unfortunately, the animation was the worst part of the movie. Something seemed off about it the whole time, it is pretty obvious it isn’t using state of the art / new technology to bring us this movie. Probably pretty old technology, graphics wise. Reminded me of a video game.

I actually enjoyed the story line and some of the visuals in the film though. By the end, I was getting a bit tired of it, sure, but the early parts of the movie kept interest for awhile. The crazy plant lady came out of no where, but looked really cool as it went down.

Nothing I will say will convince you to watch this film, and honestly, there is probably no reason to. But if you are forced to watch a newish animated film, there are a lot worse you could pick.

2 out of 4.

I will admit, when I first saw the trailer for Free Birds, I chuckled at a few spots. The nameless government entities making a pun and laughing throughout the trailer was great. A movie about a dumb animal trying to save the world with other dumb animals might lead to a lot of just tongue in cheek situations or rampant fourth wall breaking or who knows what. The possibilities are limitless.

But they also are including time travel, a known killer of many movies, if they define a version that doesn’t make much sense. None of this “its a kids movie!” bullshit either. No, the story has to be somewhat coherent, or else shit is going down.

“Down like a Tom covered in poults.”
“Hey, that’s not a joke, witty, or remotely funny.”
“It would be if we were dealing with chickens, not turkeys!”

Reggie (Owen Wilson) is a freak. He is a smarter than your average turkey, which isn’t hard, because turkeys are dumb. But he is too smart, and refuses to eat and get fattened up for Thanksgiving, which causes the flock to throw him out. Luckily for him, he gets pardoned by the President, which apparently means he can sit around all day, not worry about getting eaten, and just watch TV and eat pizza.

Well, his new awesome reality comes crashing down when Jake (Woody Harrelson) takes him from his home! Oh no! Another Turkey, not some random dude named Jake.

He wants to infiltrate a secret base in Camp David where there is apparently a time machine. He wants to use that time machine to travel back in time to the first Thanksgiving, to take turkeys off the menu. Err okay. Well they do that. And the time machine named S.T.E.V.E. (George Takei), which was built for humans, can somehow understand the gobbles from turkeys.

Then they get there. The turkeys are just extremely obvious metaphors for American Indians, being hunted by the colonists, for this important feasts in a few days. Except these turkeys are all smart. That is right, they are saying turkeys became dumb due to domestication and Thanksgiving. So we have a bunch of smart turkeys and really only one dumb one, Jake. CAN THE TIME TRAVELING TURKEYS SAVE THEIR RACE FROM DESTRUCTION? Will he be able to score with Jenny (Amy Poehler), a smart enough turkey to not believe he is from the future? WILL HUMANS BE CAST AS THE BAD GUYS?

Or you know, will anything really cool happen? Eh.

Does this turkey look high to you?

Man, Owen Wilson I tend to hate at voice acting. Aka Cars and Cars 2. But he was able to show some emotion this time. Well done. Woody Harrelson sounded nothing like himself, so I want to assume that means he put effort into his lines. Having George Takei as navigator of sorts was a “I see what you did there” moment.

But enough about that, lets talk about the plot and other things I disliked. The beginning of the movie is very fast, so much that I’d be willing to bet that 85% or more of the movie takes place in the past, whereas the trailer had mostly set just getting to the time machine. A little misleading. Most of the best jokes were also in the trailer, including jokes that weren’t actually in the movie (due to splicing of the trailer into new jokes, not taking them out of the movie). Meh. I don’t think I would have liked it more if I didn’t see the trailer, however.

Making the turkeys in the past smart is lame. That leaves only one stupid character, and not the hordes of them that they implied in the trailer. That would allow it to have a lot more zany shenanigans! So, overall, the humor in this film isn’t really existent. The theater was practically silent for the most part.

The time travel itself is super sloppy. It was fine early on, but they went back to the present, and all sorts of stuff started to occur that don’t make sense based on how they defined time travel earlier in the film.

The ending is horrible. It just…it just isn’t good. The conflict doesn’t happen, despite a resolution. The resolution leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

So we got an unfunny movie, that breaks its own definitions of time travel, and has a shitty ending. Yawn. Let’s just wait for Frozen at the end of this month.

1 out of 4.

Puns. Puns are an often overlooked humor tool that are wildly taken for granted. In fact, some people respond to puns with groans!

Those groaners I have to imagine would not enjoy Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 which has more puns than the number of acupuncturists who also happen to be backstabbers.

I wonder how many animated dicks could fit in his mouth. For research.

CWaCoM2 takes places immediately after CWaCoM, with the town of Swallow Falls in disarray and covered with food. Flint (Bill Hader) and his friends are excited for the rebuild, but they are forced to temporarily move to San Franjose, California, while Live Corp cleans up their island…for science! After all, Live Corp is run by Chester V (Matt Forte), Flint’s hero since he was a kid and the coolest scientist ever. It is usually a good idea to let trained professionals take care of a job.

Unfortunately, the clean up isn’t going as smoothly as they had hoped. The FLDSMDFR device was not destroyed after the first film, and it has created animal food hybrids to take over the island! They are also learning how to swim, and if they do, they will spread out and attack the rest of the world! Scary!

So it is up to Flint, with the rest of his crew to save the day. Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), girlfriend and meteorologist, Tim (James Caan), father, Brent McHale (Andy Samberg), former bully and current idiot, Manny (Benjamin Bratt), jack of all trades, Earl (Terry Crews), security guard, and Steve (Neil Patrick Harris) the monkey.

We also get introduced to Barb (Kristen Schaal), the ape. The fact that she is an ape, and not a monkey, is a very important difference.

Charles V reminded me a lot of Professor Hawk from Dexter’s Laboratory.

When I saw the trailer for CWaCoM2, I knew there would be an overwhelming amount of puns, but I still somehow underestimated how many they would actually throw at the viewer. At one point, the PPM (Puns Per Minute) value had to be greater than 10. Just constant puns, one after another, with hardly any time to comprehend them all.

Personally, I think the film was a bit too short to tell the story it wanted to tell. A lot of the movie felt rushed, especially once they first got to the island. In order to appease the kid viewers, they must have moved quickly to keep their interest. That has to be the biggest negative, not giving enough time to really flesh out the island and “foodimals.”

At the same time, I was equally impressed with the film’s ability to include “background jokes.” Once I saw the first few, my eyes were constantly watching the edge of the screen and I was surprised at how often they appeared. Heck, Joe Townee from the first film was snuck into this film twice. Unfortunately he had no lines this time, because his voice actor, Will Forte, was now voicing a new major character.

This film is filled with its fair share of low brow humor jokes, but an almost equal number of intelligent-ish jokes. I guess the point I am really trying to make is that this film has a lot of jokes, and they vary across the whole spectrum (outside of the adult themed joke territory). Despite the new writers and directors, I think it is a very worthy sequel to this franchise, and I would definitely watch a third one should it ever get made.

3 out of 4.

Do not go see the movie Planes.

Fuck Planes

This won’t be a typical movie review, thus the use of quotation marks in the title. Normally I do a little bit of research about a film before I watch it, just so I can lay down some fun facts in these reviews. But what I discovered about Planes I found to be so unacceptable, I didn’t feel right telling everyone about it. But first, a little bit of back story.

For the main poster and Trailer for Planes, we see that it takes place “From Above the World of Cars.” Remember Cars?

Cars came out originally in 2006 as a Pixar movie. I linked to my original review of it, but if you are lazy, basically I describe how the movie is bad morally for children. In Cars, your job in life is based solely on what car type you are. The only exception is if you want to live below your means.

Cars 2 came out five years after that, also made by Pixar. This time they changed the main character and turned it into a strange Bond parody. More importantly, we should look at the villains. The main villains for Cars 2 are lemons, aka cars that were built badly and break down all the time. These cars only wanted more equality, but instead they are the butt of everyone’s joke.

This is all even more twisted when you realize that these cars were all created somehow. These cars age and live a life, so presumably more and more cars are created every day. These lemon cars in particular were created with the sole purpose of being lesser quality than their peers. Yeah, I’d be pissed off too.

No matter how you look at it, Cars 2 was a cash grab movie, made almost solely to sell merchandise.

So now, only two years after Cars 2, we are given Planes. One notable difference (that few people realize) is that this movie is no longer done by Pixar, but instead just Disney. You might be thinking, “Hey! Disney CGI isn’t that bad, they just did Wreck-It Ralph! This one might be awesome too!”

Yes. I too am a plane.

Well, Wreck-It Ralph was done by Walt Disney Animation Studios, their normal big movie company. Planes was done by DisneyToon Studios, who are most known for making the lame sequels to popular Disney movies. You know, Cinderella II: Dreams May Come, Cinderella III: A Twist In Time, Pocahontas II: Journey To A New World, and more. The last time they had a theatrical release was in 2006, with Bambi II, and that was only in theaters in Europe. Their last five movies that went direct to video were all based around Tinkerbell.

So why were they given Planes? Well it turns out, Planes originally was going to also be a direct to video release. However, Disney liked the animation enough to let them have a theater release. Great. Since Planes was meant to be direct to video release, it almost implies that they didn’t put a lot of work into it.

The budget for Planes was only $20 Million. To put that into perspective, Cars had a budget around $120 Million, and Cars 2 around $200 million. Turbo ended up at $135 million, and Wreck-It Ralph was at $165 million. CGI animated films are very expensive to make because the technology is expensive and they take years to produce. With a budget that low, either the film was rushed, or the CGI quality is low.I believe the evidence point towards both of these facts being true, since production of Planes didn’t begin until a few months after Cars 2 came out and was originally coming out Spring 2013.

If you want more evidence, they have already announced that Planes will be a trilogy. The first sequel has already been named, Planes: Fire & Rescue. The sequel also already has a release date set for July 18, 2014. Next summer! Less than a year after the first film, I can only assume that it is being rushed out.

To recap, in great detail I have explained why the Planes movie is just a huge cash grab. It has a low budget indicating lesser quality animation and less time spent for polishing/developing. It happens to be a spin-off of another cash grab movie. It is made by a studio who is only known for their low quality sequels to all of our favorite Disney movies. It is also banking on the fact that most people who see it will assume Pixar made the movie.

Unfortunately, by now, Disney has already profited on this film. Why? The same reason Cars 2 has made so much money. Merchandising. With a budget that low, they don’t have to care about quality when the merchandising alone is just pure profit.

So I plead with you, do the right thing, and do not go see this movie in theaters. Do not buy it on DVD or Blu-Ray. Don’t buy any of its toys for your families or friends. Disney should be punished for trying to pull this type of crap on us, making almost a mockery of the entire idea of movies as an art form.

Something something something planes.

Just to keep this legitimate, here is a quick synopsis and review.

Dusty (Dane Cook) is a crop duster from the midwest, who dreams of being a great racer, and joining the race around the world. Unfortunately, he is afraid of heights, which totally makes sense. Well, he qualifies barely and makes it to the race around the world! But certain other planes don’t like him, because he isn’t a racing plane. So with a little bit of can do spirit, he hopes to prove everyone wrong, and he can succeed despite being created for one purpose!

Also featuring the voice talents of Brad Garrett, Teri Hatcher, John Cleese, Cedric the Entertainer, and more.

I’d say that this movie did a good job of breaking the morals given to us by the Car movies. After all, it is a plane doing something beyond its design and achieving greatness. But in the film, in order for him to achieve his dream, he literally has to change everything about himself first. It really brings up the philosophy question dealing with the Ship of Theseus. Can we really say a crop duster has won a race, if he removed his crop dusting ability and replaced all of his parts?

The movie itself offers nothing new. It is incredibly inaccurate in terms of geography, despite making it clear that it takes place on some strange human-less earth. There are plot holes that a jet could fit through. They even showed scenes of planes during World War II, which accidentally makes this film incredibly dark. Is this really a world where planes go to war with other planes, and hundreds of machines die? Well, I guess it makes it more human-like in that regard.

Now remember, please do not support this movie.

0 out of 4.

Turbo is the latest example of a kids movie following a very standard formula. Let’s take some sort of entity and either a) give them an impossible dream (and reach it!), or b) give them some ridiculous flaw (and overcome it!). Like a bird who doesn’t know how to fly. Or a plane that is afraid of heights (and wants to race). Or an overweight comedian who wants to box. Or a snail who wants to race in the Indy 500. Oh wait, that one is Turbo!

Fuck. Let’s get this over with. Turbo (Ryan Reynolds) is a snail! He has big dreams. He wants to go fast, and is the fastest snail he knows. In fact, he just did the yard in 17 minutes, a new personal record. He dreams of entering the Indy 500, thanks to words of advice from his hero Guy Gagne (Bill Hader), who claims that no dream is too big. His brother Chet (Paul Giamatti) thinks his dream is stupid, rightfully so.

Well, eventually Turbo falls into a car engine and gets coated with NOS, transforming his DNA and giving him incredible speed! This also somehow turns him partially into a car, with headlights, radio, rear review lights and stuff. Not sure how that second part happened. Even more eventually, Chet and Turbo find themself caught by Tito (Michael Pena), a down on his luck Taco maker. He works for his older brother (Luis Guzman) and their business is not doing well. Why did Turbo decide to not run away as soon as they were captured? No idea. But he could have.

Luckily, Tito is all into snail racing. Turns out Turbo is stupid fast and he wants to use Turbo to get more business. A very noble cause. So they set off to enter him into the Indy 500, for exposure. Nowadays kids would just make a YouTube video and become famous that way.

Oh yeah, Turbo has his own snail crew to back him up now. There is Whiplash (Samuel L. Jackson), Smoove Move (Snoop Dogg), Burn (Maya Rudolph), Skidmark (Ben Schwartz), and White Shadow (Mike Bell). Of course Ken Jeong voices a tiny Asian nail technician.

This movie is about to get fucked. Seriously. No mercy. Cover your eyes if you don’t like violent imagery.Let’s start with some factual errors. Why? Because they matter to me. I am a Masters Geophysics Student, and the sloppiness bugged me. Basically I am going to be super critical.

Turbo made a big deal about getting a yard in 17 minutes. I know it was a yard, because they showed the measuring stick briefly. However, 36 inches in 17 minutes is really slow. Like, really really slow. That is why I went over to WolframAlpha to convert it. Seriously check the link.

WolframAlpha is so amazing it compared the velocity calculated to the the velocity of a garden snail automatically and it is about 33% the speed of the actual garden snail. Great, we have a snail that is statistically slower than most garden snails. Let’s say that factual error can be ignored, fine. Unfortunately, almost every other point in the movie (pre-genetic manipulation), Turbo and other snails are still shown with greater velocities than his trial. Unless it was important to the plot that is (see: the tomato/lawn mower scene).

Come on now, consistency.

[Editor’s note: Apparently IRL and F1 are different things, but similar vehicles. I just know them as “Not NASCAR”. Point still stands, basically.]
The ending bugged me a lot as well. As it is a car race, it involved a pile up of cars real close to the finish. At this point, Turbo and Guy go into a “foot race” type of situation for the finish like, similar to Talladega Nights.  But according to official Formula 1 racing rules (here and here specifically), none of it would count and the whole thing feels pointless.

Let’s get to the most important part of the movie. This plot is inherently stupid and bad. I didn’t read the full rules for the Formula 1 racing, so I can’t confirm if there is no rule that would disallow a snail. However, the concept behind it can only be described as cheating and a snail would never be allowed to race in such an event. They have very specific standards for the size of the vehicles, type of protection they need, everything you can possibly imagine. The snail’s dimensions do not match a car’s dimensions. For an extreme example, it’d be like using a Ferrari. Or like doping.

At one point during the race, the announcer screams that he can’t believe Turbo is passing a car from below. I am fine with his reaction, because Turbo is basically cheating. But the announcer is surprised instead that he could fit, even though Formula 1 cars have about 4.5 inches of room underneath them, while a garden snail is at most 1.5 inches tall.

If you hadn’t figured out by now, Guy is the villain of this movie, but only because he wants to win the race too. Just like the other 30ish humans in the race, all doing it without cheating.

I laughed I think a total of two times. The laziness of the plot, the laziness of the details, and the laziness of the character development ruined this movie for me. To quote Eleanor Roosevelt. “America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed.” Turbo would not have lived up to the former First Lady’s opinions on America or Racing.

 

1 out of 4.

I am proud to say that I actually saw Despicable Me in theaters. Yes, now I see everything in theaters, but in 2010, it was rare as shit. But I was like hey, those yellow things look cute. Let’s watch the movie!

I figured I should probably write a review on it now, with the sequel coming out later this summer. Did you know know about Despicable Me 2? I find that impossible. Their ads have been everywhere since January at least. Open your eyes people.

Yeah, your eyes like you were on a roller coaster.

Gru (Steve Carell) is an evil genius mastermind! Trust me, he is wicked evil. The best at being a villain of all time. How do you know? Because he says so, and he has minions! Little tiny yellow minions, that are awesome. They speak inaudibly and they are the main selling point of this movie, really.

Either way, he isn’t so cool anymore. Some young upshot villain named Vector (Jason Segel) (because he has magnitude AND direction) has stolen the great pyramids. Yeah, what a dick. Now Gru feels inadequate and has to one up them by stealing the moon. Jeez. But he can’t get a loan from the Bank Of Evil / Mr. Perkins (Will Arnett) without a shrink ray in development, so he steals one! Success! Vector steals it from him though. Damn.

So Gru gets the idea to adopt three little girls, make them go to Vector’s house to sell cookies, so he can sneak in and grab the gun back. Then he can dump the kids off later. But they are rambunctious individuals. Ballet. School. Amusement parks. They are hard to take care of, especially when he isn’t cut out to be a parent. But then he learns…to love. Russell Brand plays Dr. Nefario, the scientist that works for Gru.

Aw shit yeah, I forgot I can have gifs on here. Look at how cute those fuckfaces are.

Did I mention I love the yellow minions? Yeah. Most people do. But that is about all I liked from the movie. The plot was a bit forced for me, and not at all exciting. Obviously it was all about him and the little girls, and obviously the girls were there to mostly be a thorn in his side, but actually learning to care for them in like, a day? How the heck did that work?

I just. I just can’t explain it. I re-watched it and was bored the entire time. Maybe the kids were all too young and that bugged me? Why can’t one of them have been more teenager-y? The oldest is close. But not too close. This was the first feature of Illumination Entertainment, who later gave us the bad Hop and the disappointing Lorax. I in general prefer these awesome sexy CGI animated movies to give us more realistic people, instead of the overextended ones (like Dreamworks tends to do).

Yeah. I know. I think people like this movie just for the minions and I am an old curmudgeon.

1 out of 4.

Huh, a Dreamworks movie about cavemen. That is what The Croods is about. Get it? They are simpletons, they are ‘crude’. I get it.

So now we all know that Dreamworks is still in business! Not enough failures, I see.

But give it enough time…

Cave men live in caves! Caves are safe (if not dark), because they protect from all sides, especially if you have a nice door rock. New things are bad, because new things can kill. Just ask all the other families who used to live nearby. Nope, just ignore that shit, and get your food, then go back to the gave.

Eep (Emma Stone) is going through your typical teenage girl emotional roller coaster. She hates the cave, wants her own space, but can’t leave. Grug (Nick Cage), her father, has basically forbidden it. Must. Stay. Together.

But she has a younger dumber brother, Thunk (Clark Duke), a baby sister, her mother, Ugga (Catherine Keener), and grandmother (Cloris Leachman)!

Unfortunately, food is getting scarce. Not only that, but Eep sees the sun, in the middle of the night. Fire? What is going on! Oh look, a new boy, Guy (Ryan Reynolds) who controls the miniature sun. Hell yeah. In fact, he might even have a brain. Maybe he has some ideas in there and other inventions. Well, there is his weird sloth named Belt (Chris Sanders).

Too bad he is talking about the end of the world. Seas of lava. Mountains breaking down. I wonder if that has anything to do with Pangaea breaking apart? You know, an event 200,000 years ago, and cave men were like, 20k. Oh well. I guess this will be as scientifically accurate as Ice Age 4.

I can see why they want each other. They are the only two in their age group.

Ughh. Ooogah ugh. That isn’t cave man noises, it is just me being discouraged. Basically, The Croods is about one thing and one thing only. Pretty color and cavemen joke. The plot isn’t ever really explained or talked about much. They just know they have to move, “or else”, trying to find a new cave or whatever. Learning about the world. When Grug finally accepts Guy, it is from a pathetic sob story that comes out no where. They talk about how everything can kill them, yet they survive basically every thing possible.

I think every character falls from huge heights and just tumbles and is fine, despite them being afraid of height for that reason. There i really no consistency with anything in this film. I know that it isn’t accurate, none of the animals or geology makes sense, so it is clearly another world. Basically, it is just traveling plus weird new pants/animals/colors to just go crazy with CGI. That is all it is.

Other inconsistencies bug me too. Like when they hunt in the early movie, they are running like crazy anime characters, dust clouds, even the grandma! But when they actually journey, it is a slow crawl. Alright, sure, run for your lives, but not too hard. This isn’t an inconsistency, but I hated the voice acting in this movie. Great cave people. Oh, they sound like Nick Cage and Emma Stone. Another factor taking me out of the movie, I don’t believe the characters at all because their voices don’t match.

This better not fucking sequel.

1 out of 4.

I am a bit disappointed in you, random CGI/animated movies. Why the obsession with famous people to voice your characters? If they are actually voice acting, you shouldn’t understand their normal acting voice. But alas, we must fill them up with as many big names as possible, because hey, its cheaper when its just voice acting, so why not?

I am just disappointed that I have to tag so many dang people in this movie. Shit, most of my plot is introducing the characters.

Basically, before I watch Escape From Planet Earth I just hope it is a lot closer to Escape from L.A. than Mars Needs Moms. But I guess I think that for most movies.

Finally, it looks like someone is thinking of the children.

In this movie universe, we have aliens! All different sorts, all speaking English, and all on planets of only one type. Earth is so weird. Not to mention deadly. When ever Aliens go there, they tend to never return. Seems like a big damper on the Earth thing, but sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Like if you are Scorch Supernova (Brendan Fraser), Occupation: Hero. He saves shit, didn’t you see above? He saved those babies! That somehow got on that planet with things that eat babies! Well, Scorch gets a mission to Earth, hearing of a distress signal. So he goes over, but because of having a fight with his “nerd” brother Gary (Rob Corddry), he gets captured and everyone flips his shit. His news reporting lover (Sofia Vergara) is shocked. Yes, I just wanted to throw that tag in now.

Either way, because his son is a little dickhead, and his wife Kira (Sarah Jessica Parker) is nagging about how thinking is overrated, he decides to not think, and just go and rescue his brother. Bitches, man.

Needless to say, something fishy is up. General Shanker (William Shatner) ends up capturing him too.
Puts him to work, with some other smart aliens (George Lopez, Craig Robinson, Jane Lynch). No big deal, just building the biggest weapon in the universe to “Destroy asteroids” with. Hey, he said if they build it, they can go home. Pretty great!

Hopefully everything works out at the end, and they can…Escape From Planet Earth. Fingers crossed for these poor, brave aliens. Ricky Gervais is also “James Bing” a smart computer (not even subtle guys), and Jessica Alba as the head of head of mission control?

Well, these ones don’t look enslaved. I guess that is good!

Quick! Quick! Listen to this song. Maybe listen to it three times. Remix one of them a little bit. That is what the soundtrack felt like, as I could only hear this song and some woman song smack dab in the middle. They are the only two songs played during the credits too, which claimed many more songs happened in the movie, but I definitely didn’t hear them.

“Alright, so I guess it is cheesy and childish then?” You betcha. Like a lot. Like, the jokes are people falling down or running into things.

Hey, I laughed a few times. There were some subtle jokes, or things being yelled off screen, but that was about the extent of the humor.

Instead we have a mostly “lower level” comedy, without much of anything for adults to find enjoyable when they watch with the kids. Of the other aliens, the only one that I found not annoying was the Slug, and he didn’t really get much character development besides “gross, sticky!”. The main arguments of the characters involved whether or not someone was fired or quit (when it was clearly quit. Especially since I doubt the other individual even could fire him if he wanted). The plot twists (if we call them that) were obvious about 10 minutes into the movie. The child is stupid and has bad ideas.

Heck, the film basically deglorifies intelligence. Everyone was mad at the main guy for trying to think things through before acting? Fuck that, life isn’t a race people. Thinking of course helps save the day, but they are too busy nerd joking to care.

Yet despite all this, still not as bad as Mars Needs Moms.

1 out of 4.

Sometimes the UK scares me. But usually that is just when it comes to TV shows. It isn’t a normal like or hate relationship, it is more a like or “I don’t understand what the hell is going on, so I am just going to doodle while it happens until it is done, then never watch it again, because I am confused and I don’t understand what the hell is going on, so I am just going to doodle while it happens until it is done.”

It is really a 50/50 type of situation. Thus my initial fear of watching The Pirates! Band Of Misfits.

“Bitches don’t know about my swaaaaaaaaaaaaaag. And I mean swag in its real definition. I have a pile of gold in the hull.”

Set somewhere in the 1800s, Great Britain has taken over much of the world. But Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) doesn’t control the West Indies! Fucking Pirates are there!

This includes The Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant) the piratiest pirate that ever pirated. So much that he is going to inter Pirate of the Year, and win it for once! The only problem is, I lied. There are much better pirates out there. Including Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven). Heck, The Pirate Captain hasn’t even gained any loot this last year. Just some ham. What is a pirate without loot?

So he starts a raidin’ and a plunderin’ but nothing seems to work. None of the rich boats are coming out to his area. When he goes for just one last boat, he is disappointed to find out that it is just Charles Darwin (David Tennant). According to him and his man-ape servant, the Pirate Captain’s parrot is actually a Do-do bird, long thought to have been extinct!

But apparently with these science shenanigans, there is a potential for real money. But they have to go to London first, a scary anti-pirate place. Hmm, I am sure it wont be a big issue, and no one will have to put their morals in check. Lets not forget his trusty crew, including The Pirate with a Scarf (Martin Freeman), The Pirate with Gout (Brendan Gleeson), The Pirate Who Likes Sunsets and Kittens (Ben Whitehead), The Albino Pirate (Russell Tovey) and The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate (Ashley Jensen).

Going back to my earlier fears, I have never seen a Wallace and Gromit movie. Wallace just looks way too British. So the only reason I went this way was because of scurvy jokes, boy did it deliver.

The writing for Pirates was beyond clever, full of jokes and other smaller pop culture references. Heck, it even had a soundtrack full of real modern songs, including most of Flight of the Conchords “I’m Not Crying“. Damn, son.

I also didn’t completely hate the form of stop motion like I thought I would, another definite plus. Not sure if this is going to win best Animated Picture, but it certainly was a damn good one for 2012. I mean, Ham Night. Ham Night guys.

3 out of 4.