Tag: Frank Welker

Oh hey, remember how everyone wanted a new Scooby Doo movie? Nah.

Okay, that is fair, we don’t have to ask for a movie to come out to get one. Sometimes the studios know what is up. For example, I bet people did ask for a live action Scooby-Doo movie in the late 90’s early 2000’s, and what it gave was a really cheesy strange story, with adult jokes, some obvious some not. And honestly, it sort of filled a really good niche back then. Go figure.

So even though this animated version is going full CGI, and is dealing apparently with the childhood beginnings of the gang (ehhh), as long as we got mysteries to solve and people in masks, it shouldn’t be too hard to make it work. Unless they decide to go for the “monsters are real” gag, which basically every Scooby Doo entity has been doing for the last 20 years, so it is kind of getting annoying. Please, give us weird people in masks.

Remember, if a movie has an exclamation point, it should be a musical. Scoob! should be a musical. 

Ah yes, origin stories, like a superhero movie.

Alright, here we go! Shaggy (Will Forte) and Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) meet on the beach when they were younger. Shaggy needed friends. Scooby-Doo needed a home.

Later on, at Halloween, some bullies mess with the duo, and some other kids help the two out! Their names are Fred (Zac Efron), Daphne (Amanda Seyfried), and Velma (Gina Rodriguez). Also right after that, they end up solving a mystery of a lot of stolen goods that no one even knew was a thing! They just had to meddle.

Alright, years later, many mysteries, they want to expand their operations. Their Mystery Machine needs work, so they want bigger clients, and higher paying jobs to become a success. And then they bring in Simon Cowell for some reason, who barely insults Shaggy and Scooby who leave as a result.

The other friends don’t go and stop them, so eventually, Shaggy and Scooby get attacked by robots. And then abducted by aliens? Nah, it is actually Blue Falcon (Mark Wahlberg), Dynomutt (Ken Jeong), and their assistant, Dee Dee Skyes (Kiersey Clemons). They know that Scooby-Doo is important for something. Because Dick Dastardly (Jason Isaacs) is looking for him and some ancient skulls, to maybe summon dog Cerebus from the underworld. Ah yes, real mythical monsters.

Also starring Christina Hendricks and Tracy Morgan.

What nice chairs. And I feel like a hater not showing Daphne/Velma/Fred.

It is really early on in the film when you realize this is not going to be something you want to see again, and for a lot of people, that is when Simon Cowell appears. But before that, I will acknowledge they did a version of the original intro. It was okay in the singing department, really basic, but they did recreate parts of the intro and use it as a montage of solving some mysteries. That was nice.

That was also where most of the Scooby-Doo action remained. The kid mystery was very awkward, because when a ghost appeared in the house they already had their goal completed. They could have just…left, like any normal person. Having this long run through the place and eventual capture of the ghost to find it was a masked person didn’t even make sense. 

But let’s get back to Cowell. This movie came out in 2020, why the hell is Cowell in this movie. This is not 2004. Kids for the most part won’t understand that at all.

In terms of how Scooby-Doo this movie is, it is Scooby-Not. Most of the time the gang is split up (which happens a lot sure, but not to this scale). This is a superhero movie. It is about Blue Falcon, and Scooby-Doo wanting to feel more special. It has a real monster and issue to deal with, and…it is just a mess.

A lot of the voice acting felt off. I especially did not like Jeong as Dynomutt, because it just sounded like Ken Jeong, not a robot dog. 

It was a boring film for the most part, with some other Hanna Barbera properties thrown in for fun. It is really easy to see where the movie is going, where the conflicts will appear, and what will happen at the end. It is such a waste of a nice property. It felt like something they would try as a third or fourth film of a reboot, not right away. This was barely Scooby-Doo. Focus on the basics first.

And obviously it wasn’t a musical, but it did have a lot of modern music because that is easier to get the kids to love it. 

The Smurfs and The Smurfs 2 were met with a lot of mixed results, especially on this site. But you know what? A lot of things really worked.

Like Hank Azaria as Gargamel. He was great as the voice and character himself and felt perfect. I also enjoyed Neil Patrick Harris as our human contact.

But the sequel bombed because it was a poor movie. However they blamed it on the real actors for whatever reason and promised that the next Smurfs movie would stay in Smurfs land. No real people, just CGI for everyone. And now we have Smurfs: The Lost Village as a sort of reboot on the franchise where people won’t realize that things are different.

Hundreds of smurfs, and we will only focus on a handful of course.

In this movie we are reminded again that Smurfette (Demi Lovato) was created by Gargamel (Rainn Wilson) to find the smurfs and be evil, but Papa Smurf (Mandy Patinkin) did some of that smurf magic to make her blonde, and thus, nicer. However, Smurfette feels weird because she doesn’t know what her smurf talent is. After all, all the men smurfs have an adjective to describe their talent, but her talent is just being a girl I guess.

After some fun time, Smurfette, Brainy Smurf (Danny Pudi), Hefty Smurf (Joe Manganiello), and Clumsy Smurf (Jack McBrayer) find some other smurf like thing who runs into the forbidden forest, blocked by a huge wall. And through some plot, Gargamel finds out that in that forest is a hidden smurf village that no one knew about before. If he can’t get the close smurfs, he might as well get the ones that don’t even know he exist!

So now these smurfs go out on an adventure, alone, to try and race to the lost village to warn the smurfs about Gargamel before it is too late.

Also featuring Ariel Winter, Dee Bradley Baker, Ellie Kemper, Frank Welker, Julia Roberts, Meghan Trainer, and Michelle Rordriguez.

Blonde just has to stand out I guess. Blue all the way down otherwise.

Why is it really that whenever we get a smurfs movie, they can only handle an actual handful amount only, and never like 10 or more? Oh we get one off jokes for a few of the smurfs. Vanity and Nosy got a few jokes I guess, but everyone else was one scene and done for the most part. Such a goddamn waste when there are like a hundred of them. Such lazy writers. Clumsy being there is just for comic relief, at least Hefty and Brainy have a purpose.

Wilson does a terrible Gargamel. If Azoria was never Gargamel in the past, I don’t know if I would be saying that, but at least comparison, it is so much worse. It just feels like some dude talking, not an evil grouchy balding wizard. He has lost his snarl in this movie and never feels threatening.

The story itself is just so generic. The adventure has bullshit perils, generic bad plantlife and lacks any amount of creativity.

But the worst part is that the ending is complete crap. For whatever reason, Smurfette is suddenly immune to a spell from Gargamel because she really isn’t a smurf. However, that same spell worked on rats and Gargamel, who also aren’t smurfs, so I am not sure why that it is relevant. And apparently what that really means is that Gargamel can’t cast spells on her at all. And that is how the plot gets finished, because she saves everyone by tricking him. And it serves absolutely no logic at all.

There are few okay moments and decent jokes, but it is a huge shit show. And it is not because of any human people this time. Also, Demi Lovato as Smurfette is a poor man’s Katy Perry. It is true and you know it.

Transformers. Michael Bay. Cash Money.

That is some of the reviews in a nutshell. I didn’t check up on what people said about Transformers: Age of Extinction ahead of time, because I knew I would probably agree with them. I figured the film might be full of inaccuracies that I would find painful, but I’d rather go in and see what I can find on my own without researching afterwards. Like the cringe worthy Washington, D.C. desert in Transformers 2.

But this is a start of a new “trilogy” because we can’t have things not in trilogies anymore. Not when they print so much money for the companies. Our lead human has an upgrade, no longer Shia LaBeouf who is doing some sort of joke on public with his awkward break downs. I mean, no Shia? That is great news on its own. This movie can’t be that bad for that reason.

It should be noted that I am not a Bay hater. In fact, his movie last year Pain & Gain I gave a 4 out of 4. But with some of the advertisement material, I can say that it looks like the Transformers franchise might be running out of gas.

Heh. Hehehe.

This film takes place let’s say, I dunno, five-ish years after the last Transformers. The Autobots are now on the run, because public opinion has somehow turned against them. Sure they fought with our military and helped us defeat people, but the government says they are bad now, so, they are bad now. After all, they fucked over Chicago completely, taking out about half the city and millions. Millions? Did I say millions? Well, just kidding. The media said (I think) 1300 died at the end of Transformers 3, which we know to be ridiculous.

Either way, Cade Yaeger (Mark Wahlberg) is a tinkerer, who invents gadgets in his garage. He is behind on all bills, but who cares, he will make it one day. His daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz), the 17 year old sex symbol for this movie, is graduating soon and they need college money. As luck would have it, Cade finds a Transformer (Prime) who they could sell to the government for lots of cash.

Needless to say, government is corrupt. The hired assassin (Titus Welliver) tries to kill them too, so they escape and a man hunt begins. This man hunt involves at least three or four different plot lines that are wrapped up in the very short 2 hour and 45 minute movie. But trying to explain them all would just take up time and energy that isn’t necessary. But Kelsey Grammer plays a high up in the CIA, Jack Reynor as Tessa’s secret Irish boyfriend, T.J. Miller as a guy who works with Cade, and Stanley Tucci as the head of a science corporation in Chicago.

Chicago? Yes. Because apparently despite its huge widespread destruction, they basically rebuilt it all up very quickly exactly the same way it was before. We only know that because we go back to Chicago and the bots fuck up a lot of it again.

We still have more characters though. More women, like Sophia Myles, a “geologist” who doesn’t do any exciting geology, and Bingbing Li, a scientists from China who allow the film to end in China so that this movie can make a lot more money over there. Which is what a lot of films are trying to do now, including Iron Man 3 which literally had extra scenes in the Chinese version to get more cash. Blah.

Let’s not forget our voice actors. We have Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), a man made Transformer Galvatron (Frank Welker), a Samurai-bot? (Ken Watanabe), some evil bad guy Lockdown (Mark Ryan), a Trenchcoat-bot (John DiMaggio), and literally a Transformer that just appears to be John Goodman (John Goodman).

Optimus Prime’s sword is voiced my Sir Swoosh-A-Lot.

Did you notice I didn’t mention a specific Transformers based entity that was heavily featured in all of the advertisements? The Dino-Bots? Yeah, they are in this movie I guess. They don’t talk, their plot lines are questionable, and they are in at the end to help fight bad guys. So, they do exist, albeit for twenty or so minutes. And to be fair, their action scenes are pretty bad ass. They are just grossly underused based on the advertisements and felt like a let down.

Speaking of annoying. More technicalities. A plot point puts them in Beijing. A big bad bot wants to blow up a bomb in the biggest city on Earth. Beijing is 2, so that is close enough. One of our characters knowing this goes on the run with the bomb. To Hong Kong. What in the fuck? First they make it seem like Hong Kong is a few hours away, and its really fucking far. But Hong Kong itself is a giant ass city with millions of people too. How is that better? There is literally thousands of miles of empty space all around China and they do the riskier thing?

This movie, like the third one, features tons of human casualties that they decide to brush aside and ignore. Early on it also does its best to ignore the Transformers completely. Like during a chase scene and a battle, they show mostly the humans running away from humans, than Prime fighting Lockdown. One of the biggest complaints of the franchise is too many humans (and too many women just around for their looks) and this film has that going on too. It is hard to understand why this keeps happening. It is of course also a giant advertisement for GM and other sponsors, such as Beats and Victoria Secret, which have moments that stand out in the worst way.

Some parts of the movie are delightful. Some of the fights are kind of cool. But the dialogue is terrible, acting is whatever, and there is just far too much going on for not enough payout in this movie.