Tag: John Cleese

Ohhh, box office failures? Guess I have to see it.

Much like you all, I never heard about the movie Arctic Dogs coming out to theaters. It wasn’t given to the press. If it had an advertising budget, it went up someone’s ass.

Arctic Dogs went to theaters on November 1st, and completely bombed. It opened in over 2,800 theaters and currently (at time of writing) has the worst amount earned in an opening weekend for that many theaters at just $2.9 million. Completely, and utterly destroyed by its competition.

But surely an animated film about some doggos can’t be that bad?

Oh. Foxes. Maybe. Never mind.

Swifty (Jeremy Renner) is an arctic fox, living in, well, the Arctic. He is super white, blends in with the snow, and thus, others seem to just ignore him and let him do his own thing.

Oh, yeah, this is a animals as humans movie. And the coolest animals in this small town are the Arctic Dogs super hero animals. What do they do? Oh. They deliver mail and packages to other small towns. Cool.

So naturally Swifty wants to be an Arctic Dog sledder, despite being a fox. And he meets the weight requirements, but isn’t really strong. So he is sent into the warehouse to help stamp packages, looking on the outside in.

Well, one time, Swifty has to send out a package. And it is to a weird Walrus recluse (John Cleese) who has Puffins working for him, all weird. And apparently that is enough for the Walrus to get rid of all the Arctic Dogs, just in case.

Now it is up to Swifty to deliver the packages, and, maybe, one day, also save the day.

Also starring Alec Baldwin, Anjelica Huston, Heidi Klum, James Franco, Laurie Holden, and Omar Sy.

Yep, Walrus on a robot spider bod. The ladies love it.

You see, Arctic Dogs isn’t bad enough to warrant its record. I mean, it is bad sure. But it is straight to DVD bad, not let’s scorn this movie so it never tries this nonsense again, bad.

Voice casting, most of it is uninspired. Not even John Cleese could save it with his wonderful words and accent. Hero is generic. We have had plenty of times someone who wants to be something, that he literally shouldn’t be able to do, but does it anyways because perseverance. But they keep doing it with animals or inanimate objects so that the real message is lost.

At least this time in this movie he didn’t just train hard enough to eventually get the job and prove people wrong. No, he got the job because all of the others were captured. Why? Because of plot reasons that don’t make at all any sense. Why would the villain want to take out all of the mail delivery dogs, when he still needs to get mail delivered to finish his evil plot? … … … Ohhh, because of poor writing.

Our female lead has the personality of Engineer, which is at least slightly different than the personality of scientist. And she unknowingly helps the bad guy the whole time, because I guess she isn’t smart enough to know what she is building? And there could be plot resolved from this earlier, if the main characters could talk better.

Oh, and let’s not forget the bad guys motivations. He is used to represent Global Warming, because its great to have a single source for the blame and make things fixable.

I just…I don’t know why the plot is so, so, so, so bad. The animation is definitely okay/average. But the terrible plot, nonsensical decisions and overdone tenants of the story line make this a disaster from the start. Good thing no one watched it.

This is my fourth movie this year reviewing with Anna Kendrick in it, and it hasn’t been a great year. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates was on top, above Mr. Right and Get A Job, all very mediocre to poor. Sorry, I haven’t hit The Accountant yet and The Hollars looks good too, but that is still six movies this year.

After the year she had been having, I wasn’t super surprised to see her starring in Trolls as well. Trolls is probably one of the most least anticipated animated movies of the year for me, after Sing.

I mean, I get it. Getting rights to old toys to make new movies for is in right now. The Smurfs movies did okay, why not create a world about Trolls? Gotta get that merchandising money back somehow right? Fuck new risks!

Sorry, I almost complained about films these days. Trolls just seems like a lazy cash grab, and they have been hyping it since Timberlake released that song like, six months ago at least. I am trolled out already and I haven’t even been forced to see a real advertisement for it.

One of those trolls is a fucking giraffe what is going on here?

The Bergens are large, basically ogre like entities that are disgusting and sad, lives devoid of happiness. The Trolls are tiny creatures full of color who are always partying and full of happy. The Bergens hate them and are jealous of them and also found out that when they eat Trolls, they get to feel happiness inside of them and it is kind of a big deal. So they captured all of the trolls and every Bergen eats one on a holiday called Trollstice.

Except this year they have escaped underground, thanks to King Peppy (Jeffrey Tambor), saving every last troll, including his baby daughter Peppy (Anna Kendrick). This gets the Bergen Chef (Christine Baranski) into quite a big trouble, because King Gristle (John Cleese) cannot feed his baby, Prince Gristle (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). So the Chef gets banished from the kingdom. The Trolls find a new place to live and they party for ever after.

Until twenty years later. Princess Poppy is throwing a huge party to celebrate being free of the Bergens. Everyone is going to be there, everyone but Branch (Justin Timberlake). The weird troll who is grey, doesn’t sing, doesn’t dance, doesn’t HUG. He warns them not to do the party like that or else the Bergens will come. And sure enough, the Chef Bergen finds them and takes all of Poppy’s friends. All of them, even the spiritual one (Russell Brand). So Poppy decides to get the rest of the Trolls into hiding and trick Branch into coming along with her to rescue them!

Back at Bergen Town, the Chef is getting back into business with the handful of trolls she captured. The king is dead, so the new king is that poor Gristle Jr. who never got a Troll before and he decides to restore Trollstice to make his kingdom happy! There is also a small maid, Bridget (Zooey Deschenal), who likes the king. This plays a part in the plot.

So yeah, get into the town, save the friends, and you know, survive. Whoa re the friends? Well, a lot of them are played by famous people, but if you asked me their character names I would have no fucking clue, as they kept them kind of hard to figure out and match. But we have Gwen Stefani, James Corden, Ron Fuches, Aino Jawo, Caroline Hjelt, Kunal Nayyar, Quevenzhane Wallis, Walt Dohrn, and Rhys Darby! Oh okay, fine, I could figure out who Guy Diamond was based off of his name.

They live in a scary place where literally everything has a mouth and eats something.

Oh hey, Trolls. Of course it was a Jukebox Musical in some regards, and I hoped to see something creative. Instead, for the most part, the songs were bad mash ups with a loosely related theme and just choruses to get the little kids moving their feet. I don’t hate Jukebox Musicals, I just hate bad music ones. It was overall a lesser Happy Feet in that regard, but better than Strange Magic.

Overall there were two really good musical moments, one was the song Get Back Up Again which is technically the only original song in the musical (Does the JT one count as original?), and another song near the end that captured the emotions of the moment extremely well. It might have made me cry, but crying does not mean I give the film a passing grade. There was also a very awkward song moment with Deschanel’s character. She gave a unique voice for Bridget, but when Bridget sang it was uncomfortable as the voice did not transition at all into the song.

The colors are bright and kid friendly, but the animation style on its own felt quite dull. It felt too fuzzy and well, doll like. Again, their intentions I am sure to sell toys, but it wasn’t too visually pleasing.

The world they created was an incredibly scary place, as there is a recurring joke of how almost everything eats something else. It frightened me and not in a sexy way.

Plot wise, about 20-30 minutes in it was pretty easy to figure out how the whole thing would end. And yeah, it was true. The love plot between Bridget and the King, although arguably necessary, felt like it was taking too much time from the rescue plot. There are not a lot of surprises in this film, nor intellectual humor. They have a character who farts glitter, and another character who shits cupcakes. Yay butt humor.

Overall Trolls is just okay, which is better than I expected. There are only a few more cartoon movies to go this year and the only place this one will make an impact in the awards is nominations for Best Song, I imagine. It is unfortunately also really dated. They decided to make the Trolls super modern, so they are saying YOLO, OMG and more terms to connect to the youth of today, meaning no one will give a crap about it in ten years.

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.

People are just going to see this review and think of me as a mean old curmudgeon.

Assuming you don’t already assume that.

But I was very disappointed with the new Winnie The Pooh movie.

Blah blah blah, kids will love it, super G, whatever. I hope no kids are reading this website anyways. Just in case they are, there is some bad fucking language in some of the reviews, so they should probably stay away from those.

My problems are as such. First, not counting the credits, this movie is pretty much exactly 60 minutes long. Why a person would rather watch this than a much more interesting hour long show on HBO or Showtime, I wouldn’t know. But just in terms of length (and content) it really just felt like a long episode of a TV show. Not a movie.

The animation itself also felt like it was identical to the original older movies/shows. I know why they did that, the same way they made this movie. To prey entirely on nostalgia for older people, and to introduce it to younger people to try and get more money. If nostalgia is the only reason you would like something new, or being very young, that cannot be a good enough reason for it to be good. I read a few other reviews of this, and most of them mention the nostalgic feeling.

Finally, this doesn’t really offer anything new. This is still based off of the original book series by A. A. Milne. In fact, some of the plots are stories that have already been done in movies (such as the Search For Christopher Robin).

I did enjoy the song about the Bakson, but that was because the animation was done in a creative way. John Cleese did an excellent job as narrator too. While there was some interesting moments in terms of interactions with the book pages and the characters, most of the humor comes from the normal lack of understanding on the part of Pooh.

In conclusion, if a well established series is going to release a movie after a period of downtime, it should a) Have something improved upon the earlier series, such as graphics (not saying boom boom 3D, but there is better 2D animation capabilities), b) Not just rehash all the earlier plots, and c) Be of “movie” quality, not just a longer cartoon tv show.

Tigger, please.

1 out of 4.