Love animation to bits. It was a big part of my life as a child, especially Disney, Looney Tunes, Hanna Barbera and Tom and Jerry, and still love it as a young adult, whether it's film, television or cartoons. Actually appreciate it even more now, having more knowledge of the different animation styles and directors and what work went into them.
'Joshua and the Promised Land' looked terrible, the cover alone was unappetising, and the reviews and low rating lowered my expectations even more. Saw it anyway because the Old Testament stories interest me despite not being particularly religious and as said animation is still held in very high regard by me and would see anything animated regardless of animation style, studio or budget.
Even with the low expectations, 'Joshua and the Promised Land' turned out to be even worse than expected. Am usually very generous when it comes to animation, but there is a lot of bad ones out there and 'Joshua and the Promised Land' is for me and many others down there with the all-time worst.
First off the animation is hideous, down there with the worst of Video Brinquedo, Spark Plug Entertainment and Dingo Pictures as some of the all-time worst. Everything looks static and blocky, the colours are flat and lifeless, the characters look ugly and even creepy, the movements are just weirdly aimless (some of it like moving in slow motion) and attention to detail isn't there at all. The sound is bizarre and cheapens the already ill-fitting music.
Writing is juvenile, awkward-sounding and repetitive, children and adults alike will feel their intelligence levels being significantly lowered due to the excessive way the writing and storytelling insults it. The story is paper thin and tends to not go very far if anywhere, the very few times it's cohesive it is unbelievably stupid.
Characters are irritating and with not much development or personality, there is nothing here to allow one to like them let alone root for them. The voice acting has no emotion or energy, and the unintentional creepiness it has is really disconcerting.
Overall, extremely cheap and irredeemably awful even when judging it with an open fair mind and fairly low expectations. 1/10 Bethany Cox
