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Reviews3
raidingpartygames's rating
7/10 = Pretty good for me.
First things first, I wouldn't recommend this for adults. All the character motivations are fairly shallow, and the cliches run rampant. There are a few surprises, but they're out of left field and stay unexplained.
It was still an enjoyable movie to pass time. And the place it gets bumped up from "just OK" to "pretty good" is the excellent use of craft. There are dozens of scenes with excellent framing that could be frozen and used as pictures in their own right. ILM made great use of Dreamwork's "Moonbeam" program to convey the world. The textures are photorealistic enough to draw one in, while the exaggerated features enhance the personalities of the cartoon characters portrayed. And rather than pulling one out of immersion, the occasional flashes of line-art actually enhance the experience of "fun surrounding watching a cartoon".
First things first, I wouldn't recommend this for adults. All the character motivations are fairly shallow, and the cliches run rampant. There are a few surprises, but they're out of left field and stay unexplained.
It was still an enjoyable movie to pass time. And the place it gets bumped up from "just OK" to "pretty good" is the excellent use of craft. There are dozens of scenes with excellent framing that could be frozen and used as pictures in their own right. ILM made great use of Dreamwork's "Moonbeam" program to convey the world. The textures are photorealistic enough to draw one in, while the exaggerated features enhance the personalities of the cartoon characters portrayed. And rather than pulling one out of immersion, the occasional flashes of line-art actually enhance the experience of "fun surrounding watching a cartoon".
This was excellent. Filled with observations on the silliness of comic book "canon", pet humor, and feels. This is a case where the whole is better than the sum of its parts, no individual piece was outstanding, it was constructed entirely of "pretty good" which I would normally rate 7, but filling almost the entire 105 minutes with content was seriously satisfying. And it kept the tempo through the entire thing. A bunch of adventure movies, and especially superhero movies, drop the mood and let "danger is happening" overwrite the last half hour.
Also tempted to run out and rescue some pets from the shelter at the last minute.
Also tempted to run out and rescue some pets from the shelter at the last minute.
7 = Pretty good
On the up side, there were quite a lot of clever laugh-out-loud bits throughout the movie. It had lots of great animation, and was worth watching. A florid background and easter eggs also helped.
A few jokes fell flat, which is pretty standard. The biggest reason this didn't quite hit (8=great) was inconsistent wordlbuilding. The use of "zing" to move the story just didn't work for this one. Having it show up in one place and not another, having people not pay attention to it, and the monster characters not knowing the rules for it just didn't make sense. And having one of the characters repeatedly fail in the manner of Wile E. Coyote didn't really add anything to the story.
A few jokes fell flat, which is pretty standard. The biggest reason this didn't quite hit (8=great) was inconsistent wordlbuilding. The use of "zing" to move the story just didn't work for this one. Having it show up in one place and not another, having people not pay attention to it, and the monster characters not knowing the rules for it just didn't make sense. And having one of the characters repeatedly fail in the manner of Wile E. Coyote didn't really add anything to the story.