moviewatcherperson

Based on the classic story by Henry Van Dyke we have this cheesy animated film. The animation is pretty clunky and the dialogue at first seemed to be lip- synced to the characters, especially at the beginning. We have to deal with Artaban giving exposition and lamenting about how he has to give away his treasures. The story of a wise man traveling for more than 30 years to find the "newborn" King kind of makes sense if you really let yourself go and "believe". We get a little sense of Christ's ministry for a movie that covers his life and death with the acts of service that the wise man gives to the people meets. The best part was when he helped the lady save her baby from the soldiers. It gets to the point where some of the parts are inadvertently funny, like with Artaban talking to his horse and the ending which I'm not going to spoil.

Disclaimers: I've never really watched the original movie or its two sequels. Going out of the movie I got what I was expecting: big dinosaurs chasing people while the fate of some island is at stake. The effects were pretty good and the chase scenes will keep you on your toes. Pretty much all the characters give decent performances for an action flick but almost all the characters have been taken from other films. The plot kind of resembles How To Train Your Dragon 2 near the end though I'm not complaining that much because it does add that "animal food chain/social dominance" theme created by the big dino asset. There's a enough funny and heartwarming moments to make this film good popcorn, but nothing groundbreaking.

I haven't seen "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" (at least not recently) so I might not be the right person to review it. I could barely gather from the mostly inaudible dialog which was mostly drowned out by the engine noise of the train. Would it have killed them to make the train car more acoustic? We don't need traveling realism when it's just a three-minute sort.

The story follows two men are being bothered by another man named Vincent. When he takes a bathroom break, the two men change seats and Vincent still finds them. As a short film with a title reference I was hoping for at least some funny stuff to happen, but nothing did. Somehow the writers thought two expletives in the short would make it funny. I give it three stars for the unfunny three minutes I spent watching it.