It is easy to see why the animations of Dingo Pictures are relatively obscure, though those who have had the misfortune of seeing any of their output (which along with their equally low-budget computer animated counterpart Video Brinquedo have not once made anything worthwhile) cannot forget their awfulness. It is even easier to see why they are universally reviled and nothing of their work is good. Just to say, personally keep watching them out of curiosity and as an animation fan.
My heart sank when hearing that Dingo Pictures had done an adaptation of Victor Hugo's masterpiece 'Notre Dame de Paris' (english title 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame'), very difficult to adapt for even big-budget live action with the book being lengthy, the story complex and the characterisations being very rich. And as judgmental as it sounds knew straightaway that it was going to be bad. As said, Dingo Pictures' output has never been more than very bad, their worst being abominations, and there is no way an adaptation could work with this budget and length, so this was doomed from the very start.
The good news though that 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' is not their worst. There are surprisingly more recognisable elements of the story, if more the basic content (none of the darker or more complicated stuff).
While the voice acting is very poor on the whole, did think that the narration sounded engaged enough. Of the characters, the best voiced to me was that Gringoire, suitably sympathetic.
Rest of the voice acting however is as said not really worth mentioning and ill-fitting (with a lot of pauses which really interrupts the flow), with a bored sounding Quasimodo and a too mature Esmeralda. Worst of all were Frollo, very one-note and not menacing in the slightest, and the judge, far too shrill and over the top. Most of the characters are poorly written, either bland or annoying and it has the least complex Frollo, a very complex and conflicted character in the source material and in a fair share of the adaptations, imaginable and he was nowhere near sinister enough to be evil-incarnate.
As much as it makes me want to stop talking about what else is wrong, there is plenty more to come. The worst aspect of 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' is the animation, which is awful beyond description. It has flat colours, very simplistic backgrounds and lack of detail and derivative, shoddy, unfinished recycled (some lifted directly out of previous Dingo Pictures efforts and have no relevance to the story whatsoever) and creepy character animation as well as a style that makes art of primary school children who draw and paint in half an hour or less seem more accomplished. Also what was with the constant juddery shakiness when any of the characters laugh especially, made me feel nauseous. The music always sounds misplaced and never fitting with what's going on, not to mention that it has little breathing space even in scenes that are in dire need for it. The sound effects are bizarre and random.
Furthermore, the script script is incredibly repetitive and juvenile, some of it making one question who the target audience was meant to be, that it will insult any adult is bad enough but even young children will feel dumber after hearing some of the dialogue here. The source material is a very rich one and even with some recognisable elements and a little more coherent than most Dingo Pictures animations, this makes the mistake of being really dull and over-stretched, going at an aimlessly sluggish pace with too many stop start moments. Then there is Frollo's demise, which has never been this throwaway-like.
Overall, ever so slightly better than expected but when it comes to adaptations of 'Notre Dame de Paris' it doesn't get much worse than this, yes even worse than Golden Films and 'The Secret of the Hunchback'. 2/10
