Suggested by Destroyer Thunder Birdo is a tough fighter, there’s no doubt about that. Still, he is completely outmatched in this battle. Grodd has every advantage possible and he’s also the smarter fighter so there isn’t any escape for Birdo. Loss is inevitable and there just aren’t a whole lot of minions that could hope to best this guy in battle. Gorilla Grodd wins.
Suggested by Sonic Static Shock has a lot of thunder abilities at the ready but perhaps surprisingly, I don’t think it’ll be enough to beat Dracula here. See, the main advantage Dracula has is his pure speed. I’m not sure Static would be able to counter that. If he could land some solid blows I have no doubt that they would ultimately take Dracula down, but actually landing those hits is the difficult part and he won’t be able to do it before Dracula secures the win. Dracula (Batman) wins.
Suggested by Sonic This is a pretty close fight. Klonoa has some decent elemental attacks like his tornados and wind punch but I wouldn’t say his stats are crazy good. Then you have Katana who doesn’t have any fancy abilities like that but she has mastered martial arts and the way of the sword. So which will win the day here? Ultimately I’d say Klonoa takes the slight edge because the wind and thunder should keep Katana off balance long enough for him to land some decisive blows. Klonoa wins.
Suggested by Sonic The Jolly Green Giant is huge but will that be enough to win this round? I do find myself being rather skeptical but the Whispy Woods can’t really move much. So this boils down to whether or not the Giant would be able to resist the explosive fruits that Whispy Woods can throw out and I want to say that he can. Long enough to punch Whispy out at least. Not being able to run around is a huge disadvantage. Jolly Green Giant wins.
Suggested by Sonic Lets put it this way, Mr Mxy is a guy who can mess with reality and knows how to throw a good punch but he’s not usually known as a big fighter. The reason for that is because he just isn’t the kind of guy who gets in close. You could say the same about Professor X but his experience is considerably more impressive and we have seen him show good battle tactics when he can walk. Mix that in with his Onslaught form and I don’t see Mr Mxy being able to win this one. Professor X wins.
Suggested by Sonic The Mask is a tricky guy who has some decent abilities. Aside from being rather fast, he can stretch and use a bit of toon force as defense. The guy can take a hit but at the end of the day I don’t think he will be doing a whole lot against Wackoman’s elemental attacks. This villain can completely overwhelm the guy with high speed attacks and the Mask doesn’t have the sheer offensive might to turn the tides. Wackoman wins.
It’s time to look at a one shot that just came out recently and it’s a very interesting one. It gets rather meta to the point where it’s hard to interpret just how it ended although I’ll throw my take in there later on. The one shot is 200 pages long which is crazy but at the same time there are so many pages that are recycled or just don’t have art in them that I can see why it was so long. I’d say the ending goes a long way to making the story as it helped make this one real memorable. Even as I type this I’m still sorting out exactly how good it was in my head but by the end it’ll be clear.
So the story starts by introducing us to Yuta whose mother is terminally ill and will be dying soon. She has asked him to start recording her daily life and eventual death so that she can be remembered. Yuta does this but at the last second he doesn’t have the heart to record her death and storms out. Fast forward many years and he has decided to show the video at school but edited in a scene where the hospital explodes as she dies to make up for the fact that he doesn’t have the footage. The entire student body and faculty are furious at how he handled his mother’s death and he grows suicidal until he meets a lady named Eri.
Eri says that she liked his movie but that he wasn’t very professional in how he crafted it so she will train him to make a new one. They’ll meet every night and weekend to watch a bunch of movies at an abandoned building she hangs out at. Yuta agrees to do so and now he will be recording her but will this really give him peace and is she really just trying to help him out or does she have some kind of ulterior motive?
To be honest if she had an ulterior motive then Yuta was probably doomed from the start since he went along with her plans anyway. At its core this is a fairly emotional story about overcoming loss and grief while trying to restart your life. The story is self contained in this adventure so there is a beginning, middle, and ending. The cast is very small though with Yuta and Eri being the only real characters with a big role. Yuta’s father does get some solid scenes near the middle though which I thought were handled well. He comes across as a very understanding guy and one who made his share of mistakes but does his best to make things right.
So onto the positives, I thought Eri was a solid character. Whatever her reasons may have been, she did stop Yuta from taking his own life which is massive as a start. From there on she helped give him courage and drive to keep on going and find a new path. Even when she was sick she handled it well and ultimately was the kind of character who helped make a difference in the world. To combat that, I did not like Yuta. The explosion at the end of the video was fine enough, I can see how it would be a scandal but apparently that’s how he usually tends to end his videos. He likes putting a fantasy element in it.
My real issue with him is that he’s not a very classy guy. He throws in some crude humor here like filming himself using the bathroom. Really? That’s just taking things way too far and he’s also not very classy about the kinds of movie scenes that he likes. He’s so obvious about it that he even has to comment on those moments. So yeah Yuta’s not a very stand up guy and probably not someone that would be super easy to get along with. I think he could have toned down these parts of his personality. It’s probably to show how comfortable he is with Eri but it doesn’t make him look any better.
The story can be rather dark although you probably guessed that by the subject matter. Even towards the end we get some sad twists about the mother and it all plays into the theme of how people can be very different in real life than they are from the recordings. Even though Yuta is recording these characters himself, it is only a small part of who they really were and anyone can fake things in front of a camera. I thought the twist about the mother was a bit much tbh, particularly as it doesn’t directly impact Yuta all that much. It’s more of an effect for the reader at this point.
As for the artwork, it’s okay. It’s not one of the better art pieces that I’ve seen but it does the job. I’d consider it slightly below average but you always know what’s going on. It’s also partially the style as it’s trying to be very live action-esque which often does not translate quite as smoothly into manga. I also think you shouldn’t even strive to look as realistic as possible. There’s a fine line between coming close in a stylized way like One Punch Man and then just not being visually appealing.
Now I was mixed on how much I should put a spoiler warning for a one shot because either you’ve read it or you haven’t but I’ll throw it in just in case. Skip the next 5 paragraphs if you haven’t read the one shot because there are a lot of twists at the end. As I said earlier, the twists are what make the story after all so you probably don’t want to know them ahead of time or it’ll take part of the fun away. It is the kind of story that could change a bit when you know the twists though so either way you may want to re read parts of it.
Okay so in the end Yuta makes his new movie about Eri as he is able to film her all the way to her dying breath this time. The movie is received very well by the school this time and Yuta goes on to have a family and live a good life. The life has its ups and downs but then his family is in an accident one day and they all die so he is the last survivor now. He decides to take his own life once again and goes to where Eri used to hang out except she is still there and hasn’t aged a day. She mentions that she is a vampire and will never die but her brain resets so she had him create the video so she could remember her old life and never be sad anymore. This gives Yuta a new lease on life so he heads out…and then the building explodes.
So what does this mean? Was the entire adventure actually a part of his movie? If so, when did the movie start and was any of this actually real or was it a video the entire time? Did he actually blow up the building because he was that insane? There’s a lot of ways to read this and you could have fun bouncing it around in your head for a long while. To be honest this was probably going to be a 4 or a 5 without the twists at the end because it would have been relentlessly sad if Yuta survived all of that only for his whole family to have died. If he also died in the end the score would have been lowered even further without a doubt.
Instead, this actually ended things on a more positive note. Whether you think it’s real or not, it’s at least a little upbeat that he got to walk out and the explosion was a nice touch. Still, I’m not going to cop out on you here so I’m going to give you a real answer on how I interpreted this. I was on the fence about the two so real quick here was my runner up theory. At the end Yuta really did blow up the place so this way there would be fantasy in his story again. There really was no vampire (Is what he would rationalize in his head) and the ending would have been true from his story. It’s an interesting theory but I don’t think it’s right.
So what I think is that everything until he meets up with Eri is completely real. Yuta recorded his mother’s life and then he made a movie which was shunned by the school. He met up with Eri in the shed and they watched a ton of movies together. Eri got sick and then she died. This is the turning point. At this point Yuta started recording the extra scenes including the fake ending. The fantasy angle that he always talked about is why he added a vampire at the end and the big explosion. He didn’t actually grow up and have a family. That was all narration from him inside the film. So every scene after Eri dies is a part of the actual movie. It would be easy to fake his being older with special effects and since he discussed with Eri the whole film before hand, they would have filmed the scene in advance.
To me this makes the most sense. I feel like the constant mentions of his wanting to add a fantasy edge to it were all leading up to this. The strongest counter argument to this is how strongly you believe the narration that isn’t within the film panels. Alternately you could just say that the whole thing is a movie to be extra meta but I think doing that weakens the story as a whole. If nothing was real then it’s all a bit pointless. I also just don’t think that’s even a possibility. I’m sure there are a lot of other fun theories you could come up with after this one shot, but this is the one I stick to at least. Eri’s death was the final real scene here and the rest was within the film that everyone was watching. Of course if you play it straight and everything was real including the explosion at the building that would be a really intense way to go. It’s why I was torn on which option to go with and that ended up being my runner up.
Overall, Goodbye Eri is one of those stories teetering on the brink of total destruction and being a good story. I was even a bit stressed for it the whole time because it was hard to tell just how it was going. Fortunately the ending pulls through and in the end this would be a story that I would recommend. It’s sad without throwing this in your face the whole time and while none of the characters are particularly noteworthy, they all accomplish their tasks well enough. The writing is solid enough to hold this all together and so overall it holds its own. It’s long enough to be collected into volume format one day so I wonder if this would ever get printed over here. Who knows, maybe one day it’ll turn out that this was actually the pilot to an ongoing story.
Overall 6/10
A film about divorce is definitely something that you don’t see very often. Showing this as a comedy is also something you probably would not have expected right off the gate. Unfortunately it doesn’t work as well as it could have because both of the main characters just go away too far so by the time everything is said and done, it’s hard to see them being together again. You just can’t believe it and that’s not a good sign since they’re the main characters here. I think if they could have stayed off the rebound then this could have really worked.
The movie starts off by showing us a lot of couples having a ton of fights every night. We then cut to the main duo of Richard and Barbara who are definitely not having a fun time at the moment. They fight about everything and the rift between them is only growing larger and larger. They used to be so close so it’s a shame o see what has happened to them. They just can’t have a single conversation without something going wrong and so they end up going for a divorce but who will ultimately win? Barbara and Richard both want to keep as much of the money and assets as possible but only one can have a favorable deal.
Lets dive right into why this film doesn’t ultimately end up being as good as it should be. When the two characters split up, you figure they’ll be back together by the end of the movie. That’s just how these things go. The real problem is that you then have to make sure that both parties don’t do something they’ll regret like having an affair. Unfortunately they do, both characters immediately go back onto the dating scene and seem to be incredibly desperate. They date quickly and move on with their affairs without any delay. So as soon as that happens its just hard to look forward to the ending because they were so quick to have a moment with someone else.
If the two were really as close as all that, they should not have dated anyone even after splitting up. If you were going to have them do this then they shouldn’t get back together at the end of the movie. It all just doesn’t track well and hurts the two characters quite a lot. It even puts a bit of a damper on the humor itself because the characters just aren’t likable anymore. Maybe you should just root for the rebound characters to win instead at that point although you know they’re doomed from the start.
Now on to who was responsible for the issues. Well, it seems like Barbara was the instigator from how the film picks up. Of course we know that they’ve been having a lot of issues so it’s hard to say who really started it but from how the film makes it appear, Barbara is at fault in most of the circumstances. She’s overly critical when Richard comes in and really just keeps going at him the whole time. Richard was at least trying to ask questions about what was wrong so they could talk things over but she didn’t seem to want to talk most of the time. It takes ages to get anything out of her until Richard starts breaking dishes.
It was interesting to see that the kids even had a scorecard because of how often this happens every night so they would tally up each fight. Clearly this dynamic has been the same way for a very long time at this point. From there things only escalate as this goes into court but even then Barbara’s demands are all outrageous. Richard basically has to pay for everything even though she owns it now in addition to making the regular payments. It doesn’t seem very fair and of course this is part of the humor but throughout the film it felt like Barbara was delivering gut punches to Richard while he kept holding up the white flag.
She would act apologetic at times but it doesn’t mean much when she’s still having a blast out there. So no matter how you slice it, Richard was really getting the short end of the stick here. He’s lucky that prices were so low back then because otherwise he would have really been doomed. Seeing him order a full McDonalds combo for under $1 was crazy. It reminds you just how much prices have changed over the years. Nowadays even with the app that would probably be close to 10 bucks.
Richard was a fun character but he wasn’t without his faults either. The guy did get drunk quite often and that would put him in sticky situations like when one of his friends tried to get him to have an affair. That would have really been a bad move. Fortunately he was able to get out of that in time but he should never have been in that situation in the first place. Then later on he does break down and gets together with Nancy which was also a shame.
As for the rebound characters, both Nancy and Big Al seem decent enough but you know that they’re doomed so it’s hard to get too invested. I’ll at least give Big Al some credit for not getting involved until the divorce was actually complete. It seemed like Nancy was ready even while this was in progress which is really not a good look for her. She also seems quite well off so why even get another partner? Apparently she still likes her husband but can’t get together officially again or it would cut off her finances. Why not get together unofficially though? Seems to me like that would be easier.
The writing and dialogue is fun as always though. I always liked those old time scripts with everyone talking in such a dignified way. It’s something that you can’t really capture in a modern title. Not in the same way at least, people just talked differently back then and it was very entertaining. The humor works well in some scenes too. It’s definitely not their most entertaining picture but Richard really manages to sell his scenes. I think his booming voice definitely works well for when he’s shocked and starts yelling about it. Even the scenes where he and Barbara are fighting tends to be entertaining as a result.
I’d say the film is fairly long but doesn’t really end up dragging out. It just boils down to the fact that the romance was really on the weaker side here which ends up impacting the whole experience. This is not a film that should have had a rebound romance at all and including that in there ends up weakening the film a lot. It’s a film that should have focused more on the comedy aspect of their being single again. You know, as much as I’m glad that the kids didn’t have a big role here, it might have been better if they were fighting to impress the kids instead of focusing on the romance angle of it. That would have been an improvement.
I’d say the weakest part outside of the romance is the scene where we are introduced to the guy with a ton of kids from various marriages and the hypnosis scenes. Both of these scenes have a common factor which is that they are extremely stretched out. The best humor scenes are the ones where you’ve got a witty retort or some quick gags to run through. When you take that same gag and just keep on going it ends up losing its steam immediately and that’s what happens here. I’d have cut the hypnosis scene out entirely and for the multiple marriages guy I’d have just reduced that by about half of its screen time. Instead give more time to the friends of each main character so they can dish out more poorly thought out advice. Hearing bad advice from the friends can always be entertaining in its own right as its a test to see how gullible the leads can be.
You could also have more fun with some of the supporting characters like the two attorneys. I liked those guys right off the bat and how they knew this wasn’t personal. They may have been opponents in the court room but were still friends outside of it. It was a fun dynamic and that’s the kind of humor that the film is best on. Focus on that and you’d have a stronger experience all around.
Overall, This film certainly shows how expensive divorce can be and why you want to make sure that you’ve found the right person so you don’t have to be going trough this process. While likely not as exaggerated as it was depicted here, things can definitely go quite poorly for you if you get divorced. These two characters ended up causing each other a whole lot of damage so even once they are back together again you can’t help but feel that things will take some time to get back to 100%. If anything it’s like nothing has changed so they’re one step away from doing it all over again. Check the film out if you want some laughs and don’t have a better comedy film on the docket but you can do better than this one.
Overall 6/10
Paris Blues is one of those films that is very dramatic the whole time with each character really making the wrong moves here. Be careful who you choose to go out with because it could come back to bite you. That’s the lesson that the characters here desperately needed to learn. It would have made them all quite a bit happier in the end. I wouldn’t say the movie succeeds because I didn’t really care for most of the cast but you do get some fairly decent tunes to listen to which is always important.
The movie starts with Connie and Lillian arriving in France for their big trip. They only plan to stay here for a few weeks but they know that it’s going to be a magical place. A guy named Ram shows up to flirt with Connie immediately who is less than impressed. Unfortunately her friend Lillian insists that they go check out the guy’s little band setup in the cafe. So they go and Lillian is desperate for a relationship and goes after Ram the whole time. Meanwhile Ram’s partner Eddie ends up falling for Connie and so they start to get close. I guess that wraps up the film right? We’ve got the two pairings and everything’s going just swell.
Well, that’s not exactly how it plays out. For starters, Ram seems seems to like Connie more initially and doesn’t really give Lillian a second chance but ultimately goes with her because he wants to be with someone. The whole time Ram keeps letting her know that this won’t be serious though and it’s just a fling but she wants to change his mind on that. Meanwhile Eddie and Connie take it slow here. The dilemma in this pairing is that Eddie wants to stay in France. The people treat him well and he has a successful gig going as a musician. Unfortunately Connie wants to go back to America so they can help to change the world socially. At the time there was still a lot of racial division and Eddie just doesn’t want to have to go back to that. Defending himself left and right and having to prove himself each time while apparently that’s not an issue here in Paris.
So there are our two conflicts here and they stretch for the entirety of the movie. In both cases I’ve definitely got my stance here. With Eddie, I think he should stay in Paris. If Connie is ready to make this serious then she should definitely be sticking with him. He’s got his whole life here and would need to make serious changes to adapt to America. Connie certainly wants to change the world but I’d say it would have to come at the expense of losing Eddie. The advantages don’t outweigh the risks here. It’s relatively easier for her to talk tough about this when he’s the one who is going to have to get out there and try to get a whole new setup.
The romance definitely felt doomed here. Then you have Ram and Lillian. Well, I think Lillian shouldn’t even be trying for this guy so hard. Ram’s been a free spirit who messes around a lot from the start and even told her that he didn’t want to get serious. Then on Ram’s side, Lillian keeps throwing herself at him to the point where it seems a little suspicious. Perhaps she isn’t doing well financially and needs someone to support her? It would be hard not to start thinking that a bit since Ram even made it clear that he was not interested in her several times. So when she ignores that and keeps after him, it feels more suspicious than endearing.
Ultimately Ram doesn’t seem like the type who will ultimately commit to anyone. Music is his passion and he will stay true to that but that’s where the buck stops. Beyond that you have to decide if this could ever work and I don’t think that it could. He’s only just barely gotten over being with someone else so that shows how quickly he changes and moves on to the next thing.
I didn’t care for the guy as one of the main characters. He’s never portrayed as being all that likable. At best you just feel sympathetic when he is being shot down as the guy tries to get his music published. Then you have Lillian and I didn’t like her mainly because of how desperate she was the whole time. Like Ram she seems like someone who plays the field and again I don’t see how this would end up working very well.
Eddie and Connie are more likable than the first pair. Part of the problem is really just that Connie wants him to come to her side. I dare say that he has more to lose than she does so she should have stayed. Hopefully she does well in her quest to make the world a better place though. Then Eddie’s a fun character and someone who stays classy. He isn’t always thrilled at Connie’s conversations but still answers her questions and keeps things as civilized as possible. He helps to keep Ram grounded when that guy’s getting to be a bit much and he also takes things slower. You don’t see him just jumping into bed the way that Ram does.
Paris definitely looks really nice throughout the film and I’d say it did a good job with the location sets. The place is quite big and the heroes take in the sights. We also get to see how their music gig really works and it reminds you that they are not always in the best of company though. Everyone here seems to be a bit down on their luck or a little desperate. The lady Ram has a relationship with seems a bit too open to the fact that he is messing around all over the place so I wouldn’t have been able to root for them anyway. Then you have the one guy who is addicted to drugs and can’t break out of it.
The characters certainly had their share of issues. Mainly we just see what Ram and Eddie have to deal with but that’s because the others are on vacation so we don’t really see into their lives. That’s another thing to consider, the main guys really don’t know a whole lot about the girls as a result. They can only guess but the whole thing is too fast for this to be a true relationship. The girls have only been here for less than 2 weeks as it is. You probably just shouldn’t be starting a relationship while you’re on vacation. The odds of it working out successfully seems really slim to me.
Overall, Paris Blues is a film about two doomed romances where the characters are just never on the same page. While Eddie’s a good guy, Ram is hard to root for right from the start. He also plays a really big role in why the ending is the way that it is. Ram was just never going to work things out and in the process he may have stopped the rest too. He did make it clear from the start that music was his only priority but then he should have stuck with that all the way through instead of waffling. The movie’s fairly serious and could have used a little humor to it in the end. I think that would have only served to have helped the dynamic a bit. All in al, you can do better with romance films and you can do better with dramas. This one won’t end up being very satisfying and I think it could have used some more music to take the film to the next level. Focus on the goal and give us some competitions or challenges that Ram has to overcome. Maybe that could have helped him be a decent character.
Overall 4/10
This is a film where the title is definitely very accurate. The whole movie involves the long trailer from start to finish and the journey along with it. That said, I thought it was a bit weaker than I was expecting it to be. The movie just drags on a bit and while it’s still a fun adventure, there is less variety than in the average comedy type movie like this. At its core that’s what the issue with the movie is. It needed more unique moments.
So the movie starts off with Nicky in the rain looking for his wife in a trailer. The whole thing looks rather odd so an older man tells Nicky to wait in his little house since it’s impossible to pass by it without being seen. Nicky then decides to share his story and almost the rest of the film is a flashback. He and Tacy had a reasonably solid marriage and things were going well but she desperately wanted to move into a trailer. Nicky was completely against the idea and I can’t say that I blame him because this does not sound like a good move. They shop around but ultimately end up going for a really small one that still breaks the bank. The trailer has a lot of things wrong with it and may even destroy their marriage. Can they overcome this vehicle?
Now it’s nice that Nicky ends up relenting so Tacy can get her trailer but he was really right and should have stuck his ground here. A trailer is a ton of work since you need to drive it around, find a place to park it, find utilities, etc. It’s not like you just have running water and a nearby town to get supplies from. It seems to me like you usually only live in a trailer as a last resort but not because you really want to be there. This is probably the first time I’ve seen a character actually want to make the change.
It makes even less sense when you consider how good the house that they were living in was. It wasn’t some run down little apartment or anything like that, it was actually a pretty solid place to live. Deciding to leave there was a big mistake. Well, they end up getting the trailer and they do their best with it, but it just doesn’t work. The whole thing shakes, you can get stuck in the mud, etc. I have to say that living in a trailer seems like even harder work than I would have guessed. There are just so many things that you have to take into account in everyday life with this.
One scene I did appreciate is how close the community apparently is. Everyone jumps up to help when Tacy isn’t feeling very well and apparently they have whole communities for the people with trailers. It’s nice to see that they’ve got some kind of support network going and honestly they probably should have just stuck with this group. I know the main two wanted some privacy so they went out again but maybe they should have just stayed long enough to at least pick up some tips and tricks.
Ultimately I have to mainly give a lot of grief to Tacy in the end though. So the heroes end up having to cross a huge mountain to get to their destination and this will be extremely dangerous. To help their odds of survival increase, Nicky lets Tacy know to toss out her random rocks that show every place they’ve been. Tacy agrees but secretly keeps them which almost results in their death. If you’re going to keep the rocks then keep them but lying about this nearly ended up being fatal for both of them. It’s easy to see how there was a lot of friction here as a result.
Now this is one of those crazy comedies where both characters will have their unreasonable moments but I think it’s fair to say that for most of the adventure, Tacy was not handling this very well. She really wanted the trailer but wasn’t going to be able to make it work. Not to say you can blame everything on her since she couldn’t have known what was going to happen. She just ended up putting them in this dilemma.
As for Nicky, well he tends to get overly emotional at times. It comes with the territory of trying to roll with these crazy schemes but he does nothing to help the tension between him and Tacy. Throwing out the rocks and running off just serve to amp things up even more. All in all I still liked the banter between the main two and the humor is what carries the film. It may not make both characters all that likable individually but the strong dialogue will ensure that they are both memorable.
Where the film falters as I mentioned is that it just feels like not much happened. Just look at the plot description that I used, it pretty much encompasses the entire film and that’s not very long. It’s all about the characters riding around in their trailer without ever making any real progress here. I suppose the drive up to the mountain was decent but in a way I just wanted some scenes outside of the trailer. So in a sense the premise itself limited the film. There just wasn’t a lot going on and it shows that there are only so many jokes you can do with a trailer.
Overall, The Long, Long Trailer is a good movie but not a very good one. There’s not a whole lot of replay value here and while the movie doesn’t drag on or anything like that, it won’t keep your interest quite as much as it should. There’s enough world building and potential here for sequels that have a completely different plot though. If you want to watch a retro comedy film then this isn’t a bad watch. As a one and done it’ll do the job even if you think it could have been better. The moral here is that the grass is always greener and sometimes you gotta be satisfied with what you have.
Overall 6/10
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