I now own the film! This one was a fun ride and I’m looking forward to seeing the opening fight again. It was pretty hype to see how each of them stacks up on the tier list! I’m ready for Adam Warlock to be in the sequel.
I now own the movie! You will remember that I was less than thrilled with this film to say the least, but it’s still an enjoyable ride I suppose. Thomas The Tank Engine was hype!
I now own the film! I’ll admit that Thor looked pretty bad here, but the fight scenes were pretty hype so at least there was some kind of trade off, rather than just a drop. The phase 2 collection is nearly complete!
I now own the movie! I already reviewed the title so no retro review, but I’ll still be checking it out again all the same since this was easily the best non Avengers film in the MCU.
It’s been a while since I saw the film so it’s near to quickly relive the adventures over in manga format. The series was only 2 volumes so it makes for a quick read. It’s a fairly straight adaption of the film so it’s a good way of rewatching the film if you want to accomplish the task in about 30-40 minutes instead of the film’s run-time. Alternately, you could also do it for the action scenes since they’re a little better in the manga.
Hiro was having a good ole time showing off his science skills at a new school while his brother showed him around. He didn’t have many friends, but that never bothered Hiro. Unfortunately, everything changed when his brother was murdered and his invention was stolen by a mysterious villain. Hiro realized that the only thing he could do now was use his brother’s invention to beat the new villain black and blue. The problem is that the invention is a Marshmallow looking robot that has no real combat experience. Time to see if his big brain is just for show or not!
So, it’s partially a revenge story, but along the way Hiro realizes that he has to beat the villain by the book. His brother’s friends decide to help Hiro out and in exchange they receive power suits, which simulate powers. The friends can definitely hold Hiro back at times, but it’s always useful to have some backup for the big battles. One of the kids can roller skate, another one has a monster suit, etc. Some abilities are more useful than others of course, but Hiro can’t make everything appear to be super brilliant.
Fred’s the one with the monster suit and he’s always joking around. Turns out that the guy is rich, which is certainly useful and he’s the comedy of the series. None of his jokes are remotely funny, but he’s a good character and you need someone to mess with the team dynamic at times. GoGo is the roller skates girl and probably the only member who’s always ready for a fight. She does a good job of fighting back against the mysterious villain, but there’s only so much you can do with hockey pucks and roller skates.
Honey Lemon’s the most bland character of the bunch and as a result, she doesn’t really get any powers. She had something to do with bubbles or lights I believe, but her ability was not impressive. Wasabi easily had the best powers even if he didn’t use them to their fullest extent. He had Ice blades, which could really deal some massive damage if they could ever hit. Don’t underestimate good tech, but the problem is that the villain had the best tech.
The villain went by the name of Yokai although I never remember anyone actually calling him that. Using the nanobots at his disposal, he can essentially do just about anything. They can lift, move things, transport him around at high speeds, etc. He essentially had the upper hand against the heroes a lot of the time and whenever the heroes would come close to defeating him, they’d stop Hiro and remind him that they’re supposed to be heroes and must play by the books. Yokai gets a sob story as you might have expected. It’s a touching story I suppose, but it doesn’t really excuse the fact that he went about obtaining his goal in a very iffy way. Let’s face it, Hiro and Tadashi (Hiro’s brother) would have been glad to have helped him.
Sadly, the after credits scene of the film isn’t in the manga version, but that’s okay. It’s harder to do a twist ending in a manga although it would certainly have been awesome if it was included. The ending is rather complete and the mission of saving Tadashi can be considered as enough of a cliff hanger. I think another 2-4 volumes would have helped the series pacing wise though. It would have given the team more time to train, fight other villains to gain experience, and then they could have tackled the final boss. As it stands, the manga moves at a very high speed and that’s a good thing, but it also means that the adventure is over that much sooner. There’s not a whole lot of time to get to know the characters.
For example, Hiro’s a main character, but there’s not a lot of time to get to know him. He comes across as a little generic, which could have been eliminated had the series been longer. Still, he’s a good hero and someone that you can root for. I’m not a fan of Baymax though. I don’t find him charismatic or likable and I was just never able to get into the character. I would have preferred the comic design or a more aggressive personality. His A.I. is just a little too limited and the personality doesn’t match the character design. He can fight a little, but typically only as a last resort and by then the odds are stacked against him. He puts the heroes in a tough spot a few times.
The art’s a little cluttered during the fight scenes, but pretty good otherwise. In a sense, it has that “adaption” feel to it so you can tell that it’s not an original story. Most manga series have that effect like Kingdom Hearts or the Pokemon movie adventures. It’s probably intentional or perhaps the artists are trying really hard to emulate the movie’s style, which is how that happens. Either way, the art is fairly good and I was glad that the manga tried to stretch out the fights as much as possible. More action is always a good way to pad the volumes.
Overall, Big Hero 6 is a fun manga. It’s not very deep so don’t expect much more from it than a quick action adventure, but that’s all it needs. You know what you’re getting into from the get go and there’s not a whole lot that you can do in 2 short volumes. There are no really bad characters and no really big negatives. It’s a lack of positives versus having negatives that limits it from a higher score, but a solid seven is the end goal that should always be desired as a minimum. Getting lower than a 7 is what’s a cause for worry. This score is certainly a lot higher than my next few manga reviews so…prepare yourself!
Overall 7/10
All right, it’s Star Wars time! This film got a lot of hype as to be expected since this was a sequel that people had been waiting for. It smashed the box office and looks to easily reach the billion mark while still having enough steam to get a few extra hundred million. I’m in the camp that still doesn’t see it challenging Titanic or Avatar, but it will go far. After seeing the film, I can safely confirm that it is a solid movie. It’s not great, but it’s pretty good and that’s good enough for now.
The film’s plot is a little hard to describe in part because it doesn’t have much of a plot at times. This is actually a bit of a negative for me, but that’ll be mentioned later. The Sith may be gone and the Empire is gone, but the First Order has arrived so the resistance is still the resistance and nothing has really changed for them. At this rate, they’ll never be able to cease control of the universe or become the big heroes that they’ve always wanted to be. Times are tough and it’s a losing battle as all of the Jedi have been destroyed with Luke Skywalker being the final one. The villains are looking for him, but nobody knows where he is.
Meanwhile, Rey is a lady who lives on a desert planet and she comes across a robot who has a map, which leads to Luke Skywalker. Finn also landed on the planet after barely escaping from the First Order and he pretends to be a part of the Resistance to impress Rey. The two of them must now make it to the Resistance to give them the coordinates and if they want to live to tell the tale, they’ll need some help from Han Solo. The First Order is serious business so the heroes have to watch their step.
Rey’s a decent main character. She knows how to fight and decides to help BB-8 get to Luke. She’s fairly selfless and does well to survive in such a harsh environment on her own. To an extent she’s fairly generic, but that helps to fuel the similarities between her and Luke. I’d prefer for her to be a little more headstrong, but maybe that trait will come with practice and overconfidence. That would definitely make her a great heroine! She puts up a good fight in the final showdown although I felt like the fight scene was a little bizarre.
As mentioned, she is already an experienced combatant and in particular, she’s good with a weapon. This training seems to leave her in the final fight or maybe it was just a problem with the choreography. For some reason, she constantly throws out thrusts (A stabbing motion with the Lightsaber) which leaves her vulnerable many times, but Kylo is so weak that it doesn’t end up mattering all that much. The fight was still odd though because Rey seemed experienced enough in the intro to have fought a little better than what she displayed there.
Rey is much better than her male counterpart, Finn. For starters, I didn’t like how Finn was constantly out of breath for most of his earlier scenes. I get that he was a little nervous, but cmon now. It’s not the greatest way to make the main character seem cool. He panicked a lot and the possible romance between him and Rey is already off to a terrible start. This is why we have the friend zone, so random romances won’t occur. I give the film props for avoiding this right away though and it’s possible that this will lead nowhere, which would be great.
Still, I just didn’t find Finn to be a cool character. It doesn’t help that he got wrecked in his first big fight scene. It’s good that he realized what it means to be a hero, but realizing that a little sooner and helping the civilians out on the planet in the intro would have been nice. Better yet, he could have decided not to abandon everyone because he was scared. This character has a ways to go to be even slightly likable.
That being said, Finn’s much better than Kylo. Kylo is a terrible villain and I love how Wikipedia hyped him up a lot. They say that he’s already shown to be as strong as Darth Vader and in interviews they were saying that he’s not totally evil and believes himself to be morally justified in his actions. Either a large part of the film never made it past the director’s cut or it was just false hype. He basically defines the term “Generic villain” and the worst part is that he’s an emotional villain. Kylo is just plain sad and the instant that his mask comes off, the character became a joke.
Did you think that the Jupiter Ascending main villain was bad? This guy’s just like that. He gets emotional constantly and is always panicking. He is always on the verge of tears or losing his revolve so he has to talk to a broken mask and an old man to steady himself. Unlike Vader, he allows his underlings to sass him, but since he’s constantly getting humiliated, I suppose that it’s tough to think of a counter. When a guy who’s never even used a lightsaber before it able to hold his own against the main villain, there’s something wrong. Even when Rey is wrecking Kylo, you have to wonder why anybody fears him. His Force abilities are clearly not very good and he forgets to use them when in the heat of battle. He gets overwhelmed a lot and I can’t say that I will be glad to see him in the sequel. This is a villain who is not necessary and I’d probably take any other Sith from the Star Wars series are a better villain. There are probably ones out there who are even worse in terms of character, but I’m sure that they’d at least be tough. The old man isn’t very interesting either so I’m going to be ready for some new villains to spice things up. I want the Sith to return.
So far, they’re definitely not hinting towards any of the old villains showing up, but that’s okay. The video games and comics will likely deal with the what if scenarios more. The old guard doesn’t necessarily need to show up and upstage the new guys, but I definitely wouldn’t mind since they have earned a spot on the hype train. One old character that I was glad got a small role was C3PO and R2-D2. C3PO’s all right and beats the other robots since he can at least talk in English (Talking in gibberish with a character translating is always annoying) but he’s still not the most interesting character out there. I’m waiting for him to grow an arm cannon and start firing, now that would be epic!
The visuals are pretty fun and I’m always up for a nice aerial fight in space. The characters have their blasters ready and the Lightsaber battles are also good. They are noticeably better than the older films although III had the best fights from the series. Once we get more Jedi and Sith, that should probably change as this is more of a prelude than anything else. Having more action scenes would have definitely been good since the film is actually pretty light in that category. More exploration and dialogue than anything else, but building up the universe is important. I’m assuming that the sequel will be upping the stakes. I can’t say that the soundtrack was too memorable, but I’m almost positive that there was an opera styled song in there somewhere. Films rarely have very memorable soundtracks so it’s not a big deal. We had the classic intro theme, which was certainly fun to hear.
For better or worse, this film was really aimed at creating as much nostalgia as possible. Similar to Avengers Assemble (Cartoon) the film tries to reenact as many scenes as possible from the original film. I dare say that most of this film is filled with references to the older ones. We have the classic Darth Vader vs Luke fight scene, dashing across the desert, and dozens of other such moments. This is fine for the most part and it’s nice to remember the old scenes, but it also left little time for character development, fights, and new plots to move forward. Even the climax is extremely similar to a classic occurrence, but it’s not quite as epic as the original, but that can be said for just about every scene. It tries very hard to be Episode IV, but it just doesn’t work.
A complaint that I had with the film is that it actually dragged on a little towards the middle. I’m not going to call the film boring, but there were parts of it were you would just be waiting for something to happen. It’s just not the most fast paced film out there and I feel like the film could have just been a lot more exciting. The characters limited it, but even with that, a few more space fights or some cool dialogue about Siths and Jedi could have helped. In part, I blame this on the fact that Luke is the only Jedi now. I think this was a pretty poor decision to have made because I don’t want the status quo to have reverted all the way back to IV. It just makes it all the easier to add in more homages and remake scenes from the original.
It was nice to see Han Solo again after so long. He did a good job during the fight scenes and showed that he’s still more adept at it than Chewy. Chewy meant well, but for some reason he wasn’t firing his shots all that accurately so he was mostly a liability this time. Ah well, he can still roar and Han is fine with firing the shots himself. Unlike Luke, Han is a character who continues to look good and does his older self justice. Unfortunately, I can tell that Luke’s going to be a very dicey character. He’ll probably snap out of this soon, but let’s just say that his personality had a big change due to a tragic event. As a result, he’s going to be the generic old guy who whispers words of doom constantly. He basically left the universe to fend for itself, which is very irresponsible and is just sad. I was never the biggest fan of Luke, but this is a new low for the Jedi.
As you can see, I certainly had my share of complaints during the film and it was enough for me to know instantly that it was going to only go as high as a 7. A 7’s pretty good, but it does seem low for Star Wars. That being said, it was still a good film and one of the better ones this year. It’s a fun sci-fi film and while you probably couldn’t call it an epic as much as the original, it still has its stakes. Several planets are blown up in the film and the new weapon is pretty intense, I even created a level in Mario Maker based on the concept.
Ranking the Star Wars films from best to worst, Episode IV is still my favorite. That one’s simply classic at this point and did a great job of starting the franchise off on a high note. Next would be Episode III, Episode VII, then Episode VI, Episode V, Episode I, and finally Episode II. The Force Awakens is pretty high in the list so it’ll be cool to see where the sequel stands. It’s too bad that the main villain will likely return, but aside from that I can easily see the sequel being a solid improvement. We’ll likely have more fight scenes and that’s always exciting.
A good thing that Star Wars has, which has stood the test of time is that the film’s tone/atmosphere is good. It’s pleasant and is part of why the film is easy to just watch and enjoy. I’d compare it to the MCU (Iron Man, Avengers) films in that regard. It goes less for comedy although still has some of it within, but it’s not always foggy outside or the heroes are always panicking. It’s not super grimy and since this is the future, I think everything should look pretty modern. It’s why I was thrilled when Rey got off the desert planet since that wasn’t the best locale.
Overall, I enjoyed The Force Awakens. Now Star Wars can be around for the next generation and once the trilogy is over, we can fully compare it to the original two. I’m fairly confident that this trilogy will end up winning as a trio of 7s is actually fairly likely. This film was what Battle of Gods was for DBZ. It tried to bring back the old audience while getting new viewers in. With that over, I expect everything to get more intense in the sequel and I’m ready for some epic Force abilities from both the Light and the Dark side. We’ve also got the spinoffs and prequels coming up so Star Wars is here to stay at last. Hopefully it has long legs in the box office and continues to rack up the cash so we can also get some new video games!
Overall 7/10
Inside Out was a fun animated film. I’d say that it was a bit better than I expected although I did find one of the main characters to be pretty annoying and the moral at the end of the film was pretty iffy. I can’t say that I agreed with it or at least the way that it was handled. Still, Inside Out holds its own here and the writing is solid.
Imagine a world where humans were actually complex machines which had their emotions become tangible beings that can control the person’s actions. Each emotion had a role to play and they worked in harmony to control every decision that you made. If they were to ever have a big disagreement and split up, then the human robot would shut down for a brief amount of time. The film goes into the details of how the human machine works in great detail, which is pretty fun. The actual plot of the film follows Joy as the main character.
Joy is essentially the ideal character. She’s extremely optimistic and always tries to see the positives in a situation. It’s easy to root for her and she does her best to ensure that every day is a good one. Unfortunately, Sadness wants to corrupt everything that she touches and gets Joy into a lot of trouble as the two of them fall away from the control center. They must now make it back to the human robot quickly or the girl’s social life will be ruined. After all, how can a person have a good life without any joy or sadness? The only emotions left are disgust, anger, and stress. Definitely not a good way to live there. Can Joy make it back or will Sadness continue to hold her back?
It’s probably obvious from the summary, but I do not like Sadness. She’s a debbie downer and the kind of person who doesn’t even enjoy Christmas. Essentially every line that she has is a complaint or a sigh where she tries to make everyone feel bad. Not content with just making herself sad, she tries to bring down the mood for everyone else as well. Sadness even goes as far as to corrupt the human’s happy memories and turn them into sad ones. In case you think that this is all just an accident and Sadness doesn’t mean it…think again. She does this on purpose. There are several times when Joy tells Sadness not to touch anything, but she does anyway. She ignores the warnings and causes as much damage as possible. Typically, she’ll do this immediately after being warned, which makes the whole situation even worse.
Joy is the opposite and ends up being a very good character. She’s essentially perfect. A character who’s always determined and likes to do things the right way. I’ve already talked about her so let’s move on to the next character. Disgust probably gets the smallest role out of the emotions and I can’t say that she’s a good character either. I don’t even consider Disgust to be a primary emotion, but I suppose that we were running out of them by this point. She doesn’t help out at all either here so the group would have been better off without her. At least she doesn’t openly try to put the team in jeopardy though.
Nervousness or whatever the emotion is officially called is decent. He’s always stressed out about everything that’s happening in the world so he’s on top of his game. He was even one step ahead of Joy when she asked him to write down a list of the things that can go wrong. Stress always brings his A game and he’s not afraid to go for the win. Finally, we have Anger, who’s another solid character. It’s always fun to see him grab the controls and blow up as he goes for the win. He tends to lose, but he talks a good game and Anger has more character than most of the other emotions. He certainly doesn’t let himself get pushed around although he tends to make the situation worse for his human.
Aside from the emotions, we’ve also got the other humans who have emotions of their own. We typically don’t see the other emotions, but it’s always interesting to see their other views. This even applies to dogs, cats, and just about anything else. The parents get a decently large role here. They’re pretty nice and the whole situation with the house can be a bit dicey, but they weren’t over the top as far as being unreasonable goes so the main character had no reason to be mad at them. It’s all because Joy wasn’t there of course, but you’ll just feel bad for them. That being said, there’s no logical reason why a pizza store wouldn’t have pepperoni. I think that was a bit iffy if you ask me and the scene could have been written better if we needed a situation to give the main character some tension. Bing Bong is an imaginary friend who couldn’t keep up with the opponent which goes by the name of age. I definitely didn’t mind him leaving the film as he was another character that I didn’t like. He nearly destroyed Joy by not thinking about what his secret short cut really was. His rocket was decent, but if you were supposed to cry for Bing Bong at the end..I can safely say that it didn’t happen in my case. He wasn’t the kind of character that you would get very attached too and he was just too much. If only Bing Bong had been cooler as I did like the name.
The film isn’t too short, which is good since it gives us some time to see all of the characters and explore this concept. I like the concept behind the idea that our emotions are actually sentient beings who control the human shells from within. A whole movie can be made about that…and it was! That being said, I didn’t agree with how the moral was presented as mentioned above. Basically, we are supposed to wrap our heads around the fact that our happy memories have sadness with them and that makes them even better. LOL No!
Let me give you an example. Brace yourselves here. I remember a few years back when I managed to acquire pounds and pounds of chocolates to save for my birthday. Dozens of different bags of chocolate chips, cookies, brownies, ice cream, and more were assembled. Seriously, we probably spent over 200 dollars on snacks alone for the Birthday, but it was worth it! I grabbed a huge Turkey container (Think of a big pan for pasta, but deep enough to fill in 3x that) and I stuffed the snacks inside before eating. I ate for hours and hours until my stomach was so full and I was so stuffed that my teeth began to hurt. Do I want to remember my teeth hurting? No, I block that out and just remember how amazingly good the pot of snacks was. My point is that happy memories are epic because they are happy. We don’t need any sadness messing that up.
Sadness does help us develop our character and make us better people, but it doesn’t mean that we have to corrupt our happy memories. That’s exactly the train of thought that makes people so miserable in day to day life. Whenever someone says that they aren’t looking forward to Christmas or always has a pouting expression on their face, I feel like facepalming myself. Enjoy every day folks because that’s the point of life. While we’re living, we may as well be having a blast. So, I feel like Inside Out dropped the ball on that, but it’s fine…we can’t win them all.
The animation is all right. It’s not really my style and I’ve seen animation from a decade ago and even older than that, which looks better. Still, this American Animation is really well liked and gets good reviews, but give me something a little flashier and I’ll be happy. The human characters are drawn in that intriguing CGI style that lets you immediately know that this is an American film. While we are way ahead of Japan in Live Action, they are decades ahead of us in animation. At this point, I’ve accepted the gap as a fact in life, but maybe we can change that someday.
Overall, Inside Out is a good film and it deserves the positive reviews. I had fun watching it and the film does a good job of world building. It’s an interesting film from start to finish and it never drags on. Good films don’t need action scenes to be enjoyable as this one proves, but then the writing has to be on point. Luckily that was the case here. I’m not ready to say that it’s as good as Frozen as the ice themed film still has the edge, but this one is on the same level. It just needed a super catchy song to keep up with Frozen and that didn’t happen. Take Sadness away from the film completely and who knows…maybe it could have won! I don’t think a sequel would be as good though. Certainly not if we had any hintings of romance. The emotions inside of the mom were already pretty iffy and it was an unnecessary scene that they had. The ending helped to stop that, but things could have been dicey. I still want a sequel though, but let’s make it a direct to DVD futuristic robot action adventure story to shake things up.
Overall 7/10
Cinderella is a classic film and I actually got a chance to review the original about half a year ago. It’s a pleasant film and you can see why people are so fond of it even if it’s not my cup of tea. That being said, the remake leaves a little to be desired. It tries too hard to be emotional and some characters like Cinderella’s father look pretty bad. I’d also argue that Cinderella herself isn’t a great character here.
I’m sure that you are all aware of the story. Cinderella’s mother died when the girl was still young and then her father decided to marry someone else and then leave home for a few months. He died while overseas and Cinderella went from being a girl of high standing to a slave. She finds magical strength through her fairy god mother and marries the prince so she can regain her social power. The plot limits the film’s potential, but if handled right it could still be good.
First off, I did not like Cinderella’s father at all. He certainly doesn’t come off as being very smart or wise and he is played the entire time. He marries a widow who has two rather mean spirited kids and then leaves Ella to fare for herself. I’ll just stick to calling her Cinderella since it held up I suppose. You just have to wonder how the father did not notice how sinister his new family members were and he was very oblivious. I also felt that he moved on too quickly even considering that there was a time skip. He was a very unlikable character.
Naturally, he was not as bad as the step sisters. They’re bullies who pick on Cinderella the whole time and since the main character doesn’t know how to fight or engage in verbal fisticuffs, she’s easy prey for them. Cinderella’s step mother is also fairly mean to her as she just wants to be rich and doesn’t like Cinderella from the start. Dealing with the three bullies turns out to be too much for the delicate main character.
Even Cinderella ended up being an unlikable character in the end. I like main characters to be nice. It’s a good trait and one that you don’t see as much as I would like. The problem is that Cinderella is a push over and there’s a very fine line there. Keep in mind that the place was still hers, but the step mother asks her to move to the attic and Cinderella allows this. The step mother gives her slave chores to do and slowly takes away all of Cinderella’s possessions. “Did she just walk up slowly and wreck Cinderella’s dress?” Props if you got the meme reference, but Cinderella basically allows herself to be a verbal punching bag for the new recruits.
One scene where you will also be frustrated with the main character is when she allows the cat to almost destroy one of her little mouse friends because the step mother stared her down. Cinderella seriously has no backbone in this film and allowing one of her friends to see his life flash before his eyes was the last straw. You’ll have a tough time finding a weaker willed main character no matter what film you decide to watch. Naturally, the romance was also nothing special and Cinderella was basically just escaping her situation. Falling in love with someone after meeting them for like 4-5 minutes is certainly iffy by any stretch of the imagination.
The prince was decent and I’ll give him kudos for not hunting the animal that he nearly destroyed. Hunting is wrong and now he has learned his lesson for good! His plot had some drama as his father died and there was a traitor in his army, but I actually preferred this plot to the main one. The royal characters were all fairly interesting and it’s always nice to see their social power. The bullies wouldn’t be able to stop these guys so the Prince was able to have his justice at last.
I think you can probably tell that this film is getting under a 5. For the most part, it’s a fairly charming film, but it starts to fall to pieces once the father dies as the bullying starts and drags on for quite a while. Another negative is actually the costume designs. I haven’t actually had to launch a complaint against a live action film for this in quite a while (Since the Charlie’s Angel days) but there is a lot of cleavage and it’s very overdone. The film was simply trying to copy the style from back in the day, but it’s still excessive and just not done in a classy way. The film could have easily used the same style of clothes without making it a different size. It’s a rare negative for live action films, but that just makes this error all the worse. I actually thought this since the trailer for the film first came out and I was sad to see that the film hadn’t changed.
Cinderella’s fairy god mother also didn’t look too good in this film either. For whatever reason (For comedy) she did not know what she was doing and came off as more of a novice than she should have. The original Fairy God Mother is fun because she’s a pro and with enough prep time, she can take down any foe. This one nearly destroyed herself by making a pumpkin too large and her scenes actually managed to drag on quite a bit. This is why changing things from the source material backfires so often. It’s simply not done most of the time and the film needs to recognize and accept this before moving on.
Due to the film taking place back in the olden days, there isn’t a whole lot of colorful scenery to look at. That’s too bad and while it’s not terrible, you could easily pass this film off as a 2005 film rather than 2015 and that’s always a bad thing in my book. Seriously, a 2015 film should look modern and this film already feels dated in some areas.
Overall, Cinderella’s plot simply isn’t for me so a future film will need to really change things up in order to win for me. For starters, Cinderella should be a nice lead, but she shouldn’t just let herself get bullied the whole time. Honestly, writing out the step sisters and all of their cringe worthy dialogue would be a nice step up for the film. They simply aren’t needed and just keeping the step mom around would keep the plot virtually the same. That, or just having one step sister. The film does try to have its comedy moments at times, but they’re pretty uninspired. This film may try to take you for a ride, but sometimes the best thing to do is to simply step off. If you’re looking for a good romance drama, I recommend watching Yugioh Bonds Beyond Time and just remember that a drama without romance can still be a very good film!
Overall 4/10
Dumbo is one of the oldest Disney films, but that didn’t stop it from being a box office hit. It’s easy to see why you could like Dumbo as it’s a simple, but direct film. It cuts to the chase right away since it’s so short and the characters can be fun. It’s definitely not amazing, but I was glad to see Dumbo’s mother take out the human with the whip. Those guys definitely needed to be taught their place!
The plot of the movie is that an Elephant is born with very large ears. The others decide that this deformity means that he should turn in his elephant card and they basically decide to give him the silent treatment. Dumbo’s mom tries to help, but she is put into solitary. Dumbo’s pretty sad at this turn of events, but luckily he meets up with Timothy Q. Timothy has never liked bullies so he puts the other elephants in their place and tries to cheer Dumbo up. He shows the elephant the meaning of friendship and compassion in the face of adversity. He may be small, but he has a big heart!
Timothy really steals the show as he’s easily the best character in the film. His scenes are always a lot of fun like when he intimidated the elephants. He gets Dumbo to get out of his shell and is directly responsible for the film having any kind of happy ending. Without him, the film wouldn’t have been nearly as good. Dumbo’s a decent character, but not really my kind of main character. He’s a little too quiet and gets pushed around by everyone else all the time. A little more spark and intensity from Dumbo would have definitely been appreciated. The ability to fly with his ears is quite awesome though and he should be proud of them. The other Elephants are just jealous and now the world will be as well since he has become such a sensation!
I also liked the birds who flew around as they were the only ones to get the edge on Timothy at one point. While they were a little hostile at first, they ended up being good allies in the end. They showed up after a very intense scene as Timothy and Dumbo found out why you should never drink any kind of alcoholic beverage. They had a very intense acid dream where Elephants merged and the pink lights tried to blind you. I thought that was very intense and while the scene did last a while, it wasn’t painfully long like something out of 2001 the Space Odyssey. The scene was fun and handled with a good amount of tact.
That also brings me into one of the main positives for the film, which is that the animation holds up incredibly well considering how old this film is. This was in the 40’s, but you could easily mistake it for an 80’s-90’s film. It’s sad that we have animation that is nearly 100 years old, yet can beat out some of the modern cartoons like Uncle Grandpa or even Teen Titans Go in terms of pure animation. Dumbo just feels more solid and certainly more vibrant. The colors really leap out at you.
As this is an old film, the writing is also quite good as well. The characters all sound fairly real. Naturally the bullies aren’t likable, but at least their insults are fairly dignified and you can tell that they have a lot of experience with the insults. They are ultimately defeated and humiliated on stage so they should have probably realized that they were doomed to fall.
My only real problem with the film is that things can get a little too sad for Dumbo. At one point, he is reduced to being a clown and jumping into a pie. The fall was quite large and he actually got slightly injured, which was a big no no for me. Luckily, Dumbo tipped the scales at the end, but some more domination from the young lead would have been a lot of fun as well. Of course, the film was quite short so it didn’t have that much time for Dumbo to really show off his moves, but if he was older, he could have handled the situation a little better.
Overall, Dumbo’s a good film. It’s very short so there’s not a whole lot more to say about it. It’s very peaceful and you’ll enjoy watching it as a calming experience. Once again, I’ve got to say that the animation is very impressive and that factor alone makes it completely worth seeing. You’ll quickly forget that this film came out wayyyyy back in the 1940’s. The intro was also neat as he probably helped to invent the old tale of how babies were actually dropped at your door step by a large bird. Even Yoshi’s Island had fun with that in one of the games as we learned Mario’s true origin. Dumbo never got as popular as the other Disney films, but it can hold its own. I’d recommend checking this film out so you can be ready to the remake. I just hope that the new Dumbo film ends up being good as a film about any animal can always be verrrrry dangerous!
Overall 6/10
Bridge To Terabithia is a Disney film that came out a while ago and yet it is probably still one of the more well known films based off of a book from the company. Disney needs to adapt more of them to give us a break from the usual Hunger Games titles. That being said, the ending of this film does severely hurt it, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It should be noted that I attempt not to mention the actual ending directly, but it will become pretty obvious as I talk about it. So for spoiler purposes, I recommend not checking out this film until you see the movie..and I don’t really recommend checking the movie out because of the ending so it’s one of those cycles…
The main character of the film is named Jesse and his life isn’t very fun at the moment. The kids at school bully him and his parents seem very distant or downright inhospitable at times. The only character who actually likes him is his little sister and he’s not typically around for her. Jesse is the kind of kid who gets bullied a lot because he typically just takes it. Unfortunately, dishing it back out could also get him expelled. Things look up when a girl moves into town. It should be noted that Jesse’s hobby is running and he was the fastest kid in the class. Not anymore! The girl easily crushes him in the race and tries to be friends.
Jesse naturally feels salty (“Salty” meaning that a person is upset, irritated, or sulky because they have just been humiliated in a sport or battle) about this and doesn’t want to be friends with her for a while. Eventually he cracks. It’s not hard to choose to be friends with the nicest character in the film after all. Her name is Leslie and she suggests that they hang out at a club house so that they can get away from the outside world. She loves to imagine things and gets Jesse to play with her. It’s rough going at first since Jesse forgot to stretch his imagination before he left home, but he gets the hang of it. What can go wrong now?
That’s the plot in a nutshell. The film tries to make Jesse’s life before Leslie arrives as dark as possible. He likes drawing and running, but those two hobbies can’t last for very long in a day so he’s typically bored. His older sisters are typically pretty mean to him while his younger one has higher values than the others. His dad is willing to destroy animal creatures so that he can make some money and he’s a very unreasonable character. The mom simply isn’t around very often.
The contrast is very clear once Leslie is introduced to the mix. Her family is pretty awesome and reminds me of mine. They all hang out together, paint, have snacks, and it’s all merry. The folks even allow Leslie to keep the dog that Jesse gave her even though they had no warning beforehand. That’s pretty understanding right? It really makes you feel bad about Jesse. It should be noted that the bullies also attempt to take on Leslie, but they grow bored a lot quicker so she gets to be left alone a lot after the initial encounters.
The film was going well…until the final event. That was pretty disappointing and a really bad way to end the film. It happens suddenly so at least you can’t say that you were really expecting it unless you followed the foreshadowing scenes. (Diving paper, tide rising abnormally high, rope seeming to be withered…etc) Needless to say, the twist may have been unexpected, but that doesn’t make it good. I would have much preferred a fake out, like the characters were simply tricking Jesse. It would have been a little out of character, but I could have handled that.
I give the film kudos for actually mentioning God and Heaven. The heroes have a discussion about it where the sister tells Leslie that you will go to hell if you don’t believe in God. Leslie denies this and she’s pretty young so it can probably be odd to hear back then, but the sister actually made valid points here. Does this mean that Leslie would hypothetically go to hell if everything ended that instant? You could say so, but I am inclined to say that it’s no guarantee.
Think about a situation where a baby or a toddler dies. They hadn’t truly made a decision to follow God or not since they were so young. God is omnipotent so he knows what they would have decided and I believe that this is how the system works. (Or the tip of the iceberg at least) So, there’s always a chance that Leslie would have accepted Christ into her life a little later on once she had really begun to think about it. Our minds aren’t really developed until we’re in our later teens or early adulthood. I doubt that many of us look at things the same way that we did when we were kids right?
It is still a pretty sad topic to think about though. After all, there are many “good” or nice people who will go to hell regardless of how moral they were during their lives. That’s because morality will never be enough to get you to Heaven. The only way there is through Jesus Christ. If you don’t accept him into your heart, no amount of good works will save you from going to hell. That’s why it’s always so important to preach the gospel and get people to really think about it so that they can hopefully see the truth. There’s no guarantee that Leslie would have eventually become a Christian, but at least Jesse’s household is a Christian one. Since she had started going to church with him on Sundays, there’s always the chance that she would have started to believe. Sometimes, all it takes is one really good sermon to make everything click. Also, since this is a film, I can just choose to believe that she would have accepted the Lord into her heart so the ending is a lot happier than it was.
Now, how old do you have to be to die and just go to hell if you didn’t accept Christ? That’s hard to answer and I’m sure that it varies from person to person. It’s generally accepted that babies and toddlers wouldn’t be sent to hell as they couldn’t comprehend the notion of Christianity at the time and I personally expect that the same would be true for all minors. After that, it’s anyone’s guess. Only God knows such things after all.
Back to the film. I still wasn’t crazy about the ending. Even with the happy ending that I thought up, it’s still really sad for everyone in the present. The film tries to end on a bright note by having Jesse continue his sister, but it just feels hollow. You won’t be able to feel good about that part because you’re still reeling from the ending. Bridge To Terabithia certainly did a good job of making sure that the ending is sad…but maybe it was too good. Sad scenes aren’t bad in question, but the sadder the scene, the more likely that I’m not going to like it. After all, we’re watching this for escapism right? Let’s keep the nitty gritty out of this.
I’ve been trying to think of what the “best” sad scene was. Something sad, yet not overdone too much so you can still enjoy the rest of what you were watching. I’m coming up with a blank here. Krillin’s death in DBZ comes to the mind as that is definitely near the top. Hinata’s fate against Pain, Nami’s loss to Arlong. There are many scenes that come to mind. The main similarity between them all is that the main hero gets into a rage after the scenes happen, which is impossible to do with a live action film. I feel like the rage helps to offset the sadness because then you really get angry at the villain alongside the hero and root for him to drastically win. That’s my view on the matter anyway.
As this film deals with the imagination a lot, the film decides to have fun with that. Mythical creatures attack at several points and imagination begins to meld with reality. This leads to some odd scenes where trees come alive and gremlins attack, but it’s all fake so you essentially take it with a grain of salt. The dog was really cool in these action scenes though and always got the better of the villains. He was and is a true hero.
Overall, Bridge To Terabithia is a fun film until the ending. Jesse saved an animal from crushing the film even more through animal violence and Leslie was a really good character. It’s safe to say that I wasn’t a fan of Jesse from start to finish. (He didn’t help his sister when a bully showed up and he constantly forgot how to imagine and made things tough for Leslie) Of course, Leslie being such a perfect (The film really tries to make her perfect and essentially succeeds since she has no negative qualities) character makes the ending even dicier. The supporting characters didn’t add much to the film and I’m sure that we’re all tired of watching bullies, but I suppose that they help for character development and all. It’s an entertaining film, but I’m afraid that the ending throws all of that out the window. So, I can’t recommend the film and you should watch Yugioh 3D Bonds Beyond Time instead. That film has some tragic moments like a city getting burnt and someone losing his dragon, but it never goes too far. It’s juuuuust right.
Overall 3/10
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