Tag Archives: Musical

It’s Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown Review

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It’s time to look at another classic Charlie Brown special. This one is a musical so that is definitely a change of pace for the series. It’s also one of the stronger entries in the series as the whole dancing gimmick is handled very well. Aside from Peppermint Patty’s song, the rest of them do a good job of copying the style of the 80’s. The retro songs can definitely be a lot of fun like in the classic Transformers animated film. The main theme is still as hype as it was when the first film came out and I think good tunes like this can be timeless. As a result, Snoopy’s dancing numbers are quite good.

The plot is fairly nonexistent here since the music takes center stage. One part of the plot is that Snoopy dances a lot by night and by day he sleeps a lot. This makes Charlie think that his dog is slacking off, but luckily Sally takes him to school for show and tell. Snoopy reveals his true identity as a dancing mastermind and the day is saved. Charlie didn’t get to do much in this special and even Sally told him off in the end. It wasn’t his best showing, but at least he put in some decent effort. Charlie’s probably just expecting too much out of Snoopy.

His faithful dog certainly stole the show here. The dancing numbers were great and Snoopy really knows how to dance to a tune. I wouldn’t have minded if the special had added even more dance numbers for the guy. They wouldn’t drag on because of how solidly it was handled. If you ever start to wonder why Snoopy is such a fan favorite, make sure to watch this special. You certainly won’t have any more doubts after that.

The animation is up to the usual Peanuts standard. Everything looks clear and the character designs are good. The soundtrack is what has significantly improved from the other specials, which is really the whole point of this movie when you think about it. It almost goes without saying. As per usual, this special is very short so it’s very easy to just breeze through. It never starts to drag on as a result and that’s one of the positives of being so short.

Flashbeagle is a fun little feature. The writing is solid and the characters are likable. In the end, that’s what typically makes for a good Peanuts special even if there’s not a whole lot more to say about this one. The whole thing is over in the blink of an eye and Snoopy is left on top once again. Snoopy can be a little inconsistent at times in these specials as he is a pro one second and a rookie the next, but it’s the price to pay for being in a comedy. No character is safe as they could be nerfed/weakened at any point in order to get a joke across. That’s definitely a double edged sword if you ask me, but as I said earlier, the writing is solid for the most part here.

Overall, Flashbeagle was a lot of fun and it shows that parodies/homages can certainly be good if they are handled right. Nowadays, parodies have a bit of a bad reputation thanks to titles like Transmorphers and Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus. Well done parodies are rare, but I’m still waiting for one to really hit it out of the park. I can’t quite say that Flashbeagle’s that home run hit since it can only go so far in its format, but it is a good title that I would recommend. I’m one step closer to watching all of the Charlie Brown shorts.

Overall 7/10

Labyrinth Review

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I saw Labyrinth a while back and it’s one of those classic 80’s-90’s films that they just don’t make anymore. I definitely hadn’t heard of it until about 5 minutes before I started the film so it’s always interesting to delve into the unknown realms. We get some catchy songs and the overall soundtrack is quite good. It’s certainly heavily inspired by Alice in Wonderland, but instead of a Card Queen, we’ve got a reality warping trickster! He’s no Cheshire Cat though!

Sarah has always loved fairy tales. She often imagined herself being the heroine who would defeat the Goblin King, but a sudden rain shower completely destroyed her ambitions. Her parents decide to have a nice dinner outside so they leave Sarah to babysit her baby brother. Unfortunately, the two don’t get along very well so Sarah quickly makes a contract with the Goblin King to spirit the baby away. The plan works and the baby is gone, but Sarah quickly realizes that her situation won’t be very good if the parents discover this predicament. She must now venture into the Goblin Kingdom, destroy the kind, and save her brother. Hopefully she brought a weapon along!

Luckily, the Goblin King does have a sense of humor and doesn’t mind making the game a little fair. (As far as Sarah knows anyway) He teleports her to the kingdom so that she has a fighting chance, but Sarah must get through a long maze before sunset to rescue the baby or he will turn into a goblin. The maze is rigged with invisible exits and a lot of turns so she will have to rely on the locals to help her. However, are they really here to help or is it all just another trick? It’s time for her to find out!

You can probably already guess this, but Sarah’s not a very likable character. Babysitting is so fun when it’s just a baby since you can turn on some video games and just play for a few hours. Sarah just can’t take this level of stress though and panics just from a little crying. Sure, she saves the baby in the end, but her character just isn’t likable throughout the film and the development wasn’t enough to save her. Her dog is the true hero here as he outruns the villains and constantly gets in the way of the villains. He’d do Scooby Doo proud with his various antics! The villains know better than to mess with him.

Hoggle is Sarah’s main ally during the film. He likes to play both sides as he pretends to be working with Sarah while still in the employ of the Goblin King and vice versa. In the end, he decides to throw in his lot with Sarah and they become friends, but I can’t say that Hoggle was very good either. He’s more annoying than anything and I rarely like Goblins although maybe that can change once we get a planet busting one. Hoggle certainly betrays the whole cast a lot, but at least he’s helpful at times.

The Goblin King was probably my favorite character of the film. Only probably since the dog naturally wins if he counts. The Goblin King doesn’t play fair and he has the massive advantage against the other characters since his abilities are nigh infinite. Still, he knows how to have a good time and he even has a few dance scenes and sings a song to the baby. He throws the baby up and down a few times, but always takes care to not let him get even slightly injured. Maybe he’s not such a bad guy and just wanted more goblins to play with. The only character that he was typically antagonistic towards was Hoggle and Sarah towards the end. He’s still a villain of course, but a likable one. I also liked the design as it was quite retro.

Of course, plot hax had to ensue in the climax. After all, how could an all powerful villain lose to a teenage girl with no combat experience without some form of plot hax? Let’s just say that he underestimates her speed and determination. Yeah…that’s really all I can say on how he’s defeated. There are hundreds of ways that he could have won, but maybe he just wanted the whole game to be over at that point. Most of his henchmen had started to like the baby and Sarah anyway so he may have known that it was all a losing battle by then.

For a while though, the whole world was against Sarah. It was almost sad to see all of her tricks backfire since some were clever. One trick that Sarah had was to draw on the ground so that she could backtrack effectively, but the tiles are actually roofs for some goblins so they were promptly flipped over. Sarah tried to solve the maze by going in a straight line, but due to a reality limbo spell, the line kept moving in time along with her speed so it essentially resulted in her not going anywhere. Nothing worked because nothing could work. How do you defeat a living maze? Even with Hoggle’s help they were nearly crushed by giant boulders or simply overpowered. Along the way we met the classic 2 heads, one who can tell the truth and one who can’t. Behind one of them is a door that leads to a pit and one that leads to the castle. Turns out…they were both leading to pits. That, or they simply lied about their roles in the first place or were just trolling her with false hints.

Unlike Alice in Wonderland though, I can’t say that I cared for most of the bit players. In Alice, we had the Cat, the classic Card Soldiers, and the Queen was pretty memorable. I never cared for the guys at the tea table, but that’s another story. Here, I didn’t care for the gimmicks of the minions. We had the guys whose heads would keep rolling off and that was…interesting I guess. I didn’t care for the actual designs, but they could be nice and creepy for younger viewers. They can fight, which is always a plus and get ready for cannons that fire more lethal objects than cannon balls.

It was a rough journey, but Sarah succeeded. For a while there, it looked like the whole thing was a dream based on the ending, but I like to think that it was real. The turning point was really just seeing all of the creatures suddenly appear and start dancing in the room. Sure, she could be completely delusional, but I like to think that these guys were on the level and the fact that it got a manga sequel should help this case. It would have been even better to have seen the parents stumble into the room though as they would have been pretty shocked. It was definitely a crazy sight for the average person after all.

As essentially mentioned earlier, the soundtrack is very good. We get a lot of good tunes and you can definitely dance to them as you wait for the plot to return. The Goblin King’s magic ball was also very fascinating as it would change density from scene to scene. It would bounce and then it would be glass. The latter was something that the Goblin King probably should have watched out for. We even got some action scenes like the Village fight, which was certainly intriguing.

Overall, The Labyrinth was an interesting film. It’s old and you can feel its age so that may turn some people off, but at the same time, it’s what creates that retro feel. Behind the scenes, you can also think of it as a classic story of going from having a normal life to stopping an army of powerful villains. Every good character has to go through that gauntlet at some point or another and in theory Sarah should have become a better character as a result. I’m sure that she would probably be more likable in a sequel film. The characters do hold the film back a bit, but it’s still an enjoyable film and I would recommend checking it out as I’m sure that most of you readers have not seen this one yet.

Overall 6/10

Singin’ in the Rain Review

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This is a movie that is as classic as the original Godzilla! It’s hard to picture any big film fan not being aware of this title. That being said, I’ve seen many classics that simply didn’t live up to their reputation in the olden days so would this film be as good as I had hoped? It’s not quite as good as I had imagined, but the film has its moments. There were just two factors keeping it from being a good movie for me.

Don is an actor who is proud of his work. He’s done well for himself and everything is going smoothly until he meets a girl who reminds him that movie actors aren’t real actors. Don’s life is torn to pieces at this revelation, but he recovers from this once the lady admits that she has seen all of his movies and wants to be an actress someday as well. Hollywood never stops and the owner of the company finds out that movies will have sound from now on so he has Don make a new film. The problem is that his co-host can’t sing. What will they do!?

With that, we have the drama, the action, the excitement, and most importantly…the musical numbers! Let’s tackle this one area at a time. For starters, the writing is really good. This is a classic film so it makes sense, but the characters trade barbs and insults rather well in that sophisticated way that people used to speak. The tongue twisters of the old days were also a lot of fun and definitely could test anyone’s mettle. This is one crucial element in the film’s favor.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the pacing, which is a little erratic. Before I get into this, I should note that I was practically expecting a completely different film as I walked into this one. Sure, I knew that it was a musical and I had already seen the famous scene sometime ago. The difference was the fact that Don was an actor. So, the setting and environment was much different than I had anticipated. Even so, I felt like the beginning was a little slow. Once the characters decided that they wanted to make a film with sound, I felt like the plot really started moving. The beginning was pleasant enough, but it didn’t immediately grab my interest the way most old films do because of the main character. More on that later!

Just when the film was going well, the characters have a very trippy dream where some guy decides to hang out with the girl friend of a mob boss. The scene then cuts away as the guy becomes a professional dancer, but the girl appears again and they both have a dangerous dance where the guy barely escapes with his life. The scene drags on for so long that I legitimately began to wonder if this wasn’t a dream and the movie had actually started. When the characters woke up, it was like someone had stolen the last scoop of ice cream at the local deli.

It was a pretty poor montage and that was before we found out that it was all a dream. While most of the film is enjoyable and fun, these scenes weren’t. They were clearly trying to re enact the tale of a classic hero who is seduced by a villainous lady who tricks him into dying, but it always makes the main character look bad. It was also a little more intense than I would have expected from such a classic film with such a good reputation and that’s considering that several seconds were apparently cut out for being too sketchy. This is really where the film lost most of its points. (Plural…that’s a bad sign)

I really just had one more main complaint with the film. While the movie that the heroes realizes was supposed to look pretty bad, it was terrible for another reason and that was due to the retro plot as the villain attacked the heroine. It’s a negative for sure, but not the other main one. The other main negative is actually Don himself who essentially acts like an old school Tony Stark or a mild version of James Bond. Apparently he is quite the flirt and immediately starts to flirt with the heroine after only seeing her for a few seconds.

This guy is far from being heroic and I knew that I would not like the main character after his opening scene with Kathy. (The heroine) There was no recovery from such a thing. Kathy is all right although she definitely goes from one extreme to the other as she dislikes Don before changing her mind and the whole climax is basically her going from sad tears to happy ones. Cosmo is really the guy who stole most of the show even if his antics could be a bit much at times. He definitely seems to have more talent to Don and a more charismatic personality so I could easily see him holding his own film. He got a lot of the best barbs and burns throughout the film and also came up with most of the ideas when the other characters were in a pinch.

I also liked the president of the company as he talked a good game and always allowed others to manipulate him by bringing up the fact that he’s President of the company. His sarcastic remarks would typically backfire on him and he only narrowly managed to have a happy ending here. Through it all, he never lost his nerve and that takes guts. Lina was the co-star for the films and is essentially the main antagonist for the film. She gets friend zoned the whole film, but keeps going after Don. If not for that part of her personality she wouldn’t be a bad character. I actually felt a little bad for her since most of the film is about the heroes making fun of her voice and getting someone else to sing her roles instead. Lina naturally gets a little resentful of this, especially after having trained so long and hard for this opportunity. Just another showing of how the heroes could be a little cruel. Lina’s not really a good character anyway as she gets others fired and is too obsessive over Don, but the heroes did not help matters.

This is a musical, but I can’t say that any of the songs were very memorable. There are certainly no “Let It Go” award winning songs in this playbook. The famous Singing in the Rain scene is a lot of fun, but more for the action than for the actual song. I liked how the policeman dashed over to put Don in his place. It is probably against some laws to skip and dance in the street on such a slippery day. Luckily for Don, there were no cars around so the danger was kept to a minimum.

Overall, Singin in the Rain was a film where I can see how it became a classic, but I can’t say that it totally floats my boat. As far as drama, musical, romance, comedy films go, I’ve seen better ones. The songs were not quite masterpieces and Don was terrible as the main character. Cutting him out of the film or eliminating the dream sequence likely would have been enough to put the film in the clear. As it was, the film could not overcome having two big negatives. If you’re looking for a retro film and don’t mind long scenes of questionable dancing, then check this out at your own peril, but if you want a film with a lot of heart and meaningful character development, I recommend checking out Madoka Magica Rebellion!

Overall 4/10