Movies
The worst thing about this fourth part is that it brought in a lot of money, so there's a big chance there might be even more pointless sequels. Part 4 offers little more than yet another adventure, with a new villain who isn't at all interesting. Oh, and a new side character voiced by Aquafina, who else? Po is supposed to become the new spiritual leader, but that means he has to say goodbye to his life of adventuring and kicking ass. He's not too keen on doing that, so when the opportunity presents itself, he decides to save his valley for one last time. For that, he has to counter the plans of The Chameleon. It's the same kind of humor, in the same type of setting, mixing purely US sensibilities with Chinese culture. The comedy is horrid, the voice acting is bad, and the plot is utterly boring. If I want Chinese fantasy cinema, iQiyi and similar are releasing these films on a daily basis, and still, they're better than this junk.Read all
Even though I liked the games, I never cared much for the Lego movies. The first one was pretty horrible, I'm not even sure if I was aware they made a sequel. Apparently, they did though, and it made good money at the box office, so I figured I'd give it a try, even though my expectations were low. Brick Town is under attack from a Duplo invasion. These invaders destroy things faster than the people of Brick Town can rebuild. A mission to go look for the source of the Duplo invasion goes wrong and the heroes are never heard of again. Emmet is their final hope to figure out what's going on. The comedy is terrible, the voice acting is distracting, and the musical bits are not good at all. Even the visual style isn't as inventive as it could've been, but it's a nice change of pace regardless. It's a pretty grating experience though, if only they could get the comedy right a lot of these films would be a lot easier to stomach.Read all
Another Dreamworks fluke, based on some long forgotten commercial property. Whoever thought it was a good idea to revive the 90s troll hype should probably be fired, though I'm sure they're enjoying their promotion right now. This film turned out to be another box office hit, artistically it's as dire as they come. The only positive thing I have to say is that the scrapbook-style segments were a nice touch, but they are few and far between. The rest of the film looks like you'd expect a US CG animation to look, with little in the way of a personal touch. Character designs are ugly, the environments are dull and the colors are bright but terribly kitsch. The story and characters are extremely childish, the comedy is depressing and the soundtrack ... it's like listening to a commercial radio station, the only thing missing were the commercial breaks. It's everything I'm not looking for in a good animation, but as long as it draws crowds that's what we're going to see from companies like Dreamworks I'm afraid.Read all
Poor Christmas vehicle. The idea is simple but decent enough, sadly the film is ruined by an atrocious performance of Ben Affleck and annoying situation comedy. Rather than pleasantly hectic and confusing the film is just irritating and obnoxious. Not really the embodiment of Christmas spirit this one.
The kind of film where I'm pretty certain they came up with the pun first and only then built an entire film around it. This film is called "chipwrecked", so the chipmunks end up on a deserted island. Why? Who knows? I guess they just needed something to fill another 90 minutes of film. Part three in the series is so lazy they hardly bothered to conceal the fact it's just a cash cow for them. The plot is completely nonsensical and ill-fitting, but kids love a good bounty hunt, so that's what we're getting here. Throw in some terrible pop songs in true chipmunk style and that's basically it. The comedy is painfully unfunny, the characters are rehashed once again (there's only 1 new addition, and she's terrible too) and the music is just insulting. I'm clearly not the target audience for this franchise, even then one can expect a basic level of quality. Wouldn't be surprised if this turned out to be an experiment just to see how blunt they could be without turning away people from the franchise. As there's also a fourth part, I think we haven't hit rock bottom just yet.Read all
