I volunteer at an art-house cinema every weekend and I normally usher at the kids film (mostly because everyone else hates it). I do admit, many of the kids film are mediocre (usually just re-showing a mainstream Hollywood film), but not usually this bad. There was a preview showing of this film on my last shift.
Where do I begin? The writing is absolutely abysmal, shoving a conspicuous environmental message in your face while torturing you with its' one dimensional characters. The characters have no real chemistry; we are told that Ray and Sammy are essentially soul mates and we do spend a lot of screen time with them, but I am not convinced by their relationship whatsoever. The character development in general is totally contrived and it does not enhance the plot (which is sort of the point of characterisation). The plot is boring, unfocused and badly structured, with the protagonists goal changing throughout the duration of the film (and I mean that it randomly changes). It seems that the writer also enjoys using Deus Ex Machina a lot. It doesn't try to emotionally or intellectually engage with its' audience. Rather, it preaches on about how we need to protect our planet, waving the accusatory finger at the children in the audience.
Now, I'm not against its' environmental message; 'WALL-E' had the same theme and it was a masterpiece. The difference here lies in the execution of the idea. 'WALL-E' is well written and does not bully the audience into a certain world-view. It is a plot and character driven story that allows us to emotionally engage with the situation as we absorb the message through osmosis. Its' like the people responsible for 'Sammy's Adventure' put no passion into it and only wanted to tell people to recycle.
In terms of animation, its pretty good. Not as good as what people are making it out to be, though, as it does seem a bit off at times.
Its hard to judge the quality of the voice acting as the version that I saw was a British-English dub (I have no idea why, seeing as it was a word-for-word re-dub of the original) and that version was simply terrible. It was the kind of voice acting I would expect from a straight to DVD rip-off of 'Finding Nemo'. However, I did see a tiny clip of the original dub and the voice acting is a lot better (even if, objectively, it's not anything impressive).
As for the design/overall look of the film, it's pretty...meh. It's nice looking, don't get me wrong. It's just that they are obviously trying to imitate other studios. The style of the film is very bland and boring. It would have been nice to see something a bit more creative. In fact, the credits had some really nice designs and I wonder why they didn't try to make it more like that.
I didn't see it in 3D, so all the scenes in which the 3D gimmicks were supposed to occur were even more distracting and pointless (especially the part with the octopus, which had no bearing on the plot whatsoever).
I surprised by the amount of praise that it is already getting. If this were a big Hollywood movie, it would never be given so much adulation. This film is as tedious to watch as 'Twilight' and as laughably bad as 'Birdemic', which is why I call it "Twilight Meets Birdemic". Now, unlike 'Twilight', it doesn't have a bad message, but if I had kids, I would not take them to see this and spare them the 88 minutes of boredom.
I'm giving this film a 2 out of 10 because the animation is the only thing redeeming about it.
Where do I begin? The writing is absolutely abysmal, shoving a conspicuous environmental message in your face while torturing you with its' one dimensional characters. The characters have no real chemistry; we are told that Ray and Sammy are essentially soul mates and we do spend a lot of screen time with them, but I am not convinced by their relationship whatsoever. The character development in general is totally contrived and it does not enhance the plot (which is sort of the point of characterisation). The plot is boring, unfocused and badly structured, with the protagonists goal changing throughout the duration of the film (and I mean that it randomly changes). It seems that the writer also enjoys using Deus Ex Machina a lot. It doesn't try to emotionally or intellectually engage with its' audience. Rather, it preaches on about how we need to protect our planet, waving the accusatory finger at the children in the audience.
Now, I'm not against its' environmental message; 'WALL-E' had the same theme and it was a masterpiece. The difference here lies in the execution of the idea. 'WALL-E' is well written and does not bully the audience into a certain world-view. It is a plot and character driven story that allows us to emotionally engage with the situation as we absorb the message through osmosis. Its' like the people responsible for 'Sammy's Adventure' put no passion into it and only wanted to tell people to recycle.
In terms of animation, its pretty good. Not as good as what people are making it out to be, though, as it does seem a bit off at times.
Its hard to judge the quality of the voice acting as the version that I saw was a British-English dub (I have no idea why, seeing as it was a word-for-word re-dub of the original) and that version was simply terrible. It was the kind of voice acting I would expect from a straight to DVD rip-off of 'Finding Nemo'. However, I did see a tiny clip of the original dub and the voice acting is a lot better (even if, objectively, it's not anything impressive).
As for the design/overall look of the film, it's pretty...meh. It's nice looking, don't get me wrong. It's just that they are obviously trying to imitate other studios. The style of the film is very bland and boring. It would have been nice to see something a bit more creative. In fact, the credits had some really nice designs and I wonder why they didn't try to make it more like that.
I didn't see it in 3D, so all the scenes in which the 3D gimmicks were supposed to occur were even more distracting and pointless (especially the part with the octopus, which had no bearing on the plot whatsoever).
I surprised by the amount of praise that it is already getting. If this were a big Hollywood movie, it would never be given so much adulation. This film is as tedious to watch as 'Twilight' and as laughably bad as 'Birdemic', which is why I call it "Twilight Meets Birdemic". Now, unlike 'Twilight', it doesn't have a bad message, but if I had kids, I would not take them to see this and spare them the 88 minutes of boredom.
I'm giving this film a 2 out of 10 because the animation is the only thing redeeming about it.