DakedoJones Reviews

Woody Woodpecker (2017)

Really awful, but I don't know what I expected

[3/10 · 22 February 2018]

Hey, remember all those movies from the late 2000s where a vintage cartoon character is suddenly in extra realistic CGI, now a side character to a live action drama about corporate business deals and/or a workaholic father who needs to spend time with his family? Well, we've got one of those for Woody Woodpecker now, and he now belches, farts, and makes Hip Cool jokes about "swiping left" and ringtones and songs that are his "jam". It's a movie from 2017 that feels like it's from 2008.

I wasn't exactly expecting Fargo or something, but why are CGI family movies almost always this terrible? This film barely counts as family material...Woody outright tries to murder people via such schemes including electrocution, gas explosions, and pouring wet cement into an occupied car. He also defecates on people, with one character (unknowingly) eagerly eating it. A character remarks that she "needs a Xanny" in response to a loud kid. Woody's driving force for being the harbinger of chaos is just, "I don't want an artsy house near my tree, so it's time to get some humans almost killed." Multiple subplots come and go; the only one I cared about was how the lawyer's son joins a band to both prove himself and to help out some friends at a talent show. You may ask, "I thought this movie was about land development and paternal bonding. What talent show?" Well, just wait until you have to climb through the other subplots involving a black market for stuffed birds, Woody's entire species being extinct, two brothers who are poachers, a forest ranger trying to catch said poachers, a house fire with improperly-placed blame, a sickly father-in-law, a Xanax-popping interior decorator and her flimsy marriage, and a guitar. The morning after I watched this movie, I had trace memories of it, and thought, "Wait, that was real? That was a thing that I really watched? And it came out in 2017?!" This film is disjointed, and definitely not kid-friendly.

I can't imagine being a Woody Woodpecker fan and seeing this; it reminds me a lot of the film "Furry Vengeance" from 2010, albeit now with a talking bird shoving his bug-eyed, CGI face in the camera "Son of the Mask" style. I give this a 3/10 because the kid playing the lawyer's son gave a really good performance, and the ending song was catchy. Otherwise, just run away from this. So many better children's/family movies have come out in the past decade, so this film both has no reason being so bad, AND you owe it to your kids to put on something better.

The Cell 2 (2009 Video)

Embarrassing and Tacked-On

[2/10 · 7 November 2016]

Tarsem Singh's The Cell is considered by many to be pretentious surrealism. It's an odd film that requires a lot of attention and analysis to truly enjoy, and it actually is one of my own favourite films; there's so much detail and care in every aspect of the film.

The Cell 2 does not have this redemption. In fact, I sense it shouldn't even be called "The Cell 2" at all. It's like it was some budget D-movie movie that got retitled, like those cartoon knockoffs at Walmart that get Disney-similar titles. The Cell 2 feels at times like some film major got stoned, watched The Cell, made his own weird interpretation, and then shot it in Vancouver. It's embarrassing. Its special effects look like they're straight out of a 1990s YTV commercial.

It's extremely difficult to review this movie without comparing it to the "original", but it's the movie's own fault for declaring that association. The Cell 2's reality holds no weight; with The Cell, the technology was presented with a normalcy that let you briefly believe it could really happen. But, here, its protagonist has the ability to psychically connect with someone through their personal belongings, which sounds like the plot of a hackneyed anime.

The film also tries too hard to make its antagonist mysterious, before shifting to trying to make him funny and endearing post-reveal. This is a guy who palpably hates women and tortures them with electricity; the people who would be endeared by him are people you don't want to make movies for.The Cell's Carl Stargher was so mysterious that the viewer actually wanted to know about him. Meanwhile, I can barely tell you the name of The Cell 2's villain offhand.

I watched this on a whim on the same night I found it even existed. If you don't like The Cell, just don't watch this. If you do like The Cell, also just don't watch this. It's a cheaply done, cheaply-plotted wannabe crime thriller that someone tried to tack onto a better film.

Brain Smasher... A Love Story (1993 Video)

Super bizarre, but there's fun within

[6/10 · 22 August 2013]

A few months ago, I stumbled upon an online shop selling restored, converted-from-tape movies that had fallen into obscurity, and I found myself fascinated with one movie called "Brainsmasher: A Love Story". A quick look at the trailer promised me complete, unfiltered cinematic insanity, so I eagerly ordered a copy. Post-view, I have to say that despite some blemishes, it was still a fun ride.

Teri Hatcher, Andrew Dice Clay, and Yuji Okumoto are all perfect in their roles, with Okumoto as Wu being an absolute delight on screen. The story itself is insane, and must be seen to believed; director/writer Albert Pyun has been well known for these kinds of things. The action was well done and a lot of fun to watch, particularly with the monks (whom must insist that they are not ninjas). It's also strangely satisfying watching Clay knock people about.

The movie does slow down eventually, first with an encounter with Ed's parents, then the two being arrested and detained, and then Samantha being harassed in a bar. The bar and apartment scene at least add a lot of interesting character development, but the police one was kinda dull. At least when the monks arrive and begin tearing the scene up, you're excited to see them back on screen.

The biggest problem with the movie, in my opinion, is the cop-out ending. The whole movie had been building up to a massive showdown, but when it happens, it's over way too quickly and is pretty messy. Wu is also disposed of in a bizarre, unnerving way (complete with unnecessary sound effect) and the movie slows down once again to give Ed and Samantha a chance to talk before it cuts to credits. There should have at least been some sort of prologue...I mean, how do you go the madness that just transpired? In retrospect, Clay's introduction in the beginning of the film seems like a rushed attempt to fill out the movie after only a set story was filmed. It's a shame, because aside from the abrupt ending and Wu's fist face, everything was going fine.

Would I recommend it? Well, it's not as bad as some of the other things Pyun has made - hell, there's way worse made by other people - but it's a fun way to pass the time. I don't regret seeing it, and I'll probably play it for friends who are interested. And hey...it did teach me the One-Two Knockout.

Fish Police (1992)

A Bizarre Endeavour

[5/10 · 16 August 2013]

A friend once told me about seeing part of a cartoon called "Fish Police" when she was a kid, and it sounded way too bizarre for me to imagine on my own. I luckily found the entire series on Youtube. Having watched the entire thing, I can say it's not very good. Not the worst thing I've ever seen, but it could really use improvement. It comes off as a children's cartoon that was suddenly "spiced up" right before production to become more adult.

A few things bothered me, like the times when the animation is more expressive than the actors, and then the other way around. And how Calamari's sole character trait is "Don Vito Corleone knockoff". As well, why does Connie Koi always have her eyes closed...is it seriously how they want us to identify that she's Asian? And as well, the extent of the show's humour is fish puns and sex jokes. That's pretty much it, aside from a reoccurring theme with a crab that keeps crashing a taxi into things. I think the prize-winning worst line in the entire series was this:

Gil: "Angel's completely innocent!" Pearl: "Not since she was fourteen."

Like, it's probably obvious why that left a horrible taste in my mouth. (And if this were Fish Police, someone would follow up to that sentence with a sex reference.) The only character I found myself really liking was Tad, and he did cause a few funny moments in how he would keep appearing at Gil's convenience.

Maybe this could have worked for CBS if they made the humour a little more sophisticated. As well, if they made the characters human, but I only say that because the art style of the show isn't bad at all, and the characters probably would've looked very appealing as people. The show DID hold my attention...if it didn't, I wouldn't have watched all six episodes. But there's so much lost potential in it that I really can't give it a pass.

V/H/S/2 (2013)

Worse than the original and a complete waste of time.

[2/10 · 8 June 2013]

One night, my friends and I were discussing the V/H/S series, and one of them happened to mention thinking about streaming the sequel. Having seen the first one (and being left unsatisfied with it), I decided to check this one out so I could give her my opinion on it. I haven't been more repulsed and let down by a film.

To start, the story line outside of the tapes is pretty much the same as the first movie's. There couldn't be another way for someone to discover the tapes? There's still not a way to connect all the tape stories together? That aside, my biggest problem with the movie is that the horror is not smart. There's no real psychological manipulation or realistic monsters. It's all just jumpscares and blood splashing around, because some filmmakers are still under the impression that abrupt loud noises and bodily injuries are scary.

The detectives in this film discover four tapes. One guy gets an eye transplant that lets him see ghosts...the only thing cool about this one was the POV being just like a first-person view. He meets a woman with similar abilities, and then they have sex to techno music and that's never explained properly. The next tape is about a guy who gets turned into a zombie in the woods, then he eats some people, then they eat some people at a child's birthday party, then the guy kills himself. A pattern in these tapes is that a normal person encounters something weird, pokes it instead of fleeing, and then everybody dies. Every tape ends the same, so there's absolutely no element of fear from not knowing what to expect. What's to expect? Everybody's going to get murdered, just by a different monster.

The next tape, I was absolutely enthralled by for the first while...it focuses on a group of documentary filmmakers who enter a cult accused of child abuse. I was so hooked to this one, until the first jumpscare. Then it escalates into a bizarre series of events, starting with children drinking poison, to people turning into zombies, to a really bad goat suit bursting out of a woman half its size. I've never seen so much potential completely immolated halfway through.

The last tape at least had one funny bit where a group of kids burst in on a couple making out, but before I could even finish laughing, the Monster of the Day made a foghorn noise. (These aliens also looked like Slenderman with a cartoon alien's face, pincher hands, and chest hair.) This short features ten-year-olds saying the f-word, a child almost drowning, a preteen boy masturbating on screen, and a puppy falling from a great distance that dies slowly while gazing sadly into the camera. That wasn't clever, that was needlessly sick. The maker of this short was probably trying to assert how daring and edgy they were, but it just made me want to noogie them and shove their head in a toilet.

The main tape ended with a woman turning into the girl from The Ring and a guy had an obviously fake dislocated tongue. I've got nothing.

As a final film fart, the credits end with the same thing the first movie did...a choppy recap with obviously manmade glitches set to something that sounds like early 1990s punk rock. After that, the technical credits are a way creepier text-on-black set to tape hiss. As I thought after the first movie, you couldn't just keep up the creepy mood and use the black credits? You thought the obnoxious not- quite-dubstep really added something?

What a complete disappointment. There was so much feedback on the first movie that the filmmakers could have learned from in this instalment, but they just did the exact same thing before, with old and new faults. This is one of the top five worst movies I've ever seen. If you liked the first movie, don't watch this. If you didn't like the first movie, don't watch this. If your sense of horror and humour are completely distorted, watch this, and then make an appointment with your doctor.

City Hunter: Death of the Vicious Criminal Ryo Saeba (1999)

Easily one of the worst things I've ever seen.

[1/10 · 14 May 2013]

City Hunter has always been a guilty pleasure for me. I used to watch the subtitled TV series on a local station around midnight in middle school, and years later I discovered Tsukasa Hojo's manga. When I finally found a fansubbed copy of this special - considered to be "lost" in North America (since ADV never released it on video with the rest of the series) - I was super excited to finally watch what so many people had promised me to be the best City Hunter special of all time.

I've never seen something this bad. I had to force myself to finish the movie...if this movie weren't City Hunter, I would have shut it off and deleted it. The plot is that Ryo needs to protect a newscaster when the company she works for begins killing off its management. This could've fit into a 45-minute OVA, but it's padded out to 91 minutes through the use of lengthy, pointless scenes. I have so many problems with this movie, starting with: 1) The timing is so bad. At least two action sequences could have been way cooler if they were faster-paced; hell, a final showdown that's intended to be an intense life-or-death situation actually takes place during slow, sombre music. I was bored against my will.

2) Ryo is completely out of character. Now, originally he was a slick detective/sweeper first, a pervy frat boy second, but now he's a complete sex freak who just so happens to know how to shoot a gun. Akira Yamada is practically screaming his dialogue throughout most of the movie, and his sharp, gravelly wail gets on your nerves within seconds of first hearing it. It wasn't until well over halfway into the movie when Ryo's calculating side finally showed. And, hell, the scene he finally behaves in - it's when he and Sayaka are in the boat - is actually really well done! Where the hell was this quality 48 minutes before?! Not to mention that Kaori was turned into a total brat with no redeeming abilities, and at one point pulls off all her clothes for no reason other than to show the audience her underwear.

3) Why were all the TV employees being killed off? Was it just part of the plan to kill Ryo? Who was Mad Dog if he were so important? Why couldn't Sayaka just take off the poison ring? Who the hell were Jack and Sayuri? Why are they on the covers of most releases of this movie if they don't appear until the last ten minutes? Why was Ryo waving at news cameras instead of hiding for his life like the real Ryo would? Was Sayuri really alive and pretending to be the Sayaka that Ryo was protecting? Why did the plot focus more on Ryo trying to get laid instead of actually developing the villains or the plot?

4) There is so much random padding in this film that I could cry. There's a running "gag" involving two characters being handcuffed. You literally watch Ryo take a dump. There's a scene at a noodle bar. Ryo gets drunk with some drag queens and dances naked with them on stage. Everybody points out how bald Umibozu is. Ryo and Umibozu duel? Absolutely none of this furthers the plot.

5) I have no idea of who Sayuri was or if she's even a character by Tsukasa Hojo, but she's made out to be Ryo's one true love that even Kaori seems to recognize. It totally throws away the bizarre but interesting relationship Kaori and Ryo have.

6) Not necessarily the movie's fault, but...the English fansubs. They're the only ones available, and they contain the weirdest phrases like, "Stop talking like a f*g!", "What the homie!", and "I got skillz." At one point "mokkori" is even translated as "SUCK ME, BEAUTIFUL" in a way that doesn't fit in with the rest of Ryo's dialogue.

I could write an essay on why this movie was a disappointment. There is no way in hell someone, let alone a City Hunter fan, could enjoy this movie without it being heavily edited beforehand. Maybe the Italian or French versions of this are funnier or something. This was a clustered mess of a movie, and I'm only glad I watched it so that the next time I watch a bad movie, I can say, "Well, at least it's not "The Death of Evil Saeba Ryo". The only two things I liked about this movie were TM Network's "Get Wild", and the animation. The animation was actually really good. If only the rest of the movie was up to that standard...

City Hunter: The Secret Service (1996 TV Movie)

Aside from some fun bits, it's not worth your while.

[5/10 · 10 July 2012]

Some time ago, I had an opportunity to get two of the ADV City Hunter specials on DVD, and seeing as the North American DVD run has become super rare these days, I jumped on it. Only I can tell you right now that the other one I got, ".357 Magnum", is far more entertaining than "Secret Service".

See, it falls akin to the same flaws as the 1990s Lupin III TV specials and some movies...the story is more about the regular characters running into new ones and having to work with them, so you go into it expecting to see much of your favourite character but it's more about the new cast (seeing as there's only a limited amount of time to endear them to you). This isn't anything new, since a big thing in City Hunter is the Girl Of The Week (usually a new girl for Ryo to drool over), but this special's GOTW is Anna Shinto and she's rather unlikable. She hates her father for the majority of the movie despite uniting with and working for him, she's tense and rude to Kaori and Ryo (although Ryo has it coming), and she's sexualized quite often despite looking like she's no older than 17. Ryo, Kaori and Umibozu take a back seat to her and her father.

The main plot is nothing special; someone has a dark past and they need protecting from a death squad, so City Hunter gets called in to protect them. It feels really drawn-out for a TV special, and would have worked more as a single episode. This is really not meant as a person's introduction to the City Hunter series. I can't even imagine how I'd feel if this were my first exposure...it's rather generic and dull at times, and to contrast that, they've made Ryo's mokkori moments (or "nookie moments", if you see the dub) sleazier than ever. I normally really like Ryo as a character and how he goes from a super hot, super slick assassin to a hyper dolt drooling over girls, but as one reviewer once said, "If Ryo did the things he does in this movie in the real world, he would go to jail." There's a moment in this special where Ryo finally stops trying to cop a feel on Anna and it's treated like a revelation.

Umibozu, dubbed as Falcon, shows up and is easily the most fun part of the movie. He's really only in the movie because one of the villains' guys killed some of his friends in the army, but if it's all that important, why are we only hearing it now? And in this special only? As well, I think they changed Kaori's backstory to make it seem like her brother and parents died at the same time. Anybody who's seen even the original manga knows that's not true (for the uninitiated: Makimura, or Makichan, used to work with Ryo and was killed by a syndicate in the start of the series). That should be the one thing this story shouldn't have messed with.

What bugs me about the DVD version, as compared to the special features' Japanese TV spots, is how they've upped the contrast to make the animation style look less "old" (as it was made in 1995 but licensed in 2002) but it doesn't work. It gives it a gross, candy-coloured look instead of the charming cell-painted original. I don't know how the Japanese DVDs look in comparison. The dub is great, however, and Ryo's voice actor Martin Blacker is on par with Akira Kamiya. Blacker plays Ryo in all the movie releases, and here he chews the scenery around such a dull plot, but I swear I heard him slowly lose his mind. The only downside is "mokkori" being changed for English audiences, resulting in him screaming "NOOKIIIIEEEEEE!" all over the place.

Prototype (1992)

Really bad...not even deliciously bad.

[2/10 · 5 July 2012]

Not long ago, I discovered there was one last old-fashioned video store in town, with an action/sci-fi section stocked heartily with tapes from the 80s/90s. I love robots, and going by the android-looking figure on the tape jacket and a vague promise of action, I rented this movie under its Canadian release title of "Prototype X29A". I mean, come on, I'm only 19. That just sounded cool! Watching it with my 14-year-old brother in tow, I was more hoping it would be so-bad-it's-good (like, think of Kickpuncher from Community), but not long into it, I was starting to wish I rented "No Man's Land" just to see young Charlie Sheen.

My hopes were high during the opening scene, which takes place in the once far-off year of 2057, and has some really nice atmosphere and delightfully terrible fighting. Everything changes as soon as we cut to 20 years in the future, focusing on a colony of mostly old people and some punk-looking young adults. The story seems to focus more on a young woman (only clad in a weird bra-shirt for this film) who was a toddler during the opening scene, her teenage surrogate brother, and a guy in a wheelchair who looked like John Taylor. A priest was trying to kill the teenage boy for no reason, John Taylor was playing with an erotic sim game (at one point he clicks on an option that brings up a male partner, the one thing that actually provided amusement for me beyond the prologue), and a lady who looks a lot like Lara Croft is on a computer for most of the film. And some guy kept getting into fights, and breaking necks was his only move.

It's boring, painfully so. I don't mind a lot of exposition, but here all essential information would display on a computer screen in a font that looked nifty and hi-tech in the late eighties. It bumbles around aimlessly, throwing handfuls of characters and bizarre events in your face (i.e. a card game in a saloon with a meth addict Tom Hiddleston lookalike). It even got borderline nasty at times, too, with one scene where our female lead is either prostituting to or about to be raped by four guys. The first assailant says to another, "USE MAH SKIN" and pulls off his used condom...yikes, the movie instantly was in bad favour with me. It tries to blend action, scientific themes, apocalyptic settings, eroticism and general sleaze into one package, and the result is as palatable as expired milk. (Mind you, I loved "Heavy Traffic". Violence and sleaze can be good when they're not slathered all over.)

I didn't finish it. I feel really bad admitting this, but it was one of the few movies that were so unappealing I just had to stop. I'd give it one star, but the trashy opening and one laugh provided some entertainment. If you need to see something cheesy and 80s, I'd rather you looked up the Malofilm Video and Vidmark Entertainment indents, which displayed at the beginning of the Canadian release. They're adorably dated, but my point is, two home video indents should not be better than your whole film.

The Fly II (1989)

Why does this exist?

[15 August 2011]

I saw this movie a few weeks ago when my family was staying over at my mother's friend's house. During a late-night party, I was babysitting some kids (10, 13, 14 and me, 18) in the furnished basement, when our 14-year-old, Joe, saw The Fly 2 on TV and wanted to watch it out of morbid curiosity. Emphasis on the "morbid".

Why did The Fly need a sequel at all? It looked like something a bunch of film students make on a shoestring budget for an homage project. The characters aren't particularly interesting and nor were they likable, the plot was rather generic and the gross-out carnage was over the top. I can't understand anybody who would sit through this without wanting to heckle it MST3000 style.

I had three main problems with the movie, one being how it was excessively gruesome, in an attempt to make up for everything else it was lacking. The protagonist (if you can even call him that), Martin, goes up to visit one of the failed test subjects of the Telepods, this hideously deformed dog that used to belong to him. He attempts to feed it, but it's so horribly mangled that all it does is howl in misery, to the point where Joe had to change the channel because it was freaking even *him* out. Think about it...this mutant thing was mentioned to be Martin's childhood pet, making the scene pointlessly twisted. As well, there's the opening bit in which Martin's mom gives birth to his larval sac and dies, which was just one big "why is this happening to my eyes" moment. Later on a female researcher is brutally killed and her corpse is shown on screen, which really just crossed the line for me. (Although her researching partner walks in to find her, and I must admit his reaction was very realistically acted, so he won respect from me.)

Then there's the random sex...Martin suddenly strikes up a relationship with a young woman whom seemed to not like him earlier, and they have this drawn-out awkward sex scene. It was just stupid, to be honest. It's almost like the writers put it in to try and impregnate her for a The Fly 3 (which luckily does not exist). If it was supposed to be sensual, why have it follow on the heels of a scene about a mutant animal?

Thirdly, it was tied to the original movie so loosely that it was almost insulting. Forcing Veronica Brundle to give birth to a larvae was embarrassing and gross, and even showing a clip of Jeff Goldblum as Seth Brundle on screen just to say, "Remember how we're a sequel, you guys?" Joe thought the throwback was cool, but I avoided mentioning how annoyed I really was.

We couldn't finish it. All the kids started to dislike Martin Brundle so much that we actually started rooting for the bad guys until we couldn't take it anymore and watched Spongebob Squarepants. I'd really like to buy a coffee for any unfortunate unprepared soul who's able to sit through this movie without turning into the mutant dog. Maybe you'd like it if you're not underage and watch grindhouse for a living; I don't know.

Flying Rhino Junior High (1998–2000)

Even your kids will hate this.

[2/10 · 29 April 2011]

I really thought I'd forgotten this show, since it last was televised when I was six years old, but it's beginning to be rerun on YTV. As well, when I noticed that this show only had one review on IMDb and that it was done by an over-enthusiastic child, I knew I needed to give my opinion.

Flying Rhino Junior High is one of those late nineties "educational" cartoons. As a kid I really had no idea what I was supposed to be learning, since usually the show will have a bit where the teacher with the starfish hair gives her class/you a lesson that The Phantom will eventually base his computer "hijinks" with. And I don't care if The Phantom's computer was magic or whatever...there is no way even in 1999 logic that a computer could do things like cause flesh and bone dinosaurs or enlarge preexisting bugs. The logic in this show is just so flawed that it hurts to think too much about it. And especially in this age of computers, some kid watching it is going to point out something like, "Wait, that's impossible!"

Nearly all of the central characters are intolerable, with the exception of Marcus, the good-hearted nerdy kid whom usually gets pushed around by the rest of the group. There's Billy the cocky and bland leader, Marcus's thoroughly detestable twin sister Ruby, and Lydia, an awkward-looking girl and Lisa Simpson clone. There's also this short ugly kid whom exists just to give off poop jokes, an archetypal dumb big guy who says "duh" a lot, and The Phantom's pet talking rat that I want to punch into the sun. All the character designs are made with geometric shapes, which was a good idea but looks repulsive when mixed in with the animation style.

This show had potential to be good. But jokes are thrown out only to fall with dull thuds, life lessons and educational segments are painfully forced, and the drawing style is painful to look at. I really can't believe Flying Rhino is being rerun again, since there's so many amazing 1990's cartoons that deserve airtime but aren't getting it.

Clang Invasion (2007– )

It's just not good.

[2/10 · 19 December 2010]

One really needs to see Clang Invasion to even understand how abysmal it is. My brother and I first saw this show running on YTV before going to school, and we couldn't believe it had gotten such a prime airtime slot with the quality it has.

The animation and character designs are jagged and uneven. Everyone's face is shaped like a sloppy rhombus, and when characters turn, it looks like a piece of paper with their face on it simply flipping around. In a scene where lighting strikes, the frame colours are briefly inverted. A bit of reading taught me this show was animated in Singapore, and less effort is put into making Clang Invasion good than I've ever seen out of a poor Southeast Asian studio.

The stories make no attempt to be original or creative. Tired plots and story clichés are painfully re-used all the time, and I know this is just supposed to be a children's show, but they could be a little more subtle about the plot twists they try to pull off. There's an episode where Daisy has to have a class picture but has always had terrible pictures, each of them rigged somehow, and when she goes through her past photos, the show's Mean Rich Girl character is always standing off to the side in them. I guessed the story would end with HER rigging the pictures, and left the room to work. My brother called me in a while later, and surprise, I was right. Taking an unoriginal story and pasting your characters in does not make an original cartoon. It also resorts to a lot of Invader Zim-style "random" humour...it's annoying and a cop-out to anyone waiting for an actual joke, not for something abruptly screamed out.

What irritates me the most is how the characters fall out of their personalities often, or at least stress the worst parts of them. I love character consistency and development, and I know there are kid cartoons that pull those off well, and Clang Invasion is not one of them. There's a scene where the group gets locked out of their treehouse, and Socket insists they get back in so he can get his pillow. He pauses, then abruptly says "I WANT MY PILLOW!" with a babyish voice. Robin is sometimes the most clever of the group, and sometimes he's the atypical Gross And Dumb Boy trope that gets hard to watch. However, Patrick McKenna's performance as Rivet is fantastic and entertaining, easily making his character the best one in the show.

I could only recommend sitting down to watch this show if you have nothing else to see, or if you think something on Cartoon Network is terrible and must be shown how things could be worse. You can't even riff it Mystery Science Theatre-style, it's so unpleasant.

Curtains (1983)

Charming Yet Forgotten

[9/10 · 13 October 2010]

A little while ago, a local theatre was playing Curtains as a midnight feature, after unearthing a 35mm reel of it. I didn't understand why this movie had become so rare, but it's a common fate of most independent Canadian movies from the seventies and eighties. This movie's story of how it came to be is a sad, bruised one, with missing scenes and crew disputes, and it makes me happy to see other people loving the movie these days.

Slasher film enthusiasts may be let down by this film's pacing, as it certainly takes its time to get to the violence, and when it's there, it's not particularly gory. But most people will appreciate the film's tactic of keeping you on edge with some extremely tense scenes and twists throughout. What I personally loved about the movie was how it let you get to know each of the women who would later become victims, making them interesting, likable characters whom you actually don't want to die. Most horror movies of this era chucked in annoying, well-endowed victims with stereotypes for personalities and you just waited for them to die. Such is not the case here. The actors are excellent, and many people dote on Samantha Eggar for her role in Curtains. She deserves every bit of praise.

Along with the slasher plot, there's also an underlying theme about the perils of Hollywood, how showbusiness leaves you behind as you get older, and despair for some to be a part of it. The music is well-done and very effective, particularly the beautiful ending theme.

Overall, the movie is creative and under-appreciated, but unfortunately missing explanations for certain pieces of the plot and character development. I'm hoping that sometime during my lifetime this movie is remastered on DVD with all its missing scenes and actor commentary, and there certainly are thousands of people who want the same. This movie needs a wider release; if you don't love it for what it is, you'll at least be entranced by something in it.

The Messengers (2007)

Could have been better...

[2/10 · 1 May 2010]

Recently, on a lengthy bus ride during a school trip, my class and I wound up watching this movie to pass time. Going by the opening of the film, I expected it to be a tense psychological thriller. But no, it was about a guy who moves his neurotically-impaired toddler and troubled teenage daughter into the middle of nowhere to grow sunflowers. And then they hire a mysterious drifter who turns into a psycho because crows tried to kill him. No, really.

Every single character is generic or intolerable, multiple plot lines are left hanging, and way too often was the trick of "ghost-creeping-up behind-Kristen-Stewart-while-she-stares-disinterested-at-the-floor" played. How could everyone think a murdered family just "moved away"? Wholly unrealistic and inconsistent, my class found ourselves heckling the movie for fun.

We honestly watched the movie, hoping that Kristen Stewart would die a B-movie death. But the whole family escapes a murderer, happy-la-la in the end. Also, how did the father suddenly recover from being stabbed with a pitchfork? Has the movie's director even seen a pitchfork? If you get stabbed in the back with one, you don't just get up magically! We expected the movie to involve the little boy befriending the ghosts while they kill the rest of the family, which would've been more interesting, but no.

Worse yet is the story of the crows. They were amazing, trained crows from Africa that were brought into Saskatchewan. A large portion of the crows died while trying to adjust to the climate, utterly devastating their devoted trainers. Our teacher told this to us, and that was the point where I just howled, "This was a *bad* movie!" Everyone agreed with me.

While being successful in digital effects and cinematography, the rest of the movie feels like having a pitchfork carefully driven into your face while Kristen Stewart wails "You never listen to me!" as a ghost creeps up behind her to eerie music. Avoid this movie. If you've already seen this one and want to wash it out of your brain, I recommend the original Poltergeist, which I think The Messengers copied its "dead people swamp" thing at the end from.

Monster by Mistake (1996–2006)

Hardly the best of Canadian animation.

[2/10 · 11 April 2010]

I remember this show running feverishly on YTV from 1998 to 2006, and when I watched it, I never enjoyed a whole episode. The problems are everywhere; the plots are predictable and formulaic, the characters are poorly-designed and uninteresting, and the animation looks like it was made in the mid-nineties despite the show running into 2006. One of the episodes involved a thief who was in the Patterson house, and the kids' aunt was in love with him, and the episode ended with a three-minute long chase scene.

Plus, the antics of the Monster are irritating to most people who watch it, and only some children under the age of ten are capable of truly enjoying it. I myself found it literally unbearable when I was in 4th grade, as did many of the kids my age. I appreciate the show's effort to jump-start Canadian computer animation, but Monster By Mistake was a painful experience.

Robotboy (2005–2008)

If you love yourself, you will avoid this.

[1/10 · 26 August 2007]

Now, I like sci-fi cartoons. However, when "Robotboy" appeared in Canada in late 2006, I watched the premiere and was inevitably appalled. The characters are generic and stereotypical (Do they REALLY need to make an African-American man wear tiger-stripe print clothing and speak in a Jamacian accent? WHY are all the Asian characters vibrant yellow and squinting? Does the mother HAVE to have big thighs and chest and constantly complain?) to the point where things become unrealistic, predictable, gross and sometimes disturbing. There are heavy similarities to, even stabs, at Astro Boy. Allow me to explain (dub names for the young): Robotboy/Astro, Kamikaze/Tenma, Constantine/Shadow, Gus/Abercrombie, Tommy/Alejo, Lola/Zoran+Kennedy, Moshimo/O'Shay, and it so on. Brief resemblances to "My Life As A Teenage Robot", "Star Wars", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", "Kamen Riders", "Sailor Moon" and co. are afoot. Not to mention the abundant racial/gender stereotyping. Don't even get me started on the innuendos. I'll just say they're hidden and quite dirty. But seriously. Don't even try watching this. Especially if you like Astro Boy.