First Impressions: Animal Crackers (2020... ish)

Well, it's nice to finally see this movie, kinda sorta. Yeah, you saw that "ish" in the title, and that's because, well this movie was technically a 2017 release. The history of this movie is interesting, but I don't really know all the details myself. What I do know is that this movie was released in a film festival in 2017, and according to Wikipedia in 2018 it had a release in China, but it would become a Netflix Original this year. For sake of consistency and to make this easier on myself, I will refer to this as a 2020 release, I know that isn't technically accurate, but lots of movies get weird releases, like Norm of the North 2.

There are three things you never want your movie to be, boring, offensive and disappointing. A boring movie leaves you with nothing to talk about, an offensive movie will make viewers angry, and a disappointing movie, no matter how good it is, will never be as good as it could have been. Animal Crackers in none of those, it is another category all together, a "Film that could have been good."

I'm serious, there are good elements in this movie, the animation is wonderful, good colour palette, no obvious mistakes, some nice small details as well, I think the scene where I knew that the animation of this movie was going to be this movie's strong point was in the opening where our lead character is talking to his fiancé, you can tell by the acting and facial animation that he is not thrilled about this, in fact, the acting isn't that bad either. There are LOTS of recognizable voices in this movie, Patrick Warburton, Gilbert Gottfried, Wallace Shawn, Sir Ian McKellen, Danny DeVito, but a lot of the other cast members are not too bad. Emily Blunt is of course wonderful, I think she's slowly becoming my favourite actress, John Krasinski did a good job, Tara Strong was excellent, Hell, I could barely recognize Sylvester Stallone. My props goes out to the voice director and the actors of this movie, because they did not have the best material to work with.

Honestly, when I say that this film could have been good, I do mean it. The movie has some moments that are genuinely cute. Like when the lead proposes with a clown nose, like, that was adorable. Or when he turns into a bear to protect his daughter from monsters, like there are elements of a good movie here. I've said before that good emotional scenes are the bare minimum for any movie, I think ultimately, the movie I said that about, Next Gen, another Netflix Original, had so little to offer, that even the good scenes felt lesser. With this movie, I can see some bits of quality edging through the... quite honestly awful writing.

The writing kills this movie, and not even that this movie is unfunny, though yes it is very unfunny, but there is just so much wrong with the writing. Patrick Warburton's character (Who is named Brock, making this the second Brock with monstrous pecks he's voiced), is the cringiest character I've ever seen, and a lot of that is because... well... he's kind of an... uncomfortable character, always getting up close and whispering, I felt unclean watching his scenes. Also, this movie falls under the category of "Pseudo-musicals" where, they have song numbers, but it never reaches more than three, and the two song numbers in this movie are not really good, but, I've heard worse, trust me, it's hard to top the PlayMobil movie in how bad your movie can be.

The worst thing about the writing though is, there are a lot of plot holes. I don't know if I can remember them all, but here are a couple I can remember.

1. Why is Brock trying to sabotage our lead's project? This project could literally make the company millions, and he's trying to sabotage it? Why?
2. How many people at the circus knew about the crackers? They don't appear shocked when our lead turns into animals, so they obviously knew a little about them. Why didn't they see if the blue dog and cat with the choker were the people they held the funeral for? Or was this a Dumbledore plan in the end?
3. Who the Hell is our lead's parents? He refers to the circus owners, the people that could have been his parents, as uncle and aunt, and the only relative we are aware of for either of those two that could be his parent, makes no reference to being his father, so where are they?

Honestly, the rest of the movie isn't bad, it's just the unfunny humour and sloppy story that drag this movie down. I know this movie had a troubled history, but at least one more rewrite and this movie could have been good, at least a slight recommendation. As it is, I just... I can see a good movie in here, I can see the talent that went into this movie, but as a whole, I can recommend this very much, but on the bright side, they didn't make something as bad as PlayMobil the Movie.