It is not very often that a direct to video movie gets any kind of attention from critics or movie-goers, it really has to be something special to warrant the attention of movie fans. Maybe it's a cross-over between two iconic franchises that also just so happens to be the final role for on of the actors involved, maybe it's the movie based on a popular video game franchise that we've been waiting for since the original movies, or maybe it has some hilariously bad voice acting displayed front and center in the trailer. Pinocchio: A True Story is the third one, the trailer that everyone got to see thanks to AniMat (If I'm not mistaken the Tweet was a while ago) showcased some of the worst voice acting in an animated feature since Jeff Bridges in The Last Unicorn. The kicker of course is that, as other Twitter users have pointed out, Pauly Shore has done voice acting before, so... what exactly is going on here?
Sad to say but everything that people were making fun of about the movie prior to release, the infamous reading by Pauly Shore and the scene where Pinocchio gets shot happen within the first twenty minutes of the film, but it is still a treasure trove of absolute awfulness, completely unwatchable.
The voice acting is just all around terrible, not a single take sounds convincing or natural, with the exception of Tom Kenny, who of course is a seasoned professional, so while he puts on a typical Tom Kenny voice, his acting is still the best in this movie. What makes it even worse is that this is a dub-job, so while you're hearing bad voice actors read these lines, you're watching lips that never sync to the dialogue. You never tend to notice this stuff with dubbed anime because the mouth movements are fairly consistent, partially because of the Japanese language, and also because that's just how lip syncing works in animation now, there are a set number of mouth shapes that are used when needed, you can probably get away with using five or six different mouth shapes on a character and make a convincing enough dialogue scene. CG animation doesn't exactly work that way. On top of that, the DVD I purchased did not give me the option to watch this in the original Russian, which would have made the lip-sync less of a problem.
The lip-syncing reminds me of one of those GoodTimes Entertainment/Golden Films Disney knock-offs, specifically a version of Aladdin that I watched a while ago. There are moments where the dialogue comes out of mouths that are closed. The rest of the animation is... odd. Not in that Richard Williams or Tool music video kind of way, it's odd because it's obviously direct to video quality, but there are moments that don't look all that bad, like fix the lip-syncing and you could probably get away with putting some of these scenes in a theatrical production.
Honestly, that's the most interesting talking point. Not a whole lot else about this movie is interesting. The plot is not very interesting, I mean it's solid enough, but that's about it. You want to know something that is more interesting? Nimona has been revived!
Nimona is coming to Netflix in 2023 after being pulled from Disney's line-up. This means that plenty of dead projects can be revived by other studios, and also means that my favourite graphic novel of all time is getting it's movie adaptation finally! Seriously I'm very excited, and I'm not the only one. Plus, we have another Pinocchio movie coming soon, helmed by Guillermo del Toro. We're also getting that Blazing Samurai move finally... I mean I didn't say the interesting stuff was gonna be ALL good.
On some level, I can see why this got some attention, unlike a movie like Ella and the Little Sorceress, but if you want all the enjoyment you can get out of it, just watch the trailer. Really the movie's biggest crime is that it's boring, the voice acting is literally the most interesting thing about it. I can't even recommend this as a "So Bad It's Good" movie, but at the same time, I can't recommend people not watch it either. It's boring, but ultimately harmless, I don't think your perception of animation, nor direct-to-video cinema will be hurt by watching this. Granted the standards for Direct-to-Video cinema is low to begin with, but that's beside the point. If you see this for like, two dollars in a discount bin and want something just absolutely dumb to kill some time, there are worse things to spend your money on. Can't recommend it, but it does not irritate me by existing.
No comments:
Post a Comment