Eight years for this movie to get to theatres, over a decade if we want to talk about conception years, but being announced in 2014 and finally reaching theatres in 2022, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank dares to ask one question; When can we start to assume a delayed movie is going to suck?
I'm going to be real, when I read the original title and saw the poster, I kind of thought this movie would suck, but I've been surprised by movies before so I was still somewhat optimistic. Unfortunately, as time went on things changed, I started noticing how safe recent kids films are being, I started to let myself slip into watching trailers (I blame Frozen 2 for that one, that trailer was amazing) and the movie started to be officially released, beginning with a name change. I originally wanted to title this blog "First Impressions: Blazing Samu... Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank" because for a long time, this movie was originally going under the name "Blazing Samurai", and I feel the name change was very last minute. There are a couple of jokes in this movie that would have been... well not funnier but at least more... clever is the wrong word but they would have been somewhat cute if the film kept the original title.
Speaking of humour, I mean... it is there. What can I really say about the humour of this movie? It's a generically unfunny comedy for children, it's like talking about a generically boring action movie for dudes, or a generically disgusting rom-com for moms, the demographics seem to have their generic movie types. I will say they did try to be varied with the humour, they got toilet jokes, fourth-wall jokes, anachronistic jokes, honestly I think the casting of Mel Brooks was meant as a nod to the fact that this movie was called "Blazing Samurai" and he did the movie this was inspired by, "Blazing Saddles". Oh yeah, they also have Samuel L. Jackson using fake curse words, because y'know, he swore a lot in "Snakes on a Plane"! Oh and George Takei says "Oh My!" twice because that is the meme, actually Kubo and the Two Strings had him say that too, but like, it was cute there because it was said in a situation where anyone would have said that. Once would have been fine for this movie, it would have been cute, but twice was just forcing it.
I mean, what else is there to really talk about? This movie is unfunny and has a predictable plot and character arcs. I guess it isn't devoid of character, but like, that's it. It's a generically bad kid's movie, honestly I'll give Minions 2 some credit, it was a generically okay kid's movie, so take your kids to see that. Honestly I'd call this a disappointment but like, eight years in Development Hell, that's a pretty good sign it wasn't going to be great.
From what I understand, development for this movie was a nightmare, directors came and went, the film ended up crediting three directors, companies acquired and abandoned it, some reports even stated that it was still in the animatic phase in 2019. Apparently a lot of this movie had to be worked on remotely because of the pandemic and eight different companies got production credits. Quite frankly, with the added name change, this movie had red flags all over it, and honestly, I can't think of a sadder movie release, not that I expect this movie to flop, time will tell on that one, but the fact that they clearly had some faith in this movie, despite everything going against it. It's honestly kind of sad. Especially since it doesn't even have much to show for it. The Thief and the Cobbler at least had amazing animation, and that movie was still garbage until the Recobbled Cut became a thing. Honestly, at some point someone should of scrapped this movie, I'd rather not have this movie than have a movie exist in a sad state like this. I can't really think of any reason anyone would want to watch it, outside of the movie the kids actually want to see is sold out and you're not leaving until they shut up for thirty minutes. I'm not mad, I'm not even disappointed, I'm just sad.
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