You know, doing singular First Impressions is fine, I don't mind doing it, but it doesn't really help that much when I don't have scheduled releases for them. So, here's what I'm gonna do, I'm going to do what Crash Thompson does... or did. For those unfamiliar, Crash Thompson is a music reviewer on YouTube, most notable for his series How To Get Into, Bad Album Covers, and some old series about a dorky alt. rock back from the 90s nobody's ever heard of. When he was doing reviews of new releases, he did a series called FIMI, which is an acronym which I will not be revealing because I have a rule about swearing. Basically, he compiled a bunch of albums that were newly released and gave his thoughts on them in a quicker... well "Quicker" manner than full on reviews.
So I'm gonna do something similar, because A). This let's me talk about more movies, B). This lets me have an excuse to keep things short, C). I can post this on a scheduled time instead of randomly, and D). I can add to this every time I see a movie. Basically, I'm going to introduce the movie, give the release date, and I'll also give you when I wrote that particular portion of this blog, so if I make an observation or prediction, I don't have to tell people which bit I wrote before or after the other. So, now that I have explained how this all worked, let's get to the actual movies.
ORION AND THE DARK
Released: February 2nd, 2024
Portion Written: February 6th, 2024
Oh DreamWorks, literally the day before this movie was released on Netflix, I called DreamWorks one of my favourite animation studios, and that is still true, but... it's movies like this that make me hesitate a little. Orion and The Dark is a pretty bad movie, it's a story within a story movie, like The Grand Budapest Hotel, but like... it made me think more of that Simpsons episode "The Seemingly Never Ending Story", which mocked this kind of story telling. If only the story telling was this movie's only problem. The comedy of this movie was not very funny, one of the entities is meant to induce sleeping in people, and they do this by smothering them with pillows, chloroforming them and hitting them with hammers... I'm sorry, this isn't funny, I get the joke, but that doesn't mean it's funny. I also wasn't a huge fan of he art style, but I think that's mostly just a nitpick.
I kind of expect this movie to be really divisive, like a "Love it or Hate it" type movie, but unlike something like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which achieves this by being both enjoyable and horribly uncomfortable, this movie does it by virtue of... being just complicated enough to make others feel smug, I guess. I'm just saying, don't be surprised if people take the Rick and Morty meme and use it to make fun of this movie's fanbase in the future. (Remember I'm writing this portion in February.)
I can't really recommend this one too much, on the bright side, this is also like Ruby Gillman in that I can see a really good movie in here... but I think I actually prefer Ruby Gillman to this one.
KUNG FU PANDA 4
Released: March 8, 2024
Portion Written: March 10th, 2024
From one of DreamWork's lesser movies, to one of their better franchises. After having done a whole marathon of the previous Kung Fu Panda movies, I was all set for this one. Kung Fu Panda 3 was, in my opinion, a solid way to end the series and a fourth film just kind of felt unnecessary, plus the advertising did this movie zero favors, look at this point the only people who don't know that the Kung Fu Panda movies are more than dumb Kung Fu comedies are young kids and people who don't respect animation. I'm just saying, Frozen II could have an awesome trailer, but a Kung Fu Panda movie needed to have one that only emphasized the lamer jokes of the movie?
Thankfully, DreamWorks... usually know what they are doing, and the team behind Kung Fu Panda 4 really gave us another fantastic movie. Admittedly it is not as good as two, or even three, but those are tough acts to follow. Ultimately, it is worthy of being a Kung Fu Panda movie. It once again, feels like a more natural continuation, sort of... I feel like this part of Po's story is rushed, I mean yeah, eight years is not that short of time, plus there was an entire series that took place after three, but like... it doesn't feel like that long has passed. Besides that, admittedly tiny nitpick, I had a good time with this movie, I liked the new character, I liked Po's conflict, and as usual the action scenes are pretty top notch, honestly the fight with Lord Shen from two may have some competition as my favourite fight scene in these movies.
I did kind of miss the Furious Five, a lot of what I loved about the other three movies was Po's relationship with the Five, but all in all, I can't say I'm disappointed. I don't think I can Highly recommend this one, but it's a tough call. Hopefully the next DreamWork's movie will be excellent.
THE CASAGRANDES MOVIE
Released: March 22, 2024
Portion Written: March 25, 2024
You know, this is my first dive into anything Loud House related, because I never really watched any episode of The Loud House or The Casagrandes, and I missed out on the Loud House movie. So, my first impressions are... wow this was boring.
Really, boring is the best word I could use to describe this movie, boring and predictable. Every joke in this movie was something I've seen before, and there are no new twists on them, and as soon as the opening with the modern slang talking ancient God was finished, I knew exactly how this story was going to go. If you're curious, just watch A Goofy Movie and Hercules at the same time, guarantee it's a more interesting experience.
I missed out on The Tiger's Apprentice and the new Megamind movie, I don't guarantee I'll get to them before the year ends, this era of streaming is... kinda stupid honestly, but that's a rant for a different day. I have heard that I'm not missing much on either of them, but still. So far, the movies released have been, meh, like if Orion or Casagrandes are my pick for worst movie of the year, than I'll genuinely be surprised, maybe I'll try and get around to that Megamind movie soon. Regardless, this is still the early months, all the major releases are going to be coming out more towards the summer so I can't really say I'm too disappointed so far. So, how would I rank this set of movies?
Orion gets a Not Recommended
Kung Fu Panda 4 gets a Recommendation
Casagrandes gets a Not Recommended
With all that said, I've got a movie review to write. Fare-thee-well.
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