First Impressions: Encanto (2021)

 

I think it's fair for me to say I didn't really have high hopes for Encanto. I don't watch trailers, or at least I try not to, so I had no idea what Encanto was going to be like going in, I thought it was going to be another Disney magical adventure flick, another movie that had the elements of Frozen and Tangled and Raya, with some okay songs, cute jokes and animation that looked good on screen, but really needed the Theatre to show it off.

So, I think it is also fair to say that Encanto surprised me, in fact it really surprised me. It surprised me so much, it may actually become my new favourite movie in the Disney animated canon, and honestly, Disney's modern animated movie output has been, well I would not say mediocre, it has been floundering a bit. Frozen was fine, Big Hero 6 was derivative, Zootopia wasn't anything special, Ralph Breaks the Internet was cute, Frozen II was okay and Raya and the Last Dragon and I have a complicated relationship, not that any of those movies were bad, but I can't say I really loved them. I loved Encanto.

What really surprised me was the music, and yeah, it was Lin-Manuel Miranda so it was going to be good, but holy cow I did not expect every song to be fun, memorable and enjoyable. Seriously, think about it, every song in this movie was fantastic, I can't think of any duds, and they didn't have the obvious big pop hit, they didn't have the "Why Should I Worry?" or the "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" or the "Let It Go", each song was just as spectacular as the last and I really want the soundtrack, in fact, if I find it I am totally getting it on vinyl, it's that good.

I was also invested in the characters and their arcs, I won't give away too much, but this story relies on how well written these characters are, how strong they are and how well they work off each other. I don't think I loved an ensemble cast in a Disney movie since... oh jeez, Robin Hood? The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh? Like, every character I either loved immediately, or grew to love and not just like, or tolerate, but full on, "if these characters had a series of shorts I would watch them" love.

One thing I also got to bring up is the animation. Yeah, it looks good, it looks great, the colour palette is lush, vibrant and lively, and when it needs to it can get dark and grey, but there was this one moment towards the end, and all I had to say when I saw it was "That's beautiful", not "That would look better in the theatre", not "That looks nice", full on "That's beautiful", I don't think I've said that about a Disney movie in a long time, really I don't think I've said that about any modern animated movie in a long time.

I mean, what is there not to love about this movie? It looks great, the characters are all fun, it can get very tense and one scene even made me feel the anxiety and tension. The cast was perfect, the music was fantastic, I'm really hoping that when I come back to this movie, my reaction stays the same, because I would hate for this movie to be another Frozen, where the flaws become more apparent the more times you watch it. I really want this movie to be as good as it was on first viewing because it was just so good. Hands down, my favourite Disney movie in a long time, and a definite High Recommendation.

First Impressions: Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2021)

 

You know, I completely missed the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series when it was big. I dunno, I just never thought the books would appeal to me. To be fair there are a lot of other book series I missed out on when they were big, I didn't read Harry Potter until like, Cursed Child was still brand new or something, and I still have not read The Hunger Games, and I have no plan to. Either way, I'm new to Diary of a Wimpy Kid, I never read the books, I never watched the original movies, I've seen a few discussions of it online, but otherwise, I am unfamiliar with this franchise.

So, my initial thought is, am I the only one who is sick of the middle/high school stereotype of "Everyone is either a loser or a bully"? Because I am absolutely sick of it. This may just be because I am a 2000s kid, but my middle and high school experience is very different from the ones that media liked to portray it as. Yeah, I was never the "popular" kid, but I had my own cliques to hang around with, in fact that is kind of what happened, people just stuck around with their own cliques. It was nothing like the way media portrayed it as. Maybe it's an age thing, maybe it's a culture thing, maybe it's both, but I'm just sick of it.

Something else that bugged me was the mouth movement, I guess it was just that I didn't mesh with the style, but something about it just looked wrong. That being said, the rest of the film looks nice enough, very stylized to look like the book designs. Honestly, it makes me wonder if this is Disney's response to Captain Underpants. I mean four years is about standard for an animated project, and from what I'm reading the production of this movie was a little bit hectic, but it would not shock me if Disney kept this project alive because it could potentially be Disney's own Captain Underpants. Sometimes I wonder if Eisner really left the company.

Something else that really bothered me was the voice acting for the mother, it did not sound as high quality as the rest of the cast. It was really distracting, you go from a high quality recording to what sounds like a muffled home recording. Now, I'm unfamiliar with most of this cast, and they don't do too bad of a job in this movie, but something about the mother's audio really distracted me. What else was distracting was the length of the movie, it's not even a full hour long, and yeah I reviewed movies that were shorter, but it still surprised me that this movie was only fifty-eight minutes. Like, two minutes more and you'd get a full hour. With just under an hour, it makes me wonder why they didn't just chop this up and make it a mini-series. I mean, it's already kind of like a mini-series with different segments with their own main plot, it could have worked. Again it could be a production thing, but this should have been a miniseries.

Okay, for the full opinion on this movie, I kind of found it unwatchable. I did not find it that funny, and I did not find it that relatable. I found Greg to be kind of a pain of a character, like he says he wants his position in life to change immediately and I just can't muster up any kind of sympathy. I get that he is supposed to learn and get better, but I didn't want to see him get better, I wanted to get the movie over with quicker. Honestly, that is just a good summary of all my issues with this movie as a whole. It's not funny, not relatable, I hated the lead character, I didn't even think the ending was that satisfying, and a lot of things about it really distracted me from really enjoying it. Maybe I'll give the live-action movies a go someday, and see if they're better.

Isn't that just the worst way to discover a movie? Like, you watch something that you don't like, and like, almost out of spite look up the original stuff just to see if it was better. Like, that's not a good way to be introduced to something even if it ends up being good. Still, I can't recommend this one, maybe if you're a bigger fan of the books you might find something you like, but as for me, watching it just made me upset. So, I don't think this movie is one of the worst I've seen, it's still pretty bad.

Spiderman: Into The Spider-Verse (2018) - Was it worth all the acclaim?

 

December, 2018, one of the most anticipated movies of all time was released into Theatres. This is rather strange when you consider that this was an animated feature, and a western animated feature at that. Yet, everybody that was into animation was excited for this movie, and everyone loved it. One of the highest rated animated films on Letterboxd, ninety-seven percent on Rotten Tomatoes, eighty-seven on Metacritic, best animated feature at the Academy Awards and African-American Film Critics Association, swept the Annie Awards, best Animated film at the British Academy Film Awards, Best Animated Feature Film Award at the Golden Globes, and so many other awards that it would just be a waste of time to name them all. Fifth highest grossing animated feature of 2018, and forty-seventh highest grossing animated feature of the 2010s. It got recognition and people loved it. Three years later, after all these years, was all of that praise warranted?

Miles Morales is a normal everyday kid, he's at a school he doesn't like, he is embarrassed by his dad, and he's awkward around some of his classmates. While hanging out with his uncle Aaron he is bitten by a radioactive spider, and he freaks out, especially since he also witnesses the death of the real Spider-Man and gets caught up in one of Kingpin's plots. However, by some freak accident, he is able to learn the ropes thanks to the help of some other Spider-heroes who similarly got caught in Kingpin's plot and dragged into Miles' universe. It is your standard superhero origins plot with the twist that he is helped by multiple alternate universe heroes, mostly Peter B. Parker and Gwen Stacey, but the film also has Spider-Noir, Penni Parker and Spider-Ham. I don't think this plot is going to really surprise you if you know the beats, but it's well written and flows well enough for that to not be an issue.

Okay so... I am not a big comic reader, I love Tintin comics and I am not unfamiliar with comic books, but I feel there is a large learning curve to them and they feel like a big commitment, so I am not going to go into a lot of detail on these characters. Overall I enjoyed them, Miles I feel has a more realistic arc of someone learning to be a superhero, he's in over his head, he gets anxious, he goes through the pains and prides of it all. The real key to his character is that, while he's trying to be Spider-Man, he only really gets it right when he incorporates his own identity into the persona. Peter B has a cute arc of his own which gets tied into his mentor relationship with Miles. I feel like they tried to give Gwen her own arc, about accepting friends after her tragedy, but I don't really think they pulled that off too well. Side characters are also really fun, Aunt May was fun, the other Spider-heroes were charming and Miles' family were really loving and caring. I do think Kingpin was kind of a bland, generic menace. Yeah they gave him a goal and a backstory, but I can't really think of any moment I was really intimidated or even that entertained by him. I quite liked the other villain of the movie, Olivia Octavius, she was the one with the more entertaining moments.

I gotta give some special credit to the voice acting, Shameik Moore did a wonderful job as Miles and I loved the fake voice he put on at the end as Spider-Man as to not give away his identity to his father. I think the rest of the cast was perfect, I took one look at Mahershala Ali and I thought "Yep, that was Aaron", it was like casting Kurt Russel as Wyatt Earp, and Brain Tyree Henry and Luna Lauren Velez were perfect as Miles' parents, Lily Tomlin was almost unrecognizable as Aunt May, seriously how do I always fail to pick out her voice in a movie? John Mulaney and Nicolas Cage were also very perfect as Spider-Ham and Spider-Noir respectively, and the late Stan Lee made a posthumous cameo in this movie, one of his last.

Now let's talk about the animation. When I talked about the 2017 DuckTales series, I said that it looked like a comic brought to animation. Well, this movie is that, but with the budget of a cinematic venture. It looks really good, and it goes beyond the stylized characters and settings. The colours really pop, even when the entire screen is full of neon colours, it's all so beautifully done. I am a bit more forgiving towards 3D animation than some others might be, I don't think every 3D animated film could have been done in 2D, or at least done as well in 2D. While yes, this movie would look a lot more like a comic book if it was done in 2D, it would also have looked very different. Imagine this movie looking like 2017's DuckTales and you might start to see why 3D was the right choice for this movie. I also have to mention the use of different art styles for the different Spider-Heroes. Spider-Ham looking more cartoonish with brighter colours, Penni Parker being in a more anime style, and Spider-Noir being in a thick black and white colour scheme. Yet, they never felt too out of place. I think everyone agrees that the animation is the main selling point of the movie, but is that the only reason to see it?

Going back to the question I posed at the start, was this movie worth all of the acclaim it received? While I will not argue that this movie is perfect, because I don't think it is, I do think that this movie did earn all of the praise. While the animation is amazing, the movie does not sell itself on animation alone as it also has a well-done story, likeable characters, an excellent voice cast, and some really well done scenes and moments that stick in your head. I really have to give it to everyone behind this movie, it was a risk, sure comic book movies are getting more recognized now-a-days, but this was a comic book movie with a minority lead and was an animated movie from Sony Pictures Animation following a string of not so great releases. The fact that it was not only good, but also as good as it was, honestly do I even need to say that this movie is a High Recommendation? Is it perfect? No, but it is recognized as it is for a damn good reason.

Editorial: DuckTales 2017 (TV First Impressions) (SPOILER FREE)

 

So, as of writing this I have just finished the 2017 DuckTales reboot series. The date is Wednesday, November tenth of 2021. For a family activity, my family and I watch some episodes of a TV show or a movie every Wednesday, something I want to watch. We started with Fraggle Rock after I got the complete series on DVD, then we watched a couple movies, and then we began the 2017 DuckTales series, as I started watching it as it was airing, but never got around to finishing it. Now, that it is all on Disney+, I have to ask, is this series any good? And more than that, is it a worthy reboot to a series as iconic, beloved and important as DuckTales?

YES!!!!

Okay, before I get ahead of myself, let's break it down into both questions. Starting with the easy one, is it good on its own? To which I have to say that yes, it is spectacular on its own.

Being a cartoon in the 2010s, DuckTales is a much more serialized show than the original was, and depending on your taste in cartoons, this can be a good or bad thing. Personally, I do lean towards the more episodic cartoons, because it is nice to have something to put on and not have to worry about continuity or call-backs, let's face it, some of us just don't have the time or energy to commit to a serialized show. However, I think the serializing was done rather well here. For the most part, the serialization is really only to tie in to a greater story arc towards the end of the third season, and aside from a few callbacks and minor characters that comeback, you can watch almost any random episode and follow it pretty well. I think Season 3 is the only time you can't do that, but even then it's mostly for the final twelve or so episodes. Still, I would say you got to start from the beginning of this show, and you might as well, you're most likely not watching it as it airs anymore, right? Right?

Still, story is useless if the characters are bad, and these characters are so lovable, so interesting and so amusing to watch. The triplets all have their own personality traits now, each a trait that can be represented in both their Uncle Scrooge and their Uncle Donald. Huey, like Scrooge, loves adventure, but also cataloguing the unknown and finding the truth, but like Donald is very prone to emotional outbursts and wishes for a more orderly schedule. Dewey, admires his Great Uncle Scrooge's fame and notoriety, and wishes for something similar, but like Donald can be a bit of a cheesy showoff. Louie admires Scrooge's wealth and fortune, but like Donald would rather take things easier, thought for Donald it is mostly because of stress rather than laziness. Speaking of which, Donald actually features in this show. Donald is probably my second favourite parental figure in animation, second only to Iroh from Avatar. Still, the list of characters keeps on going, Scrooge is just as fun as he was in the original show, Mrs. Beakley is a no-nonsense but loving person, Launchpad is still the big hearted dimwitted goofball we know and love, and with a bunch of extra Himbo energy. Plus, we get a bunch of more obscure characters from the comics like Gladstone Gander, Cousin Feathry, The Phantom Blot, and returning characters with new twists on their personalities like Fenton who is an eager young scientist at work, Gyro Gearloose who is cranky and foul-tempered (no puns), but a genuinely good person, and Magica DeSpell, who is just that perfect amount of vile that you just love to see. Glomgold is also a total man-child in this show, and I absolutely love it, he's just so fun to watch.

I think the only character that doesn't work for me is Doofus Drake, who is a very creepy and really uncomfortable to watch, most episodes that focused on him were usually my least favourites. However, they more than make up for that with the addition of plenty of new characters, like Lena, Violet, B.O.Y.D., Mark Beaks (Who is also just deliciously vile), and the introduction of a character very important to the duck family. (Yes, you probably know who it is, but I don't want to spoil it). However, my favourite character of the show has to be Webby, who is very excitable, eager to try new things, and also really kicks ass! She is a specially trained fighter, but they also don't forget that she's a little kid, and kids are excitable and emotional, which she is as well.

On top of all of that, there are a lot of callbacks to not just the Disney Duck Comics, and the original show, but also to other Disney properties, and let's just say, for a Dis-nerd like myself, spotting them all became an adventure in and of itself.

To top it all off, we have some absolutely amazing animation. One of the defenses I've heard for the Rise of the TMNT artstyle is that it emulates the comic style that the Turtles originated from, which is true, from the first few episodes I saw, it looked like a comic book brought into animation... Done badly. DuckTales also tries to emulate the comic book style of its origins, but does so successfully. You can see the comic style in the way the buildings are drawn and colouring and shading, but also with the title and how it's stippled to mimic the way a lot of old comics would be coloured. On top of that, I didn't notice any serious or awkward animation flubs, which is not to say there are none, but just that they weren't noticable.

So yeah, as a show on its own merits, it's fantastic, hands down one of my all time favourites. Yet, as with any reboot, sequel or spin-off, we aren't just looking at it on its own, we are looking at it as a reboot, sequel or spin-off, and how does this fare as a reboot?

Honestly, I think it's a lot better than the original series. Sure, the original isn't bad, and having watched a few episodes myself between episodes of this show, I can say it holds up a lot better than most eighties cartoons, but let's be real here, the show has aged. Now, aging is fine, it is a natural part of life for humans, most animals as a matter of fact, as well as wine, cider and cheese, and DuckTales, for the most part has aged fairly well, not exactly a fine wine, but still very well. A lot of the original shows short comings can be attributed to the original comics, as the triplets were still thought of as one entity to many of the people working on the show, in fact, in the comics they were thought of as one entity so much, that when they had to draw one of the three on a chair and the other two on the floor, they would draw one triplet on the chair, and three on the floor, an artist flub that fans have taken to calling, Phooey Duck!

However, in other places the original show has aged rather poorly. These is a lot of stuff that would not be rather PC by todays standards, not that the depictions of natives are all negative, but even the more neutral ones are very "of their time".

Even still, comparing the two shows is just sad. The Reboot is better in almost every way, and it really is not fair to the original. It's like comparing the original 1966 Grinch special to the 2018 Grinch movie. Like, yeah, on its own the 2018 movie isn't awful, but when you compare it to the original, it's just lesser in almost every way. Back to DuckTales, the artstyle is better, the characters are better, the writing and adventures are better, it really is no comparison. By all means, watch the original, but if you start with this series, lower your expectations a bit.

Really, I think that is all there is to say, on its own it is a fantastic show, and as a reboot it improves on the original in every way. So, really what else is there to say? High Recommendation!

The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie (1979) - An enjoyable, but outdated way to enjoy classic shorts

 

It's weird to think in the era of streaming services and independently created content that there was ever a time that you had to hope and pray that the movie or show you wanted to watch was going to air on TV that night. Home media didn't really take off until the 1980s, so what was someone supposed to do then? Well, someone at Warner Bros decided to take some of the classic Looney Tunes segments and put them into a movie. However, this wouldn't be any old compilation movie like the Fantastic Animation Festival movie from 1977, this was going to have some semblance of a narrative. Even still, in the age of Streaming and DVD boxsets, is a movie like this worth coming back to?

Much like with the Fantasia review, there really is not much else to this movie other than a collection of shorts with a few wrap-around segments. However, unlike Fantasia, the wraparounds do give this movie somewhat of a narrative. Essentially, we drop in on Bugs Bunny, as he talks to us about his life, which are shown as various Looney Tunes shorts. These range from shorts starring his cohorts, to shorts all about him. I will talk about the segments, but not as individually as I did with Fantasia. There are a lot of shorts in this movie, and I have varying opinions about them. So, other than any new segments and the ending segment, most of the Looney Tunes shorts I'll be talking about in groups.

The first segment is, from what I can tell, an original segment about the history of chases. It's told as you'd expect a joking cartoon character to tell a joking history. It's not that funny, and is rather slow. Probably due to the fact that at this point, everyone behind the Looney Tunes was much older, although I will give credit that there may be some actual true information in this segment. See, sometime in the early 2010s, researchers discovered that when lit up in certain ways, some paintings in the Chauvet Cave would actually form the illusion of movement. So, in a sense, this segment was correct that animated pictures began on cave walls. I find that kind of amusing, but then again I am a media history nerd.

After this we get out first Looney Tunes short, "Hare-way to the Stars", this short has some cute gags, but I don't think this was the best short to start off with. Thankfully, after this we get three Daffy Duck shorts in a row, starting with "Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century", an all time classic short, "Robin Hood Daffy", which is funny even in this shorter state, and "Duck Amuck", one of my all time favourite animated shorts. I've talked about this one before, so if you want my detailed thought on it, here's a previous post to check out.

Next are three shorts that focus on Bugs dealing with a more intimidating adversary, starting with "Bully for Bugs", a great short, but maybe not the best way to start this stretch of shorts. The rest of the three also feature Daffy, so maybe if they reversed the order of these three, it would have worked better. Our next short is "Ali Baba Bugs", which I am skipping right past because I don't want to get into a discussion over whether this short is problematic by today's standards or not. It was never one of my favourite shorts in the first place, mostly because of its ending, I never really found it that funny. Thankfully, the next short is "Rabbit Fire", which is probably my favourite Bug and Elmer short.

Our next three shorts start off on a bad foot, because it starts with "For Scent-imental Reasons", a Pepe Le Pew short. I never liked Pepe Le Pew, I never really found him to be that funny, not that there weren't some neat gags in his shorts, but the main joke was never that amusing. Next is another shortened cartoon, "Long-Haired Hare", which is still funny in this shortened form. Along this theme, the next short is the iconic "What's Opera, Doc?" one of the most recognized, beloved and remembered Looney Tune segment out there. I like it fine.

The final Bugs Bunny short is "Operation: Rabbit" which is the perfect segue into the final portion of this movie, the Road Runner shorts, which are just played as one big segment. They include a lot of the iconic moments from many of the shorts, such as the Bat-Man's Outfit from "Gee Whiz-z-z-z-z-z-z", the Earthquake Pills from "Hopalong Casualty" and a couple trampoline gags. Road Runner cartoons were always my favourite of the Looney Tunes shorts, so I do really like this big mesh of iconic and hilarious Coyote gags.

Other than all of that, there are the wraparound segments, which don't really serve to tell jokes, but more to introduce each short. All in all, these were fine, but that brings us to a very interesting point. These are the reasons you would want to watch this movie nowadays, because we can get the full version of all these shorts on multiple different DVD releases, so the question remains, are these wrap-arounds worth it? Honestly, I would say no. Though I love a lot of these shorts, a part of me just wishes I was watching the shorts separately rather than the movie. I have a couple Looney Tunes compilation DVDs, and I think I'd get just as much entertainment out of them as I did from this movie. So, how would I recommend it?

As a movie, I'd probably put it in the Slight Recommendations category. Someone might really like seeing this laid back and more casual kind of Bugs Bunny. Then again, we don't spend much time with that Bugs Bunny, we spend a lot of time with the classic shorts, and that is the movie's biggest problem. There is no need for it anymore, we can get the entire series run on DVD now. Remember, this was made before home media really took off. In a way, it's very archaic and a relic of a bygone era where we couldn't just put on our favourite episode of our favourite show with the click of a button. If you are a collector of all thing Looney Tunes, you might have this in your collection, but even then I don't think it's worth watching. Grab a compilation DVD and enjoy.