Diary Of A Wimpy Kid The Last Straw: Forced Conflict From A Writer Out Of Ideas

Greg and his family are back and this time he has daddy issues for no particular reason.

So I thought I was done with the horrible animated Disney + Diary of a Wimpy Kid films and yet here I am.

This time after embarrassing his dad at church, Greg is going to get sent to a military school unless he gets his act together. Cue a series of schemes to try and appear like he’s doing good at school which all go wrong, who could have seen that coming. This whole conflict is weird for three key reasons, one this conflict between Greg and his dad hasn’t been there before, the fact they have the author of the books writing these films and he just forgot that little detail is shocking, secondly is the fact that it is pretty clear to see Greg is accident prone not bad which makes the dad look unfair, thirdly Rodrick is actually bad and he just lets him get away with it. As such you end the film thinking that the dad is an insecure man child, who wants to punish his son for his own failings, which probably isn’t how the film wanted him to come across.

In the images on Disney+ for the film you see them wearing Christmas hats and it is presented as a Christmas film however, there really isn’t a mention of the season anywhere so it doesn’t really come across as a Christmas film. So if that’s what you are looking for then stay away.

All of my points about Greg being a goody goody from my last review also still stand here, it is quite sickening.

Overall, less cringe than the last one but the story and the conflict feels forced.

2/5

Pros.

It is short

There is one or two good laughs here

Cons.

It is boring

Greg is devoid of personality

The conflict feels forced

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Diary Of A Wimpy Kid Christmas Cabin Fever: Worse Than Book Burnings

Summary

I returned to the Disney version of the Diary Of A Wimpy Kid franchise and was a bit sick.

So lets get one thing very clear, Greg is a good kid but also a fundamentally flawed one with his schemes often getting him into trouble, he is not the sort of kid to give away the present he most wants to help those in need, the idea was so American and sickening that I almost turned it off. This idea of the great moral virtuoso is fake kids don’t behave like that.

In addition this film above all others in the space made me hate current day animation and long to return to the two dimensional hand drawn kind of years prior. Everything about this was so ugly, the models how they moved around the space, the way they interacted with the environment, the environments themselves were hideous.

Moreover, Greg’s families personality was just one emotional state the entire film, there was no nuance or development for his family in anyway they started off the film one way and ended it the same.

Overall, this is some of the most soulless animation you might ever see.

1/5

Pros.

It is short

Cons.

The animation is ugly

It feels fake and overly moral

The family has no personality

It is not funny or relatable

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Zootopia Two: China To The Rescue

Summary

Disney Animation could not get more generic if it tried.

The first film felt paper thin with the idea of the predators vs the prey metaphor working as a stand-in for race relations, everyone could see the very obvious message of not judging others by what they are but rather the content of their character. Yet this film feels the need to push a worn out and frankly reductive metaphor further forward as it has nothing to say otherwise.

In many ways this is the very worst kind of sequel not one that exists due to a need to, but rather one that is just done for profit. Everything feels a bit more low rent, the humour a bit more stale, the voice cast sound like they are going through the motions, they have the woman from Abbot Elementary basically being an animal version of her character from that show, it all feels very low effort.

Finally wherein Disney films of old used to have a clear moral message that the film would teach over the course of its runtime, there is nothing like that here, maybe it is the reliance of shades of grey rather than actually having established heroes and villains or the need to make everything morally complex that leads to this issue it is hard to tell.

Overall, this is just more animated slop that brings down the tone of the whole genre.

1.5/5

Pros.

It is watchable

It has a few unintentional laughs

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A Very Merry Pooh Year: Bring Back Hand Drawn Animation

Summary

Pooh and friends celebrate the holidays.

I needed a pallet cleanser after all of the horrible three dimensional animation I have seen recently for a project I was helping a friend with, so I thought some classic hand drawn animation was just the ticket. Seeing this makes me think about what we have lost, hand drawn animation has so much more heart and soul, even when it combines with three dimensional characters or elements.

I like that this is not just a Christmas film but rather a film that reflects the whole period, there are not many animated New Years films so that was a nice change. I thought that this special did a lot to not only make it feel like Christmas but show how each individual character interacts with the season. The Christmas magic really gave the sweetness of Pooh an extra something.

I would challenge you to watch this special and not even feel a little bit Christmassy, it shows the true meaning of the season and has a wonderful message that is relevant no matter who is watching it or when.

3.5/5

Pros.

It is sweet

It is novel

It is nice to see the different character interact with Christmas

The animation

Cons.

It is slow at times

It has almost a melancholy feel at times

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Animal Farm: Netflix Is Almost Fully Slop At This Point

Summary

Animal Farm for the TikTok generation.

Let’s not pretend that many of the people this film was aimed at had ever even read the book, one needs to say that many of the mindless drones who watched this film are a different farm animal from the ones primarily focused on in the film and that is sheep.

The fact the film featured a TikTok inspired dance sequence and shopping sequence shows you the sickening lack of subtly this film was going to approach the themes of the seminal book with. If you cannot tell yet this was not made for intellectual people.

Then they cast Seth Rogen in the role of Napolean, now Rogen is detestable for a few reasons, he is a self-hating Jewish person who spends an awful lot of his time apologising for being what he is, he has questionable involvement in the alleged crimes of James Franco, and also is the acceptable male buffoon character, whenever one of these left wing comedy tv shows/films are made. It is okay to laugh at him the show/film wants you to see how much of a loser he is as he debases himself. Rant over, whoever thought casting him here was a good idea needs firing, the central role of Napolean calls for someone with range who can convey the journey that the character is going on, perhaps a Shakespearean actor who can feel truly menacing, not Rogen who feels about as menacing as Shaggy from Scooby Doo. To say he lacks dramatic range is the understatement of the year.

They also cast a man to play the male role of Snowball, though of course this is done in the modern parlance wherein this is a man who thinks of himself as a woman, and Netflix thinks they are pushing boundaries by casting him, in a male role. This is stunt casting and little else.

On top of all that horrendousness you have the fact that the animation is the kind of horrible sterile CGI animation that everything is these days, the sort that makes you feel like it is made by robots rather than people.

Overall, everything about this endeavour feels soul crushing.

1/5

Pros.

You can use the noise of it to make sure you haven’t suddenly gone deaf.

Cons.

The animation

Rogen

It is brash garish and horrible

The political statement it makes

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Eyes Of Wakanda: Ryan Coogler Seems To Hate Black People

Summary

We get to find out more about the wonderful citizenry of Wakanda.

I am starting to wonder if Ryan Coogler is secretly a white supremacist, both this and Iron Heart are so chocked-full of harmful Black stereotypes that it certainly points that way.

In this mini series we learnt that Wakanda interferes constantly in the outside world, despite hiding its existence from its African neighbours and allows them to starve. Moreover, despite Shuri’s line in Black Panther about the white man being a coloniser, here we see that exiles from Wakanda, then go on to do just that. So everyone is the coloniser?

Why do they do this? They do it to protect their artefacts which they hide away and lock in a vault as they are much too powerful for anyone to use, even though they were invented for a reason. This all ends when a girlboss YASS Quueen of future Wakanda shows up in the last episode to tell the silly men that the artifacts don’t matter and that they need to stop hording them and stop hiding from the outside world. Meaning all the murder, all the working with bad people so you can steal your artefacts back from them whilst ignoring what they are doing to those around them, was for nothing.

It also made Michael B Jordan’s line in the first film about the African artifacts in the British Museum sound hollow and be out of touch with the new Wakandan philosophy on artefact hording.

There is also a female Asian Iron Fist for some reason and she mops the floor with multiple highly trained Wakandan soldiers with ease.

Overall, I want Marvel to go away.

0.5/5

Pros.

It is unintentionally funny sometimes

Cons.

The stereotypes

The moral messaging behind it

It makes the films actively worse

It doesn’t need to exist

There are no memorable new characters

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Sauvages: Depressing And Icky

Summary

A tribe faces an existential threat and only a teen girl can save the day.

As far as kid’s films go this was incredibly depressing. There is unrelenting sadness to this film that never lets up, it’s hard to really encapsulate where this sadness originates from, but it’s unmistakably there.

I would say this film is more message focused than focused on being entertaining, but that is okay sometimes animated films are more about messaging that being entertaining see Inside Out. For me personally I thought this was a little heavy handed and needless at times but, I will give it props for clearly executing on its goal.

There is one thing that I thought was a uncomfortable about the film, and that is the nudity. Now this may be a cultural thing or me making something out of nothing, but during the let’s say last ten minutes of the film the lead character who as I said is a young teen is topless. Now you don’t see anything as she is not developed, but it has an icky and uncomfortable feel to it, I don’t understand why this was not thought about, in terms of international perception at the time, but I didn’t like it.

Overall, if you want a very hard environmental message and some uncomfortable scenes than this is the animated film for you.

1/5

Pros.

It is nice to see a stop motion animation film exist

Cons.

The message

The nudity

It is badly paced

That only part of it is translated

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The Bad Guys Two: Meet The Bad Girls

Summary

The Bad Guys are back.

I saw this is a double bill with Smurfs, see my review of that now, and suffice it to say I was feeling depressed. I was beginning to think that the days were studios put effort into family films was dead. Then I saw this film. Did it reverse that notion? The answer is mixed.

Whilst this film had far more style and personality that Smurfs which felt AI made, there was also a hollowness to this film as well. The Bad Guys themselves were more likable and had charm, and you cared about the characters, but in terms of the world and the story things just felt bog standard. It felt very much like a narrative you have seen before dressed in a new skin.

I would have liked more time with Wolf, Sam Rockwell, and Diane, Zazie Beetz, to explore their relationship, and the idea of how hard it is for bad guys to be good and readjust to a society that does not want them. This would have been far more interesting that simply having the bad guys be framed by a group of bad girls, yes you can hear my groan. Alas, the film does not even do much with these new bad girls beyond have them be a foil to the bad guys, and set up some future romances, as far as characters go they are quite one dimensional. Perhaps this is done on purpose to give them more ground to mine in a third film.

Overall, serviceable but nothing special.

2.5/5

Pros.

The characters have charm

The animation has passion

Wolf and Diane

Cons.

The world feels hollow

The story is deeply uninspired

It feels predictable.

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Smurfs: Smurfette Is Black Coded Now

Summary

James Corden takes a moment from not paying his writers a fair wage, and insulting waiters to star in the third remake of the Smurfs of the recent past.

Do the Smurfs have any continued relevancy? I would argue that is doubtful, is this better or worse than the previous remakes? I would say that it is of a similar quality. Is it a good film? No. All of the Smurf remakes and reimagining’s have been terrible this is just the latest.

The film is about magic books and has the smurfs go out into the real world, surprise, surprise, whilst I enjoyed the switch between live action and animation I thought the film did not do much with it or really play around. It was very lifeless at times, and felt almost mechanical.

A particularly egregious part of this film is Rihanna as Smurfette, this was done to provide some diversity to the voice cast possibly? They also now have a very clearly LGBTQ+ smurf in the gang. How the Rihanna thing is egregious is the fact that Rihanna has to do several musical numbers, no one else in the film does, and it just feels almost like an advert for an upcoming album rather than a nice accompaniment. Did the makers of the film not think of getting maybe someone younger than the kids might be into for their horrible effort in self-promotion.

Overall, this is why Paramount as a studio has fallen and is being bought out.

1/5

Pros.

Nick Offerman’s character

Cons.

Rihanna

It is boring

It is lifeless

James Corden

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Elio: The Death Of Pixar

Summary

Pixar’s latest is yet another effort in emotionally manipulative story telling.

Gone are the days wherein Pixar had charm and wit, in are the days of therapy speak and finding the idea of a mother-son bond ‘just a bit too much’. For reference the creatives behind this film found the idea of Elio, Yonas Kibreab, being the child of a single mother to be too much and instead needed to have it be an aunt-child dynamic. Why is that? Why is so much of modern Hollywood afraid to show good parent child dynamics, or even nuclear families, it is starting to reach a distractable peak now.

Great science fiction often plays on the cool ideas of meeting aliens, the new technology, the things we might learn about ourselves etc, but not this film instead we have an incredibly boring film about intergalactic politics told in a way so dumbed down that a paper bag could understand it.

Good family films can be made in such a way wherein every member of the family can find something to enjoy in it, but this film is just low effort garbage, that treats audiences young and old alike as fools.

1/5

Pros.

It is short

Cons.

The aunt-son thing feels forced

None of the characters are likable

The therapy speak

It is not fun.

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