Orion And The Dark: One For The Anxious Kids

Summary

A young boy realises that the dark is nothing to be afraid of.

I really liked this film for the most part. I thought that Orion was super relatable, and that anyone who was ever an anxious kid will immediately remember feeling his anxieties, it is like a shared collective trauma. I thought it was a bit weird when we stepped away from Orion and it was about his kid and then her kid, I thought this seemed a little confused and messed with the flow of the film it would have worked better narratively if it had just stuck with him.

I thought Orion’s interactions with and friendships with Dark and the other night entities was all quite sweet. You really believed the friendship between Orion and Dark and when they save each other from death throughout the course of the film at different points you can see they care about each other. It is very wholesome. Plus it was nice seeing Natasia Demetriou get some work she is always great. My one complaint on the character side of things would be that the film had too many and as such some of the side characters came off as wanting and lacking in the personality department, we could see them on-screen but knew very little about them.

Overall, a solid Netflix animated film.

4/5

Pros.

The lead is super relatable

The friendship between Dark and Orion is nice

It is very wholesome

The animation is nice

Cons.

The side characters are underdeveloped

Swapping to Orion’s kid and then his kid’s kid is a bit jarring

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Migration: Dancing Ducks And Outdated Memes

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A family of ducks go on a cross country migration

This was a deeply average animated movie, nothing happened that you couldn’t guess from the trailer and it was mind-numbingly stupid. Before you cry out but this is a movie for kids, sure but films like Toy Story and hell even Super Mario had good enough writing that you could enjoy it whilst being an adult there was a cleverness, not so here.

What I found odd and perhaps irritating about this film was its desire to repeat jokes, a repeated joke in a kids animated film is not unusual, but this film doesn’t just repeat one or two jokes it is like say 7 or 8 jokes that it reuses over and over and because it’s a large amount by the end of the film there are no new jokes just repeated ones. Moreover, this film is incredibly dependent on outdated memes and pop culture moments that horribly date the film. Remember Salt Bae? Remember when the salt sprinkle meme was a thing? This film sure does and it bases the villain of the piece around him because that is a thing that will still be relevant with folks today let alone kids.

The moral lessons of this film are fairly insipid, it’s the same old same old about going outside your comfort zone, and if a girl talks to you once then you must fly across the world to catch up to her because clearly she is your soulmate. Maybe I am overthinking a kids film but I just think that there are much better animated films that teach these same lessons.

Overall, if you want a film about ducks dancing and a lot of references to outdated memes then this is the one for you, if you want anything else not so much.

2/5

Pros.

David Mitchell is in this that a massive pro for me

It is fun to laugh at it

Cons.

It is boring

It has a generic message

None of the characters, except the little sister duck are likeable

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Chicken Run Dawn On The Nugget: I’d Rather Have Some KFC

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

The Chickens are back.

I am going to be up front with you all when I watched this film I was eating the Christmas deals from KFC at the same time, that is my sense of humour.

I like Aardman, I support British animation, but deary me this film was unnecessary. When will the trend of the characters we care about from previous films being called out by their kids end ? So here we see Molly, Bella Ramsey, call out her mum from hiding her from the world and saying how she wants more out of life, Ginger, Thandwie Newton, could have easily avoided the events of the film by saying ‘look if you go outside of this island you’ll die’ but no.

Anyway, the new preachy daughter character saying how the chickens now have a moral duty to go and free the other chickens in the camps at the end is just irritating. We don’t need every character to be an activist.

Maybe it is because I didn’t like the first film but if there was supposed to be any charm here it is just not showing up for me.

Finally, and this may be somewhat controversial, but Molly’s scouse best friend has an incredibly grating and irritating accent and every time she says anything it just goes through you. Having heard many a scouse accent in my time, I was thinking to myself is this someone making an over-the-top impression but nope. It is honestly hard to listen to at times.

Overall, they should make a Robin Robin sequel and stop this.

Pros.

It is short

The animation is impressive

Cons.

It didn’t need to exist

The whole plot of the film could have been easily avoided with one piece of dialogue

The scouse chicken

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Futurama Season II: One Large Step In The Wrong Direction

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Buckle up this will be a long one, this is my review of the Hulu season of Futurama.

Now first a little context, Futurama was and is my favourite animated series of all time, with American Dad a close second. I have watched Futurama all the way through more times than I can count and it has influenced my life in a number of ways. I like most people fall into the standard pattern, with one slight difference, I think that the Fox seasons were gold, I like the specials more so than some of the other fans, and I think that the Comedy Central run was fine but a massive step down.

The more I think over the new episodes the more I think they should never have been made, whether it was because they brought on new writers who didn’t understand the characters or whether it was because the show didn’t have solid ideas in coming back it remains to be seen but it could be either.

Really in my mind their were two major issues with this new season, firstly there is the fact it is obsessed with being topical, whether that is in talking about covid or cancel culture, which dates the episodes horribly and feels like the writers couldn’t come up with a new idea so they just went ‘what’s in the news’. Secondly, you have the fact that the series disrespects to an insane degree Fry and Leela’s relationship. You have Leela seemingly going off with other guys multiple times over the course of these episodes for no reason and at the end it will end with something like it was all a dream, it is awful.

I think the easiest way to review this season is to go episode by episode. The Impossible Stream as asinine and thinks it is far more clever than it actually is, it begins the long disrespecting of Fry and Leela’s relationship as well. Bad episode. Children of a Lesser Bog may well be the only good episode here, it carries over from the Fox era well adding a beautiful new chapter in that storyline and expanding out the side characters, it is a shame that it sets such a high bar as it makes everything else look like crap by comparison. How The West Was Won, is again the series needing to be topical and be like ‘aha crypto am I right kids’, are you beginning to notice a theme yet? Parasites Regained is entertaining again I like the classic call back and the Dune parody but it never really gets above okay. Related To Items You Have Viewed is an episode that you will forget about as you are watching it is dull, again the episode tries to do some classic Futurama science fiction but waters it down with topical references that amount to ‘Amazon bad’. I Know What You Did Last Xmas is one of the wors Christmas episodes as once again it takes the interesting concept of Robot Santa and makes it boring and dull, also Bender and Zoidberg don’t have chemistry. Rage Against The Vaccine and Zapp Gets Cancelled are both awful episodes and I think you can see why, it’s in the title, it is jokes that age horribly and that you have already hard at least a million times before, utter trash. The Prince and the Product is my most hated episode of the season as it flips off anyone who likes the Fry and Leela romance and then goes it was all a spell, it feels like the very worst kind of screw the audience story telling. All The Way Down is better, I would put it above Parasites Regained and below Children Of A Lesser Bog it does some interesting science fiction stuff and I like the questions it tries to explore, but it isn’t perfect.

So what’s that, three out of ten of the episodes this season are okay to good and seven are bad……. Yikes. If you are an optimist you could argue that it’s new writers trying to find their voices and old writers trying to get their groove back and that maybe the next half will be better but honestly I think that Futurama should have stayed dead and that pains me to say on a core level but it’s the truth.

Also a number of things carry over from the Comedy Central era yet Zoidberg’s girlfriend is not even mentioned, and that is one of the best episodes of the Comedy Central run, he is back to being pathetic and alone now and it feels like regression.

Overall, a massive shame.

1.5/5

Pros.

One good and two okay episodes

It is nice to see the characters back

Cons.

The need to be topical

The disrespect to Fry and Leela

Seven bad episodes

The new writers aren’t good

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Wish: Disney Wanted This To Bomb

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Disney fires a massive blast on their side of the culture war, sadly it has blown back on them in a big way.

I went to see this opening day, there were three other people there that is the strength of the Disney brand these days. Anyway, where to begin with this film that made me turn to my girlfriend and go no more Disney animations ever again.

Firstly the plot is beyond simplistic, like really there is no plot beyond an incredibly ham-fisted social message that everyone is special and unique and if life is ever even slightly unfair it is your duty to totally Karen out about it and that only through revolution can anything ever be achieved.

I mean I may be reading it wrong, but personally seeing how two of the only white male characters were evil and how it was the duty of everyone else to punish them it just felt like yet more preaching and like I was being told this film was not for me. If they had made the King look exactly like Donald Trump I would not have been surprised as that as clearly what they were going for, and this might play in America but outside of America audience’s don’t care for their social justice messages. As you all well know, if you have read my reviews for some time, I don’t mind a progressive message at all but when they decide to lecture and force it down the audience’s throat then it becomes clawing quickly.

The songs were not great either, which seems like an easy thing they could have gotten right, the only one that was catchy was Chris Pine’s song about how ungrateful people are. The rest aren’t terrible but they all come off feeling the same which is fine but it doesn’t do anything to sell the film.

I had heard that the ending of the film basically set up a Disney animated films shared universe, and after having seen it I question whether I was lied to. There is some implication of it but I thought it would be clearly shown, that was half of the appeal to me.

One thing I did like about the film that I will give it a half point for was the absurdity with the chickens that was a lot of fun, but sadly that was all the fun on offer in the entire hour and a half ish runtime.

Overall, another lecture from Disney

0.5/5

Pros.

The chickens

Cons

It is preachy

The real world parallel is right there for all to see and it’s irritating

The songs bar one aren’t good

It isn’t fun to watch

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Elemental: Pixar’s Attempt To Address Immigration In The Silliest Way Possible

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Pixar has run out of ideas so is now making films about elements, what’s next a feature length film about a cup of coffee.

So I went into this with low expectations, like basement level low expectations. I had seen the trailers and I thought that the film just looked like generic animated pap that repeated the same few life lessons all animated films do over and over again in an effort to entertain kids in the summer. However, there was far more to it than that and I would argue that this film has one of Pixar’s most developed and engaging emotional cores and that the romance between its leads is the sweetest one I have seen from the studio in years. I left this film blown away by how much it made me feel and yes I was a little bit emotional at the end.

What I would say about this film, and this is where I believe this film has gone majorly/wrong, is that it shouldn’t be about elements. At its very heart this is a film about worlds colliding, as cliché as that is, and of immigration with the latter playing a key role throughout the plot and informing a number of character relationships. I think this film would have been a triumph if it had just been exactly the same but swapped out the elemental characters for human characters and had it been an animated film about a grown up child of immigrants falling in love with someone from outside her community with the two helping each other grow. Now I can think of a pretty obvious reason this wasn’t done, as it may be viewed by some as too political and Disney might have had a panic thinking how is that going to play in Middle America, but I think if they had done that I would be giving this film a 5.

Overall, a hell of a surprise buried under some needless nonsense.

4/5

Pros.

The romance

The emotional core of the story

The inter-character relationships in a non-relationship sense

It is genuinely effecting

Cons.

The use idea of it being elements just doesn’t work at all

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Human Resources: Season Two Overview

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

The hormone monsters are back in the office.

So I wasn’t a big fan of the first season of this show as I thought it was confused and overly busy. However, I am a fan of Big Mouth, as many of you will know, as such I wanted to like this show and I can say that I did enjoy this second season far more.

This is mainly because the show really crafts a key group of monster characters and sticks to them, it is not like the first season wherein we were constantly being barraged by new characters in every scene. Moreover, by focusing on a smaller group of characters it allowed for each to get some meaningful development over the season. The quality of this development is somewhat questionable as whilst each character does get progressed this season it at times feels like they are just running through names trying to give each character a scene to show where they are at now and then move on.

Building upon the issue of hollow character development, this season also tries to give a different character focus per episode which in an off itself isn’t a bad idea. However, the issue that then comes with this is that you might care about Rochelle or Maury and Connie and as such want to see their storylines get developed rather than being thrown into another character’s world, who you may not care about, for an entire episode. It slows things down a lot and causes you to stop paying attention in these other storylines.

Overall, the characters shine a lot more this season and it does right a lot of the wrongs of the first, however, the uneven character work and segmented approach to who the series is following on an episode by episode basis mean the series isn’t perfect.

4/5

Pros.

It is funny

The characters are better and more developed

It stops forcing in new characters

It rights a lot of the wrongs of the first season

Cons.

The character work is uneven and the segmented episode approach focusing on different characters takes you out of it at times.

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Across The Spider-Verse: Spider-People Overkill

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Miles Morales returns to the Spider-Verse.

I was very excited for this film going in, but have to say I was a little disappointed with what we got.

First the positives, I thought the character work was great particularly as it applied to parent child dynamics and the idea of finding a home/family, in this regard the film really nailed some deep emotional scenes that were genuinely moving. I also liked the addition of all the new Spider-People especially Spider-Man India, I did think they went a little cameo mad especially when they got to the clubhouse near the end of the film, but for the most part I liked seeing all the different variants I remember from the comics. Of course another pro of the film was the animation, which was incredible and a real feat to behold, the fact that the animators were able to blend so many different styles of animation so seamlessly together in one film highlights the artistry of Sony Animation and is really a big boon for them.

Now despite all of that, this wasn’t a perfect film. I disliked the act structure and thought it felt like one of the Hobbit films, this was mainly due to the fact that it didn’t have an ending or third act but rather one long second act that will then lead into the next film. I understand this film was written to end on a cliff-hanger, but I think that it could have had a degree of resolution within its own narrative as well as doing this rather than just abruptly cutting away. Due to this structure decision the film feels like it has quite bad pacing issues. I also didn’t like what they did to Miguel O’Hara, and admittedly this one hit me harder than most as outside of Peter Parker Miguel O’Hara is my favourite other spider-person, I think making him a villain was a bad call. I understand that in the third film it will be revealed that he was taking orders from/ coerced to work for Morlun and the Inheritors and he will redeem himself, but I just think that by making him so outwardly villainous here it takes away from a lot of his heroic potential in the future.

3.5/5

Pros.

Spider-Man India

Miles

The animation

The emotional beats

Cons.

The pacing issues

The ending

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Star Wars Visions: The Bandits Of Golak

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A brother and sister duo try to escape Imperials and Inquisitors whilst fleeing the Galactic Civil War.

There isn’t a whole lot wrong with this episode, it has some okay action and at times knows how to use its tension, but I think that is just it, this is an episode of half measures it is fine but doesn’t push for more than that.

I think the major issue with this episode is that the plot idea has been done before and done better, not the exact same plot but the idea of force sensitives having to run away from the Empire whilst being hunted down and having to make sacrifices to go into hiding. I feel like I have seen the episode so many times before in different areas of Star Wars media and for me that is a problem.

I also think that it is time to stop having all these survivors of Order 66 as it totally ruins the moment within the lore. Order 66 was impactful as it killed off most of the Jedis, it was a big deal, to have more and more of them surviving just takes away from it. Before you say it I know this show isn’t cannon, but I just wanted to say as it plays a role in the narrative of the episode that it is a plot crutch I am not enjoying from current year Star Wars. If they want to have more Jedi they could establish that there was a temple of some kind in the Outer Rim or beyond that was a splinter group from the main order and which didn’t get involved in the Galactic Civil War for whatever reason. That way you can have more new Jedi’s pop up without the question being where were they in the original trilogy.

Overall, a fine episode if one that felt very, very familiar.

2/5

Pros.

The action was okay

It was watchable

Cons.

The lazy plot crutch of another surviving Jedi

I feel like I have seen it before

The emotions weren’t developed enough to be impactful

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Star Wars Visions: The Spy Dancer

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A dancer bides her time to strike back against the Empire.

Despite my claims in the last Star Wars Visions review this episode is in fact the best of the season so far. This is for two central reasons.

Firstly the story of the lead and the horrors she has faced really puts a human, or in this case alien, face to the rebellion and makes it feel even more important and impactful. I think the episode perfectly captures this idea of rebelling and pain in the most beautiful way, and that the final hint towards resolution was surprisingly effecting.

Secondly, the animation is the best here is has been all season with Cartoon Saloon being the only ones thus far to pose a challenge to Studio La Cachette’s excellent form. This really comes through during the dancing scenes with the incredibly intricate dance wherein the lead’s outfit and the fabric itself seem to come to life.

I think both of these reasons raise the bar from what has already come out this season and lays down a gauntlet for the final few episodes to match or exceed.

Overall, I think this is a powerful episode that is well crafted and is guaranteed to make you shed a tear.

4/5

Pros.

The emotions

The animation

The characters

The feeling of rebellion and pain

Cons.

The ending is a bit too opened ended for my liking I would have liked a more definitive ending

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