Spoilers in this entire review! I was browsing Netflix when I came across this film unexpectedly and thought it looked interesting. After reading a review, and seriously, seeing the really weird animation for the cover, I figured I'd give it a try. Maybe even if it was just a trippy movie to laugh at, it was something to watch.
I didn't realize that the two main characters being gay was anything notable. Big deal; it certainly doesn't help or hurt the story and in no way makes it more compelling, get over yourself about that.
Now, what I personally found very hard to get over was the animation. The backgrounds and what appears to be CGI were done very well, but the main characters look downright awful. They remind me of someone who has just learned about Illustrator and is going to great lengths to look like they have talent, but ends up with weirdly proportioned and cheesy characters. Animation is such a beautiful art form and can express so much, oftentimes more than live action. This film made me depressed to have to watch it, just for the art style and animation of the main characters. I love animation, and this is not the cream of the crop.
As to the sci-fi aspect, yea, it's technically sci-fi what with the A.I. and spaceships and living on the moons of Jupiter. I get that, but nothing else really made it sci-fi, it wasn't included in a meaningful way to the story line except to be a stage for the characters to play on.
(Yes, even more spoilers here too) Now, down to the nitty gritty. I love sci-fi, I love animation, and who doesn't love a love story? This one is dull, uneventful, sometimes hard to follow, and certainly doesn't make me ache for the two main characters to get back together.
The movie was actually just barely "ok", up until the point where the flimsy rescue is formed and put into motion. Things started to unravel at this point and I think the writers lost their way. They lost my suspension of disbelief here several times. From the way they break in and break the clone, to finding the lab and breaking in there (why again didn't they just go straight to the lab?), all really made for a bad ending and oh, the cliché! Left and right it was the same old recycled clichés about "Boo hoo, my girlfriend was taken by an evil music exec, and they don't let me see her,! Damn! She was the best thing that ever happened to me! I'm just a poor rich kid that wants to play her music and eat her cake too, if you know what I mean. *winky*" Yes, get ready for plenty of girl on girl action. It's almost like the creator thought the only way to keep an audience involved was getting some more lesbian stuff in there. Mind you, this is not explicit at all, just some suggestive hands and bellies exposed, but almost every scene with the two main characters has some girl stuff going on. Puhhhhlease, who wrote this? A 14-year-old boy? It can't be a great movie and NOT have girl action every 4 minutes, right? It gets to the point of almost depending on the lesbian theme just to fill time and make it full length. (Sidenote: which reminds me reading somewhere that the director was using high school students to draw and animate this movie? Well, I'm sure the kids had no problem with some PDA and a dash of T&A!) Overall, not that great of a movie. If you can get past the visual experience, the storyline is just not compelling or unique. There is a lot of great animation out there WITH great story telling. If this was the directors first step into movie making while they were in film school, I would say it was a pretty good first try at it, but this was not good enough to be taken seriously.
I didn't realize that the two main characters being gay was anything notable. Big deal; it certainly doesn't help or hurt the story and in no way makes it more compelling, get over yourself about that.
Now, what I personally found very hard to get over was the animation. The backgrounds and what appears to be CGI were done very well, but the main characters look downright awful. They remind me of someone who has just learned about Illustrator and is going to great lengths to look like they have talent, but ends up with weirdly proportioned and cheesy characters. Animation is such a beautiful art form and can express so much, oftentimes more than live action. This film made me depressed to have to watch it, just for the art style and animation of the main characters. I love animation, and this is not the cream of the crop.
As to the sci-fi aspect, yea, it's technically sci-fi what with the A.I. and spaceships and living on the moons of Jupiter. I get that, but nothing else really made it sci-fi, it wasn't included in a meaningful way to the story line except to be a stage for the characters to play on.
(Yes, even more spoilers here too) Now, down to the nitty gritty. I love sci-fi, I love animation, and who doesn't love a love story? This one is dull, uneventful, sometimes hard to follow, and certainly doesn't make me ache for the two main characters to get back together.
The movie was actually just barely "ok", up until the point where the flimsy rescue is formed and put into motion. Things started to unravel at this point and I think the writers lost their way. They lost my suspension of disbelief here several times. From the way they break in and break the clone, to finding the lab and breaking in there (why again didn't they just go straight to the lab?), all really made for a bad ending and oh, the cliché! Left and right it was the same old recycled clichés about "Boo hoo, my girlfriend was taken by an evil music exec, and they don't let me see her,! Damn! She was the best thing that ever happened to me! I'm just a poor rich kid that wants to play her music and eat her cake too, if you know what I mean. *winky*" Yes, get ready for plenty of girl on girl action. It's almost like the creator thought the only way to keep an audience involved was getting some more lesbian stuff in there. Mind you, this is not explicit at all, just some suggestive hands and bellies exposed, but almost every scene with the two main characters has some girl stuff going on. Puhhhhlease, who wrote this? A 14-year-old boy? It can't be a great movie and NOT have girl action every 4 minutes, right? It gets to the point of almost depending on the lesbian theme just to fill time and make it full length. (Sidenote: which reminds me reading somewhere that the director was using high school students to draw and animate this movie? Well, I'm sure the kids had no problem with some PDA and a dash of T&A!) Overall, not that great of a movie. If you can get past the visual experience, the storyline is just not compelling or unique. There is a lot of great animation out there WITH great story telling. If this was the directors first step into movie making while they were in film school, I would say it was a pretty good first try at it, but this was not good enough to be taken seriously.