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darkfox173
Reviews
Mulan (2020)
Unrecognizable as Disney's Mulan
My first impression of this film came from walking in to my living room to see my roommate watching it. I stood there for a good 15 minutes trying to figure out what he was watching before I gave up and just asked him. When he told me the title it did not bode well as I had been planning on watching the new Mulan myself later.
Though I was hesitant I did watch the whole film from start to finish. It was everything I had worried about after that fifteen minutes. Calling this film a "remake" is simply inaccurate. It's unrecognizable as Disney's Mulan. The story has been drastically changed and key characters from the original animated film are nowhere to be seen. Moreover, this film lacks the charm of the animated film, taking a more serious approach that falls flat due to poor acting and bad special effects.
I'm not sure who this is a film for, but one thing is certain: if you enjoyed Disney's original animated Mulan then this isn't the film for you.
Artemis Fowl (2020)
A complete waste of time.
This movie deserves 0 stars. It's not Artemis Fowl and it can't even get by on its own merits as a movie. The story has been completely changed from the books it's supposedly based on to the point where it's completely unrecognizable as Artemis Fowl in any sense. The characters have been completely changed as well. Artemis is meant to be 12-year-old criminal mastermind with the disposition of a Vulcan that was well aware of his family's criminal enterprises for his entire life and brought up to eventually take over for his father and keep their criminal empire running. He detested athletic activity and was always extremely formal, constantly wearing suits even in his down time. His father went missing when he was very young, held by the Russian mafia, and it drove his mother insane. He was left to keep everything going and at 12 he kidnapped a fairy and ransomed her for gold. Though the protagonist, in the first book Artemis was very much the villain.
In this movie Artemis is clearly just a kid that is smarter than everybody else. They kept his "kid genius" trait and removed everything else. His first appearance in the film is him surfing, something the true Artemis would never have done. He's constantly seen in typical clothing you would expect a kid to wear during the first portion of the film rather than his signature suits. His mother is dead and his father is kidnapped by Opal Koboi, the reoccurring villain that was introduced in the second book and had nothing to do with the Fowl family until Artemis II foiled her schemes. Movie Artemis has an emotional outburst when he learned from a news broadcast that his father is suspected of being a criminal and denies the accusations, eventually having to be dragged away by Butler, who in the movie prefers his first name despite it being a major part of his character in the books that his first name is to remain a secret unless he's dying. Butler is the one that introduces Artemis to the reality of faeries, which is what his dad was involved in, rather than Artemis discovering faeries and dragging Butler and Juliet into it with him like in the books.
All of the characters have been drastically changed in similar manners, their traits and backstories completely thrown out the window and rewritten. They're mere caricatures of the characters they're supposed to be.
Even forgetting that this was supposed to be a book adaptation the movie wasn't very good. The acting is bland and the actors are always either trying too hard or not trying hard enough. The manor is beautiful from the outside but there's far too big a disconnect between the style of the exterior and the style of the interior. The voice over narration by Josh is terrible, far too raspy and often difficult to understand due to that fact. The plot of the movie is very basic and recycled from nearly every hero or spy B movie ever made. The characters are watered down stereotypes with no depth to them at all. All in all, it's just terrible. Disney wasted so much money on a movie that turned out to be complete garbage.
If you're thinking about watching "Artemis Fowl" my advice would be to just watch Spy Kids or Men in Black again instead. It's basically those two movies combined in the worst ways possible and somehow both of those movies are better films than this one.
Mako Mermaids (2013)
Should have stuck to the original plotline
I watched H2O when it came out and I was actually looking forward to Mako Mermaids since it was meant to have everything I loved about H2O and my favorite actress from Lightning Point. The first season of Mako Mermaids was on par with the first season of H2O in my book and I would give it a 7 out 10 if that was the only season. However, the show started to go downhill after they decided to continue it as a sequel to H2O rather than as a prequel like the first season was intended to be. This creates a ton of conflicts, continuity problems and plot holes both between H2O and within the different seasons of Mako Mermaids itself.
Scales: Mermaids Are Real (2017)
Not really worth watching
I was in the mood to watch something about mermaids, it being May, but I regret watching this film. The acting was terrible and all of the characters seemed to be complete idiots. The whole story was poorly written and the special effects weren't that good. What bothered me most though was the fact that the leading actress looked nothing like the girl on the cover. It's obvious which girl is meant to be the main character in the story just by looking at the cover image but at the beginning of the film I was constantly asking "Well, where is she?" because I couldn't find her. Unlike the girl on the cover the girl actually playing the leading role, despite the movie's claims of her beauty, is actually quite homely. The actress playing Crystal would have been better suited to play the role of Siren. Combine that with her bland emotionless acting and I can't see this leading actress going very far in the movie business.
Frozen II (2019)
Very little connection to the first movie
Aside from the fact that Elsa, Anna, Kristoff and Olaf appear in the film as the few little flashbacks that are nothing more than scenes from the first movie there's very little connection between Frozen and Frozen II. Frozen II had a completely new plot with brand new elements that were never hinted at in the first film and made changes or expansions on plot points from the original that felt shoehorned in. The sudden discovery of the lost ship seemed forced and the ship itself being there in it's condition made very little sense. If it were whole enough to float all to shore at least some of those that were aboard should have survived and if it were too damage and sunk at best you would only get pieces of it washing ashore, not the whole ship. The girls' mother being from the enchanted forest also feels forced. It's as though they decided it for this movie only as a plot device. Either way, it's all new information and it makes Frozen II feel disconnected from Frozen, as though Disney decided to place the main character from Frozen in a completely different world. The best way I can describe it is: It felt more like a crossover than a sequel, but I'm not sure what Frozen's been crossed over with.
Regrettably, the one thing I find that connects back to the first movie is Elsa's singing, in the worst way. Though the words in the songs are different everything she sings sounds like "Let It Go".
Lastly, in addition to the crossover feel of the movie the pacing is too quick and the actual plot is lacking. There was barely any time spent building up to the reawakening of the spirits and the first part of the movie was spent on a scene from the past where Elsa and Anna were children listening to their father tell the tale of the enchanted forest. The scene would have fit better as a flashback while the sisters were cuddling after charades or given in pieces throughout the movie at key moments. The journey both to and through the enchanted forest felt far too short and the angered spirits were calmed in an instant. Over all, the whole thing just seemed rushed and the ending didn't really feel in line with the message of "big changes happen in life". The moment where Elsa turns to ice is heart-wrenching and Anna making the choice to right a past wrong knowing what it would cost and that it would mean things could never been the same again really shows how much she has matured on this too-short adventure, but then all of that is undone by Elsa miraculously coming back to life and saving her kingdom from destruction. Despite the fact that Anna then became queen and the sisters are living in separate places not all that much seems to have actually changed. The kingdom is restored to its former glory, the sisters still seem to get together as often as they used to if that note was an indication, and Anna is saved from having to learn the lesson that the story meant to teach and get to live free of any kind of consequences for anything. Had Elsa remained frozen and Anna had to rebuild the kingdom from the ground up it would have been a story with much greater impact.
Pet Sematary (2019)
Good movie but the pacing could use some work
I finally got around to watching Pet Sematary and overall it was an enjoyable experience, but it felt more like an episode of a television show than it did a movie. I didn't find it scary, but since I have yet to find any horror movie that actually managed to scare me I won't judge it for that. Some of the characters were pretty good while others fell flat. Ellie seemed like an actual 8 year old girl and Rachel has a decently developed reason for why she's uncomfortable talking about death but Louis wasn't very impressive and Gage didn't get enough screen time for me to really care too much about him.
Church was excellent in his simplicity. His evil tendencies and plots weren't overt and they didn't go over the top with making him look or act demonic which made it more realistic that the family could dismiss his occasional strange behavior as a result of "the accident" and how Ellie could still be so attached to him even after he scratched her.
I actually like the change where they killed Ellie instead of Gage. With Ellie having just turned 9 she was still very much a child and incredibly young, but old enough that she could have had hopes and dreams and we could actually get to know her as a character. Bringing her back as an undead being influenced by an evil spirit leaves more of an impact than just making her a demon child too. You know that Ellie is still in there somewhere but there's something dark tainting her and driving her to do terrible things. Because Ellie is old enough to truly speak she can hint at what's happening to her and how she feels about her situation, such as when she tells Louis that she can "hear the woods" in her head. If you think about it the entire situation is bleak and depressing.
The movie could have been great had it been longer. Some of the deleted scenes really should have been included to help flesh out characters and relationships better and the movie could have really benefited from spending more time on the Creed's life in their new house leading up to Church and Ellie's death. By the time the credits rolled I was surprised that it had been nearly two hours because Pet Sematary didn't feel as long as it actually was with what little it covered. I've encountered television shows that manage to cover far more in single 45 minute episode.
Another problem I'm having with the movie is the ending that was chosen for the final cut. After seeing the alternate ending I feel as though it was actually the darker of the two and would have been more in line with the theme of grief and melancholy. In the final cut undead Ellie buries Rachel and runs into Louis in the Pet Sematary. The two fight and Louis seems to win, having pinned Ellie. He has a shovel in hand ready to cave her skull in and laments that he wanted them to be a family, to which Ellie put up an illusion of being living Ellie and tells him they can. As he's about to kill her a second time Rachel shows up and kills Louis instead and the two bury him. All three return to the house, now undead, with Jud's house burning and Gage still locked in the car. In the alternate ending Louis reaches Ellie as she dragging Rachel to the burial site and the two fight in the Pet Sematary just like in the actual ending, but in this version Louis falls for Ellie's manipulation and instead of killing her he helps her bury Rachel, who is just on the very last leg of life as they're burying her. Louis and Ellie return home, Jud's house burns, and an undead Rachel shows up by morning. The camera pans over family photos hanging on the wall and the last thing we see is a still living Louis holding a sobbing Gage with an undead Ellie, Rachel and Church standing near them looking like a twisted family photo framed by the window. In an interview it was said that the final cut's ending was chosen so the audience could leave with a smile on their face, but Pet Sematary isn't a story meant to leave anybody smiling and the alternate ending, though far more depressing, is the more powerful and impactful of the two.
Winx Club (2004)
With so many versions this show is difficult to rate
5 stars is the middle ground here in trying to rate this show. There are so many versions and they're all different. In English alone you have rai, 4kids and Nickelodeon. I don't typically say this, but the 4kids version is actually my favorite and, in my opinion, is worthy of 10 stars. I would place the rai version at a distant second and grant it 3 stars. The Nickelodeon version, however, is the worst. If it had a separate entry here I'd give it only one star, and that's only because the rating system won't let me give zero stars. I remember first hearing that Nickelodeon had picked up the show to continue it from where it left off and then being completely baffled when commercials advertised it as a "world premiere" for their new show, as though Winx Club as a whole was something brand new. In a way, it was: rather than airing the existing episodes Nickelodeon had essentially remade them with new voice actors, changes to designs, and a gratuitous amount of sparkles where there didn't need to be any. Worse yet, the first few seasons had been condensed and lost far too much in the process, just so the network could get to the new seasons faster and still call the show entirely their own.
The 4kids dub typically organized things in a way that made sense and had dialogue that paired well to what was happening on screen compared to the rai version. A good example is the very first episode. The 4kids version begins with Bloom witnessing Stella fighting in fairy form and helping her, then taking he home after she passes out. Her mother wakes her up the next morning and discovers that she had been reading about fairies the night before, reminiscing about how Bloom used to pretend to be a fairy for hours. She asks who the girl sleeping in the guest room is and Bloom hurries out of bed saying "so it wasn't a dream". She rushes through getting ready while making up an explanation before going downstairs where her dad tells her that they'll be cleaning out the garage. Bloom complains that she has other things to do, he father asks what sort of stuff and Bloom asks if he remembers when she was into fairies. Her dad remarks that she was cute pretending to know magic and there is a flashback to see Bloom as a child. After her mother steps in her father agrees to let her spend the day with Stella as long as she gets the groceries, which she sets off to do on her bike. She runs into the local mean girl who calls her bike trash because mean girl is getting a brand new scooter and Bloom defends her bike because her dad got it for her.
The rai version begins with Bloom waking up to her mother playing a prank on her telling her she'll be late for school. She falls for it and hurries through getting ready before she realizes she's on holiday and tries to go back to sleep. Her mom scolds her about how late she was up and, upon discovering she was reading about fairies, makes a dismissive comment about it. Her mom tells her she can help in the shop now that she was out of school and leaves. It cuts to downstairs where Bloom is complaining about having to work in the shop and about already being 16 and not being allowed to do all the things her friends do. Her dad says "only 16. you're still my little girl" and an image of a young Bloom appears on screen while Bloom continues to whine. Her dad tells her they'll be going to the beach and she complains that her friends get to go on holiday by themselves and that would be the best present ever. Her parents tell her that they got her something to help her get around town and she's excited, but becomes disappointed when she finds out it's a bike and not a scooter. Her parents talk about it while Bloom rides away complaining to herself about the bike and runs into the local mean girl. She soon ends up at the park, when she runs into Stella.
Bloom's character is completely different in the two versions. In the 4kids versions she's kind and grateful for what she has and she gets along well with her parents. It's obvious they're a happy family. In the rai version Bloom's a bratty teen, her mother is dismissive of her interests, her father doesn't seem to know her at all, and there seems to be a lot of tension in the family. Having the encounter with Stella take place first and then having Bloom stay up all night reading about fairies makes sense and seems like a more logical progression of events. The scene where she wakes up in a hurry makes more sense with realizing the encounter was real than it does as a bad joke about school.
Over all, I'd say if you're going to watch Winx then watch the 4kids dub and stop after season 3 ends.
Teen Titans Go! Vs. Teen Titans (2019)
Complete Garbage
1 is too high of a rating for this movie. It wasn't "Teen Titans Go! vs Teen Titans" but "Teen Titans Go! vs Teen Titans Go! Draw With Slightly More Normal Proportions". The Teen Titans characters were completely out of character compared to the original show. The movie lacked the seriousness, charm and well-placed good humor that the original show had and instead relied solely on the same stupidity present in Go! to carry it. When you tease a revival, at least make an effort to write the characters well regardless of how you bring them back. This is a mockery. Go! was bad enough but they're trying to ruin to original Teen Titans now too.