And it was bad.
xD;;;
I was disappointed about that, man. I went into that theatre SO ready to like the movie, but I didn't... and as usual, I'll tell you why.
First of all, I came away from the movie with a mistaken impression: that the voices of many characters had been re-dubbed from the original. Since Snifit told me a story about how the Weinstein Company had done that before, that was the logical conclusion I came to when I noticed that, most of the time, the lip-flaps of the CGI characters didn't fit the words of their voice actors. But I was wrong, this was the original voice crew. D: What does that tell you about the CGI lip-flaps?
They were reeeeally badly-done. xD;;;
DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS. The original voiceover for the movie was in FRENCH. But at the time I wrote this, the Wikipedia article neglected to mention that fact. :C Oh noes.
Now, I have some beefs with the animation in other areas too. The action over the course of the film was uncomfortably fast; only rarely did the characters stop bouncing around and chattering on-screen to let the audience catch up. Breaks in the action were somewhat relieving, but were awkwardly handled and usually interrupted the pace of the movie more than anything. The CGI itself was jumpy in places and the lighting looked pretty weird; that being said, visually, it was pretty cute. A few of the character designs were worth the eight bucks I paid to get in.
On to the story. To put it simply, it was bland. Utterly and completely bland. I'll just copy-paste from the Wikipedia article on it...
Wikipedia
10-year-old Arthur is living with his grandmother in a quiet country house. He has recently lost his grandfather, and doesn't see much of his parents. His grandmother entertains him by reading stories to him. One of these stories is about the fabled Minimoys, tiny fantastical beings living in harmony with nature in the very garden of his grandparents' house. According to these stories, the Minimoys are holding a wondrous and expensive treasure of rubies given by an African tribe to Arthur's grandfather. Furthermore Arthur has become enamoured with a picture of the princess of the Minimoys. Arthur's grandmother has been given two-day deadline to pay a large sum of money to a developer (played by Adam LeFevre) who has bought up her mortgage from the bank and plans to evict the two. Arthur takes it upon himself to find the rubies in order to pay off the debt. After stumbling across various clues written a few years previously by his grandfather, Arthur manages to find the key to the Minimoys' world. He discovers some Masai-esque men in his garden, who tell Arthur how to get into the Minimoys' world by way of shrinking down with the help of a telescope and the power of a full moon, and he changes his form into that of the Minimoys. When Arthur is down underground with the Minimoys, he learns of a danger to the little people's future — the plans of Maltazard, the leader of an army of mosquito-riding warriors living in nearby "Necropolis", who plan to conquer the Minimoys' by flooding their city. Thanks to, but also in spite of, Arthur, the Minimoys' colony is saved in the nick of time, and the 1000-year old (which is about the same age as Arthur in Minimoy years) princess fall in love. Arthur finds out his grandfather is not dead as suspected, but imprisoned in Necropolis. Together, they find the rubies Arthur's grandfather wrote about in his stories, and pay a part of it to the developer to save the house and land.
Long story short, it's nothing we haven't seen before. Cute, pure-hearted kid goes on a mission to save Granny's house, defeats evil, and... well, in this case, hooks up with 1000-year-old princess. We'll get to that later. What got me most was that there was absolutely nothing deeper than that tired old battle between good and evil to hold the audience's interest. There was no growth for any of the characters. There was no mystery. There were no plot twists. The good guys won in the end, and the bad guys lost. This didn't just result in little to no entertainment value for older audiences- well, aside from the sexual innuendos- it also showed that the people who made this movie thought that this crude and simple story was the most that young children could handle. And that made me sad. D:
The audience is LITERALLY told, about twenty minutes into the movie, what is going on and what is going to happen by the main character. 'The evil developers are going to take my grandma's house unless I can find the treasure than my grandpa hid here three years ago! OMG! D:' 'But Malthazar has them! He's evil!' 'Well, I'll just have to get them back and defeat Maltazard and stuff!' 'Okai.'
And I haven't even told you about Selenia yet. Selenia is the headstrong princess of the Minimoys, and in Minimoy years, she's just reached her 1000th birthday. "Okay", I hear you saying. "What does this have to do with anything?" I'll tell you! Dx Our protagonist, ten-year-old Arthur, is a very lucky kid. While most children his age aren't interested in romance, he and our hottie princess fall head-over-heels in love with each other by the end of the movie.
Um.
Eeew?!
The writers have tried to neatly tie this up by saying that 1000 Minimoy years are equivalent to 10 human years. Um. That is the lamest attempt at a cop-out I have ever heard. Why does she look, act, and sound so much older than him, then? This is just creepy s**t. When he said "Just ten more moons, Selenia" at the end of the movie, and it zoomed in on her sitting on a tree branch and saying "I will wait for you", I wanted to barf. Eew. Eeeew.
Well. Anyway. Here are a few more things about the film that I didn't like:
- The American movie/pop culture references thrown into the movie in what I can only assume was an effort to make it appeal to a wider audience were stupid.
- The fact that the only black voice actors (that I know of) to be featured in the movie got the roles of monkey-like Jamaican-looking drug-and-alcohol-consuming nightclub-goers was really tasteless.
- The dialogue and pacing thereof was very poor. (Unfunny comic relief was eeeverywhere).
But there were some bright spots! Er.. a bright spot. David Bowie's character's SEXUAL INNUENDO. :'DDD In this one part, he was like.. killing fruit with his looong fingers or something, because killing fruit is fun... and he ORALLY SERVICES HIS FINGERS, I SWEAR TO GOD. He's licking the juice off, and he like.. sticks his fingers in his mouth and sucks on them.. AHNDISJDHKJH HAHAHAH. AHAHAH. xO;; AHAH. Ahem.
....
Okay. So. After the movie, we went to the food court and ate dinner... well, Alison didn't eat much 'cause she wasn't feeling well. ;o; I found a little bugg and named him Nathaniel. He was so CUTE. <3 Tatheer took pictures with her cell phone, so I'll try to post those sometime. Then we went to the bookstore, where Alison bought me not one, but TWO manga. ;o; I'm so grateful! <3 I've finished reading volume 3 of Hunter x Hunter (KILLUA IS CRAZY AS HELL), and I'm starting volume 6 of Saiyuki Reload now.
And in other news, I got some awesome avatar art from Aolga, who drew me in a "draw-the-avatar-above-you" thread. =D Check it out.
Isn't it awesome?! x0 <333 Thanks, Aolga!
