Trilogy Week #36 - CG Animation

When feature length CG animation came on the scene in 1995 with Toy Story, and thought, this new style of animation can do know wrong. My thinking was I imagine every one of these movies has got to be very expensive to make, (which they are) so there's no way the studios are going to make these films with mediocre stories or characters. Oh how wrong I was. I went to see every CG movie I could get my hands on, and quickly realized that the majority of these new creations were pure crap. Shrek, Ice Age, Meet the Robinsons, Robots, all horribly bad. I soon found out the reason for this digital shit was due to studios thinking, Pixar has made CG films gross millions of dollars, we need to get on that. So studios started pushing pre-maturely made scripts into the pipelines thinking if these bad stories go through the CG filter it will make the movies better. Well that was not the case, and that wave of garbage is still going strong. So you have to play prospector to find the little nuggets of gold in this hollywood river of awful CG movies.

Title: Wall-E

Year: 2008

Director: Andrew Stanton

Cast: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, Sigourney Weaver

Rated: G

Running Time: 1hr. 38mins.

My Review: I am a fan of everything post-apocalyptic, and when I first saw this trailer, about a little robot alone on the planet, that really caught my interest, and I was not disappointed. What I loved about it, is the same reason I like documentaries about animals in the wild. You just watch, watch how something interacts with the world around them, and I instantly fell in love with it. And the sound design done by Ben Burtt is amazing, doing the voice for Wall-E, M-O, and designing every sound effect for this awesome film. When Andrew Stanton asked him to do this job, he said "I need you to be 80% of my cast." 10 out of 10 sporks

Jonny's Review: This is a masterpiece of animation, story arch, music, character design, and presentation. This is a top of my list of greatest animated movies of all time. This movie had a bunch of moments that could have been done all wrong , like making the main focus on the human rather than the love story between wall-e and Eve. This film knew what it wanted to be, and rush right in to show it. Though I find it a risky move to have a movie mostly with no dialog and a love story for kids, they pulled it off. 10/10 rubik's cubes

Title: Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs

Year: 2009

Director: Pjil Lord, Chris Miller

Cast: Bill Hader, Anna Faris, Bruce Campbell, James Caan, Andy Samberg, Mr. T, Neil Patrick Harris, Al Roker, Will Forte, Benjamin Bratt, Bobb'e J. Thompson, Lauren Graham 

Rated: PG

Running Time: 1hr. 30mins.

My Review: Have you seen the short lived MTV series Clone High? Well this movie was written and directed by those same creators. And they bring the same type of unorthodox humor to the big screen. For this story, their style of humor works perfectly. That fast, quick, silly humor that is rare to see in a feature length animation. It was very refreshing to watch in theatres, and still makes me laugh out loud at home. A must see for fans of Clone High. Plus you can never go wrong with Mr. T in your film. 9 out of 10 monkey translators

Jonny's Review: This is another great animated movie, and another that could have gone wrong. This is one of the only movies that people thought "how can you possibly make 90 minute movie out of this?" By getting the people who made “Clone High” that’s how.  The best that shines in the movie is the timing of it’s jokes, they are presented just right, and the timing of Steve's jokes make it all the better. What also made this good, was the character designs. You are engaged with every character, from Flint, to Mr. T, to Joe Town (the guy who rips his beard off) Even though this movie had a big feel it was meant for kids, it did very well for itself.   9/10 gummie bears

Title: How to Train Your Dragon

Year: 2010

Director: Chris Sanders

Cast: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, T.J. Miller, Kristen Wigg, 

Rated: PG

Running Time: 1hr. 38mins.

My Review: A great story adapted by Chris Sanders, (also director of Lelo and Stitch) and a spot on cast. I couldn't imagine anyone else to play these characters than the ones in this film. I'm a big fan of improve, and they used a lot of improve that these great comedic actors brought to the table. 

I was very on the ball, when I first saw the trailer for this movie, because I've have not been a fan of Dreamworks Animation. I hated all the Shreks, and didn't even bother with the Madagascars, or Shark Tale. So I wasn't that excited, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how well this story came out, it could've gone completely off the rails, and been as stupid and stale as their previous franchises. But, this could be only a fluke, and I'm still not quite sure how the sequel will turn out. 8 out of 10 little chihuahua dragons

Jonny's Review: I’m just gonna say it, I didn't really like this movie, I just thought it was kind of dumb. I did like the character designs and it’s want to discuss different dragon types, but I didn't think the story was that great, the characters themselves are stupid and it’s want to have current culture references.  If that how the book is, then BOO!. I’m sorry, I hated the voice actor for Hiccup, it was really annoying. I didn't pay much attention to any of the other characters at all, and Stitch.. I mean Toothless, he’s a great dragon, he was cool, but his behavior as a cat was clearly for the audience. I just didn't really care about this movie. 6/10 battle axes.