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Went in primed to like this, but I was very repulsed by just about every choice in this film. The art direction was bad - it's not that it's low budget, it's just tacky and unappealing. The drawings that start the movie, the very poor costuming for the human characters and the mascot costumes all clash and none of them are good on their own. The only kind of nice designs were the frog and the fish. Combine that with ultra artificial green screen compositing and you have a visually focused movie that's almost always incredibly unpleasant to look at. The lead actor is very fit and can move around a lot but his whole demeanor and sense of humor seems to be based around the same type of "comedy" that fuels things like Epic Rap Battles of History. You can't make another Chaplin or Keaton but the kind of timing and gesturing (with more than your eyebrows) could have been studied more for a role like this. I would actually be surprised if the filmmakers appreciated or have watched many silent comedies. It has a very "retro" type feel to it, a filter-based, algorithmic aesthetic that is distinctly online in origin. They played a lot of video games and watched a lot of cartoons that were probably already borrowing jokes from older cartoons and films. They clearly put in a lot of effects work but I don't sit down to a movie for 100 minutes to congratulate the filmmakers on their work ethic. Edit: Man, the poster has such better design than anything in this movie, including rendering the beavers and his costume in a way that makes them look actually nice.
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Apr 27, 2024 17:37
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trevorreznik posted:I don't know what you're seeing in the costuming that I'm not, can you elaborate? I scrolled up to the poster a few times and don't see a difference that lessens the movie. I do agree that the lead isn't as good as Chaplin or Keaton, but I think that's unfair since they're two all time greats with decades of experience in silent movies and big studios backing them. It’s looking at the costumes in motion. They look cheap, and I did not find the cheapness charming. The proportions in the poster are also cartoonish, while the beavers in the movie are just regular guys in cheap mascot outfits moving like regular guys. I didn’t expect the guy to be a vaudevillian comic actor, but I also don’t think modern epic internet YouTube mugging is funny and that’s the only thing he did during the entire film. I’m sure kids like it, but this is not a kid’s movie and the rave reviews are not from kids.
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Apr 27, 2024 23:05
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CatstropheWaitress posted:I get the sense ya didn't go into this knowing that this was a super tight low budget covid flick. I'm sure there's a way to get this atheistic to look cleaner, but like, all the editing and compositing was done by the director. They had an "art department" but 100% of it is just prop and model builders, whatever that entailed. I have more than passing familiarity with low budget and independent films. I knew what it was going into it. I've seen plenty of video game/sci-fi influenced special effects movies at local film festivals in my life and this one has better compositing and effects than most, I agree. I don't really care about the technical achievements, though. It's nice for them, not me. The humor at the beginning is somewhat inspired by Looney Toons gags but always focuses on the effects, which since they are obviously fake I find the least effecting thing to focus on in a comedy. Then we get the entire middle chunk of the film which can be boiled down to "what if Zelda Breath of the Wild happened in a movie?" I just don't find it funny. I've played the game and had fun with the physics engine, I don't need to see it repeated on screen for an hour. The one movie these guys have for sure seen is Star Wars, since we get a whole tribute scene with the same sound effects. It's not even really a silent movie, it features a Zelda-inspired silent protagonist that communicates through grunts. I didn't see a lot of filmmaking promise or inspiration here besides the technical compositing abilities. The fight scenes/violence seem to have more passion and creativity than anything else but those are not the focus of the movie.
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Apr 28, 2024 17:13
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Gonna go out on a limb and say they appreciate and have watched a few given they made a whole movie that's largely w/o dialog and uses the same music library as many classic toons.