Movie Review: Zootopia

Zootopia a.k.a Zootropolis
Walt Disney Pictures, USA, 2016.

In a distant future evolution has allowed herbivores and carnivores to live peacefully together although prejudices still exists. Bunny named Judy (Ginnifer Goodwin) has a dream. She wants do leave country-life behind to become a big city cop. However small animals are discriminated against in the police force. Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) thinks that small animals can't be real cops so Judy finds herself writing parking tickets.

Judy

Chief Bogo

But there is a mystery to solve. Several animals have gone missing, and Judy decides to solve the case even without official support. Only Assistant Mayor Bellwether's (Jenny Slate) support helps Judy to continue the investigations. Judy teams up with a small-time con-artist fox Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) who knows the streets. Like Judy, Nick has a misunderstood but he has chosen to be a rascal. The unlikely duo finds a common cause as behind the missings there is a sinister conspiracy that threatens the balance of the whole city.

Piggy has a crime to report

Nick, Bellwether and Judy

Judy's and Nick's adventures are fun to watch, it is a buddy cop comedy with trendy neo-noir and caper film tones. The moral of the story is that the first appearences may be deceiving, and the person behind may be totally different from the expectations. The world is detailed with funny visual jokes, and some references to pop culture and the city is divided to different habitats, with suburbs for actic animals or small rodents. The duo meets also some shady characters from the criminal underworld so there are funny "Godfather" and "Breaking Bad" references.

As a funny joke, there is a scoundrel selling bootleg Disney movies. I would watch Pig Hero 6.

Rating: Very good

Voice actors: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, Nate Torrence, Bonnie Hunt, Don Lake, Tommy Chong, J.K. Simmons, Octavia Spencer, Alan Tudyk, Shakira, Raymond S. Persi, Della Saba, Maurice LaMarche, Phil Johnston, Fuschia!, John DiMaggio, Katie Lowes, Gita Reddy, Jesse Corti, Tommy 'Tiny' Lister, Josh Dallas, Leah Latham, Rich Moore, Kath Soucie, Peter Mansbridge, Byron Howard, Jared Bush, Mark Rhino Smith, Josie Trinidad, John Lavelle, Kristen Bell, Evelyn Wilson Bresee, Hewitt Bush, Jill Cordes, Madeleine Curry, Terri Douglas, Melissa Goodwin Shepherd, Zach King, Dave Kohut, Jeremy Milton, Pace Paulsen, Fabienne Rawley, Brad Simonsen, Claire K. Smith, Jackson Stein, David A. Thibodeau, John Wheeler, Hannah G. Williams, Vassos Alexander, Ricardo Boechat, David Campbell, Koura Kazumasa, Nicholas Guest

Directors: Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush

Movie Review: Yellowbird (2014)

Yellowbird (Gus - Petit oiseau, grand voyage)

TeamTO, Haut et Court, La Compagnie Cinématographique, Panache Productions, Rhône-Alpes Cinéma, Belgacom, Centre National de la Cinématographie, Région Rhône-Alpes, Région Ile-de-France, Ciné+, Gulli, Backup Media, Piste Rouge, France, Belgium, 2014.

Yellowbird (Seth Green) is an orphaned bird raised by Ladybug (Yvette Nicole Brown) and family of bunnies. He is afraid to leave home but Ladybug tricks him to go see the world. While outside Yellowbird meets a dying big blue bird Darius (Danny Glover), who needs someone to guide his flock to Africa. The problem is that Yellowbird has no sense of direction.

Yellowbird and Ladybug

The Flock

In the flock there are girl bird Delf (Dakota Fanning), hippie bird Max (Zachary Gordon), Delf's not-boyfriend Willy (Brady Corbet) and his little brother Fleck (Jadon Sand) and a bunch of little birds and their parents. Grouchy Karl (Jim Rash), who wanted to be Darius' follower, doubts Yellowbird's navigational skills for a reason. The migration becomes dangerous as Yellowbird guides the flock in the wrong direction. Also the iron birds (airplanes) are a constant threat to birds who fly too high. At what point should Yellowbird tell that he really has no clue about where they are, and how will the flock react to that and will they survive?

Yellowbird and Delf

The owl

Rabbit family

Euro-animation has nice visuals with European country-side and cartoony characters whose layered paper mimicking design makes them look a bit like piñatas. Especially the flying sequences look pretty. The characters are quite usual for these kind of adventures, but quite likable too. There are couple of romances too that are not too underlined, but bring some interesting extra arcs to the story.

As the "leader" of the flock Yellowbird is kind of goof, but he is inventive too. Some of the funniest side characters are jovial sea lions and an owl (Elliott Gould) who is a sneaky innkeeper. The story has the familiar growing up story with many falls and triumphs and some thrills in a sinking ship. Overall it is a nice little film to watch for both kids and adults.

Rating: Good

Voice actors: Christine Baranski, Yvette Nicole Brown, Brady Corbet, Dakota Fanning, Danny Glover, Zachary Gordon, Elliott Gould, Seth Green, Richard Kind, Ryan Lee, Christopher L. Parson, Cristina Pucelli, Jim Rash, Jadon Sand
Director: Christian De Vita

Movie Review: Willy Fog In 20000 Leagues Under the Sea

Willy Fog In 20000 Leagues Under the Sea a.k.a  The Adventures of Willy Fog: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea a.k.a Willy Fog Matka kapteeni Nemon kanssa
BRB Internacional S.A., Televisión Española (TVE), Spain, Taiwan, 1993/1995.

Loosely based on characters created by Jules Verne.

"Around the World with Willy Fog" or "La vuelta al mundo de Willy Fog" was popular cartoon in Finland in the 1980s, "the Lion version" of Jules Verne's classic novel "Around the World in 80 Days." A sequel series "Willy Fog 2" was also made based on "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." Some episodes were cut into TV-movies. In the series most of the heroes were felines (except Tico who is hamster) whereas the antagonists were mostly canines. Interestingly, BRB produced also another classic series "Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds" where the heroes were dogs. Both "Willy Fog" and "Muskehounds" had theme songs that everyone who has seen the series remembers.

1871, London. Sea monster is attacking ships and US government asks gentleman adventurer Willy Fog to join the hunt. Of course Willy agrees and his wife Princess Romy and their loyal servants Passepartout and Tico pack their suitcases and get on board Abraham Lincoln. Harpooner Ned Land and Professor Aronnax are there too to offer help. And so the ship sees a sea beast roaming the ocean. The beast is made of metal so Ned's harpoons have no effect. The heroes are swept overboard and captured to Captain Nemo's submarine Nautilus.

Willy Fog

Passepartout and Tico

The crew is hostile and they don't even respect tea-time. Those barbarians. Being early pioneer of Bartitsu-style, Willy teaches some habits to the crew when they treat Romy disrespectfully. However some crew members are nice and the boat has a talented cook who makes even seaweed tasty. The Captain is a mysterious organ-playing figure.

Willy and Romy overboard

Prof. Aronnax and Ned Land join the adventure

The Cook

Paranoid Captain Nemo is sinking all ships that get on his way. Ned doesn't allow that and together the heroes save a ship that was almost sunk by Nemo's torpedoes. But what about all the sunken ships? Who cares. The premise of the quest is quickly forgotten (either because of slack scriptwriting that doesn't explain Nemo's motives or cutting of the original episodes) and everyone just enjoys the voyage. Although Nemo is basically a homicidal monomaniac he is also a gentleman who loves oceans (think about prototype of Karl Stromberg from "The Spy Who Loved Me") and shows Willy & friends the wonders of the underwater world. But a treacherous crew member plots against Willy. And dangerous icebergs and giant octopus threaten the boat too.

Captain Nemo

Ned prevents sinking of an innocent ship

Nautilus

The animation was made in Taiwan and it looks considerably cheaper than the original series that was coproduced with Nippon Animation, practically making it anime. The sequel series is not ugly like Dingo animations but the difference to the original is still noticeable (for example Romy has developed a squint).

The new characters Aronnax and Ned are quite one-use characters, and Nemo's character is mindbogglingly conflicted. But the main characters Willy, Romy, Passepartout and Tico are the same ones that were lovable in the original series, and their adventure has funny and exciting moments.

Rating: Good (Willy Fog fans)Average (otherwise)

Finnish version voice actors: Eero Saarinen, Heikki Määttänen, Ari-Matti Hedman, Elise Langenoja, Arto Nieminen, Minna Tasanto, Anssi Känsälä ja Pauli Virta
Director: Claudio Biern Boyd

Movie Review: Lego Scooby-Doo! Haunted Hollywood

Lego Scooby-Doo! Haunted Hollywood
Hanna-Barbera, Warner Bros. Animation, The Lego Group, USA, 2016. 

Scooby-Dooby Doo!

Talking dog Scooby-Doo and his friends solve the mystery of sea creature. Shaggy and Scooby decide that they will not agree being monster baits for the price of Scooby Snacks again. But they must still eat and so always hungry Shaggy and Scooby-Doo visit a hamburger bar. Winning the eating contest earns tickets to Hollywood tour for the whole gang.

Shaggy and Scooby-Doo

Daphne, Fred & Velma

Famous monster film producing Brickton Studios is on the rocks as no one likes horror movies anymore. People only watch sappy romantic comedies. When the horror star Boris Carnac, the Man of 999 Faces, died the studios couldn't produce another hit movie. Mr. Brickton is thinking about selling his studios to businessman Atticus Fink. Horror-fan & tour-guide Junior is currently the only employee of the studios.

Mr. Brickton

Junior

Headless Horseman is scaring the tourists. Late night horror show hostess Drella Diabolique (voiced by horror icon Elvira herself a.k.a Cassandra Peterson) suspects that Carnac's horror characters have become alive. As monsters drive the filming crew away, Fred decides to direct a movie starring Shaggy and Drella. Daphne yearns for Oscars and tries to learn how to be an actress too.

Drella Diabolique

Looking cool

Mummy needs a dentist

It feels that in Finland Scooby-Doo has never gained as much popularity as in USA, and of the Hanna-Barbera productions more popular characters in Finland have been Yogi-Bear and The Flintstones, perhaps Top-Cat too. Maybe the younger generations know Scooby and his friends better from direct to video movies (rather than from the original TV-series) that are also sometimes shown in TV. Still I remember reading some Scooby-Doo comics in 1980s (can't remember if it was Scooby's own comic book or a Hanna-Barbera- compilation album). Lego's version is is a solid episode of Scooby-Doo with Lego-humour but does not invent the wheel again so for fans of Scooby-Doo this is quite familiar stuff. What's nice is that it has light tribute to Boris Karloff and old horror movies in general. It also parodies the naming conventions of movie sequels.

I would watch this

That awkward moment when a zombie is haunting your airplane

Rating: Good

Voice actors: Frank Welker, Matthew Lillard, Grey DeLisle, Kate Micucci, Dee Bradley Baker, JB Blanc, Christian Lanz, Scott Menville, Cassandra Peterson, James Arnold Taylor
Director: Rick Morales

As usual this Lego-movie has some nice extras.

Lego Scooby-Doo: Knight Time Terror

Warner Bros. Animation, The LEGO Group, USA, 2015.

The Scooby-gang visits a castle that is rumoured to be haunted. There is a treasure hidden too. The haunting is a gimmick to attract tourists but there is also Cursed Armour of Black Knight that begins to haunt the treasure hunters. The Grimsley-siblings would like to find the treasure of their greatgreatgrandfather but the house is full of traps. Always hungry Scooby and Shaggy also lose their sandwiches to a meat-eating plant.

There goes my lunch

Voice actors: Grey DeLisle, Matthew Lillard, Kate Micucci, Phil Morris, Colleen O'Shaughnessey, Sean Schemmel, Jason Spisak, Frank Welker
Director: Rick Morales

Also two vintage animations that inspired couple of characters of the main story are included.

Scooby-Doo! The Headless Horseman of Halloween (1976)

The headless horseman terrorizes a Halloween party. Scooby-Doo's cousin Scooby-Dum helps the detectives although he is not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Scooby-Dum

What's New Scooby-Doo? Fright House of a Lighthouse (2004)
Mystery Inc. visits a lighthouse where a treasure is hidden. Ghost of the evil lighthouse keeper keeps the tourists away. Another detective and underwear entrepreuner Verona Dempsey is already on the case which annoys Velma.

Now that was quite random

What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly

Comparing these two episodes from different eras shows that the basic idea of the show has remained the same. There is a mystery involving a ghost and a treasure, the ghost is always some villain with a mask and Scooby and Shaggy eat a lot of food. Overall the DVD is a nice package for Scooby-fans.

Movie Review: Monster High: Welcome to Monster High

Monster High: Welcome to Monster High
Mattel Creations, USA, 2016.

Draculaura lives in an old castle with his dad Dracula. Humans must not see the monsters because humans are dangerous. One evening Frankie Stein comes to search for friends and  knocks at their door. Together the girls decide to find more monster friends who have gone hiding in different parts of the world. After recruiting Clawdeen Wolf, Lagoona Blue and Cleo de Nile thre girls decide to start a school for monsters with Dracula as their teacher. Also the school's lunch lady is recruited at some point, but compared to the original series her character is now fused with the tentacle thing from the old series. (Another example of character fusion: Draculaura now has a pet spider that looks the same as Operetta's spider in the old series).

Dracula and Draculaura

Umm..ok.

The school grows with student recruitment campaign. Zombie girl Moanica is a bad apple and wants to take back the world from the normies with her zomboy army. Frankie and Draculaura run for the presidency of the school and want to develop normie relations diplomatically and there a help from a normie pop star Tash would be needed. But also Moanica runs for the president too and has sinister plans. New character ghost Ari Huntington is introduced.

Cleo, Lagoona and Clawdeen

Raythe and Deuce hanging out with skeleton guys

Moanica

After Mattel losed the Disney Princess license to Hasbro, they tried to lure princess fans by making the Monster High dolls and animations more cute and girly. The characters were redesigned with more Frozen-style looks and some cute or weird critters were added. Basically this is what a Barbie version of "Hotel Transylvania" would look like. In fact even some of the new Barbie-movie covers have the Frozen-style face models. But the redesigns soon start the feel like the least of the problems.

Speaking of Barbie it is ironical that Barbie-director William Lau directed some of the MH-films (even some of the best ones), but managed keeping the styles of the two franchises distinctive so kudos for that. Here the new crew couldn't. Of the three directors or three writers of the story only Jun Falkenstein and Shane Amsterdam had previously worked in a Monster High production (both in "Great Scarrier Reef"). Writer/producer/director Audu Paden (who had a huge impact in the style of the original series) was not involved with this production (and neither are the characters voiced by him included). Also MH-producer Ira Singerman was not involved. And although I don't like MH resembling a Barbie-production it doesn't mean that they wouldn't be entertaining (I'm just outside the intended audience) but it would not be great if the two franchises became too similar.

Zomboys

Spot Venus in the low left corner

Ari Hauntington

Many fans were disappointed by this movie and it is easy to see why. I am outside the target audience but it was disrespectful to the fans of the franchise that the MH-world was altered so radically. I think the makers failed by scrapping large parts of the old Monster High lore and at the same time trying to please the old fans by including some popular characters from the old series. We have characters that were introduced only in the later run of the series (Venus and Twyla) while we are missing Ghoulia, Gil, Manny, Scarah and Heath who have been around since early episodes? The Wolf-family is missing Clawd and Clawdia. Abbey's absence at still point is still acceptable as she was introduced near end of the second season of the webisodes. Troublingly Frankie has inherited some of Ghoulia's hacking skills so was their original intention to ditch the character entirely? However Mattel seems to have acknowledged the backlash of Ghoulia's fans and there are some rumours floating around the web that Ghoulia will return. After all tech-savvy characters like Ghoulia and Robecca were characters that could inspire girls to pursue science or engineering careers.

And where are the original teachers Mr. Rotter, Headmistress Bloodgood, and Mr. Hack? In the original series the school was at least two hundreds of years old with at least Mr. Rotter being a former student so his inclusion would have been conflicting with the new storyline. In the new movie the school was founded by Draculaura and Frankie in Dracula's house. This also ruins the whole Robecca Steam storyline. Although the original continuity was not perfect there was nothing that was nothing that was too serious. There were inaccuracies in the originals as it seems that the lore and MH-world were created as needed when the show went on, but the webisodes and the movies felt like part of the same continuity: the new characters would appear in later films (if only as background characters but still) and the characters would refer to the events of the previous adventures. Why to junk the old continuity if there wasn't anything fundamentally wrong?

Another problem is that MH was never very action-focused (there were chase scenes though) but now the girls resemble more Charlie's Angels throwing zomboy-enemies around. Draculaura gets her vampire powers early in the beginning. In the original series Draculaura gained her vampire powers (turning into a bat) only in the later films and only after a considerable effort. Now all of the main monsters have stronger super powers and Cleo can tie up enemies with mummy wrappings. Also the personalities of the characters feel different: cool dude Deuce Gorgon looks scrawnier and hides from the normies in the shadows and mean cat Toralei feels domesticated. Zombies are menacing whereas in the original series they were generally nice but dim-witted folks. Contrastingly to the sugary style, Moanica feels like the most sinister villain of the franchise.

The story feels lacking the things that were fun in the original steering the franchise to more generic girls-toy tie-in. There are some annoying plotholes and fallacies and events that do not make any sense. If Dracula has an amulet that can find other monsters why haven't he and Draculaura used it before to find new friends? And if there is Internet for monsters how was it built if the monsters are hiding in secluded places? And what's with vampires suddenly loving sunlight (although they were more sun-resistant in the original series than in the common vampire lore, they still needed sunscreens or parasols to avoid sunburn).

If there was something good, it was the way Clawdeen, Lagoona and Cleo were introduced. Also some of the jokes were faithful to the old MH-style.

Contains one episode of "Ever After High" (interestingly the possiblility of MH/EAH crossover was hinted in "Boo York" but with the reboot it now seems unlikely).

Dragon Games Part I Shatter the Mirror
Raven gets to meet he evil mother who is locked inside a mirror. Apple's mother Snow White is concerned that Raven is more popular than Apple. Apple frees the Evil Queen who disquises as a new student. Raven's pet dragon Nevermore senses danger in the new student. Another dragon gets dragon babies and Snow White opens Dragon Games.

Raven and Apple

Businesswoman Snow White

Rating: Bad

Voice actors: Debi Derryberry, Cassandra Morris, Salli Saffioti, Larissa Gallagher, Cristina Milizia, Michael Sorich, Jonquil Goode, Travis Dresden, Evan Smith, Sara Cravens, Cam Clarke, Julie Maddalena, Jun Falkenstein, Ben Diskin, Max Mitchell, Spike Spencer, Hippo Cabal, Tarra Layne
Directors: Stephen Donnelly, Olly Reid, Jun Falkenstein