Nahuel and the Magic Book (2020) Poster

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5/10
Great potential, most of it wasted
gameboyfanatic-537936 August 2022
Being honest, I watched this because the villain design was lovely.

South american animation hasn't been in the best spotlight for the last three decades, so I was interested in seeing a passion project which had a pretty drawing style and a different story to tell.

But, I was quite dissapointed.

The animation usually works, but the CGI and cel shading use felt very akward and forced, it didn't blend well with the 2D animation. Although the framerate was higher in intense scenes and usually with the villain on camera. I also liked the alternative style scenes when they told a different background story. There were a lot of talented people involved but I believe they were very limited with the budget they had.

Also, I was able to spot some animation errors for a movie which was shown on cinema.

My biggest complain is the audio. There was no audio technician and it's very obvious (in the spanish dub at least). Some microphones sounded weird, like they were covered or low quality, sometimes the characters spoke and there was no audio, the SFX were almost non existant when people talked. The dub had also weird parts, there were talented actors and starters but no direction.

Finally, the story was enjoyable. Although the characters were quite plain and the relationships between them weren't developed properly. They looked liked exagerations of themselves. And I felt more intrigued about the villain and the talking dog than the protagonist himself, that's a bad signal in a movie.

Give it a watch if you'd like to see a different movie or indie animation, but not if you want a serious film.

I still love the villain/10.
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4/10
Good story, but bad dialogue ruins it
Flavianomatos15 November 2023
The story is very interesting, albeit too much cliché. It deals with some forms of magic and people who perform them.

However, the villain completely plain and lacks any motivation besides power and ruling the world. The hero being too naive was a thing I didn't like but it's tolerable.

Now comes the defect that bothered me the most: the dialogues and speeches. "Nahuel!" is the most repeated sentence throughout the movie. After the tenth or fifteenth occurrence, it started to become insufferable. Then, in the middle of the movie, comes one of the worst pieces of info dump in one of the worst ways possible, when Fresia tells a man turned into a dog by a curse his own story.

All said, a good idea with a failed execution: plain characters with cliché motivations and horrible speeches.
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10/10
Cliché, but amazing film
FrenchGerman090901 July 2021
Warning: Spoilers
This film, despite the flaws, is one of the most memorable films I've ever seen. Awesome character design to make the film cartoonish like a graphic novel/comic or even shows and movies such as Gravity Falls, Steven Universe and Studio Ghibli, Great animation inspired and influenced by Hayao Miyazaki, good soundtrack, uncreative, but understanding plot, and memorable characters, including our protagonist of the film, Nahuel.

Just like Pixar who makes us cry in their films, there were some scenes that are very emotional that talks about family lost and encouragement like: The death of Nahuel's mom in the beginning of the film during in the middle of the storm while she and his husband get pass though it and headed to the nearest hospital, When he and his dad were on the boat, his father would like to pass his profession to his son, having a bond the father and the son when he show him how to handle fishing The scene where Nahuel's mom rescued Nahuel from his deep fear of the sea, she give him a locket and encourage him to be brave,

and this one scene, and it's my overall favorite scene of all time is when Nahuel and his dad reunited after he was brainwashed and got cured by showing his dad a locket from Consuelo, aka Antonio's loving wife and Nahuel's mom. His eyes were back to normal and start crying, missing her and griefing her death. He sees his son, alive, alighting the tears of joy and apologising to each other. Nahuel regrets his decision to steal the book, not only to conquer his fear of the sea, but also to make his dad proud. However, his dad apologizes for being such a cold-hearted, bad father to him and from now on, he loves his son the same way he love Consuelo.

Now that's what I call "Show, don't tell", "Acting", "Drama", and "Cinema"

The ending itself, despite it's predictable, was amazing and it would be a missing piece of have a sequel or a TV series according by Renegade Pop Culture after the events of the film and giving the protagonist to mastered the Levisterio and the story wasn't about Nahuel's fear of the sea (yes, I know that his mom died in the boat during the middle of the storm at the beginning of the film to make sense), it's about his fear of his bullies because we saw him and the two boys bullied Nahuel 2 times in a row.

The characters look familiar to the other characters from Gravity Falls and Steven Universe

Nahuel: Dipper Pines and Steven Universe

Fresia: Pacifica Northwest and Connie Maheswarran

Antonio: Stanley and Stanford Pines and Greg Universe

Ruende: Lion

Raiquen: The Diamonds

Chon-Chon: Gideon

Kalku: Bill Cipher

I hope it gets distributed soon by the American Distribution Companies and there might be an English dub soon as well.
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