Reviews

Watched as a comedy, 300 is not bad, but they should have put in more funny scenes. I won't spoil the magic, but we were all cracking up when the mutant ninjas appeared. It's as if the film makers were so scared that all the half-naked men might give the audience the wrong idea about the Spartans, that they turned the Hetero up to 11. At first I was offended, but the homo/xenophobia is so over-the-top, it becomes absurdly funny.

Twelve Things I learned from the movie:

1) Spartans are kind of like Scottish football players except that they all shave their chests and don't wear shirts... wait, I guess they're exactly like Scottish football players.

2) If anyone is effeminate, nonwhite, a lesbian, or physically unattractive, they are an enemy of freedom or a slave.

3) Wearing underwear is only for evil people like hunchbacks and God-kings. The army of freedom goes commando.

4) Throwing your only weapon is a good battle strategy, as is slowing time and teleporting from one location to another. (I knew this from other funny action movies though)

5) The aesthetic style of car commercials from the early 90's is the new cutting edge of action cinematography unless there are women in the shot, then you should shoot it like a perfume commercial from the early 90's.

6) Rhinos and elephants are easy to ship, easy to train, and very easy to kill.

7) Spartan cloaks never get dirty unless you are returning from a son-avenging murderous rampage.

8) Spartan cloaks have the power to summon wind if the wearer utters a corny line. Protip: Louder and cornier lines produce a stronger wind.

9) The sight of a toppling decapitated body can be surprisingly funny if the body belongs to a character you know nothing about and the entire scene happens in sloooooow moooootion.

10) Ru Paul blew most of his Godking evil henchmen budget on fancy masks for his elite army of mutant ninjas and forgot to check their resumes for evidence of any actual fighting skill.

11) People who kill innocent women and children are savage enemies of reason and justice, but people who kill innocent babies are reasonable and just champions of freedom.

12) "Well-written action movie script" (or video game or comic book) still means laugh-out-loud cheesiness during every dramatic scene.

So, while it doesn't quite top The Mummy Returns for unintentionally hilarious nonsensical action, it's a close second. I predict that this movie will score well with male gamers, adolescent boys, and ultra conservative patriarchs. I know it was based on a comic, but really now, it's like an allegory for the War on Terror written by a confused twelve year old. If you're looking for quality even on par with the mediocre Gladiator, keep looking. 5/10

P.S. Make sure you watch the credit roll for the multiple evil transsexual Asian roles (I thought transsexual Asian #3 did an excellent job).

This film was much better than I expected. The numerous intentional movie references are kinda silly, but I did like the Dr. Strangelove one. However, the most hilarious moments of the movie are:

*spoilers* (although you shouldn't be worried about spoilers in this movie)

1) The "evil archaelogical dig," everything about it is funny.

2) The wizard of Oz like chant as the mummy is resurrected. (you know,

ooooooh-eeeee-oooh, eee-ooohuuumm)

3) The scene where the row of horsemen ride up in a line and then ride away for no apparent reason.

4) The fact that the computer generated Rock's expressions and acting are much better than the real Rock's. This still makes me smile.

5) When the Scorpion King dies, the Mummy runs onto screen from the side, gets down on his kness, clenches his fists in the air and shouts "Nooooooooo!" I was laughing for about ten minutes after this.

6) Frasier's wife dies, and her brother doesn't seem to mind.

*end spoilers*

There are many many other unintentionally funny moments in this movie. It's bad, I mean really God awful bad, but it doesn't take itself seriously and the accidental moments of comedy are worth a matinée ticket.

PS None of the planned jokes are funny at all.

And I almost went to the theater to see it. Whew! dodged a bullet on that one. Here's a little hint to all you American animation studios out there. "Good" actors (especially good American actors) do not necessarily make good voice actors. Case in point: Titan A.E. Now the term "good actor" is used rather loosely in Matt Damon's case and doesn't even apply in Drew Barrymore's case, but anyway they are terrible terrible voice actors.

This is my theory: most if not all American actors are judged on appearance first and acting ability a distant second. In addition, acting for the screen allows them to use their appearance to convey their emotions and their voice isn't as important. When some bigwig gets the bright idea that popular people will draw an audience and decides to cast them in an animated movie, many are completely lost without their precious good looks/physical antics to distract the audience from their horrible acting skills as far as actually speaking their lines. Their solution is to Over-act and Over-deliver their lines which makes them sound even worse.

This is the general problem I have with most American voice acting. There's rarely any subtlety which means there really isn't any complexity in the characters. They're boring cardboard cutouts whose personality can be summed up in a neat little sentence.

Now, all that being said, the voice acting in Anastasia and The Iron Giant are both much much better than in Titan AE which I think reflects primarily on the quality of the script and the skill of the actors involved. Also, hearing Drew Barrymore's voice coming from an Asian girl makes me physically ill, but I'll get into that later.

First of all, as has been said a hundred times before the script is the most derived, bland piece of sci-fi mishmash imaginable. I can say with confidence that the average twelve year old if given some paper and a pen would produce maybe not as polished a script, but certainly a much more interesting one. As far as the animation quality is concerned, by any standard it is subpar. The character animation suffers from the Disney "rubberized" effect where motions and expressions are overemphasized to make it perfectly clear to the dumb little children exactly what's going on because everyone knows that children are incapable of detecting subtle emotions. (I dare you to tell that to any mother of a young child.) The computer effects have been done several years ago in Japan and even older Saturday morning cartoons like Beastwars look more impressive and polished. Also, inexplicably there is a drop in framerate when a lot of computer effects are used. That's right, there is videogame slowdown in a movie! Uhhh...I'm not sure how this happened, all I can think of is that the prerendered effects were done at a low framerate to save money and they tried to match the animation framerate to make it consistent. In any event, the movie is visibly jerky druing most action scenes which is distracting. Now, a rant on casting: With the exception of Nathan Lane and John Leguizamo, the characters in the movie don't match their voices.

Even Matt Damon, whose Cale character looks fairly similar to the actual actor doesn't seem to matchup voicewise. (but the appearance of the character shouldn't really make a significant difference anyway to a decent voice actor.) It's most likely due to a combination of bad voice acting, a lousy script, and poor facial animation of the characters. One obvious complaint, Drew Barrymore's voice is extremely lazy (as is her acting). Her character is supposed to be the silent, intense type (I know my Asian stereotypes). The resulting mismatch sounds ridiculous.

Janeane Garofalo's standup is funny because she's a sarcastic little complaining woman. Her character is a large angry military alien. There is a basic mismatch in terms of personality and voice that can only be overcome with good voice acting skills which just aren't there. Finally, realism. It isn't there either. I think that most people understand that there are certain qualities about a vacuum that make it impossible to float through it unharmed. A couple would be temperature and the lack of freaking air. It reminds me of Episode One in the way that it seems to have been created by flimsily linking together preplanned action sequences with no regard to a smoothly flowing plot or even the most basic scientifc facts and laws of physics. Now, the good points. John Leguizamo has fun and his character is believable. Nathan Lane sounds like Nathan Lane which can be good or bad depending on your opinion of him, but I thought he did a good job. In a radical departure (I'm sure there were several marketing meetings held about this) there is no wisecracking animal sidekick in the Disney sense. *spoiler* The best scene in the movie is when you think that the insect-like cook will take that role and he is then shot. *end spoiler* This movie is also too short, apparently the Disney standard 90 minutes was in place and it feels very rushed. Of course with a poor movie like this, I was glad when it was over. This is an utterly flavorless movie that stands as another shameful example of the horrible quality of American animated movies. I am quite ashamed to have rented it, and I will do everything in my power to forget that it exists. PS: If your excuse is that the movie was intended for young viewers, several young people whose opinions I respect pronounced the movie as "boring and predictable" and "okay, but I don't want to see it again." In any event, I think that the standards for holding an intelligent child's attention and capturing their imagination are quite a bit higher than those for the average American adult these days.