Reviews

I saw today that there was a new film from studio Ghibli, and I got excited. Then I watched it... I shouldn't have. The story begins a bit confusing, it's very disjointed and plays out like a montage, as the whole movie sort of seems to. Things begin to pick up around the middle, and you start to trace the movie so far, and it leads your mind to many possibilities that you can theorize may come to pass. When the time comes to deliver on even a single one of the things that were foreshadowed, it never does. The entire film feels like a budget toddler program, like something from Cocomelon... and it's insulting that it bares the Studio Ghibli name. The ending was a big slap in the face, and everything you have been anticipating gets dumped in your lap like a curtain reveal, amd the movie ends, with no rhyme or reason, it's just over. What?

I give it 3 stars for keeping me watching to the end. There were at least eight times that I asked myself why I was still watching this movie. These were typically during the large narrated segments of the film. This movie is a reel of stunts and action shots, strung together by character narrations that explain why this next scene of explosions and gunfights is about to happen. There really isn't any story here other than what you can read in the description, or see in the trailers. Ryan being snarky, writers being lazy, and Michael Bay being extreme. I kind of hated it, but I went into it having no idea what I was about to watch. I kept wondering... I couldn't shake the sneaking suspicion... When the credits finally rolled and I saw it in big bold letters... "Michael Bay", I nearly died laughing. I had been thinking it was one of his the entire time, and that validation was enjoyed at least enough to say, on the whole, watching this movie was ultimately a positive experience. Aside from that point, I have completely forgotten what the actual plot even was aside from, well... You can basically just go ahead and paste the studio's synopsis here. They could have just skipped the narration and the story completely, and added a couple more explosions and a downhill skiing scene with Reynolds being chased by an avalanche.