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samradion
Reviews
Svet-Ake (2010)
Disappointing and depressing
I bought this after having read the write-up and back of the box expecting an uplifting, humorous and heartwarming tale.
It is none of these things. The film carries on at a slow pace and gets progressively darker. Just when you think it's all going to turn around and have a positive ending it pulls the rug out from under you and ends on an extremely miserable and unpleasant note.
If the back of the box said "an exploration of the futility of existence in impoverished Kyrgyzstan" You would at least know what you were getting. All that stuff in the write-up about light love and laughter is not really true as the ending of this film smashes any of the humanity that goes before it.
If I'd had a better expectation of the film I probably would have enjoyed it more but it's practically sold as a comedy and is in fact a tragedy.
Lego: The Adventures of Clutch Powers (2010)
Fun, but definitely a straight to video release
Firstly this is a kids movie and has to be reviewed as such. If you're an adult and even an adult fan of Lego you won't get a huge amount out of this. The movie has some nice touches such as a scene inspired by the alien movies and the post-opening intro song is actually pretty good.
However it really does seem the main aim of this movie is to sell more Lego than to entertain, they have tried to cram in just about every current Lego range in (rock monsters, space police, city and castle) before rather strangely deciding to base the rest of the movie in the Castle universe.
The animation is OK, but not really much better than any of the cut-scenes in a Lego game and the whole movie did have the feel of an extended computer game scene. I couldn't help feeling this would be better suited to a 15-20 minute episode format on kids TV.
The voice cast is actually not bad, Ryan McPartlin and Yvonne Strahovski (sic?) are well known for their work together on Chuck and are well cast.
Overall a fun kids film to kill an hour or so for a young Lego collector, but ultimately too shallow and lacking lots of the humorous touches that featured in other Lego offerings such as the Lego Star Wars games that made them fun for adults too. Worth picking up when it inevitably appears in the £5 section of your local supermarket, but still a million miles better than the Bionicle movie.