Stupid plot and a bad movie overall that must be judged even more harshly considering all the much better Robin Hood films that came before it. Trying to do something different is only to be commended if it doesn't turn out to be as awful as this boring attempt to re-imagine the Robin Hood story. There were some nice stunts during the action scenes, but between the fast cuts and all the slow motion, I stopped to care about that, too.
Great acting/directing of all the child actors. The children are outstanding in every scene. Otherwise the film is quite underwhelming. Somewhat interesting characters, some good ideas and scenes, but overall nothing special.
It's strange for me that so many people here seem to love this film so much.
I find the technique and style very interesting - not the act of shooting live, and then painting over each frame; that's been done before (and perhaps better, in my opinion), even if here it was done by oil painters instead of animation artists and using oil on canvas, which of course meant a lot of work and is a huge achievement by itself. But I don't find the end result of all that work to be that amazing, even when seen on a cinema screen. What I liked more was the composition of the shots based on van Gogh's paintings, a bit similar to "Shirley: Visions of Reality".
That being said, I think this should have been made as a short, like it was originally intended. At a length of one and a half hours, the style of the animation is not enough for me to judge the film only based on that, and I take everything else much more into account - the plot, the acting, the strange casting choices of (generally good) actors with inopportune (and different) accents - and considered as a whole, this is a bad movie for me.
The story is a boring and unengaging neo-noir murder mystery, which in the end obsesses so much about van Gogh's death that I feel the movie missed out on the opportunity to paint a portrait of his life using his own technique and style and the acting is puzzlingly bad (even apart from the accents), mostly due to the very odd body language, as Lumen points out.
I'd recommend having a look at this film, but watching through all of it was quite a dull experience for me as the fascination with the style faded over time and the moments of recognizing scenes copying / alluding to van Gogh's paintings were not enough to make up for all the film's shortcomings.
Good premise and a fun watch. Not the best version of what this could have been, but story, characters and action are all decent and original enough to be interesting - although at times it seems a lot like a crossover between Le Cinquième Élément and Training Day (with a bit of R.I.P.D. and The Last Witch Hunter).
By far the worst film I have seen in a long time, and I'll watch almost anything.
I completely agree with frankqb, the idea is interesting but is never really explored properly, and instead the film just wanders off in many different directions.
There seem to be at least four different stories here, first there's the life changing experience of the protagonist as he becomes small and what that means for him, then there's the relationship and dynamic between the big world and the small world (including political and economic implications), then the social inequality within the new small world, and then the whole stuff about climate change and the end of the world.
Unfortunately these stories do not combine well and no matter what the viewer might be interested in more, the movie as a whole can only disappoint.
I would have liked to see more about what it means to live in this fictional small world and how it interacts with the normal world (as I too would have expected the film to be about that), but in the end only the very first part is somewhat about that. After maybe a quarter of the film the whole downsizing part is only a gimmick, and towards the end it doesn't even matter anymore whether they're small or not.
And as for the parts where the film focuses on being small, they are mostly wasted opportunities.
We once see a "giant" rose, and there's the big cracker, but after that, everything else is just regular size relative to the small people. Even their food is just small food - wasn't the whole point of downsizing to consume fewer resources?
And on top of that, the way the small world works doesn't make any sense.
Sure, the process of downsizing is sci-fi, and might as well be magic, no problem. But then in the small world everything works just the same, after all.
I'm fine with ignoring things like air pressure, but it's ridiculous and boring that everything is the same. They drink normally out of tiny glasses, ignoring that surface tension would make that near impossible, Matt Damon's character has a tiny mobile phone which he can use to take selfies. Even if we ignore the issues with the battery and CPU, such a tiny camera couldn't work, that's just optics. Same for the tiny cigar and tiny lighter. Everything should be different - cooking, writing, using any appliance, and there's so many regular sized objects they could bring into the small world and interact with, yet it practically never happens and everything is custom made just like it would be in the big world. There's not even animals; they talk about birds and insects, but the only animals we see are horses. That were shrunk too. How stupid is that?
Finally, there is the social commentary - but the film fails here, too. It hints at some things then never develops anything, and instead just focuses on the idiotic protagonist while sometimes parading it's Asian stereotype character or showing you the slums.
And just as frankqb pointed out, the mixture of lame comedy and the cautionary message the film tries to almost constantly force on the viewer doesn't work at all and just makes it insulting.
Avoid this terrible movie. This is not a "fun film" you can just enjoy without thinking too much about it, even if it may be marketed this way. It's just plain awful.
Entertaining and original, yet still disappointing.
It's a fun action comedy, but I don't think Ragnarok, the epic of the Norse Gods battle that brings about the end of the world should be told in the format of a comedy, even if it's the Marvel comic version. It just doesn't fit the story - to the viewer the events seem trivial and inconsequential, while to the story's characters they should be sinister and devastating, and yet they seem to share the audience's light-heartedness.
Don't bother watching this.
It's another poorly written and badly edited mess of a film that's boring when it tries to be be epic, annoying when it wants to be funny and ridiculous whenever it's supposed to be original.
Sure, the acting is overall decent and Wonder Woman is great, but it's not enough to safe the movie.
The villan is so boring that I'm not bothered by how stupid the CGI-Effects make him look, his motivation is witless, and although he's technically threatening to end the world, it seems like he only poses a small problem which Wonder Woman could deal with alone. But she doesn't feel like it, so she teams up with Batman instead and they form the Justice League, a group of superheroes, that works together to do one thing only - realize how pointless they are without Superman. So they bring him back, fight him until it's no longer convenient for the plot, and then he does what he does best: demonstrate why he's a mostly uninteresting character by resolving the whole problem basically alone in two minutes without even trying. And of course that means battling hords of inhuman underlings that pose no threat to them and then getting into a fist fight with the bad guy, before the energy thing destroys Earth, because what else could a superhero movie possibly do at the end?
Not to disagree with the commentators who prefer the novel, but I don't think that this film is missing anything or doesn't make sense, as some claim. What parts would you rather see included? Maybe the part where
the children enter the sewers, Bill performs an ancient ritual that takes him into another dimension where he meets a giant turtle that created our universe by vomiting it up, which helps him defeat It and afterwards the children get lost in the sewers and Beverly has to have sex with each of the boys to "restore unity to the group?"
Starts as a fairly interesting suspense thriller, then suddenly abandons the plot and the characters and turns into a repetitive political lesson that advocates fascism and government sanctioned murder (for the sake of security and order).
Sure, things may be bad in India and people feel that the government is powerless or too corrupt to deal with some issues and this is addressed in some Bollywood movies, but these glorifications of Fascism rather spoil the fun when they're thrown in as the conclusion of films like "Singham" or "A Wednesday".
I love the original short, but this is a boring and kitschy mess. It does not have enough plot to fill the runtime and fills the gaps with lame references to horror classics. Sure, those old horror movies are great, but paying homage to them in a never ending parade of in-your-face, yet out of place visual gags doesn't elevate this film in any way. In the end all the far reaching references cannot paint over the fact that the movie fails to sustain itself with enough of an original plot or engaging characters, and so it just collapses; yet sadly, just like for the reanimated pets, its natural death is not the end of this film and it drags on way too long.
Pretentious garbage that alternates between boring and painful to watch.
Stupid people being stupid, bla bla, the universe, more stupidity, magical creatures, organized society and medicine are evil, more stupidity.
At least it's short. I still wouldn't recommend watching it to anyone.
Terrible. Terrible, terrible, terrible. Terrible acting, terrible animation, terrible singing, terribly cliché and boring. Calling this film average is an undeserved compliment. This just sucks and is a waste of time and an insult to everyone with any sense of taste in movies.
I know it just came out and it won't stay like that... But isn't that even more reason this and other popular films shouldn't suddenly be on so many top lists right after release?
Is this really one of the top 50 war movies of all time, one of the top 50 action movies of all time, one of the top 50 adventure movies of all time, one of the top 50 films of the decade and one of the top 250 films ever...?
I have a mixed opinion of this.
One the one hand it's a creative and innovative film that makes full use of the tools at its disposal, taking you on a truly entertaining ride filled with stunning visuals.
On the other hand, I agree with whykecoakfly as far as the plot and the characters are concerned. It's not a bad story and the pacing is good, but there's nothing special about it, and all the characters are flat, stereotypical and comical.
Dr. Strange himself is a somewhat interesting mix between a witty and (at times) cynical genius (a role Cumberbatch definately knows how to play...) who just naturally excells at everything and a "blank sheet character" that the viewers can easily project themselves onto as they follow him through the story.
There's only two things that really don't work well in the film, in my opinion:
First, the villian. Mads Mikkelsen is great, but his character is neither interesting to the viewer nor truly challenging for the heroes.
And secondly, I find the film suffers heavily from a fundamental problem with almost everything involving magic - you don't know what the rules are, you don't know what's possible, or how one magic thing compares to another. New spells and magic items are introduced constantly and dispite the good choreography, effects and editing even the fight scenes are not so great, because you can never know what the stakes are. You can think, "that spell looks cool", "nice weapon", "this attack is a neat move", "the mirror dimension looks great" - but you just have to go with whatever happens, as everything might change at any moment.
It's surprising how this movie can be so terrible considering the great cast and source material and the amazing original film adaptation.
Unfortunately, this one is really not worth watching.
Not so strong on great animation, good story lines, memorable characters or even good music. But at least it's full of wonderful morals, teaching us that domestic violence is normal and counts as funny, if the abuser is a woman and the victim a man, women with the wrong body shape are naturally unattractive, a carnivore daring to feed commits a crime that should be avenged, and of course, violence is the best and first solution in any conflict.
Comments 26 - 50 of 62
Movie comment on The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film
crazy_bitch
You need to have parts of your brain removed to find this funny, and in any case watching that surgery would be more funny than this film.Movie comment on Robin Hood
crazy_bitch
Stupid plot and a bad movie overall that must be judged even more harshly considering all the much better Robin Hood films that came before it. Trying to do something different is only to be commended if it doesn't turn out to be as awful as this boring attempt to re-imagine the Robin Hood story. There were some nice stunts during the action scenes, but between the fast cuts and all the slow motion, I stopped to care about that, too.Movie comment on Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue
crazy_bitch
Wow.Movie comment on Primaire
crazy_bitch
Great acting/directing of all the child actors. The children are outstanding in every scene. Otherwise the film is quite underwhelming. Somewhat interesting characters, some good ideas and scenes, but overall nothing special.Movie comment on Black Panther
crazy_bitch
Silent Red, the ratings here are taken from IMDb.Movie comment on Loving Vincent
crazy_bitch
It's strange for me that so many people here seem to love this film so much.I find the technique and style very interesting - not the act of shooting live, and then painting over each frame; that's been done before (and perhaps better, in my opinion), even if here it was done by oil painters instead of animation artists and using oil on canvas, which of course meant a lot of work and is a huge achievement by itself. But I don't find the end result of all that work to be that amazing, even when seen on a cinema screen. What I liked more was the composition of the shots based on van Gogh's paintings, a bit similar to "Shirley: Visions of Reality".
That being said, I think this should have been made as a short, like it was originally intended. At a length of one and a half hours, the style of the animation is not enough for me to judge the film only based on that, and I take everything else much more into account - the plot, the acting, the strange casting choices of (generally good) actors with inopportune (and different) accents - and considered as a whole, this is a bad movie for me.
The story is a boring and unengaging neo-noir murder mystery, which in the end obsesses so much about van Gogh's death that I feel the movie missed out on the opportunity to paint a portrait of his life using his own technique and style and the acting is puzzlingly bad (even apart from the accents), mostly due to the very odd body language, as Lumen points out.
I'd recommend having a look at this film, but watching through all of it was quite a dull experience for me as the fascination with the style faded over time and the moments of recognizing scenes copying / alluding to van Gogh's paintings were not enough to make up for all the film's shortcomings.
Movie comment on Bright
crazy_bitch
Good premise and a fun watch. Not the best version of what this could have been, but story, characters and action are all decent and original enough to be interesting - although at times it seems a lot like a crossover between Le Cinquième Élément and Training Day (with a bit of R.I.P.D. and The Last Witch Hunter).Movie comment on Downsizing
crazy_bitch
By far the worst film I have seen in a long time, and I'll watch almost anything.I completely agree with frankqb, the idea is interesting but is never really explored properly, and instead the film just wanders off in many different directions.
There seem to be at least four different stories here, first there's the life changing experience of the protagonist as he becomes small and what that means for him, then there's the relationship and dynamic between the big world and the small world (including political and economic implications), then the social inequality within the new small world, and then the whole stuff about climate change and the end of the world.
Unfortunately these stories do not combine well and no matter what the viewer might be interested in more, the movie as a whole can only disappoint.
I would have liked to see more about what it means to live in this fictional small world and how it interacts with the normal world (as I too would have expected the film to be about that), but in the end only the very first part is somewhat about that. After maybe a quarter of the film the whole downsizing part is only a gimmick, and towards the end it doesn't even matter anymore whether they're small or not.
And as for the parts where the film focuses on being small, they are mostly wasted opportunities.
And on top of that, the way the small world works doesn't make any sense.
I'm fine with ignoring things like air pressure, but it's ridiculous and boring that everything is the same. They drink normally out of tiny glasses, ignoring that surface tension would make that near impossible, Matt Damon's character has a tiny mobile phone which he can use to take selfies. Even if we ignore the issues with the battery and CPU, such a tiny camera couldn't work, that's just optics. Same for the tiny cigar and tiny lighter. Everything should be different - cooking, writing, using any appliance, and there's so many regular sized objects they could bring into the small world and interact with, yet it practically never happens and everything is custom made just like it would be in the big world. There's not even animals; they talk about birds and insects, but the only animals we see are horses. That were shrunk too. How stupid is that?
Finally, there is the social commentary - but the film fails here, too. It hints at some things then never develops anything, and instead just focuses on the idiotic protagonist while sometimes parading it's Asian stereotype character or showing you the slums.
And just as frankqb pointed out, the mixture of lame comedy and the cautionary message the film tries to almost constantly force on the viewer doesn't work at all and just makes it insulting.
Avoid this terrible movie. This is not a "fun film" you can just enjoy without thinking too much about it, even if it may be marketed this way. It's just plain awful.
Movie comment on Olaf's Frozen Adventure
crazy_bitch
Too long. No fun. No purpose.A disgrace to show this before Coco.
Movie comment on Thor: Ragnarok
crazy_bitch
Entertaining and original, yet still disappointing.It's a fun action comedy, but I don't think Ragnarok, the epic of the Norse Gods battle that brings about the end of the world should be told in the format of a comedy, even if it's the Marvel comic version. It just doesn't fit the story - to the viewer the events seem trivial and inconsequential, while to the story's characters they should be sinister and devastating, and yet they seem to share the audience's light-heartedness.
Movie comment on Justice League
crazy_bitch
Don't bother watching this.It's another poorly written and badly edited mess of a film that's boring when it tries to be be epic, annoying when it wants to be funny and ridiculous whenever it's supposed to be original.
Sure, the acting is overall decent and Wonder Woman is great, but it's not enough to safe the movie.
Movie comment on The Four Musketeers
crazy_bitch
The potentially great cast can't save this mess of a movie.Movie comment on It
crazy_bitch
Not to disagree with the commentators who prefer the novel, but I don't think that this film is missing anything or doesn't make sense, as some claim. What parts would you rather see included? Maybe the part whereMovie comment on The Boss Baby
crazy_bitch
I was pleasantly surprised by this.then I wanna give you all of mine.
Movie comment on A Wednesday
crazy_bitch
Starts as a fairly interesting suspense thriller, then suddenly abandons the plot and the characters and turns into a repetitive political lesson that advocates fascism and government sanctioned murder (for the sake of security and order).Sure, things may be bad in India and people feel that the government is powerless or too corrupt to deal with some issues and this is addressed in some Bollywood movies, but these glorifications of Fascism rather spoil the fun when they're thrown in as the conclusion of films like "Singham" or "A Wednesday".
Toplist comment on IMDb's Comedy Top 50
crazy_bitch
"Comedies are light-hearted plots consistently and deliberately designed to amuse and provoke laughter."Hey, that description almost fits one or two films on this list.
Movie comment on Frankenweenie
crazy_bitch
I love the original short, but this is a boring and kitschy mess. It does not have enough plot to fill the runtime and fills the gaps with lame references to horror classics. Sure, those old horror movies are great, but paying homage to them in a never ending parade of in-your-face, yet out of place visual gags doesn't elevate this film in any way. In the end all the far reaching references cannot paint over the fact that the movie fails to sustain itself with enough of an original plot or engaging characters, and so it just collapses; yet sadly, just like for the reanimated pets, its natural death is not the end of this film and it drags on way too long.Movie comment on Beasts of the Southern Wild
crazy_bitch
Pretentious garbage that alternates between boring and painful to watch.Stupid people being stupid, bla bla, the universe, more stupidity, magical creatures, organized society and medicine are evil, more stupidity.
At least it's short. I still wouldn't recommend watching it to anyone.
Movie comment on The Jungle Book
crazy_bitch
Terrible. Terrible, terrible, terrible. Terrible acting, terrible animation, terrible singing, terribly cliché and boring. Calling this film average is an undeserved compliment. This just sucks and is a waste of time and an insult to everyone with any sense of taste in movies.Movie comment on Rogue One
crazy_bitch
I know it just came out and it won't stay like that... But isn't that even more reason this and other popular films shouldn't suddenly be on so many top lists right after release?Is this really one of the top 50 war movies of all time, one of the top 50 action movies of all time, one of the top 50 adventure movies of all time, one of the top 50 films of the decade and one of the top 250 films ever...?
Movie comment on I, Robot
crazy_bitch
A terrible mess of a film, trying as hard to convince you it's clever and intriguing as it is failing to be these things.Movie comment on Doctor Strange
crazy_bitch
I have a mixed opinion of this.One the one hand it's a creative and innovative film that makes full use of the tools at its disposal, taking you on a truly entertaining ride filled with stunning visuals.
On the other hand, I agree with whykecoakfly as far as the plot and the characters are concerned. It's not a bad story and the pacing is good, but there's nothing special about it, and all the characters are flat, stereotypical and comical.
Dr. Strange himself is a somewhat interesting mix between a witty and (at times) cynical genius (a role Cumberbatch definately knows how to play...) who just naturally excells at everything and a "blank sheet character" that the viewers can easily project themselves onto as they follow him through the story.
There's only two things that really don't work well in the film, in my opinion:
First, the villian. Mads Mikkelsen is great, but his character is neither interesting to the viewer nor truly challenging for the heroes.
And secondly, I find the film suffers heavily from a fundamental problem with almost everything involving magic - you don't know what the rules are, you don't know what's possible, or how one magic thing compares to another. New spells and magic items are introduced constantly and dispite the good choreography, effects and editing even the fight scenes are not so great, because you can never know what the stakes are. You can think, "that spell looks cool", "nice weapon", "this attack is a neat move", "the mirror dimension looks great" - but you just have to go with whatever happens, as everything might change at any moment.
Movie comment on All the King's Men
crazy_bitch
It's surprising how this movie can be so terrible considering the great cast and source material and the amazing original film adaptation.Unfortunately, this one is really not worth watching.
Movie comment on Make Mine Music
crazy_bitch
Not so strong on great animation, good story lines, memorable characters or even good music. But at least it's full of wonderful morals, teaching us that domestic violence is normal and counts as funny, if the abuser is a woman and the victim a man, women with the wrong body shape are naturally unattractive, a carnivore daring to feed commits a crime that should be avenged, and of course, violence is the best and first solution in any conflict.Movie comment on Gwoemul
crazy_bitch
Terrible, boring, waste of time.Showing items 26 – 50 of 62