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Reviews
The Little Mermaid (2023)
Unfortunately just mediocre
I have to be honest, when I first saw how they would alter the appearance of the main character I was a bit reluctant to give it a watch, and even my 6-year-old twin daughters weren't particularly interested.
But I guess it's just a reflection of the times we're living in and you have to be open minded, so yesterday we decided to finally give it a totally unbiased chance.
My first impression was that it seemed to be one of the better (yet still pretty unneccessary) live-action remakes of our beloved Disney classics, and what I thought would bother me the most turned out to be not a problem at all.
Funnily enough, my daughters only asked why Ursula had a different skin tone. :-)
And I actually liked the idea of Triton having vastly different daughters better compared to how it was before, but why did they have to cut out their song entirely?
Speaking of which, another song/scene was removed but instead we got new songs that felt really forced and didn't stick in your mind at all.
So the run-time was longer and yet it felt like a lot was missing.
Now what really made me go for such a low rating is this:
The original was extremely colorful and gorgeous to look at, but here the underwater scenes were often just downright ugly and you could even see the greenscreen, while on land everything was almost too bright and colourful, which made it look much more like a stageset instead of out in the open.
But most of the integral scenes take place underwater and yet it never really feels like they're actually underwater.
I can't really say anything bad about the actors' performances, I think they did a great job overall, but the characters they portrayed...
Triton is not really giving much attention to his daughters, and since they focus on Ariel of course, where did he get the impression she might be in love?
This came out of nowhere and then het gets into a rage over her collection without any buildup.
Also you never see Ariel be a rebellious teenager to make this believable.
They also give so much emphasis on Eric being the prince, but he really doesn't act like it in any way, especially not towards the people, there's no interaction whatsoever.
They're talking about his birthday, but there's not much happening and they're not even showing him getting the statue as a present.
It's just there, falling in the water and Ariel picks it up...off-screen...
And I didn't mind Scuttle being a girl now, guess you have to be more diverse nowadays, but they somehow managed to make her just annoying...and not in a funny way...it just didn't work.
But my biggest complaint would be with Ariel herself.
In the original she was so unique and thy were able to get across all of her emotions even though she was just hand-drawn.
Especially when she was human and was trying to win the prince over even without a voice, she was so extremely lovable, it made you almost fall in love with her yourself.
And here?
She's just a beautiful girl who does bacially nothing except for simply spending time with the prince who she doesn't seem to be interested in, so what made him fall in love with her?
Just her looks?
Isn't that what we wouldn't want to convey anymore, that beauty's the only factor that counts?
Although I have to admit the scene in which Eric guesses her name is really sweet and better thought out than in the original.
More in-dephts scene with the disguised Ursula using Ariel's voice would've really helped, and made for some good laughs in the original.
And then there's the finale with Ursula which felt rather rushed and they so desperately wanted to give Ariel more edge so they made her strike the finishing blow instead of Eric, which was fine I guess, but I would've wanted her to be more fleshed out in other regards than being a tough girl, so she could be allowed to be saved by the prince every once in a while.
Also I missed the scene in which Triton rose out of the water to say his last goodbye and even accept Eric as his son-in-law.
I know it's just a nit-pick, but I would've loved to see Ariel at the end rise out of the water with that sparkling dress and human feet given by her father instead of just wearing her ragged dress she lost in the water before.
Overall, this one lacked a lot of the emotions perfectly conveyed by hand-drawn animation back in the day, which is a shame because it should've been quite easy with real actors.
So that's why it's just another mediocre Disney re-hash that will probably soon be forgotten.
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022)
If you ignore the ending this is actually pretty decent
First off, I was never too big into reading Marvel comics even though I am a fan of the whole universe in general.
My knowledge is only big enough to be able to remember what the characters looked like in the comics and what their powers are, so that when a new character is introduced in the movies and/or TV shows I do recognize them.
With that being said, all I knew about She-Hulk is that she's in some way connected to the Hulk (well, duh!), that she's a lawyer in real life and that she used to break the fourth wall before Deadpool did.
So when I heard about this show I wasn't overly excited or anything and only now came around to watching it, and I have to say, I liked it quite a lot.
The character was fun, it was different enough from the rest and I genuinly enjoyed old and new cameos.
I would also go as far as saying I enjoyed it more than most other Marvel TV shows, and I already watched all that came out prior to this one (except for the animated ones, it'd be just too much).
The ones I did in fact enjoy more were Loki and Moon Knight, but only these 3 shows made it easy to practically binge them (which I didn't, but I could've, given their overall entertainment factor).
I really don't understand how Ms. Marvel could've gotten a better rating in here, since that show had some pretty dumb writing in it.
I know it was more aimed for kids, but in some instances it was insultingly stupid even for maybe underdeveloped kids-brains.
Now you might wonder why I wouldn't give She-Hulk a 10-star rating then if I like it this much.
Well, there are some flaws in it I just can't deny.
For starters, Marvel is already giving extensive backgrounds and origin stories for their characters, so why the writers always feel the need to alter this, once the story is supposed to be shown on screen, is beyond me.
I guess they think they don't want to show us the exact same thing we've already seen in the comics, even though most audiences want just that...but if you're doing it for the first time with a bigger budget, why not stick to what's already there?
Instead they make use of their creative freedom and thus invented a new way to get Bruce Banner's blood into his cousin Jen's bloodstream, resulting in her to become similarly altered as him since they're related and share the same abnormaility that can withstand the gamma radiation.
All of this is okay I guess, if they wouldn't ignore this fact later on.
Speaking of bigger budget, the CGI on She-Hulk is just never believable: It looks really fake most of the time and even though she's a big hulky (^^) woman, couldn't she be moving like a woman, at least when she's just walking around?
And why did they have to give Jen curly hair which completely changes in structure when she transforms?
Also the supporting human characters are mainly throwaways you immediately forget.
Still I was never bored and wanted to see where this was going...until the ending of the season came along...
What the hell was that?
We see that her love interest deceived her by copying her phone (which leads nowhere), but he also seemed to have obtained a blood sample from her (off screen?), and then we never ever see that guy again.
Then the surprise bad guy uses a serum based on Jen's blood to give him superpowers but all of a sudden the gamma radiation isn't lethal anymore, even though we were told it only worked on Jen because of her relation to Bruce?
But then comes the actual kicker: they throw all of that out the window by resolving to a big fourth wall joke (which isn't really that funny) undoing everything that happened in the finale and leading to an ending without any finale at all.
I couldn't shake the feeling they were told right in the middle of shooting the last episode that there wouldn't be a 2nd season so they had to come up with something to end it abruptly.
You can tell that basically the ending's what ruined any chance of this being remembered as a great show, despite it's flaws here and there.
I would love to see She-Hulk again, but I doubt that's ever gonna happen seeing as what they did to her here...
Rim of the World (2019)
I really don't understand all the hate
First off, I don't write a lot of reviews, but with this I felt I had to.
Seriously, why all the hate because this movie is super clichéd and stereotypical?
I mean what did you expect?
Even I had to watch it in two sessions as I couldn't sit through it in one go.
The story's pretty flat without any real surprises, it's predictable and the effects are only okay.
But I was decently entertained, there were some good laughs here and there and in my opinion the actors did a really good job.
I always saw the characters and not some people portraying them.
And I really liked how one of the main characters had to overcome his greatest fears at the end (of which there are many, despite the obvious alien threat).
But I also can't understand all the overly positive reviews as this movie has some major issues as well:
Because of the lack of depths and original ideas, resulting in the recycling of so many tropes and formulas, most of this seemed to have been written for kids but the language used and the level of gore suggests it was aimed at an older audience.
So it doesn't really appeal to any side and I'd definitely not show it to my kids.
They clearly didn't know what they wanted to go for here and thus failed pretty badly at hooking you in, you never get invested as you can't really relate to anything here.
At one point I was just shaking my head as the movie suddenly turned into an Adidas commercial and never let go of this until the very end (you have to see it to believe it).
Speaking of the end, the kids kept on holding on to a key of some sort without really knowing what it was for exactly, while fleeing from an extremely powerful but unbelievably stupid alien (they're so intelligent that they have highly advanced spaceships but yet behave like wild animals?), so that it eventually could be used to align a secret defensive weapon to blow up the alien mothership.
But they don't even show that happening and instead focus on a pretty lame fake-out (as if they would go for the death of one of those kids) and then you just see the mothership explode in the sky leading to a totally awkward photoshop montage showing the events after and thus wrapping up the movie.
It feels rushed and uninspired and leaves you on a hollow and empty note.
So in conclusion it was a moderate endeavor, it didn't feel like a total waste of time but the world could've easily gone without.
PAW Patrol (2013)
I wish I never had to encounter this
I'll make it plain and simple: it's a kid's show placed in a non-sensical universe (where dogs can talk while all other animals can't) with unimportant plots, stupid and annoying characters and forced situations in which the help of the PAW Patrol is needed for no apparent reason.
It's clearly just meant to sell as much merchandise as possible, but other than that it's pretty harmless.
The animation is decent and there was clearly put some effort in this during production, which makes it appealing for small kids...which is also the biggest problem...having to endure this borefest for the sake of your children only to hear them scream for more and leaving you with spending your hard earned money on stuff no one needs makes me want to rue the day this was ever invented.
But what can you do?
Kids love it...!