Ah, Dingo Pictures, one of those "mockbuster" companies. You know, the companies that ride the coattails of better companies for a quick buck. The animation is a GIANT red flag for those who don't figure it out or don't know before hand. Seriously, i've seen cartoons from the 1930s that look better than this! The character and background designs are so abysmal that even a 5 year old could do better. The lip syncing is NON-EXISTENT at best, the colors strain the eyes, and it just looks like the artists and animators didn't care while making this. Not to mention, it is so slow and boring. Of course, there is voice acting, and OH DEAR MERCY! It just sounds like a single person did every single voice, and even then, it sounds like he could only speak in broken English when it came to saying his lines for this. Plus, the voice volume is so low that you have to try and listen closely just to hear it. Not just that, but the story is pretty much just focused around a soccer (football if you're outside of the United States) game. There is no humor, although that isn't really a necessary thing to have in your movie (a lot of the time). Don't watch it, just don't. This fails on EVERY SINGLE LEVEL, and there are better reviews on it (for example, DXFan619's Phoenix Games review on YouTube).
3 Reviews
One animal soccer game you'd want to miss
TheLittleSongbird23 June 2021
Dingo Pictures is very like, well actually almost exactly the same as, their computer animated counterpart Video Brinquedo. In that pretty much all of their output is insultingly inept, blatantly derivative and "to be seen to be believed to see how awful animation can be" rubbish. Even their least bad animations, such as 'Lord of the Jungle' and 'Legend of Atlantis', are very poorly done. Not a single good animation in the bunch and this is coming from somebody who doesn't like being over-critical.
'Animal Soccer World' is one of Dingo Pictures' most notorious efforts for very good reason, very easy to see why. Not only is it one of their worst but it is also an all time low. As aforementioned in my previous Dingo Pictures reviews, it is hard to know where to start when there are no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and even for a studio with next to nothing worthwhile 'Animal Soccer World' is one of their worst. Am taking no pleasure in saying all of this, but anybody that says that this is bad is one hundred percent right and too generous even.
The animation is appalling, even for low-budget animation, the flat colours, very simplistic backgrounds and lack of detail and derivative, recycled and creepy character animation, and characters randomly falling into random and silent laughter for no reason at all. As well as a style, a very cheap mix between MS Paint and water colour paintings, that makes art of primary school children who draw and paint in half an hour or less seem more accomplished.
Furthermore, the inappropriately jaunty and heavily dissonant music always sounds misplaced and never fitting with what's going on, not to mention that it very rarely stops, actually sounding like it was composed and recorded on loop. The script is incredibly repetitive, awkward-sounding (none of it flows naturally) and juvenile that it will insult any adult is bad enough but even young children will feel dumber after hearing some of the dialogue here.
Regarding the story, that "takes inspiration" from numerous Disney films and blatantly ripping them off, feels stretched and narratively thin as paper, with incredibly plodding pacing, and is very disjointed and goes nowhere a lot of the time. The sequences with the soccer have nothing on the sheer fun and intensity of the one soccer match in Disney's 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks'.
Characters are excruciatingly irritating, not a likable or interesting character among them, while the sound effects are bizarre and randomly placed and the voice acting is amateurish and cheap even by low-budget animation standards, often being annoying, poorly recorded, creepy-sounding and incomprehensible and even ill-fitting.
In conclusion, an all time low in Dingo Pictures' very dubious output. 1/10.
'Animal Soccer World' is one of Dingo Pictures' most notorious efforts for very good reason, very easy to see why. Not only is it one of their worst but it is also an all time low. As aforementioned in my previous Dingo Pictures reviews, it is hard to know where to start when there are no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and even for a studio with next to nothing worthwhile 'Animal Soccer World' is one of their worst. Am taking no pleasure in saying all of this, but anybody that says that this is bad is one hundred percent right and too generous even.
The animation is appalling, even for low-budget animation, the flat colours, very simplistic backgrounds and lack of detail and derivative, recycled and creepy character animation, and characters randomly falling into random and silent laughter for no reason at all. As well as a style, a very cheap mix between MS Paint and water colour paintings, that makes art of primary school children who draw and paint in half an hour or less seem more accomplished.
Furthermore, the inappropriately jaunty and heavily dissonant music always sounds misplaced and never fitting with what's going on, not to mention that it very rarely stops, actually sounding like it was composed and recorded on loop. The script is incredibly repetitive, awkward-sounding (none of it flows naturally) and juvenile that it will insult any adult is bad enough but even young children will feel dumber after hearing some of the dialogue here.
Regarding the story, that "takes inspiration" from numerous Disney films and blatantly ripping them off, feels stretched and narratively thin as paper, with incredibly plodding pacing, and is very disjointed and goes nowhere a lot of the time. The sequences with the soccer have nothing on the sheer fun and intensity of the one soccer match in Disney's 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks'.
Characters are excruciatingly irritating, not a likable or interesting character among them, while the sound effects are bizarre and randomly placed and the voice acting is amateurish and cheap even by low-budget animation standards, often being annoying, poorly recorded, creepy-sounding and incomprehensible and even ill-fitting.
In conclusion, an all time low in Dingo Pictures' very dubious output. 1/10.
Believe it or not, this was fairly watchable
Horst_In_Translation21 March 2024
Warning: Spoilers
"Das unglaubliche Fussballspiel der Tiere", which literally translated means "The incredible soccer/football game of the animals", is a German animated short film from 1998, so this one is over 25 years old now, and internationally it is mostly known as "Animal Soccer World", which summarizes the action pretty nicely too and without superlatives, even if only one third of this half hour is really the game then. The writer and director here was the late Roswitha Haas and she made this film pretty much in the middle of her very prolific 12-15 years that include (short) films about many famous characters and tales, so this one is a bit of an exception as nobody really knows these characters included in here. The production company she usually worked for is called Dingo Pictures and if you take a look at all they did (with Haas), you will realize that most of these works scored really bad ratings and reviews. It must be said, however, that this film here for example was only rated by 69 people as of now, so it is not a totally representative rating. And as you can see from my rating, I would say that this was not as bad as people say it is. I read that the international dub in the English language was pretty woeful, so maybe this is one reason. The Germann dub I did not mind. On the contrary, I would say that the voice acting was maybe the film's strongest side. It was exactly what children would expect and like with how almost all actors went over the top to adjust their voices to the respective animal they were portraying. The film starts with a violent conflict between a panther and a dog and they argue also about who is the better football player and the consequence then is a football game between the jungle animals and the dogs/canines.
As I stated earlier, 20 of the overall 30 minutes are pretty much preparation for all this. We have the conflict of a young dog who wants to play, but is not allowed to by the other folks because he is too small. Luckily, the dog they really want as goalkeeper sides with the young hound and so he does not only get to play, but even scores the equalizer close before the end. A bit expected and maybe unrealistically over the top, but I am still in favor because they did not shove it into our faces constantly afterwards. On the contrary, the game is over then immediately afterwards and there is talk about a follow-up game. Aside from the football action, this film also brings in quite a lot for only half an hour. There's cheerleaders, there is the decision who will bring the referee and who will bring the linesman, there's food sold during halftime break, there's hooligeese (my favorite play on words here perhaps, especially the German word for those, which is even closer to "hooligans"), there's clearly biased commentators and so on. Basically everything that belongs to a football game was included here in a somewhat funny and entertaining manner. I am indeed pretty shocked this film received such a poor reception. It is far from awful. You can probably say that the cartoon style there looks as if it could also be 20 years older than it actually is, so not a treat physically, but I like the retro approach in general and I thought it fit well with the story, so all is well. There were also a few moments that made me laugh. Not only hooligeese, but also for example the moment when there is a penalty kick and the canine goalkeeper refuses to try to stop the ball because he is scared of being hit and stands just on the side with an offended face expression. I liked that character in general, even if I wonder why they really wanted him so much as the goalkeeper after all we find out about him and how it also costs them the compromise to allow the boy into the team.
Anyway, there was also a friendship story in here between said young dog and a young lion and the latter definitely reminded me of Simba. The looks did, the voice not at all. His father resembled Mufasa, only that he surely reached a much older age than Mufasa from what we are told about the adult lion here. He does not look that old though. The friendship story between the two young ones was also depicted nicely. There is talk at the very end that now they can be friends again and hang out for six weeks before the next football game then. So it fits in nicely with the premise that you have to ignore friendship for 90 minutes during the action if there's people in the other team that you are close with, but afterwards all can be back to harmony and hanging out together again. Admittedly, they also played around in a not super competitive fashion during the game on one occasion which resulted in one commentator calling it a friendly game or actually saying that it should be such and he was in disbelief in terms of what he was seeing there. The commentators were generally entertaining, so it was both interesting what we saw and what we heard. I guess this is pretty much it then. Surely, this is a film that is not super great, also visually there could have been more face expressions for example to the characters, but it is entertaining at times, has some charm here and there and on one or two occasions I even saw some guilty pleasure potential plus I liked most of the characters, also the supporting characters like the nervous reporter early on or the female paramedic. All this results in me giving the outcome here 2 stars out of 5 and a positive recommendation overall. It is especially for kids, but not exclusively. Also for those that are still young at heart. Ignore the ones bullying this little film. Besides, at 30 minutes only you are not really wasting too much time. Also ignore the imdb poster for this title as those characters or nationalities (Germany, Brazil) are not included in this movie.
As I stated earlier, 20 of the overall 30 minutes are pretty much preparation for all this. We have the conflict of a young dog who wants to play, but is not allowed to by the other folks because he is too small. Luckily, the dog they really want as goalkeeper sides with the young hound and so he does not only get to play, but even scores the equalizer close before the end. A bit expected and maybe unrealistically over the top, but I am still in favor because they did not shove it into our faces constantly afterwards. On the contrary, the game is over then immediately afterwards and there is talk about a follow-up game. Aside from the football action, this film also brings in quite a lot for only half an hour. There's cheerleaders, there is the decision who will bring the referee and who will bring the linesman, there's food sold during halftime break, there's hooligeese (my favorite play on words here perhaps, especially the German word for those, which is even closer to "hooligans"), there's clearly biased commentators and so on. Basically everything that belongs to a football game was included here in a somewhat funny and entertaining manner. I am indeed pretty shocked this film received such a poor reception. It is far from awful. You can probably say that the cartoon style there looks as if it could also be 20 years older than it actually is, so not a treat physically, but I like the retro approach in general and I thought it fit well with the story, so all is well. There were also a few moments that made me laugh. Not only hooligeese, but also for example the moment when there is a penalty kick and the canine goalkeeper refuses to try to stop the ball because he is scared of being hit and stands just on the side with an offended face expression. I liked that character in general, even if I wonder why they really wanted him so much as the goalkeeper after all we find out about him and how it also costs them the compromise to allow the boy into the team.
Anyway, there was also a friendship story in here between said young dog and a young lion and the latter definitely reminded me of Simba. The looks did, the voice not at all. His father resembled Mufasa, only that he surely reached a much older age than Mufasa from what we are told about the adult lion here. He does not look that old though. The friendship story between the two young ones was also depicted nicely. There is talk at the very end that now they can be friends again and hang out for six weeks before the next football game then. So it fits in nicely with the premise that you have to ignore friendship for 90 minutes during the action if there's people in the other team that you are close with, but afterwards all can be back to harmony and hanging out together again. Admittedly, they also played around in a not super competitive fashion during the game on one occasion which resulted in one commentator calling it a friendly game or actually saying that it should be such and he was in disbelief in terms of what he was seeing there. The commentators were generally entertaining, so it was both interesting what we saw and what we heard. I guess this is pretty much it then. Surely, this is a film that is not super great, also visually there could have been more face expressions for example to the characters, but it is entertaining at times, has some charm here and there and on one or two occasions I even saw some guilty pleasure potential plus I liked most of the characters, also the supporting characters like the nervous reporter early on or the female paramedic. All this results in me giving the outcome here 2 stars out of 5 and a positive recommendation overall. It is especially for kids, but not exclusively. Also for those that are still young at heart. Ignore the ones bullying this little film. Besides, at 30 minutes only you are not really wasting too much time. Also ignore the imdb poster for this title as those characters or nationalities (Germany, Brazil) are not included in this movie.
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