The Clockwork Girl

(2010) The Clockwork Girl COMPUTER ANIMATION/ SCIENCE-FICTION

Based on the comic book series created by Sean O'Reilly and Kevin Hanna, containing a very simplistic set up, surrounded with many complicated nuances young children would be incapable to understand unless you had 1) seen many movies, and 2) open to strange unusual things even though they're not so nice to look at. The movie is called "The Clockwork Girl" but upon watching it, it's almost looks just as complicated as watching any adult Japan animation movie since the entire environment is totally different than what viewers are accustomed into seeing. At the opening, the movie introduces us to two characters competing for the coveted prize of bragging rights. One's an expert biologist who happened to install two hearts into a Frankenstein -like baby who looks like a demon, and was using it to win since it had astronomical physical abilities, while his opponent is a mechanical person who builds things by using machines. He was using a mechanical robot that he had built for the contest until it was unable to do specific things. So because it lost him the contest, he let the "Ancients" take the robot away since it disappointed him. But what he did get instead is a relationship with one of the 3 judges and then he was happy again. A strange deadly plague were to happen later called "Blight" which eventually divided the city into two different groups since on one side, they wanted to be healed or fixed up by using biology and they were called "Biotists", while the other side wanted to be fixed up by using machines- they're called "Technocrats". And then by the time the plague took away his only love interest, he then became motivated to build another robot again, but this time one with a heart and much advanced abilities naming it 'Tesla' or "The Clockwork Girl", who's other purpose was to act as his daughter since he was alone and needed companionship. "The Clockwork Girl" and the demon baby viewers saw earlier are eventually going to meet since he's no longer a baby anymore who grew up to be a teenager named Huxley. Anyways, this entire set up almost seemed like it came from a L. Ron Hubbard novel, the founder of "Scientology" except that he was originally known as a novelist who writes science-fiction. Other homages I had noticed also includes "A Clockwork Orange", "The Phantom Menace" and "Star Trek" since the movie's approach into solving the "blight" plague almost looked like one. The only downfall is that is that it's too complicated for children to understand unless they understand biology and machines including viewers who're opened to other possible unexplainable possibilities but are possible to be shown on this movie.

A constant among other reviews has been to point out the dated animation. There's a very good reason why the movie looks the way it does: it is a low budget indie CG film produced by first timers nearly a decade ago. Labeling The Clockwork Girl as a 2021 release is somewhat misleading. The film was finished in 2013 and aired on Canadian premium television shortly after. It just took until 2021 for the movie to gain widespread distribution. It is a shame, because the visual style is appealing (well, outside of Huxley, but that's the point), it's just let down by technical aspects.

The movie does a good job of keeping things going. Everything feels brisk and the plot progression happens smoothly in ways that make sense. I did come in expecting star-crossed lovers and thankfully, the movie does subvert that a bit. However, the runtime leaves a few things underdeveloped, including the villain. There's a twist at the end that really changes how prior actions are viewed, yet the movie has no time to acknowledge that before the credits roll. We needed more of an epilogue to wrap the story up.

Acting wise, I felt the main cast did well. Alexa Vega was great as Tesla. Huxley is kind of a brat and I guess Jesse McCartney was okay. Carrie Anne Moss was also a highlight.

Soundtrack-wise, the pop song inserts were very out of place. They did not fit the action scenes in a movie that's largely somber in tone. Thankfully, there are only a few, but the rest of the score was forgettable.

Tesla and Huxley OTP!

The production values look like a video game, but once you get past that, the world, story and cast is fantastic. I do wish this had a decent budget for the visuals, but this was an indie film made with love and it shows.

I was a big fan of the comic series, so it's nice to see it come to life! I hope they make a sequel or into a tv series.

To be fair, while not "good" compared to others of today, it is a good start for an indie group to get a foot in the door with their own story instead of playing along with the common rehashing played out "popular" stories

while the animation wasnt 100%, neither was the older show 'Reboot' in its original season yet that blossomed as the creators got into the swing of things so its possible the creators of clockwork girl can also grow from this for their next venture and in the current times where society seems intent in drawing divisions between people, clockwork girl stands out with the message of stop focussing on differences and think about what we can achieve together.

The bad - Half finished animation. Did they run out of money? Were they teaching themselves how to use the newly purchased software on the job? There was a lot of good world building and character design, but a substantial amount of it look half finished and amateurish.

• The sound mix and the music. The orchestral score was fine, if averagely mixed, but the modern pop songs shoehorned into the film were jarring and really bad. They damaged the world building significantly and were a poor decision.

• Huxley. Wasn't a great character idea or that well played. I can see what they were going for but for the bio part of it he could have been better than a dumb teenager in a misshapen frankestein's monster body.

The Good

• Tesla. She was pretty good, the best looking of the animated characters, and interestingly voice.

-The world building. It was a pretty solid idea for a film, tech verse bio in a steam punk setting. Heavily influenced by iconic characters from history but not in a bad way apart from the clockwork orange droogs who had no reason to be in this world apart from the word clockwork in their source film title.

The plague mask characters were suitably creepy, and the castle in the sky was interesting too. The Hals moving castle flapping flying machines were nicked but some of the other designs were original and interesting.

Although it was half finished the city design and some of the locations were good.

I think the animators over-reached their ability. There were some exciting camera angles attempted, but failed at. Just because you can move in a 3d way doesn't mean it looks cinematic. A more experienced team would know how to pull off the moves without it looking cheap.

Obviously a lot of work went into making this film once you look past the lackluster parts. There's a lot of detail in there amongst the poorly rendered and badly moved animation. The next one will be better I'm sure.

They wisely got some decent voice talent on board and they mostly delivered.

I can see why people are jarringly shocked by the movie, but it isn't a one star effort, but it's not a 10 either. It's a generous 6-7. Please do better next time as the material deserves it.