Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012)

I lost the count, but this is the, what, fourth Ice Age movie? Fortunately, it got better than the last. We have more Scratch (I love that guy), we have less sentiment, and more humor. That is great. Regarding the animation, not much to say: it is great. The story, not bad, not relevant to the success of the movie.

Things I love: the liberty statue and Scratch Atlantis. Lovely. Also, Beethoven ninth (Ode to Joy) is always a great sound. But wouldn’t it be more adequate the Dvorak ninth (New World)?

Puss in Boots (2011)

Puss in Boots

After Shrek I was looking for a movie with the Boots’ cat. Finally watched it, and, I am sorry to say it isn’t as good as I was expecting. The animation is good, the Puss is very cute, the story is nothing interesting. Even for children, I don’t think the story is near any of the Shrek movies (and I consider the third very very bad).

Although I can cope with a movie like Shrek, where all characters are different (cats, ogres, horses, eggs, whatever) it gets strange when you mix cats and humans, talking to each other. And it gets yet more strange, when you add.. one egg! An then, they all talk to each other. But the poor goose (mother or child) are unable to talk. Gah, I think they need some more work to put a movie out.

Probably is that the reason that Puss in Boots: The three Diablos wasn’t almost mentioned anywhere.

7/10!

Open Season (2006)

Open Season (2006)

2006 seems to be the year of animal movies. Over the Hedge and Madagascar (2005) are more or less from the same time. But unlike these two, Open Season is warm movie. No big features, no big story, a minimal with no quality soundtrack and just some cool animation and a hand full of jokes. To help, the voice of Martin Lawrence for the main character (Boog, the bear).

Unlike other movies, like Shrek, Open Season lacks adult jokes. You know, when you take a kid to the cinema to watch a movie, you don’t sit him in the room and get to the next room to see a horror movie. You sit together with your kid, and watch the same movie. If you can make the adult enjoy the movie as much or more as the kid, in the future this same adult with bring the kid again to the cinema. In the other hand, if the adult gets bored, he will not take the kid that much times to watch animation movies. So, I defend these movies should be as much interesting as possible for everybody.

Voted 7 in IMDB.

Rio (2011)

Rio (2011)

I confess my idea was not to post here this picture, but a picture of Blu, the bird, the main character on Rio. But after seeing this (and other similar) image I couldn’t resist to show you the nice Portuguese cobblestone. Isn’t is nice? Ever in 3D animation? I love it.

Anyway, back to Rio (2011), the movie story is the standard for an animation family movie, nothing big there. But there are some jokes (plenty of jokes) that make it fun to watch. An then, there is the detail in the animation, the detail in the scenarios (just like in the picture above) and the mimed reality. You know, the view of Rio de Janeiro from the top of the Cristo Rei is just like the one in the movie. Instead of just inventing a new reality, the producers choose to make it seem really like Rio. That makes the picture yet more interesting, and it is (I know it is) a challenge for animation artists.

Voting 8 in 10 @ IMDB. Would vote 9 in case of a really new story…

The Ant Bully (2006)

The Ant Bully (2006)

The Ant Bully movie is not great on animation (it is good, but not on the best) and does not have a really new story. The basics are the usual on a kids movie, trying to learn to respect nature, and respect one another. Then, add the hey, I shrunk the kid and you have a movie. Nevertheless, you can have some good time watching it. The usual amusement of seeing small things as big ones is nice, and the imaginary of being small can lead to some nice thoughts.

Probably this was a strange paragraph. Forget it and watch the movie… oh, and try to find out who is Nicholas Cage and Julia Roberts, hihihi.

Up (2009)

I like animation movies, not just because of the story itself, but because they are usually comic and also because I like to see the advances on computer animation. And Pixar movies always astonish me because of the animation and graphics quality. This is not an exception. This movie is great.

Unfortunately I am not that happy with the story. Not because it is not plausible. I am used to that in animation stories (and not only animation…). But because I lack humor. There are a few that I can recall, but most of the movie is a drama, or just old jokes. And that is a shame. I am a really admirer of some animation movies that have different levels of humor, from kids to adults. In this I could not find adult jokes… but probably I was distracted….

Finding Nemo (2003)

Finding Nemo (2003)

Happy Feet (2006)

Last night we had Happy Feet in the public Portuguese television, dubbed in Portuguese. This fact is relevant. Probably I would say different things if I watched the original version, as the dubbing process was not good. Why? The voices were cute, but hard to understand, and most of the musics were not dubbed or subtitled. While that is not relevant for the Queen’s music, some others were relevant (for instance, the one in the beginning).

The story is trivial. You join the ugly duckling story with some ecological message and the result is… Happy Feet.

The graphics are not astonishing. Nothing really new here. I think the only relevant portion is the reflection of real humans over the computer graphics. I am not sure they were real humans, but some of them were quite… real.

Conclusion, a good movie for children, mostly irrelevant for grown ups.

I think this shot tells much about the movie. It is an animation movie, by DreamWorks, with high quality renderization, nice characters, nice voices, a simple story, a lot of imagination and with some lessons to teach. If you like animation movies, you will love this one.