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stacyp_1212
Reviews
Espíritu del bosque (2008)
Don't be lured in by a high IMDb rating, like we were
I think anyone who rated this above about a 2 must have seen the cast, rented it for their kids and left the room.
My family spent the first ten minutes watching the movie trying to figure out what the blue critter was. No ears, a stubby tail, giant cheeks, and blue. Is it a graphic representation of the "spirit of the forest?" Then how come it's so clumsy and incompetent? Finally one of the characters referenced it by name, oh, it's a gopher. Nope, probably never would have figured that out.
The animation is awful, it looks like the outtakes from another movie, before the final animation layer was applied.
The dialog, or translation of it from the original language, is trite and distractingly odd. I could forgive the occasional weird comment, but the whole movie is a series of weird comments. Several scenes were nearly disgusting or curiously inappropriate, I kept thinking I was going to have to cover my kid's eyes, but then at the last minute it turned and just skirted the edge.
The characters aren't anyone I'd care about, when the two flies were swallowed by a cat, and I was so happy! I wouldn't have to endure them anymore! Unfortunately their adventures continued.
About 45 minutes into the movie my husband and I were finding it so unbearable we paused it to ask the kids if they still wanted to watch. Our 9 year old agreed she didn't like the movie but the 7 year old wanted to see what happened, for about ten more minutes, then she confessed she didn't care either. We watched to the end on x4 speed, which is how I'd recommend watching this movie.
Yes, in the English version the voices are done by a wonderful cast. But that doesn't make up for everything else this movie falls short in.
How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Movie VS Book - Movie WINS!
Saw the movie yesterday and loved it. I found the books at Costco and bought a couple, read the first today, expecting it to be amazing since so often books outshine their movie counterparts. But on this one I'd say skip the book, go see the movie again. The movie may sell a lot of moms like me on the books, looking for something for their kids to read. But the kids will hardly recognize the book and the movie as having much to do with each other, beyond "vikings," "dragons," and some of the characters.
Whoever converted the book into a screenplay did a wonderful job. The movie was great (see the other reviews) my only real comment on it was it amused me to hear Vikings with Scottish accents, and American accented kids. But hey, I stayed up late more than one night just to listen to Craig Ferguson talk so I'm not complaining too loudly.
Merlin (2008)
Why call it "Merlin"?
Suppose you hear there is a new TV series called "Baggins." It's about Bilbo Baggins, a midget who runs a traveling poker game on his river raft, and his wife Frodo, the goodhearted cook who is trying to turn the river raft into a four star restaurant. They are approached by Gandalf, who wants them to join his seven burly bearded friends in a seven samurai type story to rescue a village he knows from becoming victims of a scam artist who stealing all the gold in the area. What? We're just retelling the story!
This is what the makers of Merlin have done. When you use characters or names of characters from a very famous, long lived story, there will be a great many people who know something about the characters from having grown up with them. The Arthur legends, involving Merlin, have several variations. I haven't read some of the more famous ones, where the legends are started such as Malory and Tennyson. But in T.H. White's The Once and Future King, and in the fabulous Mary Stewart books, Merlin is older than Arthur's father, Arthur as a boy doesn't know he's the son of a king, Gweneviere meets Arthur just before they get married, and she's most certainly not a maidservant... These are just some of the fundamentals of the story which come to mind after watching two episodes of "Merlin."
If you're not going to utilize the well known aspects of the characters which were long ago already established in countless stories, why even call in all that history by using their names? Why not call this series "Necromancer" and name the main characters, oh I don't know, the wizard Pennerlin and prince Tellerthur?
Aside from completely rubbing me the wrong way with the liberties it takes with all the history I know of Merlin and Arthur, while rather predictable, this "Merlin" is a good family show, my kids love watching for the Magic, and can follow the plot.
Chingoo (2001)
I guess we were lost in the translation...
My husband enjoys movies produced in Asia and the Orient. We watch a fair amount of those. The old "seven samurai" ranks as one of his favorites. I say that as an explanation that despite some familiarity with some foreign movies (not that we're experts by any means), and acceptance of some things as inexplicable cultural differences, I wanted to like this movie more than I did. It seemed well acted, the settings seemed authentic and interesting, the situations seemed real and sincere. But as my husband and I watched it there were a lot of times when we would look at each other in total confusion. "Now what just happened? Can you 'splain that to me?" I mean, I expect a certain amount of cultural differences, but often the character's reactions and motivations seemed completely baffling to us. We just shrugged and figured that if we knew the culture better we'd have understood. As it was, a lot of it went right over our heads.