Change Your Image
bloodtoxin88
Reviews
SAGA - Curse of the Shadow (2013)
Drag-on Bore: Curse of the Budget
I'll say this right off the bat: This is a low-budget film, and it can't be entirely faulted for that. The kind of pitfalls you would expect from a low-budget movie are all here: Cheesy effects, poor makeup, limited sets, over-processed visuals (as a result of limited sets).
Normally, these things would be forgivable if the acting, story, choreography, and cinematography outshine them. In this case, they simply do not.
Everything you see in the first 5 minutes lets you know exactly what you're in store for. A terrible CGI dragon is being ridden by an orc in very unconvincing makeup. The orc is shot down by an elf with the cheapest color contact lenses this side of your local mall, and a fight scene ensues. This is where you see the combination of poor direction and framing coupled with extremely inept choreography. Hell, there's a point in the first fight scene where you can CLEARLY see the elf MISS her kick to the orc's face by about a foot, and he still grunts and flies backwards as if it connected. That's the kind of thing you either re-shoot or cut in post.
This is the kind of quality you might expect to find in a feature-length YouTube production -- though that might be insulting to some of the more accomplished YouTube content producers.
Squirrel Boy (2006)
Disappointing.
Though it's certainly been said before, this show is, to put it simply.. dull. It does very little to push the standards of conventional cartoon humor, and even fails to deliver the mediocre; which wouldn't be all bad if not for the fact that most of the characters in the show are simply uninteresting.
Most dialog throughout the series seems to lack proper timing and the chemistry required to care about the characters, their relationships, or what's even going on in any particular episode. Though the voice acting is decent, it often seems as though the show is trying so hard to be entertaining that it's actually begging you to laugh at it's bland and all-too-familiar setup.