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Reviews
Ronal Barbaren (2011)
Not horrible but still bad
I watched this out of pure curiosity, to see if "adult" animation was still little boys playing dress-up in daddy's suits making dick jokes when actual adult (read: complex story lines and interesting characters with actual stakes) animation is being made right now by Pixar and Dreamworks. It is still like that sadly, for some "adult" mean aiming directly for language, sex and violence and doing it so heavy handedly that it becomes more childish instead. Now, the film does look fairly good to its credit so it has that going for it, too bad everything else about it is poor.
Think along the lines of Scary Movie, Vampires Suck and Meet the Spartans and you have an acutely good idea of what this is, near humor-like substitute for those who know no better or much in general. Had it been live action, it would have been classed as absolute dreck but being animated seems to have saved it from actual criticism which is a shame.
The characters aren't likable and are weakly written ciphers when they're not being stereotypes, the plot is flimsy even for your basic "unlikely hero rises to challenge in order to save family" storyline and the worst aspect of it is the supposed "adult" orientation it supposedly has. Like I said earlier, it revels in the fact it knows how to swear, make constant testicle gags (including one which just went on for far too long) and what boobies are. Problem is though, you need to be funny sometimes without relying on insult comedy, making a weak dick joke or just saying "fuck" to keep things going.
I say it's not horrible because you do get one or two decent jokes and it's not ugly most of the time to look at though but when your script is the same person speaking every line but coming out of different bodies it can't really hope for greatness. Oh and it's short too, cheaply made kids film short which seems fitting.
Konferenz der Tiere (2010)
Not awful but still bad nonetheless.
Now, this film is bad and I'm willing to hold back given that it had a pretty meagre budget and is from Germany so will have a sense of humour approaching "strange" but I will say it is horrendously lousy if compared to the big boys when it comes to storytelling, Wall-E for instance tripped over its ecological message by accident and still managed to make a very good point for environmentalism. However, I'm not grading this against that calibre of film because of its indie stature and could never hope to hit those giddy heights.
First off, it might think of itself as a comedy but it isn't. There are jokes (or at least I figure some are) but they're lightweight affairs which border on humorous but fail to... um, seal the deal. Where they're not incomplete, they're not lousy fart jokes most children wouldn't find amusing. That's OK though, comedy isn't the driving point, the message is and driven home it shall be until it overshoots and hits someone in the eye 3 miles away.
Based on Die Konferenz der Tiere from 1969 (tt0064552), the story regards a dam being built upstream of a Okavango delta which leads to a drought and one meerkat to make a difference. In 3D. Zeitgeisty enough what with the ecology, meerkats and 3D, a winner all round right? It might have had a better shot had there not been three story lines running concurrently which fail to resolve into one smoothly enough not to cause huge story snarl-ups. The thing feels like three teams seemingly wrote something in isolation and someone had to meld them into one coherent story. As a result, the animals who live outside the Okavango and have no real backstory beyond having the effect of some humans on their existence and somehow make it to the main location via rusted bathtub. And the message, oh the message! I don't wish to spend too long on this as whilst it is overbearing there is more to the film and 1,000 words only go so far.
Basically, it was intended to be "humans should be careful about the damage they do in the name of progress" which, whilst a good point to make, got berated upon and twisted into implying genocide of an entire species for the greater good which I doubt was the writer's intention but came out as such nonetheless. That misfire alone is the weakest part of the writing and easily the thing which kills sympathy for the protagonist's goals (and consequently the film) dead more than the abject lack of humour.
Onto smaller things, characters are broadly characterised to the point that some barely qualify to be more than talking props and that's some of the main cast, others get the short end of the stick and get a stereotype to hold onto. There's even a evil hunter shoehorned in, not sure why but he's as close to an antagonist we get which isn't a nebulous sentiment. Character design falls on the side of iffy but workable and thankfully the human characters don't creep people out though they're not remarkable beyond that. On top of that, several times I found myself thinking I might have hit a conclusion only to find I'm less than halfway through which gives you an idea of the story quality. The CGI isn't bad, it's pretty good when not dealing with fast moving fluids (or dirt for some reason) but it's still sub-par within this field and the character design does the acting work no favours.
Should you find yourself bored, just willing to see what Europe can put up against animation titans like I am or simply curious to find out what could attract top drawer British comedic talent to such a harshly critiqued film (beyond the rather nice payoff) then give it a spin but don't be surprised if you'll want your time back once you press stop.