Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Worst Movie Ever

I've made it clear in the past that I'm prejudiced against talking pig movies. I did like Babe and its sequel but any other pig has left me cold. I can accept talking germs, aardvarks, bats, cats, dogs, lemurs, and just about anything else but pigs.

I ask myself, "Is this a fat issue?" No, I accept talking elephants and hippos.

I ask myself, "Is this a food issue? Pigs are after all one of the few animals I've eaten that actually eat humans." No, I've eaten alligator and shark (and surely there's been a few worms in a hamburger here and there) but I don't mind movies with talking sharks, alligators, or worms.

No, I think it's because pig movies (Babe excepted) are just plain bad.

Some people point to Charlotte's Web as a fine film. It's far better than Gordie, the Little Pig who Made it Big but I never cared for it either. Wilbur the protagonist is a completely passive character--he does nothing to save himself, he depends entirely on the spider. I might be able to take that but the whining! Every other line of dialogue is "I don't want to die!" usually followed by a fainting spell.

Still, the original wasn't completely terrible. The sequel is.

For starters, the rat which was originally voiced by Paul Lynde, the gayest man ever to live, now constantly watches over his four offspring. That's Scrappy Doo times four on top of an already bad situation.

Charlotte's daughters aren't much better. They sport similar hair colors and hairdos as the Powerpuff Girls (down to the redhead big-haired girl being the leader, the brunette short-haired girl being the bossy pessimist, and the blonde with pig-tails as the baby). Unlike the Powerpuff Girls, they don't do anything but make lame running jokes.

Wilbur is still a whiner. Personally, I prefer cartoons send my kids the message "hitting people solves problems" over "whining solves problems." I'd prefer "climbing the water tower with a rifle solves problems" over this.

The animators combined traditional animation with very low-level computer animation. This was done in some of the Pokemon movies and Disney's Hercules but usually there's some kind of reason for it. In Web II, it's just to make water ripple and clouds float by, something that could have been done just as well with traditional animation. This patchwork approach is simply distracting which isn't really a bad thing since it keeps your mind off how bad the rest of the movie is.

Bob the Builder and What's New, Scooby Doo? come across like something by Fellini. Sooner or later, I'm sure they'll make Charlotte's Web III but I'm hoping my kids will be too old for it by then. I'd rather them set the garage on fire than to sit through another helping of Wilbur.

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