Shaun The Sleep: The Flight Before Christmas is a short and sweet Christmas special! Diary Of A Wimpy Kid animated is forgettable.

Shaun’s seasonal excitement turns to dismay when a farmhouse raid to get bigger stockings for the Flock inadvertently leads to Timmy going missing.

Just a few short thoughts mainly because it is essentially Shaun The Sheep but a Christmas special. Everything what makes Shaun The Sheep in general so great is here, the characters, the humor, the fast pacing and so on. It’s a 30 minute special that does a wonderful job of getting it’s message across in a very Shaun The Sheep type of way. I do feel the last 10 or so minutes are on the weaker side as it does fall in familiar territory. However that isn’t enough to stop this special from being incredibly solid and a very fun time! If you are a Shaun The Sheep fan you will definitely love this one!

Shaun The Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas is available on Netflix!

8/10 B+

Greg Heffley dreams of becoming famous while surviving middle school with his best friend, Rowley.

I’m not going to pretend that Diary Of A Wimpy Kid is this legendary source material, but having that said for a movie that felt like it was trying to follow the book more closely it really doesn’t work nearly as well as the live action movie that came out in 2010. I thought the first three live action movies were overall really fun movies that know what they are trying to be and do that very well. We don’t ever discuss the Long Haul so let’s just move right along to this movie, I was under the impression that this animated movie was going to be longer than 58 minutes. So it really took me by surprise however that isn’t the major problem, the major problem is that it’s the exact same movie as the one in 2010 but animated and with different actors. While that isn’t a necessarily a bad thing because what else are you supposed to do? What hurts this new one is the lack of charm. The 2010 one had a lot of charm and was genuinely funny mostly due to how well the cast worked plus it’s very memorable. You just don’t get that here, sure the animation is nice at times and did a decent enough job with getting the main events from the book in. But none of it feels really charming or fun at all, it feels very manufactured and lifeless which completely goes against what the Diary Of A Wimpy Kid books are about. Which is a shame because I do think an animated Diary Of A Wimpy Kid movie could have worked they just really did not try all that much with this movie. I hear they are coming out with a sequel (Rodrick Rules) so I do hope they learn their lesson and try to make it more charming and more memorable. Overall this version of Diary Of A Wimpy Kid really does not have much to it, you are better off watching the 2010 version. I’m sure kids will absolutely eat this movie up but for everyone else I don’t recommend.

Diary Of A Wimpy Kid is available on Disney+

3/10 D-

Injustice is both a messy and failed adaption.

The story takes place on an alternate Earth in which the Joker has tricked Superman into killing Lois Lane, sending the hero on a rampage. This unnhinged Superman decides to take control of Earth for its own good, leading Batman and his allies to attempt to stop him.

Sometimes you watch certain movies and just say “this should have been a series” Injustice is one of those movies, I was pretty excited when I heard that a movie was being made, plus it’s directed by Matt Peters who directed Justice League Dark: Apokolips War one of the best DC Animated movies in recent memory. Injustice is a massive disappointment there’s a few things to enjoy such as some of the action scenes and a few moments (and when I mean few I mean a few because good lord) where the writing isn’t surface level and attempts to try and keep the story interesting. That’s where the good parts end because Injustice is a complete and total mess writing wise and tone wise, the tone constantly switch’s back between being incredibly dark to being a friendly Saturday morning cartoon. During one scene you would have a character getting brutally murdered and the next scene you will have Green Arrow or Harley Quinn cracking jokes (I don’t mention Plastic Man because I actually didn’t mind those jokes as much.) but let’s talk about the bigger issue the writing, I feel like the writers had no idea what to do with Injustice so they kind of just wrote random scenes as it went on. It doesn’t help that a lot of the scenes feel like a clipshow that I’m sure would confuse a lot of people who aren’t too familiar with Injustice. It doesn’t help that the writing is very surface level and has no interesting elements in it at all, they really could have explored some of the characters but instead a lot of the characters are just there to be killed off. Which yes is to be expected but it doesn’t feel impactful at all, it just feels like they had no idea what to do with said character so they killed them off. And that all traces back to how lazy and bare minimum the writing is, it’s such a massive disappointment because I really do think this had potential. Overall Injustice is as I said multiple times very disappointing, this is a prime example of something that could have easily worked as a series but instead we get a lazy movie that was sent out for a quick buck.

Injustice is available on all VOD Platforms!

1/10 F

The Addams Family 2 is somehow worse than it’s predecessor!

Hoping to get closer as a family, Gomez, Morticia and the rest of the Addams clan embark on an adventurous road trip in a hideous and humongous camper.

The Addams Family 2 somehow ends up being worse than the first movie, if you don’t recall the major problem I had with the first movie was the jokes and it just being an unremarkable movie all together. Addams Family 2 takes all of that and does nothing to improve on the first movie, the jokes this time around are FAR worse. We have a Billie Eilish joke, “Squad Goals” “I’ve always been socially distancing” and much more along those lines. Which that right there is clear to me that the writers have very little understanding about The Addams Family, I get they want to market this to a younger audience and that’s perfectly acceptable. But don’t dumb it down kids are much smarter than that, you don’t need to shove in a bunch of jokes that you only put in hoping to get a “they said it” reaction, the cast like last time is the only good part about this movie. They all try their best with what they are given but it’s not nearly enough to save this movie from being a dumpster fire, as for the plot it’s another one of those “family members have a road trip hoping to bring one of their family members closer” sort of plots. Which at this point has been done to death, but I wouldn’t mind it as much if they tried something new with it….this movie does not do that. It plays exactly how you think it will and that’s the end of it. I will give the movie this…there is this one part with Lurch singing “I Will Survive” that was actually not badly done. It’s sort of random and comes out of nowhere but it’s still a nice scene. That’s really all I have to say about The Addams Family 2 it’s a very unremarkable sequel that had very little point to it, how it ended up being worse than the first movie I will never know. This could have been the chance to improve but instead it went backwards.

The Addams Family 2 is now available on all VOD Platforms!

2/10 F

LEGO Star Wars Terrifying Tales is great for kids but could have been much more.

Dean, Poe and BB-8 must face their fears, stop an ancient evil from rising, and escape to make it back to their friends.

Lego Star Wars Terrifying Tales is about about the same as the Lego Holiday Special from last year. Only that I prefer the Holiday Special a bit more, the main problem with Terrifying Tales is it’s not very funny at all. I like that Poe Dameron was a main focus in this special whenever he was on screen it was always pretty solid. The three stories are all just average, none of them really standout in any special ways. I will say that this is a pretty good special for kids, it’s completely harmless and does get the job done. However for everyone else you sadly will not get that here, sure the animation is very nice to look at and there are some jokes that work. But a majority of them are a huge miss or just aren’t funny at all.

Lego Star Wars Terrifying Tales is now available on Disney+

5/10 C

Scooby-Doo Meets Courage The Cowardly Dog is a welcome nostalgia throwback!

The movie involves Scooby-Doo and his friends finding a strange object in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas, the backwoods hometown of Courage and his owners, Eustace and Muriel Bagge.

Growing up Courage The Cowardly Dog was one of my favorite cartoons, it was a very smart and horror filled show that was quite fantastic. So when I saw that a Scooby-Doo and Courage crossover was happening I was pretty excited, this is something that should have happened years ago! The end result is quite great, I do wish John Dilworth came back as the director but that’s perfectly okay. The movie does a good job of combining the two really well, it keeps the characters as they were several years ago. Both properties fit very well together and it really shows here, I do wish the movie used some darker imagery that Courage The Cowardly Dog is known for. The jokes are actually not too bad, there are some that don’t land particularly well but a lot of it does remain faithful to both properties. It plays out how you would expect, it takes elements from both properties and blends them into one. There are things that I do wish this movie improved on such as the villains which were bugs, part of what made Courage really interesting as a show was the creatures and villains. Using bugs sort of seems like they took a very uninteresting path, despite that though I had a lot of fun with this movie. If you are a Courage The Cowardly Dog fan you will absolutely love this. It’s not anywhere near as fantastic as the show was but it’s a nice throwback that I do hope we see more of Courage in the near future.

Scooby-Doo Meets Courage The Cowardly Dog is now available on all VOD Platforms!

7/10 B

Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle Of The Realms is a solid follow up to Scorpion’s Revenge!

The heroes must travel to Outworld to defend Earthrealm as Scorpion searches for the ancient Kamidogu before it’s used to resurrect the One Being.

Mortal Kombat Legends Battle Of The Realms is a sequel to Scorpion’s Revenge which came out last year and was even in my best list. Battle Of The Realms is more of a traditional Mortal Kombat movie, as in it focuses a lot less on backstories and more on the tournament and action itself. In some ways this helps the movie and in others it kind of hurts it. For starters the animation is quite great, it’s very detailed and adds a lot to the gore and fatalities. Although the characters don’t get the most development this time around, they are all still a lot of fun and are backed up with very strong voice acting. Battle Of The Realms does go a little too bonkers towards the end such as having Liu Kang go full on Super Saiyan (which kind of just happens out of nowhere). Overall Battle Of The Realms is a very straightforward Mortal Kombat movie that will please fans of the franchise, It might not be as good as Scorpion’s Revenge but it’s still a solid time!

Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle Of The Realms is now available on all VOD Platforms!

7/10 B

Vivo (2021) Movie Review!

A music-loving kinkajou embarks on the journey of a lifetime to fulfill his destiny and deliver a love song for an old friend.

Vivo is a film that I really wish Netflix put a lot more effort into advertising…because what they did here to this surprisingly quite solid movie is shameful. Vivo is another movie that Sony was going to originally release until Netflix offered to (Mitchels Vs The Machines and Wish Dragon were the other two). Anyway on to the movie itself, right from the start Vivo opens with a very energetic song that really displays how this movie is going to be, the songs are surprisingly quite great! They have a lot of personality included in them as well as a lot of passion, plus they all fit the movie quite well. The animation combined with the environment the movie is taking place in is also quite great as well, like the songs it matches what the movie is trying to go for! The writing is overall pretty solid, while there are some cliches we have seen quite a few times I will say that at least Vivo makes them fun. Lin-Manuel Miranda does a really solid job here as his style works pretty well and delivers some great moments especially during the songs. Overall Vivo is an incredibly solid movie that I highly recommend giving a watch!

Vivo is now available on Netflix!

8/10 B+

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, Batman The Long Halloween Part 2 and Rock Dog 2: Rock Around The Park (2021) Movie Reviews!

The bodyguard Michael Bryce continues his friendship with assassin Darius Kincaid as they try to save Darius’ wife Sonia.

This is another case where studios will make a sequel out of almost anything, The Hitman’s Bodyguard was generic action comedy that had good actors in it (Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson) they had great chemistry but that was about it. The sequel Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is more less the same thing, except a few new cast members are added and the jokes aren’t as funny. Morgan Freeman definitely phones it in and it’s very telling from his role, the chemistry between Reynolds and Jackson is at least still decent enough. There are jokes that do land but the problem is that it takes awhile to get to said jokes, a lot of this movie is just a whole lot of nothing. The action is fine I guess but it really isn’t anything to write home about. I really don’t have much else to comment on, as I said it’s almost the same thing as the first movie only that this one is slightly weaker.

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is now available on all VOD Platforms!

4/10 D+

Batman pursues a serial killer with the assistance of Police Officer James Gordon and Attorney Harvey Dent. But when the killer takes on the criminal family of the Falcones, Harvey Dent gets caught between the fronts.

Batman The Long Halloween, Part Two is almost identical to it’s predecessor only that this one has more action than drama. Which is exactly what I expected and quite frankly what most people were expecting, like it’s predecessor the voice acting, animation and the dark atmosphere are all really strong and make this movie standout as well. Despite having a lot of action there is also a lot of great character moments that do help in the character development area, the action scenes were quite great as well. Not much else to say, as I said everything I said about the first movie can be applied to this one, so if you loved the first movie you will definitely love this one.

Batman The Long Halloween Part Two is now available on all VOD Platforms!

7/10 B

When Bodi and his band ‘True Blue’ leave Snow Mountain, to tour with pop sensation, Lil’ Foxy, they learn that fame comes at a price.

I know it’s very cliche to say “who asked for this”but it most definitely applies here, Rock Dog was some bad animated movie that came out in 2017 and soon after it’s release it disappeared. I guess someone thought it was a good idea to make a sequel which is ultimately a very pointless one. The animation is extremely cheap it heavily reminds me of those Youtube kids videos animation which is not a good thing, the movie reuses tons of character models as well. The writing is garbage and the story is very predictable, what else do I really need to say? It’s Rock Dog 2 a sequel that nobody asked for.

Rock Dog 2: Rock Around The Park is now available on all VOD Platforms!

1/10 F

Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021) Movie Review!

A rogue artificial intelligence kidnaps the son of famed basketball player LeBron James, who then has to work with Bugs Bunny to win a basketball game.

Get ready because this is going to be a long one, a sequel to Space Jam was inevitable whenever the topic of “movies that will most likely get sequels” or “sequels we want to see” Space Jam was always there. Fast forward to 2021 and the sequel is out and look I’m not going to act like the first movie is some sort of masterpiece, in fact I’m not even a fan of the first movie It was one of those movies where I liked it as a kid but now it’s really not good. However the first movie at least tried (Michael Jordan was horrendous however) the same can’t be said for Space Jam: A New Legacy. So to start off if you spent time on Twitter and saw the number of cameos in the movie…it’s just as painful as they look. Each and every single one of them feels forced there’s going to be spoilers of what some of them are so skip ahead if you do not want to read! The cameos in question is pretty much anything that Warner Bros owns from Rick And Morty, Mad Max Fury Road, Superman, Austin Powers and several others heck during the basketball game you can see numerous characters like The Iron Giant, The Flintstones, Batman villains, the Clockwork Orange crew (yes Alex and his gang are for whatever reason there) and a ton of others. (END OF SPOILERS HERE!) I feel like my friend said it best about this movie “this is the equivalent of a rich kid coming into show and tell and instead of showing one item he or she decides to show like 50 items.” This is the type of filmmaking that I consider not filmmaking, it’s nothing but a million dollar studio looking down at the audience and saying “look how much IPs we own!!” The worst part about it is none of these cameos do anything for the story at all, they are all just there without any rhyme or reason. The only thing I can say I liked in this huge mess was the animation, I thought it was actually well done and gave the characters the energy they usually have. There were one or two jokes that were okay but the rest of the jokes didn’t land at all, I know I say “this movie was not funny” quite often but trust me when I say that a majority of these jokes were horrendous. During the first act of the movie they already use a Big Chungus meme which completely comes out of nowhere, let’s get to the acting, writing and story. The acting is complete garbage LeBron James’s performance was quite awful, it feels like he’s not trying at all, with no energy or effort put into it at all. On the other hand Don Cheadle gives a “it’s so bad it’s hilarious” type performance he truly looks like he’s having a blast which is something refreshing to see, the writing and story are both terrible and a complete total mess. Random plots just happen for no other reason which brings me back to the cameos, you can feel the desperation in the writing when it comes to the cameos to the point where it’s embarrassing. Did I forget to mention that it’s 2 hours long? A huge giant commercial for HBO Max and the rest of Warner Bros IPs, with horrendous pacing that feels like you are sitting through a 4 hour commercial on loop. I have nothing else to say Space Jam: A New Legacy is a disaster, this is what happens when a studio resorts to one of the lost common denominator of filmmaking, hadn’t been for the animation and Don Cheadle this movie would have absolutely gotten my lowest rating.

Space Jam: A New Legacy is now in theaters and HBO Max!

1/10 F

America The Motion Picture (2021) Movie Review!

A chainsaw-wielding George Washington teams with beer-loving bro Sam Adams to take down the Brits in a tongue-in-cheek riff on the American Revolution.

My friends and I talk about film quite a lot (what a shock!) somehow the topic of Netflix releases came up and I read the plot of America: The Motion Picture which we all agreed sounded like it could be fun in a trashy type way….it was not that. Instead of making something that’s at least enjoyable this movie goes out of it’s way to be as terrible and uninteresting as possible. This movie can be pretty much boiled down to someone’s terrible fanfiction of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and so on. The writing is horrendous there was not one joke that landed all of it was either edgy, immature or just not funny at all. I feel like another good way to describe this movie is it feels like one of those terrible adult animation tv shows that came out in the 2010s. I really don’t know what else to say this was absolute garbage.

America The Motion Picture is now available on Netflix!

1/10 F