Family - Movie Meister Reviews

July 9, 2021July 9, 2021 leebutler Animation, Comedy, Family, Review

Tom & Jerry (2021) – Slap-Stuck

Released: 1st April
Seen: 8th July

Ever since Who Framed Roger Rabbit, there have been a lot of attempts at putting animated characters into the real world. No film has ever really come close to Who Framed Roger Rabbit in terms of making that combination work, but where a lot of them falter has been the story. You notice how a lot of these films really lean on the main characters travelling cross country in a car with whatever B-list actor they could hire that month. Recently there’ve been more bad attempts at this with Sonic the Hedgehog being bad (sorry, it was) and some pretty good attempts like Detective Pikachu. So, on the spectrum between Sonic and Pikachu, where does Tom & Jerry fall? Right smack in the middle, perfect mediocrity.

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June 21, 2021 leebutler Animation, Adventure, Comedy, Family, Musical

Arlo the Alligator Boy (2021) – Smile At This Crocodile

Released: 16th April
Seen: 18th June

Back in the 90s and early 2000’s, Disney had this thing that they did where they would make a movie out of the first three episodes of an upcoming series in order to get people used to what was to come. This led to such films as The Return of Jafar, Mighty Ducks the Movie: The First Face Off and Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins among a whole cornucopia of other films.

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June 20, 2021June 20, 2021 leebutler Animation, Adventure, Comedy, Family, Fantasy

Luca (2021) – Looka At This, It’s Cute (and a little bit gay)

Released: 18th June
Seen: 18th June

With all the films that are going to Disney’s premier service lately I’ve noticed a weird pattern regarding the films that they don’t throw a surcharge on the second it pops up… namely that they’ve been, largely, kind of bad. Sure there’s exceptions like Soul or Onward, but other films like Magic Camp, Stargirl and Artemis Fowl (a film that, no joke, didn’t pop up on their site’s list of original films when I went to look before writing this). Basically if a film skips cinemas and just pops up on Disney Plus I’m going to be going in with some trepidation… and then they just throw something like Luca up there and I wonder if they even know when they have a good thing on their hands.

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June 19, 2021June 19, 2021 leebutler Animation, Adventure, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Review

Wish Dragon (2021) – A Charming Little Wish

Released: 11th June
Seen: 16th June

So earlier this year, Disney released the film Raya and the Last Dragon. It was a pretty great film as a lot of Disney’s animated fare tends to be but there was this weird thing going around where people wrote off its box office as a failure because it only made 130 million worldwide on a 100 million budget. For some reason this is a thing that keeps coming up this year where films are having their box offices judged based on pre-pandemic expectations, as though we’re completely through the wilderness. Spoilers, we’re not. Anyway I bring this up because I wonder if the supposed failure of Raya and the Last Dragon led to today’s film Wish Dragon not getting as much attention as it deserves which is a shame because Wish Dragon is charming.

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May 7, 2021May 7, 2021 leebutler Family, Comedy, Review

Yes Day (2021) – Not On This Day

Released: 12th March
Seen: 6th May

Films, in general, are full of tropes. Some hide them better than others but every film has them. The trick is to either hide them well enough behind interesting characters and dialogue that no one cares or to find ways to subvert them or put them together in new and interesting ways. Then there’s the films that don’t even bother to try and hide their tropes and just hope you’re stupid enough to enjoy them. Yes Day is kind of the queen of trope films for 2021 and unfortunately for it, I’m not as stupid as I look.

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May 3, 2021May 3, 2021 leebutler Animation, Adventure, Comedy, Family, Netflix, Review, Sci-Fi

The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021) – The Animated Charmer Of The Year

Released: 30th April
Seen: 2nd May

Sony Animation has had something of an interesting history in regards to their output over 20 films. They’ve run the gamut when it comes to quality, from the objectively awful fare like The Emoji Movie to some of the best animation in history with Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. Slowly they’ve gone from an animation company people would cringe about to one that actually gets a lot of excitement going with their new releases. So, where does The Mitchells vs the Machines fall in regard to the rest of Sony Animation’s output? It’s borderline perfect.

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April 23, 2021April 23, 2021 leebutler Fantasy, Drama, Family, Review

Pinocchio (2020) – Pinocci-No

Released: 25th December 2020
Seen: 22nd April 2021

The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi was printed in 1883 in Italy and quickly became a classic. The story of a little wooden puppet with a nose that grows every time he lies has not only been adapted multiple times but has inspired a multitude of other films. Possibly the most famous adaptation was done by Walt Disney in 1940, a film so popular that the song “When You Wish Upon A Star” would basically become the Disney anthem.

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April 11, 2021April 11, 2021 leebutler Adventure, Animation, Family, Fantasy

WolfWalkers (2020) – Wolftastic!

Released: 11th December 2020
Seen: 5th April 2021

I’ve made it no secret that I do not like the Apple+ service that much. I find its layout to be subpar and its content to be so sparse that I can’t imagine paying for it at all. Honestly, I only have it because I got a few years for free and even with that I’ve still never been that bothered to use it even when they finally put an app on game consoles meaning I can actually watch their limited content on the TV.

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April 7, 2021April 7, 2021 leebutler Animation, Adventure, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Netflix, Sci-Fi

Over The Moon (2020) – Out Of This World

Released: 23rd October 2020
Seen: 5th April 2021

When it comes to the Oscar race this year for best animated film, it feels like Soul is the foregone conclusion. It’s kind of hard to beat a film that was so funny and poignant with such impeccable visuals and was such a cultural event. However, the race isn’t quite over yet and I would like to offer a wild card entry that might sneak in at the last minute, that being the Netflix original film Over The Moon.

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April 4, 2021April 24, 2021 leebutler Family, Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

The One And Only Ivan (2020) – Ivan The Terrific

Released: 21st August 2020
Seen: 2nd April 2021

In 2012, author Katherine Applegate released The One And Only Ivan. The novel was based on the real story of a circus gorilla named Ivan who was kept in the middle of a shopping mall until a large petition and the threat of a massive boycott got him transferred to a zoo where he would have something resembling actual freedom. The book was a smash hit, winning several awards and appearing on several “must read’ lists so an adaptation was inevitable and Disney just happened to be the ones to do it… and their version got nominated for an Oscar, hence why we’re talking about it.

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