Monday, January 24, 2011

Worst of the Worst: #39, Miss March; #88, Kaena: The Prophecy

A double shot for no particular reason other than I had the time and hadn't watched one in a few weeks. Also, my reviews for each are quite short, so why not combine them?

1) There are no redeeming qualities to Miss March. None. The two guys who wrote, directed, and starred in the film are going for a Harold and Kumar-type vibe, but they are neither smart enough nor funny enough to pull it off. For a movie about guys road-tripping to the Playboy Mansion, it is telling that there are more poop jokes -- graphic ones -- than there are sex jokes. Nobody in the movie is even slightly likable. I'm not offended easily and I don't really care about the whole "R-word" movement, but I was taken aback by how often the word "retarded" is used in this one. Even Craig Robinson playing a rapper with an obscene name that is supposed to be funny, but instead is just dumb, can't save it. Nothing can save it.

2) Then, we go to Kaena: The Prophecy, the English dub of a French animated sci-fi movie. It uses the same CGI as video games, which is slightly interesting except the people are all wrong. They don't quite look or move right. At least the plot is original, dealing with a planet of people who live in a tree that is under attack and one precocious girl goes on a quest to save them. That hasn't been made into a movie too many times. The girl is fifteen, but is quite inappropriately buxom -- a major problem with women in animation -- and there is, in ostensibly a kid's movie, one creepy sexual reference. The biggest thing is that the movie just doesn't make any sense. You never know what's going on because you can't figure out who the characters are or why they do what they do and the end sequence just left me scratching my head. Maybe the French could understand it.

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