Every VFX shot in this film makes me think of the classic meme line from Arrested Development, "What could it cost? Ten dollars?" All of the CGI is super bad in this installment, even by 2000s standards.
Tragic that Proto Zoa had to be recast. He's a shell of his old self in this one. The Flubber-esque robot version of Lester the manager was amusing enough, though it was implied in Zequel that Zoa's manager was another human. Better was the gag about not being old until you're 30. I, too, am 31. :joy:
Story-wise, I think this was actually stronger than the second film. Adding a "Mini-Zee" (Dasha) was a shot in the arm to the action that otherwise got pretty dull.
For continuity reasons, it's a shame they had to recast Nebula.
Also for continuity reasons, the stress helmet prop should not have been so drastically redesigned. It's only a year later, and unlikely that the station crew had a ton of extra resources for upgrades to equipment over that period given that WynComm (WyndComm?) has folded.
Stargate fan me laughed out loud at the general's name being Hammond. If only they'd gotten Don S. Davis to play him.
Extra point for nostalgia. I caught the last half or so of this ages ago as a kid, in a hotel somewhere, and decided to finally find out how this wacky adventure started. Unfortunately, adult me has discovered that the writing isn't terribly tight and wow are the characters one-dimensional. Even by Disney Channel Original Movie standards, there's a lot of room for improvement.
Maybe the neatest thing about Zenon is having a very young Raven on the cast, closely followed by all the fun space/science themed slang the writers came up with for this universe, even if some of the words are overused to the point of losing their meanings.
I wonder if CinemaSins has done this one… At the very least, I think Zenon managing to get the right access code two seconds before Total System Failure should qualify for a cliché demerit.
Dave Coulier… Didn't expect that!
Saw Peter DeLuise in the opening credits and thought, "If nothing else, this will be funny."
It was.
That man directed "Urgo" (Stargate SG-1 3x16). Of course he can be funny!
Enjoyable as it was to watch, though, the script itself is pretty trash. I had fun anyway, but this film is not deep.
Wow, I didn't even recognize Paul Sun-Hyung Lee. Did he change that much between this and Kim's Convenience or am I just bad at faces? (I realize it's possible both are true. :sweat_smile:)
Spent the whole film looking for Rhys Darby, because my silly brain saw "John Rhys-Davies" in the opening credits and got confused. :joy_cat:
Me trying to figure out how a "Fabergé merry-go-round" as a birthday gift didn't prompt Mia to maybe wonder who the heck her dad is:
:thinking::thinking::thinking::thinking::exploding_head:
Thank you IMDB for listing uncredited cast… As a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fan, I'm ashamed I didn't recognize René Auberjonois' voice as Philippe Renaldi.
Timeline of the film makes the main romantic pairing appear such that it's pretty uncomfortable, though everything appears to be fine in the real Sonora Webster's life so I'll just have to get over that part.
Weakest point of the film is its predictability; most of the story is paint-by-numbers, but it still earns a place among good film choices for younger audiences for the story's underlying message—especially because it's true.
Best part of this movie is the moments where Anna Popplewell did the "Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen" look (bow and arrow, reasonable protective clothing, girl-in-charge) four years before the first Hunger Games film.
The battle scenes are cool too, I guess. Just wish there was something more to the story and character growth. It's a bit telling that this had the most VFX shots (1600) of Walden's whole Narnia trilogy. There was a definite focus on spectacle, perhaps at the expense of runtime that could have been used to better flesh out the characters, but I know that's partly a matter of preference.
It's been so long since I read these books, I can only decide how much I like this film as its own work, sans comparison to the source material. And as its own work, as a fantastical film for the younger audience, it's solid.
Are some of the lines childish? Well, yes. I'd be upset if they weren't, considering the protagonists are children. The story is simplistic, and that's OK.
This movie had me on my own phone for half its runtime—an achievement, given it's only just over half as long as The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), which I watched yesterday, comments on which drew comparisons to this film. While I didn't love Wolf, it was at least more interesting than Glengarry.
My boredom was quite unexpected, because on the surface this seems like it should be similar to other films I did like, such as 12 Angry Men (1957) or The Man from Earth (2007)—both of which also take place almost entirely in a single room and tell a story through dialogue with minimal action.
The problem with Glengarry, I think, is that every single character in the office is indistinguishable from the others. While I thought Wolf ran quite a bit longer than it needed to, its characters each distinguished themselves from their officemates. Glengarry's all sound the same. For such a star-studded cast as this, the same-y characterizations were a real surprise.
I admit I space(y)d out for a while in the middle, because there are only so many variations on "These leads are crap!" one can take.
TMDB has deleted this as a duplicate of the other entry, despite this one being for the blu-ray and the other being for a WOWOW broadcast that was cut down slightly.
The first words I heard came out of John Billingsley's mouth, and I was disappointed to note that he only appeared in that first scene.
Nice goof when Javier asks Emily if she texted the number he gave her, considering that the fraudsters called him when Emily checked in at their dummy shopping gig to confirm she was a legit referral.
The runtime of this film is, canonically, 1h56m. I watched it on Kanopy, though, which was the only source to present it in a 1h52m variant. The difference happens to align with the shortening one would see when projecting a 24fps movie at 25fps… so that's very curious indeed.
Hopefully that's all it was, and not a cut scene.
Very little of the charm remains from its two predecessors. Less plot, worse jokes, more jump cuts!
I rate Saul Rubinek as the most surprising aspect of this film.
Not enough Robert Picardo screen time.
Too much screen time for stuff that didn't drive the plot forward.
Jaideep Ahlawat's character looks like "an Indian Colin Firth" for so much of this movie. It became distracting at times. :joy_cat:
Biggest reason for me to watch this (during the 2022 Trakt Database Crash, no less) was to see Ronny Cox's first "villain" role. One can indeed see here the DNA of his later characters, like Senator Kinsey (Stargate SG-1). :ok_hand:
THIS FILM WAS CUT ENTIRELY ON A COMPUTER
I guess that was a new thing back in 1999? Still an odd statement to put in the credits, but it is tonally appropriate.
Honestly, this movie's comedy is more like what I expected when starting The Office after seeing all those memes/GIFs. If the TV show was like Office Space, I might actually be motivated to finish it.
It's a one-off short, so of course the production timeline was way different from a series or feature-length film. But wow, if all anime had this quality of animation…
Should you watch this for the story? Probably not. Maybe not even for the "plot"—but the art is very good.
As of writing (October 2022), this half-hour documentary is available to watch on YouTube, uploaded officially by its creators:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lcB9u-9mVE
Life After Pi was supposed to be "the first chapter" of a feature-length documentary called Hollywood Ending, but there has been no word from the project's social media accounts since the short won a jury award at the 2016 Cleveland International Film Festival, and the feature film's website no longer exists.
Despite memeable dialogue throughout, the script as a whole doesn't do much for me—in large part, because the timeframe is too short.
Perhaps I shouldn't have revisited this one. I'm not convinced that I'd seen the whole thing before, now, but the likely truth is that I did see all of it and just forgot everything but the memes because the story is… well, forgettable.
This movie isn't terrible, but it certainly could have made better use of its premise. The script is broadly written, and the characters never quite gelled for me. Even Max, our protagonist, is awfully flat—and I don't blame Francis Capra's performance for it.
No one should expect Shaq to be a great actor! That's one of the most frequent critiques I saw in looking at other reviews, and it's simply not fair. Criticize the production for casting him based on stature and name recognition, but don't rag the guy for his acting skills. :sweat_smile:
It's some kind of accomplishment that Fran Drescher and Bill Cosby's characters were more compelling than Robin Williams' title role. Remember, he's supposed to be the (shooting) star.
I wish Williams had been a believable 10-year-old, but neither his performance nor the way his character was written made it work. And truthfully, nobody got good writing in this film. The comic bits weren't funny, and the dramatic moments (especially with Jack's parents) were absolutely cringe-worthy.
Once again, here I am in the aftermath of choosing a movie based on knowing nothing about it other than who some of the lead actors are—and once again, I find myself disappointed.
At time of writing, this is freely available from the Hagerty Drivers Foundation channel on YouTube: https://youtu.be/fgOb22gz_TY
An "urban food log"? Why does this sound like it's trying to be a cool '90s film?
Shots of Bobby Monday's car make me wonder… New York requires two license plates, front and back, so why does his car only have one on the back? It clearly says "New York". (Maybe NYPD vehicles are exempt from this requirement, but I could neither confirm nor refute that possibility through basic online research and don't feel like trawling through actual legal codes.)
Vibes from this film include: Mirror's Edge, Baby Driver, and (as others have said) Transporter.
It's a decent film, if you can overlook how cartoonish Michael Shannon's character is. I had trouble doing so, but enjoyed the rest.
On the strength of its two leads, I wanted to like this film. They're just fun to watch, and their relationship feels real.
Some way over-the-top moments dragged it down for me, though. Plus I wasn't a fan of any of the soundtrack choices—and most importantly, there's no payoff at the end. (The dream sequence could have at least been script-accurate and had Angela wearing the bikini she said she'd buy day-one, couldn't it?)
It's clearly not a bad film. Never Goin' Back snagged some award nominations at film festivals, and even managed a couple wins. Mostly, I wish the title didn't give away so much. Put it together with the first scene and you already know where things are headed.
Funny how Ori ships appear to have a nearly identical ground-attack mode to the System Lords' al'kesh: energy bombs dropped in pairs.
Throwing in the Replicators might have been a touch overboard, but overall this was a great conclusion to the Ori arc—picking up the loose ends left by SG-1's non-renewal after season 10. All that's left is for me to figure out where this movie fits into the chronology, since at some point Carter has to move from the SGC and SG-1 to Atlantis so that show's fourth season can make sense.
Note to self: At time of watching, TMDB (and therefore Trakt) had the runtime as 97 minutes, which seemed wrong. Checking services listed on JustWatch, there were a few outliers at either 97 or 104 minutes, but most agreed with the 101-minute figure, as did about a dozen DVD & Blu-ray encodes I checked (without downloading) from a torrent search. Given that the vast majority of sources agreed with IMDB, that seems to be the "real" duration—though if rounded, it should be 102 minutes (1:41:53).
