I can say I've seen it. I can say I laughed uproariously. Because holy wow is this movie awful. Front to back, start to finish. It's so bad you sometimes forget it's offensive too. On purpose.
One of the first gags is that after failing to inspire his new youth male team. He dismisses them reminding them not to steal his catalytic converter. After being called out for it by the black player. The black player drops a saw used to steal catalytic converts. In the next scene he doesn't have a catalytic converter.
There's not so much acting as there is setting up punchlines whether they're awful verbal jokes or pointless (and often too long) visual gag montages. I was going to say something about the imitation indie music and wanna be Karate Kid soundtrack but the credits were still rolling and the song section came up. All the songs are by William Boreing. I don't know if that's Jeremy's son or whatever nepotism nonsense but the music was uninteresting. It wasn't sonic garbage just... boring.
You could spend an hour debunking all the nonsense assumptions the movie makes erroneously. But for my money even from a conservative Daily Wire standpoint most of the movie is just dumb and pointless which is a problem because the movie's only saving grace is supposed to be it's messaging. It's like a Christian Faith movie in that way. Christian Faith movies are awful but they're awful because they don't care about anything other than sending the right message. The art of storytelling doesn't come into it. The only one that matters is the root story. That a team of men's washouts could dominate in women's sports. Ironically basketball is a poor choice for this because the gender differences aren't THAT big. And physical mass isn't everything like you see in the movie. Not when you're playing comparable teams. The women's teams are practiced active teams and our ladyballer are again some washouts who are hanging out just to do this. It's so casually done you never see them practice which is both a reflection of how much this isn't a sports movie and a reflection of what the movie thinks about female players. You see what it thinks at the end of the movie when it has grown bulked out basketball players playing with girl-children.
No one expects a vanity project to be perfect. But just because it's a vanity project doesn't mean you get to by pass every narrative concept. Me, You, Madness is awful. This is worse. But that one PRESENTS as a vanity project. This presents as a movie with something to tell through humor. It's not JUST lazy. It's not JUST offensive. It's not funny either. There's just scenes that you know the DW found funny. Scenes that they were dying laughing while they were writing it. But in the end on the movie are just... "ehh oh i see what they were trying to do".
[8.2/10] An Appa story that is essentially a one-bison version of Homeward Bound with a little Frankenstein thrown in for good measure? You can bet your behind I’m there.
What impresses me with this show is how much it conveys using just its visuals, without any dialogue. Particular kudos belong to Dee Bradley Baker, who gives the audience so much to go on as to what Appa is thinking and feeling through this ordeal with just a variety of grunts and groans.
When he’s fighting the various sandbenders, we feel his struggle and how hard he’s fighting. It’s a pretty easy bit, but when he’s captured by that jerk in the circus, we want nothing more than for him to escape such harsh and unfair environs. (And the connection to the kid who reminds him of Aang is a nice touch in that regard.)
My god though, those flashbacks to the little baby flying bisons melted my cold cold heart. Not only is a nice excuse to see some mini-bisons being cute out there, but it deepens the connection between Aang and Appa and helps explain further why Appa is so determined to get back to the Avatar.
His running into Suki is also a nice touch, if only because of how hurt and afraid he is at the time. The whole fear of fire gets overplayed a bit, but the way he’s clearly been through so much and is struggling to go on when Suki finds him creates such pathos in this poor mistreated creature. The scenes where he has spines sticking out of him, his fur looks haggard and fray, and he’s fearful of anyone coming near him create such a sense of pity for such a kind, gentle animal.
I don’t know that we really needed the run-in with Azula & Co. immediately after, but it was entertaining enough to see her and her compatriots clash with the Kyoshi Warriors. And the follow up, with Appa trying to return to familiar surroundings and ending up meeting a Guru at the Eastern Air Temple, portends all sorts of interesting things. The Guru is an appropriately weird character, but the way he bonds with Appa and sends him toward Aang, speaking in broad strokes mysticism all the while, made for an interesting denouement to all this excitement.
Of course, he has to get captured by the guy who seems to be the season’s big bad before we can go, which ends things on a bit of a down note, but still, it is, true to the Homeward Bound influence, an incredible journey that owes a great deal to the animators and design team for communicating so many emotions and so much character from a big fluffy sky buffalo. The fact that a wordless beast can inspire so much feeling is a testament to how good the A:TLA team is, even when they’re working with one hand tied behind their backs without the use of dialogue or typical story progression.
