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arcticfoxalberto
Reviews
Meet the Spartans (2008)
Super Bad
Note: I watched this because it was free on YouTube with ads, and I am trying to watch all 8 of Friedberg and Seltzer's films that they directed to do a full ranking of them.
Unsurprisingly, this movie sucks. The worst 2008 movie besides Disaster Movie.
I will admit that only 6 jokes in this movie were a little funny (like one where Leonidas tells the villain it's fine he won't be in history books because he can't read and the one random-ass Barbie Girl moment during the dumb GTA parody). But none of those jokes can save this movie from being a colossal mess.
I didn't see 300 outside of the "This is Sparta" meme (which they completely botched here), but here it feels less like Seltzer and Friedberg watched the film they were spoofing than Epic Movie (which spoofed mainly Narnia), and it's like they only did it to cash in on the Snyder movie's popularity in the cheapest way possible. The ancient Greek setting is very pointless because of all the modern references and technology used. It would have worked better if they found clever ways around the ancient setting to represent modern things like cell phones (similar to Flintstones), or maybe there was time travel involved, but they didn't do either here.
What puts this movie as one of the lowest of the Friedberg/Seltzer filmography is the overabundance of product placement and gross-out humor, which really left me feeling disgusted rather than laughing. I can enjoy gross humor in stuff like Ren & Stimpy and Jackass, but the ones here are uncreative and it believes that being as gross as possible is enough to be funny (too many pixelated women's crotch shots is one example). The product placement is also awful, because they literally stop the movie to advertise brands like Gatorade and Budweiser, and there were too many stupid references to reality and game shows like American Idol and Deal or No Deal. Do I even have to mention the movie references that are spelled out for you? There's also a joke where they literally point out a review saying the movie is a cheap knockoff of 300, which doesn't make that problem go away.
One last thing I hated about this movie is that despite being 83 minutes, only 65 minutes is the actual movie. Then there's a 3 minute "I Will Survive" number and 5 minutes of deleted scenes you'd expect on the film's DVD. The latter part is awful here because they literally pause the slow moving credits for them rather than putting it on the side of the screen like in Disaster Movie. If you want to make the movie short, just make the runtime reflect it better or else people would feel more ripped-off than they already are.
In the end, a terrible "spoof" that is only barely better than Disaster Movie because it is at least more clear what they were trying to parody. I'm sad that movies like these killed off the parody genre because that genre can still be good now as they were back in the days of Mel Brooks and the Zucker brothers, who were actually spoofing rather than merely referencing. :(
Rumble (2021)
One of Paramount's better animated films recently, but still has issues
I was looking forward to Rumble for a while. I remember when it was announced by Reel FX in 2015 when it was titled "Monster on the Hill". Then Paramount Animation boarded the movie in 2018 followed by WWE in 2019. I got the first trailer in theaters before Sonic the Hedgehog, and even though it didn't really impress me, I still had hope for the movie because sometimes trailers don't represent a movie well (the trailer actually had scenes that were played out completely different than the movie, and the "champion monster inside him" joke isn't in the movie, neither was the little boy character).
I saw the movie twice on the day of its Paramount+ premiere (the first time when it launched at midnight and the second time later in the morning). I found the movie to be a decent but not very special animated kids flick.
I'm gonna start with the positives.
1) First off, the wrestling scenes are fun to watch thanks to the awesome work of the animators at Reel FX and the unique attacks of the different monsters. The overall animation of the movie is great and it feels like something that would belong in theaters. The character designs of the monsters are great and they are just as creative as the ones seen in Pixar's Monsters, Inc franchise. I love the mixes of different animals for them like Tentacular being a shark/octopus hybrid, King Gorge being a Bull/Bulldog hybrid, (ha) and Ramarilla being a Gorilla/ram sheep hybrid.
2) The humor did make me laugh a good amount of times. My favorite is a tentacle joke near the end that goes over a kid's head. That was hilarious to me. There are also times when it feels like the writers are self-aware about the kind of sports movie they were making, with an example being Winnie pointing out how hard it is to think of sports cliches. I also enjoyed the guy with the tattoos.
3) The villain Tentacular is fun to watch because of his "all about me" attitude a la Kuzco from Emperor's New Groove and a surprise about him towards the beginning. Terry Crews also didn't do too bad voicing him.
4) I liked the film's message of not having to be like your parent and being you. It's overdone for sure, but it was done pretty well in this film.
The film doesn't use the third-act breakup cliche where the characters get mad at each other and separate, which is common in many animated kids' movies.
5) I liked the wrestling announcers Lights Out McGinty and Marc, as they both had funny banters with each other throughout the film about Steve's dancing.
6) Will Arnett's performance as the main monster Steve makes him charming at times. It's no Lego Batman, but he at least sounded like he was having some fun voicing the character.
7) The tone of the film stays consistently light-hearted, which is a huge improvement over Paramount Animation's Wonder Park, which had bizarre tonal changes.
Now, it's time for the negatives.
1) The film doesn't take full advantage of the monster wrestling concept, as we mostly focus on a predictable story of a girl trying to save her father's stadium from getting closed.
2) I think there should have been more of an explanation on how monsters and humans live together, like the kind of homes that monsters live in or what they do outside of wrestling.
3) Winnie isn't an interesting protagonist. While I liked her passion and drive for helping the city, she doesn't have much of a character outside of that.
4) The last act could have been longer and slightly more dramatic. It felt rushed in my opinion.
5) The film didn't have much emotional weight. There are a few emotional parts like whenever Winnie is remembering her father, but not enough to help you feel for the characters.
6) This is just a personal nitpick, but whenever Jimothy (played by Ben Schwartz) talked in the film, all I could hear is Sonic the Hedgehog.
7) What happens at the end is so predictable that you can tell it happens from the first trailer!
Overall, Rumble is easily the best Paramount Animation film that isn't SpongeBob, as it has fun moments and some decent writing, but it isn't very good either. This would be a good watch for the kids and big WWE fans, but if you are outside of that, it's not really something you need to go out of your way to watch.