Let me start out my assuring you all that I LOVE Top Cat - love the character, the cast, the original series - LOVED it all. He defined what 'living by your wits' really meant. I was so excited to take my daughter to see this.
There were three things that made this film terrible in our eyes.
Firstly, the concept of a police state without privacy is a really BIG idea to put in a kids movie. I genuinely struggled to explain the conflict between Top Cat as the ultimate libertarian and Strickland as the dictator in a way that she would understand it. Further to this the concept was quite clumsily applied so that it was sometimes pitched as freedom vs. safety, sometimes technology vs. human (or feline) imagination, sometimes arrogance vs. intelligence - it was inconsistent and didn't really make you feel that the villain was well thought out.
Secondly, Strickland continually comments about how handsome he is. These comments are just not funny or clever and are crowbarred into every sentence or conversation. It was ridiculous and it was always there - in thirty minutes he probably said it thirty times. It is the worst kind of humour, to just repeatedly say a thing. Not even in context. Rubbish.
Third and lastly, the Maharaja of Pikchu has a really exaggerated Indian accent - aren't we past the point in history at which we consigned comedy stereotypes to the bin? It frustrates me when movie makers try and get a cheap laugh from an accent, it's lazy and offensive.
There were three things that made this film terrible in our eyes.
Firstly, the concept of a police state without privacy is a really BIG idea to put in a kids movie. I genuinely struggled to explain the conflict between Top Cat as the ultimate libertarian and Strickland as the dictator in a way that she would understand it. Further to this the concept was quite clumsily applied so that it was sometimes pitched as freedom vs. safety, sometimes technology vs. human (or feline) imagination, sometimes arrogance vs. intelligence - it was inconsistent and didn't really make you feel that the villain was well thought out.
Secondly, Strickland continually comments about how handsome he is. These comments are just not funny or clever and are crowbarred into every sentence or conversation. It was ridiculous and it was always there - in thirty minutes he probably said it thirty times. It is the worst kind of humour, to just repeatedly say a thing. Not even in context. Rubbish.
Third and lastly, the Maharaja of Pikchu has a really exaggerated Indian accent - aren't we past the point in history at which we consigned comedy stereotypes to the bin? It frustrates me when movie makers try and get a cheap laugh from an accent, it's lazy and offensive.