I'm guessing if you are not a Hungarian you probably don't know that this movie was actually a sequel to one of the most beloved animated movies ever released in Hungary. The original movie was based on a short novel and basically followed the story of a small fox cub named Vuk as he grew up. The story, while made for kids does delve into themes such as death and loss, the main character loses many of his loved ones and has to struggle to survive. The sequel, the one I'm writing this review for insults the legacy of the original movie and seems to be just using the name to trick people into watching this horrible piece of garbage. The storytelling is lazy and isn't really that interesting. There are two main characters in the story: kis Vuk (literally meaning little Vuk) who is the son of Vuk from the original movie, and a kid in a wheel chair (I literally can't remember his name) who has a dog and who's parents died before the events of the film. The main villain of the story is a woman who's supposed to be the head of a traveling circus (she has a stick that can hypnotize people for no reason). In the original movie the villains of the story were the humans and their faces were never shown, it felt like the entire movie was made from the perspective of the foxes. The villains are shown to be completely incompetent in this movie while in the original they felt truly powerful and they did manage to kill multiple of the main characters' loved ones.
I don't really want to waste my time with the story because I have to talk about the animation and the horrible artstyle of the movie.I animate in 2D so I might not be an expert in CG animation but still, I have to say that from the first few moments the movie manages to showcase impressively bad animation for a movie with a 5,000,000 Euros budget.The problem goes further than the animation itself, since both the character and background design are awful. It also feels like some of the shots go uncomfortably close to the characters.The flaws in the animation itself becomes even more apparent if you slow down the footage and look at some of the movement. Some of the movement feels completely unrealistic and not in a good way. Most of the time movement in animation is exaggerated but in this one it just feels plain wrong, at one moment in the beginning the main character does a complete 360 in mid-air without having to push away from something at a low altitude. Talking about exaggeration, some of the movement feels completely weightless. The issues with the character design are even worse with the human characters that just look completely awful.
Overall, everything from the character design to the animation and the story create a movie that's not only insulting to the original classic, but also insulting to 3D animation. This movie is completely irredeemable and all around bad.
Review of A Fox's Tale
