The Illusionauts (2012) Poster

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1/10
Children are recruited to change back Julio Verne's stories
Lotusflower11113 January 2014
So confusing and didn't have a thread... it just jumped from one scene to the oder with no correlation sometimes. It was boring, had some jokes for grown ups. The scenes in slow motion didn't make sense, they looked like the movie wasn't working properly. My nephew only liked a couple of parts with the puppy. It was difficult to relate to the characters and the adults had a fake french accent that made it difficult to understand them. I don't recommend it for children under 7 and I can't imagine an 8 or 9 year old enjoying it. Overall, just a messy movie with nothing interesting to tell and nothing that would keep the child interested. I enjoy a good animated movie, like Epic or Despicable me. This one wasn't only bad. Very bad movie.
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1/10
If there is a worse animated movie, I bet you to find it.
Ucare8 February 2014
I like animated movies a lot. And VERY VERY rarely I do not watch a movie till the end, even if it is not very good.

I registered to this website just for this review: I do not remember to have ever watched a worse animated movie. I had to stop at 45 min (I resisted so long just because I was bored and needed to watch something, but the movie was more boring than my previous boredom). The animation is really bad. Do you remember those video-games of the past, where the cover was so beautiful and realistic but the animation of the game was totally unrealistic? So is this movie. Beautiful cover, bad animation. The animation is actually so annoying that I had sometimes a sort of seasickness, because the Characters move all the time in a strange way. The story is stupid and narrated in a complicated way. The voices are sometimes annoying. The gags are repetitive and of bad taste. Or I should say bad smell, as the main gag of this movie is a kid who farts. nope. And all is a plagiarism of other movies. Not in the funny way that other movies do. Just in a stupid way, to sell something which alone cannot be sold because has got no value by itself.

I am sure there are bad movies. But to make all this effort in an animated movie, and get such a result, one must really want to fail.
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1/10
A CGI nightmare
djmmccorkell1 July 2014
Setting aside all the blatant flaws, such as the utterly insane attempt at a plot or the phoned-in voice acting, this film contains some of the most awful CGI I've ever seen. Every single character has weird floaty eyes where their irises regularly float out of their eye sockets.

It's incredibly disconcerting and I'm sorry I can't describe the effect better. All I can say is that it looks like the character's faces were designed by someone who has never made eye contact with another living human being. Once you notice the weird eyes (and you will within 5 minutes) you'll spend the rest of the movie being freaked out by them.

Fortunately you won't be missing much because the rest of the show is abysmal. It's a complete nonsense story about hating Jules Verne and trying to satirize European politics. Neither topic is a good basis for a kids' movie.
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3/10
fair comment
xuanmingmei8 May 2013
I got nothing against the previous review I mean I can't "defend" this movie much and people are free to think what they want after all, but I believe every movie deserves a constructive review rather than a destructive one.

Soundtrack is good and I strongly disagree on the technique part being bad I think its quite good you can clearly see and feel the character expressions and in small details like the lions hair, you can see that animators have put a lot of work on this movie. But still,

THE MOVIE IS BAD.

The problem here isn't the animation: The problem is the writer. SAME problem that Eduardo Schuldt has on all his movies. He should really hire someone for the scripts because he's giving peruvian cinema a bad name by doing so himself.
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1/10
The most entertaining mess of a movie I have seen in a long time.
MonsterVision9928 September 2017
This has to be the most entertaining mess of a movie I have seen in a long time.

This 2012 Eduardo Schuldt animated film follows the tradition of his past motion pictures, in that its horrible. His movies are just cynical pieces of trash made to be consumed by little kids who he thinks don't know any better. To be honest, hacks don't bother me, I can watch a cynical product and even kinda of like it, but this is just unbearable.

The movie its as cliché and as forced as a film can be, the editing is just horrible, its like they don't know how to properly cut a film, they leave all these uninteresting and useless scenes in, not only that but they cut the movie in a way that makes you feel like someone is messing with you by skipping chapters with the remote control.

The main characters (who are supposed to be a team of 4 kids for the children in the audience to relate to) are all stereotypes, but they don't do anything with them, there is no development in any way, at first they all hate each other but as soon as they find themselves in trouble they all suddenly care for each other. They even make two characters fall in love, and guess what, its not well developed either.

The humor is bottom of the barrel, not a single joke works, not one (genuine) laugh in the whole movie, maybe they think that kids are idiots who laugh at stupid things, and they are probably right, but there needs to be more than just that, if not for the parents, for the kids to learn something important or useful.

You may be wondering why do I even care?, after all its just a crappy obscure kids movie, well I care because it was made in Latin America. The director made the first Latin American 3D animated film back in 2005, this is our legacy, people. Some of the worst animated movies ever made.

I recognized some of the voice actors and I feel bad for them, it was a long time ago, but still, they are all good actors, they even made the movie a bit less awkward.

I wish I could say something nice about it, I guess it being somewhat entertaining for bad movie fans could count, but its juts a horrible piece of trash, I think I heard someone say once that you couldn't find a worse animated film even if you looked for it.
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1/10
So aweful it's hilarious
Monkeywizard05516 March 2019
I'm not even going to talk about the hideous animation and horendous voice acting, I saw this movie in a video on the YouTube channel 'I hate everything', I enjoyed that video so much I decided to watch this movie by itself. You see in the UK this movie goes by the name 'fantastic 4orce' (the best way to read the English title), and by searching this on the web I managed to find the movie and watch it from start to finish in English (the dubbing is aweful). 'Fantastic 4orce' is so bad that it's an absolute joy to watch, I was genuinely crying with laughter at most of this pile of garbage movie, if you've ever wondered what the worst animated movie is... here it is.
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3/10
I am ashamed of saying that Shultz is a Director.
red-squirrell25 January 2014
Warning: Spoilers
It was bad. Really bad. And I am Peruvian, so when it was in theaters, it only lasted 2 weeks. I mean Shultz is a C class director. If you look at his movies, they have all been rated under five stars. I've watched every film he has directed, he has not directed much films. Six films only.I mean, he's not an eligible director.I sad that the Illusionauts is a Peruvian film. I liked the soundtrack, and maybe the little dog. But everything else was just poop! And if Shultz is reading this:

GO TO SCHOOL, FOOL!

I mean, the movie sucked as the movie "Attila"(2013). It was Horrible. I was desperate to leave the cinema while watching this junk. I mean, It's a surprise it's not on the IMDb Bottom 100! So hopefully, Shultz stops directing films and is replaced by someone who knows how to direct movies.
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2/10
"Fantastic": 100% ironic
TheLittleSongbird26 September 2017
Have made no secret of being a lifelong, and long will it continue, fan of animation. 'Fantastic Force' (or 'The Illusionauts') appealed to me because the cover looked beautiful and the concept was such a clever one, what other animated film has a premise that intends on destructing Jules Verne? Even if the pro-literary message is not original in animation, having been done much better in 1994's 'The Pagemaster'.

What a real waste of fantastic potential. The premise is both overcooked and under explored, and coupled with so many things done poorly and what the film tried to do, it was hard to tell whether 'Fantastic Force' was trying too hard or not trying, if this makes any sense it seemed like there was a lot of both going on. Fantastic? More like very bad, saved from total doom by a couple of things. They being the spirited voice cast, with Christopher Lloyd in particular playing his tailor-made character to the hilt, the peppy soundtrack and some cool gadgets.

However, the animation is terrible (as said with 'Izzie's Way Home') and some of the worst to not have Video Brinquedo or Spark Plug Entertainment's names on it. So bad in fact that it deserves its own paragraph. Calling it late 1990s-like animation, regardless of the valid argument of computer animation having advanced significantly on the whole since then, is almost insulting, am aware that this is low budget but that shouldn't be an excuse for such amateurish work. The backgrounds are lifeless, the attention to detail careless, the colours are flat and garish, the eye movements are unintentionally creepy, there is nothing natural about the characters' movements and the lip movements are sloppy and near-incomprehensible.

Just as risible is the script, enough for target audience and who it was aiming for to be severely questioned constantly. 'Fantastic Force' is a family film, like most animation, but fails from personal opinion to appeal to both children and adults. Adults will cringe at the excessive gross-out/potty humour, that takes over everything frequently. Meanwhile children are likely to be confused by some of the film's many ideas and muddled narrative and find it at times near-sadistic. The whole stuff with Profiterole's gas takes up far too much time and should have been used much less and more time devoted towards properly developing the concept and ideas.

Loved the unique premise, but it really suffers here from trying to throw in too many ideas and do very little, and in some cases not do anything, with them, which complicates and increasingly confuses the story. There were some good ideas here actually, but they were badly under cooked and anything to do with Jules Verne are reduced to fleeting references. What a waste of a potentially clever plot.

Dialogue throughout is awkward, the slapstick is overdone, poorly animated and overly-immature and the characters are bland and annoying with any development falling completely flat.

Overall, the complete anti-thesis of a fantastic film. With such a good concept there was a good film in there somewhere squandered completely by execution that always veers between the very bad to embarrassing. 2/10 Bethany Cox
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1/10
Is this 10 years old? The title cover even looks and plays better than the movie
dbobby29 April 2014
Warning: Spoilers
I don't even know where to begin. I don't want to come off mean but I can't even give them an A for effort in this day and age of animated film. It might as well have been done with stick figures. LOL.

Even with a star voice casting of Christopher Lloyd or Sarah Michelle Gellar couldn't even save this movie. It's really this bad. The CG and animation looks dated 10+ years (totally amateur) and the story and scenes are idiotic as well. If someone gave me the budget to do this CGI animated film I could guarantee I would do a 1000X better job especially utilizing the star voices.

Okay. Maybe I came off a little too harsh. So here's the most positive thing I could say about it. I would highly recommend everyone to watch this movie, or even a scene from this movie, just so you don't take our word for it and you could see how bad it is for yourself.
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4/10
An oddly interesting movie is a Creature Feature sort of way
debora-bibb18 July 2019
Warning: Spoilers
Freedom Force is a Peruvian animated (also known as Fantastic Force, Fantastic 4orce, The Illusionauts, and Los ilusionautas.) The lip movement was originally designed for the Spanish language version, naturally, and the voices are off in the English dub. There are a number of differences between the Spanish cut and the English cuts and there are differences between the Fantastic 4orce cut and the Freedom Force cut with scenes being added, deleted, moved, reused (in the English versions), and the dialog is different in places. The entire opening section of both English versions are not in the Spanish version I watched. My Spanish is not good enough to say either English dub is more accurate to the original dialog, but they both seem to cover the story adequately with Fantastic 4orce being closer in one section to the original.

The story is rather complex, someone has fiddled with the works of Jules Verne to ruin the stories and a group of 12-year old children (also a dog) are sent into the stories to find and activate a reset switch to restore the stories. Aside from the literary value, the French President's Wife is supposed to host an event to celebrate Verne's stories.

The children all represent an aspect of Verne's personality at the age he started writing: Genius and love of technology; Literature; a descendant of Verne's first love, and Flatulence (which Verne is said to have suffered.) Their suits transform to fit the situations they encounter.

The movie is not the worst I've seen, there are structural problems, and the plot is a bit of a mess, but it is strangely interesting for people who enjoy Creature Feature movies.

The books used in the movie are:

Five Weeks in a Balloon

Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

From the Earth to the Moon

Hamlet - an altered quote to show the program works, "TV or not TV that is the question?"

Around the World in 80 Days - referenced only

There is also a scene that references the Jules Verne Time Train (Back to the Future Reference)

A running gag that involves a bug flying into a mouth is a reference to Kung Pow Enter the Fist from 2002.
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10/10
Sarah Michelle Gellar saved this for me
fmarvel-6861513 December 2023
I never listen to reviews ever let me start by saying that.

The only reason I watched this was for Sarah Michelle Gellar and tbh it's not as bad as everyone says I thought it was cute, it wasn't bad at all. The animation style is weird and tbh just not good in any way lol but the voice acting and the plot line is pretty good (not perfect but good) and people also need to remember that this isn't supposed to be some Oscar winning huge success ITS A KID'S MOVIE and that's the main audience for this film.

Don't be so quick to judge a film, if you have children put this on and let them enjoy literally all that's important is that the children enjoy this film that's all.
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1/10
If there is a worse animated movie, I bet you to find it.
Ucare8 February 2014
I like animated movies a lot. And VERY VERY rarely I do not watch a movie till the end, even if it is not very good.

I registered to this website just for this review: I do not remember to have ever watched a worse animated movie. I had to stop at 45 min (I resisted so long just because I was bored and needed to watch something, but the movie was more boring than my previous boredom). The animation is really bad. As the previous review say, yes, you can see that the animators put lot of effort in it, and you can see that it was NOT enough. "they put lot of effort" is enough for amateur theater shows in the local church. Not for a movie. DO you remember those videogames of the past, where the cover was so beautiful and realistic but the animation of the game was totally unrealistic? So is this movie. Beautiful cover, bad animation. The animation is actually so annoying that I had sometimes a sort of seasickness, because the Characters move all the time in a strange way. The story is stupid and narrated in a complicated way. The voices are sometimes annoying. The gags are repetitive and of bad taste. Or I should say bad smell, as the main gag of this movie is a kid who farts. nope. And all is a plagiarism of other movies. Not in the funny way that other movies do. Just in a stupid way, to sell something which alone cannot be sold because has got no value by itself.

I am sure there are bad movies. But to make all this effort in an animated movie, and get such a result, one must really want to fail.
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1/10
Don't waste your time
patero201228 November 2012
A kid's story with no argument. This 'movie' really had a director? God damn it! all characters shake too much. Story is too bad... My daughter (10), her friends and cousins (9->12) can't wait more than half an hour to walk out... sorry... actually... they run out. Story bad, director worst, characters terribly bad... Not even one single good thing. It was actually a waste of money. I can't believe that someone with the ability to make a cartoon picture can throw the opportunity doing something so wrong. Thinking of it, just creeps me out. I'm not going to blame the fact that it was made in a up growing nation, because there are retards in everywhere... but I can't believe someone could produce this kind o SH.. One last thing... why is not a 0 (zero) to qualify this? I have to put 1, because I can't put a lower one.
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1/10
Potty humor ruined movie
hdicmanti17 January 2014
Warning: Spoilers
Hmmmm. The idea of saving good literature had some life but the movie's execution did not hit the mark. Adults will figure out what the disjointed scenes are trying to accomplish but kids only notice the potty humor throughout. Kids 3,7 and 9 identified with the puppy and liked the space scene while three adults believed it might have a chance if strong family values had been a priority. As it turned out the writers doused any chance of success by themselves being confused with what families want. Hint: Burping and farting might get laughs from some but truly are not attractive nor a model for success. We turned it off midstream and had a discussion with the kids who agreed that it was not appropriate and that the story could have floated on its own. Too bad they sunk themselves.
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2/10
Disgrace to literature.
andresfajardolhs19 February 2022
I remember watching this movie over the summer and seeing the Shakespeare puns was very bad ( I like reading). You call this a movie ( it didn't even have a plot ). It also didn't make sense at all ( -3)
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1/10
Confusing.
worldsworstwryter28 December 2021
Nothing makes any sense. That's quite common with these awful films, but this one is particularly bad. Everything is completely ridiculous, and none of the wacky stuff they get up to is actually explained properly. Things just happen out of nowhere seemingly without reason.

Apart from that rather large problem, it still sucks. The animation is awful, the characters are awful, the writing is awful, I could go on.

On top of that, it's actually quite inappropriate at times. There's an unsettling line about a baby cousin that felt really uncomfortable, amongst other things.

Perhaps most insultingly, is when at the end, Ash from Pokemon claims that the film's ending is better than anything Jules Verne ever wrote. (the 'plot' revolves around Jules Verne for some reason.) Just, no.

Overall, everything about this was utterly terrible, and baffling to watch. I never want to see this again. I'd give it a 0.7/10.
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10/10
Great movie.
jamesloseeliam13 December 2023
People are being way to hard on this movie like this Is just a simple movie for kids and all these people are acting as if it's the worst movie ever created which it isn't.

It's a fun little superhero animated film.

Put this on for your children to watch and I promise you they will absolutely love it, full grown adults are just way to quick to judge everything like please just shut up and let children have a nice movie for once stop complaining about everything.

And to any parents reading this just stop reading reviews and watch the film for yourself and let your child enjoy this movie. The cast and the script are pretty good but the animation is kinda bad.

Other than that it's perfect.
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10/10
Hot
jollirin9 December 2022
It's so horrendous it's good

Bee movie copy and paste humor

Them farts though

Absolute top tier lore 1000/0 Amari fg me lobe lore hot.

It's so bad that you want more.

Absolute peak fiction

The jokes are rolling me off that I have diarrhea

The vibes are absolute crackhead that I wanna force someone to watch it to understand my humor and make inside jokes about Jules Vern. The left handed author. Wink wink. I'm in ahh struck with how creative this author made and adding the cringiest puns that I wanna swallow my own fist. But I still enjoyed it because a loser saved the gang. I'll say it again peak fiction.
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