Change Your Image
trygstad
Reviews
Little Spirit: Christmas in New York (2008)
Lame and sad.
Good actors tied to a bad product. In 2009--when this was made--digital animation was hardly in its infancy, but you would never know it from this movie. The animation is just bad all the way around; badly designed, badly drawn, badly rendered, herky-jerky, and downright painful to watch. Even more strange, when the Christmas tree is flown to Macy's by helicopter, the helicopter is a U.S. Navy SH-2F Seasprite. This is an aircraft not operated by civilians at all, and the tactical mission equipment such as the radar dome is clearly visible under the fuselage. I figure that for some reason, it was the only helicopter they had an existing 3-D model for, so they just used it. (BTW, I have 2000 hours flying H- 2s, so it was fun for me to see it in the movie, but in no way makes the movie worth watching...)
Annapolis (2006)
Complete inaccurate and even mis-named movie.
Like other reviewers here, I'm a Naval Academy graduate. I'm proud of it. Those of us who went there refer to it as it The Academy. Not "this academy" and certainly not "Annapolis"--that's what civilians call the place. To Mids, Annapolis is just a sort of cute little town outside the gates. This movie has about as much to do with the real Academy as, as, well darn--I can't even think of a suitable simile. Let's put it this way--the characters in the movie wear Midshipman uniforms and call each other by Naval rank titles. That's about it. It costs very, very little to make a movie accurate, but no one on this movie would let accuracy get in the way of "telling a story". But when you're supposed to be telling a story set in reality, these inaccuracies effectively gut the story. Gee, you want an exciting Brigade Boxing story? Try Oliver North boxing James Webb for the 1968 Brigade Championship--a true story, and far more compelling and exciting than this story. Other reviewers have pointed out many of the inaccuracies in this story but oddly enough many others see this as a "recruiting story" for the Navy or the military; I think this conclusion could only be reached by those who are even more ignorant of the service than those making this movie. All in all a pretty complete waste of an hour and forty-eight minutes. If you want to see a decent movie about the Naval Academy, "Navy Blue and Gold" made in 1937 is a far more accurate depiction, even 71 years later. It's also a much better story.