Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate

Year 18, Day 260 - 9/17/26 - Movie #5,434

BEFORE: I watched the first third of the Emmys yesterday, the "craft" awards, I still have to watch the main telecast and then try to figure out what the third part was. There were a number of documentaries that I watched that got nominations, which seems a bit weird because I thought that the Emmys were for television shows, and to me, those docs were MOVIES. Yes, I realize that we have a thing called "made-for-TV" movies or there's a category for "miniseries and TV movies" or something like that. But I'm talking about films like "Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!" and "John Candy: I Like Me" - how did those get Emmy nominations, they're just documentary movies, what makes them TV movies, the fact that they aired on a streaming channel? We seem to have somehow erased the line between movies and TV shows, if these movies can be nominated for Emmys and aren't being considered for Oscars for Best Documentary. What makes them TV movies and not movie-movies? I would love some clarification on this. 

Speaking of my Doc Block, it seems that fashion icon Bob Mackie has passed away, and he was the subject of one of my last-minute-added docs this year. Look, it's bad enough that I chose some docs about already deceased people like John McCain, John Candy, Roger Corman and Molly Ivins. And Sergio Leone. And Roberta Flack. And David Lynch, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty. And Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor. Jeez, there sure were a lot of dead people this year. And Elvis Presley and Ed Sullivan and Fred Rogers. But now there's one more, and I'd hate to think that my blog is cursed somehow - so I'm hoping that certain people get at least one more trip around the sun, like Mel Brooks and Dick Van Dyke and Gloria Gaynor. Jeez, Paul Anka and Diana Ross are probably getting up there in years, too. Robin Byrd and Stevie Nicks and Reggie Jackson. Hang in there, Billy Joel and the members of Led Zeppelin, it's not your time to go just yet! Also, does anybody have eyes on Chevy Chase? 

Tonight I'm wrapping up just over a week of animated films, as Keith Ferguson carries over from the regrettable "Happily N'ever After 2". There's one more animated film that linked to just "Smurfs" and none of the others, so I couldn't include it here, but I think I can work it in near the end of the month, it was due to leave Netflix so I went ahead and watched it, the review will follow in a couple weeks. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Megamind" (Movie #1,101)

THE PLOT: Megamind's former villain team, The Doom Syndicate, has returned. Newly crowned hero Megamind must now keep up evil appearances until he can assemble his friends to stop his former teammates from launching Metro City to the moon. 

AFTER: Another LONG delay between installments here - there's got to be a reason why it took some studio 14 years to make a sequel to "Megamind", I'm assuming lack of interest, people weren't exactly staging protests over the lack of a sequel. Possibly lack of money, too, because they couldn't afford to hire back any of the voice actors from the first film, instead they found sound-alikes for Will Ferrell and Tina Fey and David Cross, ones that would fit the new, lower budget. Again, I'm assuming.

Yet this is set just DAYS after the events of the first film, because obviously animated characters don't have to age in normal time, they can be any age we want them to be, and just like with Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, you can always rewrite their origin story if you're really stuck, or drop in a flashback that's never been seen before, or screw it, just do whatever you want, because it's not like kids are sending in fan mail to their favorite animated characters, asking them to "please make another movie because I've seen the first one a couple thousand times, and I love it but I'm also quite sick of it!"

Geez, I barely remember the first "Megamind" movie, I know that this character was a villain who defeated his nemesis, Metro Man, and then had nothing to do, so he created a new hero called Titan, who became a worse (better?) villain than he ever was. So Megamind became a hero to take down his own evil creation, Titan - yeah, that film might be worth a re-watch, it was so long ago - with a fresh eye, I may pick up on even MORE Easter eggs and tributes to superheroes from other TV shows or movies. 

So here in the sequel, Megamind stops a theft by oustmarting a group called the Go Fish Gang as they try to steal a gem-encrusted fish, which I'm not sure is a thing. Afterwards, Megamind's minion, Chum (formerly named "Minion", but his name was changed so as to not get mixed up with the Minions from the "Impossible Me" movies) tries to suggest an upgrade to "sidekick" status, though Megamind won't allow it, and so they decide to separate, at least for a while. Well, break-ups are never easy. Reporter Roxanne Ritchi was the good friend telling Chum that he should speak up and make his intentions known, and really, she should have stayed out of it. Clearly Megamind has "Artist Brain" and doesn't want to share the hero spotlight with anyone.

So at the worst possible time, Megamind's old criminal team breaks out of prison and comes to find him, they have mistaken his new "hero" status as the sign he told them to wait for, the sign that he was just a couple steps away from taking over Metro City. They're not falling for his "hero" act, either, they're convinced that he's a villain in hero's clothing, rather than the other way around. And since there are FOUR of them and one of him, he's forced to play along and pretends to rob a bank, in order to win their trust. Umm, most superhero films these days don't also follow the conventions of a Shakespearean farce, just saying. 

He also has to reveal "Phase Two" of his evil plan to them, even though he never really made a definitive one - but he did place rockets deep below Metro City, with a vague plan of launching the whole city into space. Great news, the plan is a hit with the Doom Syndicate, only also bad news, because they don't need Megamind to help them, since the rockets are already in place. Megamind tries in vain to get Chum back, then goes into hiding in an alley after he can't. He learns a valuable lesson, that he can't necessarily do everything himself BUT he can do more using the power of teamwork, once he admits that he needs help. 

One quick trip to Everything City for supplies, and we're ready for the big showdown between the new team of heroes (and sidekicks) and the old team who can't even decide which one is in charge. Well, duh, which one's going to be able to put a barely-rehearsed plan in motion? All that Megamind's team has to do is distract the villains, sneak into his own headquarters, stop the launch of the city into space and then round up the evildoers, what could POSSIBLY go wrong? 

They've set themselves up perfectly for another sequel, which could take another 14 years - or maybe they just followed up with a limited series on Peacock, which they did. Damn, I was hoping for another movie, and not just a TV movie. 

Directed by Eric Fogel

Also starring the voices of Laura Post, Josh Brener (last seen in "Carry-On"), Maya Aoki Tuttle, Emily Tunon, Talon Warburton, Scott Adsit (last seen in "72 Hours"), Chris Sullivan (last seen in "The Drop"), Tony Hale (last seen in "Marty, Life Is Short"), Adam Lambert (last seen in "Bathtubs Over Broadway"), Jeanine Mason, Michael Beattie (last heard in "Minions: The Rise of Gru"), Eric Fogel, Todd Haberkorn, Eric Murphy (last seen in "Being Eddie"), Joey Rudman (last seen in "We Are Your Friends"), Roger Craig Smith (last heard in "Trolls Band Together")

RATING: 4 out of 10 laser beams in the air ducts

Happily N'ever After 2: Snow White - Another Bite at the Apple

Year 18, Day 259 - 9/16/26 - Movie #5,433

BEFORE: All right, this film has been on my list for much, much, too long. I can't say for sure if it was on the original watchlist when I started this blog in 2009, but, you know, it's possible. I watched the first "Happily N'ever After" film in 2010, so that's 16 years ago, and it's taken me THAT long to link to the sequel - because none of the voice actors from that original film saw fit to appear in the sequel, they must have known it was going to be terrible. Or maybe there was no budget to get any of those actors to come back? Who knows? I'm just happy to finally be able to cross this one off the list, it's only 75 minutes long so even if it's unbearably stupid or corny, I can endure 75 minutes of it to open up a slot on my watchlist. 

David Lodge carries over from "Swapped". I could have snuck this one in between two movies in the "Purge" franchise, because one of the voice actors provided the voice for the broadcast system announcements in those movies, but then that would have caused thematic whiplash, I think. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Happily N'ever After" (Movie #444)

THE PLOT: Fairy tales collide when Mambo and Munk tip the scales of good and evil once again. This time, Princess Snow White is a misguided teenager who'd rather have fun with her friends Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and Little Bo Peep than help peasants. 

AFTER: Now I'm wondering if the Chain was trying to protect me, all this time, for the last 16 years, because this really is one of the worst animated films I've ever seen. Beyond that, it's one of the worst films of ANY genre that I've seen. But it's gone now, it can't hurt me any more. 

I have to imagine that some other studio was trying to jump on the "Shrek" bandwagon, mashing up different fairy tales together, this would have been released between "Shrek the Third" and "Shrek Forever After", but who knows, maybe they started production after the second "Shrek". Still, that might be giving it too much credit, because this really looks and feels like it was thrown together and animated on somebody's Commodore 64 personal computer. I mean, we have AI now and the Instagram is filled with "A.I. Slop", all of which looks better than this does. I mean, you can just type the name of a character into an A.I. engine now and in a few seconds you'll have footage of that character doing anything you want. ANYTHING. 

Somebody (or a lot of somebodies) had to WORK to make a film this bad back in 2009 - the animation is horrible CGI, there's no attempt at proper lip-synch so you kind of have to infer which character is saying what at any given time. Notice that there's almost always one male character talking to one female character, then through the audio clues of lower voices and higher voices you can (sort of) determine who's saying what. But it's still difficult to follow and even harder to justify. 

Some of the actors use different names when they work on different animated projects, like acclaimed voice-over artist Keith Ferguson used the name "Jim Sullivan" in the credits here, I've got Wikipedia telling me that those names are used by the same actor, which is going to allow me to link to tomorrow's film. For a while I thought, maybe he's under exclusive contract to Disney or Warner Bros. and if he wants to do other projects outside of that company, he's got to use a pseudonym - but now I think it's because this film is so BAD that he doesn't really want anyone to know he worked on it. For sure it's not on his reel or his resume that he hands out. 

Ugh, let's get into it and then I'll be done with it. Snow White here is portrayed as a reckless teenager, she's always shirking her Princess duties and going "clubbing" with her friends - Goldilocks, Red Riding Hood and Little Bo Peep. These girls are collectively multi-racial and say "Holla!" a lot, that should give you an idea about when it was made. The dance club they go to also has a jousting match, sure, because it's Medieval Times - but Snow White has a cell phone!  And when she bites the apple, the spell causes her to say terrible things about her friends on social media, which is a network of crystal balls or something - that's very stupid. Why not just remake "Mean Girls" but with fairy tale princesses, that would be a better idea than this. 

Snow White's mother also dies early in the picture, so when the king realizes that Snow is out of control with the clubbing and the social media, he figures he'll get married again so she'll have a mother to teach her how to be a better, more giving woman. Umm, NITPICK POINT, why can't HE teach her that? Oh, right, because she's "Daddy's Little Girl" and he can't seem to discipline her in any way. It happens. But this is a chance for "Lady Vain" to get Rumpelstiltskin and the Magic Mirror to cast a spell so she looks EXACTLY like Snow White's dead mother. Right, because that won't seem suspicious at all. 

When the King sends his man-servant to the Fairy Godmother's dating service to start the search for his wife, the F.G. looks high and low and, of course, stumbles on the dead queen's exact double, and then it's not long before the marriage is scheduled, and Snow White, she doesn't take it well. This is what drives her to the forest to the home of the Seven Dwarves, she lets herself in and falls asleep in their beds. Geez, for a second I thought she was in the home of the Three Bears and they got her story confused with Goldilocks'.  When the dwarves tell her that her mother used to live with them (kinky, I did it...) they decide to make her stay and they teach her to do good deeds, like rebuild the houses of the Three Little Pigs and babysit for the Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe. Well, she DID have so many children, she didn't know what to do, but with Snow White's help, she has time to go to the spa and get a make-over!

The worst part of the film is how the characters Mambo and Munk carry over from the previous film, voiced by new actors because nobody wanted to return to this franchise, and their presence in the story makes no sense. They're "somewhere else" and they've got this big scale that they can't control, and somehow it tips fate toward either good or evil - but umm, where are they, and how does their scale affect the good or bad things that happen to Snow White? We already have the Magic Mirror, do we really need the Magic Scale in the story, too? Nope. But we have it. 

Somebody has to go out to the forest and find Snow White, before her father makes the big mistake of marrying Lady Vain, who will ruin the kingdom and probably kill the king once she becomes queen. Sir Peter, one of the king's bodyguards, finds her running a Help Center in the forest and they travel back to stop the wedding, just in time of course. The only way she can convince her father that she's changed and he doesn't have to get married is by apologizing for all the rude things she said about her friends, which she should have done ANYWAY, not just to stop the wedding. Lady Vain does not take this well and attacks Snow White, but her attack is reflected by the Magic Mirror, and it bounces back, removing her illusion spell and everyone can now see she's not as beautiful as the former queen. Ah, tough break, but she would have gotten away with it if not for those meddling dwarves...

The story is simplistic, it feels like it was written by a child, and as I said before, it looks terrible, as if it was made when computer animation was in the infancy stage. Well, it kinda was, except we already had "Shrek" and "Toy Story" movies which look a hundred times better. 

Directed by Steven E. Gordon & Boyd Kirkland

Also starring the voices of Gina K. Bowes, Cam Clarke (last heard in "Lego Batman: The Movie - DC Super Heroes Unite), Doug Erholtz, Jennie Fahn (last seen in "Gloria Bell"), Keith Ferguson (credited as Jim Sullivan) (last heard in "The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie"), Kate Higgins (last seen in "Hotel Artemis"), Helen Niedwick, Lex Lang (last heard in "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2"), Christine Lakin (credited as Catherine Lavine) (last seen in "Georgia Rule"), Cindy Robinson (last heard in "The Forever Purge"), Doug Stone, Kirk Thornton, 

RATING: 2 out of 10 pieces of Humpty Dumpty

Swapped

Year 18, Day 258 - 9/15/26 - Movie #5,432

BEFORE: It's Tuesday, and I have an update on that Pig Island BBQ & beer event that I went to on Saturday. I arrived an hour late, and when I got there all of the beer had been given out, and about half of the food stands were out of food. The event basically shut down at 2:30 pm, but had been scheduled to go until 4 pm. I now believe that since there were VIP tickets sold, and the VIPs were given access to BBQ and beer an hour before general admission, that this was a major cause of the food and beer running out - of course they want to sell more VIP tickets at a higher price, and of course they would want to give the VIPs whatever food and beer they want, but to do that and then have almost NO food or beer to give to the general admission people, who also paid for access, just paid a bit less, no, I don't think that's fair. I now think the organizers had no intention of saving much food for the "commoners" who paid less - I'll admit, I bought the ticket from a discount site, but I still feel I was entitled to the "unlimited" beer and BBQ I was promised. 

I followed the organizers on Instagram and saw that there were a few other people starting to complain (a bit) about the event, and starting to ask if there was the possibility of getting either a partial refund or a voucher for the next event and I replied to a post, stating that if anyone bought their ticket from the same discount site as I did, they could contact customer service and describe what happened at the event, express their dissatisfaction and maybe if enough people did that, a refund MIGHT be possible. A few hours later, that whole Instagram profile was cleared out, gone, goodbye, simple, no more profile, no more complaints, no more refund requests. It just ain't right. What I need now is for some investigative journalist to really look into this event, who made money from it, what they provided and what they did NOT provide, this could be a mini-version of the Fyre Festival incident, and that was a MAJOR news story where an event organizer got in trouble for not giving people what they paid for. Stay tuned to the news, I guess. 

The voice of Fred Tatasciore carries over from "The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie".

THE PLOT: A tiny woodland creature and a majestic bird suddenly swap bodies, forcing them to team up to survive the wildest adventure of their lives. 

AFTER: At first glance, this story seems to have a lot in common with "Hoppers", even the vowel sound in the title, "hop" vs. "swap", that's another similarity. Body-swapping is involved in both plots, only in "Hoppers" we had humans downloading their brains into robot animals, and here we've got animal characters keeping their brains, but switching their bodies, essentially "becoming" other animals for the purpose of understanding each other, learning to co-exist. "Hoppers" had more of an environmental message, which I support, while "Swapped" just wants all of the different animals to learn to work and live together in harmony, and there are no humans anywhere in the picture. 

In tonight's film, we don't really know where this takes place, is it on past-Earth or future-Earth or some completely different planet in another solar system or even another galaxy? Well, we'll never know if they don't tell us. The various animals all seem sort of familiar, only also not, and they have different names. Ollie's not a beaver, he's a Pookoo, and Ivy's not a bird, she's a Javan, whatever these things are, and Boogle is clearly a fish, except he's a Boogle fish - and the more they use these names the less connected we feel to them, it just all boils down to some kind of verbal nonsense after a while, in other words. Literally, in other words that we don't know.

Once upon a time on this other planet, or in this other dimension or whatever, there were these giant magical creatures called the Dzo, and when they came to visit this little slice of nature, many years ago, they brought these magic purple light-pods, which enabled the forest creatures to transform and take the shape of other animals, so they could understand each other, both in language and also spiritually, like as a species they could feel empathy for the other animals once they had lived for a while as the other creatures. Damn, this is all going to be about growing and fostering peace and understanding, isn't it? Probably a good thing overall, but it feels like a really long way to go and possibly also the most difficult way to get there. Can't we just do this with human kids of different skin colors and religions or something? 

According to the legend, years ago a Treewolf grabbed one of the purple magic light-pods from a Dzo, and transformed into a Firewolf, killed four Dzos and started a forest fire that also caused a rock-slide, which created large dam that blocked the river. After that, the different species in that area all kept to themselves, and that's the culture that Ollie the Pookoo has grown up in, one of fear and racism (sorry, species-ism) and keeping to your own kind. Why do I get the feeling that the film's going to try to change this all back? 

Ollie made a mistake and trusted a Javan, showing that bird how to open the pods that contain Piplets, a major food source. Suddenly hundreds of Javans appeared to eat the piplets, leaving few for the Pookoos (wait a second, the Javans are like the people with VIP tickets, and the Pookoos are the ones with general admission, who suddenly have no food to eat. Jeez, it's like this movie predicted the Pig Island incident of last weekend!). Ollie becomes an outcast among his own tribe, but tries to make up for it by shining light into the eyes of the Javans using glass shards, which makes them fly away and leave the Piplets behind. However, one Javan attacks him, causing him to fall into a hole where he lands on the last magic Dzo pod in his neck of the woods, and he's transferred into a Javan, of all things. His own people then chase HIM away, because they can't understand his language, he can't tell them that he's a rodent trapped in a bird's body. 

He's rescued by a trio of Javan sisters (one of them is the one who attacked him, and also the one he taught to open Piplet pods, before that. WHAT ARE THE ODDS?) and the Javan helps him track down another magic pod, so he can turn back, but WHOOPSIE, she touches it first (even though Ollie said, "Hey, don't touch that...") and SHE gets turned into a Pookoo, again, WHAT ARE THE ODDS? But we can assume that karma or fate or magic knows what it's doing here, because perhaps some time spent together, basically each in a body from the other's species, they can learn to work together and foster understanding and sing in harmony and finish each other's sandwiches. Or sentences, whichever. 

Boogle the BoogleFish says he knows where there are more pods, what could possibly go wrong? Simple, instead of switching back to their correct animal species, Ollie and Ivy both get turned into BoogleFish themselves, so now there are three fish, one who used to be a rodent and one who used to be a bird, working together to find even MORE pods so they can straighten this whole mess out. But maybe that's not what's really happening here at all, perhaps darker forces are at work...PLOT TWIST! 

So that's it for my story summation, go watch it yourself if you want to see if the animals ever get back into their proper bodies and learn to work together, defeat the evil power, and share Piplets together in the future. Darn, I've given it away again, haven't I? Oh well. Let me just add the one NITPICK POINT, because it was made clear earlier in the film that if the Javans ate the Piplets there would be none for the Pookoos, and if the Pookoos ate them, there would probably be none for the Javan to eat. So how come at the end of the film, when they learn to work together, there are suddenly enough Piplets for both species? Just being friendly to each other does not make more food appear, especially if there was a limited amount to begin with. 

Directed by Nathan Greno (director of "Tangled")

Also starring Michael B. Jordan (last seen in "Sinners"), Juno Temple (last seen in "Venom: The Last Dance"), Tracy Morgan (last seen in "Lorne"), Cedric the Entertainer (last seen in "Serving Sara"), Justina Machado (last seen in "A Thousand Words"), Nate Torrence (last heard in "Zootopia 2"), Camden Brooks, Tata Vega (last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom"), Ambika Mod (last seen in "Black Bag"), Lolly Adefope (last seen in "Saltburn"), John Ratzenberger (last heard in "Spellbound"), Kari Wahlgren (last heard in "Fixed"), Zemo Tatasciore, David Lodge (last heard in "Recount"), Johnny Williams (last seen in "Friendsgiving"), Maven Morgan (last heard in "Scoob!"), Nathan Greno, Tim Mertens (last heard in "Wreck-It Ralph")

RATING: 5 out of 10 hiding Rock Bears

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie

Year 18, Day 257 - 9/14/26 - Movie #5,431

BEFORE: Since tonight's film features Porky Pig, let me tell you what happened this weekend when I tried to go to Pig Island, which is a not-annual BBQ and beer festival on Staten Island. I've been to that location before, the same event company used to run an event called Rib King there. Now, usually I try to be first in line for beer festivals, the reason being that if I'm at the end of a VERY long entry line, by the time they check everyone's IDs and hand out wristbands and sample glasses, I could lose up to 30 minutes of drinking time, and that's no bueno. So I planned to wake up at 9 am (on a Saturday) so I could leave the house by 9:15 and be sure to catch the 11 am ferry to Staten Island, and my friend agreed to the same timetable. Well, that's not what happened. I had difficulty falling asleep, this happens often when I'm anxious about waking up on time. Yes, the very thing I'm trying to do - fall asleep and wake up on time -  brings me such concern that I can't do it. 

So I woke up at 9, and I was so relieved that I woke up at 9 that I relaxed, and fell back to sleep. Great. I got up and got dressed and was out the door by 10:15, but there was no way I could make that 11 am ferry. So I texted my friend and told her to go on ahead, I'd catch up. The festival was scheduled for 12 pm to 4 pm, so I figured there was plenty of time. I got to Union Square and took an "R" train downtown, it was on the local track so it should have taken me to the Whitehall St. subway stop, which is just steps from the ferry. Service to that stop had been suspended, but my phone app told me it would be restored that day. But then I looked up and the train was going over the bridge to Brooklyn, now it was a certainty I wouldn't make the 11 am ferry, and probably not the 11:30 one, either. Took the train back and the closest I could get to the ferry was Canal St., which meant I needed to walk down to Whitehall, a 25 minute walk at a fast pace, however, I was still limping a bit due to the sprained ankle. At this point my brain was telling me to give up, just go home and eat the cost of the festival ticket (I paid $49, a discount price, full price would have been $71). But for some reason I kept going, made that long walk and I caught the 12:30 ferry to Staten Island. My friend had gone on ahead as I suggested. 

I took a bus to the event and checked in about 1:15 pm, the check-in guy told me there was "still plenty of food" which simply was not true. About half of the booths had run out of food, and the beer was completely gone. All of it, gone. Suddenly I remembered a Rib King event at the same location a few years previous, one which had run out of ribs around 3:00 pm, not 4. For that one I arrived early and had my fill of ribs, so it didn't really bother me. But this, showing up an hour late and finding out the event was already out of beer AND running out of food, yeah, I was angry. Half angry at myself for being late and half angry at the organizers for clearly not bringing enough samples to hand out. I stood in line at the few booths that still had pork samples to hand out, and probably ate about $10 worth of food, there was still a whole hog being carved up and I stood in that line three times, and that was a LONG line. I probably had the equivalent of a light lunch, like I'm a big dude and you're seriously going to hand me this teeny, tiny food sample? What is up with that? 

For some reason, the food and beer vendors who ran out of product stuck around, with nothing to hand out. I guess maybe their rides weren't coming until later, or it would be too obvious if they left early that they failed to bring enough. Meanwhile, the VIP area was still filled with people eating and drinking, so I think I know what was going on, the event hosts made their money from the VIP tables, meanwhile they told the people with discount tickets, like me, that there was no more food or beer, which seems extremely shady to me, possibly illegal. I resolved to never go to another event from this organizer ever again, especially not with discount tickets, and well, I certainly can't afford VIP ticket prices. At 2:30 they started breaking down the booths (remember, the event was supposed to go until 4 pm, but I think the fix was in) and I left at 3, but inquired about a refund on the way out. They told me I would have to contact the ticket broker, and I did, but I only got $12 back for my troubles, meaning I paid $37 for a couple tiny pork samples and NO beer. There were animal rights activists protesting the event, and I was able to tell them that I barely ate anything at all, so they should leave me alone. (Actually I told them I was once married to a vegetarian, and I'd heard it all before.)

So that happened - I'm waiting now for other people to complain on-line so I can weigh in and support them. I happen to know the organizer, he used to run a restaurant in the East Village that hosted beer dinners occasionally. He's a well-liked businessman in the beer community, but now I'm realizing how much of a shady weasel he also is, and I strongly suspect he oversold the event and also told the food vendors to not bring too much, I mean, who plans for a four-hour event that runs out of food and beer after an hour? I work part-time at a basketball stadium that serves 13,000 people at a time and NEVER runs out of beer, that would be bad for business.

Rachel Butera carries over from "Smurfs" (2025)

THE PLOT: Porky Pig and Daffy Duck are Earth's only hope when facing the threat of alien invasion. 

AFTER: Now that I have my path(s) to Christmas, it's time to start thinking about Halloween season. Oh, the chain knows that it's coming, and really, what is the chain but my own subsconscious, speaking to me through the proper sequencing of movies. The call is coming from inside the house, and the chain is my brain, what other explanation could there be? So the September chain contains a few films that were NOT classified as horror films, but they're kind of on the edge of horror. Alien invasion movies kind of ride that fine line between sci-fi and horror, they're sometimes just a little bit of both. In addition to two alien invasion films this month, I've got a "Predator" film (that's kind of an alien movie, too, right?) and at least one film titled "Anaconda". Creature horror, giant snakes, aliens, oh, we're in spooky season already, we just haven't really felt the full impact yet. Prepare yourself...

Of course, this is just a cartoon - and a Looney Tunes cartoon at that. What could possibly go wrong here, except for absolutely everything? Daffy Duck is about to run "amuck" and pretty much duck everything up, and I can really empathize. Every time they put me on a new station at the stadium without properly training me, I just know something's about to go wrong, possibly at near "I Love Lucy" conveyor-belt levels. I feel you, Daffy. 

Porky is Daffy's best friend here, they gave Bugs Bunny the weekend off, it seems. You know, there's hasn't been a movie with the Looney Tunes characters since "Space Jam: A New Legacy", and then before that there was "Looney Tunes: Back in Action", way back in the early 2010's. We just don't get enough of these characters these days, why would Warner Brothers just back-burner their best characters, at least where movies are concerned? I know that "Coyote vs. Acme" is in theaters now, so maybe they can get some momentum again. I mean, "Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile" was little more than a re-working of the "One Froggy Evening" cartoon, but come on, we need a movie with Tasmanian Devil and Speedy Gonzalez and Elmer Fudd and Tweety and Sylvester in it, everybody at once, "Roger Rabbit"-style. 

Instead, this is Looney Tunes characters in a post-"Ren and Stimpy", post "South Park" animation universe. Like in the old Looney Tunes you wouldn't see a character's naked butt or really have any sexual innuendo at all. OK, maybe Pepe le Pew got a little handsy when he tried to seduce a cat, but you wouldn't have Daffy Duck talking about Petunia Pig by saying, "Oh, look at that tasty dish, I bet you'd love to have a slice of THAT!" Of course, Daffy was talking about the pie on the diner shelf, not the female pig sitting at the counter, but the old cartoons still wouldn't have gone there. You can feel the influence that more modern animators had here, if John Kricfalusi hadn't gotten himself cancelled in 2020, this movie might have worked with Ren & Stimpy in it, instead of Porky and Daffy. Just sayin'. 

In what we could consider to be a "reboot" of the whole Looney-verse, this film adds an origin story where Porky and Daffy are found as babies by Farmer Jim, and raised as adoptive brothers. Huh, who knew? According to their flashback, Farmer Jim didn't die, exactly, he sort of ascended into the sky, Jesus-style, and the last thing he told them was to "stick together" and "take care of their home". As adults, they are best friends and roomates, or hetero life-partners in a mixed-species relationship, if you prefer. They don't live on the farm anymore, which raises some questions, maybe, about what happened to it - but they share a house in the town of Grandview, and we see them getting ready for the annual home inspection. They fail, however, because there's a giant hole in the roof that somehow neither of them noticed. 

We, the audience, happen to know that their house was hit by a UFO that was on its way to ao crash landing, and the only character in the movie who noticed it was a scientist with a telescope, who first saw an asteroid heading toward Earth, then got a bit distracted by the UFO. Umm, I think they prefer to be called UFPs, now, which are "Unidentified Flying Phenomena" - the "O" stands for "object" and that's quite literally objectifying, OK? I figured (incorrectly) that we would be seeing an appearance from the "Marvin the Martian" character, but they kind of went a different way with this, and that's fine. 

I don't want to give too much away here, but it plays out like one of those "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"-type films from the 1950's, where the aliens have a way of taking over human bodies through a form of mind control, essentially turning them into zombies. Gum-chewing, mindless zombies. But then of course there's a twist, because nothing is really what it seems to be at first. It's really hard to have NITPICK POINTS regarding a Looney Tunes cartoon, not only because they (eventually) did address the goofs that I noticed - they're still mistakes, but at least they acknowledged them, as they were necessary to drive the plot forward. 

Really, a lot happens here, they kept this one moving FAST and packed a lot into 90 minutes, even loose parodies of the films "Independence Day" and "Armageddon". I'm betting that they might have wanted to use the title "Farmageddon" here, if it hadn't already been used by that Shaun the Sheep movie. It just feels fairly disjointed at times because it's trying to be both a classic toon and a more modern toon at the same time. I don't think you can please everyone that way, satisfying both the older animation fans while still attracting a younger crowd to the same characters. 

Directed by Peter Browngardt

Also starring the voices of Eric Bauza (last heard in "The Super Mario Bros. Movie"), Candi Milo (last heard in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Peter MacNicol (last seen in "Film Geek"), Fred Tatasciore (last heard in "Trolls Band Together"), Laraine Newman (last seen in "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not"), Wayne Knight (last heard in "GOAT"), Ruth Clampett, Andrew Kishino (last heard in "The Monkey King"), Kimberly Brooks (last heard in "Spies in Disguise"), Keith Ferguson (last heard in "Chuck"), Carlos Alazraqui (last heard in "Free Birds"), Peter Browngardt, Nick Simotas

RATING: 6 out of 10 sets of wind-up novelty teeth

Smurfs (2025)

Year 18, Day 256 - 9/13/26 - Movie #5,430

BEFORE: I had to make a decision today - to Smurf or not to Smurf? I passed on watching this film last year because I noticed it linked to a few different Christmas films, so I figured it COULD be handy some December because then I could watch five Christmas films instead of four, or three instead of two, just by dropping this one in-between. I don't think there's anything Christmas-ey about this film, though, it would be used there JUST for the linkage. But it also fits HERE, thematically as well as link-wise, while I'm burning off as many animated films as I can. 

The same problem still exists, though - do I watch it now or do I save it for Christmas? Well, to figure it out I need to work out my path to Thanksgiving and Christmas, even though it's only September, it's time. It might even be too late - but I did it, and I counted the slots. Well, last year I had like 7 Christmas films, but this year I don't have a path to so many. The December chain depends on the November chain, which depends on the October chain. I found two paths in the right number of steps to Christmas movies, but to just ONE movie with each path. So there may only be ONE Christmas movie this year, c'est la vie. The more important news is that neither path needs the "Smurfs" film, so I can watch it here and get rid of it. 

New films are being added to my watchlist each month, though - so when I get to November maybe I'll look for some new links, maybe I can change things up then and work in a couple more Christmas films. But for now I just needed to know that there IS at least one path to Christmas that exists, and it doesn't use the "Smurfs" movie.

This will be the THIRD film in the last week that I worked at a screening of, in addition to "Boy Kills World" and "GOAT". "Smurfs" was a blue-carpet event for us back in July of last year. Not too many celebrities showed up, I did see John Goodman show up - he posed for photos with people dressed as giant Smurfs for about 30 seconds, then got back in a car and drove off. Well, that told me all I needed to know about the movie. Hey, he showed up at least. 

Nick Kroll carries over from "GOAT". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Smurfs 2" (Movie #2,420)

THE PLOT: When Papa Smurf is taken by evil wizards Razamel and Gargamel, Smurfette leads the Smurfs on a mission to the real world to save him. 

AFTER: Lord help me, this was pretty terrible, even taking into consideration that's it's made for kids. Certainly no adult (besides me) would even waste any of their time watching this, right? I mean, it's just nonsense, even taking into consideration that it's an animated fantasy film, and those aren't expected to make sense. As long as there's a good story, though, it can be whatever it wants to be, however this is NOT a good story, just nonsense. 

This is essentially a reboot of the Smurfs movie franchise, because it ignores everything that ever happened before in a "Smurfs" movie and starts from scratch, with a new origin story that claims that Smurfs were created to be the guardians of "good" in the universe, whatever that means. "Good" is subjective, right? I mean, anything that one person thinks is "good" could be considered "bad" by the next person. Unless you're talking about morally good vs. evil, and even that can get subjective sometimes. Only a Sith deals in absolutes, or so I once heard. 

There are still Smurf characters that are defined by particular strengths or characteristics, like Brainy Smurf or Grouchy Smurf or Vanity Smurf - I'm not sure this concept is great for kids, because shouldn't we be teaching them they can be or do a lot of different things, that they don't have to be defined by one characteristic or one profession or one bad habit even? Why don't we have Alcoholic Smurf or Heroin Smurf or Deadbeat Smurf? This does seem in line with the previous movies so I guess even with a reboot, the writers are just going to fall back on the bad writing crutches of the past...

But the new part here is an evil Council of Wizards, and four magic books, one of which is called Jaunty Grimoire and it's a book with a face and arms and legs and man, is that creepy. But it's hidden in Smurf Village and it might explain why Gargamel was always trying to get rid of the Smurfs, because he wanted that book? Anyway there are apparently FOUR magic books in total, and three are owned by evil wizards on the Council, and Gargamel's near-identical brother (very similar to Dru from "Despicable Me 3") is named Razamel and he apparently sent Gargamel to get the book from the Smurfs years ago but I guess Gargamel kept failing or forgetting to get the book? It's all very unclear, after introducing these new story elements so late in the game.

Meanwhile, No Name Smurf is a Smurf without a purpose - he hasn't found his "thing" to do yet, much like a kid who has not decided what they want to be when they grow up, I suppose. Hey, it takes longer for some people than for others. I don't have any issue with No Name Smurf, because we could all have an existential crises if we don't have a job or a hobby or at least a "thing" to do. Without a "thing", what are we? No-thing. I feel you, No Name. Secretly he'd love to be Magic Smurf, but apparently that's not an option. Not yet, anyway. But at some point he finds he can open portals to other worlds, other dimensions, so OK, yeah, Magic Smurf, or at least Multiverse Smurf - however, opening portals also brings the Smurfs to the attention of Razamel, it reveals their location to him. 

Razamel appears in Smurf Village and kidnaps Papa Smurf, leading the other Smurfs to cross dimensions to get to...umm, ours? Wait, we have evil wizards on OUR Earth? That's a bit weird. Once we get into multiverse stuff, why can't it be a universe that's mostly like ours, only it also has evil wizards and magic? The Smurfs go to Paris, for some reason, looking for Papa Smurf's brother, Ken. Ken? Why isn't he Uncle Smurf, if he's Papa Smurf's brother? I told you nothing makes sense here. The Smurfs try to go to Razamel's castle but instead get bounced over to the Australian Outback, where there is a portal convergence or something, and a group of hairy creatures called Snooterpoots. This is only going to get worse before it gets better, isn't it? 

Razamel then captures the rest of the Smurfs, almost, and the two that are left, No Name and Smurfette then have to travel by car with Mama Poot from Australia to Munich. Umm, see the problem? Just me? Meanwhile, Papa Smurf reveals the existence of ANOTHER brother, Ron, who was once the best, bravest Smurf of all but got sucked into a vortex, well that's it, he disappeared forever 100 years ago and there's no way to return, I mean it's not like we expect him to turn up again later in this movie or anything like that, right? 

This is the "Avengers: Infinity War" of Smurfs movies - when in doubt, just add another villain (or a second version of the same villain) and then keep adding heroes, keep adding heroes, keep adding heroes. More is always better, right? Then have a series of magical objects that the villain wants to collect, make them different colors so the audience can tell them apart, and make sure that any heroes you kill or disintegrate or suck into a vortex can be easily brought back. 

By the end, it's just a giant chase scene, through various dimensions that are animated in different styles, and it becomes a one-gag sequence - "I have the book!" "Wait, now I have the book" and so on and so on. A chase scenes is a story crutch. Collecting a number of magic objects is a story crutch. Dimension hopping or entering the multi-verse is a story crutch. But this is what Marvel has been relying on for the past few years - which is what makes me NOT look forward to "Avengers: Doomsday", not at all.

Ugh, I made it, that was only a 90-minute film but it felt like forever, it was agonizing. Thank God I never need to watch it ever again. 

Directed by Chris Miller (director of "Shrek the Third")

Also starring the voices of John Goodman (last seen in "Love the Coopers"), Rihanna (last seen in "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets"), James Corden (last seen in "I Am: Celine Dion"), Nick Offerman (last seen in "Pamela: A Love Story"), JP Karliak (last heard in "Batman: The Killing Joke"), Dan Levy (last seen in "Haunted Mansion" (2023)), Amy Sedaris (last seen in "Save Yourselves!"), Natasha Lyonne (last heard in "The Bad Guys 2"), Sandra Oh (last seen in "Big Fat Liar"), Jimmy Kimmel (last seen in "Marty, Life Is Short"), Kurt Russell (ditto), Octavia Spencer (last seen in "Small Town Saturday Night"), Hannah Waddingham (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"), Alex Winter (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Maya Erskine (last seen in "DC League of Super-Pets"), Billie Lourd (last seen in "The Last Showgirl"), Xolo Mariduena (last seen in "Blue Beetle"), Chris Miller (last heard in "Penguins of Madagascar"), Rachel Butera, Conrad Vernon (last heard in "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish"), Tyler Peterson, Marshmello, Chris Prynoski, Spencer X, Hugo Miller, Ryan Naylor (last heard in "Trolls Band Together"), Jonny Manganello, DJ Snake, Lea Elui, Yuuki Luna, Daisuke Tsuji (last seen in "The Rip"), Keisuke Hoashi (last seen in "C'mon C'mon")

RATING: 3 out of 10 sound effects from, you guessed it, Sound Effects Smurf

GOAT

Year 18, Day 255 - 9/12/26 - Movie #5,429

BEFORE: We've got the "After School Special" week coming up later in the month, this is a series of screenings arranged by my boss, the theater manager, that feature work from alumni of the college, and this year we've got "Anora" and "K-Pop Demon Hunters" screening, I may pop in to see one or both of those, but, you know, I can also watch them at home. But in April of this year we also had a special screening of "GOAT", arranged by the school's animation department, because Adam Rosette, one of the directors, is also an alumnus. I had a chance to talk to him before the screening, you know, let him know I produced a couple of features myself, and he seemed like a pretty cool guy. I wasn't able to watch the film that day, but I made a mental note to get to it, down the road, when I could. 

The voice of Eduardo Franco carries over from "Hoppers". And we're going to send an increasingly rare Birthday SHOUT-out to Jennifer Hudson, born on 9/12/1981.

THE PLOT: A small goat with big dreams gets a once-in-a-lifetime shot to join the pros and play roarball, a high-intensity, co-ed, full contact sport dominated by the fastest, fiercest animals in the world. 

AFTER: This is a surprisingly not-terrible film about animals playing basketball - sorry, ROAR-ball in this world where animals can all talk and have human-like personalities and wear human-like clothing and play human-like sports. This feels a bit like an off-shoot of the "Zootopia" world, except that just can't be, because one film is owned by Disney and the other is owned by Sony, and well, you see how that worked out for Spider-Man movies, most of the Sony ones ("Venom", "Morbius", "Madame Web") have to take place in a different universe for legal and copyright reasons. So that means that there is ALSO a multiverse for animal-based CGI movies, and different cities across that multiverse where animals live together in harmony, or sometimes the opposite of that. 

But if there WERE sports in the Zootopia zoo-niverse, they might look something like this. Or who knows, maybe Disney wouldn't go this far with it, and they would all just play badminton or chess or something, no major-league sports with falling stalactites or lava floors or ice-based basketball courts that could shatter at any time if the right animal stomps their foot. The roar-ball here is VERY strategy oriented, based on the animals playing and what their environment is. There's definitely a home-field advantage if you're used to playing around vines or volcanic lava or an ice-sheet, and your opponent isn't. 

But still, it comes down to getting a ball through a hoop, or "basket" and still there are plays to memorize and there are fouls called (or not called) and three-pointers and all that. So come on, it's basketball, just with extras. And longtime Roarball star Jett Fillmore is the best player on her team, the Vineland Thorns. But she's getting older and physically that means she's not playing as good as she used to - the simple solution would be to get her some teammates who could also play well, but I guess that never occurred to the owner of the team. Or maybe there's no draft in roarball, no college roarball to train players who want to work their way up to the majors, or anything like that. The animal world is a lot more loosey-goosey, I guess, and sometimes with actual gooses. 

You just KNOW there was a story meeting about what other animals can play basketball, at least theoretically. So the thorns also have an ostrich (fast runner), a giraffe (very tall, obvi), a rhino (big, can block and obviously take a hit) and a Komodo dragon (umm, crazy like Dennis Rodman?). I'm guessing a lot of thought went into picking those animals and thinking about how they might play basketball differently. The other teams in the league have horses, gorillas, even polar bears, and you know, different plays and different strategies for different animals, I guess. There's not really a lot of time here to get into all of the nuts and bolts of it, but it's probably a weird, wild, Animal Kingdom world of sports. One thing is for sure, all of these animals are "Bigs", and they don't let "Smalls" into roarball. 

Well, along comes Will Harris, a goat, who wants to change all of that - he's been a roarball fan since he was a kid (two meanings) and thinks that if he works hard enough, practices every day, and finds a way to go viral against all conceivable odds, he might have a shot. Sure enough, somebody tapes a pick-up game between him and Mane Attraction, a Big horse who's on another team but is in town to play the Thorns. Will can't possibly beat Mane, but just the fact that he TRIED is a major deal, and a video does go viral, and it's seen by the Thorns' team owner, who needs a sixth player on her team, because with only five, if any animal should get injured, there's nobody to sub in, so that's an automatic forfeit. You'd think there would be rules against leaving that sixth spot open, but I guess not. Flo Everson signs Will as the sixth player, and keeps "guaranteeing" that he'll play the next game, but Jett uses her influence to make sure that the coach never puts him in. So he's just a bench-warmer, he's still on the team, right? And people keep tuning in to see what will happen when he finally gets put in a game (he'll probably get squished, but you know, some fans want to see that happen, too.)

The other team members don't treat Will well at first, either, but when a player DOES get injured, Will finally gets a shot at playing real roarball, and since he actually studied and remembers the plays, unlike the others, they go on to win that game. Go figure. But even after that, and even after Jett and Will have one of those "outside the stadium, over the lights, through the trees, bounce at halfcourt, nothing but net" games of HORSE that were made famous in McDonald's commercials (featuring Michael Jordan and Larry Bird, I think) Jett still doesn't want to let Will play often (but she knows he can sink a basketball from a distance, that might be important later on in the film...).

Then the film works in a twist similar to one seen in the "Major League" film - the owner actually WANTS the team to lose so she can move it to another city, sell it and cash out. Well, this would explain why she signed a small goat. This makes Jett more determined than ever to have a winning season before she (and the rest of the team) are released if they won't move. So Jett goes out and wins the next game practically by herself, her team moves on to the playoffs but the team members don't want to play on her team any more. What is a team without it's players, and isn't a team only as strong as its weakest link. Jett finally has to learn how to pass the ball, which is hard for her, being the team superstar at all. But it's a great message for the kids, that one person can't succeed without a team behind them, or even side-by-side. 

All the Thorns show some kind of personal growth, too - the ostrich learns to take her head out of the sand and be proud, the giraffe learns it's OK to play for ten teams in ten years, the rhino learns that defending his teammates is also an important role to play, and the Komodo dragon learns to play poker against the right people to become a team owner himself. 

There is a live-action analog to the story of a smaller player succeeding in a major-league situation - one was a prank, that was covered in the movie "The Saint of Second Chances", when Bill Veeck, manager of the St. Louis Browns, put a little person, Eddie Gaedel, in to bat for the Browns, with a very small strike zone. The other is NBA player Spud Webb, who at 5 foot 7 was one of the shortest players in NBA history. Yet he won the 1986 Slam Dunk Contest at the All-Star event. Some people said he would never be drafted into the NBA, but he proved them all wrong, and he played his own game, his way, and I think that's at least some of the inspiration for the goat character here. And I'm glad this isn't just a one-joke film, playing off the double meaning of "GOAT". 

Directed by Tyree Dillyhay & Adam Rosette

Also starring the voices of Caleb McLaughlin (last seen in "Concrete Cowboy"), Gabrielle Union (last seen in "Riff Raff"), Stephen Curry, Aaron Pierre, Nicola Coughlan (last seen in "Barbie"), David Harbour (last seen in "A Working Man"), Nick Kroll (last seen in "Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!"), Patton Oswalt (ditto), Jenifer Lewis (last heard in "Spellbound"), Jelly Roll, Jennifer Hudson (last seen in "Adam Sandler: Funny Guy"), Sherry Cola (last seen in "Good Fortune"), Andrew Santino (last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), Bobby Lee (last seen in "Borderlands"), Wayne Knight (last seen in "Beyond 'JFK': The Question of Conspiracy"), Ayesha Curry (last seen in "Irish Wish"), Savannah Van Van McConneaughey, Rayaan Kamal Khan, Adam Pally (last seen in "A.C.O.D."), Angel Reese (last seen in "A House of Dynamite"), Joe La Puma, Erin Andrews (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Andre Iguodala, A'ja Wilson (last seen in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Mike Breen, Kevin Love, Dwyane Wade (last seen in "Ride Along 2"), Tarek Bishara (last seen in "The Tale"), Aaron Buchsbaum, Michelle Cabalu, Luke Cimity, Libby Thomas Dickey (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation"), Tyree Dillihay, Addison Foote, Liam Knight (last heard in "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part"), Angelo Kouyate, Michelle Raimo, Aaron LaPlante (last heard in "Fixed"), Derek Mio (last heard in "The Emoji Movie"), Cassius Peyton, Kingston Peyton, Teddy Riley, Lashana Rodriguez (last heard in "Turbo"), Adam Rosette, David Schulenburg, Jessica Schulte (last seen in "Wicker Park"), Melissa Sturm (last heard in "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish")

RATING: 6 out of 10 baby gerbils

Hoppers

Year 18, Day 253 - 9/10/26 - Movie #5,428

BEFORE: I'm going to count this one as a second Thursday movie, then skip over to Saturday, because Friday is the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and it doesn't feel appropriate somehow for me to watch a silly animated movie for kids, a bit disrespectful somehow. I mean, life goes on but I also have to live with myself and how I act, it's all semantics maybe but I choose not to count that as a day for watching silly movies, so I just started this film early on Thursday night - I'm fudging the date, really, but I do what I feel I have to do to justify my actions. Or I justify my actions by the way they make me feel, whatever. 

Ego Nwodim carries over from "Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile". When I'm linking these animated films, there's kind of a line that I don't go past, which concerns "Additional voices". If a person is listed in the cast under this credit, I usually don't even mention them, even if that's a famous person that I'm aware of, for the sake of the chain I need to be 100% sure that someone voiced a character in that film, and that means a NAMED character. If someone just did crowd work or voiced a bystander, I don't feel comfortable using them as a link - God knows, it would be easier if I did, because then I could just link all the animated films using Carlos Alazraqui and Laraine Newman as links, they're credited in nearly every film. But nope, named characters only for links, because I'm not letting the chain break now, after all this time. 

THE PLOT: A 19-year-old animal lover uses technology that places her consciousness into a robotic beaver to uncover mysteries within the animal world beyond her imagination. 

AFTER: Back on February 28, I worked at the theater where the NY International Children's Film Festival was taking place, and on Festival Day 1, the last film of the day was "Hoppers". It was scheduled for the big theater, 470-plus seats, and we had a line for "Hoppers" that went all the way down the block. Now, the film was scheduled to open in theaters about a week later, but that made this an exclusive sort of preview screening, so yeah, the place was packed. I was managing the line outside and making sure that only about 20 or so people got in at a time so the ticket-scanners would not be overwhelmed. Also, I had to keep a good count to know when to stop seating people, when we're close to capacity we at least need to slow down a bit and/or count the number of empty seats still available, so we don't let in too many people and then be forced to kick a few people out. It's better to not let them in in the first place if there's no seats for them, sure, they'll be disappointed but getting inside and THEN finding out there's no place to sit, and getting sent home, well that would feel much worse, especially to a kid. But attendance capped out at just over 400, which was great, nobody had to be denied access or sent back out and I think everyone had a great time. What a great film to screen on Day 1 of the festival, and on a Saturday night, no less!  So yeah, I had to put "Hoppers" on my list as soon as it was screening on Disney Plus, because I remembered how many people showed up for that screening!

I did kind of make one mistake, I noticed there were people sitting inside the lobby who had come out of the third screening and just sat down on some ottomans in the lobby, after a few minutes I realized they were waiting for "Hoppers" to start seating, but they were unaware that a line had been building up outside - now I should have brought this to the attention of the festival hosts, but instead I approached the family and told them they would have to get in line for "Hoppers", they couldn't just hang around in the lobby waiting for the next show, and they got a little mad at ME for telling them they had to join the line outside, or at least one of them did, but I was trying to be fair to everyone, as I wasn't yet sure if the screening was going to be at capacity or even over-capacity. "Why didn't anyone tell us sooner?" the mom asked me. I said I didn't know, but since the line outside was already halfway down the block, they should send someone to stand in it sooner rather than later, as I couldn't just seat them from the lobby, this was a new show with a separate admission and they had to wait in the line and have their tickets for "Hoppers" scanned separately. The festival host asked me why I kicked that family out of the lobby, and I had to explain that they were waiting in the wrong place, they were not made aware of the line forming outside. Oh, well, that's what I get for trying to be fair - it's really each guest's responsibility to figure out where to wait for the next show, or to ask if they're not sure. 

Anyway, this is a fine enough CGI Pixar film about the importance of saving wildlife and natural habitats for animals, while at the same time demonstrating that doing this is a very complicated thing, as we humans don't necessarily think the way that animals do. Why do they settle in THIS place but not THAT place, why do they migrate? We think we know why beavers build dams, for example, but do we really understand the whole story? And then there's that complicated cycle where the animals hunt and kill each other, that whole system is very complex, too - sure we had Elton John singing about "The Circle of Life" in "The Lion King", but wasn't that just a bit simplistic and glorified? I mean, we're talking about death and eating each other, but this is not usually a preferred topic in a kiddie movie. 

"Hoppers" gets into some of that, however it's also hampered by the limitations of the form - we know that animals can't talk, at least with language, but for the purposes of an animated film, that's the crutch that filmmakers have to lean on. The general rule of animation is that animals can all somehow talk to each other, but animals can't talk to humans and humans can't talk to animals, not unless some form of magic or mind-melding or body-swapping is involved. Like "Family Switch" last year, where the baby and the dog swapped souls or whatever, and they just acted like each other. Neither one could talk, so it somehow worked out, and we're left wondering whether an animal could talk if it body-swapped with an adult human, or would the animal be able to talk in the human's body? I mean, it's impossible so there's no reason to even speculate about it, right? 

Not so fast, here comes "Hoppers" saying "it's OK, we've got this." Here Mabel, a young college student and environmental activist, wants to prevent the town Mayor from building a new elevated highway right where a beaver dam currently is, and he found a way to get rid of the animals, which umm, can't be good. The best plan she can come up with to stop is to try and lure a beaver back to the dam, because if one is actively living there, then the highway can't be built. 

Mabel learns that her college professor has found a way to put someone's mind into a robot animal, such as a stork or a beaver, and they've been sending these drone animals out into the wild at night to study animal groups, this has been done over the years by documentary filmmakers to get undercover footage of animals for nature series, they find a way to disguise the camera to look like an animal, so the camera can be sent in very close. This takes things that big step further, if you could mind-control a robot animal, what could you learn about the animal's culture?  Mabel then projects her consciousness into a robot beaver and goes looking for another one, to convince it to move into the old dam and start doing whatever it is beavers do there. I know, I know, since she looks like a beaver why not just take up residence HERSELF in the dam, and that would prevent the highway from being built? Well, first of all then the movie would be OVER, but also she doesn't know the first thing about dam-building, or even swimming, or even acting like a beaver would, so the jig would be up. Also there's some kind of time limit for how long somebody's brain can be in the robot body before needing to return. 

Mabel learns more about the animals' culture than she ever thought she could, she meets King George, who is also a beaver, and he runs daily exercise sessions for all the forest animals. (Very conveniently, when Mabel is in the robot beaver body, she can talk to animals and she can also understand them. It's a huge NITPICK POINT, sure, but see above, we're limited here by the nature of the storytelling format.)  King George explains that nobody wants to live near that dam any more, it's way too loud, so Mabel deduces that the mayor somehow installed speakers that emit a noise that only animals can here, and it's been keeping them away, so he can build his damn highway. The animals have all kinds of rules about who can eat whom, like whenever, but they're also very trusting, they can't believe that humans could be as evil as they are, and knowingly use technology to drive animals off a piece of land. Huh, the forest animals are just lucky that the humans didn't hunt them all down or just poison them all to clear that acre. 

If you want, you can view this highway as a metaphor, for a giant arch or a government building or a ballroom, whatever you choose. Casting Jon Hamm as the Mayor is certainly in line with making a Trump-like character who's more focused on, say, re-election and polls than say, the environment or doing what's morally right. It's not a bit leap here, not at all. And of course, the futility of fighting City Hall or the White House or the Supreme Court when you're just one person who wants to save a dam or some wetlands or a trapped whale. You may know what the right thing is, but getting society to let you DO that is a whole different problem. It doesn't help if you're 19 years old and prone to fits of rage when things don't go your way. 

Mabel's heart is in the right place, but she's very anti-authority, so when she finds out that George is only king of the mammals, and there's also a king of the birds, a queen of the insects and a queen of fish, and before taking any action there must be a council meeting of all the animal leaders, well, that's a lot of authority in the animal kingdom for her to butt heads with. So, it does NOT go well and she ends up alienating more animals then she convinces, putting her in the unique position of having to SAVE Mayor Jerry when the other animal leaders put out a fatwa on him. They send a squad of geese (or ducks?) to lift a great white shark out of the ocean to drop into his car. And I wonder now if somebody at Pixar had to figure out how many ducks it would take to pick up and carry a great white shark, if that's even possible. 

I could list a LOT more N.P.'s, but that would probably take me all night, and I just have to move on. The technology here of course is fantasy-based, we don't have brain-switching technology from human to human, and we can't put a human consciousness into a robot, at least not yet. But I think we can control a robot with a human mind, or at least that seems more achievable, but again, for the purposes of an animated film with logistical limitations, the storytellers here needed to rely on imaginary tech that may never, ever become real. 

There's a mid-film twist, of course, a reversal in Act 4 is pretty much par for the course, leading to Act 5, where "all hope seems lost". The insect ruler and the reptile queen and the fish queen force the crazy inventors to reverse-engineer the body-switching device, so the insect king can be inside a robot Mayor Jerry and hold a rally out in a forest clearing so that all of the "human king's" followers can attend the rally and get "squished" by electronic noise. Again, any resemblance to a Trump rally here is probably very accidental and also, you know, right on the money. I think maybe that some inspiration here might have come from Robert Kennedy Jr., remember when he had that worm living in his brain because he ate some raw meat or something? We used to make jokes about how if the worm had taken over his brain and was somehow controlling him, it WOULD explain some of his weirdest behavior over the years. So here there's a caterpillar's brain inside the robot Mayor, and sure, he acts erratically and very non-human at times. In other words, he's a Republican for sure. 

Throw in a dumpster-fire of a rally that turns into a for-real forest wildfire, and parts of this are as timely as today's headlines, while also having a very crazy storyline that's possibly four times as complicated as it needs to be. But it's got an environmental message that kids can take to heart, and I think we maybe need a lot more movies like that so the next generation can have a shot at fixing the planet that we all collectively have broken over the last few decades. So I'm willing to let a bunch of things slide tonight. 

I mean, it could have been worse - the old Grand Theft Auto video-games had a fake radio ad for an event in Liberty City called "Saturday Night Beaver", where you could go to the club and watch forest rodents disco-dance and dam-build. A kids movie with that name would have been much, much worse, although I'm thinking that the name was used at some point over the years as the title of a porn parody. I could be wrong, though.

Directed by Daniel Chong

Also starring the voices of Piper Curda, Bobby Moynihan (last seen in "You're Cordially Invited"), Jon Hamm (last seen in "Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie"), Kathy Najimy (last seen in "Dumplin'"), Dave Franco (last seen in "Unfinished Business"), Eduardo Franco (last seen in "Queenpins"), Aparna Nancherla (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Tom Law, Sam Richardson (last heard in "Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken"), Melissa Villasenor (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (last seen in "Lying and Stealing"), Steve Purcell (last heard in "Inside Out 2"), Nichole Sakura (last seen in "Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain"), Meryl Streep (last seen in "Marty, Life Is Short"), Karen Huie, Lila Liu, Eman Abdul-Razzak, Vanessa Bayer (last seen in "Freakier Friday"), Joe Spano (last seen in "Hart's War"),

RATING: 6 out of 10 "chopped logs" emojis