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
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