REVIEW: Otto is a Rhino

Look, I said I was gonna do it, and by God I'm a man of my word. This is the end; the final entry from Crone Film that I'm subjecting myself to. I thought it would be good for a laugh at first, watching Freddy Frogface and Ivan the Incredible, but I think it's safe to say that I've simply said all I can say about these films. This is the final nail in the coffin; my obsession with Crone Film ends with Otto is a Rhino (yes, I know what the poster says, but the title card at the beginning of the movie says Otto is a Rhino, so there). Like the other films in this cracked-out trilogy, this is based on a Danish children's book, only it's been stretched out to fill just over an hour runtime. Again, I'm not sure if it's just a poor adaptation or if the books these films are based off of are equally as intolerable, but I'm also not sure it matters. Otto is a Rhino is an outright chore to get through, and I wouldn't expect anything but at this point.

The plot involves the same gross, ugly kid that appears in every one of these movies. Only this time, he finds a magic pencil that he uses to make a giant, yellow rhino. That's about the entire plot in a nutshell; a rhino appears in an apartment building and the entire rest of the movie is simply characters reacting to this oddball occurrence. There's no adventure or fantasy or anything at all engaging, just a bunch of unlikeable characters attempting to benefit from a sentient being born from someone's wall. "Let's bring a rhino to life" is the farthest this story wishes to experiment with the idea of a magic pencil that can make anything real, and I'm not sure if we're better off or not for that lack of imagination.

Really, "lack of imagination" sums up the entire film. There's no amount of whimsy or wonder like one might expect from a plot like this. The titular rhino isn't anyone's friend; it's a big, gormless animal with all the situational awareness of a houseplant. You look at all the other children's films where our kid protagonist makes a fantastical friend, films like The Iron Giant and Pete's Dragon, and you can get a sense of all the hard work that went into making the Giant and Elliot into actual characters rather than just plot points. Here, Otto the Rhino is just a prop for our host of equally dim characters to react to. It's not even made clear that he understands who the children are or how they brought him to life. It's Frosty the Snowman if the titular character was brought to life with a sub-zero IQ; we can't feel any sympathy for something that displays all the sentience and personality of a bootleg Chia Pet. Otto doesn't even get into any comic hijinks. He's tremendously docile for a rhino, content to just stand in one place and eat the drapes. It's the cinematic equivalent of an imaginary friend who does nothing but teach children how to do their taxes.

The human characters aren't much better, each one displaying a dizzying single personality trait. The cowardly kid is scared. His father is a jerk. The firemen are all idiots. It's not like I was expecting Alan Moore's Watchmen or anything, it's a children's film adapted from a children's picture book. It's okay to have flat or static characters, as long as they have something interesting to do, and that's where this film really shoots itself in the foot. They present a world of literally endless possibilities, where anything you can draw can come to life, and decide to waste that potential trying to get a rhinoceros out of an apartment building. Even that barebones description sounds too imaginative and exciting for this movie, considering most of the conflict revolves around the success of an independently-run café.

Let's pretend this isn't a problem; say this is meant for actual toddlers with the attention spans of goldfish. Sometimes a children's book doesn't really need to have a point or message, so long as it gives young kids something novel and interesting to latch onto that will get them interested in reading. Curious George is a series built entirely around the concept of a monkey being a monkey in different places, we don't always need to inspire an epiphany in every four year old just before nap time. But if this is truly meant to be something mom and dad can throw on for an hour of peace while Junior sits in the playpen, why is it so all-around unpleasant? Why does every character have beady little eyes and bulging Gary Busey teeth? Why are there references to casual sex, binge-drinking, and polygamy? It's a children's film where the only people who are going to get anything out of it are those who imbibe copious amounts of mind-altering substances beforehand. Believe me, for as much as I'm bashing this abomination, I can't imagine it's anything but a rollicking good time if you and your friends find yourselves half in the bag (especially if there are any animation students present).

It's about now that I wonder if there's even any point in giving my final thoughts on Otto is a Rhino. Like I'm going to actually recommend this to anyone but drunk or stoned twenty-somethings who have nothing better to do. Look, I'll be blunt; if you're a parent, give your child something better than Otto the Rhino. When you find yourself in a position to decide what entertainment your child gets exposed to, take care enough to give them something better than this. Sure, sometimes you really just need them to sit in front of the TV and shut up for a few minutes so you can hyperventilate into a paper bag (and maybe scarf down some uneaten mac and cheese) without being hounded. Believe me, I get it. But it can't really be understated how much of an impact the media we consume has on the people we end up becoming, especially as children. I can't even compare Otto is a Rhino to something like McDonald's, that's how unsubstantial it is as a piece of children's content. If you make the decision to fill your child's head with garbage like this, you're potentially depriving them of extraordinary parts of our culture. Films can change our lives, and it's your responsibility as a parent to make sure that it's for the better. Rather than... whatever the hell this is.

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REVIEW: Help! I'm a Fish! (A Fish Tale)

Let's talk low-profile animation. Movies that are decidedly B-listers (at best) when compared to your usual Disney/Dreamworks moneymakers, assuming they even make it to theaters in the first place. The kind of movies you always see taking up space in the kids section of the bargain DVD rack, collecting dust until some nearsighted-but-well-meaning relative picks it up as a last minute birthday gift. These kinds of movies are such a fascinating mixed-bag in terms of both quality and content, especially when you factor in foreign films. Little cultural differences and regional influences in art direction can inform the overall look and feel of a film, running the gamut from something like The Little Prince to something like Ivan the Incredible. And speaking of Ivan the Incredible, today's obscure animated feature comes to us from the country of Denmark; regardless of what some of the marketing may imply, Help! I'm a Fish proves that Danish animation doesn't necessarily have to be a nightmarishly incoherent CGI fever-dream.

The story follows a rambunctious boy named Fly (Jeff Pace), his little sister, Stella (Michelle Westerson), and their brilliant-but-stuffy cousin, Chuck (Aaron Paul). After sneaking out to go fishing, the kids stumble upon the lair of an eccentric marine biologist (Terry Jones) who has developed a formula that turns humans into sea creatures. After Stella is accidentally transformed into a starfish and lost beneath the waves, it's up to Fly and Chuck to drink the potion and rescue her themselves. Fortunately for them, the professor also developed an antidote, which falls into the fins of a common pilot fish. After imbibing some of the potion, the fish (voiced by the late Alan Rickman) develops a humanlike intellect. Now calling himself Joe, he seeks to establish an deep-sea society of intelligent, talking fish (of which he is the unquestioned ruler). With only 48 hours until their change becomes permanent, it's up to the kids to rescue Stella, get the antidote away from Joe, and return to their human selves before it's too late.

On the surface, Help! I'm a Fish is fine enough. The voice acting is quite solid for an English dub and the delightfully-dated soundtrack of bouncy Scandanavian-style pop is loads of fun. It's got a pleasing visual style and a host of memorable character designs, in addition to being legitimately very well-animated for what it is. For a kids' movie about a magical science potion that turns people into fish, the script is surprisingly tight, setting up and foreshadowing important plot elements ahead of time so that everything flows in a sensible, coherent way. Functionally-speaking, it's a well-made movie, but that's not what made Help! I'm a Fish stand out to me. The thing that really struck me as interesting was just how dark and dramatic this film was willing to get.

The first thing worth mentioning is the villain, Joe. The film establishes a surprisingly mature metaphor for dictatorships; he who controls knowledge controls the populace. Joe is the keeper of the "magic potion", in addition to being the smartest thing under the sea. He controls who is worthy of the gift of sentience, as well as how smart they're allowed to get. He grants his followers enough mental capacity to speak and follow orders, but purposely keeps them duller than himself so they have no other option but to implicitly believe everything he says. While the metaphor is a little on-the-nose in this case, it's still a wildly original angle for a movie like this to pursue, given how the rest of the plot unfolds.

It's also worth noting how little the film shies away from the dramatic reality of our protagonists' situation. The ticking clock element is in full effect here, and the result is surprisingly heavy. The prospect of being forced to live out ones remaining years as a jellyfish is a worrying prospect, and the level of optimism our protagonists show deteriorates more and more as the film goes on. It may sound as though I'm hyperbolizing a bit here, but the film really does get downright dreary as it approaches the final act. There's also a surprising amount of death; there's no "fish are friends, not food" sentiment to be found here, as the shark Joe recruits as his enforcer (David Bateson) casually eats a number of characters without remorse. Usually these "tough but dopey henchman" type characters end up joining forces with the heroes in the end (typically after being mistreated time and time again by the primary antagonist), but that isn't the case here. The shark is, by all accounts, unapologetically malevolent and aggressive, taking extreme pleasure in chowing down on whatever unfortunate Joe allows him to. This is a movie about three children trapped in a fledgling dictatorship where everyone in charge wants to murder them. And it's called Help! I'm a Fish. Grim as that is, I haven't even touched on the climax yet.

Without spoiling anything, let me say this; the climax to this film is pure nightmare fuel. The rest of the movie was a tad more dramatic than I expected, but it still felt like a kids' movie. A little heavier than something like Frozen, sure, but still a kids' movie. The climax is typically where all the dramatic tension in a film comes to a head, but this movie has a tonal curve like a brick wall, veering into Cronenberg-esque body-horror at one point. If the final confrontation with Joe doesn't leave little ones wetting their underoos, we're treated to a scene that commits so soundly to selling the tragedy that occurs that it almost comes off as hilarious in a really mean-spirited kind of way. Again, I don't want to spoil anything, but this ending really needs to be seen to be believed. I'm all for children's entertainment that dabbles in the more macabre side of things, but the climax of Help! I'm a Fish is the stuff that "Top 10 Most Disturbing Childhood Movie Moments" clickbait articles are made of.

Suffice to say, I don't think this is a movie I'll be forgetting anytime soon. It's well put-together, well animated, and goes to some surprisingly dour places given that it's a movie about kids turning into cutesy cartoon fish. While I wouldn't necessarily go as far as to call it a hidden gem, Help! I'm a Fish is certainly a curiosity that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys outsider animation. By all means, grab some friends, dim the lights, and crack some jokes about Jesse Pinkman playing an obese kid who turns into a jellyfish. It's all just build-up to the insane punchline that is the hilariously bleak and traumatic climax that's sure to satisfy anyone who's ever asked "how did they get away with that?"

Credit and thanks go to Sparky from the "Help! I'm a Fan" fansite for the majority of screengrabs used in this Review.

REVIEW: Ivan the Incredible

You thought I was kidding, didn't you? Back last year, when I sat through Freddy Frogface, I knew that this would have to be next. But Ivan the Incredible is not the sort of thing that one just rushes into. Like deciding to willfully submit to torture, it's the kind of thing that requires not only a fair amount of consideration, but a soundly broken spirit. This is not a film for the faint of heart; I've just seen it and I'm still trying my best to make sense of it. Before we begin, it's worth noting that, in the film's home country of Denmark, it goes by the title of Gummi T, which roughly translates to Jelly T. The "T", in this case, stands for "Tarzan". Believe it or not, this is a detail that is very much relevant to the plot.

The film opens by introducing us to the main character, a young boy named Ivan. He lives alone with his father, a man who seems to be struggling with severe mental issues. For whatever reason, he idolizes the literary character of Tarzan and, believing that he embodies all that a man should be, decides to raise his son to follow in the footsteps of the Lord of the Apes. Ivan, it turns out, is bad at everything. Not only is he a scrawny wimp who gets bullied every day at school, but he's also illiterate and appears to suffer from some form of schizophrenia. Often he sneaks away to an abandoned warehouse he has filled with anthropomorphic trash-sculptures he has conversations with, like a page out of John Wayne Gacy's private notebook. Still following? Because we haven't even gotten to the witch.

You see, a wandering witch has come to town, peddling bonafide miracles. This puts her in direct competition with Ivan's father, who has recently taken up a career as a Coach. Not for a sports team or a school, just in general. For a fee, he will coach people. It was around the time he forced Ivan to climb a tree in front of the whole town (angrily berating him when he inevitably fails) that I realized this film was actually painting a stark portrait of the toll that unchecked psychological issues can take on familial relationships. Feeling desperate, Ivan goes to the witch in search of a miracle that will make him the best at everything. She obliges, telling him that the magic potion she's concocted will allow him to be the absolute best at whatever he wants to do, but only for a day. However, she forgets the one ingredient that limits the potion to only work for one day, which really seems like the worst mistake anyone in her position could possibly make, given the circumstances of what she was messing with.

Ivan goes to school next day, wielding his newfound godlike abilities like a school shooter. He terrorizes and publicly humiliates everyone and anyone who once mocked or questioned him without discretion or subtlety; at this point, I'm a hundred percent certain that someone could pass this off as a character drama about the dangers of unchecked mental illness. Now that he's the best at everything, Ivan's dad decides to accredit his son's unholy powers to his superb coaching strategy (despite said strategy boiling down to verbal abuse and reminders to be like Tarzan). This nets Ivan and his father immense wealth and fame the world over, as this awful piece of human garbage continues to neglect and exploit the talent that his only son attained through literal black magic. Eventually, Ivan tires of being his dad's mealticket and suffers a violent outburst that I can only describe as reminiscent of both Chronicle and Carrie. He immediately feels guilty, however, and reconciles with his deadbeat dad just in time for the witch to force-feed him the final ingredient, dooming him to a life of mediocrity once more. Roll credits.

It's a trip, that's for sure. Often I felt entranced by what I was watching, despite how ungodly ugly the entire thing is. This is the height of sweatshop CGI, lifting several models wholesale out of Freddy Frogface. Everyone's got the same beady, dead little eyes and stringy hair; I've seen bowel movements with a more appealing aesthetic than this movie. The animation is stiff, the lipsync is off, and absolutely none of this matters because look at the plot which I just described to you. This is a movie that does not fail because of its look. This is a movie that fails because of its everything. Every conceivable aspect of this film is just offputting, I honestly don't know what could have resulted in this being made. I considered making a "there's something rotten in the state of Denmark" joke here, but this movie has pushed me to my limit as it is, and I'm not entirely sure I want to take that final step off the ledge.

Ivan the Incredible. What a concept. It seems like the low-hanging fruit, when discussing a movie like this, to describe it as feeling like a look inside the mind of a serial killer. Having watched this in its entirety, I need to cast aside all pretenses and say that this movie seriously feels like the product of a diseased mind. It's so surreal, so mean-spirited, so ugly in every single sense of the word. I don't know who would make something like this and I don't know who would unironically enjoy it. That said, I kind of love it. It's exactly that kind of terrible, like The Room or Hard Ticket to Hawaii, where it's just so baffling that it's the perfect thing to lose yourself in while heavily under the influence and (hopefully) surrounded by friends. In that regard, I cannot recommend it enough, but do understand what you're getting yourself into. When you hit play on Ivan the Incredible, you're in for a wild ride.

Check back next year, when I finally get around to reviewing Otto the Rhino.

REVIEW: Freddy Frogface

There are some things in this life that are inevitable. We are born, we live, we die. For me, one of those things was watching Freddy Frogface. Anyone who's followed my blog thus far knows that, at the end of each month, I watch something that I know is going to be absolutely terrible. It adds a little spice here and there while keeping things varied, ensuring that each month isn't just a few consecutive weeks of "here's this movie I watched for the first time, it was great". Over a year ago, when I was first starting this blog, this was the movie that inspired me to dedicate the last week of each month to a work of pure garbage. No one had heard of this movie, let alone actually watched it. Why would they? And yet there it sat, added to my Netflix queue out of morbid curiosity, taunting me. The review you are reading is quite literally a year in the making. At long last, the time has come and I have done the unthinkable. I have watched Freddy Frogface.

The plot. Good lord, what can I even say about the plot? This whole experience felt like a dream. Not a good dream, by any means, but not quite a nightmare either. Have you ever had one of those dreams that isn't fantastical, but is more just... off? Something that comes to you right before you wake up feeling clammy and gross, with bad morning breath and a crick in your neck? That is the kind of dream that Freddy Frogface is. Like most dreams, I'm forgetting more and more of it as the seconds slip past, so I'm going to do my absolute best to recount what I saw before the majority of this thing is gone from my mind forever.

Taking place somewhere vaguely European, the story follows a young boy named Victor. Victor is kind of a vindictive little punk who makes trouble for himself and those around him, so I honestly don't care so much that he's constantly bullied and beaten by what appears to be a mentally-handicapped young man at least twice Victor's age named Freddy. When the circus comes to town (advertising a talent show that anyone can enter), Victor gets the bright idea to put together an act that involves his dog, Sausage, basically playing fetch and doing flips. Now you're probably thinking that this sounds like a fairly cut-and-dry plot with little to no conflict. And you'd be right. Despite this, the movie is 84 nigh-unendurable minutes long. It's the plot of a twenty minute children's television cartoon stretched out to roughly an hour and a half and it works out about as well as you'd expect.

I'm not sure I can summarize in words how much of an unpleasant experience this movie was. Everything about it is ugly, inside and out. The character designs are nauseating; everyone has stringy hair or a snaggle-toothed grimace or dead, unfeeling eyes (or in the case of most of the cast, all of the above). The lip-sync is a joke, not that the dialog is all that inspired, and the whole thing is honestly quite mean-spirited. We don't have anyone to root for here. Victor is a charmless, spiteful little jerkass, his best friend is a doting whiner, and said friend's cousin is about as bland as a slice of whitebread floating in a puddle of tap water. Aside from that, the movie features a surprising amount of swearing, alcohol, child abuse, animal abuse, and things that would probably result in death (or, failing that, severe trauma). At one point, Victor tricks Freddy into getting stuck on the blade of a windmill several stories above the ground. He then leaves him there until a drunken blacksmith arrives and almost murders Freddy with his shotgun. It's just a wholly unpleasant experience for just about every reason imaginable.

What else can be said about Freddy Frogface? It's dreck. Confusing, nauseating, unlikable dreck. The only modicum of enjoyment to be gleaned from watching this thing comes in the form of the weird European attempts at English slang; hearing Freddy refer to people as "ass-bobs" and cowardly characters get called "chicken poops" is at the very least entertaining in an ironic, "I can't believe I'm actually watching this" sort of way. So now, I finally have my closure. I watched Freddy Frogface, it was absolutely repugnant, and now I never have to experience it ever again.

Check back next year when I finally get around to reviewing Ivan the Incredible.