The Little Prince

[Randall]

Well , there's this, of course...

http://spinoff.comicbookresources.com/2 ... d-release/

Apparently, it has already opened in Canada, after being released overseas first. But the US wide release is now unscheduled.

[Ben]

This is so dumb. Paramount didn't have a theatrical release plan a WEEK before the release? Maybe I'll wait for a Canadian Blu-ray, but a quick trip to Amazon France shows their disc has the English dub and subtitles, for only €22.

[Dacey]

Be all of that as it may, what I really want to know is when we'll finally see the release of Underdogs.



Smurfs: The Lost Village now coming April 7th, 2017.

[James]

Moved this to its own thread.

[EricJ]

If you've seen the trailers (and I have, for one), I don't blame Paramount. ONE BIT.
It's already gotten early gushes on RottenTomatoes for the artsy stop-motion half, but they're being a little too generous to the corny standard-CGI rest of the movie.

(And frankly, I didn't even like the 1974 live-action musical, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO22oqCqpzw but at least it was 100% the book, and didn't try to pander with screenwriter "updates" like the Dr. Seuss movies.
And those who are going to say "Oh, but the stop-motion's so well-crafted!" go watch Fantastic Mr. Fox.)

[Ben]

Yeah...I think I said elsewhere here that the CG portions looked like any other such flick. In fact the tone of that felt very different to the Little Prince book I remember as a child. I was concerned how this would mesh with the classic story (and how much of that would take up screentime in terms of balance...is this mostly The Little Prince or mostly a CG comedy/drama?), but that's also why I want to see it!

[Randall]

Off to Netflix!

http://spinoff.comicbookresources.com/2 ... le-prince/

[EricJ]

Where it can join two or three OTHER foreign CGI mutations of The Little Prince that didn't play in this country...
(Well, they're not showing the French 3D series anymore, but still.)

[Ben]

In the US, maybe?

I suspect other territories that had a theatrical release (like the UK and Canada) from other distributors (ironically Paramount in a lot of cases) will have to wait for their Net-fix. And that probably won't mean a Blu-ray coming anytime soon.

With the UK also not listing one, I guess it's back to Amazon France for this. What a shame a major animated film like this gets treated so bad.

[EricJ]

Be all of that as it may, what I really want to know is when we'll finally see the release of Underdogs.

Well, appropriately enough for the thread...it's on Netflix now.
http://instantwatcher.com/title/80000466

[Randall]

My son really wants to see Underdogs, ever since he saw it appear on Netflix last week. He's not sure why he wants to see it either, but it's eating at him.

We did catch Free Birds on Netflix the other night, based on James' recommendation of 3 years ago. What a kooky film. Fun, but kooky.

[James]

Finally got a chance to watch this. I'm not going to take the time to do a review but here are a few quick thoughts.

-----

THE BAD

It tried very hard to be meaningful. Characters spouting convoluted phrases that are supposed to sound deep but just come off as someone trying too hard to sound smart. (I'm not intimately familiar with the book at all, so maybe this is a carry over from that.)

On the other end of the spectrum, it wasn't very funny so tried to add some humor in terrible ways. An example - remember in old cartoons where a character would go "offstage", like into a closet, and then we would hear lots of wacky crashing sounds and weird beeps and boops? At least twice in this movie.

The story didn't make much sense. I'm not a huge fan of abstract stories, so that's on me. But this was beyond that. Just a lot of nonsensical plot. Again, I'm not that familiar with the book so maybe some of this comes from that. On a side note, another issue was that the film couldn't decide whether to go with a straight storyline or the more freeform narrative - which gave the whole thing a feeling of being a bit of a mess.

The film is almost two different movies. And, no, I don't mean the traditional CGI part with the old man and little girl vs the part that looks like a storybook with the Little Prince! The first half of the movie is the old man and little girl and the Little Prince. It's OK except for the issues mentioned. The second half is... something different! From what I understand, a sequel of sorts to the book. And it is terrible!

The dialogue was a little... off. I'm not sure if this was the case, but it occasionally felt like the film was written in another language and then translated into English by someone who was pretty good with the language but was not a native speaker.

The voice acting was sometimes not so great. Definitely not the whole film. I thought the two leads were good for the most part. But in some scenes it felt very obvious we were listening to actors - almost any scene with laughing for example!

THE GOOD

I really liked the animation in the parts with the Little Prince. I get why they saved that style for the storytelling parts. But maybe it wouldn't have been terrible to make the whole movie that way.

The best thing about the story was they didn't spell out exactly what was happening on some key points, letting the audience's interpretation be the "right" one.

-----

Unless you're into the book, definitely not a movie I'd recommend, with the caveat that I don't like movies that purposely don't worry about not making complete sense. If you like films with a more freeform narrative, I'm still not sure you'd like this but give it a shot if you're bored!

[Ben]

Still have it in my Netflix list to watch, since I didn't get around to importing the Blu-ray yet. I'll take a look sometime, maybe over the holidays.