Alright! Today, because I didn’t really have much to say about any of them, I’m reviewing three films: Sing 2, The Bad Guys, and Strange World. Each comes from one of the major American animation studios (Illumination, DreamWorks, and Disney), each of them are a tight hour and a half, and every single one of them is a solid 7/10 adventure.
The Bad Guys
We start today’s journey with DreamWorks’s The Bad Guys, an adapted story about a legendary group of five anthropomorphic thieves who get caught while performing an elaborate heist. Led by a wolf by the name of… Wolf… the bad guys pretend to be good in a con to get out of jail time. It’s a fun, simple hook that doesn’t leave you wanting more, but also isn’t a regrettable waste of time.
However, the movie isn't particularly original in any regard, not exactly to its detriment, but not to its benefit either. It has fart jokes, elaborate heists, Spider-Verse-inspired animation, best friend drama, a five-person ensemble where three of them aren't developed, the villain from Penguins of Madagascar, main characters that are animals for no particular reason other than merchandising, a lead that sounds like Owen Wilson but is actually Sam Rockwell, and the same "bad guy wants to be a good guy" shtick DreamWorks has pulled since 2001, maybe even 1999 if you count Moses as a "bad guy."'
It's not the most daring or creative kids' movie you'll ever see, but if you do happen to see it you won't be bored. It has the trademark subtle DreamWorks humor, fun heists, and a simple enough message to be endearing while not stopping you from asking why the only anthropomorphic animals in this world are the main characters... like, literally everyone else is human. Were they Ninja Turtle'd with radioactive goo? What's the lore?
Overall, I give The Bad Guys a 7/10. “Simple enough jokes and morals make The Bad Guys a good time.”
Sing 2
2016’s Sing was a fun movie. Was it original in any sense of the word? Absolutely not. It was one of the most clichéd, cookie cutter, unoriginal works to come from Illumination (an achievement unto itself), with a dime-a-dozen celebrity voice cast, standard animation, jukebox musical formula, and a world populated by anthropomorphic animals paired with a story that doesn’t even try to connect that. Like at least The Bad Guys had some random “Wolf is the bad guy in every fairy tale” message, Sing has literally nothing to say about its animal populous other than that they’re cuter and easier to market than humans.
The sequel, Sing 2, is just as creatively bankrupt as its predecessor. Also like its predecessor, it works. Unexplainably, unfathomably, and despite its deep flaws, I genuinely liked Sing 2. Maybe it's the goodwill from the first one's genuinely heartfelt moments, maybe I'm not wholly invincible to feel-good 2010s pop music, or maybe I'm just overcompensating for the cheap gags that had me laughing out loud.
There were technical elements that I didn't particularly like about the movie, however. It was significantly less emotional than the first one, the blocking in the final show was nonsensical, and, most annoyingly, the finale is like a watered-down version of Madagascar 3, knowledge of the voice cast is required to explain why random characters get solos (Bono and Halsey voice two characters that otherwise have no payoff and confuse the plot - if the little green alien gets a huge solo number anyways, why was it a big deal when Rosita gets that role?).
However, I think Sing 2 has a remarkably better plot than the first's played-out underdog story, and I like the setting and themes better. The more balanced ensemble effect is nice, the designs are glitzy, Buster Moon has a significantly better arc here, and Johnny continues to be the best part of the franchise. On that note, Taron Egerton has a fantastic singing voice and I'd gladly watch Sing 3 if only for more of it.
Against all odds, Sing 2 improves on its predecessor in numerous aspects with better animation, story, and characterization, although the emotional heart was traded out for more chill-delivering acoustic pop covers. It's another win for Illumination's master plan to make cheap animated films while regularly outgrossing the competition... it's legitimately hilarious to me that Disney used $380 million for $299 million in box office receipts to make Lightyear and Strange World while Illumination spent $85 million to make Sing 2 and ended up with $408 million. It's the little things in life.
Sing 2 is the best thing from Illumination since, well, the first Sing in 2016? And before that, The Lorax in 2012. It's a good movie through and through, and sometimes that's enough. Here's to hoping for Super Mario Bros.
Overall, I give Sing 2 an 8/10. “Despite suffering from unoriginality in every regard, Sing 2, like its predecessor, just works.”
Strange World
And the last movie in the 3-in-1 is Disney's Strange World, an original story about the mystical world of Avalonia, which is surrounded by mountains no one can pass over. Enter the Clades, a family of legendary explorers whose sole purpose is to get to the other side... until one of them decides to settle down and become a farmer. But now that their planet is dying, farmer Clade and his teenage son Clade reunite with Grandpa Clade to find a cure. Inspired by Journey to the Center of the Earth and pulp films, Strange World is a surprisingly muddled effort.
While some could cite the similarities to Raya and the Last Dragon's mystical land of Kumandra and Encanto's similarly impassable mountains, the truth is Strange World leaves very little impression on the viewer because it's just not memorable. From the generic premise, characters, conflicts, visual blandness, and the name (Originally titled Searcher Clade, a much better name), it's Disney on repeat. If you've seen a Disney movie since Meet the Robinsons, you've basically seen Strange World, and a much better Strange World at that.
I typically take notes while I watch movies, and my assorted Strange World notes were mostly filled with negativity aside from a few visual cues. Now, I don't particularly like being negative - It makes for easy writing, but, and especially after Disney's 2022 streak of Kenobi, Lightyear, and Pinocchio, it almost feels redundant. It hurts to say that after growing up on Tangled and Hercules, but to just assume an original Disney movie will be bad when not aided by Lin-Manuel Miranda is a sucky feeling. It makes Encanto seem like a fluke rather than a comeback.
What makes Strange World's utter unmemorability even more unnerving is that the end twist is actually a rather clever idea, one I'd feel legitimately bad about spoiling in this review. But on the other hand, there is such a little chance someone reading this will actually watch it, so I'll let the cat out of the bag: Their journey to the center of the Earth is actually a journey to the center of a giant continent-sized turtle (Think Lion Turtle from Avatar), and every obstacle they traverse is actually some part of its inner workings (The acid lake = stomach acid, the blobs are blood cells, etc).
It's a legitimately good twist and the final scene makes a fantastic visual impact, but the movie is so frustratingly generic that a singular good scene isn't enough to save it. The final conflict between characters is random and comes out of nowhere and the entire emotional core of the movie is told entirely verbally. Focusing on the poor relationship between the grandfather and father is fine, but the repeated "You're such a bad dad" dialogue can only go so far when the singular flashback we saw showed him as an otherwise courageous father, if mildly arrogant.
It's like that for every character and conflict in the movie. Not a moment goes by without the movie verbally explaining to us how we should feel about the characters. It's chock full of exposition, either because it doesn't trust the audience to understand the film or because, and more likely, this movie went through so many rewrites that any spark of originality was completely lost. It feels like a movie scrapped and then worked and then reworked again to the point where everything makes sense, but everything is just a hair off so it feels like someone put "Disney" into an A.I. script generator.
Unlike the two movies above,
Strange World is trying pretty hard to be funny (Again, the A.I. left spaces for "Human laughter"). Unfortunately, while
Sing 2 and
The Bad Guys had natural humor that came from the character interactions and visuals,
Strange World has more of the 2010s humor that I found so unnerving in
Raya and the Last Dragon. Maybe it's because the voice actor the teenage son wasn't particularly funny or maybe it's because it was drowned in exposition and the A.I. rewrites, but the movie tries so hard to be funny it's painful. Especially painful was when they recreated
the best joke in 2011's Winnie the Pooh but to a rushed, unfunny result.
I also found it mildly interesting that the movie didn't really have anything strange in it. For a movie called "Strange World," nothing in it is particularly innovative or special. I saw more imaginative things in
The Croods, everything here was trying to be
Interstellar-lite or was just a blob with flagella. Which makes sense in hindsight, but doesn't lead to any positive feelings. Also worth noting is
Strange World features
Disney's first openly gay character, Ethan Clade. Also worth noting is the film doesn't do anything with that, having both the grandfather and father give Ethan the same loving advice in direct opposition to the recurring gag that they were giving him wildly different advice. If you're looking for genuine representation, try A24's
Everything Everywhere All at Once, where the grandchild's sexuality helped progress every character involved and added to the thematic generation gap.
It genuinely amazes me that Disney is putting out worse products now that they actually have competition. Like, if my competition was Ferngully, I wouldn't try so hard as to make Aladdin and The Lion King. But now there's actual competition making things like The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and, yes, Sing 2, the fact Disney is answering that fire with Strange World is... well, it's funny to me. Like, aren't businesses supposed to bounce off each other to make better products? Or are they just banking on Disney+ viewership and the MCU?
Overall, I give Strange World a 5/10. "For a movie that wants to be Journey to the Center of the Earth and DuckTales, Strange World is the most boring love child of all time."
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