Oh goodie, another movie from nWave Studios, the people who thought implied dog rape in a kids film was a good idea. Yeah, I was not looking forward to this one, and if it weren’t for the fact that this made it to Netflix rather than cinemas this time around, I’d be looking forward to it a whole lot less. But thankfully, this isn’t anywhere near as heinous as The Queen’s Corgi. Admittedly, that means it’s closer to the studio’s average of bland, inoffensive bargain-bin material, but I’ll take that any day over whatever fresh hell they tried to pull last time.
The animation quality is a bit odd on this one, as the attempts to make it look better only end up making it look worse. The lighting effects are decent, up to par with the Hollywood standard, but giving that much clarity to these character models and textures wasn’t the best idea; it’s like using a 4K TV to watch Butt-Ugly Martians. All the liquids look oily (which for a film where crude oil is a recurring plot point seems like a good move, but the water and mud look about the same), the animation for anything living stands out like a spear-sized splinter against the nature backgrounds, and it is insanely distracting how glassy-eyed the humans look. Not as distracting as Jules Medcraft’s performance as Adam (seriously, Rolf from the Muppet Babies was more convincing), but still distracting.
It also benefits from largely sticking to the one thing nWave has ever shown competence with: Chase scenes, of which there are a lot in this film. Some are on-foot, using the super-speed ability Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) have in this universe, some involve cars, and one even involves a minecart. I don’t know what it is but when these animators focus solely on movement (with some POV shots thrown in so the iffy modelling work doesn’t detract from it), it can get reasonably engaging. For these guys, that might as well be high praise.
Then there’s the story, which unfortunately doesn’t involve anything nearly as cracky as the hair scientists from the original Son Of Bigfoot. Instead, this is a predominantly environmentalist feature, with Bigfoot seeking to use his newfound media fame to draw attention to X-Tract’s shady oil dealings in Alaska. Coming from the same writers behind the embarrassing Arctic Justice, I was worried this was going to fall into the same pitfalls… which thankfully isn’t the case here.
Sure, there’s traces of the same caricaturing of the environmentalists in question, as if the film can’t take its own message seriously, but it isn’t nearly as prevalent as in AJ. If anything, with the way it highlights the oil company’s attempts at greenwashing, and the running gag of a moose telling everyone to get off his land, it at least makes a better showing of good faith than I was expecting.
It’s nothing all that special, and the visuals take quite a while to adjust to, but as disposable entertainment for young’ins, it’s almost refreshing how average this is. It’s up there with Son Of Bigfoot and House Of Magic as far as nWave’s 'best' work to date, and seeing that the studio has stopped overreaching and gone back to what they know they can do well, I’m happy with the results here. I’m not expecting to remember that much about this film after I’m done writing this, but happy nonetheless.
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