athena

I only watched the short involving the hand shaking the hamster... now possibly it's because I used to keep pet hamsters that this short strikes me as being cruel, lame and unfunny...

Or it could be because this short is simply cruel, lame and unfunny.

I didn't watch it all the way through to the very end... once the hamster's dressed in women's lingere with tacks stuck in his head--and still talking--there's really just no point.

I'm with P.C. on this... if I heard this song on its own, I might find it mildly amusing--kinda reminds me of something in the Weird Al Yanovic vein... but the quality of the animation here ruins it for me. No grace, no sense of caricature... has a kind of bumbling along, 'good enough' quality to it.

Final Analysis: Skip it.

If there was ever a show that was worth mocking, it has to be this one... first off is the fact that it looks like anime and tries ludicrously hard to be anime, but it isn't in fact anime... in as much as it wasn't produced in Japan but instead made by a French company that thought it would be a grand thing to make series in that style that all those kids were just so darn hyped up on.

The result is a series that attempts to use the conventions of anime... the poppy animation, the shorthand visual cues for emotions and reactions... but somehow manages to feel horribly inauthentic... like those commercials that have come out of late with cheesy ninja foreign films that have been re-dubbed to sell dishwasher soap.

This is, of course, on top of the basic sins have having stupid characters, pancake-flat plots and all the intelligence and wit of a tapeworm...

Avoid. Please avoid.
If you catch children watching this, drag them away from the TV... tell them it's for their own good.

After I watched this film on DVD, I flipped to the behind-the-scenes featurette with Ralph Bakshi. He describes Wizards as his first foray into the 'family entertainment' genre. I admit, I shuddered rather violently at the thought of anyone's family sitting down and watching this film.

What's it got?
Well, let's see... a fair amount of graphic violence--nothing says family fun like dead faeries lying in their own blood... a bad guy who is really keen on Hitler--complete with swastikas, a reference to anti-Semitism and of course film footage of Hitler himself... scantily clad 'hooker' faeries and a heroine who comes across as being just shy of a sex kitten.

Now, I have nothing against mature animation, but c'mon, let's just call it what it is and not pretend that the fact it has warm and fuzzy elves as its heroes suddenly makes it a family movie.

Target audience aside, this movie is poorly animated by almost any standard... is only slightly less difficult to follow plot-wise than Bakshi's "Lord of the Rings"... and was generally so dull and heavy-handed that I ended up watching most of it with the fast-forward button firmly pressed.

Why they didn't just title this film as "Rodney Dangerfield as Animated Dog" is beyond me... this movie is one very long, very painful Rodney Dangerfield comedy sketch. Rover has every one of Rodney's distinctive mannerisms and virtually every line of dialogue is like a stand up comedy oneliner. You can almost hear the 'badum-bump' in the background.

The film is at moments too mature to hit a children's audience and too stupid to hold the attention of adults. After the first hour I began watching the film on fast forward. Not a good sign.

Unless you are a HUGE fan of Rodney Dangerfield and think he's the most brilliant comic of all time, I would advise avoiding this movie like the plague.