Cry me... oops.. Fly me to the Moon 3D
May 5th 2009 07:05
Hungarian poster for the movie
Well, what can I say? First and foremost I'm not 7 years old, so I cannot state that this movie is utter garbage. What's undeniable though is that it doesn't succeed as a family fun animated movie. It's not Shrek, nor The Incredibles. It's something I would rudely explain as a geeks with money movie.
Although the Belgian director, Ben Stassen is not unfamiliar with movies, he directed some IMAX 3D docus before, he's new to the feature film world. Sadly the effect of his feature debut is a snorefest for anyone over 7, with badly aimed farting and snorting jokes, and totally misfired approach of the cuteness factor. The fly larvaes for example are supposed to be the "aaawww so cuuute" characters of the movie. Instead they're one part annoying and at least two part disgusting or at least unsettling, which is a major failure in my opinion.
The so called story revolves around three fly kids hitchhiking the Apollo 11 mission for the adventure of their lives, while a pioneer type of grandpa-fly serves as the mentor/storyteller of the tale, with stereotypical Soviet flies trying to sabotage the mission. That's about it, the rest is mostly gimmick oriented stereo 3D.
Well... this picture sums it up!
But they fail somehow even in that department. While there are some interesting fly around moments (pun is intended), most of the time the Moonlit (pun again) face of our heroes is terribly ghosted. This is a problem of 3D movies, more precisely of 3D projection, but there are anti-ghosting procedures that can be done in movie post production, which seem to be completely missing here.
Caption note: The humans in this look like a cross between a fox and wax puppet
As you can guess the result is not quite stellar. The major flaw however is that they fail capturing the attention of the parents. Since most animation movies outside of Japan are intended for kids, the moviemakers have mastered to lure and entertain the parents accompanying their kids. The key is the hidden joke, aimed at the adults. That's like non-existent here, which leads to rapid boredom and distancing of the grown up audience. And to top that it's not a good fairytale, like some Disney classics, that would touch the inner child in you, it's some irritating flies barfing in your face once in a while, while you're counting the spelling errors that appear on tablets and newspapers to tie down your attention. (I'm serious, just look for "... 16st" as a date on a newspaper to get you started)
While this can entertain from the aspect of 3D alone (and just), there are much-much better 3D material out there fortunately, that you can choose from. Skip this, or sacrifice yourself for your children if they want to see it desperately.
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