The Worst CGI Kid Films In Recent Memory

[cuppajoe95]

Yeah what's the deal with TROLLS, is this another marketreasearch like Shatktale or What?

Me, I'm a little more concerned with Boss Baby. Though it will obviously be CGI and the premise at least sounds silly and cartoonish, I'm certain that it'll be just another "baby who's like an adult" thing.

At least it'll be better than Baby Geniuses.

 

[Drtooth]

From what I've read, it's a kid's book adaption, and it is headed up by Tom McGrath, one of the guys behind Madagascar as well as voice of Skippet the Penguin (the only VA that's consistant through all Mdagascar and Penguins projects). It does sound ...off, but nothing too doofy.

Trolls screams "we'd better make this just to get the most out of the license we paid good money for." But as an animated movie that seems to at least take place in a mystical realm, it does have the upperhand on the Smurfs films (which this film originally was going to emulate). You have to picture it. It'd be about some obnoxious kids trying to fit in or cope with a major change and the Trolls just so happening to appear to them, say a bunch of wacky catchphrases, make painful pop culture references for their less than 40 minutes of screentime out of a 90 minute movie, and at the end, everyone dances to something stupid. You know. The standard live action adaption of something. Never really liked that format. Bullwinkle's movie could have benefitted from not trying to sell out to an imaginary female market that would only watch the movie if they chucked a Mary Sue in there. TMNT'14 was mostly April O'Neil and the guy that was supposed to be Shredder. And I gotta admit, I liked Age of Extinction, but if they just cut out the crap about the human family, and replaced it with more stuff about the Dinobots it would have actually been a more sleek, concise film. It's clear that The Muppets was a tongue in cheek critique of these kinds of films.

I have to give DW credit with this version of Trolls, though. It's not one of those. But that's an admittedly low bar.

 

[mr3urious]

From what I've read, it's a kid's book adaption, and it is headed up by Tom McGrath, one of the guys behind Madagascar as well as voice of Skippet the Penguin (the only VA that's consistant through all Mdagascar and Penguins projects). It does sound ...off, but nothing too doofy.

The film does look like an expansion of the book, as well, with it not just being about this boy who gets jealous about his new adult-like baby brother. There seems to be an epic adventure/conspiracy plot to it, too.

 

[mr3urious]

When all is said and done, I'm sure DW's Trolls won't be half as insulting as the X chromosome-pandering, estrogen-fueled Trollz cartoon from over a decade ago that flopped horribly and got DiC sued by the original company that created it. You know, the one where the main characters are a bunch of Bratz wannabes with magical powers, and the boys aren't allowed to use magic because of the actions of the main antagonist even though the girls are shown to be just as irresponsible with it (unfortunate implications, much)?

Yeah, the 2016 film is starting to look even better now. I'd say Andy Heyward was a much bigger troll than DW could ever be.

 

[Drtooth]

I'd love to go on a whole thing about how crappy DIC was near the end, even though they were pretty lousy in the 90's with a few little exceptions here and there. I mean, DIC's glory days were the 1980's with shows like Inspector Gadget, Heathcliff, Mysterious Cities of Gold and like that. Even the Lupin the 8Th series we would have got sounded great (but if it came to pass we wouldn't have Gadget).

So anyway, I saw the trailer for this again on the big screen before KFP3 and... I'll just chalk it up to how trailers are usually meant to be stupid so little kids can glom onto it. But it's a rather painful example. Dated pop hip hop music, characters showing their 'tude, saying which celebrity is involved again (something DW hasn't done for a while) stuff like that. I do have to admit, the character designs are pretty decent. At least they aren't cutesy boo-boo. I'll give it that. But I'm withholding anything beyond that until the first trailer trailer that has movie footage in it.

Other than that, there seems to be a lot of CGI movies again this year, as opposed to last year. I'm certainly not excited by Storks, but I can't say it's going to be Lionsgate level bad. Though WB feels they need to remind everyone that they brought them The Lego Movie (yet not Quest for Camelot or that stupid crap about the owls). The Little Prince looks genuinely good, though. Might check that one out. And Ice Age is Ice Age and they'll keep that franchise going until the sun burns out. Kinda wish I had something really terrible to share from my movie trip yesterday. Only thing that made me roll my eyes is something live action about Kevin Spacey turning into a cat (!)

 

[Drtooth]

Well, I've been waiting for this for weeks, but "Norm of the North" finally entered the pantheon of "So Bad, It's Horrible" in TVTropes.

And the best part is, according to this review that was linked to the SBIH entry...

Even kids hated it. Kids. Wow.

 

[D'Snowth]

To be fair (to the kids, not the movie), a lot of kids are like that in a theater irregardless of the movie. Seriously, I think when I was younger I was roped into seeing a Pooh movie in theaters . . . I don't even remember which movie it was (maybe THE TIGGER MOVIE), nor what happened in it, you know why? Because the theater was full of screaming kids that ran up and down the aisles, climbed over seats, and did stuff like he described that first little girl doing. So, I mean, I really can't go by stuff like that as kids hating a movie, because let's face it: kids just can't sit still for a movie, period. The second kid he described ("Is it over yet? Aw man.") probably holds more merit, but other than that.

I mean, come on, we all knew NORM OF THE NORTH was gonna blow. This guy didn't even mention the obvious: the story is totally unoriginal. How many times have we seen this movie: protagonist is an animal, protagonist knows the rules of his society is to not talk to humans because humans are monsters, protagonist realizes his entire world is in jeopardy because humans are destroying it for their own selfish gain, protagonist decides to "break the law" and confront the humans to stop them, the humans are amazed at what the protagonist animal does and decides to cancel their plans. This is essentially HAPPY FEET with a twerking polar bear with a hamster posse rather than a tap dancing penguin with a posse of Hispanic penguins.

They seemed desperate enough to lure people into theaters to see this movie by overtly shoving Taylor Swift's wigga song into all the trailers, because we all know that's how you get attention, by incorporating white girls who try to sing and act like black girls - it's worked for Miley Cyrus . . . Taylor not so much (seriously, that song has gotten her quite a bit of controversy), but it's Taylor, the world's obsessed with Taylor right now, so slap one of her more annoying songs onto the trailer to get people's attention.

 

[D'Snowth]

Boy, this guy really rips NORM OF THE NORTH apart, so much so in fact he outright refuses to refer to the movie and its title character by name, and refers to them by expletives instead:

 

[Drtooth]

To be fair (to the kids, not the movie), a lot of kids are like that in a theater irregardless of the movie.

You don't have to tell me that. I've had some horror stories of ill behaved kids. When I saw MFS, there was a very specific kid screaming his head off before the movie because he somehow had a fear of movies or loud noises. He then shut up for the entire movie. Then there was the punk kid in Bolt that just... awful. I hate the fact I like kid's movies and go to see them, but for the most part, the only real problems with kids I have is the too young to go to the theater crowd that can't stop asking "who is that? Who is that?" I don't expect a 4 year old to follow a plot line, and while most preschoolers think every Sesame Street character is Elmo, one toddler though my Mr. Potatohead from Toy Story shirt was Elmo. And of course the obligatory kid repeating every single line they thought was funny. Annoy as heck in Turbo (the kid would NOT shut up), but I admit the little kid going "Beedoh Beedoh" in the back of the theater during DM2 was kinda adorable.

I mean, come on, we all knew NORM OF THE NORTH was gonna blow. This guy didn't even mention the obvious: the story is totally unoriginal. How many times have we seen this movie: protagonist is an animal, protagonist knows the rules of his society is to not talk to humans because humans are monsters, protagonist realizes his entire world is in jeopardy because humans are destroying it for their own selfish gain, protagonist decides to "break the law" and confront the humans to stop them, the humans are amazed at what the protagonist animal does and decides to cancel their plans. This is essentially HAPPY FEET with a twerking polar bear with a hamster posse rather than a tap dancing penguin with a posse of Hispanic penguins.

Uh... Ferngully? That too? Take the forced environmental message and you get, among thousands of others, the Hey Arnold that wasn't supposed to be theatrically released but was. It's one thing to basically have the same plotline of a movie, there's only so many stories to be told after all. How many times have we seen the "save the something from greedy developers via trying to make something a landmark or endangered species preserve" bit? I mean, in Muppet movies alone there's 2 of them. But it's another thing to just flop around familiar plots with no interesting variation. Now, I watched that Black Nerd Rant and what really stuck out to me was the fact that the villain was pulled from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. Now, I'm meh about the first movie, but caught the second on FXX and loved it specifically because of the villain and the plotline. Even though, I have to admit there's a tiny gap of logic about not wanting to make food out of intelligent creatures when that's what they've been doing with real food for years. Aside from that, it was a nice nasty stab at Steve Jobs and Apple culture. Seems in Norm, they just decided to make the character flamboyant for the sake of being flamboyant.

But I like how he mentioned that the audience not only didn't laugh, but groaned. Now, you all know how I disliked the Yogi Bear movie (among other reasons it uses the "greedy developer" angle, but frankly a Yogi Bear story would have to feature one anyway). I'd say it's the worst of the films I've seen for years and ..eh... I liked BOTH Smurf films and Green Lantern so you know how bad a movie must be for me to hate it. But the packed (it was a small room, though) room actually laughed at the lazy attempts at humor. Especially Yogi dancing to "I Like Big Butts" for a cheap gag. If families can laugh at stuffy old songs about the buttocks used in a dumber than usual way, I thought they could laugh at anything. But WOW. I'm surprised it made as much money as it did, and it was a low amount.

They seemed desperate enough to lure people into theaters to see this movie by overtly shoving Taylor Swift's wigga song into all the trailers, because we all know that's how you get attention, by incorporating white girls who try to sing and act like black girls - it's worked for Miley Cyrus . . . Taylor not so much (seriously, that song has gotten her quite a bit of controversy), but it's Taylor, the world's obsessed with Taylor right now, so slap one of her more annoying songs onto the trailer to get people's attention.

The character in the film becomes famous for "twerking." Don't see why the two critics didn't mention that, as it seems like another "we're keepin' it 'hip' for da yunstas in da hood. WORD!" type sheltered 50 year old white guy decision. Now, the thing that ticks me the heck off is twerking had it's 11th birthday cake by the time Miley used the term. I know this for a fact because somehow I got MTV 2 back in 2003 or 4, and they kept playing this music video by the Ying Yang Twins (that is the funniest thing, if not one of, I've ever seen in a not supposed to be funny way). And it started out as a fake interview where someone asks them "What are you going to do after 'Whistle while you Twerk?'" And indeed twerk was part of the song. A certain war wasn't even a year old yet when Twerk was a thing. Then 10 years tardy to the party Miley did her bit, now when that became completely irrelevant it was considered current for a movie this bad.

 

[Drtooth]

While this is slightly off topic, I feel that this Two More Eggs cartoon is pretty appropriate. Plus, it's the kind of joke I'd do about bad CGI movies.