The Worst CGI Kid Films In Recent Memory

[Drtooth]

Already I'm reminded of that Arthur episode where the kids starting gaining an irrational fear of squirrels.

I cannot believe that D'Snowth wasn't the one to point that out.

I am in shock.

All this talk about bad movies and everything, that SHARKNADO is apparently more groundbreaking than any of us could ever imagine...

I hate the fact they're making a second one. Rationalization for why: the movie was a so bad it's good film. Now they're going to make the second one intentionally SBIG. Now, there are legitimate purposely goofy films... Troma's entire oeuvre, the 1966 Batman series... but I don't see them pulling off anything that isn't a crappy self parody that's insanely meta, with everyone basically looking at the camera and going "Nnyyyyyhhhh.... Check, Please!" At best, the equivalent of a mediocre Simpsons episode that makes fun of how the series isn't as funny and then commenting on the internet not liking them.

I know it's not a wide release, but this thing made almost $15,000 on its opening weekend!

Sadly impressive. That's 100 bucks a theater. By sheer ratio, it actually did better than Oogieloves. According to wikipedia, "On August 29, 2012, the film opened at #17 at the box office to $102,564 in 2,160 theaters, with a per-theater average of $47."

 

[D'Snowth]

I cannot believe that D'Snowth wasn't the one to point that out.

I am in shock.

I... never saw that episode, and not even really familiar with it, so... yeah.

I can't watch anything post-Season 8 (I gave Season 16 a chance though to see what the new Flash animation is like, but other than that...).

 

[Drtooth]

I used it for that "Hai, Squirrel" YTP.

Anyway, that review I posted got me thinking about this line...

Its really more of the Turbo/Planes "You can do anything if you set your mind to it regardless of how fundamentally unqualified you are" thing.

For all the business I gave Turbo, I came to enjoy the film once it sank in. But I STILL had problems with that Aesop. Essentially the whole "You can be whatever you want and be successful, and the naysayers will all be eating their words not matter how completely physically impossible whatever you want to be is" crap. Like I said before somewhere in some thread, I absolutely LOVED what they said in Monsters University. They had a much more realistic (without being nasty) moral of "no matter how bad you want it, you might just not fulfill your exact dream, but what you are capable of can surprise you." Turbo took the former to a ridiculous level and basically said "doping up to an extreme can make an underdog a formidable opponent with no negative repercussions at all."

As for The Crappy Flight of the Crappion, the fact it has an even more hollow "You can be anything" moral reflects the film. And frankly, it gives more reflection to Monsters University's moral. I'm sure a lot of the animators in this thing are talented, but were essentially forced through the entire thing. One person pointed out that there is absolutely no love in this film. This looks like complete work start to finish, and the director Ewing sounds like a total Dbag. I wouldn't be surprised if he paid them less than minimum wage to put this crap together. Ah, regulation free Texas. Giving us the worst animated movie in history.

 

[Drtooth]

On the subject of squirrels... There's this.

It's not fair for me to say this will be a terrible film. I love Canadian animation, and it's nice they have an animation studio they can release mainstream pictures with.

But I'm just not sold on the concept.

But that thing with the Turkey doesn't look much better either.

On the one hand, it's nice for smaller studios to compete with the big studios, but those same third, fourth, and fifth party movies make the good CGI films look bad and "cranked out."

 

[mr3urious]

On the one hand, it's nice for smaller studios to compete with the big studios, but those same third, fourth, and fifth party movies make the good CGI films look bad and "cranked out."

There's nothing wrong with smaller companies making animated movies, whether CGI or hand-drawn. The problem is when they try too hard to emulate the big boys, and often times even the big boys have moved beyond the sort of tropes that made them big (i.e. princesses, fractured fairy tales, pop culture gags, fart jokes, etc.).

That's why people love the films Don Bluth made in the '80s: he never tried to emulate Disney, and often went in a much darker direction than them. However, after All Dogs...

 

[D'Snowth]

That's why people love the films Don Bluth made in the '80s: he never tried to emulate Disney, and often went in a much darker direction than them.

That's what I've always said: his movies have always had much more depth and subtext to them than the typical lighthearted, bright and fun, happy and cheerful animated features of the time, and all the while, they were still very much appropriate for younger audiences; it's always difficult to really find that balance, but he managed, and as I've said before, in this day and age of CGI, I really would like to see what he could do in that department (I heard a rumor that he was actually approached to do the original ICE AGE, but turned it down) - to me Despereaux had a very Bluth-vibe to it.

However, after All Dogs...

Again, I will argue that ROCK-A-DOODLE is nowhere near as bad as everybody *cough*Nostalgia Critic*cough* makes it out to be: I find it to be a very imaginative movie, with a lot of really beautiful and eye-candy animation; yes, it's a little on the trippy side, but then again, much of the movie was supposed to be a dream, and dreams don't always reflect reality, do they?

Now, A TROLL IN CENTRAL PARK, on the other hand... yes, I'll agree with the consensus on that one, that really was his worst movie. In fact, I recently rewatched the whole thing again, just to see if it's as bad as I remember, and you know what? It turns out I really didn't remember much of anything! They took us to see this movie one day when I was in daycare (it must have been a last-minute switch, because we were supposed to see FREE WILLY), and after rewatching it recently, I've discovered that I must not have paid a lot of attention as a kid, because I only clearly remembered 5% of the whole movie - the rest honestly felt like NOTHING but filler, no wonder I didn't remember anything other than the beginning and the end, because nothing really happens in the middle.

 

[Drtooth]

That's why people love the films Don Bluth made in the '80s: he never tried to emulate Disney, and often went in a much darker direction than them. However, after All Dogs...

Some of it was 50/50 between him and the distributor. Thumbellina was made only so Fox could have their own Princess line to compete with Disney. I didn't see Troll, but I tend to think, out of all the ones I've seen, that was his worst. There was no love put into it, and the only thing good about it was the Animaniacs short at the beginning. Only reason I wanted to see it.

But yeah. We forget there were a LOT of crap 2-D movies in the 90's. There were some choice ones. I actually quite like Cats don't Dance. I wish I saw it in theaters with the Foghorn Leghorn short. But other studios were trying to be Disney when Disney was looking for a new voice for itself.

I gotta admit, the Squirrel Heist movie sounds alright. It could be pretty good or go really really wrong.

That said, TVTropes Development H**l article says...

In 2001, Shrek producer John H. Williams founded his own studio, Vanguard Animation, which created Valiant, Happily N'Ever After, Space Chimps, and a direct-to-video sequel of the same. Their website shows several other projects in the pipeline, such as The Nut House (a heist film parody involving squirrels and acorns), Rotten Island (adaptation of a book by William Steig, who also wrote the books that inspired Shrek), an adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Twits, and many more

are mentioned in a 2010 press release. However, other than an October 2011 announcement of The Nut House, it seems Vanguard has vanished. Probably for the better, as another studio announced their own squirrel-based heist film for a 2014 release.

Hoo boy. It does sound like that could have been worse. This is the guy who made 2 terrible CGI movies for fourth party companies. Space Chimps?! Happily N'ever After?!

 

[robodog]

Space Cats I liked. Space Chimps not so much.

 

[Drtooth]

The small, very small fan base of Space Chimps apparently hated the sequel. So, they actually made a worse movie than Space Chimps.

Also, I was never thrilled with Fly me to the Moon. A movie based on an insanely terrible pun.

 

[robodog]

Any time you try to center a movie around a bunch of flies you're just asking to fail. Nobody wants to see a movie with anthropomorphic flies.