The Worst CGI Kid Films In Recent Memory

[mimitchi33]

They sell Mumfie stuff?

I think it could be still there, but I'm not sure. I read a post on DinosaurDracula recently about a dollar store in the same area which sells lots of neat things from 20 years ago, and they haven't updated their inventory. No idea if they sell the GUND Mumfie range, though, but it's a maybe. I saw the plush dolls at an arcade-there were some Mumfies and Pinkeys in one of the claw machines and a giant Mumfie and a Scarecrow plush up for redemption. I think the Mumfie was 3000 tickets or something and Scarecrow was 1,675 tickets. If you want plushies like these, Britt's coming out with some this year, but that's for a different topic.

Remember those days of yore when Cary Elwes was something of an A-lister? Kinda like Whoopi Goldberg, and now she's reduced to being a co-host on a morning talkshow that nobody even really watches anymore, yet it comes getting ripped off all the time.

Also, Tim Curry shows up in a lot of these CGI knock-off films. Other than The Rocky Horror Picture Show, he's done nothing noteworthy at all but keeps getting used! The only other thing I know he did is Peter Pan and the Pirates.
Also, I was shopping at Target yesterday with my sister and I heard a converstation relevant to this thread:
Mom (looking at the Imaginex figurines for Sponge Out Of Water): Oh look, Jason, is that SpongeBob? You like SpongeBob!
Jason: Mom, I like SpongeBob, but not the crappy CGI version! Besides Ninja Turtles, all CGI shows stink like a diaper! The Smurfs sucked, the Chipmunks sucked, everything is terrible!
At least there's faith for our generation.

 

[D'Snowth]

Also, Tim Curry shows up in a lot of these CGI knock-off films. Other than The Rocky Horror Picture Show, he's done nothing noteworthy at all but keeps getting used! The only other thing I know he did is Peter Pan and the Pirates.

Long John Silver in MTI?

He was also Nigel Thornberry, the hotel manager in HOME ALONE 2, a secondary villain in the CHARLIE'S ANGELS movie, narrated A SESAME STREET CHRISTMAS CAROL, and other things.

 

[FunnyBear]

[QUOTE="mimitchi33, post: 1130430, member: 41104"
Also, I was shopping at Target yesterday with my sister and I heard a converstation relevant to this thread:
Mom (looking at the Imaginex figurines for Sponge Out Of Water): Oh look, Jason, is that SpongeBob? You like SpongeBob!
Jason: Mom, I like SpongeBob, but not the crappy CGI version! Besides Ninja Turtles, all CGI shows stink like a diaper! The Smurfs sucked, the Chipmunks sucked, everything is terrible!
At least there's faith for our generation.[/QUOTE]
What's wrong with the CGI SpongeBob?

 

[Drtooth]

Mom (looking at the Imaginex figurines for Sponge Out Of Water): Oh look, Jason, is that SpongeBob? You like SpongeBob!
Jason: Mom, I like SpongeBob, but not the crappy CGI version! Besides Ninja Turtles, all CGI shows stink like a diaper! The Smurfs sucked, the Chipmunks sucked, everything is terrible!
At least there's faith for our generation.

I disagree. Yeah, maybe for the lousy pasted on movies, but CGI cartoons have come a long way on television. They're mostly good, barring any really bad preschool series. I remember when CGI TV shows lasted all of one year and weren't too popular. Yeah, there was Mainframe's Beast Wars/Machines and Reboot. Anything else back then just got dumped onto syndication and got cancelled. Took Jimmy Neutron to really break out.

Other than that, yeah... Tim Curry used to do a lot of voice work. From Taurus Bulba in Darkwing Duck to Dr. Thaddeus Morocco in Rescue Bots (until he stopped doing it and they replaced him). Only time I've seen him not be a villain was Wild Thornberries.

 

[AlittleMayhem]

Am I seriously the only person in the world who's actually looking forward to the new SpongeBob movie?

I remember my mum saying once that the newer CGI Disney movies just don't have the same quality as the classic 2D ones but I digress. Sure it's not the same, but the fact that they had to create new technology to make the fur on Sully look as realistic as possible is still darn impressive. And I beleive there's still a lot of possiblities CGI can do. For example, look at this test short for Popeye by the same guy that made Hotel Transylvania;

 

[D'Snowth]

I realize I've been saying this same old tune over and over again, but I think the problem with CGI is that it's fallen into the same category as 3D and sequels: it's gimmicky.

Back in the day, there was really only two studios that came out with quality CGI movies: Pixar and DreamWorks; and they were always competing with each other, so they always brough their A-game. Then BlueSky became a full-fledged studio after they spent a number of years as a special/visual effects company (JOE'S APARTMENT, anybody?) and came out with alternatives to Pixar and DW, like ICE AGE. Now we have dozens - maybe even hundreds - of off-brand studios cranking out CGI movies all the time, not to mention mainstream studios like Disney have switched to CGI, so in a a sense, CGI is suffering from a case of Seinfeld is Unfunny... yeah, TOY STORY was dazzling and amazing when it first came out in 1995, but fast-foward to 2015, there's nothing to spectacular about CGI anymore. And because of that, neither Pixar nor DW really seem to be on the top of their game anymore, because their competition is no longer as stiff as it once was, so they're not trying as hard... meanwhile, BS is just doing more ICE AGE.

2D tried to make a comeback with THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, and even though it brought people into the theaters, it apparently wasn't a commercial success to warrant Disney reopening their 2D animation department, so they closed those doors permanently. Same with that WINNIE THE POOH movie (by danged it the animation wasn't too fluid that it looked digitally animated). Just about any 2D animation today is on TV, and it's almost always Flash, which as we've discussed before, can be good or bad, depending on how the animators utilize it: some Flash can look good and fluid, but if it's mass-produced (like TV series), it can look stiff and robotic.

 

[Drtooth]

I remember my mum saying once that the newer CGI Disney movies just don't have the same quality as the classic 2D ones but I digress. Sure it's not the same, but the fact that they had to create new technology to make the fur on Sully look as realistic as possible is still darn impressive. And I beleive there's still a lot of possiblities CGI can do. For example, look at this test short for Popeye by the same guy that made Hotel Transylvania;

Everyone fails to remember that when the huge Disney animated movie boom hit in the early 90's, there was an endless sea of absolute garbage made by every other studio. Nostalgia filter can only go so far. I see absolutely no difference now with CGI films. And I agree, the garbage ones only hurt far better ones of better quality. I'm glad that the public is starting to pull away from some of it. Thankfully that awful Wizard of Oz film flopped big time. Shame that Rio 2 had an audience and HTTYD2 didn't quite find one domestically.

If there's a problem with 2-D (and lest we forget, Spongebob is both the same animation and 3-D, and I bet the 3-D is met with nods and winks), it's that too much focus was on Princess and the Frog (opened opposite Chipmunks 2 and Avatar) and Winnie the Pooh (the franchise was Flanderized into a preschool one, and preschool movies always fail). At least on Disney's end. Other than the fact Dreamworks tried to get a 2-D/3-D hybrid film out there and then cancelled it, I don't think anyone's trying, or even bothering to try. Unless you're pretty much any other country in the world, apparently.

Still, CGI is an easy thing to pick on when a bad movie, no matter how beautifully animated, is still a bad movie. Thumbellena sucked so hard! It might as well have looked like one of those 1950's pre-animation shows where they used static drawings. Same goes for "Crayons of Hero Color" and "Russian movie dubbed to resemble a Disney Release Number 876-F3."

 

[mr3urious]

Back in the day, there was really only two studios that came out with quality CGI movies: Pixar and DreamWorks; and they were always competing with each other, so they always brough their A-game. Then BlueSky became a full-fledged studio after they spent a number of years as a special/visual effects company (JOE'S APARTMENT, anybody?) and came out with alternatives to Pixar and DW, like ICE AGE. Now we have dozens - maybe even hundreds - of off-brand studios cranking out CGI movies all the time, not to mention mainstream studios like Disney have switched to CGI, so in a a sense, CGI is suffering from a case of Seinfeld is Unfunny... yeah, TOY STORY was dazzling and amazing when it first came out in 1995, but fast-foward to 2015, there's nothing to spectacular about CGI anymore.

And most of the off-brand films flop hard nowadays, which I'm thankful for.

2D tried to make a comeback with THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, and even though it brought people into the theaters, it apparently wasn't a commercial success to warrant Disney reopening their 2D animation department, so they closed those doors permanently. Same with that WINNIE THE POOH movie (by danged it the animation wasn't too fluid that it looked digitally animated).

Disney's really not done with traditional animation in theaters, per se; they just don't have anything major at the moment and seem to be using it only for shorts. The Mickey Mouse short attached to Frozen was a 2D/3D hybrid, for one, whilst Paperman seen before Wreck-It Ralph utilized CGI with hand-drawn textures.

At least on Disney's end. Other than the fact Dreamworks tried to get a 2-D/3-D hybrid film out there and then cancelled it, I don't think anyone's trying, or even bothering to try. Unless you're pretty much any other country in the world, apparently.

Still holding out hope for Me and My Shadow. It's never been officially cancelled; just put through a suspiciously long development heck.

 

[WalterLinz]

Am I seriously the only person in the world who's actually looking forward to the new SpongeBob movie?

Lol are you kidding me?? I am more than excited to go see it!!

In fact - call me crazy, but I'm really starting to enjoy the cg versions of the characters, plus seeing them in their superhero outfits!!

 

[Drtooth]

Disney's really not done with traditional animation in theaters, per se; they just don't have anything major at the moment and seem to be using it only for shorts. The Mickey Mouse short attached to Frozen was a 2D/3D hybrid, for one, whilst Paperman seen before Wreck-It Ralph utilized CGI with hand-drawn textures.

I'm very happy about those shorts. It's just that they've been struggling for a 2-D feature and hitched their trailers to films that were doomed to not do too well. Princess and the Frog went under heavy scrutiny because everything about it was either too racial or not racial enough. Even then it's a princess movie, so you're going to lose the male audience anyway. I mean, that's why Frozen's such a big deal. It managed to cross the boundary. And not having a Dreamworks film to compete with it didn't hurt. As I've said before, they could have given Princess and the Frog a decent November opening, but no, they needed to put that horrible Mo-Cap Christmas Carol in a prime spot, leaving the Princess to have most of her audience taken away by the subpar second Chipmunks film.

And what happened to Winnie the Pooh was a shame, but also their own fault. It was supposed to relaunch a franchise that turned into yet another CGI Dora clone. The one where they're super heroes that solve mysteries with not Christopher Robin, like A.A. Milne totally envisioned. :eyeroll: And what's mostly disturbing is that after that movie, they completely shut out Winnie the Pooh. Remember, this is the same company who in the 90's milked the heck out of that cash cow. You couldn't punt a football without hitting Tigger somewhere, and you couldn't so much as find Mickey Mouse at a Disney Store! WOW! That's...that's a bad turn of events, right there.

Then again, not all of their CGI non-Pixar films did that well. Surely, their earlier attempts weren't massive successes (except for Dinosaur, the worst of the bunch), but even Tangled did only so so. Around the same level as Princess and the Frog.