The Worst CGI Kid Films In Recent Memory

[Drtooth]

Unfortunately, that Squirrel movie may suggest different. If anything, I hope this gets Dreamworks to reconsider a January release date for KFP3, which deserves a Croods/Home late March release date. Biased as it's one of my favorite DW franchises (right up there with HTTYD and Madagascar), and KFP deserves better than "maybe a dozen Mil during winter vacation."

Still, I take back my "Really?! Rob Schnieder" comment. It's a perfect fit.

 

[Luke kun]

Unfortunately, that Squirrel movie may suggest different. If anything, I hope this gets Dreamworks to reconsider a January release date for KFP3, which deserves a Croods/Home late March release date. Biased as it's one of my favorite DW franchises (right up there with HTTYD and Madagascar), and KFP deserves better than "maybe a dozen Mil during winter vacation."

Still, I take back my "Really?! Rob Schnieder" comment. It's a perfect fit.

what do you mean by "a dozen mil during winter vacation"?

 

[Drtooth]

I saw this trailer in theaters before Shaun the Sheep, as it's a Lionsgate film and Lionsgate loves to show their crappy kid's entertainment off (wasn't there an unskippable Alpha and Omega ad on the Henson's House special DVD?). It's indeed worse on the big screen. There is nothing clever or even necessary about this film. It's pure garbage, and garbage that deserves to stay in 2003 where it belongs.

Oh... funny thing. Check out the actual Youtube page for some aggressive little runt spamming the page with "this looks like fun" and belittling anyone who doesn't like it. He has a "hilarious" take down to anyone who dares thumbs down the video, calling them 30 year olds that live in their mom's basement because they dare not like the movie. Either this is some one that worked on the film or someone mentally deficient to find his own comment as clever as the film.

Seriously. There's nothing wrong with liking gawd awful piece of abomination like that, unless you're a complete tool about it. Something tells me that the Norm of the North fanbase will be worse than the Alpha Omega fanbase.

EDIT: Also, there's this other film they were previewing. A Spanish language kid's movie with subtitles (but English narrated trailer) that Translates to "A Chicken with Lots of Eggs" (eggs being balls, clearly). It doesn't look good at all, and the only remotely funny joke (a Karate Kid reference that ends with a a gag that he's really just doing chores) was done to freaking death by now. I'm glad that there's something out there for Spanish speakers, but can't they have something...I dunno...good?

 

[cuppajoe95]

Oh... funny thing. Check out the actual Youtube page for some aggressive little runt spamming the page with "this looks like fun" and belittling anyone who doesn't like it. He has a "hilarious" take down to anyone who dares thumbs down the video, calling them 30 year olds that live in their mom's basement because they dare not like the movie. Either this is some one that worked on the film or someone mentally deficient to find his own comment as clever as the film.

Wow. Just wow.

I've heard of spam, comments from sock-puppet accounts and what have you, but I don't think I've ever heard of something like that.

I'm aware that The Nut Job was a success during the usual early bomb month,, but hopefully Lionsgate ends up with another January bomb like they did with Happily N'Ever After.

By the way, on the subject of that Spanish CGI movie you're talking about... is this it?

It's actually a sequel in the Una película de huevos series from Mexico.

 

[Drtooth]

I've heard of spam, comments from sock-puppet accounts and what have you, but I don't think I've ever heard of something like that.

I can almost swear it's someone behind the film, either someone who worked on it or someone at Lionsgate. No one would defend a movie that lousy with that much gusto unless they're Astroturfing or mentally deranged. There is nothing likable about that movie. When I was assaulted by this trailer in theaters, the room played to complete silence. Wasn't a packed house, wasn't a big room. It was completely dead quiet. Okay. A chuckle from the back of the room with one line at the end. I could go on beating this dead polar bear all day, but this trailer speaks for itself. Poor animation, unironic cliched storyline, terrible voice cast (and the one decent actor is a "What the Heck, Casting Agency" move), and overall dated 2003 in 2015 feeling. This is a massive step back for CGI animated movies. Strange Magic may not have been a well written film, but at least the animation studio tried. This looks worse than something on Redbox/Netflix. Even has the patron saint of bad CGI dubbed European movies as the main character. There is nothing "fun" about it.

Also, I HATE how the Comic Book Resources article about it likened it to Madagascar. Sure, those may have been Dreamwork's more juvenile movies, but they have their own special charm. This...this is a knock off at best. Heck, it makes Open Season look good by comparison.

 

[Luke kun]

How can we compare the Norm of the North fanbase to the Alpha and Omega fanbase?

 

[Bliffenstimmers]

How can we compare the Norm of the North fanbase to the Alpha and Omega fanbase?

How can Norm even have a fan base when it only has one fan?

 

[Drtooth]

And not even one at that, unless they're that disturbed.

Seriously. The Alpha Omega DA Fanbase never ceases to amaze me. We have a less than mediocre film that prevented Pixar from making Newt, fast tracking Cars 2 as a result, that's nothing special and no matter how they defend it, they only like the darn thing because wolves be in it. And even their fanbase is supposedly divided on how crappy the DTV's are. I've provided their TVTropes page before, and I really think those who haven't checked it out should. There are no negative entries in it (there used to be, clearly an edit war by their insane fanbase) when by all means the rest of the world hated that film, critics especially.

And something tells me Norm's going to wind up like that too. It's too cliched, awful, and amateurish not to have some overly defensive twerps making out with it on TVT like that.

 

[cuppajoe95]

There are no negative entries in it (there used to be, clearly an edit war by their insane fanbase) when by all means the rest of the world hated that film, critics especially.

Well, I think the reason Lionsgate is milking Alpha and Omega for what its worth is because well... it cost less than the box office gross of Mars Needs Moms, due in no small part to its animation being made in India. The fact that it made about 1.5 times the budget overall (as well as the studio execs and even Richard Rich himself not realizing that the fanbase contains plenty of lunatics) probably gave them the greenlight to make it into a franchise of sorts.

As for the above comment, if you check the Box Office Mojo page for it and look at the international receipts for it, you'll find that out of all the nations listed, only in six countries did it crack even $1 million. Heck, some places where it was released, according to IMDB, aren't even listed there!

Much as I'm trying to be impartial towards A&O and trying to avoid causing a flame war, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Lionsgate doesn't luck out this time... but hey, things can happen that are beyond our control.

 

[Drtooth]

Alpha Omega is the film no one asked for and no one wanted. Darn straight that it was so cheap to produce that it made back its budget. If it wasn't for the fact that it has a small, but vocal cult fanbase posting terrible screenshots with Comic Sans font slapped on it (something I hate no matter what fanbase) as "original" artwork on DA, I wouldn't say a darn thing.

But speaking in general, the problem with CGI kid's movies is that, sure, we can say Toy Story made a crapload of money, but what stuck out more was that Shrek made a crapcrapload of money. So, by extension it's not that these third-fifth party animation studios wanted to copy Dreamworks not so much Pixar (and Dreamworks was basically just doing this because of Pixar and their 2-D movies were doing only so so to not that great). That's why Ice Age is a 4 movie long (with a fifth on the way of course) franchise. They wanted their own Shrek. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was Sony's Shrek, being more literal of taking a kid's book and trying to build a world on it, being much less successful. Both those film series aren't bad, but they aren't great. It's my personal belief that The Lego Movie was the writing team from Cloudy making the same movie only great, because a lot of it was subversive and tongue in cheek to the tropes Cloudy had. Almost seemed to be a self parody of that movie. But that's another topic all together.

Then you have the other little studios trying to be DW, and you get stuff like AO. Sometimes you'll come across something like Igor which was a pleasant surprise for me, even though the ending was cheesy and tacked on. But you get these little things from random studios that open to low BO, and because they're cheap enough to be DTV's, they make back their budget or at least not lose that much. Fast forward to today and even Dreamworks is struggling. Sure, their last films were based on an obscure book series about bad@## Santa, a film about a Snail that wanted to be an indie car, and a film based on a 1960's cartoon series that isn't even aired anymore when other films based on said cartoon series were huge flops (this movie made back its budget internationally, meaning it's the biggest hit a Jay Ward cartoon film ever had). Then you get to HTTYD2 underperforming domestically, and Penguins of Madagascar released to poor timing. Franchises that were successful enough to get cartoon shows weren't making money. Which makes the fact crap like The Nuthouse making back it's low budget all the more frustrating.

Then you look at how "well" Dorothy returns to Oz did, and there's a sigh of relief.