Postman Pat: The Movie

The Story: When it comes to a British icon, there's probably one question to ask. How do you make them into a feature-length movie, whilst still respecting the original source material and not offending the nation that adores the icon? However, the film makes it clear that the filmmakers asked this question instead. How can we ruin this British icon within the span of 80 to 90 minutes and still get paid for it? Yes, as you can probably tell by that comment, this story is clearly just an absolute middle finger to both fans of Postman Pat and casual moviegoers in almost every way.

Now, let's start with the plot, where it's about Pat entering a singing competition to win a holiday for him and his family, whilst behind the scenes, a corporate official running Pat's job plans to use his popularity as a front to take over the world with his army of robots. But wait, there's more, because apparently, there's a subplot where, due to the fame and robot sabotage, Pat starts falling out of favour with Greendale, which doesn't really start until the halfway point. But wait, there's more, as there's also a subplot about Pat's family feeling like he's drifting away from them, which only comes up from time to time. But wait, there's still more, as there's a whole other subplot about the manager of Pat's rival trying to sabotage Pat and even trying to kill him, which gets resolved surprisingly quickly. Yeah, as you can see, the story is just an absolute mess, filled with tons of subplots that make the entire film convoluted, just to give the writing the appearance of complexity.

And yet, absolutely none of these plots are engaging, due to them either being heavily predictable where it becomes easy to guess the outcome or poorly-developed by not giving them much time or dedication and making them feel almost non-existent and just making all these subplots feel like filler to help extend the movie's running time. And what makes it worse is how some of the elements presented deviate heavily from the somewhat grounded world of the original franchise. I mean, seriously, when in the actual show does Pat commonly fight off evil robot copies of himself controlled by an over-the-top businessman who wants to rule the world? And if that wasn't bad enough, the pacing also provides another major issue, where it makes the film act so aggressively fast-paced that it quickly becomes obnoxious to watch, and thus making the feature just feel tiresome.

And that isn't even counting the comedy that, whilst it can have its good moments, mostly falls pretty flat, due to it often relying on bad slapstick and awful pop-culture references. However, the worst part of the story and what deviates from the show the most is its tone, as whilst the series has a calming and timeless feel to charm its audience, this movie desires to be as chaotic and trendy as possible to influence the audience to buy more merchandise to give more money to the filmmakers. And through this abysmal tone, the story feels like it was written to fit a checklist criteria that was made to gain money, and thus rendering the entire feature to feel practically soulless and just downright cringe-worthy.

Sure, maybe nobody expected the story to a Postman Pat film to be amazing, but that doesn't excuse how the story is both a horrible representation of its original series and a soulless time-wasting mess. (2/10)

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The Animation: So the story is an absolute trash-fire, but maybe the animation can help to make things better, right? There's a phrase for that, and it's called wishful thinking. Okay, I'll just get straight to the point here, this film looks very bad. Now, one thing I do have to give the animators credit for is how the character designs do stay somewhat faithful to the original series whilst also doing their best to transition them into the 3rd dimension. Well, for the most part, since some characters like Jess do look pretty awkward. However, whilst the character designs remain faithful to how they typically look in the franchise, the backgrounds, on the other hand, do not, as they all look very much bland and generic, lacking any unique style of their own to make them stand out from any other backgrounds of the same dull nature, unlike in the show, where they gave off a pleasant atmosphere and felt like heading into a wholesome little village.

Not to mention how, due to the feature's most likely very low budget, the rendering is absolutely terrible, where everything looks cheap and mechanically-produced, especially the textures that look so artificial and fake, as the skin of the characters looks like plastic. And if that wasn't enough, the character animation makes things worse by making their movements feel clunky and robotic, especially factoring in the slow framerate that doesn't match the pacing, to the point where it makes the entire movie feel less like an actual movie and more like an old video game for the PlayStation 2, although that might be a bit harsh towards the PS2.

Maybe the animators can present some talent, and maybe they did good work in other places, but for this film, it's clear they really didn't want to work on this, and in the end, the animation just flat-out sucks, especially when compared to the original series it came from. (3/10)

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The Characters: Now, with an absolutely atrocious mess of a story and awful animation, it should be evident by now that the characters are gonna suck, as not only are they bad, but some can make the feature somehow even more tough to watch. Now, let's start off with the postman himself, Postman Pat, a kind-hearted and friendly postman who tries his best to help out the townspeople and especially his family. Now, in the show, due to its charming nature, Pat is actually an enjoyable character, because of how his kind nature feels wholesome. Here, however, since the film feels quite disingenuous and lacks any respect for the original franchise, Pat is just the bland trope of the kind protagonist, accompanied by his pet cat Jess, who serves no purpose to the film, other than for plot convenience and some bad slapstick.

Next, we have the townsfolk and Pat's family, who also serve the awful story by being complete and utter morons, where they just fall for every trick the villain has planned and don't have enough brain-cells to even comprehend the concept that someone they know and trust very well has been replaced by a robot that couldn't be more obviously a robot if it was holding a sign saying "I'm a evil robot." As for the other characters, there's Josh, Pat's rival in the competition who loves playing video games and barely has any screen-time, his manager Wilf, who serves as the comic relief due to how much slapstick he endures, Mr. Brown, the bumbling but friendly CEO of the SDS and Simon Cowbell, who is just a blatant parody of Simon Cowell.

Then we have the villain, Edwin Carbunkle, the new boss at the SDS who uses Pat's evergrowing fame to his advantage and with his Patbot army, plans to take over the world. Now, I know this may be an animated movie made for kids, but he really is pushing that notion down into the ground, with just how ridiculously hammy and over-the-top he can get, to the point where it feels shocking that absolutely nobody in Greendale had figured out that he was a bad guy from the moment he appeared, and I was just waiting for someone to put two and two together and go "wait a minute, this dude might be evil." I mean, seriously, he couldn't be less subtle of a villain if he tried.

Another thing I want to talk about with the characters is the voice acting, and I'm just gonna be honest here, it's actually one of the better elements of the feature. Sure, I won't say everyone here was decent, as there were some that felt a little bit off, like Susan Duerden as Pat's wife Sara, but I will admit that most did a solid job, where even with the horrible script they had to work with, it sounded like many of the actors, like Jim Broadbent, David Tennent, Rupert Grint, Peter Woodward, Robin Atkin Downes and many more were having fun whilst doing their lines, and the best jokes are when the actors would get a chance to stop making lame pop-culture references and actually deliver some funny lines. Does it redeem the film in any way? No way, this is hopeless, but I will acknowledge that some people did their job very well, and had fun doing so. I'll even add that the singing voices were nicely done too, like from Ronan Keating, even if the transition is laughably noticeable, and most surprisingly Rupert Grint. Huh, I guess Ron Weasley can sing, go figure.

Even if the acting and singing can offer some entertainment, it still doesn't excuse how the characters are so poorly-written that they are either forgettably bland at best or embarrassingly braindead at worst. (4/10)

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Well, I can comfortably say that I wholeheartedly hate this goddamn movie. Postman Pat: The Movie is an animated feature that serves as both a soulless cash-grab and an insult to one of the most popular British franchises, where even simply watching it feels like a waste of time. Sure, maybe it has some okay character designs and solid voice acting that also results in some good singing, but that doesn't save it from having an unoriginal mess of a story, lame subplots that are underdeveloped, an abundance of pointless filler, weak humour that falls flat, bad animation that looks cheap, a cast of characters that range from dull to idiotic, an obnoxiously fast pace and an atrocious tone that makes the movie feel both soulless and disrespectful to the series it was based on.

Honestly, my recommendation is that you should skip this film and instead watch the original show, because that way, you'll have some substance to gain, rather than spend 80 to 90 minutes of your time and effort to experience this soulless cash-grab. (3/10)