cujoe_da_man

I finally got around to watching this and I'm very underwhelmed. It's not bad, it has some humorous parts, but overall, I was actually kind of bored.

Let me get something out of the way, I understand this was for kids, not adults. I'm not ripping on it for that, but there's a point where a show moves from "made for kids" to "just insulting kid's intelligence". This was certainly getting close to the latter.

I'm willing to give them a pass, this was one of the earliest Lego/Star Wars shows to air, so they probably didn't have much to go by. I think we'd all be used to 'The Lego Movie(s)' with awesome stories and humor for everyone of all ages today, so it's easy to forget that a franchise sometimes has to get its footing to be really good (Star Trek TNG wasn't exactly stellar storytelling in its first season). I found some of the humor to be rather dull, especially when making pop culture references to modern day Earth such as C3PO saying he has WIFI, R2D2 calling Anakin 'Einstein' and other similar jokes just don't land well, even for a show made up of characters in Lego form. I did find the mini-clone-clone quite humorous and most of General Grievous' scenes were fun, so it's not all bad. There is a running gag of Yoda always speaking "backwards" when, in fact, he doesn't do it all the time. It gets to the point of being super annoying and they try to remedy this with another joke of how he only does it when he's not mocking someone. I know it's supposed to just be fun and funny, but there's only so long you can hang onto one joke.

I have to wonder if the writers and the art department knew which Star Wars they were working with, this episode alone features Star Destroyers, ships that don't come into existence until ep. 4. There are other ships that resemble X-Wings, but without the s-foils making that signature X shape. Grievous also can't seem to keep the same voice, between this and the next episode, I am certain I heard three different voices, one of which had no sound modulation to make his voice mechanical sounding.

Voice acting is ok, the only really recognizable voice is C3PO and Palpatine is passable (and let's face it, anyone can do Yoda), everyone else is more of a cheap knockoff (Obi Wan is by far the worst). They do much better when you get into "Droid Tales". The actual acting of the voice actors also isn't so hot, again, it's better in later series'.

Honestly, I might recommend skipping this series if you're a hardcore hater, but for everyone else, this would be a good start to see how the team behind these shows progressed when you get into "Droid Tales" and "The Freemaker Adventures". It's still worth the watch.

I saw this at our local electronics shop that buys movies and thought it would just be a fun "kung fu" action flick. Well, they got the "kung fu" part... kinda.

It started off simple enough with a number of setups for plot points later in the movie, so don't be surprised when you're easily able to predict what will happen.

The problem I had with this movie is not that it's a ripoff of Spiderman, but that nothing in the plot made any sense. The main character, Chan, is imbued with powers from a magical space amulet that makes him get really overheated when he gets excited and burns off his clothes. You would think they would have gone with a Human Torch kind of character, but his powers are the ability to control metal objects. There is another that is supposed to be a moon stone, but it gives you ice powers. When these elements are combined, you get Captain Pl... err, I mean, you get a nuclear bomb. The main antagonist is Usama Bin Ali (bet you can't guess who he's supposed to be) and he's upset at America and wants to destroy a US boat carrying bombs (that we never actually see) with a nuclear bomb made from the magic rocks that will kill everyone in Thailand (I think they're in Thailand). I don't mind when a movie wants to have a message, but you have a super hero battling terrorists, you lose something. The whole terrorist (movie) plot just seems forced and I don't understand why a movie base in an Asian country with Asian actors/inhabitants would have such a heavily influenced Middle Eastern agenda. I am certainly no geography or history major, but to me it makes no sense at all and it makes the message confusing. Was the director anti-American or anti-terrorist? They didn't even have a real supervillain for Chan to fight.

After Chan gets his powers and continually asking for more exposition to understand what's going on because us, the watchers, wouldn't have a clue without it, goes around the city to fight crime. He stops such daring criminals like a drunk driver by throwing the driver and his car into the air and crashing him into a billboard, he ends a very slow police car chase by smashing the car and probably killing everyone inside, and even stops a couple of "evil" elephants on a rampage... that only started rampaging because of some kid with psychic powers.

Oh, you didn't know about the kid with psychic powers? Yeah, there's this kid with psychic powers that can control your mind, bend gun barrels, move things without touching them... it's a plot point that is never used properly. The bad guys have him in their possession and the only thing they use him for is to find the boat they want to destroy. Seems like a lot of wasted potential.

The movie attempts to be all philosophical and completely fails at it. There is one scene where a random monk tells Chan that "to control your body, you must control your mind, then you can control your body". They also keep throwing this whole "you must contain the fires in your heart" kind of messages. I get what they were going for, but I don't think the writers understood the message they were trying to convey. They also try to string things together that have no business being strung together, like when they try to explain that Chan's powers can be nullified with electricity because the magic stone doesn't like honey. No, I am not making that up. The stone is apparently alive and if you feed it honey, it becomes docile. The honey has enzymes and therefore has the same properties as electricity. It makes total sense.

A lot of the dubbing isn't that good, they tried to do their best and that's fine, but you can really tell they just didn't know what to say in a lot of cases. The newscasters are especially bad.

The fight scenes are just ok, it's nothing you haven't seen before and there's a lot of use of wires and suspension rigs to make the actors move in ways they physically cannot. This isn't a bad thing, but you can really tell when the actors are on wires. That being said, it won't matter much because you can't usually see what's happening anyway. The way they cut the fight scenes will drive you crazy. Nearly every fight scene only shows about a second of footage before cutting to another angle, so you never really get to see them fight. Not all of them are this way, but the majority are cut too fast to really enjoy it.

Costumes and outfits are fine, again, nothing special. The look of the girl who takes on the moon stone was decent, though you could tell she was wearing a sports bra and panties (not that I expect her to be naked, but you can tell she's just wearing clothes, would have been better with a full body suit).

The CG work isn't good, but considering when this came out and where it was released, I'll give it a pass.

Overall, it's not really a good movie, it's not really a bad movie, it just exists and isn't really worth the watch unless you just want to be bored.

I'm pretty certain three out of the four reviews here are from people that worked on this movie... and I use the word "movie" loosely. Apparently, a group of people had delusions of grandeur and thought they were making a B-movie masterpiece, but ended up with a Z-movie not fit for a bargain bin.

You start off the movie with a retro grind house "special presentation" opener that, for a few seconds, gives you nostalgia for movies you would rather be watching. The movie moves onto a shot of an owl sitting in a tree... and then it defecates before it flies away. If that isn't foreshadowing for what you're about to witness, I don't know what is.

The characters are such an A-list cast including:

'Guy Reading His Lines Off Screen' playing 'Generic Scientist'

'Sushii Holder' (probably a porn name) playing 'Lesbian Scientist'

'Boob Lady' playing 'Lesbian Scientist's Girlfriend'

'Can't Do A Proper Accent' playing 'Evil German Scientist Stereotype'

'Token Black Man' playing 'Thug 1 With A Gun And Money'

'I Look Like The Lead Guy From Birdemic' playing 'Thug 2 That Wears An Eye Patch'

'They Found Me On The Street' playing 'Thug 3 That Looks Like Reject Joe Dirt'

'Beer Gut' playing 'Not Even Rent-A-Cop'

'I'm Someone's Math Teacher' playing 'Racist Italian Stereotype'

There is also 'Generic News Anchor' named L. Kaufman, played by Lloyd Kaufman. Yeah, that's really subtle. He's also holding a mic with "Troma TV" taped to it, as if these morons think they're anywhere near the cult status of Kaufman's Troma franchise.

None of the actors can act, it's apparent they were just fed their lines and told to stand on the "X" for the shot. Ironically, the only one that actually had any level of talent was Larry (Thug 1 with the gun). We're not talking Hollywood a-list celeb here, but he at least seemed to understand what and who his character was. It was at least convincing enough to want more of him.

The movie spends a lot of time reminding us the girls are lesbians. It's such a stunning and brave movie that finally represents lesbians in a positive light. They assault some poor bar patron and tell him they're lesbians, they randomly take showers for no other reason than they're lesbians, they're flashing and rubbing their naked bodies against each other, truly stunning and brave and absolutely no indication this was just the director's attempt at making a porno. They also sit around and talk about the guys they want to have sex with... because they're lesbians. Absolutely made for a modern audience. Lesbian Scientist always has this "I don't want to be here" look on her face especially at the very end. I wonder if she owed someone money.

The sets... well, there are no sets. If it's not someone's house, it's a couple walls made out of plywood with a folding table in the middle. It's embarrassing to see what they attempted to pass off as a lab, it looks like someone raided their kid's science set they bought at Walmart to use as props.

There is a soundtrack and if the swamp woman music sounds familiar, it's because it's some strange rendition 'This is Halloween' from "The Nightmare Before Christmas". The movie ends with ANOTHER shower scene and some techno version of 'Let's Hear It For The Boys'. Aside from that, there is nothing else notable about the music.

The only makeup is when Lesbian Scientist is mysteriously turned green and naked. It's never really shows WHY she is turned green and naked, she wasn't injected with anything, just that after her beating, she runs miles and miles out of the city into the swamp (while naked for some reason) and then becomes swamp woman. They give her some goofy teeth and don't bother to cover the hairline with the same green paint. She also wears Crocs... must be some kind of attempt at humor, get it? Crocs? She's a reptile (I think)? Filmed by a studio with a croc as the mascot? Funny. She also questions whether she can still have children... because that's how lesbians work, right? I guess if she got in-vitro, but who is going to hold her down? It's obvious the writers... well, the people who wrote the script, didn't actually put thought into this. They just said "hey, this is funny, we'll put it in".

Swamp Woman herself is barely even in her own movie, clocking in at a whopping 4.5 minutes TOTAL and when she is, all she does is run around the woods talking to herself. She occasionally kills people that come looking for her, but other than that, nothing happens.

The type of exploitation this is attempting to cash in on is just sad. They don't understand what made those old exploitation movies so enjoyable to watch. Even the bad ones were still entertaining in their own way, this movie is just tedious to sit through and even with all the nudity, you're still looking at your watch and thinking "how did this make it to an hour in run time?". They could have cut out all the padding and whittled this down to a half hour easy and still could have told the same story. They threw in random shower scenes with the two girls that last waaay too long. The lighting and grading don't match the rest of the movie, which is why I think they weren't originally trying to make a low-budge sci-fi movie.

At the end, this isn't even good enough to warrant watching for how bad it is. The editing is terrible, the thin plot is written by children, it's boring, and not even the nude girls are enough to make you want to sit through it. Skip this trash.