ANIMATED MOVIE REVIEW: BATMAN AND HARLEY QUINN (2017)

The DC cinematic universe was known for being mostly a failure. However, there animated offerings tend to be quite good. I have watched a few of them and I'm not sure if I just got a bad lot, but the results for me have been mixed. This is definitely in the mixed bag.

This movie is about Batman teaming up with Nightwing and Harley Quinn. Their goal is to beat Poison Ivy and Floronic Man who want to turn all humans into plants. The majority of the voice work and animation is servicable to good. However, the problems all abound in the script.

The first thing is that it doesn't know if it wants to be an adult movie or a kids movie. This leads to weird mixes such as children's action scenes and a plot, but then you have them playing up Harley Quinn's sexuality with some BDSM or a particularly gory kill of a security guard. It can't decide whether to be serious or joking.

The characters don't even know. For example, with the whole world at risk and them being outgunned, they still refuse help from other heroes. That and the ending and how they win is the very definition of anti-climaxes. 

There are other problems as well, but that is the main one. One pet peeve I have is how they keep trying to make Harley not so bad to fill in as an antihero, instead of the mass murderer she is. But that is just a bit of background. At the end of the day, the inconsistent tone prevented any build-up of tension, which made this show feel like it just dragged on too long.

2 out of 5 swampy waffles. 

MOVIE REVIEW: JOURNEY 2- THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (2012)

Journey 2 is the sequel to Journey to the Centre of the Earth (I think, it is never really referenced in the movie). In this movie, Dwayne Johnson stars as a step dad to a teenager from the first movie. THe teenager is trying to decode his grandfathers message to find him on the Mysterious Island.

This is definitely a movie aimed at the younger audience. There is no real blood and gore. Similarly, there is no real scientific or long-winded explanation for allot of what happens in the movie (such as the big is small and small is big rule). It is intended as a fast-paced sequence moving through set-pieces. And in this, it mostly succeeds.

However, where the movie falls apart is that the characters themselves don't treat anything like any real danger. In one part of the movie, they are racing against time to get off the island. However, then the kid is upset when he isn't allowed to take a day-long detour to look at a unique mountain. The movie is filled with a bunch of little moments like this that try to feel like force drama.

This wouldn't be a problem if it didn't have moments where it is trying to make the audience take it seriously. A nice popcorn-flick where you can just relax throughout the movie is fine. However, you can't make a movie both ways. You can't have nothing feel like it has any consequence and also randonly have tension when you want to. There needs to be a consistent tone throughout the movie. At the end, this is just a forgettable movie.

2 out of 5 mysterious waffles.

MOVIE REVIEW: TAU (2018)

What do you get when you start with a pretty interesting premise. Then, in small but painfully abrupt steps, it then proceeds to insert every stupid cliche until the story is mercifully put out of its misery. Well, I am starting the think the answer is pretty much Tau.

Tau is the story of a down-on-her luck girl who is making ends meet by stealing small things and pawning them off. She is then kidnapped and, along with a bunch of other un-missable people, she is subject to experimentation in order to get her brain patterns. Of course, she ends up being a genius.

At some stage in the movie, the actual plot kicks in with an AI being assigned to guard her. She quickly bonds with the AI using the usual cliche's. What is friendship? What is death? What is laughter? Etc. Eventually, due to increasing stupidity from the characters and plot contrivances, things eventually end.

This movie is pretty bad. Bad acting, bad story, bad effects, bad pacing. There is no reason to really watch this. This feels like someones first draft for a story that just got made without anyone considering if it actually makes sense or is even worthwhile watching.

1 out 5 artifical waffles. 

MOVIE REVIEW: LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT (2002)

Life or Something Like It is a movie that feels like it is going for Oscar Bait. Instead, by the end of the movie, it manages to undermine its own message while playing into every bad romantic movie cliche that is know. Some spoilers ahead.

Angelina Jolie stars as a hotshot reported. She seems to have the perfect life- dating a famous baseball player and being successful in her own career. However, the plot kicks off with a fortune teller telling her she would die in a week and then predicting some other stuff correctly to make her believe him.

This leads her on a journey of self-discovery. She predictably goes through the motions of realising her relationship is shallow when her boyfriend tries to help her out. I'm still not sure why. She then gets together with a guy she had a one night stand with years ago. She then gets drunk and makes a fool of herself on television, which (of course) gets allot of exposure and a promotion for her.

At the end of the day, the movie just plods along with a generic plot. Even at the end, the whole message is undermined when she interviews a celebrity. Then, for some reason, the celebrity has a break down on air when she is reminded she isn't married. 

This undermines the message the film is trying and failing to send with being happy with yourself. The final message is that, if you aren't in a relationship, you can't be happy. Which makes her even more hypocritical as she is literally getting together with her two-night stand guy.

1 out of 5 waffles or something like them.