tigress-06218 Reviews

Taking 5 (2007)

I Can't Believe There's a Boy-Band Kidnapping Movie

[5/10 · 7 January 2024]

The first time I watched it somehow I came away from it thinking it was unironically good, but I was embarrassed making that claim and rewatching it with a different viewing audience as it's definitely more of the ironically good variety. Still, it's crazy, entertaining, sometimes stupid, and worth a watch with anyone who enjoys bad, campy movies.

It also is quite shocking as it doesn't pull any punches; I guess because it was a DVD release and not on a kids channel. When they kidnap the band members, They REALLY kidnap them, tied down, gagged, the lot. They drug a driver. They steal a car. And there's a scene where a main character attempts to seduce one of the band members; while the actress was overage she truly looked young and the character is a minor in the story.. so yeah. Gross.

Still, it's a unique experience watching an honest-to-god boyband kidnap movie, and I can't imagine not being entertained by watching this. And the film is nostalgic due to the time period; I think they really did capture the intense zeal that teens had for boy band members back when boy bands were still a thing. Oddly enough, this came out in 2007, in a period far removed from the N'Sync/Backstreet phenomena of 1997-2002 and yet far away from the future One Direction craziness of 2011-2014.

Monster High 2 (2023 TV Movie)

How Can A Movie with Singing & Dancing Monsters be this BORING?

[1/10 · 7 January 2024]

The first Monster High movie got a lot of attention, but man, did no one watch this one. This has only a handful of reviews and almost all of them seem to be from people involved in making the film. As someone who had no part in making the film, just someone who watched it (or attempted to watch it), let me just say it is a terrible, terrible film.

I watched the first film from start to finish. (You can check out my review, where I go in-depth). And while the first film was bad, it was at least watchable. And it did have some good points (albeit few). The songs were bad, but they at least sounded like they belonged in a movie. The plot made no sense, but at least it was paced decently in a three-act format.

THIS film, however, was so bad it's bad. Unwatchable. My friends and I barely made it past the half-hour mark before we all agreed we needed to turn it off. We didn't even have anything to say about it due to how boring it is.

Again, my title. It's literally a movie about teenage monsters who sing and dance. And it ended up too boring to finish. How is that even possible?! I couldn't think of a more potentially engaging concept for a movie. It could have at least been bad in a campy way, but no.

It was paced horribly. We made it to thirty minutes and nothing happened except: 1. Deuce said he POTENTIALLY COULD leave Monster High. He's thinking about it but hasn't made a decision either way 2. Clawdeen made the decision to run against Torelei for class president, which really doesn't matter all that much to the plot. Nothing happened regarding the campaign except Clawdeen made some posters 3. Draculaura met a really shady guy who is POTENTIALLY a love interest for her. He told her he is a human witch and they proceeded to do a really terrible two-person dance sequence which is the moment we had to turn it off

I don't recommend anyone watch this movie due to how boring it is. But due to the lack of attention I think no one wanted to watch it anyways.

Monster High: The Movie (2022 TV Movie)

Cliche and Badly Executed DCOM-Wannabe with Sparse Moments of Redemption

[3/10 · 6 January 2024]

Someone got a hold of the tried and true tween movie script. You know the one, you've seen it a billion times before. Main character is new at school (either a freshman or a new transfer, or sometimes both). She's shy, unconfident, out of place! She clashes with the mean popular girl and falls for the handsome yet down-to-earth heartthrob; together with her new quirky friends she solves whatever problem is happening in the plot and learns to be true to herself.

Yep, some guy got hold of that script and inserted the names of Monster High characters into it. And made it a musical.

I don't need to rehash the hundreds of critiques that discuss just how unfaithful it is to its original source material. That's been covered enough, but I do agree with the other reviewers that any and all changes made to the concept/story only made the end product worse.

Instead I'll take a shot at a different review, reviewing the movie itself, which was still awful.

First off, it was a huge mistake making this movie a musical. Production definitely wanted to make this as standard modern kids' fare and looked to Descendants and Zombies for inspiration. But you really need a reason to make a movie a musical. You need a talented choreographer and song team and actors who have experience in musical productions. If you don't have that, then the movie ends up... well, like this one. With forgettable, terrible songs, minimal choreography, and actors who don't seem to grasp they should be performing a song with their whole body and not just moving their lips when they lip-sync the track.

Second, the costumes/makeup. This movie gets a lot of hate for its costumes; I actually think most of the hate is undeserved, or at the least misplaced. When the basis for the costumes comes from dolls (hyper skinny ones at that) who dress in platform heels and wear outfits appropriate for twenty-year olds, it's impossible to replicate that style for real teenagers. I think for the main characters, the costumes were fine and I had no issues with them. It's the background characters that were atrocious. They looked awful. Embarrassing, actually. I don't know whose idea it was to paint the extras from head to toe but it looked terrible on camera. And oddly, they put so much effort into painting them, yet their hair and outfits looked like no effort or thought was put into them at all. Without exaggeration, the background monsters looked like the background townspeople from Halloweentown, which was made over 20 years ago.

There wasn't a coherent plot. And the characters! They took some of the most fleshed-out, interesting, unique characters ever created for a tween-oriented audience... and just flat out cut them all from the story. No character in this film bears any resemblance to any of the established Monster High characters. They used the stock archetypes in every tween movie instead, which made every character flat and unlikable. There wasn't a single character who I liked throughout the film, except possibly the main character. Draculaura as the "sarcastic goth friend" archetype was my least favorite, and I really wish they kept her established personality which is almost the exact opposite to how she is portrayed in the film.

So... If it was this bad, then why didn't I rate this a 1 out of 10? Well... there's actually a few sparse moments in this film that surprised me by being actually quite good that I should mention.

The most notable one is the scene involving the song "True Monster Heart". Everything about that sequence worked; the choreography, the cast's performance, and notably, its importance in the film. Clawdeen's motivation to transfer to Monster High was to find a place where she could be herself (half human, half monster), free of judgement or hate. Disappointed by the human world and its hatred of monsters, she begins the movie by performing the song "Coming Out of the Dark" explaining her expectations for Monster High: "Here I am, I'm comin' out of the dark/Not afraid to show my secrets or my scars/This is where I'm finally free". However, Monster High wasn't the utopia she imagined, and what she finds is the same hate and judgement, only towards humans. This song expertly conveys this through its exaggerated, goofy lyrics ("Humans are unbearable, altogether terrible/Just a bunch of freaky creeps) " and the characters' (excluding Clawdeeen) notable enthusiasm during the sequence. The scene is akin to "A Girl Worth Fighting For" in Mulan, where the characters' common attitude regarding women are established via song and Mulan has to join in for fear she will be discovered. I wish the same high quality and thought was put into the other musical sequences; sadly, this is the only one of any quality or importance.

The other sequence that really worked was the sequence where Clawdeen had to break into the principal's office, and through magic, had to impersonate the principal in front of Cleo. Marci T. House really sold her performance as "Bloodgood but actually Clawdeen" and the comedic timing of the sequence worked well. Again, if the whole movie was paced and executed like this it could have been great, but this was the only scene that worked.

Overall the movie was a solid one out of ten with the exeption of the scenes that I mentioned, which raised its rating slightly. I really, truly wish it was better, but alas.

10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

Writing tries to be edgy, comes off as cringey

[1/10 · 9 November 2021]

I'm in a real Emperor's New Clothes situation because I'm the only person I know who thinks this movie is as bad as it is. But it's horrible and I have no idea why it's considered an 'iconic movie' or even good.

It's just a worse She's All That, but also the edginess of the dialogue from Heathers without any of the thematic execution or surrealism/stylistic elements that makes the dialogue passable in that scenario. In this world, teachers tell students they "should be btch-slapped" and students draw dcks on each others' faces. Ooh. So edgy. /s I can just imagine the writers grinning thinking they were writing 'cool' dialogue when to the viewer it's just stupid and occassionally grating. I was rolling my eyes on one of the lines one of the characters says when asking about why Bianca is so popular- "Does she have beer-flavored npples?" The writing is at the level of a sixth grade boy.

And the references to Shakespeare- I've had writers try to convey something in a movie in a heavy-handed way, but I think this movie gave me a concussion with how they beat you over the head that this is a reference to Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. What are the characters reading in class? Shakespeare. Whose poster is in the friends locker? It's Shakespeare. What's the school called? Padua, the country from Taming of the Shrew. One of the characters goes to the prom as... Shakespeare. And in case someone is so dense not to catch all of that, the characters will sometimes just straight up quote from the play, unprompted.

Some scenes are also strange, indicating they might have been trying to go with a more surreal take before going with a very standard depiction. For instance, there's an unnecessary scene at the beginning explaining the social cliques in the school (this type of scene is a teen movie cliche, but it's only necessary in films where cliques are central to the narrative. Not so in this movie, which is very much about individual characters) and the cliques explained contain groups like 'white rastafarians' and 'cowboys'. Clearly going for a comedy moment, but this wasn't sustained during the rest of the film, as much of the scenes with the main characters seem to be neutral or even slightly realistic to the high school experience. The movie also seemed to start out with Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character and Kat as dual main characters before dumping him and relegating him to a side character.

Some like this movie just for the performances (which in my opinion, the actor/s have to hit it out of the park to justify liking a movie with other flaws) but the performances are pretty standard. Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles are likeable but they have many scenes where their delivery is flawed. I don't think any acting is standout and the characters aren't super unique either.

Overall, serious execution flaws and especially awful dialogue make this movie quite an unenjoyable watch.

Charmed: Lost and Bound (2002) Season 4, Episode 12

NOT Bewitched!

[3/10 · 4 November 2016]

I have watched Bewitched since I was a kid (Note: It was long considered classic TV when I used to watch it) and I am outraged at the portrayal of the show. To anyone who has actually WATCHED the show, they would know that Samantha is not a passive stereotypical housewife. She actually takes care of things all by herself, often going behind Darrin's back to fix problems. Watch any of the episodes from the black and white seasons and you'll see her attitude. Sure, she listens to Darrin and doesn't use her powers, but she does this out of trust in the marriage. She also does this to spite her family who opposes her marriage, and in fear that Darrin will abuse her powers and become greedy. She DOESN'T just cook dinner or sit and knit, like Phoebe does in this episode. (In the early seasons Sam is a terrible cook and I don't think she's ever knitted). They should have never dragged Bewitched into this. They could have made it so Phoebe was cursed to act like a stereotypical 50's housewife. Instead they dragged the reputation of a classic show (A show that took place in the late 60s-early 70s and was mostly in COLOR), of which they obviously had limited knowledge.

Apart than that, I loved the firestarter plot, especially the parents being demons- they should have focused even more on this storyline, because it was excellent.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Hitchin' a Ride (2015) Season 1, Episode 8

Weak and a Rip-Off

[4/10 · 15 November 2015]

Listen, I love this show. This cartoon is both creative and written impeccably. Compared to the other Marvel cartoons currently airing its definitely one of the best.

However, this episode was a real low point. For one thing, the build-up from the previous episode made it seem like this was going to be either the season finale (I heard somewhere the season was going to be only 8 episodes) or some sort of turning point. The fact that Neptuna has the universal weapon and Korath knows about the cosmic seed... well, I was expecting another conflict.

This episode was more of a filler. If there was a summary of the events of the season, none of this episode would be included. If that was just it then this episode would still be below average, but not bad...

The big turn-off for me was the lack of originality- this episode directly copies two episodes of original Ben 10, "Permanent Retirement," and the season 2 finale. I was about ten minutes into this episode when I recognized that I've seen this before. If you've never watched the show, you would not realize, but basically the whole part about the symbiotes putting Drax and Gamora in pods was copied, and the part with Quil and Rocket and the pocket Dimension tool was EXACTLY what happened in the season 2 finale.

It's disappointing when writers have to default to previously written material. As shown by other episodes of Guardians of the Galaxy, there's a huge amount of potential for great, original story lines here.

I hope later episodes will feature other writers.

Descendants (2015 TV Movie)

Cheesy and Lackluster

[1/10 · 8 August 2015]

Disney has seen better days. This movie was very underwhelming. Typical angsty and unlikeable main character (Mal), falls in love with the good looking but understanding guy. Barely any plot other than that. All the main characters get on your nerves, except for me Carlos was a standout. This movie doesn't really teach kids anything, in fact, it gives them the false impression that people who have school spirit and get good grades are dorky and lame. Basically this movie is an hour and a half of the music video for Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend"

Oh and the songs are terrible. Just awful. Made my ears bleed.

In conclusion, it's really not worth watching. If you want to watch an excellent Disney Channel original movie, try Wendy Wu or Now You See It. Those are great.