Fish and Cherries Productions

Ahh, what a ride this has been. Of course, they could pull a total Toy Story and make a fourth one, but if this is to be the end… what a ride.

How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

Penguins of Madagascar wasn’t anything super spectacular or groundbreaking, but it was still fun. I may not have thought much of the original Madagascar when I saw it, but I thought the penguins were the best part, so this was welcome entertainment. There were a lot of clever and fast jokes, as well as a string of puns that I couldn’t tell whether they were clever, corny, ironic, or all three. That said, the plot is a string of tropes and conventions, which leaves Benedict Cumberbatch’s character, which he brings all of his natural charm to, as merely a plot device and not a particularly interesting character. As such, you’ll probably figure out most of the plot as soon as movie gets going.

The biggest stick for me is that the moral seems very confused: there’s a message at the end about how a person’s worth is truly what’s on the inside, but this is being delivered while the heroes are turning people from monstrous to cute. That’s such a huge contradiction that I’m still trying to get my head around it. Honestly, though, I’m glad I saw it. The penguins are their funny selves and there’s plenty of good comedy from the side characters, which is all I was really expecting. It has its faults and it doesn’t break any new ground, but it’s still fun.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 is indescribably good. The first one was a hard contender with Toy Story 3 for best animated film of the year at their time and the sequel improves on everything significantly. All of the characters, even the minor ones, still have very distinct personalities, the animation is still beautiful, the flying scenes are still breathtaking, and there were some very emotional scenes that definitely hit harder than the ones in its predecessor. The ending seemed like a bit of a deus ex machina to me, but it was still within reason. Oddly enough, the thing that always impressed me the most about these movies is how they did the hair, as that is often the hardest thing to animate. But in this series, every single one is given a lot of detailed work and legitimately looks real. Overall, this is definitely a must-see. Here’s hoping that this one takes the Oscar home.

Mr. Peabody and Sherman was a fairly good movie that also left me a little disappointed. One of the movie’s biggest strengths is that it’s very intelligent, both in most of its humor and Peabody being portrayed as a Holmesian genius prodigy, which is a nice touch. However, the film’s greatest strength is also a potential drawback, as some of the humor might be so sophisticated that it might leave some of the younger viewers feeling lost. But the biggest drawback is the character of Ms. Grunion, whose only purpose is to be a one-dimensional antagonist that simply exists to harass Peabody and make him miserable, even getting excited about him getting possibly put down, with no believable motive or reason for doing so apart from “he’s a dog and dogs shouldn’t raise humans.” That does stand aside some other heavy and well thought out conflicts and themes too, like parenting techniques, what family truly is, and other such things that really have a lot of heart and make you feel for these characters. However, this comes at the expense of a rather cliched story and some fairly tired tropes, like the aforementioned bully in Ms. Grunion and also isn’t as strong in the laugh department. So as you can tell, I’m fairly mixed about this movie. It’s much more mature than the advertisements make it out to be and it’s very smart, but the intelligence is held back by a rather formulaic plot. But it is far superior to any of the other adaptation of the segments of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show that came before it, so take that for what it’s worth.