Year: 2020

Need for Speed (2014)

Currently the Rotten Tomatoes rating for Need for Speed is 23% (57% audience score). I can understand why it wasn’t a critical success, but I’m definitely on the side of the audience here.

Watch this movie if…

  • …you like car racing movies.
  • …you like practical special effects (rather than CGI).
  • …you don’t mind a ridiculous premise.
  • …you like happy endings and don’t mind a predictable plot.

Do NOT watch this movie if…

  • …you are tired of The Fast and the Furious franchise.
  • …you hate tropes and are hoping for some literary merit.
  • …your attention span is less than 130 minutes.
  • …you are a pedantic gearhead.

Personally, I don’t mind stories whose plots I can predict. After all, I’ve been trying to become an expert on plot by watching and summarizing movies. What bugs me is when I can predict the dialogue, and this movie didn’t have that problem. A commercially successful movie plot has to have certain elements, but there’s no excuse for stale dialogue. If the characters are going to say something obvious, they may as well say nothing at all.

See below for a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

Continue reading Need for Speed (2014)

Onward (2020)

Either Onward wasn’t that great, or I was in a weird mood when I watched it.

Or maybe the previews ruined it. I prefer to watch movies that I know nothing about. Movie trailers that show you jokes from the movie are awful, because a joke is really only funny when it’s a surprise.

Or maybe it’s that I don’t like movies about high school. Onward is about a magical quest, sure, but it is also somewhat about being in high school. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a television or film depiction of “the American high school experience” that bore any resemblance to my own high school experience. Relatability fail. Every time.

Or maybe it’s that the movie can’t be about an epic quest and high school at the same time… too much cognitive dissonance.

Or maybe it’s that Pixar’s charm is fading; too much reliance on a formula? The story did seem to have the odor of plot coupons — not that the brothers had to physically collect things, but they did go through a series of preordained steps to reach a goal. Sure, there was a meaningful ‘inner’ journey, but the outer journey seemed a bit paint-by-numbers.

It’s not that it was a bad movie. It was good. But I couldn’t love it whole-heartedly.

The funniest part of Onward was the scene at the chasm. I laughed so much! But there are some really, really sad moments too… And some cringey ones, which is probably another reason I didn’t like the movie as much as I was hoping to.

Watch on Amazon

See below for a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

Continue reading Onward (2020)

The Swan Princess (1994)

I didn’t see The Swan Princess when I was a kid so I have no happy nostalgic feelings for it. I have almost no happy feelings for it at all, to be frank. It was the stupidest thing I’ve seen in a long time.

Was the whole thing terrible? No… The villain song was good. Still, although I love me a good villain song (Ursula’s in particular), even a great villain song can’t hold up an entire movie.

And no, in case you were curious, the plot is nothing like the plot of the ballet. That’s what I’m told, anyway, and I believe it—in part because I can’t imagine a ballet that would be anything like this movie.

Whereas The Swan Princess seems hopelessly outdated, Beauty and the Beast, which came out three years earlier, seems like a timeless classic. I hesitate to even compare the two, though they are both early nineties princess cartoons. A less unfair comparison to make would be with Thumbelina (1994), which came out the same year… and was also terrible.

Maybe kids like this nonsense… after all, The Swan Princess has like… eight sequels! Still, I think children deserve better.