Review: 'Axel: The Biggest Little Hero' with Ed Asner, Matthew Lillard, and George Takei

I’m a big cartoon guy, I still watch cartoons on Saturday morning and have my TiVo record all the current series on Cartoon Network. I’m pretty open to watching animated films also. Even though I’m open I’m also pretty critical of them. Now when this new one came to me I was a bit surprised. I’ve never heard of the studio or the movie at all. I was sitting here thinking just who or what is Axel The Biggest Little Hero standing on top of robot bird with sunglasses on. Well I just popped it in and gave it a watch.

So here we have Axel The Biggest Little Hero as a pretty simple hero adventure story. What’s interesting with this is that it has a very '80s feel in terms of howcompletely all over the place the world and characters look, yet it is never explained. The story is about a young boy named Axel who considers himself a hero while the rest of his little town just see a rambunctious nuisance. To be completely honest the whole set up of this story felt very much like the early parts of Naruto (a long running Japanese anime). One day while Axel was “saving” a small bug on a branch he has a vision of a mystical far away grove of Cacti that could save his people from ever worrying about hunger. He’s told this by the voice of their great hero, Bunta, that he must complete this quest to become a true hero. Being that he fell from that branch and got hurt he then spends the time as he heals up telling everyone what he saw and they all just roll their eyes at his claims. Axel then decides to pack up and go off on this journey into the unknown to find this grove. Following him on this journey is his best friend, Jono.

Honestly, the main thing that's surprising to me is just how good it looks. There have been some CG films in the last year, some even released in theaters with modeling, character design, lighting, textures and such that are just so bland and subpar, almost like cut-scenes for Playstation 2-era games.  This movie though is quite interesting to look at with what I see as a keen eye for detail, characters, and settings.  The one thing that really holds this back is that the story doesn’t seem to bemade for a movie at all. There are parts of the story that are very slow and drags, and feels more suited to an animated series.  Another thing lacking is the big bad villain of the story. While it’s a great visual there isn't a true foe that is going to try and stop Axel from getting his ultimate prize. Instead it's more of a situation Axel falls into while on the journey, and that lacking hurts the story.

In the end , while I think the story will be really interesting for younger kids to watch I feel it’s going to leave everyone wanting. The story in all felt like watching that Clone Wars movie that was just the first three episode of the show. You’ll get to end and feel like "That's it? But where’s my ending"? Who knows if we’ll ever get it? It might just end up being something you can put on to keep the kids quiet for an hour.

Read More

Review: 'The Nut Job,' starring Will Arnett and Katherine Heigl

So The Nut Job is a quite perplexing little animated movie. Here we have a story about a purple squirrel named Surly (Will Arnett) who is a loner from all the other animals in a park, with the exception of a rat named Buddy who doesn’t speak. See, Surly doesn’t really get along with the other animals that live near a giant oak tree and are led by a Raccoon (Liam Neeson) called Raccoon (hmm, yeah). One day Surly and Buddy try to rob a hot nut stand; at the same time, Raccoon has sent two other squirrels, Andie (Katherine Heigl) and Grayson (Brendan Fraser), to do the same. Some things happen in the ensuing caper to cause Raccoon and all the other Park animals to kick Surly out of the park. Once out of the park, Surly and Buddy end up finding a nut shop and decide to do a heist to steal all the nuts from the shop so that they don’t have to worry about food all winter.

The interesting about this movie is how all over the place it is. I guess since the movie is focused on the animals they never really tell you the time and place of where this all happens; you have to figure it out with the weird stereotyped human characters. They seem to be characters from old movies from the 1930 to 1950s. At points if feels like it’s a kid version of that recent TNT show Mob City. Most of the jokes are pretty simple slapstick gags. These work well for children who seem to enjoy that lot. There are some pretty good points, but over all a lot of the humor is forgettable.

Now, the actual craft of the film is something to talk about. While the film looks OK for the most part, it doesn’t really stand out in any real regard visually. Most the human character just feel like paint-by-numbers, fit-the-stereotypes type of designing. All the animals actually look most like the animals they are, but that leads to another problem in that the animals they used look alike, and so the different characters start to look the same and you start to forget which character is which except for Surly, since purple squirrels don’t exist. Most of the lighting and textures are also kind of bland and repetitive - daytime sunny and yellowish or nighttime dark and purplish. I guess they were going for a certain feel but things could’ve been pushed a bit more for it to stand out. The actual animation or movement of the characters is pretty good, especially the facial animations. It really excels there with showing the feelings and performances of the characters. 

So with The Nut Job we have a movie that in way is marketed like an Over The Hedge rip-off that never really escapes that idea at all when it’s on. The Nut Job isn’t a movie that maybe you should rush out to go see and spend those hard-earned dollars on now. It's pretty telling when the most memorable thing in the film is a credit sequence with a 2-year-old South Korean pop song hit. While it’s quite enjoyable to kids it will be just as enjoyable when it’s on DVD or OnDemand in a couple of months. This is one you should probably sit out.

Rating: 2 out of 5 Guttenbergs

Read More