If you're not already feeling the steady onset of mild fatigue in regard to the seemingly endless cascade of content that's being exclusively manufactured (oops... I meant "produced") for the Disney+ streaming service, then I'd recommend you give these mini-episodes of "I Am Groot" a whirl as they're relatively short in length and their runtime as such doesn't make you feel as if they're a completely pointless waste of your time to sit through. Quite clearly taking a ton of inspiration from the classical cartoon shorts of old (presented in a similar vein to the likes of something either Chuck Jones or Tex Avery might've done, back in the day), the condensed cutesy stories told within each adorably self-contained episode was pulled-off rather well for what they were (nothing too spectacularly special, but the charming simplicity plays in their favour as an effective plot-device).
In terms of pure enjoyability, the adventurous shenanigans and near mishaps our tiny titular tot gets caught up in sure can be amusing as every awkward situation Baby Groot finds himself trying to navigate through is made instantly more adorable thanks to his unique utilisation of infantile innocence which, in turn, provides you with just the right amount of sustainable entertainment value. The vibrant computer-animation style on display here appears it's been somewhat tweaked a little to be slightly differentiated from what we're normally accustomed to seeing in the mainline Guardians films, with them trading in their standard practices of employing photorealism in exchange for a more prevalent cartoony look instead, which I wholeheartedly believe was their original intention right from the very start of this quaint project's initial conception.
And now for the CGI side of things, the main focal point of discussion in which people on the internet just LOVE to whine and whinge about. I ain't no VFX artist, but I sure can empathise with them for the massive industry workload their underpaid teams get from numerous big-name studios (they don't deserve all the hatred that's hurled their way). Basically, visual-effects animators get unfairly criticised for their time-consuming craft, with online critics always leaving those "that looks so bad" and "this is really fake" comments. If anything, I say they ought to be bad-mouthing the over-demanding studios and their relentless requests for last minute detail changes, essentially asking them to do overtime without receiving any extra payment. There's no wonder why every single frame of the CG-centric scenes in a majority of Hollywood-produced projects (films/TV shows) today don't always look fully finished, that's because they simply weren't allowed the additional time to be extensively worked on some more ("hmmm... just gotta meet that headline, guys!"). So if the digital-effects don't look like they're up to scratch, please don't just instinctively blame the hardworking animators (it's not like any of them intended to make awful-looking CGI on purpose). Instead, the primary fault lies in the studios literally changing their minds all the time (they really should've thought-out every step of their preliminary plans more carefully). That being said, the visuals aren't too badly done here.
So all's well that ends well, I liked it for what it was and what it was is actually pretty darned good, even if I do say so myself. Was it entirely necessary for them to produce a Baby Groot spin-off series for no other reason than to blatantly cash-in on the immense popularity of the Guardians franchise and in order to keep the series relevant until the release of Guardians Vol. 3? Hmmm, I'd say "probably not, no. But there's no denying the fact that I did indeed get a lot of enjoyment out of this". If you're a dedicated superhero fan and want to see literally every piece of Marvel content they put out there that's MCU-related, I say it's well worth your time so give it a watch. I'd even go so far as to recommend it to non-superhero enthusiasts, because it just has that certain appeal of adorable cuteness to it.
In terms of pure enjoyability, the adventurous shenanigans and near mishaps our tiny titular tot gets caught up in sure can be amusing as every awkward situation Baby Groot finds himself trying to navigate through is made instantly more adorable thanks to his unique utilisation of infantile innocence which, in turn, provides you with just the right amount of sustainable entertainment value. The vibrant computer-animation style on display here appears it's been somewhat tweaked a little to be slightly differentiated from what we're normally accustomed to seeing in the mainline Guardians films, with them trading in their standard practices of employing photorealism in exchange for a more prevalent cartoony look instead, which I wholeheartedly believe was their original intention right from the very start of this quaint project's initial conception.
And now for the CGI side of things, the main focal point of discussion in which people on the internet just LOVE to whine and whinge about. I ain't no VFX artist, but I sure can empathise with them for the massive industry workload their underpaid teams get from numerous big-name studios (they don't deserve all the hatred that's hurled their way). Basically, visual-effects animators get unfairly criticised for their time-consuming craft, with online critics always leaving those "that looks so bad" and "this is really fake" comments. If anything, I say they ought to be bad-mouthing the over-demanding studios and their relentless requests for last minute detail changes, essentially asking them to do overtime without receiving any extra payment. There's no wonder why every single frame of the CG-centric scenes in a majority of Hollywood-produced projects (films/TV shows) today don't always look fully finished, that's because they simply weren't allowed the additional time to be extensively worked on some more ("hmmm... just gotta meet that headline, guys!"). So if the digital-effects don't look like they're up to scratch, please don't just instinctively blame the hardworking animators (it's not like any of them intended to make awful-looking CGI on purpose). Instead, the primary fault lies in the studios literally changing their minds all the time (they really should've thought-out every step of their preliminary plans more carefully). That being said, the visuals aren't too badly done here.
So all's well that ends well, I liked it for what it was and what it was is actually pretty darned good, even if I do say so myself. Was it entirely necessary for them to produce a Baby Groot spin-off series for no other reason than to blatantly cash-in on the immense popularity of the Guardians franchise and in order to keep the series relevant until the release of Guardians Vol. 3? Hmmm, I'd say "probably not, no. But there's no denying the fact that I did indeed get a lot of enjoyment out of this". If you're a dedicated superhero fan and want to see literally every piece of Marvel content they put out there that's MCU-related, I say it's well worth your time so give it a watch. I'd even go so far as to recommend it to non-superhero enthusiasts, because it just has that certain appeal of adorable cuteness to it.