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kevilar
Reviews
Hidden in Plain Sight (2019)
SPEAK UP!!
This isn't a review of the film, but a comment on one aspect of it.
Whoever was responsible for the sound needs to go back to film school. It was very difficult trying to hear what anyone was saying for most of the film : almost every line sounded like it was being delivered by someone with a mouth full of cotton wool, a bunged-up noise, and a bucket on their head (worst culprit was main villain Gino Anthony Pesi). And that was even before the awful music started DROWNING EVERYTHING OUT.
If you do ever watch this film, activate the subtitles before you start.
Watership Down (2018)
TEDIOUS, DULL, UGLY
The BBC heralded this is as a superior version to the original 1970s animation. As usual with anything the BBC make nowadays, it was all hot air.
Right from the very start, it showed a lack of originality, mimicking the original's aboriginal art style "creation myth" with not very different-looking shadow puppets.
It's all very well to get big-name actors to provide the voices, but not a single one of them had any character or distinctiveness. And as is the norm these days, the most aggressive and arrogant characters were voiced by obviously black actors. Pretty much every voice sounded the same, which made following the story very difficult because they all looked the same too.
As realistic as the CGI wanted the rabbits to look, Watership Down is a work of fantasy fiction (Bunny Cults At War), so surely some liberties could have been taken with reality to make the characters look distinct from each other : colours, markings, different shapes/sizes. But why bother : I began to wonder if the character designers had ever actually seen a rabbit. Their legs were much too long and they stood far too high off the ground. Yes, they looked more like hares, but there were times when they looked like guinea pigs, cats, kangaroos, and on one occasion, even a hyena.
When you COULD see them. The majority of the film was so dark and drab, my mum even asked if it was supposed to be in black-and-white.
To avoid the traumas supposedly caused by the original film, much humour was promised : humour in the form of two characters constantly bickering about the lack of female rabbits. So it was actually less funny than the "disturbing" original.
I can't honestly say I'm a huge fan of the original film, so I didn't come to this version with any worries of not living up to my memories of it. In fact, after seeing this wasted opportunity, it made me think better of the far superior and efficient original.
If I could have rated this 0, I would have.