Starts off with a freaking Minions short film, which pulled no punches in terms of its, lack of objective quality, or anything. Nothing was surprising. Everything was inevitable. There was this one scene where a minion uses a paper bag of dog poo as one of those bags you hyperventilate into- that was pretty enjoyable, especially if you're exactly the degree of deviant I am. But other than that...
Comes the dawn, though. The film started. Generic Taylor Swift pop song, flyover of NYC, bird in the sky oh boy we're watching Storks from WAG no wait it's just Secret Life of Pets from Illumination, oh well-- but I like generic pop songs, darnit, and the camera swooshes down to follow Max and Katie biking in the park, the one in the center, that one, and, Max's coat is flowing gently in the breeze, and Katie's character design is well-thought-out and pretty darn pleasant, and so within one minute of the commencement of the film proper, I am hooked.
Gorgeous fur rendering, non-ugly character design. Even the characters you think are pretty ugly in the trailer aren't that ugly. (The squirrels. I'm thinking of the squirrels. Mel is still a hideous affront to decency, and the bunny thing is also fairly an eyesore, but having only two ugly characters in an Illumination film is something of a small miracle.)
It wouldn't be all that notable of a movie, really, if not for the fact that holy crap guys, it's actually a fairly decent Illumination Entertainment film-- the volume of that fact places the film's existence somewhere between Pinterest and LEGO Chima on the list of Most Groundbreaking Things in the Galaxy. Maybe not that high, maybe that's a bit of a hyperbole--it's not like it's even an above-average flick or anything--but that's how it feels to me.
WTH was up with the sausage factory sequence, though? Were those sausages spiked with drugs? Is crystal meth an ingredient in the insecticide they use to kill the insects they make sausages out of? Not that I'm wont to do any of these three things even singly, but now I'm pretty sure I know what it feels like to take a metric ton of mescaline and watch Minions and Sausage Party at the same time.
As long as I'm on the subject of sausages, though, uuummm I guess I'll take a tangent now, but I had an epiphany, sometime within the past week, how a hot dog is apparently the word for that kind of sandwich- the meat tube on the inside is the wiener, and the bread tube on the outside is the bun, and it's only their powers combined that makes a hot dog. I've just been using the term "hot dog" to refer to the wiener part as well as the name of the sandwich, which I always did figure was kind of ambiguous, and meanwhile was always confused by the (correct) usage in instances such as this:
and this:
Theeeere you go I guess.
So, Secret Life of Pets, anyway. Gets pretty darn scary for young kids, I guess, finally a PG film living up to its potential...
I cried, no less than three times, and I'm pretty sure probably more. I guess I'm like a "On Stranger Tides" mermaid: I discovered, sobbing like a sissy baby at the end of the movie (the hamster thing finally finds its way home!), that I don't cry at emotional lowpoints, but emotional highpoints; not sad parts in movies, but at happy ones.
Or at hatdrops, when it comes to The Good Dinosaur. You know, whicheither.
So, I guess I liked it. No individual element was anything all that new (climax straight out of Finding Dory, sausage factory sequence straight out of Perry Bible Fellowship (okay, I wish)), and heck, the combination of the elements wasn't that original either, but, I've said it before and I'll say it again: decent. Illumination. flick. Does this give me greater reason to hope for Sing? ...shoot, man, I don't know. Let Moana come out next month first, and then we can start dealing with the month after that...
Crazy thought, though: by the time Moana does come out (no spoilers till then!), the nation will already have chosen its next president.
Wild.
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