Quick Notice: A few days after my Artemis Fowl Review I finally reached 200 subs and I don’t have enough words to describe how thankful I am for that. The reason I haven’t gotten around to making a special post for it, is more personal reasons. I’m going through a weird phase at the moment where new spontaneous ideas are coming through my head that have kind of taken my eye of this site. Also I turned one year older a day after I got 200 subs so maybe it’s also an age thing where I have become a bit more wary of my actions and what my future holds. 

It’s nothing to worry about as of yet as they’re just ideas and how they’ll affect this site I’ll tell you when they’re no longer ideas. Anyway, I appreciate the 200 subs, happy birthday to me and enjoy the second last part to the Disneyathon.

The Disneyathon Part 20: The Big Hitters!

So it’s been less than a year and already Disneytoon have released a sequel to Planes! I’m guessing there were many people over the age of 5 who really wanted to see what happened to Dusty HopperCropper after the first Planes movie.

In all honesty I held this off for as long as I could because of how unfun it was to watch the first movie, but to my surprise Planes: Fire & Rescue was actually not too bad and I can almost say I kind of liked it.

To get the negatives out of the way this new movie is still flying over the very generic uninspired zone that was so infamous in the first movie. It’s so unoriginal now that the sequel feels the need to copy off the predecessor. Remember when Dusty couldn’t complete the race properly because he was afraid of heights? Well now his gearbox is busted and so he can’t fly very fast and If he breaks his limit he will blow up, thus giving him a new obstacle to conquer for the rest of the movie. Also Ed Harris’ character, the grumpy helicopter, is basically a rehash of the miserable World War II plane with the tragic backstory from the last movie. The story is nothing of note once again and the humour is worse this time around. This is the movie for you if you love hearing a lot of cars saying car puns for an hour and 20 minutes.

Those complaints aside, this sequel is leaps and bounds better than the first movie. The racing angle never interested me so I’m glad they ditched that and went for this new fire fighter theme. The new fire fighter characters are surprisingly not too bad, with none of them being too annoying. Also the voice acting I think has improved between movies. The lack of evil jerks was great, replaced by a dangerous bush fire that gets out of control really quickly and offers some of the most stunning animation from this whole franchise.

Pretty much once Dusty ditches his racing career and those annoying characters from the first movie and joins the fire fighter academy the movie is more tolerable. It can be kind of fun and I’m shocked to say that there were some parts that had me emotionally engaged. It’s also one of those sequels where you don’t even need to have seen the first movie to understand what’s happening. When I think about it, the first movie is so inconsequential they should have just started this whole series right here.

Bottom line is Planes: Fire & Rescue is nothing amazing, but I was completely surprised by how much better it is than that first dreadful movie. Still I don’t think this movie is really worth your time, but if you have young kids or want something light and pretty, then be my guest. 4 to 5 out of 10.

Returning back to the works of Walt Disney Animated, 2014 gave us Big Hero 6. I guess with Disney buying Marvel and a few of their movies raking in dollars within the billions at the box office why not try out using an obscure cast of characters and introducing them to mainstream audiences. Especially since this came out the same year as Guardians of the Galaxy and that did incredibly well, so it should work out the same for Big Hero 6. Guess what, it did, and it won an Oscar, so take that Guardians!

My thoughts on Big Hero 6 is it’s alright. I wasn’t too rapt in it 6 years ago and my opinion hasn’t really changed. It’s a fun family superhero movie with cutesy and dark moments or, if you prefer, it’s Little Johnny’s first Marvel movie because his Mummy won’t let him watch the big boy superhero movies. I’m sorry I sound pretty harsh, but at least there is enough cool superhero action and good characters to keep Little Johnny invested for the whole hour and 40. But if you’re older, then you might see it as another run of the mill superhero origin story that really doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

The only reason this movie is remembered better than it should be is because of Baymax the big huggable airbag robot. He steals the show as he’s instantly lovable and a great companion for our main character, Hiro. I know their relationship is not an original concept, but I don’t care. The two are such a good pairing that it’s kind of annoying when they’re forced to mingle with the other members of the Big Hero 6. The rest of Hiro’s team is just very one-note, like a much more bland Teen Titans. This also applies to the other characters like Hiro’s brother who felt very reminiscent of Kenai’s older brother and the main villain who is just like every MCU villain up to that point.

The featured song for this movie was alright and the action scenes were pretty fun. The animation is still very impressive as they’re pretty much on a par with Pixar. The idea of San Francisco being combined with Tokyo is a cool concept but very underutilised. I just imagined they would have spliced the two cultures together, with a little touch of Sci-Fi. No, it’s feels very American, to the point where they should have just set the story in modern day San Francisco.

It’s weird that it’s been almost a decade with no forgettable movies, but unfortunately Big Hero 6 might be the first to restart the trend, unless our five final movies prove otherwise. This is not supposed to be ironic, but Big Hero 6 is getting a 6 out of 10 from me.

I’m not sure how many of you have heard of a movie called Strange Magic. It came out five years ago now and it was made by Lucasfilm and more particularly conceived by the peculiar mind of George Lucas. It’s a tale about two opposing sides, light and darkness. It’s about two opposites falling in love and dancing to your parent’s favourite tunes. It’s a story about seeing beauty in the most unpleasant environments. This movie, among other things, is just truly …. awful. I’m sorry, I couldn’t keep it up because this movie is so bad that it makes Planes now tolerable and The Black Cauldron something I could watch on repeat.

I didn’t have big expectations for Strange Magic and I was totally unprepared for the eyesore that was the creepy animation, looking like it was completely ripped from Dinosaur and the 2009 Christmas Carol. Oh, and also the ear bleeding musical numbers! There hasn’t been another movie that I wanted to remove from my screen more quickly since I watched the reboot for Dr Dolittle earlier this year!

The story is all over the place. Our main character starts off like most Disney Princesses, excited to marry her Prince Charming, but that dream is crushed when she catches her dream hunk with another woman. So after one horrible musical beating of a beloved song she goes through an anti-boy phase and puts on some goth make-up. Meanwhile her sister prepares to meet a potential Prince Charming at the ball. By the way all these events happen less than 10 minutes in. The pacing is terrible as it speeds through everything really quickly at the start and then slows down at to a snail’s pace towards the end of the movie.

According to George this is supposed to be a Beauty and the Beast type story, which is weird as that doesn’t even start until an hour into the movie. So much nonsense has happened up to this point with this small elf character they introduce that I legitimately forgot the goth fairy was the main character we’re supposed to be following as she was heavily sidelined after her initial falling out. The romance sucks, it’s basically Beauty and the Beast, but instead of showing the significance of this impeccable bond they just tell you, because that’s easier.

The two worlds of Light and Dark don’t make much sense as you’re given no idea how this social structure works because everyone seems to be on equal footing. It is pretty bad when you have a villain who wants to marry a princess so he can gain higher power, when all this time he could have just asked her dad and he would have got it without having the main characters turn on you. There is this love potion that seems to change it’s own rules every time the mini blue fairy speaks. Lastly, and I mentioned this before, the characters sing in this and it’s easily the worst part of the movie as it’s so obnoxious and none of the songs fit the tone at all. I’m not joking when I say this is one of the worst musicals I have ever seen in my life!

I do want to give out some praises as I feel some are justified. The animation, despite how unappealing it is to look at, still had a lot of work put into it and it also helps that some of the character designs are nice to look at. I don’t think any of the acting is bad as most of the actors in this movie I admire. There are even some scenes in this movie that I thought were not too bad. It’s a shame all this extreme talent is wasted on this garbage movie that really doesn’t deserve them.

Despite George saying this is supposed to be the Star Wars equivalent for 12 year old girls, I don’t think this movie is for them. This movie should be more aiming for the Frozen demography of 10 and under, but it’s too dark and creepy for them and no males or any grown women will ever watch this so no wonder why this movie bombed. It’s made for almost no one. The only hope I see for this movie is if it could possibly gain a cult following. For me personally I’m glad I only watched this on Disney+ so I can happily pretend I’ve never seen it. 1 to 2 out of 10. So yeah Strange Magic has finally dethroned Song of the South as my new worst movie for the Disneyathon.

My Official Disneyathon Ranking List

Link to The Final Part: The Disneyathon Part 22: The Finale!!