Reviews

This movie was describe as some super dystopic thing, but what it really is, is a strange and uninteresting crossover between Disney dog movies like Homeward Bound, and actually dystopian films (but realistic) like Okja. This movie hits neither marks - it's not some cute kids movie with animals, and it's not a thought provoking dystopian film.

This movie hit me as someone trying to fit as many plotlines as possible into one movie.

You follow a teen girl who has problems with her father and plays in an orchestra (I don't know what that has to do with anything since I was unable to finish the film). You have something about crossbreed dogs being taxed or banned, while "hungarian breeds" (oh, the many many hungarian dog breeds) aren't (but just where the dad lives? Apparently not everywhere? Why did the kid bring her dog if her dog wasn't allowed in the city? Are cross-breeds allowed in the countryside? Does the kid normally live outside of Hungary??). You have the dog being left outside, and street dogs doing their thing. You have some sort of statement (?) with the father working in a slaughterhouse and approving animals for slaughter (?).

On some level, all of this mixes together in what seems like ordinary life. Okay. Congrats for "boring realism", only "boring realism" isn't a genre I want to watch.

After watching half the movie, my wife and I were asking ourselves what the point was. Were cross-breed dogs supposed to be a parallel with refugees? That seems racist on it's own, and it also falls flat, because a teen girl wouldn't bring her pet refugee to stay at her dad's. Is it supposed to be a statement about animal cruelty? That would make more sense, but then what's the point of the whole plotline with halfbreeds being taxed and all?

Sadly, this flic was too dull for us to keep on watching and see if the movie does have a point (it's a long movie!).

About the cinematography also, we can see it was influenced by the 2000's trope about having shaky hand-held style cam for everything. Thank god that trope is over. In this movie you have this kind of shaky cam for EVERYTHING. Shots like the girl sitting down in a calm and quiet room. Shaky cam in that kind of shot doesn't add action or drama, it just makes you a bit queezy. Shaky cam for bike shots, dog running shots, dogs outside shots, sure, justified. For shots at home, quiet shots, etc? Nope. And this hand held shaky came is present nonstop. Yikes.

Ce film, c'est un peu la preuve que si on a de bons animateurs, de bons acteurs, mais une histoire qui tient pas debout, avec des trous dans l'histoire, les résultats ne sont pas fameux.

Franchement, quand on a la chance d'avoir Philippe Katerine qui joue un chat, on devrait faire mieux. Déjà dans les premières 5 minutes le film part dans une espèce de réalité alternative mais qui a conscience qu'elle est alternative... quoi? Oui, on commence à la veille de la guerre franco-prussienne 1870, sauf que "bam", elle n'a pas lieu. Ah... on sait ce qu'elle est même si elle n'a pas lieu? Donc du coup, on est conscient que nous regardons un film qui se passe dans une trame historique qui n'est pas la nôtre, mais qui se compare à la notre. Ok, on peut faire mieux comme vraisemblance. Et en plus la façon que ça explique "Einstein, Plank, nous ne les connaîtrons pas". Mais... alors pourquoi on nous les mentionne si dans l'univers du film, on ne va pas les connaître? Pour nous faire dire "mon dieu! Pas de Einstein?! J'aurais pas deviné, dans un film steampunk!" ou pour nous rappeler que dans notre monde, il y a eu Einstein, et que nous regardons un film médiocre?

Ensuite le nombre de clichés. L'inspecteur de police merdique qui reste pendant tout le film même si on en a rien à foutre, le grand-père génie qui comprend tout même s'il voir la technologie pour la première fois (je vois un avion pour la première fois de ma vie - chouette, maintenant je sais comment le réparer!), une maison immergée dans la seine (comme elle est profonde la seine!!), la jeune génie qui concocte le remède miracle avec un équipement pourrit dans une planque alors que tous les génies de l'histoire de l'humanité depuis 1870 n'y parviennent pas... c'est trop! Et à la fin (SPOILER) quand le monde caché est en dessous de Paris (même pas loin en dessous, du genre, à la profondeur des égouts). Là, c'est juste con.

Ensuite le nombre de trucs qui ne tiennent pas debout... Pourquoi les "gros méchants" gardent leur plan secret? Ils ont évidement la technologie pour dominer la terre à l'heure qu'il est. Au lieu, ils ont laissé crever toutes les forêts d'Europe "juste parce que"? Et le père, il était emprisonné parce qu'il était en désaccord avec le plan de préserver la vie dans l'univers?? Ses motivations, son désaccord, ne sont jamais expliquées. Ça reste un énorme trou. Et l'Europe et l'Amérique qui vont aller en guerre pour les forêts du Canada ; attend, la Russie en a pas de forêts? La Sibérie, tout a été rasé?? Et l'Afrique elle est où dans tout ça? J'imagine que des Européens qui en ont rien à foutre de l'Afrique, ça peut peut-être passé comme seul aspect réaliste. Le film pue surtout une espère de fantasme occidento-centrique qui, même pour un enfant, laisse plein de questions sans réponses. L'enfant qui regarde ce film, à moins qu'il soit neuneu, se demande pourquoi y'a plus de forêts dans le monde entier autre qu'au Canada (apparemment).

Si les voix sont bien, et que j'ai adoré l'esthétique du film... mon dieu, ça a fait mal. Note au directeurs et directrices de l'animation ; lisez le scénario la prochaine fois, vous méritez mieux.

This is a bad propaganda film. This being said, I have to say that I am very left wing - probably more than the people who made this film, so this isn't an "I don't share their views so I'm accusing them of propaganda" kind of deal. It contains a the traits of propaganda ; lack of factual argumentation, incoherent jumbeling of scenes, usage of emotional rather than thought provoking footage, etc., etc. I won't mention more, though the list could easily go on.

This film is also what I would describe as Schizophrenia on film. It contains mixed footage of a lot of different things without there being any clear link between them. It contains no factual or clear ideas either. After seeing this film i wondered for a while - along with my friends with whom I had seen the film - what it was that the film makers might have meant. what was their message. "that love is going to save us?". This is more or less what we could conclude from it. It starts off as an interesting political statement for the first 5-10 minutes, about how corporations have taken over political power. It then goes into corporatist states and Mussolini - which has really a limited link to what we are seing now. Another propagandist trait - the usage of specific vocabulary to produce an emotional reaction (fascism = bad, so by associating what we are against with fascism, you will have feelings of sympathy for our message), and mixed images of Mussolini and Trump, creating a comparison between the two (though the average American probably has no idea who Mussolini was). It goes downhill from there. At first it focuses on Trump being pro-corporations. It then accuses the Obamas and the Clintons of doing the same thing, but even bing worst than Trump. It goes from being left-wing anti-corporations, to being some sort of right-wing pro-trump anti big government film. It goes on saying about how big government ends up protecting corporations and allowing their power (this is of course a big sum up).

It makes no sense, it goes in every direction without ever really saying anything. I really have no idea what the point, or anything of this film is. This is why I can only describe it as, on top of being a bad propaganda film, it is completely schizophrenic, and makes virtually no sense.

I have to add, finally, that it is totally incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't know the USA to a good extent. It makes heavy usage of all the American political acronyms (DRA, EPA, etc.), it uses in its propaganda, all the American focuses (segregation, institutional racism, etc). I wonder how this film could ever be shown (first of all), but be shown outside the USA, as it makes virtually no sense for people who don't know the USA well.

This film is an example of what cinema should be.

Yes, the plot isn't so "thick", it's a rather slow film.

Why I say this is what cinema should be, is because it has as it's base images. Its images speak louder than word ; you see what you have to know.

Everyone involved with this picture seems to have done an astounding job - may it be through directing, the actresses, the set, the photography, the costumes - everything is astounding and very well done.

When we saw this in theatres with my colleagues - mostly male -, we came out speechless. At the end of the film, there was a girl crying in the same row as I - the first time I see anyone crying to a movie (really crying from bing moved). With my colleagues, we walked out, and none of us spoke or said anything for at least 5-10 minutes, as we all obviously were affected by the nostalgic beauty that the picture captures. Finally someone broke the silence with the only thing that could break the spell - a banal exclamation "it was well done", as the only thing to be done after such a film is "a return to banality". This is a film I will gladly see again.

In this film where you can guess a link to FARCs and so on, you don't get what you would be expecting. While you await something that shows the realities of conflicts, or ideologies, of combat, etc. What you really get is just a lord of the flies rehash - with a few very obvious references. Most of it is also quite predictable. You barely see combat, you have a very limited view of child soldiers and how they are handled, treated (mistreated) and scared by their butchers. You don't see the agony of how child soldiers are brutalized, what you have is a bunch of teens with guns with loose orders and essentially no disciplinaries. While the film is visually stunning, making good use of landscapes, visual effects, of sound, etc. and though the actors perform well, it falls short as quite empty. Instead of learning anything about reasons for their "indoctrination" (to what, we do not know - the end offers more of a "evil perpetrates evil" moral, as an out-of-control nonsense spiral ; of which the Columbian conflicts were not, and still aren't), we only get a conclusion along the lines of "some can be saved, and some have been broken".

This movie isn't bad, it just falls short in any plot development, contextualizing, etc. Instead of being the realistic, brutal and shocking film it was expected to be, it's essentially just another psychological thriller.

I saw this movie and had the chance to discuss it with Girard at the 2019 FIN Atlantic film festival while covering it for the radio where I work. I honestly did not expect much from this simple fact : the description made of the movie from anything I could read did everything except say what the movie was about. It said "beautiful saga across three decades and four countries" or "story of friendship, family, etc. etc." but no plot description. When this happens, it's usually because you have a weak plot.

The plot though, was not as cheap as the screenwriting. The plot is another ww2 holocaust drama (for some reason, we can't seem to ever make positive movies about jewish accomplishments, etc., only stories about the holocaust. This is an important topic, yes, though it has been treated in the multiple hundreds of films on the topic), with as an "original" twist, a musical background. This isn't bad, and makes up most of the scenes. It leads to the first and only interesting thing in the film - SPOILER - the use of song (the type in jewish liturgy) to memorize the names of people who disappeared during the Shoa. Though the music is beautiful, we aren't treated to any of the real "memory songs". we get a composition for the film score.

The shape of the story solidly bothered me. It's absurdly cheap - we've seen it all time and time again. Someone disappears, later it becomes a sort of "detective story" in order to find the person who went missing, etc. All you get is again "Protagonist goes to some place. Asks questions. Looks for person. Goes to next place, asks questions, etc.". Not only is it a cheap and very common way to structure a story nowadays, but the realism of it hangs by a thread.

Nonetheless, the actors are remarkable, aesthetically the film is extremely well done, musically it's very nice. You might be moved by some parts, but overall this film is nothing you're never seen before, and you might not remember it later on. Watch it on Netflix, where it's bound to end up.

This movie starts off well - you have about half an hour of interesting material. An innocent man is victime of corruption, and one of his friends, who is a lawyer in Moscow, comes to help him.

Nonetheless curruption is in the way, etc. etc. etc.

Then, out of the blue - contemporary art cliché #1 - the innocent man's wife starts an affair with the lawyer. Of course this is completely out of the blue, and has no previous link to anything, nor does it really make more sense than "hum, i guess people are horny".

The movie, from then on, goes on a downward slope. All the interesting elements from the beginning disappear, and all you are left with is a bad rewrite of Jobe's story, with a lot of biblical references all over. It was a mix of very predictable, and "crippled with plot holes".

The actors were quite ok, the scenery was beautiful, it was filmed ok, nonetheless, a poor and weak script, filled with clichés, upon clichés of déjà vu, doesn't do much for me, even if it's put in a Russian context.

In this film you have about 30 minutes of interesting material. The rest is a waste of time, an absolute bore. After having seen this movie I was filled with annoyance at having wasted time seeing this very forgettable film, which for some reason was celebrated by an artsy-fartsy clique.

I went to see this, against my basic instinct, because I thought the original film was so marvellously good that they couldn't go so low as to produce a cheap and saddening "part 2".

They did.

Let's start with the story. There is none. There are two parallel "stories" that happen. The first is the younger Mr. Banks, recently widowed, who learns overnight that if he doesn't come up with an insane amount of money, or find one specific paper, he will lose his home because of a debt. The second is "Mary Poppins, this one street lamp lighter and the little Banks children go around and sing songs with no link to anything". The first song goes along the lines of "Hygiene is important", the second, "it's important to read books", and the third "if you feel off, look at things with a new perpective". There is no link between them, and come out as absolutely random. There is absolutely minimal coherent link between them and the "story" in itself. These two "storylines" don't really ever merge, and you kind of wonder why each is happening, and how they will be linked. Sorry if this ruins the film : they essentially aren't.

The second is the characters. They don't hold up, in any way. The kinds are, at first, very responsible, and as soon as Mary pops up, they just end up being less and less mature. Mary Poppins is supposed to be a proper British nanny who teaches good values, etc., while having fun ("We are not a codfish"). In this film, she doesn't appear to do anything except bring the children to be less mature. The street-worker sidekick basically becomes the main character because he is the only one who actually does anything - he guides Mary and the children through everything. Mary Poppins most of all, is not Mary Poppins. She puts no focus on manners, she lets the children run around and do basically anything. She is the nanny, she is there to care and educated, but she has none of her manners. The character is not the character. Let's mention side characters like the mean banker. Is he mean? He rips out Mr.Banks' name out of a banking ledger in order to destroy proof that Mr. Banks own's shares at the bank, in order to reposess his house. Then, right after, he stays at the bank until midnight so that Mr.Banks and the children may bring a document which they may or may not find to the bank. How does this hold up? Yes, the screen writers are trying to build useless suspens, but a mean banker would go out of his job at quitting time, not stay there until midnight.

In a mix of "non-story" and "lack of character", the question of "what is Mary Poppins' role"? She serves essentially very little purpose until the very end. She isn't Mary Poppins, she serves little purpose... what is she there fore? I'll tell you - she is there because of her name. She is there so that one will say "oh look, it's Mary Poppins!" and be content with that. She is nothing but a name to attract audiences.

Let's get to the songs : after walking out from the theatre, I could neither remember nor hum the melody to any of the songs. And having tried for over a week, I still can't. On the other hand, I saw the original for the last time over two years ago, and I can still remember the melody to essentially all of them. The song writing in this one shows cheap song writing techniques used nowadays in musical drama. That is to say "I will start off this song by talking in rithm to some light musical background, and the we will simply go along some 4/4 partitions with a strong bass marking the first and third mesures". If this sounds technical, it's just in words what your ears will find ordinary, uninteresting, and bland.

May we go on to the aspect of "we won't copy the original, but we will try to copy the original"? In the first there is a hilarious scene with an old man on his ceiling and they had to sing to get him down. In this one, they are in an upside down apartment, and they have to sing to get it right side up. In the first they went into chalk drawings where they were in an innocent but amusing race. In this one they go into a porcelaine pot where they go to a theatre (only so that Mary Poppins and her main-character-side-kick can sing about the importance of reading books), where the children run off to have a over-the-top, American chasse with villainous animals who were trying to rob them. The chasse is imbecilic, lacks imagination, serves no purpose and does not "thrill". It is random, and has no place in this film.

Should we also go into what this film tries to teach? We've mentioned the values of "bathe regularly" and "read", but what else? The Mr.Banks is a painter who now works in a bank because there is an economical recession and art doesn't pay (though it could. ps. don't follow your dreams). At the end they all become magically rich out of nowhere, supposedly due to a micro investment that Mr.Banks made in his childhood (capitalism pays off; own stocks and invest, children!). It tries to teach some things, but the meaning of it all is quite... blurry and distorted.

Do I go on about everything that is wrong in this film? This is already long and negative.

I should mention the only good things : the sets, decors and animation. They are very nice, the 2D animation in the porcelaine scene was very beautiful and appreciated. Nonetheless, nice sets and animation does not compensate for an utter lack of everything else. It's what the french would call "powder to the eyes". Some sort of magical powder made to distract and blind to the fact that the film lacks everything else.

Here is a tip if you saw this one. Watch a scene from the original ,and it's parallel in this one. You will see that it the first, there are minimal sets, and the production value went into worthwhile dialogue and well written and catchy tunes. you will see that in this one, it is the exact opposite. The sets will put you in some magical re-imagined-passed universe, while the dialogues don't hold up, the songs are bad, and if you actually pay attention to what's going on, you are bored.

Let's cut it short : this movie is horrible. If I hadn't gone to see it with my family, I would have asked for my money back halfway through. I most certainly would not have appreciated it when I was little - this being said, I watched the first over and over again when I was a kid. P.L. Travers is probably rolling over in her grave. If you are wondering if you should see this movie - don't. Why does it have a good ratting? Probably for 2 reasons only 1) the name Marry Poppins is on it, and 2) Powder to the eyes.

This movie is good. you've got everything for a good action movie ; all the explosion, heart pumping, etc.

Nonetheless, I was disappointed. The first one is an action / sci-fi masterpiece. sure, some visual effects seem a bit old now, but who cares?

In this one, the visuals are great. some of the computer effects are better than in new movies (26 years later!). what really made it less good for me were two things.

The first thing doesn't include spoilers really ; it's that they tell you EVERYTHING. While in the first one, the superb script writing leaves you cluelessly curious for most of the film, this one essentially tells you everything from the very start. Ok sure, the first one already existed, so it had less of a novelty effect, but nonetheless, here they really leave no room for curiosity to grow, which I found of course, less thrilling.

The second thing is... all the plot holes! Really, some things I could not get my head around. the first is, of course, why would the machines send the t-1000, more advanced model terminator, later in the past, than in the first part? Of course, for this film they had to think up some new, novel way to entertain people - a new, more advanced terminator seemed a good way, but this one is just over the top! why wouldn't the machines send that one? it doesn't make too much sense.

A few other plot holes popped up along the way - more bothersome than this one in my opinion, but no examples come to mind now. nonetheless, how ever small they were, they stoped me from fully enjoying the picture.

Basically, it's a good movie, but in no way does it compare to the first one, and it does have many plot holes.