12 Days Of Dino Dicember #48: I Am T-Rex (2022)

Time to close off this year’s 12 Days Of Dino Dicember with a family/children dinosaur movie, one ailing from mainland China and also fairly recent, as in released originally in 2022 as “Wo shi ba wang long”(which i assume translates to “The Tyrannosaurus Rex”, as can be seen in its original Chinese theathrical poster) but localized/released online with the “I Am T-Rex” title.

It’s also a CG animated film, because we already had plenty of no budget puppet dinosaurs, some high quality (and some low ass quality) dinosaur stop motion animation, caveman boning of the implied kind, cannibal movies sold as dinosaur flicks, pseudodocumentaries, dinosaur comedies with yellowface or comedy bits that aged like the reptiles themselves, so for the sake of variety, let’s move away from all that shizzle.

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[EXPRESSO] Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (2024) | Chaos Control(led)

Time for Shadow to enter the fray, in the third live action Sonic The Hedgehog film.

The plot sees Sonic and his friends Tails and Knuckles summoned to fight a new menace, Shadow, a nother powerful alien hedgehog that was sealed away for the last 50 years in a remote prison, until someone freed him, framing the defeated and basically retired Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik as the culprit, so the trio has to team up with the “Eggster” to find what is going on..

The first one was ok, the second i liked more and felt was a step up from the previous one, and once again this is an improvement, upping the stakes, introducing new characters , managing to pick up the right/good elements from the videogame series (Sonic Adventure 2 in this case) and use them well in this new narrative, committing to its 90s ‘tude even more by having Jim Carrey go full Dumb And Dumber as he plays two characters, both “Eggman” and his grandfather, Gerald Robotnik, doubling the slapstick ham and sillyness, for better or worse.

Honestly, i do enjoy Carrey doing some of his old schtick, even if it’s a bit too much at times.

Also, the effects and CG for Sonic and friends are top notch, arguably the best they’vee ever been, seamlessly blended, he action delivers some fun corny “DBZ but even more for kids” fights, and it does manage to be silly and referential but without being grating, even for adults.

While i find it to be a quite decent kids film, honestly it’s about as good as a Sonic live action filn could have been, in both spirit and form, and while the post ending credits scenes tease of more, it is the cap of a trilogy, providing some closure indeed.

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #34: Dino King: Journey To Fire Mountain (2019)

I was a bit anxious when i saw the poster for this sequel to The Dino King pushing the Lion King vibes even more obviously, let alone the very “Land Before Time”-feeling cover for the UK DVD release, implying a more kid-friendly sequel.

And my fears were kinda confirmed when i noticed the cast… as in, the first movie had a “fake cast” at the end listing the various types of dinosaurs appearing in the film, since the creatures didn’t speak and the dialogues were offered as a post-humous narration by the titular protagonist.

It was a fairly unique thing for these dinosaur movies also aimed at kids, the combo of mostly non-humanized animals that don’t actually talk like people, even with the narration acting as a compromise… which is dropped entirely by the sequel, Dino King: Journey To Fire Mountain.

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Pinocchi-O-Rama #2: Pinocchio: A True Story (2021)

Let’s get the “meme boy” one over so we can kill any mystique it could possible accrue in time, by tackling one of the more recent adaptations, the Russian 2021 one that pretty much nobody would have cared about if the english dub had Paulie Shore delivery such a stock effeminate – and most importantly out of place – performance as the titular Pinocchio, especially notable in the clip you’ve seen of him talking to Gepetto of how he wants to see the world on its own, as he ready for it.

Tybald being Pinocchio’s horse, which he never had in the original story, but then again, it bound to be expected from your movie when it can’t even have the gall to call itself “THE true story”.

Just one of the many. Whatever.

I guess someone finally saw Tangled and wanted to have a funny horse character, so much it presents the movie as a story he’s telling you about, giving the basic gist of Pinocchio being carved by Geppetto, dissing the “growing nose” thing and then actually… preseting more than actually narrating the whole thing. Liar. And odd as a Jiminy Cricket replacement. Sort of. Not really.

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