#i have a very weird relationship between my Compelling Villians and my Just Villains. if theyre meant to be complex

[erythristicbones]

unexpected side effect of deciding to redesign Nisha & Artemis & Apollo as an evil punk band bc its my story and i choose the self-indulgence......im actually getting really attached to Apollo now

[littlealeta]

Spies in Disguise Spoiler Review

The film is essentially a rip off of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs with a tinge of Trigun mixed in there especially through the character of Walter. From his interaction with his mother about how he’s getting bullied at school to the end where he is saved by birds and even had his hair up a la Flint Lockwood once. He even has a tinge of Vash the Stampede in him, with his pretentious morals about pacifism which ends up getting him hurt at times. He lacks the depth these two characters have and even the appeal. He seems quite pretentious and won’t shut his mouth so I can sympathize with Lance's annoyance with him. I mean, the idea about pacifism is a good message to send in a kids movie but it got moralistic to the point where he’d either end up getting himself hurt at points where self-defensive violence was necessary or somehow fazing villians with his kittens and glitter whereas most villains wouldn’t care about anything cute when they’re trying to attack their victims. The only good characters in there are the secondary characters which are the girl and her partners that I forgot the names of but they didn’t even get enough screentime to have any sort of depth. All of the characters overall are either two-dimensional or one-dimensional.

Which brings me to how contrived this film is from its dialogue to its story to its characters. A lot of the dialogue was unnatural and talky especially through Walter, where at some points he even breaks the show, don’t tell rule. There’s even a bird who I can’t remember the name of who somehow eats anything he sees. The film is full of cliches, the love at first sight relationship going on between Lovey and Lance (good thing that Lance didn’t fall in love with her back), the character arc of the main character being seen as an outcast before he becomes a lovable, famous person, the relationship development of Walter and Lance and so on. Even a lot of the jokes were gross-out, some were funny though. Even the pacing of the story is way too fast, characters never die or get hurt very often, they’re usually saved by some sort of plot armor, which means the tension is barely there.

The film had some good ideas about pacifism, being weird and working together with somebody you don’t have anything in common with but fails to execute these ideas due to its uninteresting characters. Now, I would've been okay with the pacifism moral if that was part of character development where he starts off as a weak person who doesn't want to hurt a fly but then learns that using self-defensive techniques when the situation calls for it are okay even if they are violent, but there's none of that there and honestly, it would've been better and more refreshing than the character development he has. I also liked the voice acting, especially with how Tom Holland and Will Smith play off each other and most of the animation is decent except there are some cartoony looney tunes antics that like I said in my Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs review doesn’t go well with a CGI animated feature film. And Walter’s Flint-like character design is also a minus.

I don’t see how this film is doing so decently with the audience. I give it a 4.8 out of 10. While I wasn’t expecting much good out of this anyway, because it had a few good ideas, it was a very disappointing film that could’ve been decent if the characters and jokes were more original and compelling.. It’s just a stupid film that younger kids will have a good time with but anyone ten years and over would probably be better off seeing Little Women instead. This was a very mediocre animated holiday film to close the decade and year off with. Honestly, My Spy looks better and I hope that is a better version of Spies in Disguise.