Kotas Reviews Dakrah's Familiar

Greetings, and welcome to another review. It's been a while, but now all our bowls have been supered and I've managed to overcome some pretty nasty bouts of illness, so I can finally write about something I read while I was incapacitated. First off, it's a short story, and second off, it's a FANTASY short story. I know, I know, you were all hoping for another food review but I'm trying to stretch my reviewer legs as it were. 

As you may have gathered from previous reviews, I am definitely a fan of the fantasy genre of literature. I've gobbled up many a fine fantasy novel or story in my day and I can say truly that it is probably my favorite genre...at least it is right now. During my recent incapacitation I found myself wanting to escape my current situation and lo and behold, I had recently purchased such a piece of escapism. Enter: Dakrah's Familiar.

Available in a single bookstore, everywhere.

Full Disclosure: I happen to personally know the author of this book and the person who did the cover art. So my biases might be showing in this one. Scratch that, they probably will. Still, I think it is valuable and entertaining to publish my thoughts on it, especially since I paid my money just like everyone else has to do in order to read it. Yah, I ponied up my $2.99. With that out of the way, let's continue. Be warned, thar be spoilers ahead, so if you want to avoid them, skip down to the last paragraph for the FACE Rating and final thoughts.

If you are looking for a story filled with exciting action, thrilling adventure, and non-stop excitement...well, you should probably look someplace else. I can sum up the entirety of this story in a single sentence: A wizard desires to have a familiar. He acquires one through the casting of a ritual. The End! You can pretty much encapsulate this story within the time frame of what would be something that happens between the chapters of another, more action focused story. This is a character piece that fills in the details of "so, when my wizard got a familiar in Dungeons and Dragons, just what the heck DID happen anyway? It's not like you go down to the local pet shop and buy one am I right?" 

This story opens with our hero Dakrah finally deciding, after much hemming and hawing over not completely understanding just what it is he is about to do, to just cast his "Summon Familiar" ritual already. Dakrah is what every wizard character ever claims to be, supremely confident in his ability to perform magic, loquacious in thought and explanation, and painstaking in preparation. His inner dialogue reveals that these outer traits paper over a certain pensiveness about his actual ability. There is also a pinch of impatience with the "proper way", as displayed in his choice of familiar and its animating entity. "Better the devil you do not know, rather than the stuffy angel you do" might not be the safest path, but it is certainly the more interesting choice.

The ritual casting has two points of failure, and thus the rest of the ritual is glossed over with just a few words. The first is the shaping of the familiar. It is implied that there are standard choices ("You may bring a cat, rat, toad, or owl..") and then there is the more exotic path of Shape Your Own Carnivore. In most fantasy worlds, the taking on of a familiar is often coached as a sizing up of each other, and then settling into a relationship. In this story, Dakrah decides that he literally wants to mold his familiar in the image of his mind's eye, and bargains and threatens ephemeral and dangerous spirits/entities/somethings into doing his bidding. The mental process as described is fascinating, really, especially since it requires a bit of the wizard's own essence to complete the working.

The second point of failure is finding something to provide the spark of intelligence. Modern stories attribute this as a feature of the animal that was always there (Crookshanks displayed a number of distinctly un-cat-like proclivities, if you will recall), but here Dakrah needs to convince a greater entity that this is Worth Doing. Through implication and indirect reference we learn that most wizards call down an angel and say nice things to it. Dakrah chooses to choose the path less taken, simply because he doesn't want to deal with arrogant angels, even though he has no idea what exactly this choice will result in. So much for the careful preparations beforehand eh? 

I won't completely spoil this bit, because it crams a LOT of character building elements into a dialogue with the entity that arrives as well as a number of setting tidbits (dare I say, hooks) that whetted my appetite to learn more about the world of Aurikesh. Dakrah, of course, succeeds in his task, to no one's surprise.

The work has its flaws. It's...short. Shorter than I was expecting, really, which led to a mild disappointment though it could be a feature for some. It's also very, very wordy. And by wordy, I mean there are a lot of words used I had to look up or just sort of gloss over and hope I got the gist by the context. I mean, I'm not opposed to looking up a few words here and there, but 5-6 times within a few pages? I am a simple unfrozen caveman reviewer. The modern world frightens and confuses me. As I type these words, I think "Are there small spirits in the box that draw really fast?" The one thing I do know is that if I am feeling a bit overwhelmed, others may too. 

On the FACE Rating System, Dakrah's Familiar gets a solid 2 smiley faces. I appreciate stories that crawl inside the mind of their focus in order to get a good understanding of what makes them tick, and I enjoy examinations of magic. Definitely worth the three bucks to me. Those looking for a rollicking adventure might leave a bit disappointed, but the setting appears to be rich with possibility. Some of my disappointment with the length of the story was because it left me wanting. If you like fantasy as a genre, this is a good story with some meat, though the word density can be a little intimidating. Crack open your dictionary for this one, but I think it was worth it.

Kotas Reviews RWBY

So, I watch a LOT of Internet videos. I watch videos that review bad movies, bad comics, pop songs, nostalgic things, video games, and sometimes even action figures. I watch videos that portray insane science fiction, talk about board games, and even just people playing a video game. One of my favorite sites to watch videos on is the Rooster Teeth site, home of Red vs. Blue, the Gauntlet, and today's review topic, RWBY.

RWBY (pronounced Roo Bee, you know, like the gemstone) is perhaps the most anime-ist thing that I've watched in a long time. The story opens with some very stylized artwork and a voice over that tells us what the deal is in this world. Seems the world is full of horrible, soulless critters collectively known as The Grim (as opposed to the Gloom, the Grump, and the Gaga) that used to dominate everything. With the "rise of human kind" however they saw a threat and went to "chew our asses to pieces". Humans, being the resourceful assholes that we are, countered this with our use of tools and a substance known as Dust, which grants magical powers and abilities. This Dust comes in powder form (naturally) and in the form of crystals, and can apparently be mined. Using the magic of Dust, humanity has built itself into a world-spanning power. The creatures of the Grim still haunt the darkened corners, but they are the province of the Hunters and Huntresses, fighters trained to use Dust and Dust-enhanced equipment to, well, Hunt Monsters.

So, what does that leave us with as far as the aesthetics of RWBY? Well, what if Final Fantasy and Harry Potter totally went out, had a few drinks. One thing led to another, and 9 months later you got RWBY. Maybe throw in a dash of Gurren Lagann for the fact that just about every piece of technology in the series runs on the Rule of Cool and you've got a highly stylized, gonzo-tech world. It is a show that takes a few design queues from Steampunk, but then you have airships that look like something out of HALO...which is crazy awesome really. The character designs are heavily anime inspired, but they look like someone played the Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and said "You know, I could gussy this up and make a show around it." Cell shading might be a thing, I guess? Still, I LIKE the designs, particularly concerning the gear that all the characters use, but I'll get to that in a bit.

The main character of the show is Ruby Rose (Red Riding Hood inspired). She's a young girl who just graduated top in her fighting academy and has only the desire to help people by becoming a Huntress...and has a fuck all huge scythe/sniper-rifle to back her shit up. In short order all the other characters are introduced: Weiss Schnee, a snooty well trained rich girl with a chip on her shoulder (Snow White inspired), Yang Xiao Long, Ruby's fun-loving upbeat bruiser of a sister (Goldilocks inspired), Blake Belladonna, the quiet, bookish sarcastic girl with the hidden soft spot for Ruby's wacky antics (Belle inspired...you know, Belle? Beauty and the Beast? Right), Jaune Arc, the clumsy Nevil Longbottom stand in, Nora Valkyrie, best described as the spastic one who will END YOUR SHIT if she decides to, Pyrrha Nikos, the hyper competent yet for reasons unexplained crushing on Jaune one, and Lie Ren...the other boy.

You may conclude that none of these characters is particularly well developed or explored in depth. You would be totally right as well, but the series is only 11 or so episodes long at this point (of a planned 16 for the first half of the first season), and none of them exceed 10 minutes long. But you know what? It is not always the originality of the characters that makes a show, but the quality of the presentation.

Monty Oum, the lead animator, was recruited by the Rooster Teeth guys for their Red vs. Blue show. Why? Because of the kind of amazing _Haloid_ video, which is a mashup of Halo and Metroid. You can watch it here. It's a bit dated at this point, and, well, a bit "fanservice-y" but the really fun fight choreography along with animation ability is what got Monty where he is today. The man can show some really interesting fight scenes, even if they can be a little too herky jerky sometimes.

RWBY lives and dies by it's crazy fights and I find them very entertaining to watch. The concept of the Grim-tainted creatures helps easily identify each "type" of enemy that is fought, and each character has incredibly distinctive gear. I've already mentioned the scythe/sniper-rifle, but there is also the javelin/long rifle, the submachine-gun/kama, the sword/whip/pistol, the elementally enhanced rapier, the blunderbus/battle-axe, the armored gauntlet/shotguns, and my personal favorite, the Maul/Grenade Launcher, which I refer to as the Boomhammer. Are you seeing the theme here? Dust-powered gear gives everyone the ability to do "Crazy Matrix Shit", and of course it is put together in some very elaborate fights. Monty Oum seems somewhat obsessed by the idea of using a shotgun to enhance melee attacks as well as a device to aid in movement, and while it is completely ridiculous...it works in the context of the show. It's just good old ridiculous fun.

On the FACE Rating Scale, RWBY gets one smiley face. It is a little TOO stereotypically anime-ish at times, and the heavily stylized artwork might be distracting for some, but I love the look of the gear and the crazy nature of the fight scenes. 

Kotas Reviews the Year of the Dragon Quadrology

Ages ago, someone posted on G+ about a free fantasy book, called The Shadow of Black Wings (http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Black-Wings-Dragon-ebook/dp/B008FS5RPC/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371232238&sr=1-5&keywords=year+of+the+dragon). You can get it free on Amazon and the Kobo book store. I downloaded it and forgot about it. When my daughter was born, I had some down time waiting in the hospital for various things and no Internet connection. I had, however, downloaded the book to my tablet. So I started reading it. I enjoyed it enough to purchase the quadralogy of the series, Year of the Dragon (http://www.amazon.com/Year-Dragon-Books-Bundle-ebook/dp/B00CKEY974/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1371232238&sr=1-2). This is my review. Don’t worry, I will try not to spoil it for you. Not that it matters.

Have you ever read a story and thought “Man, this would be awesome when paired with this other story?” That is exactly how this book seems to have been written, only to the extreme. It is almost a kitchen sink of fantasy. Dragons? Yes. Magical School? Yes. Chosen One? Sure, why not? Steampunk? Of Course! Japanese Culture? Look how DIFFERENT I AM! If I could best describe it, it as if Kevin Siembiea of Palladium Books took a bunch of popular fantasy literature bits (Harry Potter, Eragon, Codex Alera, How to Train your Dragon, Avatar the Last Airbender, etc.), crammed them all together, and wrote a Rifts style splatbook for Legend of the Five Rings. THEN someone wrote a fanfic about it. And set it in an “alternate history” of Earth. With major colonial powers named “Dracaland” and Blatantly Transparent Substitute Names for Real World Countries. I am totally not kidding.

The story starts with our hero Bran having just been thrown off a building, having witnessed the King’s wife in an incestuous...wait, I got my popular fiction mixed up. First there is a prologue that doesn’t make any damn sense until you read the second book. Then the story actually starts with our hero Bran is having trouble at Dragon Rider school because he is being bullied for having a) common blood and b) a wimpy dragon. Or something. His dad is Best Dragonrider and Bran really wants to live up to that, but he has to go about it his own way, and not the way his dad tells him, because he is just that kind of rebel...who doesn't otherwise misbehave. After graduating from the Dracaland Rider Academy (or whatever) and not hooking up with the Hot Semi-Exotic Girl that is completely One Dimensional and has nothing to do with the story ever again, he has a fight with someone you think isn’t important but shows up 3 books into the damn series for reasons that remain unexplained. Then we switch to his dad being worried about his son not being cool enough. Then Bran kills a Dracolich with his Soul Lance magical Dragon Rider powers in a scene that may mean something but is only mentioned like one more time ever. It is seriously called a SOUL LANCE. Seriously.

Superdad invites Bran to go on the Steampunk Titanic What Is Also A Warship to go to China, er, Qin so they can protect the Dracaland (sigh) interests in selling Fantastical Opium.

We switch viewpoint to some Japanese, er Yamato people for some more background that will be relevant later but currently seem out of place and arbitrary. Sato is a Yamato girl dressing as a boy to inherit her father’s Western Style Wizardry Dojo, where they combine magic and katanas to be extra awesome, but have fallen out of favor with the Daimyo or something. Her best friend Nagomi is the innocent shrine maiden apprentice particularly skilled at healing and with red hair that makes her a bit of an outcast in Yamato. I am sure that her hair won't be mentioned every other fucking page. There are other characters mentioned at this point that may or may not be relevant in the future.

For reasons I won’t go into, all of these characters get thrown together and have to fight off an evil vampiric demon, originally raised by Roman-esque priests during a long time ago War of Dark Darkness, who uses all powerful Blood Magic Necromancy (the very WORST KIND) to try and.conquer Yamato. Along the way, they learn about each other, and stuff happens for incredibly convenient reasons to advance the plot. Also his dad does some stuff.

If this all sounds completely insane, that’s because it IS completely insane. It is a kitchen sink of Fantasy Tropes, coupled with point of view whiplash between chapters and the seeming inability of the author to actually write a story in book format. Seriously, each book just sort of stops, and the story continues right where you left off in the next book. Most books have a beginning, middle, and end. These books do not, and each chapter is more like an episode in a serial or a comic book. Plot threads appear and disappear, and occasionally get wrapped up, and lots of incredibly convenient things happen to move the story along. The thing is...I like this. What it lacks in polish or sense, it makes up for in sheer earnestness and cheesy charm. Classic fantasy it ain’t, but if you enjoyed the movie Krull, I think you’d enjoy this book, even if it is totally ridiculous in premise and execution. This is in every sense a guilty pleasure of popcorn fantasy.

Overall, on a scale of 5 frowny faces to 5 smiley faces I give this one smiley face. I enjoy cheesy movies and this book is as cheesy as it comes, coupled with a crazy awesome setting with something for everyone, even if it’s just “drinking game fodder”.

Kotas Reviews The Hobbit

Today I saw the Hobbit. First, a little background. The Hobbit was THE book that got me into fantasy literature. I was sick for a week or two one summer as a small kid, and I couldn’t really do anything. I found a copy of The Hobbit amongst my parents books. I read that thing like 3 times...in a row. My grandfather recorded the original animated movie off of HBO or something the next year, and I watched the hell out of that too. Wore out the tape. I love this book, perhaps more than any other book written so far. Be warned, beyond this point thar be spoilers. Skip to the final paragraph for the FACE rating and final word.

This film is not the movie of the book. It is a movie based on the book, and more to the point, it is a movie based on a book as seen through the lens of the previous Lord of the Rings films. This is not a children’s bedtime story, this is an epic tale that is clearly a prequel to an even more epic tale. The themes have been increased in scope, and in doing so have changed some of the underlying nature of them. Bilbo is still our unlikely hero, but he’s much less...bumbling. In fact, the entire set of dwarves, mostly comical figures apart from Thorin in the book, have become more of a rough and tumble assemblage of adventurers. Thorin is an appropriately brooding “King Without a Kingdom but Gonna Get it Back” fellow. Gandalf is, of all the characters, the least changed. Enigmatic, yet with a twinkle in his eye and a penchant for sage advice, as is befitting a wizard.

The opening narration is a particularly good bit of work. Ian Holmes and Elijah Woods reprise their roles as Old Man (er Hobbit) Bilbo and Frodo in the framing device of “Bilbo finally getting around to writing down his story in full.” Both of the actors looked comfortable back in the roles and I enjoyed it. The transition to “60 years ago” was nicely done. I must say, Martin Freeman does a simply wonderful job as Bilbo, always giving off the right impression I would have for the hero in his situation. In fact, the acting is excellent from almost everyone. The dwarves at the party hits all the correct notes from the book, and the cleanup scene is well executed. From this point however, the movie makes some considerable departures from the book. Oh, none of the main story elements are changed, but...well, I’ll get to it.

Take for example the troll scene. I enjoyed the portrayal of our dear friends Bert, Tom, and Bill Huggins. But the scene is different. The dwarves didn’t lose their baggage when a pony fell in the river, instead Fili and Kili are counting up the ponies and realize two are missing. They draft Bilbo to assist in the recovery. The trolls have taken them, of course. Bilbo sneaks in to try and set them free, but due to a bit of bad luck is found out when he tries to pick pocket a tiny knife (for a troll) to cut the rope for the ponies’ pen. Kili leaps in to try and save him...along with the rest of the dwarves. A frightful row ensues, with the dwarves attacking and beating up the trolls with their many weapons, and only stops when the dwarves are forced to surrender or the trolls will pull Bilbo in half. They are in sacks or tied to a spit, but Bilbo manages to stall them for long enough for Gandalf to show up and smite a boulder in twain, revealing the dawn and turning them to stone.

This scene hit all the basic elements of the scene in the book, and served the same purpose. It showcases Bilbo’s inexperience with adventuring, puts the dwarves in a pickle, and Gandalf saves the day. But it is much more the scene it had to be, viewed through the lens of the previous films, rather than a scene from the book. Bilbo was caught this time, not because he was doing something somewhat foolish in order to impress the dwarves, but some rather unfortunate bad luck (grabbed by the troll when he reached for his handkerchief, which just happened to be right where Bilbo was standing to grab the tiny knife) instead of an enchanted coin purse. It is Bilbo, not Gandalf, who keeps the argument going over how best to cook the dwarves, and he does so directly, rather than trying to sound like the trolls. These dwarves are not the comical lot who get stuffed into sacks, but capable warriors put in a tough position (though they are vastly more comical than say, Gimli). Gandalf doesn’t trick the trolls into taking too much time, he straight up splits a fucking boulder to let the sun in. Don’t get me wrong, the scene is actually a lot of fun, but you can see the alterations made in the name of “seriousing it up” a bit for the movie.

Many of the film’s other scenes are in this vein, making things a bit more serious than they would otherwise have been had the other Lord of the Rings films not existed. There is actually an excellent character moment between Bilbo and Bofur right before the orcs attack them in the cave, but it drives home one of the new themes of the movie: Everyone Needs a Place to Belong. The actors play it well...buuuuuuut it is not exactly Tolkien’s writing here. Same with the entire thing with Azog the Defiler, the Primary Antagonist of this film. There is a whole heaping helping of stuff here that’s dolloped on top of the Hobbit to give it some of the epic scope of the previous films. It’s not badly done, but it seems to be a bit of “trying too hard” to make Thorin into the dwarfiest of all dwarves...for actual reasons as opposed to being stereotyped. There’s a bit during a flashback to the fall of the Lonely Mountain where we learn why Thorin has a severe dislike of elves...which isn’t even in the book to begin with and sets up some antagonism between Thorin and the Wood Elf King in the next film...that doesn’t really NEED setting up. It just seems so...superfluous and a little off putting, making out the Wood Elf King to be “kind of a huge jerk”, way moreso than in the book. Hell, Thorin is totally an asshole to Elrond, when in the BOOK he’s a little standoffish, but otherwise seeks council and rests up for a good long time and they part as friends.

Most of the stuff they added in about the “rise of the Necromancer” and so forth isn’t bad. It’s just..rushed. In the book, the Necromancer is a “far away bad guy who’s been around for a long time” and the reason why Gandalf isn’t with the dwarves for everything after Beorn. This time? Radagast the Brown finds out he’s set up shop in an abandoned fortress and is fucking with Mirkwood. Sauruman dismisses the threat, but Galadriel and Elrond do not take it so lightly. These bits are interesting, but again they “serious up the story” because of how epic the OTHER films were. I know I harp on this a lot, but it really, really changes a LOT of the tone and theme of the story.

Ugh, let’s talk Radagast. I should fucking love this character to death. He’s played by Sylvester “I am the Seventh Doctor” McCoy, and does some interesting wizard shit in the name of healing an animal, has a rabbit drawn sledge, and is all around an eccentric character with some clever tricks, underestimated by his enemies and friends alike. But...he’s got shit all over his face. Radagast lets a couple of birds nest under his hat. The character design for this calls for a veritable RIVER of bird shit to run down one side of his head, face and into his beard. This bothers me on a very fundamental level and I could NOT get over it. In every scene he is in, I just could not stop thinking that he’s gotta bowl you over with his foul bird shit stink. No one EVER calls him out on it, even though it is RIGHT ALL OVER HIS FUCKING FACE and is TOTALLY DISGUSTING. Just awful and it made me hate this character so very much. There’s “eccentric old nature loving hermit wizard” and then there’s “crazy old homeless guy covered in shit.” This falls into the latter category.

On the other side of the spectrum, there is Gollum. GOLLUM. This may be the very best scene in the entire film, is when Bilbo meets Gollum. Andy Serkis nails this performance to the wall, and Gollum is absolutely terrifying. He straight up bludgeons an orc to death with a rock on screen! The dual personality from the other movies is played up a little less here, but is still an essential part of the character. This IS Gollum as he needs to be for this film, given the Gollum from the other films. It is brilliant and wonderful. The other CGI character I enjoyed was the Great Goblin, huge warty pustule covered goiter and all. Just a delightful character, and pretty much spot on from the book too.

The climax of the film is the “Fifteen Birds in Five Fir Trees” scene from the book, but it is VASTLY different from the book, as it is the climax of the film. Everyone heroes it up, though Gandalf’s role is slightly downplayed, and the eagles are shown to be more a tool of the wizard then as acting of their own accord. It’s still a pretty fun showdown and puts the movie in a good place to pick up the story in the next one. Bilbo gets to show why he’s the protagonist of the movie and everyone gets a small moment to shine, all ending on a very clever representation of the Carrock, with a lovely shot of the Lonely Mountain in the distance.

On a scale of five frowny faces to five smiley faces I give this a sold three smiley faces. It did not feel like a three hour movie to me and I enjoyed it very much. However, it is very, very different in a lot of ways from the book, and this may bother people. The main themes of the book are here, and there are some additional ones that add a bit of depth and scope, in keeping with the “movie universe” that the previous films created. Definitely NOT for small kids though. It is PG-13 for a reason.

Kotas Reviews Wreck-It Ralph

This weekend Charlotte and I went to see Wreck-It Ralph in the theater. We even paid full price. Did you know that two movie tickets for two adults at full price costs $21? Neither did I. Anywho, we got to see previews for the Hobbit, which was awesome, and some other crap I don’t care about.

The movie is prefaced by a little short called Paperman. Paperman is a tale of a man, a woman, and about one hundred paper airplanes. There is no dialogue for the whole thing, but it was very, very well done. To talk further about it is to spoil it, and I wish to not do that. It was very good.

Fair warning, I am going to try to avoid spoilers as much as possible in this review, but a few things may slip in here and there. If you want the summary, just skip down to the last paragraph for the FACE rating and my final thoughts.

Okay, now that that is out of the way, let’s dive in. The opening montage sets up the story of the game. Fix-It Felix Jr. is an arcade game in, well, an arcade. It’s been there for 30 years now, watching other games come and go...and Ralph has been the “bad guy” in the game for all that time. He wrecks the Niceland Apt. complex, Felix Jr. fixes it, Ralph gets thrown off the roof, lands in the mud, and Felix gets a medal. At the end of the day, everyone goes inside for punch and pie, while Ralph goes to live in the dump, next to his old stump, with a bed of bricks.

As the narration closes, we finally see the framing device of Ralph at a support group for “bad guys” called Bad-Anon. Essentially, he is dissatisfied at being treated like a real “bad guy” for just doing his job. I think we can all relate to that, having had to be the “bad guy” once or twice in our lives. Anyway, the support group breaks up and reveals they are all actually inside the Pac-Man game...and can leave it via a giant power strip that connects all the video games. It seems that the characters can travel to the Power Strip (a.k.a. Grand Central Station) and thus move between all the different games in the arcade. That is, unless their game gets unplugged, in which case they either “die” with the game, or remain in Grand Central Station. The other major problem, which is revealed via hearing a “safety warning” by Sonic the Hedgehog playing on a nearby billboard, is that if you die outside your own game, you don’t regenerate and are gone forever.

Ralph, after essentially being shunned by his game mates during the 30th Anniversary of their game being plugged in, decides that he’s gonna go get his own medal, even shinier and bigger than any of the ones Felix has. Thus, he decides to game jump and win a medal in another game. Hilarity doth ensue, and everyone learns valuable life lessons about, uh, virtual life. The main characters have a fair amount of depth for the most part, with Ralph and Venelope having the most while Felix and Sergeant Calhoun have the least. That said, I particularly enjoy Calhoun’s backstory as it is one of the better “video game in jokes” of the movie.

In fact, that is really one of the highlights of this film: All the video game jokes. Most of them are just little visual gags in the background, but they entertain me so. From the Pong lines and blobs running around Grand Central Station to the fact that the protagonist from Tapper is the local barman, there’s a lot for a video game nerd to enjoy. The other source of cheap laughs is the setting of the racing game Sugar Rush, a candy and sweets themed racer where a lot of the film’s action takes place. The myriad of jokes are infinitely predictable, but they are still pretty funny, and there’s even a few Chekov’s Sight Gags to be found.

The film’s flaws are mostly found in the middle acts. A lot of what makes this film clever is the game hopping stuff, and seeing characters out of their element. Jane Lynch’s Sergeant Calhoun is a riot to watch, Ralph is a VERY sympathetic character, and Felix is a likable but privileged jerk ass at times, and all these characters have interesting arcs...buuuuuuut once we get to Sugar Rush, all of these elements become sidelines to the story of Venelope, played by Sarah Silverman. I liked the character well enough (she is annoying...but she’s SUPPOSED to be annoying so it works), but the movie switches the focus to mostly her and that is a bit of a detriment. The end is, well, very, VERY predictable with only one real twist that came as any sort of surprise. Still, the old standby story constructions have served us well over the years, and when presented well can be very, very enjoyable.

This is a fun movie, and I enjoyed it a lot. On a scale of 5 frowny faces to 5 smiley faces this gets a solid 3 smiley faces. It is a kid friendly movie that holds a lot of hidden gems for those of us who grew up with video games and can get behind some old fashioned sentimental entertainment. Definitely the feel good movie of this week.