Neophyte-Ronin's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[50MG]

Looks a shitload like bipolar disorder. We ought to exchange phone numbers.

[Mario Meets Kirby]

God, that sucks. Any more submissions like this and it'll permanently scar the good name of fan fiction. Next time, pick a story that doesn't suck, and for the love of God, don't narrate it.

And yet, this one glides by because it's a parody. And for some stupid funny reason in this site, all is fair when it comes to parody. Even the submission guidelines and suggestions create a virtual loophole where they discourage the use of anything copyrighted, yet encourage the satire thereof. So people can get away with knocking some juvenile hack's attempts at literature, if it happens to feature known game characters.

So, this is an adaptation of a piece of fan fiction. Yeah. And like I've said, all's fair with parody at this site. It has become quite the fashion to narrate a story in its entirety and then animate to it. On occasion, the animation has to do something trippy or just plain weird (note Mario's face), while rambling on and not making any sense and making everything ugly, because the story is ugly too, and we have to emphasize that point, over and over, ad infinitum. Yeah.

I hate this. I really do. It's self-indulgent and at someone's expense. I bet there was never any query made to allow an adaptation, let alone tarnish it. What was meant to be funny turned out completely poor in execution, bland in style and uninspiring. The story is bad, but the adaptation is worse, and on purpose. It'll pass judgment and infest the site like all the other bad satires that have crept up over the years. Worst of all, it's by a reasonably good author who can do a whole lot better.

My only recommendation: either pick a decent fan fiction to adapt and ADAPT it (not narrate a damned mess), or don't even bother borrowing from fan fiction.

JonBro responds:

So, let me get this straight. You dislike this because
- it's about a horrible fan fiction
- it's a parody containing randomness
and that's it.

I don't mind getting 0 reviews when they contain criticism that's actually constructive, but this was not one of those times. You didn't mention a single time why any of this was bad. You gave examples of things you personally find annoying, but for what reasons? What made this poorly executed? How was this self-indulgent? These are all questions left unanswered in your review. All you've done is throw assumptions at me. My intentions were to take a badly-written fan fiction, which is probably long lost and forgotten by its writer, and point out what a mess it is through animation. I can assure you it wouldn't have made any difference whether or not this was a video game parody, because that was not the point.

[a RE-UNdead short]

It IS hilarious. The punchline offsets the best part about being a zombie. I would have said, "Nothing", but that would be anti-climactic. This is one of those instances where the profanity complements everything nicely. It's a little cheap, but it's effective.

[Punishing ACTA]

If you didn't understand the political context, you could pass this off as psychological horror. I mean, come on: a bunch of faceless suckers wearing the same damn kind of mask all leering at one guy? Okay, that's beyond creepy. The soundtrack fit the mood perfectly and the blur effects and suddenness of the shots only added to the unnerving sensations that go through one's spine while watching. It's not a pretty thing. It illustrates the dangers of a covert concordance or secret society of sorts, even if their agenda is pure. You can tell that by the look on the man's face.

Again, without knowing the context, this passes off as a noir cartoon that borders on the kind of horror that you get from something like Silent Hill. The message seems clear to some, but that's the sort of trap this cartoon can run into.

[Homework]

Crude, but it got a few laughs out of me. It's not great, though. It's just a very swift gag, like one three-panel comic strip put into animated form.

[Fenada 001]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!

Okay, um, nalem is a brilliant animator. Whatever spanio did to inspire this, well he ought to be commended and given the key to Newgrounds. What a way to celebrate the sheer awkwardness that is St. Valentine's Day!

nalem responds:

He inspired me to animate it! I was originally going to make it just a webcomic! He also has offered lots of creative input whilst I wrote it among other things, so he plays a big role in making this happen.
I'm glad you like it and thank you for the compliments!

[Prosnorkulus]

Prosnorkulus: Bloated with Gas and Anger Issues

Okay, so if you watched "Mike's Date" by MiddleFingerRings (this review will be waiting for you when you get back), we're on the same page. Now that you know some filaments of the guy's style, let's begin. Prosnorkulus is a mock-up of a very, very bad period piece with fantasy stereotypes and excessive gore. The plot does not need to make sense and it is a given that the audience suspends its disbelief. Yet, not everybody can do so, not to such an unrealistic extreme, anyway.

Enter Prosnorkulus, a Dwarf who never speaks, has an ambitious brown beard, and does nothing but ax anyone who disagrees with his ridiculous mission or just pisses him off in general. His eyes glow red when this happens, yet he is some kind of wonderful when it comes to personal heroism. He literally has sex with all the maidens in the region inside his war tent, and they are all piled together that the thing bursts at the seams. Anyway, uh, I didn't quite get the plot. Either that's a failing on part of the author or I just missed something. Anyway, he's doing something yet has to contend with a wiry, anachronistic sniper using a high-precision rifle, a thick contrast to Prosnorkulus' Warcraft-tinged medieval blunderbuss.

If this cartoon succeeds at one thing, it is the cartoony art design. Every character is unique and expressive, with all the class of a Chick Tract and the intellectual quotient of a mule hoof. The explicit gore is noteworthy as everything is rendered in slow motion tweens that are so over-the-top that you just bat your head from side to side in disbelief. It's hard to keep THAT suspension up, let me clue you. Ryan Maddox peppers in anachronisms such as drill sergeants, homosexual noblemen, squinty-eyed losers, and people you just know are going to die. All their faces fit.

What it fails to do is use any impressive animation. It relies upon slow-motion death sequences so much that you start to yawn with the escargot excrement that is the action sequences. The pace drags and little traditional methods exist outside of lip-synchronization for voice-overs. Oh, and a movie like this requires more than two or three voice-over talents, because even though they did a good job, they did a poor job at masking their identities between characters. I could tell Josh Tomar played the king, for instance, alongside several other characters. It's a struggle for any voice-over talent to obscure their regular voice with accents and delivery, but here, it seemed like they didn't bother trying. This movie should have had far more voice talents involved, in other words.

Other failings of Prosnorkulus include reliance upon dead air background noise and an ear-grinding dubstep soundtrack--PURE DUBSTEP--which hammers in the fact that if Hans Zimmer ain't scoring your action movie, kiss your box office earnings goodbye. The appropriateness of the soundtrack--in terms of offending every last bystander--succeeds, but it wasn't necessary since the movie already is. Instead, Prosnorkulus needs background ambience, it needs a bloated soundtrack like Skyrim: a heroic Scandinavian choir and overplayed brass segments. That way the sniper can clip this jackass in the knee and it'd be topical, though Skyrim jokes are already old.

In summary: it's badly written, badly paced, badly overdone and badly executed. The effects are cheap, laughable, the voice talents are overworked, and the jokes, while they got me to laugh with their gratuity, fail to stand up against other works, including "Mike's Date", which excels by keeping its scope in check. It's a flash that takes forever so you see once and never look back, a forgettable period comedy with obvious juvenile inspiration and irritating execution. It's meant to piss you off, but unlike Fisthead and other gratuitous gags, it wears its welcome out too soon.

If Ryan Maddox is considering a Prosnorkulus sequel or even a series, I recommend narrowing the speaking parts and overall scope down to a trickle because the only thing I remember now of Prosnorkulus is his ridiculous ponderous gait.

MiddleFingerRings responds:

Come on guys, don't vote this as a useless review. Clearly our pseudo-intellectual friend has put a lot of work into it. ;D

Just to be clear; there were some good points in there, but your choice to direct it to the audience rather than to me, while simultaneously tearing the work to pieces, is a poor one. Also, all of the good points were so overwhelmed by the 'speaking like a critic' bullshit that I found it hard to pick them out.

[Parasitemas]

Obscene Never Equates to Edgy

Inspiring isn't the word I'd use to describe it. All this did was inspire me to kneel before the toilet bowl in joyful anticipation for something that might just cure my migraine. It's ugliness like this animation that makes me wonder why I keep coming back to Newgrounds. Maybe it's because I'm the kind of guy who enjoys a good public hanging every now and then. You know, like a walk-in execution ceremony.

Yeah, uh, there is no real plot, except that tapeworms are divine, or some other stupid message that is perfect for the holidays. Merry fucking Christmas, wankers. Here's a cartoon about anal probes and other disgusting shit. Why not put up a bunch of neon lights around a life-size crucifix in your front lawn while you're at it? Cartoons like this prove Santa never existed, ever.

Anyway, it's one of those cartoons where it is technically sound, it is a finished collaboration, there are no glaring mess-ups like that "Every War in History" cartoon, and I'm pretty sure this decrepit shit is still in their hard drives for posterity. So yeah, this is a triumph by the professionals all right. It's hard to tell which animator did what since it's all a seamless blur of insanity and--and I will bet fifties on this--nobody will seriously desire to replay it to cross-reference with other selected works from each authors' catalog. I ain't doing this bull-work for you, either. This is enough to shrivel up a porno star's hard-on into a stack of dimes.

Even though this debuted during Christmas, please do not recommend this for Christmas 2011. It will end up there anyway, no thanks to the Admins, but instead, recommend that it end up in a selection like "Bastards" or something. I'll tell you one thing: the "M" rating doesn't cut it; "A" is preferable since the level of obscenity is shown and not just implied. "Parasitemas" is just another mash-up from a set of talented but cynical and juvenile misfits who enjoy shitting into everyone's stockings. Obscene is not equal to Edgy, and for that, this one gets a 3 of 10.

OrganizedApeShape responds:

MAN EPIC REVIEW!

[Every War in History Ever]

A Glitchy Submission on the Front Page: Yay....

Congratulations! You SUCK, Evan! You completed a Flash Project and then deleted it before realizing there are noteworthy bugs. A triumph of the ages, for sure.

You set out to touch upon a touchy subject and made a submission that requires us to slough through YouTube for the "Real" version. If there is a "turf war" over content and distribution across various sites on the net, then this cartoon adds to the garbage. It happens when Kongregate gets developers to design content exclusive to its site and release inferior versions throughout the interwebs in an effort to pull in players and thus traffic and advertising revenue. That's a war in and of itself. So triple-foul goes to Evan Huber for touching upon war, failing to add anything new to discussion, botching the Newgrounds submission (and getting Front Page?) and perpetuating a war for the attentions of viewers and hence advertising revenue. Aren't we all happy now? Yes, because we've learned nothing from a cartoon about war!

Also, anybody who fails to release the proper, complete version consistently across all venues is bad enough, but to DELETE the original file is just horrible, horrible form. Perhaps this is on Front Page as an example of what not to do. I have never seen anybody openly write in Author's comments that they deleted the original project file (or deleted anything of a serious artistic or intellectual endeavor, period) after throwing it on a site for all to see. Do journalists, artists, novelists, or programmers routinely delete their material? No. Their relatives do so when they're embarrassed by it (look up de Sade). Under most circumstances, they archive them, digitally or otherwise, retaining originals of sketches and drafts and whatnot because sometimes, ya gotta revise a little here and there. Posterity. Sentimental value. Leaving behind a history for others to follow. Evan should invest in CDs, an external hard disc drive, any kind of rewritable storage to pack projects into, if he fears his computer's memory storage is shaky. Why anybody who pursues Flash animation as a hobby or profession chooses not to purchase something so simple and affordable is beyond me.

All this and I haven't even summarized the submission's contents. Well, I really don't have to. "Every War in History Ever" is a gratuitous smash-fest of why wars start. Ha-Ha. It's also bogus and wrong. It only covers matters of political opinion and does not take economics or prestige into consideration, or even matters of family and nations. It's a mad rush to get everything squared away under a megabyte that ultimately fails to deliver on its promise and leaves nothing but a hokey and abrasive aftertaste in the minds of viewers. It's not meant to be incredible, and it is meant to be open to interpretation, but it isn't very funny either, so the general consensus will likely be: "the author should strive to do better technically," and "I interpret this as a one-dimensional stint of hand-waving."

Either way (often both), Static Bunny skewered himself. He ought to aim higher AND keep his project files archived before he decides to delete the original file. I mean, come on: it's hard enough to try to get a message across, but it only damns you if you come off as a hack AND sloppy. If this cartoon hopes to spin off as a series of topical short cartoons, then the sequel better transcend the miserable outcome of "Every War in History Ever."

Despite misgivings, even something that fails this bad should be recommended to the Politics section since it IS still relevant. Even though one may argue that the notion is open to interpretation and the animation sucks by intention, it is a more objective note to say this cartoon could have been done a whole lot better and saying otherwise is like claiming the grapes are sour, or you're copping out so you don't get beaten to death by the pigs among the Review Crew. It's not extraordinary, was never intentioned to be, and thus it "succeeds". For that, I give "Every War in History Ever" a four out of ten.

[Tails Doll room]

Surprisingly Good, Cheap Shock

Okay, so this is another spoof of the infamous creepy "Tails Doll" from one of the Sonic games. This one melds a creepy atmosphere and a good soundtrack with an interesting effect that made me do a double-take. Despite the simplicity of the approach and crudity of the design, props go to the presentation.

So this is essentially a brief scare, with the unnerving realization that the Tails Doll has come to life. That's it, that's the plot.

The flash cartoon wins because it knows its audience at Newgrounds. It uses a modified window that matches Newgrounds' color scheme, so when the creature moves forward, it appears to extend beyond the natural boundary. I haven't heard anybody at Newgrounds doing this as part of immersing the audience, so give props. The static effects, choice of soundtrack, and overall grimness elevate a standard Sonic-themed spoof to something far beyond the sum of its parts. The paws extending beyond the boundary of the screen made me do a double-take, so it was well thought-out.

Hopefully more authors inspired by Sonic or the horror genre will take cues from this minor masterpiece and attempt to achieve thrills with a little bit of imagination and stage magic. There isn't much else to this, but it hearkened me back to the good old days when Flash cartoons were inherently simple.