2011 In Review 29: Fat Frog: The Movie

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Gizmog
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2011 In Review 29: Fat Frog: The Movie

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"Fat Frog: The Movie" won the Film Festival contest for a number of good reasons. FnrrfYgmSchnish's combination of colorful graphics, action-packed story and even a little humor here and there. He also manages to mix computerized voices, ala "Harry Potter", with real voices in a fairly seamless way. It's not perfect, but for the most part, "Fat Frog" is an entertaining experience.

The year is 1773 and the bunnies and mice have joined forces to rid the world of frogs once and for all. No one, not even Mouse Jesus can stop this unchecked aggression. No one, that is, except THE FAT FROG. The story follows his one man campaign against the combined strength of rodents and rabbits. Along the way he gets into his share of fights, and these are masterfully animated. He can't kill the Mouse King and stop the war without going through the four generals. Unfortunately, the film ends before he even takes out one general. To me, this really changes the tone of the movie. Without some kind of climax it feels less like a self-contained story and more like the intro to what would be a great RPG.

The lack of a good climax exacerbates "Fat Frog"'s real problem, which is that the second half is pretty boring. I can't imagine Fnrrf thought he'd be able to finish 5 epic battles within the contest time frame, so I wonder why he didn't cut things back a little and focus on the one with the captain. Ending the movie there, maybe with a little teaser that there's still 4 Generals to go would've left everyone hungry for more without losing anything of value. The talk between Fat Frog and Mouse Jesus is a little slow for my tastes, and then to end the game just as there's been a great build up to a fight is lame.

There are some great voices to help things out though. Outside of the computery ones, which actually work better than you might think, both humans do a great job pacing and emoting their lines. My favorite is the big boss, who reminds me a lot of Him from the Powerpuff Girls cartoon and the guys in the intro are also great. It's all backed up by a great soundtrack, which if I'm not mistaken, includes the contest's only N-bomb. Gotta love rap music!

All things considered, this is probably the only Film Festival entry I'd recommend watching to anyone and only if you treat it as a preview of things which (hopefully) are still to come. It's got some problems, but you can ignore most of them if you aren't expecting a completed work.

Score: 7.5/10
2011 Score (Per Jun 18th): 68/100

Part of Gomey's 2011 Year In Review
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Last edited by Gizmog on Tue Jan 24, 2012 7:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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