once again i am thinking for a brief moment about the adventures of rocky and bullwinkle and how it probably influenced young us more than we'd like to admit in terms of liking apto before that was really coined as a term, along with getting stuck inside a computer
not a good movie, but one i'm glad we watched at the time we did
knowing that we're watching rescue rangers (2022) on friday, i am once again thinking about the "toons as actors" thing - a trope i'm an absolute sucker for - which lead to thinking about the adventures of rocky & bullwinkle again
i wonder which one we'll end up preferring the CGI in, in the end
(i am also thinking about how the adventures of rocky & bullwinkle made the move of declaring itself part of the who framed roger rabbit? extended universe)
good news: rescue rangers (2022) also declares itself part of the who framed roger rabbit extended universe, more explicitly
it also isn't very good, but... well, there are so few fucking films with "out of work toon actor has to take a regular job" and that's a very specific brainworm we have, and so we might give it more of a pass for that reason...
...even if some critical plot points are Fucked Up if Disney didn't know their own history, and Extra Fucked Up if they did.
as for the CGI comparison... they're both bad, in different ways. rocky & bullwinkle did i think the best job a smaller studio could do in 2001 trying to intentionally make it clear these are toons. it's not great, but it's consistent.
rescue rangers has a lot of characters who are intentionally supposed to be animated poorly - and that's a joke that only works if the other characters look better by comparison.
and most of the time, they don't. the "good" cel shading can't pull off the 2D effect convincingly most of the time. the "good" realistic CGI reminds me of the mid-00s takes on garfield and scooby doo.
it feels like another victim of disney underpaying VFX studios while trying to churn out New Content for disney+ as fast as possible
i found it more distracting in a way that i didn't with rocky & bullwinkle, but granted, it's been a long time since i last watched rocky & bullwinkle
(and also if you are a fan of recognizing things there are a lot of things to recognize in rescue rangers... many that i'm honestly surprised were willing to work with disney for specifically this. remember how there used to be a lot of bad blood between dreamworks and disney? well, they've apparently buried the hatchet enough that shrek is here and mentioned by name. every few minutes there is something that disney doesn't own but sure would like to. there doesn't need to be a monopoly if all the brands are just collaborating! go find chip & dale somewhere in fortnite!)
