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lynnsemenets
Reviews
One Piece Film: Red (2022)
One Piece: Film Hype
This movie is very enjoyable if you just vibe along without trying to ponder the plot and the characters' decisions. Otherwise, the fridge logic might just hit too early and spoil your enjoyment.
Some of the moments the movie could do without are:
The plot of the movie is overly convoluted, like Oda's idea that Uta goes mad due to the mushrooms rather than naturally, due to her trauma. Like, seriously? Is Saint Uta too good to snap on her own or something?
Worst Dad Award goes to Shanks, whose choices make zero sense, and are the absolute worst choices he could have possibly made, every single time. I used to love him, but now, I could strangle him with my own two hands for everything he did to his kid.
There's a lot of fanservice, like numerous characters appearing for about 1 second purely for the audience to scream over them. Some people will enjoy it a lot. Some people, like me, will find it tasteless.
The last fight looks like a trailer with everyone showing off their moves rather than an actual fight, and the monster they're fighting is perfectly random. It comes from nowhere and has zero backstory. No one properly explains what it even is, what it wants and how it came to be: it's only there because the movie needs a big music-themed fight.
The main character, Uta, has me conflicted. She could be really, really great, but instead, she's the quintessential Mary-Sue, which is rather off-putting. She didn't need to have the coolest characters in the manga for her dad and "little brother" to be cool herself: her character is very interesting, her motivations and issues are very relatable to a whole lot of people, and she would be a wonderful character if she weren't so Mary-Sueish and blatantly overpowered.
But my biggest problem with her is that to introduce her, Oda cheerfully retconned one of the biggest, oldest, most important parts of the story, loved and cherished by most any fan: Luffy's past with Shanks. It's incredibly poor taste to just go and retcon something this essential to the Grand Story just to make a mostly non-canon movie. Oda didn't even need to do this: he could have introduced Uta as her own character, without spinning retconned explanations out of thin air, and Uta would have been glorious... ah, but then they wouldn't get to use Shanks in the marketing to essentially sell the new movie as The Shanks Film. (This intentionally misleading marketing was also pretty insulting tbh. The most "red" this movie has is the second verse in Backlight.)
The songs are a very big part of the movie, and they, too, have me conflicted. Out of everything in the movie, I liked them best: they shine with vibrant energy, they really are way too catchy (for weeks now, I've been unable to get them out of my head), and Ado is a great rock singer. But they're definitely not for everyone - I, for one, don't even like them all that much, even though they're stuck in my head. Ado consistently sounds like a teenager talking back to / yelling at her parents (Backlight, Fleeting Lullaby, Tot Musica are mostly whinging and yelling set to music rather than actual singing). While she's great at screaming and growling - I'm no connoisseur of rock music, but to me as a layperson, her rock songs in the movie sound really cool - her singing technique leaves much to be desired, particularly her high notes, which are often off-key (I'm Invincible in particular was so off-key I kept cringing throughout). And for some reason, Ado just has to scream in every song, even in the slow, mellow ballads. Maybe she uses the yelling to cover up for technique deficiencies, or maybe it's just her style - I don't know.
But what I do know is that her songs, while often great, are not the kind to enchant absolutely everyone, the way they're claimed to be. Backlight, Fleeting Lullaby, Tot Musica are good rock, but how many rock songs are there in the world charts at any given moment? And yet we're supposed to believe that any old lady would happily groove to them. As for her other, pop songs... New Genesis is insanely catchy, and the music is great, as well as the singing (for the most part, because that high note in the very beginning is pretty poorly executed), but the rest of the pop songs are pretty much cookie-cutter J-pop. They might be enjoyable to many, but they're not even close to, say, Beyoncé level of singing, range and technique-wise. (Pet peeve: when people praise Ado's "amazing vocal range"... do they even know what vocal range is?) That's why it's pretty hard to believe that Uta is as absolutely amazing a singer as she's claimed to be.
I definitely not regret watching this movie, and it's well worth the ticket price. However, it's hardly a "love letter" to the series. Rather, it often looks like blatant exploitation of the fans' love for some characters, and the retcon of Luffy and Shanks' story feels very disrespectful to me. This is a fun, hype movie, but it could have been done so much better and cleaner.
Ah well, at least people had fun.
Let's Dance (2019)
Unoriginal but pretty (and) inspirational
Tl;dr objectively not that great but I liked it a lot. Saw two times, would see again.
The plot is as cliched as it can be, a typical journey per aspera ad astra. The two parts I found rather refreshing were that (a) the main character is a heavy perfectionist, hence most of his inner struggle in the movie, and (b) throughout the movie the emphasis gradually shifts from "win at all costs" to "do your best, be your best, enjoy yourself, and screw all the rest." Overall, all the plot devices are definitely tired and overused, but they still work. Or at least, they worked for me.
Visually, the film is beautiful. Beautiful dancing (although more on that a bit later), beautiful Paris, beautiful people of various races, ages and colors. Definitely a feast for the eyes.
The characters are all likable, even the "mean" ones. Most of them are just genuinely good people you'd want to hang out with. Also A+ for gay representation, I really liked the way it was done in the movie.
The music is nice and catchy, especially the song in the end credits. However the piece the team chose for the competition was as unoriginal as humanly possible. It was, of course, beautiful, and it did fit the choreo's idea and message, but... come on, is it the only (SPOILER) classic (/SPOILER) tune they could come up with?
The competition dance was also... meh. Definitely the worst choreo in the movie. There were so many beautiful, inspired pieces throughout the movie; did the team run out of ideas in the end? However the duet / pas de deux was beautifully done - not because it was technically exquisite or perfectly executed (I don't think Chloe is a very talented ballerina), but because it was so very emotional, passionate and soulful. I did tear up a bit.
The hip hop dances were good... I think. I don't really know much about hip-hop and breakdancing, but I thought the choreography was very impressive and well executed. The ballet, however... Somehow I got an impression that the creators of the movie don't know much about ballet. (Here's when I get a but geeky, sorry about that.)
First, there's too much glamour. I don't know, maybe it's a French thing, but from what I've seen, most ballet dancers and teachers dress like bums when they're working. They don't care much about their hairdo, but they do care about warmth and comfort. But then again, I've only seen clips from the Vaganova academy and some behind-the-scenes videos from the Royal Opera House, etc.; I've never been to a ballet school or a ballet competition, so maybe I'm wrong.
Second, like I've said before, Chloe is not a very talented ballerina. I'm not an expert, but I've seen enough beautiful dancing to notice some very wooden arms. A true ballerina's arms are a thing of wonder, a song of body, flowing like water and fluttering like wings (see Zakharova, Lopatkina, Nunez, etc.) So if you want to see some really beautiful ballet, that's not the movie for you; YouTube is your best bet instead.
Third, at one point Chloe says there's no place in ballet for the black, the too short, and the too tall. Well, that's patently not true. Francesca Hayward, the principal dancer of the ROH, is black and tiny (5' 2" / 157 cm) - and she's a bloody supernova on stage. The legendary Uliana Lopatkina is six feet tall - a giant! Misty Copeland, the principal dancer of the very theatre (American Ballet Theatre) the main character supposedly wants to get in, is black. The famous Carlos Acosta is black, etc., etc. I mean, it's true that ballet is highly standardised, but there's always room for difference as long as you are talented, work hard, and find ways to conceal your faults or even turn them into advantages (like Lopatkina's huge ass feet that somehow make her rises on pointe that much more beautiful.)
Last but not least, at one point a minor character says about a slightly unconventional ballet choreo, "That's not ballet!" O rly. Is this a parallel universe where Kylián, Forsythe, Bourne, Leon & Lightfoot, etc. didn't happen and the ballet world is still stuck in the Petipa era? This line is both ignorant and mighty cliched, especially considering that the American Ballet Theatre does a lot of contemporary ballet.
/End rant Overall, this movie is not very original and not very true to the facts. However, it's beautiful, funny, and rather inspirational. If you're looking for some light entertainment, you're definitely in for a treat.