Sunday, May 29, 2016

Movies with Talking Animals and Bark Ranger (2015)



A large part of human nature is socialization.  Deep inside each person is a need for companionship.  Many people find this camaraderie in talking with other people.  That’s what parties and hanging out are about.  Being around other people is the main reason you do that stuff.  Another way to find companionship is through having a pet.  Having an animal around (whether it be dog, cat, horse, or anything else) can help a person feel less lonely than they otherwise would.

Filmmakers know about our love of having animals and have produced many movies that play into it.  That’s where the “boy and his dog” concept stems from.  There’s a certain amount of relation that a viewer has to a child loving their pet.  It connects the viewer with the movie through an emotional investment.  All of this is because of our inherent need for companionship.  We want a friend as close as the boy is to his dog.  We want that kind of platonic relationship.  We want to connect with someone or something in that way.

But what do the animals feel about their relationship to the people?  Many movies delve into this aspect of the companionship by giving voices to animals.  They give spoken personalities to allow a better ability to directly address what animals are feeling.  This can, of course, lead to problems.  The personalities could be grating.  Many times, they are.  Movies like this week’s Bark Ranger make the animal into a smart, badass, yet irritating figure.  The voice work can make or break the character.  Then there is how they integrate the talking into the movie.  How does the animal look when talking?  That can be a deal breaker.

There are three ways that movies and television shows make it look like animals are talking.  The first is to get the animal to open and close its mouth.  I believe that this method involves feeding the animal.  When it chews, it visually looks like talking.  You can add a voice and make it feel similar to a foreign film being dubbed with English voices.  It’s one of the top two ways of making animals talk, though I’m unsure if it’s the best.

The other of the two top ways is to simply have voiceover.  Using this method, there is no need to manipulate the mouth of the animal, practically or digitally.  It works the same as telepathy in terms of depicting it.  All that is necessary is for the animal to have some sort of expression, and a voice is placed over it.  This style helps to keep the movie from looking goofy.  It grounds everything in a realistic setting and doesn’t cause a negative feeling in most viewers.

Finally, we come to digital manipulation.  This is when the mouth of the animal is altered to make it look like it is talking.  There are two different aesthetics when a mouth is digitally manipulated.  One is to place another mouth over the animal’s mouth and have that one shaping out the words spoken.  Then there is the method that involves digitally enhancing the already present mouth and making it look like the oral cavity of the animal is talking.  Of course the second of those methods is better, though both are of lesser quality than the practical ways.

Bark Ranger went with this final way of making the dog talk.  Ranger (Jon Lovitz) had his mouth changed through computer graphics to look like his snout opened and closed with the words.  At least it was his own mouth.  I’ve seen movies for the Sunday “Bad” Movies that didn’t even have that quality of animal mouth work.  (I’m looking at you, A Talking Cat!?!)  It always feels unnatural to see an animal’s mouth moving with words, especially when done through the use of computer effects.  It looks goofy.  The worst part of these effects in Bark Ranger was that they look bad.  The movie didn’t have a big budget.  That was noticeable through the visuals.  It got worse with the talking dog effects.  The whole snout of Ranger looked poorly rendered when he talked.  It looked like a fake snout, laid over the real one.  Which it was.  It was a digital recreation placed over the already existing part of the dog.  Not enough time was spent making it look realistic.

The quality of the mouth work for Ranger wasn’t the only problem.  Like many other talking animal movies, the animal character was meant to be heroic and funny.  Also like many other talking animal movies, the jokes were terrible beyond belief.  Ranger was the best friend of Jack Keller (Lucius Hoyos).  Dogs are man’s best friend, after all.  The problem is that Ranger was condescending to almost every person he met.  He made fun of all of the humans, and treated them as if they were below him.  He laughed at his best friend’s girlfriend Chloe (Zoe Fraser) because she couldn’t ride a bike.  He made Jack’s father Blake (Ari Cohen) come to him when they saw each other on the road, instead of compromising to meet halfway.  He treated other dogs like crap too.  He practically walked all over Spike (David Berni) when seeking information, and later again after telling the story we watched unfold.  Ranger was not a likeable character.  This is a common trait in talking animal movies.

Let’s look at these qualities in another talking animal movie I’ve covered, which I’ve already brought up in this post.  Duffy in A Talking Cat!?! was another animal that had their mouth altered through digital trickery.  The difference was the quality.  Though Ranger’s mouth still resembled a dog’s mouth, Duffy had a moving black circle placed over his mouth to signify talking.  It was a lack of effort from the people behind the movie.  This is the worst way to go about making an animal look like they’re talking.  It is lazy and doesn’t resemble a real mouth.

The personality of Duffy is where A Talking Cat!?! went right.  Instead of having the cat make snarky, snide remarks about everything that happened, he seemed like a wise sage.  This was further exhibited through Duffy’s interactions with people.  He took time to give advice and help the people in their lives.  He cared about his friends.  He didn’t think himself better.  If anything, Duffy was helping everyone become better than he was.  The problem with this was Eric Roberts’s performance, which sounded like it was literally phoned in.  I don’t mean that in the modern figurative sense of literal.  I mean the true sense, which is the opposite of figurative.  It sounded like Eric Roberts called the director and they recorded his performance over the phone.

There are good examples of movies with talking animals.  I can’t say I’ve watched any for the Sunday “Bad” Movies since this blog is based around the idea of bad movies.  One example that comes to mind for me is the remake of The Incredible Journey, titled Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey.  The movie focused on two dogs and a cat as they journeyed through the wilderness attempting to return from a farm to their home in San Francisco.  The personalities of the animals varied, allowing for a mixture that kept any single voice from grating on the viewers.  There was the younger, more excited character.  There was the older, wiser character.  And there was a sassy female cat conveniently named Sassy.  Together, the three played off each other instead of being one overwhelming personality.  It worked the best out of any of the talking animal movies that I’ve mentioned.

In Homeward Bound, the animals’ voices were simple voiceover.  There were no attempts to make their mouths move with the words.  The voices were placed over whatever the animals were doing to keep the action realistic.  The performances relied more upon the voice work than actually making the animals look like they were talking.  It worked better than the other movies I’ve discussed.  The performances of the animals were unaltered and allowed more emotion to shine.  There were no distractions.  It was all about the emotional connection through the voices and the actions.  They didn’t need to visually be tied together through the mouths to work.

The two biggest flaws in talking animal movies come in the form of the animal personalities and how the voices are portrayed.  Having only the irritating smart ass animal that interacts with nobody can be detrimental to entertainment.  Making animals’ mouths move in unnatural looking ways can distract from the words they speak.  Those aren’t the only things that can make a talking animal movie good or bad.  Of course bad filmmaking can bring a movie down harder than an anvil on Wile E. Coyote.  But these two details are big factors in creating the talking animal character, and that character can be the thing that keeps a movie from being tolerable.  It is the most important character to nail in these movies.

I am not against talking animal movies.  I know that it takes hard work to elevate one to a level higher than a cheap attempt at cashing in on parents who want to distract their kids.  Some good movies have come out of this style.  I love Homeward Bound.  But there are lesser movies being released with talking animals all the time.  A Talking Cat!?! was one.  Bark Ranger was another.  Though the movies had other problems, the talking animal was a big part of why they were bad.  That’s why this post exists.
Now for some notes:

  • Here is the post for A Talking Cat!?!
  • Jason Blicker was in Bark Ranger.  He was also in Iron Eagle II and Iron Eagle IV.
  • Marcia Bennett was in Bark Ranger.  She was previously seen in Glitter.
  • Finally, Marty Adams made an appearance in Bark Ranger.  He was also in Dead Before Dawn 3D.
  • Have you seen Bark Ranger?  How about A Talking Cat!?! or Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey?  What do you think of movies with talking animals?  Any other good ones you can think of?  There is a comments section below where you can discuss this post or anything mentioned in it.
  • If you know of any movies that should be covered in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, feel free to let me know in the comments or on Twitter.  I’ll be making more of the schedule soon and I like to toss suggestions in there.
  • Sometimes when I’m watching bad movies, I like to share clips in my Snapchat story.  If you want to see this stuff in the future, among a few other things, you can find me with the username jurassicgriffin.
  • Next week’s movie is going to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III since the new Ninja Turtles movie is going to be coming out.  That’s right.  Synergy.  This is the movie where the brothers go back in time to feudal Japan.  It’s going to be fun.  I’ll see you next week with a post.

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Funky Forest: The First Contact (2005)



Funky Forest: The First Contact was a strange Japanese comedy that used different kinds of humour to generate laughs.  There were awkward moments and gross out moments.  There were times when the situations got surreal.  In fact, that was most of the time.  This was one of the strangest experiences I have had watching a movie.  Now I will share it with you.

It didn’t take long to figure out what the post for Funky Forest: The First Contact was going to be. Five minutes into the movie, I knew that I was going to write about it every few minutes.  Hopefully this post didn’t end up a mess.  It’s just that the movie seemed so insane that it would be difficult to remember what happened if I didn’t live journal it.  So that’s what you get this week.  You get a live journal.

0:00 – 5:00
It started with a comedy variety show.  Two men were on stage saying and doing weird things.  They slapped each other a couple times, and nothing really happened.  Then we found out that a man in some sort of flying bean was watching it on television before heading off into the sky.  Cue the opening title card.  It was a strange introduction to a strange movie.

5:01 – 8:33
This part was called Little Hataru.  A girl made a giant molecule almost explode.  Then she shot a laser out of her forehead at some weird beanbag chair looking thing.  It ended with her saying that homework shouldn’t exist.  This segment only helped to fester my confusion.

8:34 – 8:45
The two weird comedian guys were pretend fighting like giant robots.  It sort of reminded me of the fake gunfight from Spaced.

8:46 – 11:52
The title of this segment was The Unpopular with Women Brothers.  Later segments would be called Guitar Brother.  One of the brothers played a song on guitar and asked the second brother if girls will like it, while the third brother told them to knock it off and go to sleep.  I do not understand why this was supposed to be funny.

11:53 – 12:11
The two comedians finished up their fight and saluted the camera.

12:12 – 14:14
A girl jogged through a park.  She hugged a tree and giggled.  Then she went for a nap in a field while a dog watched her.  What does this mean?

14:15 – 22:18
Notti & Takefumi.  A man and woman were hanging out and discussing their relationship.  Notti met Takefumi when she was in high school.  He was once her English teacher.  They weren’t lovers.  They were just good friends.  Takefumi was obsessed with his music.  He played a mix on his turntable because he had a dream.  Notti said it was lame.  There was also a weird moment where something touched Notti’s foot, but it wasn’t Takefumi.  The movie was still swirling pool of weird, seemingly unrelated partial stories.

22:19 – 22:41
There was more of the two comedians.  One was telling the other to “just do it.”

22:42 – 27:02
Another Guitar Brother segment.  Only, it was the third brother.  He was doing an interpretive dance to summon a female demon.  Or to get girls to like him.  Or both.  This made more sense than anything else up to this point.

27:03 – 34:20
So this segment was called Babbling Hot Springs Vixens in Alien Piko-Riko.  Three sales women went to a retreat.  They met a man who knew Guitar Brother.  It was the man’s birthday the day before.  They gave him 10000 yen and sang happy birthday.  Then one of the women told a story.  Her friend Takefumi once saw a spaceship.  He went inside but only remembered coming back out.  The girls then took a bath.  This segment was promising and gave me hope for later, connective segments.

34:21 – 34:30
The guy from the last part turned to the camera and asked what the audience is looking at.

34:31 – 38:39
The Babbling Hot Springs Vixens returned in The Big Ginko Tree.  One of the sales women told a story about a ginko tree that kept growing in different directions when it got cut.  Finally, it was chopped down and turned into cutting boards.  It was a decent story told well.

38:40 – 38:47
The three sales women were in the hot spring.  Two of them thought it was hot and one didn’t.  Okay then.

38:48 – 46:27
The Babbling Hot Springs Vixens in Buck Naked and the Panda.  This segment was a good representation of how I felt during this movie.  One of the sales women told a story about a guy riding a panda and lying about it.  The other two got angry about the ending and attacked the storyteller.  That’s how I felt with this movie, since all of the segments seemed to end with me thinking “What the feck?”  Half of them didn’t even have real endings.

46:28 – 48:38
Guitar Brother was back to poorly play guitar.  I think his guitar was out of tune.

48:39 – 48:49
The sales women were on a train back to where they came from.

48:50 – 1:10:16
We returned to Notti & Takefumi.  Takefumi was sharing the strange dream that he had.  In the dream, he was forced to dance with various people and things.  First it was some weird man with a demon mask and a fur glove on one hand, holding an assault rifle.  Then Notti showed up and demanded that Takefumi dance with two lobster girls, a giant animated robot that became a soccer ball, a group of people dressed in yellow, and a floating animated head.  It was five dance numbers crammed into one dream sequence.  When he woke up, we learned that the jogger who fell asleep earlier was Notti.  I probably should have picked up on them being the same actress.

1:10:17 – 1:13:30
There was an intermission.  This movie had an intermission.  Sadly, it wasn’t long enough to do anything with the time.

1:13:31 – 1:22:55
This segment was called Wanna Go For a Drink?  A schoolgirl walked through the hallway of a school and saw a yellow fuzzy thing dragging across the floor.  She followed it and found a guy in a fuzzy yellow costume asking her to pull on the yellow thing.  It looked like a tail but it came from his penis area.  She pulled on it.  Three hours and ten minutes later, she put some squirming tube thing into her belly button and it set off bells as if she won a prize.  Takefumi was there and opened up a box that the tube was connected to.  There was a giant anus in the box.  Takefumi stuck his arm in the anus and pulled out a doll that was actually a tiny sushi chef.  The chef relayed a “fairly fine” test result.  Then the scene cut to the girl telling a guy that this was a dream and that she couldn’t marry him.  So that was something that happened.

1:22:56 – 1:23:04
More of the crazy comedian guys doing weird things.

1:23:05 – 1:25:37
This segment was called Home Room.  A kid stood in front of the class and yelled at everyone because they stole his shoe.  Nobody wanted to give it back.  He sat down, having lost the argument.  Then the teacher yelled at him because he was wearing both shoes.  It was quick, it was funny, and it wasn’t completely weird.  I liked it.

1:25:38 – 1:27:34
Guitar Brother made a return.  The three brothers decided to have noodles.

1:27:35 – 1:28:03
The two comedians were arguing over who caused the trouble, then they did a weird salute thing.  They like to do that weird salute thing, it seemed.

1:28:04 – 1:30:25
It was another Home Room segment.  In this one, the class president got up and started making a mockery of the classroom.  The teacher told her to stop and she said she couldn’t.

1:30:26 – 1:30:52
Someone was shining a shoe.  They whispered about a singles picnic.  It was probably the same one that was brought up in one of the Babbling Hot Springs Vixens segments.

1:30:53 – 1:36:26
This segment was called Youth’s Classroom.  There were three pairs of school children playing around with weird looking monster things.  One pair consisted of the girl that was playing with the molecule and the class president.  The teacher was the shoe shiner.  The teacher told the kids to begin and they played the monsters like musical instruments.  One of them accidentally scuffed the teacher’s shoe and the teacher freaked out.  There was nothing funny about this segment.  It was just weird.

1:36:27 – 1:36:36
One of the comedian guys asked the other if he wanted to go to the zoo.  These two made absolutely no sense to me the entire movie.

1:36:37 – 1:40:53
Back in the homeroom, one of the girls finally got a boyfriend.  The class celebrated only to have the teacher from the next room come in and yell at them.  The homeroom teacher told him to piss off, and everyone started celebrating again.  I flipped back and forth on these homeroom sketches.  I kind of liked this one.

1:40:54 – 1:48:32
Guitar brother sat with two characters called the Anime Brothers.  They were discussing a new anime and its origin.  A dog thought up the idea and a translator relayed it to the creative team.  The translator had a big fake head.  It ended with everyone being invited to the singles picnic.

1:48:33 – 1:55:08
In this Guitar Brother Special segment, we got to see the singles picnic that was mentioned throughout the movie.  Most of the guys that we have seen were there.  The angry teacher and the homeroom teacher (who was the hot springs guy), Guitar Brother, the little brother, the Anime Brothers, and two other guys were there.  They talked about how they plan to get women.  One guy danced really well and they praised his skills.  Notti also ran by.  This segment paid off threads from earlier in the movie.  I started to like Funky Forest more with this segment.

1:55:09 – 2:00:19
Two guys were screaming about teachers getting equal pay.  Good idea.  Then a dog was thinking.  Then we saw the most insane animated segment ever.  This was a representation of the dog coming up with the idea and the idea having been made.  The thought behind this was brilliant.  The execution, not so much.

2:00:20 – 2:00:33
A teacher was a police officer and he threatened the students but wouldn’t do anything since he was a teacher.

2:00:34 – 2:11:12
This segment was called After School Club.  This segment went semi-viral on the internet.  A man sat on a chair.  He had long nipples.  He squirted milk while a girl swatted at it with a badminton racket.  Then he pulled monster things out of his pants and threw them at her.  One of them latched onto her arm and sucked her blood.  A doctor pulled off the monster to reveal a tiny monster man hanging on her arm.  He pulled a name stamp out of the monster man and made fun of its name.  Then the girl’s coach, who happened to be Guitar Brother, asked if she wanted to quit the club.  Takefumi showed up for a bit.  This segment perfectly encapsulated how weird the movie was.  It was just plain weird.  Funny, I guess, but weird.

2:11:13 – 2:11:19
The after school club was practicing gym stuff.

2:11:20 – 2:11:50
Guitar Brother shamed Takefumi for believing in the alien piko-riko.  I’m not sure if the alien piko-riko ever paid off.  Is that what Takefumi’s weird dancing dream was supposed to be?

2:11:51 – 2:26:30
Back to Notti & Takefumi.  Notti described her dream.  She was dressed all in white and playing violin in the forest.  Three girls were manipulating the sound of the violin through different soundboards in the woods.  It was basically the musical equivalent of porn.  There was a brief animated segment explaining who the three girls were then Notti woke up in the park.  The segment came out of the story as she and Takefumi were talking to each other.  They started dancing in the backyard for some reason and I ended this movie wondering what the heck I watched.

2:26:31 – 2:30:01
The end credits had some of the worst music I’ve ever heard.  Ugh.


Concluding Thoughts
I’m not really sure what this movie tried to be.  Weird is the best description.  Sometimes it worked.  I enjoyed the dream sequences.  But there were other parts like After School Club where I was left wondering why it existed at all.  Half the time I was entertained and half the time I was baffled.

If you’re interested in weird Japanese humour, Funky Forest: The First Contact is the movie for you.  Be warned, it is two and a half hours long.  You probably knew that by the timestamps throughout this post.  If you’re going to watch it, you need to invest that time into it.  I feel like a changed person having seen it.  You might too.
Now for some notes:

  • Funky Forest: The First Contact was suggested by @ddogfilm.
  • A few foreign language films (either with subtitles or dubbed in English) that I’ve covered are Infra-Man, Dig Your Grave Friend… Sabata is Coming, Attack of the Super Monsters, and An American Hippie in Israel.
  • Have you seen Funky Forest: The First Contact?  Do you agree with me about how insane the movie is?  Have you seen any movies like it?  Have you seen the After School Club segment online?  You can discuss this movie, post, and other related things in the comments section below.
  • If there are any movies that you think I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can share those suggestions in the comments or you can tell me on Twitter.  I like adding suggestions to my schedule.
  • Sometimes when I watch bad movies, I share clips of them on snapchat.  You can follow me there.  My username is jurassicgriffin.
  • Next week’s movie is going to be a newer movie called Bark Ranger.  It stars Jon Lovitz as the voice of a dog.  If you’re interested in this movie, or my posts in general, come back next week to see what I say about that one.