Oddball

Hi, everyone. So once again I have been contacted to review movies for TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) Kids. And so for the next few weeks, I'm reviewing several of their films. First up is the movie Oddball. A movie about dogs and penguins that takes place in Australia. Sounds pretty good. Let's get started












Main Characters: The two main characters of the movie are a chicken farmer named Swampy and his granddaughter Olivia. Swampy is a good protagonist, he's ambitious, loyal, and he is a good father figure for his granddaughter. Speaking of which let's talk about Olivia. Well, first off it turns out that Austrailian child actors aren't much better than American ones. But looking past that I do like Olivia. She seems to care a lot and is also written like a realistic kid. We also have single parent, penguin researcher, and Olivia's mother: Emily Marsh. I like Emily, she cares a lot about her daughter. And the last of the main characters is Bradley Slater, Emily's new boyfriend. At first, he looks like a bumbling dad type character but as the movie goes on he turns into a sort-of-villain. I like him and despite being a villain he's still likeable. Lastly, there's Oddball. He's a dog who really likes penguins. He's pretty adorable. Overall we have got  a great main cast of characters. But how do the side characters hold up?







Side Characters: There are a lot of side characters so let's get through them. First is Jack Jones. One of Emily's research partners. I like this character and think he's funny. He also looks like Chris Pratt so that's a plus. There's Mayor Lake. She is the Mayor of the town and I also like her. She's a good friend to Swampy. There's the dog catcher. He's sort of a parody of the old "Evil dog catcher" trope and it's pretty funny. And lastly, there's Zoe. Emily's other research partner. She isn't really given much character development. I can't tell you too much else about her.  So overall we got so pretty good side characters that are a pretty good comic relief. With the exception of  Zoe who is a tad boring. Now let's look at the plot











Plot: In the town of Warrnambool Australia the population of Fairy Penguins has gone down recently at a sanctuary because of fox attacks. If the penguin count falls below ten the sanctuary will be closed down. Once Swampy realizes Oddball is great at protecting penguins he and Olivia secretly put Oddball at the sanctuary at night. But Bradley accidentally ends up agreeing to put a whale watching centre on the island. So Oddball needs to keep at least ten penguins on the island before the next count in order to keep the sanctuary from becoming a whale watching centre. I only really have two major complaints. The first complaint is that at the beginning of the film there is this over the top chase scene. Now the scene was funny and all but it felt super cliche. Right down to having an incompetent cop and an apple cart getting knocked over. My second complaint is that there's sort of a twist ending that wasn't set up too well. But other than that it's a pretty solid plot.





Conclusion: Oddball is a great movie. It has characters that seem like real people, it is really funny, and it makes me want to go to Australia. Despite having a twist ending that doesn't have too much set up to it I still recommend this movie. Don't worry folks this is just the first TIFF film I'm reviewing and there'll be more all throughout the month of April. See you next time.