Little Door Gods

Hello, everybody, I am reviewing another movie for TIFF Kids. This time, it's a movie from China called Little Door Gods. It comes from a studio called Light Chaser animation and to be honest just from pictures I saw of it I can say I am intrigued. So, I am going to go over the movie and tell you what I thought of it. This  is my review of Little Door Gods.

Characters: The main characters of this movie are two brothers who are also Gods. Shen Tu and Yu Lei. Shen Tu is the main character and I do like him. He's very caring and nice. Yu Lei starts out as one of the two main heroes but eventually turns into the main villain which I thought was interesting. It's also one of the reasons I like him. Then there is Raindrop. She is a little girl from earth who works with her mother at their family's restaurant. Raindrop does fall into some of the cute little kid character cliches but other than that she's fine. There's Raindrops mother and owner of the restaurant Ying. She seems to care a lot about Raindrop and I like that a lot. Then there's the owner of the restaurant across the street from Ying and Raindrop (I can not remember his name. I apologize for that). He's not that interesting. He is basically every other cliched evil businessman character. And lastly, there's Nian the great evil beast. He's sort of every giant evil overlord ever. So not too interesting. There are some other characters like Colossus and the Earth God but I don't have too much to say about them.












Animation: The animation in this movie is pretty good. I like the character designs as each character looks unique. The background designs are a bit generic but I can overlook that. All the action sequences are actually done very well. So overall the animation in this movie is very good and much better than some other animated movies from America that I've seen.

Plot: The story of this movie is that the Door Gods Shen Tu and Yu Lei are facing unemployment as Gods. After hearing the story of a beast called the Nian Yu Lei decides to release it so that he can defeat it and the humans will remember the Gods. Yu Lei leaves to the human world where he has to destroy three seals in order to release the Nian. Shen Tu follows him into the human world. Along the way, Shen Tu befriends Raindrop and even helps out at the restaurant. I don't want to get too far into the plot because of spoilers. Overall I like the plot some bits I had trouble following. Although that probably has something to do with me not being able to read subtitles fast enough rather the plot itself. So overall the plot is pretty solid.


Conclusion: Little Door Gods is a great movie filled with memorable characters, an interesting plot, and great animation. I really don't have too many major complaints about this other than the subtitles go by a bit too fast. But that might just be me. So I do recommend this movie. So, if are in Toronto go see Little Door Gods. Remember, I will be reviewing more of these TIFF movies for the rest of the month. See you all next time.

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.