Cyberknight Masao Kawata
This film starts with a vain and spoiled male dog, the title Romeo, singing and dancing, in a very sexist performance, with bitches kissing him like he was a king. The horrible pop song lasts much longer than it should and, when it's over, we find out that it was a tale of said dog about how his life was, before he was kicked out by his owners. After such a nasty presentation of the character, it's absolutely impossible to sympathise with him. Instead of been kicked out, he should've been "put to sleep"...The rest of the plot is just dumb. Romeo is attacked by a gang of stray dogs (plus a cat and a rat), which start fighting each other for no good reason, instead of beating the hell out of Romeo. Romeo becomes an Eddie-Scissorhands-like and trims the dogs, for no reason, making them his friends (I wondered where he kept those scissors hidden). They decide to start a business of dog hair cut, when Romeo discovers they have to pay (with bones, the currency) for "protection" to a mobster. Romeo refuses to pay, fights the mob member and... nothing really happens (clearly, the kingpin is not a Corleone). Romeo meets a bitch on a roof top (yes, those dogs climb up house roofs like cats, and sing horrible pop songs), harasses her and is (obviously) ditched. More nonsense follows until an animal control team shows up and tries to arrest all the strays. For no clear reason, Romeo decides to save the kingpin from being captured, what eventually leads him to become the roof-top-singing bitch's "dogfriend". The end (more or less, keep reading).The plot makes little sense, with lots happening for weak or no reason and, worse, going to absurd and/or stupid directions. It is about an hour and a half long, with about half of that filled with horrible musical performances (awful pop songs with ridiculous choreography).And when you think the musical acts are the worst part of the film, you just find out that it's also a comedy! The visual jokes are all kitschy, forced and embarrassing, like when the kingpin screams to Romeo, the camera zooms out to show the planet Earth, and everything is distorted by the boom wave of his voice (yeah, sound waves in space... pure comedy...)Technically, the film is also a disaster. The animation is awkward, like in the "ReBoot" computer animated television series, but that was in 1994, one year before "Toy Story". To simplify the animation, I guess, there is a lot of close-ups of the characters (so, there is a lot less to animate and render). Actually, the fourth wall is put down a lot, with Romeo talking to the camera, annoyingly. Movements disregard gravity, mass, momentum (like the Velociraptors of the first "Jurassic Park", they also didn't know the meaning of mass or gravity) and friction, so it's not seldom to see characters "sliding" on the landscape. And when it reaches "The End", and you think nothing else could make it worse, the credits roll and you are presented with "deleted footage", like in the credits of a Jackie Chan film, except that they manage to be even less funny than the original scenes! They are like bad jokes that someone (that didn't "get" them) makes worse by trying to explain them, with more unfunny jokes...It's absolutely unbelievable that this is a Disney production. I mean, after rising from the dead by the end of the 20th century, Disney became one of the biggest producers of cinematographic content of the beginning of the 21st century, eventually engulfing Pixar and acquiring the "Star Wars" franchise. When I saw the 3D CGI castle and heard Disney's theme song, I thought it was some kind of joke, I really expected some character would jump up screaming "gotcha!", but no one did, it is, indeed, a Disney production! This film is as embarrassing as those anti-Nazi propaganda films Disney produced during WWII, except this one has no war to blame for its failure. I simply cannot understand how this has an IMDb score above 5, as it is as bad (or maybe even worse) as other computer animated disaster, like "Plumiferos" (2010).
Mini Ganesha
The plot of the movie is very simple, it kind of reminds me of The Lady and the Tramp parts one and two. It's not because Romeo came from a rich family, but it was the gangs and the dog catcher. The music was pretty good, just hearing it gives you the feeling that it's made for kids.There were two things that was a huge turn off for me in the movie, one was the way they moved the characters and second was the script. There was something that bothered me with how they made the dogs move, sometimes the arms would look weird and sometimes the facial expressions doesn't really match with the emotion their suppose to do. Like when Romeo's going to howl, he looks like he's just opening his mouth and looking up. There are also moments when the characters are suppose to touch each other (a pat on the head, hug, etc.), they look like they have force fields surrounding them, making it look like the characters are in an invisible ball. Some of the characters look nude, for example, Charlie Anna, he reminds me of a naked Peter Griffin. And sometimes Romeo eye's would look infected.And the script! I think this is the biggest thing that ruined the film, kids these days don't use the word "dude" anymore. In the movie Romeo uses a lot of slang's from the 80's, I think it would be better if bollywood animators would lay off the "cool factor" e.g. shades, motorcycles, high shirt collar and the Elvis hair do.The thing that impressed me the most about the movie was the details, the fur, the lighting and everything in between. The way they made the characters unite with their background, like the shadows on their fur and the shine in their eyes. The details on the fur makes me want to buy a Romeo stuffed toy, he's so FLUFFY!!! They fur is the biggest thing that impresses me about the movie. Compared to Sully from Monsters Inc. I would rate Romeo somewhere above Sully in my Fluff-o-meter. I also watched the special features of the DVD where they showed how they modeled Romeo, from the inside out. I like the details of their teeth, when they smile of talk, they don't just show a tongue, and the nose look so dog like, the way they made the wetness of it shine from the light.... http://miniganesha.blogspot.com
