TheDragonDane Reviews

Hell and Back (2015)

Rotting in hell for all eternity would be funnier than this movie

[1/10 · 11 January 2016]

I have never seen so much talent go to waste with possibly one of the most unfunny, uninspired, boring, empty hollow script I have ever seen. How did this get green lit who in their right mind would read this script and sacrifice all their time, effort and talent to be in this? I honestly wonder if they are personally ashamed of themselves.

These writers so thick in the head actually think adult humour is nothing but spamming the f word and saying penis over and over again. That's the movie there's not even a story to fall back on.

It is the most desperate attempt of adult jokes I've ever seen. And That's the only thing the films going for…. Nothing else but telling jokes which is an awful decision for ANY film

This is what someone would assume South Park/Superbad were like just by a quick glance. Without understanding there's more depth to the raunchy jokes. Nothing in the script works, the characters are empty one dimensional shells just to tell a joke... One character is an unlikable jerk, another one is fat, another one smokes weed, and another one is horny..... HAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHHAH!!! The story is stretched so thin and one of those, "setup with nothing else going for it" type of films.

The most disgusting part of this movie is it's advertised as an adult film while it treats us like children. When in reality most mainstream animated films are pretty mature in the first place. So what is this trying to prove?

The best thing I can say about the film is like I said, the voice talent, animation, set design and art direction. Its perfect proof that great presentation can never save an abysmal script and It will ruin the experience for pretty much everyone. This film is an insult to those who pulled their weight and put effort in this project.

I'm actually sorry about saying all those awful things about, Grown Ups 2, Jack and Jill, Doogal, Not Cool and even Tusk. Those movies are freaking masterpieces compared to this thing and that is saying a lot. This movie just ticked me off.... Because literally in the first 6 minutes of this 86 MINUTE MOVIE I was already done and regretting my decision to sit through this..... I persisted at 1.5 speed and it still was torture. Glad this was a flop and how nobody knows about it.

Everyone involved should be personally ashamed of themselves. This film appeals to nobody….

This is the worst stop motion movie I've ever seen and the worst movie I've seen in my entire life as of 1/11/16. (Coming from 1000+ films)

1/10 And that 1 point is just to be generous to the people who tried to make the best out of this.

Hamlet (2000)

Hamlet 2000?

[4/10 · 22 June 2015]

This is "Hamlet 2000"..... Yes that's what its called. This is basically a modernization of the classic William Shakespeare play with the same title. Sounds like a.....good....idea? Well though it can definitely get pulled off BUT much like the modern day Romeo and Juliet the dialogue is identical to the play from 400 years ago. So there is old English and it doesn't fit at all with the modern day setting. It's incredibly distracting and unfitting. "Modernizing" all the dialogue not even a little bit just doesn't work and you better don't give me the business as a excuse to keep this movie timeless because it's already 15 years old and incredibly out of date. There are fax machines, VHS tapes, and hilarious early 2000s outfits scattered out throughout the movie, it already doesn't hold up.

Unlike the Romeo and Juliet (96) which had a ton of stylized cinematography and pacing Hamlet 2000 is mundane, grey and not fun to look at. The setting is in some generic apartment building witch isn't visually stimulating. Though there is occasional creative shots here and there, they are far and few between. But to be honest Hamlet 2000 was pretty low budget and it shows its measly 2 million dollar budget in the lack of visuals and couldn't get close to the epic scale, beautiful shots, from the Oscar nominated Hamlet 1996

Little skill was used in the directing as most scenes were people sitting around barely moving. Acting for the most part is wooden and unconvincing. Half the lines are barely audible and most people speak in mumble. I felt like the actors had no clue what they were saying. I barely knew what they were saying. The casting wasn't that good either, Ethan Hawke as Hamlet; Bill Murray as Polonius? What? That doesn't sound right and they just phoned in every scene. Julia Stiles's character Ofelia has a scene where she screams in fear comes off as unintentionally hilarious because it looked like she didn't care at all. One take seems like most they ever did and it makes the movies genre to be a "Thriller" to be underwhelming.

The respect for the source material could be taken as offensive. The famous "To Be or Not To Be" speech is filmed in a blockbuster while Ethan Hawke has the goofiest outfit imaginable. Nice product placement there buddy! Then all of a sudden you see Hamlet 2000 watching the actual Hamlet on TV? Wh-what?! How does that even work? Just imagine if its Back to the Future 2 and in it the main characters are seen watching Back to the Future 1 on television. It shouldn't even be in the same universe.

The play Hamlet puts on is changed to a pretentious "The Ring" like VHS tape though I kind of like that scene. Sound mixing is muffled a bit though it could've been the VHS copy I was watching. But there was barely any music in the movie when there was it was incredibly generic. There's a scene that takes place in a party and the characters are still mumbling to each other while blaring music is playing. How do they hear each other? This could be the fault of some mediocre editing which has some flashbacks or visions that don't really add to the film at all.

This is one of the shorter Hamlet movies to get released just running less than 2 hours which is definitely useful if you wanted a quick summary of the story. And its not a horrible film its definitely watchable and its pretty innocent experiment. When it was released it was well received surprisingly reaching a 70/100 on Metacritic it hasn't aged well however. Hamlet 2000 is still fun to poke at with a group of people. But still there are tons of other adaptions of Hamlet that should be checked out like the 1948 and 1996 ones. Hamlet 2000 gets a 4/10