Saturday, July 30, 2011

Attention Hollywood: Stop messing with my childhood!

This weekend, we saw Hollywood release another feature-length live-action/CGI movie adapted from a classic cartoon series. It was considered yet another critical failure. I'm not even factoring in the 3D portion of the release. Yet, Cowboys and Aliens brought in more people but The Smurfs is likely to win the weekend on the heels of the increased money with ticket sales for 3D.

In other movie news, I am giving up on Hollywood when it comes to sucessfully adapting a classic cartoon into a full length live-action film. The past few movies that they tried this with have been utter failures, and that includes Transformers.

Don't get me wrong but I saw Yogi Bear despite the reviews and when I left the theater that day, I decided enough was enough. I think Neil Patrick Harris is a great actor but not even he could save The Smurfs if he tried.

The best movie with live action and CGI characters isn't even based on a cartoon. It's Enchanted, the 2007 movie released by Walt Disney Pictures.

Just look at the overall positive percentage of critical reviews:
The Smurfs 18%
Yogi Bear 13%
Alvin and the Chipmunks 27%
Alvin: The Squeakquel 21%
Scooby Doo 30%
Scooby Doo 2 21%
Fat Albert 23%
The Flintstones 22%
G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra 33%
Garfield: The Movie 15%
Garfield: A Tale of 2 Kitties 11%
Inspector Gadget 21%
George of the Jungle 55% (71% top critics, 10/14): This may be the only one that has decent replay value, seeing as how I bought it with my bar mitzvah money in 1997. I think I even sold it to half price but to be honest, I don't plan to upgrade.
The Last Airbender 6%
Marmaduke 9%
Underdog 15%

I don't need to deal with the Transformers movies but those are 57%, 20%, and 36%, respectively.

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