Freddie, der Superfrosch

Wow, my first new review in months. What a great one to start out on! Am I glad to see that IMDB has an entry for this completely demented movie. I was starting to doubt my own sanity.

On to the review. This is one of those movies that is way to incomprehensibly bizarre to hate. If you like insane films, and you find it in the video store, rent it and watch it. Like it's obvious soul-brother, "Sayu-Ki", it might just change your life. Just don't say I didn't warn you.

I saw this movie on the shelf of the local charity shop, and was differing whether to get it. In the end I made up my mind not to buy it, but to look at the rating and reviews on IMDb and watch it on YouTube. In spite of the low IMDb rating and the negative reviews, I enjoyed this movie. As for people saying that this is the worst animated movie ever, sorry I cannot agree. Doogal, Titanic:The Animated Movie and Secret of NIMH 2:Timmy To The Rescue are much much worse.

Freddie as F.R.0.7 isn't a perfect movie. The story about a prince turning into a frog and then an agent and having to investigate what happened to the disappearing monuments is predictable and sometimes uninvolving, some of the script is a little cheesy and there are one or two parts that drag. But there are a lot of things that compensate:

• Firstly the animation is great. As long as you are not expecting Disney, you'll be fine. Some of the backgrounds are gorgeous, like in the encounter of the Nessies, and the characters in general are well drawn particularly Freddie himself and Messina in snake form.

• Contrary to other reviews I liked the songs. True they are not perhaps Oscar worthy material, but they are memorable. The beginning song was excellent, and Messina's song was very well done if unusual. And the singing is actually good, in some animated films like the Secret of NIMH sequel the music sounds like it is being performed as part of a school end of year production but not here.

• The voice acting is top notch and add to the charm and quirkiness that the film does have. Ben Kingsley is absolutely charming as Freddie, and Phyllis Logan is excellent as Nessie in a truly charming scene. Brian Blessed relishes his role as the main villain El Supremo, while Billie Whitelaw is great as Messina particularly in the final climax. I love Jenny Agutter and she was lovely as Daffers. Sterling supporting voice work also from Nigel Hawthorne, Michal Hordern and Jonathan Pryce.

All in all, this is a flawed but charming film, helped by the great animation and voice acting. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Where to start? This is one of the greatest animations to date, hell IT IS THE GREATEST ANIMATION TO DATE!!!! The story is as follows, a 17th century prince in France gets transformed into a frog, meets the loch ness monster and becomes present day secret agent Freddie the frog, fighting evil. Now the logic starts. All of Britains great monuments are disappearing because an obese warlord allied with Freddies evil aunt are shrinking them for a reason that makes perfect sense. All the Britons lives are directly linked to those monuments and if they are taken away, the British people die. Wow. What a film. So full of the logic and structure lacking in all of Spielbergs movies. It also has incredibly well done dialogue by a uniform cast and great songs that should have won an Oscar.

I remember seeing this film in theatres as a child. I don't remember much about it except that I did enjoy it. It's a good watch for the kiddies, probably not as watchable for the parents. Since I can't remember much I'd say take a chance on a $.99 kids' rental and then get Spy Kids for the whole family to watch.

forgive the pun, i watched this movie about a week or two back for the fun of it since i was trying hard to remember it after not seeing it since childhood, let me tell you, the film seemed a hell of a lot better when i was a child.

i gave it a 2 because of the good animation but other than that this is a pretty pointless and awful movie.

the dubbing was the worst part of this movie to me, but the characters never had any worth remembering lines anyway so it doesn't matter.

there were two songs in this movie that i really didn't see the point of, the queen of evilmania and nessie's song, both of them had absolutely terrible lyrics not even fit for an episode of postman pat and both seemed utterly pointless and wasted time, they were probably only put in to fill gaps.

do we even find out at all during this movie who this insanely evil and pudgy dictator is, i don't think i hear his name once or even why he's involved with the movie.

i don't get why freddie decided to go back to France to stop crooks, i don't understand why he drives this weird green car and i don't get how he managed to turn from a 6 inch frog to a 5 foot man during one scene or how exactly the other frogs managed to find him clothes, the fact that it's a kids animation is not a plausible excuse.

the only other good bit i thought was the British man who always tripped over his own phone chord and got tangled up in it more than once in the film and each time more ridiculously, this to me was a pretty original and funny joke but they didn't execute it perfectly enough to make it funny.

there's a Scottish character in it, and guess what his name is, that's right, Scottie, very very typical.

my real question is, why exactly could all of britains monuments be used to power up a crystal which puts people to sleep, if you cant answer that question then there really is no reason for the second half of this movie.

so anyway, my verdict, the film was too short, made no sense, was a work of nonsense and was poorly casted vocally.