AngelsAngel

This movie was genuinely just slow and meandering with not much intrigue going for it. It *could* have been so much better, the potential was there in the plot for this to be a great comedic/dramatic romp, but it ends up being neither of those things. Unfunny, unmoving. It's just kind of *there,* things just sort of happening, and then happening again, and again, no sense of stakes or pacing, no sense of visual or narrative appeal, a movie that just keeps puttering and sputtering along to a puttering and sputtering end in every aspect, throwing in pieces of Kubrick soundtracks here and there with less than stellar end results. I usually enjoy John Malkovich, but both this and Shadow of the Vampire just seem so lacking in the use of his talents, or he doesn't really suit the role, not that there's much of a role to suit, with no real delving into the main character's motivations or anything, but I don't know the whole performance/just general presence of him kind of sticks out like a sore thumb in this weird otherwise indie feeling production. I don't care much for him at all. So many pieces of plot go nowhere, so much character and story depth is left unexplored, there's not even a whimsical charm to the telling of this legend, again it's just *there,* empty and uninspired and amateurish. Though the last like minute has a small sense of vague amusement to it, I can't say the same for much of the movie.

The only reason I give it any star at all is because I have a bit of a crush on one of the random idk british debt collector thugs?? From the first like two minutes of the film, one of Burn Gorman's early bit parts, delivering one of the few entertaining lines/interactions in the whole film. Burn Gorman <3.

This movie hurt to watch just a little. The first one at least Kurt Russell did a great job carrying the thing, but the sequel underutilized him and his charisma and energy, so there's not a lot to redeem it. The dialogue is stilted, no one knows how to act, the staging/filming is stiff, the characters are unlikeable and the plot and villain make no sense, especially in relation to the whole point of the first movie, it's like hey just forget all that, forget the other sibling, make the first kid annoying, throw in some bad cgi gremlins that don't match the rest of the movie's style in any way, mash together lore and then lip sync badly, the kids will eat it up.

I mean it's cheesy, it's on par with the quality of a lot of Christmas movies, which is to say it's not exactly *high* quality. While the first movie wished it was The Santa Clause, this one wished it was a lot of different things, but was lacking in the execution and true feeling of magic. It was lazy writing, even for children.

A movie that doesn't require much thought and definitely has a few too many toilet humour jokes and somewhat cringy dialogue, but overall still pretty exciting, thrilling, and a lot of fun to watch with well choreographed action that was never boring, keeping you on your toes, and an endearing performance from John Cena as Noel, who was just a genuinely fun, sweet and quirky character.

Sure, it's not groundbreaking, it's not overly surprising in the direction it went, and it could've explored its concept and the implications of it more thoroughly, especially the horror of it, (warning, parts of it get brutal/dark but more in a cartoonish supervillain way?), but hey, that's not the type of movie it is, not the type I expected it to be, and that's fine.

It had a lot of humour that didn't hit but also a lot that did, it had characters I was rooting for, good pacing, scenes that made me feel on the edge of my seat; it made me laugh and make various oh and *gasp* noises, and be like did you see that?? To my family, so all in all, a stupid good time. Slightly unnerving in concept. Kinda like an old fashioned violent cartoon.👍