Little Gobie

The first Toy Story type animation to come out of Hongkong was Dragon Blade which was a terrific movie, really using the talent Hongkong has in martial arts to tell a solid family story. This was continued with the success of TMNT, again having great action in it. Now Astro Boy might not have been as successful as TMNT, but it was certainly great entertainment. I loved that movie!!! So when Little Gobie came out as the next Hongkong made computer animated film I was more than eager to see it. But it was really really REALLY REALLY R E A L L Y bad. OMG, didn't the director see any of the other animated films made by his fellow countrymen??? What was on the mind of the people who paid to make this movie??? Do ANY of them watch any moves at all??? All I can say is, thank GOD I went alone to watch this (and the theater was pretty empty too). I guess people can sense a stinker. Well, from now on I'm gonna be a little more careful before choosing to watch an animated movie made in Hongkong!

Now, I understand that I am not really this movies demographic (I'm 27, and this movie seemed to have been written with toddlers in mind) but good films can surpass their target demographic. Think any good Pixar movie, or the first Shrek, or How to Train your Dragon. All written primarily for kids, but enjoyable to everyone. I would say that Little Gobie is the complete antithesis of those movies. It exists in a cold, heartless, poorly rendered (in every sense of the word) world where plot is secondary to merchandise sales. If you see any pictures from the premier events for this film, you will notice that there are always people wearing reindeer horns or holding plush toys of the movies characters; they seem to be the focus of all the pictures. This might be because the film is completely and utterly unwatchable, and so the producers are trying to squeeze a dime out of the licensed merchandise while they can because they sure as hell won't be making any profit off this completely unwatchable film.

For starters, the animation is so bad, that at times I thought I was watching someone play a Playstation 2 game. All the character models are horrifying both in design and in motion. The story wouldn't even be considered adequate on Nick Jr. The translation of the script is third rate and probably took no more then a couple hours to complete; I doubt the source material gave them much to work with though. The voice acting also sounds like it was completed in about a day. This film was screened at the Garden State film festival following 2 amateur short films for kids, and those budget productions (both shot on likely less then $500) took this 8 Million dollar travesty to school. Whoever this Tony Tang guy is, I hope he is never allowed near a camera or animation workstation ever again. Just like how most people consider Chinese goods to be inferior knockoffs of other products, this movie is is the dollar store version of Toy Story.

Stay VERY far away.

Oh, and a special dishonorable mention to the California Film Awards who awarded Little Gobie the "Best Animation" award. There must have been no other entrants in its category for this thing to have won anything.