Freddie the Frog

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.

I have seen this film a few times, and have always enjoyed it. It is a fairy-tale; it is for children; if you can allow yourself to see it in that light, it will be entertaining. Clearly the creators of this film have a lot more imagination than your average Hollywood hack, though perhaps a little more respect for contemporary audience's expectations would have gone a long way to making this more popular. I really love the songs, though. Especially "Lay Down Your Arms" by Asia. Nothing like a bit of moral 80's cheese-rock.

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.

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.

'Freddie as FRO7' is really an enjoyable little film. It might be a bit chaotic, and even weird, it has its very own, very different kind of charm. What's that you're saying? That this movie is a stinking bowl of manure? Wait just a second, and answer me this:

WHICH VERSION ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

This is a vital question in this case, because if you're talking about the USA version, i must point out, that I'm talking about the original version. And both of us are totally right about each opinion.

With this unfortunate little movie, American editors have gone way too far. While at some points I understand the concept behind their motive to chop this poor cartoon into shreds, but at many times, there doesn't seem be any kind of concept to talk about.

For example, I can see why they cut the two jokes about Daffers' (a female secret agent) breasts. One of the jokes consisted of the main role gazing at her boobs while taking a comment about them, in the other one however she shows them off to Freddie (not to the audience). I was around nine, when I first saw this movie, and found the first joke funny, and the second one quite weird. But none of them offensive. Men are attracted to boobs. I don't have any problem with that, neither did back then. But okay, it's not children's material, so I can accept that it's been cut. Next thing: dancing soldiers. The problem with these evil minions lies in their appearance. They do look a bit like Nazis, and some of them wear KKK uniforms. As a nine year old kid, I knew quite a few things about WWII, but I knew how Nazis looked like, and I already knew many things to hate them for. So evil soldiers portrayed as Nazi look-alikes felt appropriate. But maybe i only knew these things because I'm European... but wait! I even understood the KKK references! Still, I may understand why the cut HALF of the song featuring these guys. At this point however, those enthusiastic US editors really got themselves into editing! Geesh, what to cut next? What to cut next? And there goes the fight scene at the end. I don't get it. It's not that they cut out the more violent parts. They've just erased half of it with no reason! Why? Were they short on celluloid? Anyway, this is a painful cut. It makes the ending totally anti-climatic, and makes the rest of the fight-scene entirely pointless.

But why stop here? Let's trash out a whole plot line! Why? Seriously, WHY? You see, there is this guy at the yard who's always turning his eyes, snickering in a very slimy manner, and so on. He is just the evil slime-ball stereotype. In the original version he turns out to be a spy for the evil ones, and gets arrested at the end. In the US version, he doesn't turn out to be a spy, and doesn't get arrested. He just does his evil looks, eye-turnings, and snickering, and thats it. WHY???? Now he's a character that's not just totally useless, but also clearly insane! What was the point?!

That's nice, the movie is in ruins now. But oh, we aren't finished yet! The original version starts off with Freddie cruising through France in his weird car, arrives at his apartment, starts feeding the fish, which gives him a flashback about a pond in France, where he spent his childhood. This neat touch gives the movie a needed framing. In the US version, the film starts with random medieval castle-parts. I really got confused at first, and thought the DVD might have the wrong film on it. Again, this edit makes absolutely no sense.

No, that's not all, really that's only the tip of the crap-berg, but I think you got the idea.

For the original version the score would be 7/10, While the American version barely lives up for a mere 3/10.

Take my advice: If you really want to see this, DO NOT BUY THE US VERSION, which appears to be the only version for DVD. You better off with buying a VHS player and a copy of the original on tape.