Naruto, le film : Mission spéciale au pays de la Lune

This movie is only worth for the climax. Otherwise boring. Literally I'm slept while watching.

Like "Stone of Gelel," this was a film I had only seen once back in the day. I was 13 when it premiered on Toonami, and I felt rather underwhelmed with it. However, upon re-watching it, I am happy to say that, while it has its issues, it's actually much better than I remembered it being.

The story is rather basic, but it's executed quite well thanks to the characters that Naruto and friends meet. Michiru and his son Hikaru are both endearing characters who go through compelling arcs of learning to become better and more caring people. Naruto's friendship with Hikaru felt very appealing and believable, even though there were a few too many scenes of them shoving their new friendship down our throats.

We get to see Kakashi Sensei and Sakura again, and joining them on the journey is Rock Lee. While it is cool to see Rock Lee, I'm rather disappointed that he didn't have much to say or do outside of the fight scenes.

We once again get top-notch animation with really interesting and beautiful settings. Most of the action scenes were pretty good. The action scene taking place at the beach wasn't anything too exciting, but the rousing climax definitely makes up for it.

The movie's biggest downfall is the villains. I'm not going to sugarcoat anything, they were pretty awful. Shabadaba (I can't believe that's actually his name) was one of the most one-dimensional bad guys I've seen in a while, and his henchmen were cardboard cut-outs with no personality. The baddies in the first two "Naruto" films weren't exactly groundbreaking, but they were still good enough to keep my interest. The ones in this film did not.

However, with great animation, an engaging character arc, and an exciting battle at the end, this is still a film that I enjoyed despite its flaws. While it's the weakest of the original "Naruto" trilogy, it's much better than I originally thought and it gets a recommendation.

RATING: B

Looking at the many "Naruto" movies, I came across this one and found it to have the lowest score on the IMDb, but you know what? It's still by no means terrible. I think the biggest fault with this film is how it's paced. We spend too much time setting up the prince's son and too late to introduce the villains. Still, Naruto has never really given us a terrible movie and this definitely has its good points. I guess overall it was just okay. The prince's son is pretty annoying at first, but he does get better later. Weird how everyone's mad at Naruto mistreating the son of a prince.

Little do most of them know, he's the son of the hokage! It was nice to see Rock Lee even if he's not quite that useful. The best part was probably the animation. I really do like the villain's powers too, with the ability to turn people into stone. It's been too long since I've watched "Naruto" so I was glad to finally see him in action again. I do like how that crescent island kingdom is drawn. It was cool to feature circus performers (especially the animals!) as side characters who contribute to the final fight. **1/2

There's nothing particularly remarkable in this context, except for a significant amount of money invested in numerous lackluster five-minute fights featuring poor choreography. Despite this, the overall standard was quite good; however, I had reservations about the art style. It appeared somewhat inconsistent when compared to the source material. The use of computer-generated imagery (CG) was appropriate and not excessive. It didn't stand out, but it also didn't give rise to any complaints.

The sound quality was mediocre. Naruto has always had excellent audio in general. I won't say that I disliked it; I just didn't hear anything. Not in the sense that it disappears completely into the surroundings, but rather in the sense that it merely exists. Like in the first season of the series, it should breathe life into the desolate wasteland of obscene writing. Though several musical scores were taken from the TV series, that's why it manages to score a 6. Characters while trying to take themselves seriously, were more of a comedic relief than anything else. What this movie needed was the growth of team Kakashi. Naruto being his usual dumb self, Sakura and Lee had as many lines as that Siberian tiger (!), which somehow managed to be incrusted into this mess of a story.

The "villains" were the laughing stock of the movie, their designs, voices, (and what's with the wannabe Jiraya wigs?) no backstory, no motives, no nothing.

To save you the brain cells (or remnants of the aforementioned if one has already managed to watch this "masterpiece") I'll spare you the details regarding the so-called "character development" Well, OK, I'm just being coy. There isn't anything to spare actually.

I liked this movie pretty good, but as it is the movies seem to be getting weaker. I liked the snow one the best, the stone one and this one last. The main problem stems in the form of very weak fight scenes. The bad guys in this one are very underdeveloped and I still do not get the point of the wigs. There is a bit to much sentimental stuff going on to as they did some best friends forever pinkie thing way to many times for my liking. Still, it had some good humor and the characters were their usual selves. I am disappointed also by the fact Rock Lee is in the movie, but he just does not seem to play a really big role in the story. He just seems there for the most part, though I liked his end fight the best. The story has our gang of Naruto, Sakura, Lee, and Kakshi guarding a prince and his son. For first part of the film it is basically just Naruto and the prince's son getting to know each other and come to understand each other. The only real action comes in the form of a ship they are traveling on being hit by a storm. Then they arrive at their destination only to discover the king has been overthrown and mysterious shin-obi are working with the councilman who took over. Well you have a clash and the prince gets captured and Naruto and gang have to go to the rescue. So that is basically it, like I said improve the fights a bit, make Lee a bit more important to the plot, and develop the bad guys and this one could have been as good as snow as it is though it was still fun to watch.