Deimos-remus

So, movie night with the buds has led us on a trek through the American Pie saga, which for now, has come to an end. I can't say any of them are necessarily good, but there's been a couple standouts. However, the last three spinoffs are some of the worst movies I've ever seen, and this one follows suit.

I don't understand how American Pie, which, let's face it, is a very dated formula for a comedy film nowadays, is still going on. They can be blatantly misogynistic at worst, mildly amusing at best. That's when we're faced with Girls' Rules, which "tries" (and I mean that in the loosest sense) to subvert the series traditions by resorting to the oft-ridiculed idea of the "all-female reboot". That's not where the problem lies. The problem is that beyond being a whole lot of nothing, unfunny garbage and not veering enough away from the series' formula, the characters actively agitated me as much as the ones found in Naked Mile and Beta House-- they're terrible people, but the movie never acknowledges this fact and they still end up getting what they want, despite being parasites. Piper Curda's plot-thread was especially... gross and manipulative-- her boyfriend breaks up with her (he's never presented as some jerk or anything, so it seems valid on his part), so she pressures him into constant casual sex to get him to...change his mind? But, it's all fine because they get back together in the end. Silly me. Then, in a rather cynical move, it "tries" to go for a Booksmart vibe, by attempting to be thoughtful and charming, but of course it doesn't work. Just watch Booksmart instead.

It was clearly written and directed by men who probably have a thing for high-school age girls, and miserably failing at making something even remotely feministic.

I've spent maybe 5 minutes writing this, and that's already too much time I've devoted to it.

Making this film in this era is just about the worst idea a comedian could've come up with- I don't understand how this was released, let alone funded. This is the most nauseating vanity project I've ever watched; a comedian, in his self-professed infinite charm, wit and wisdom gets on his soapbox to school the rest of us about The Issues™

The twist? He's vocally masquerading as Sassy Black Lady™ (basically an inarguably offensive modern day equivalent to minstrel shows and blackface) because according to him, minorities and women are completely phasing white men out of the entertainment industry, or more specifically, radio. (as if talk-radio isn't already dominated by male conservatives- something they always seem to conveniently ignore in this discussion). But at the end of the day, It's also just writer-director-editor lead Jeremy Saville lampshading ("hey, as long as I address that the premise is totally racist at some point, I'll move on and it'll be forgiven, right?") it's completely awful- I mean, at one point, bartender Joe (Saville) claims to be a better black woman than a real one. I get that this in jest, but seriously?

It's almost kind of fascinating. On one hand, there's *maybe* a shred of Saville having innocent (yet very very misguided) intentions in making this, but on the other, it's such a clear vanity project about the guy playing himself so he can have a platform to vent about society's problems (or more specifically, the problems that comedians have run into in this modern "PC culture"). With all the lampshading Saville does, it's hard to not see him guilty of the racism he's supposedly denouncing.

Beyond all this, if you weren't offput by its reprehensible premise, the film is technically dull, has very poor production value, and there's absolutely no style or flavor to how it's filmed, acted, shot or edited. It's no doubt, an amateurish production through and through. As a whole, it's just flat-out embarrassing and shameful.

Initially, based on the recent reveal of the new Watership Down, a lot of people were getting upset at the perception that it was trying to 'politicize' and 'modernize' the story by adding more non-canonical female characters, but honestly its biggest flaw is just how downright dull it all is. It adapts the story closer to how I thought it would (though the changes it makes ARE baffling), but it's stylistically bankrupt, gray and lifeless.

Rabbits are indistinct from one another, vocally and visually. The attempt to anthropomorphize their behavior further (as opposed to the book making animal behavior relatable on its own) felt like a shoehorned attempt to make it more humanized, as if these characters could not be sympathized with otherwise, something the 1978 animated film does quite well; the rabbits look and act like rabbits...in this, they don't convince. The choice to try and make the story seem more like an epic (this is directed by the same guy that brought us the forgettable 300 sequel after all) was a very misguided and egregious misunderstanding of the original material as well. This all culminates in attempts at unearned sympathy for characters that I couldn't care less about (despite being very familiar with the book on which it is based) as it never gives any of them the proper amount of attention or care.

How the 1978 film manages to be animated more naturalistically and convincingly, despite the era's limitations (and being done by a very small, but dedicated independent studio), is incredible to me. Perhaps all the budget went to the star-studded voice cast (and the Sam Smith credit music) but the voices didn't add much merit to an already rather bloated adaptation. It's a strange thing that it was likely expensively produced, but undeniably rushed, making it look and feel terribly cheap; I was having flashbacks to the awkwardness of Disney's 2000 flop, Dinosaur, and other stiffly-moving animation from that era.

I wasn't expecting much out of this new series, but I was honestly surprised at how incompetently it all was.