DanielRobertRoss

I love anime.

Spirited Away, Akira, Hellsing, Dragonball, Naruto, Ghost in the Shell, Howl's Moving Castle, Demon Slayer, Pokemon, Ponyo, Way of the House Husband and Attack on Titan to name a few.

Fantastic stuff.

But the lead character in Stand by Me Doraemon is an aggressively obnoxious lead character (Nobita, a cliched dork with no off button) and he drags the film all the way down with him.

What an annoying cluster of obnoxious, cliched characters, including a schoolyard bully who's so one dimensional he looks like he walked right out a 1950's flashback scene in a Stephen King adaptation.

Whoever worked on this maelstrom of noise (Directed to death by Tony Oliver, Takashi Yamazaki and Ryuichi Yagi) has some undiagnosed adhd.

Or maybe they think that they need to fill the film with endless emotion, action, emotional manipulation, snot dribbling out of noses, whizz-bang time travel animation, visual gags, comedy yuks, sound effects and OTT voice acting to distract from the worn out, paper thin plot.

Films, especially ones marketed towards children, need to have moments for both the characters and the audience to breathe.

This is key jangling: the movie.

The main problem however, is the main character is just way too unlikeable during the film's first 2 acts for him to redeem himself in the third act.

He's Charlie Brown, if Charlie Brown was an obnoxious crybaby with adhd and annoying level of obsession with a girl.

At least Charlie Brown was content to merely pine over the red haired girl from afar.

I feel genuinely sorry for the young girl Nobita is obsessed with.

Most anime has hectic moments, but there are almost always pauses for the audience to breathe.

And I understand cultural differences.

The way Asian filmmakers tell stories is different in many ways from western filmmakers.

Which is of course understandable.

But this film hurt me. It feels like it's 3 hours of a crybaby running around like a 2 year old.

Screaming, crying, punching, more yelling.

I was exhausted.

Some funny lines of dialogue, and the animation is (mostly) nice to look at, but I hated this film.

Don't show your kids this, there's so much better anime out there.

This is probably the best thing I've ever seen.

One star removed because there wasn't enough Rich Evans.

Sharks fascinate me, they always have. I remember watching "The Shark Chronicles" as a kid when it first aired on TV back in the early '90s. The amazing footage of sharks blew my mind. James Coburn's gravely voice narrates, he could read the phone book and make it sound Shakespearean.

Re-watching it now, it's still one of the best shark documentaries ever made. There's groundbreaking footage of hand feeding Bull sharks, expert stuntmen filming simulated shark attacks for Hollywood films and a first hand account by famous shark expert Rodney Fox of being almost killed by a shark.

Al Giddings, who is the main focus of the feature, tells several anecdotes about his close calls with sharks. The horrifying accounts of near fatal shark attacks are compelling, but so are the revelations that sharks are not the mindless killing machines that so many movies would have you believe.

This documentary also touches on sharks being killed just for their fins, which saddens me. They are incredible creatures that are endangered due to overfishing, and if we aren't careful, we may lose one of the most amazing creatures of the deep, and the world will be poorer for it. A fascinating insight into one of the most amazing animals on this planet. Highly recommended.