Jamie
Humphrey and Kate are bestest of wolf friends, but he’s an omega and she’s an alpha and she’s destined to mate with the son of the leader of a rival wolf pack. Disaster strike, though, when they are tranquilized and transported to a far off national park. Can they get home and save the pack (and perhaps get each other) before it’s too late? Find out in… Alpha and Omega.
How?! Kate and Humphrey are wolves that want to totally bone (for real). He’s like “who dat?” whenever she’s around. But she’s an alpha and he’s an omega and that means that they can’t be together. Instead there is a sexy male wolf, Garth, that she’s supposed to mate with because he’s the son of leader of a rival wolf pack. This rival wolf pack is really struggling on the other side of valley where food is becoming scarce. So they’re like “we’re moving in and gonna done fuck you up if she doesn’t mate with Garth and join the packs.” Everyone seems cool with this scenario, except that Garth is also like “who dat?” to Kate’s sister. Anyway, this all comes to naught as Kate and Humphrey are tranquilized and transported to an Idaho park as part of a repopulation effort. Humphrey’s like “we better get busy with that repopulation effort.” But Kate is like nah and with the help of a Canadian Goose golfer (don’t ask) they start their journey back home. This also more or less goes swimmingly and they end up arriving home just as the big wolf pack battle royale is about to begin. Kate is like “I better get busy with repopulation with this sexy wolf and forget Humphrey for the good of the pack” until both she and Garth reveal the truth that they don’t love each other. The big fight ensues but is interrupted by a giant stampede where Humphrey and Kate heroically save the leaders of the two packs. They decide that Humphrey isn’t so bad after all and allow omegas and alphas to marry and they all howl at the moon which is a metaphor for a giant orgy I’m pretty sure. THE END.
Why?! They are wolves and they want to ffffffffffffff-rolic through the fields together. Seriously they just want to have sex with each other bunch a bunch of stuff stand in their way. Mostly societal rules.
What?! Obviously no product placements or MacGuffins. One interesting thing associated with any film is references to other films or errors or goofs. These are detailed manually by users on IMDb and being a weirdo I often read all of them when watching one of these films. A drawback to this is that you get goofs like this one that stay on IMDb: “When Humphrey gets attacked by a bear, you can see what appears to be a boom mic at the top right corner of the screen for a split second.” … come on IMDb. That is obviously not true… it’s not true, right?
Who?! Have to obviously point out that this was the last film made by the late Dennis Hopper and he got a Dedicated To credit as a result. Seemha Ramanna got a Special Thanks for his association with Crest Animation that made the film. He also got a Special Thanks for future BMT film Norm of the North. Apparently it was in production at Crest when it went under… in 2013. It didn’t get released until 2016. That’s quite the wait.
Where?! Set primarily in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada. Kate and Humphrey are then transported to Idaho and make their way back. It’s a pretty solid settings film given that it’s animated and due to the importance of certain aspects of these spots I’m gonna give it a B+.
When?! Ha! Nope. I have no idea. Modern times obviously. The only thing is that part of the plot is reintroduction of wolves into Idaho… This apparently happened around 1995-6. I actually don’t see much about that happening afterwards. So I’m gonna call it… I think this film is set in 1995. Prove me wrong. D- just for funsies.
I think that Alpha and Omega (which I didn’t note in the last post was actually our Chain Reaction film from The Game Plan through Christine Lakin) and Foodfight are a perfect pairing for this cycle. Alpha and Omega is a children’s film that only stands out in that is seems to insist on having weird adult sexual concepts being thrown around. The wolves are drawn all sexily and they have howling that is a stand in for the wolves canoodling on a mountaintop. Why? No one knows. Foodfight basically takes all of that to the extreme. It is racist, homophobic, anti-semitic, misogynistic, etc. etc. etc. Everything is an upsetting stereotype. So beyond the fact that it had animation at an impossibly terrible level, it just was never going to be good because it was offensive and bad from the start. So while Alpha and Omega was underwhelming on its own, the synergy between the two films made it a much more satisfying BMT film. Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! We watched a kids film about wolves where the wolves were like … super sexy though? Like, that bothered me. It felt really gross and wrong, and I didn’t like it. Let’s get into it.
The Good – The message I guess. The primary message of not allowing others to dictate what you can do in your life, especially about things like who makes you happy. There is a bit with howling which is somehow both terrible and also one of the only unique things the movie brings to the table as far as cheap CGI kids films go, so it has to go in the good.
P’s View on the Preview – There were two main things that interested me going in. First, just how bad the CGI was. It looked terrible in the trailer, so I thought it would be interesting to see just how cheap they went (spoiler alert, really cheap). Second, that sexy wolf. I can’t get it out of my head. Why make the girl wolf sexy? Is it just me that thinks the character design is sexy? Am I the weird one?! AM I THE WEIRD ONE?!
The Bad – The sexy wolves still bother me (AM I THE WEIRD ONE?!), but I think I’ll just put a button on that specific complaint. The story is pretty basic, and the film looks like garbage. It looks like a CGI tv show basically, something that can be produced in a hot second these days. A lot of adult humor mixed with fart jokes basically, which is an tad bit odd, but really, what did I expect?
You Just Got Schooled – This film is basically The Land Before Time series for this generation. There are eight films in total, the last three of which were produced all at once and premiered within a year and a half of each other. The voice actors have been extremely consistent once they replaced the (much more famous) original cast as well, which is a surprise. Here and the trailers for the eight films:
Enjoy? I’m not going to link them, but there are a number of full reviews of the franchise as well. A few things stand out. First, people are genuinely passionate about the franchise, lamenting the decline in quality after the fifth installment. Second, the reviewers are all around 12 years old probably, which is profoundly weird, would I have been doing things like this if I grew up now? I guess I probably would have. Third, I would not recommend looking for any fan fiction about this franchise … yeah you guessed it, it is all basically weird porn. Franchises like this provide a veritable bounty of deep diving opportunity which gives me existential anxiety, but I still find endlessly fascinating.
The BMT – It definitely is still weird watching kids films for BMT. Like, it all seems kind of pointless once you throw out the need to have a coherent storyline or character motivations. This is one of the more interesting ones though because of its many direct-to-video sequels and really quite terrible CGI (something that is now pretty standard). In that way it was somewhat worth it. Also, it is on the Calendar. Somehow it managed to get onto the Calendar and we watched it.
Welcome to Earf – Easy peasy. Justin Long was in Alpha and Omega and also in Old Dogs with Robin Williams, who was in The Big Wedding with Robert De Niro, who was in Righteous Kill with Al Pacino, who was in 88 Minutes with Leelee Sobieski, who was in Here on Earth. Welcome to Earf.
StreetCreditReport.com – None. Which isn’t very surprising for the chain reaction at the end of the chain, we often have trouble getting to the current year cycle in the end. It is on the Calendar though, which means it is the worst film released on that specific day of the year ever. So that’s something. But this isn’t even close to the worst animated film around (see below for the film that almost unanimously takes that honor), and 2010 was such a good year for bad movies it would never get close on that either.
Bring a Friend Analysis – This week we watched another computer animated adventure in Foodfight! Right off the bat I’ll say this is actually far more entertaining than it has any right to be (don’t get me wrong, it is boring, it is just less boring than you would think). The look of the film suggests a mid-90s video game cutscene, but it is implausibly worse than that. The Flophouse gets it right in saying it is more like what a 7 year old would produce on animation software that comes for free with a computer. I’m going to give it a B+ and hear me out. The film has an extremely unique backstory for a film like this. It was produced and released in desperation and because they were legally obligated to. Things like The Room or Troll 2 or Teen Witch all are mainly produced in a thick fog of delusion. This film started that way, but then is obviously only completed and released because they had to complete and release something (anything). And thus it sidesteps a bit of the cynicism that surrounds something like A Talking Cat?! Oh, the film itself? It is made by monsters who perhaps dream of corrupting children’s minds. It is the only explanation. If the film weren’t quite so boring / upsetting it would have gotten an A. Like if it was as harmless as Teen Witch it would have easily gotten there I think.
Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 