ParaNorman

[Dacey]

You have to remember that Coraline was marketed as a film with plenty of jokes, though. And there was a lot of humor in it, even though it is one of the more "extreme" PG animated films in recent memory. But the stuff that was really frightening wasn't shown in the trailers at all.

At the end of the day, if they make Paranorman look like a scare-fest featuring zombies and mayham, it isn't going to sell. Not only do they want kids to show interest, obviously, but they also want for parents to feel comfortable taking their children to it.

So, I wouldn't worry about the quality of the film. I'm sure Paranorman is still going to be one of the more interesting animated movies in 2012.

[laughingoctopus]

That's a good point. For instance in The Muppets (a 96% on rotten tomatoes!), they constantly advertised the "fart shoes" bit, despite it being terribly unfunny in an otherwise great movie. Truly hoping its the same with Paranorman.

[Dacey]

You know, I never have understood why there was so much "outrage" over that bit. After all, Fozzy's jokes aren't supposed to be funny.

[Randall]

Yes, but any fart humor at all is just so beneath the Muppets. Basically... Jim never would have done it.

[laughingoctopus]

^ Exactly.

[Ben]

And yet - as I was going to save for my review but may as well drop in early here - what does Fozzie pack as part of the Muppets' arsenal of "weapons" in The Great Muppet Caper?

[Randall]

Ahhhhh....

[Macaluso]

The fart shoes works because the joke isn't a fart joke. It's a Fozzie-bear-unfunny-joke joke. It's not really the same thing if a character was fartin' it up somewhere else in the movie. Whoopie-cushions are just a very obvious cliche bad comedy prop.

As for Paranorman, it looks good. I'm excited for whatever the big crazy skull thing that is probably at the end of the movie is going to be. Coraline and Paranormal have a really neat art style, and do something other than just weird and dark for weird and dark's sake.

Frankenweenie, on the other hand, looks awful. I'm so over Tim Burton's... thing he does. At least Johnny Depp and Helen Botham Carter isn't in this one.

They are in Tim Burton's other new movie that's live action though :p

[Ben]

Just a quick plug for my mega Muppet movie review, finally online!

http://animatedviews.com/2012/the-muppe ... a-blu-ray/

Now can we get back to the original ParaNorman topic here, please, and save the Muppet talk for here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3747&p=76930#p76930

[laughingoctopus]

After some initial disappointment with trailers, I'm really excited to see Paranorman. 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, and quite a few great trailers have been released, so I'm going to try to see this as soon as posle.

[Randall]

Looking forward to this, too! There are whispers of it being better than Coraline, and I loved Coraline.

[laughingoctopus]

Better than Coraline? I'm hearing great things about the 3D also, which is great considering Coraline's (IMO) brilliant use of 3D.

[laughingoctopus]

Just saw the movie. It was amazing, second best movie I've seen this year. Full of witty humor, gorgeous animation, emotionally engaging and wildly entertaining plot, and a nice use of 3D. Trailers definitely mislead me, I didn't expect Paranorman to be this good. I am surprised at its PG rating, as it's very heavy and dark, has some language, and a load of sexual references (both in dialogue and visuals). Regardless, it's great.

[EricJ]

It's visual, but half an hour in, you REALIZE why almost no one ever spoke in the teasers/trailers.
Currently slogging through it now, and while I want to like the Coraline Lite look, the insufferable sitcom-quirkiness of the script is making it tough going.

Coraline had the fantasy-novel uber-cool of Neil Gaiman to drive it, but here, it's like they took everything that was cool, creepy, kid-gothy and visually imaginative about Coraline, and replaced it with the sitcom-cliche' characters from Monster House and the preciously smug writers from Cloudy/Meatballs...
It was a paid rental during Oscar-catchup week, so I feel some obligation to get all the way through it and hope it gets better in the climactic reels, but make it stop, make it stop!

[Dacey]

"the sitcom-cliche' characters from Monster House and the preciously smug writers from Cloudy/Meatballs"

Didn't you post this exact sentence elsewhere recently, Eric? Like...this afternoon recently?

And I have no idea what you mean by the "preciously smug" writers of Meatballs, considering it had some of the best writing I saw in any movie I saw in 2009, live-action or animated (come to think of it, I said something similar when Monster House came out). But each to their own, I guess.