Orion And The Dark (2024, Charlie Kaufman's sort of done a Dreamworks)

[Small Man Big Horse]

I say sort of as this is based on a book by Emma Yarlett, but Kaufman's adapted it for the big screen, and I was pretty impressed by it. For a good chunk of the film's fairly short running time (the credits kick off at the 80 minute point, though are worth watching for a further 4 minutes) it tells an appealing and often quite sweet story where the anxiety filled Orion is barely surviving until one night when he meets the personification of the Dark (who isn't voiced by Seth Rogen, but I really wasn't certain until I saw the credits and it's someone called Paul Walter Hauser). Towards the end

Spoiler alert

it's a bit message heavy and I'm not convinced the slightly meta story-telling device was needed,

[close]

but the majority of the time I found myself thinking that it's certainly one of the best Dreamworks films I've seen, and almost on a par with a solid Pixar movie. 7.7/10

Edit: Just remembered, I needed to put a warning in for The Mollusk as the film does feature a Flaming Lips song.

[Mister Six]

This is on Netflix, for people who are wondering.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention - deffo gonna check this out.

[beanheadmcginty]

I thought Uwe Boll had already made this?

[selectivememory]

Thanks for the heads up. Wouldn't have watched this if I didn't know about Kaufman's involvement, and to be honest, I probably wouldn't have been able to tell he'd written it if I didn't know going in. Still, it was enjoyable enough, and there were a few good gags in there and some decent performances that I liked.

[holyzombiejesus]

It got on my nerves. A couple of the 'jokes for the parents' just made me cringe (in a bad, later-season Simpsons way) and my little boy wasn't particularly taken with it either.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Thanks for the heads up. Wouldn't have watched this if I didn't know about Kaufman's involvement, and to be honest, I probably wouldn't have been able to tell he'd written it if I didn't know going in. Still, it was enjoyable enough, and there were a few good gags in there and some decent performances that I liked.

I felt like the (first) Werner Herzog appearance and the existentialism and nihilism references made it feel quite Kaufman-esque, but then it seemed to become more conventional as it went on which I thought was a shame, even though I liked it a fair bit overall. It kind of falls in to the "Not as good as Puss In Boots or Soul, but I preferred it to Onward and Luca category" for me.

[SteveDave]

Monsters Incside Out

Some of the character design was awful and the fake Seth Rogan voice of Dark got on my nerves after a bit. Then it seemed to change to fake John C. Reilly.