Miggs's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[TANKMEN .5]

Okay.

Okay.

That world pretty much sums it up. Nothing was particularly amusing. The deliveries are all confident and well done but elicited little amusement. The writing isn't too bad, with the reference to Darkman and the unease of the fact that he had no lips.

I've seen the series before, and these are pretty much the same feelings I've had towards the others. The Tankmen are confident, crass, ignorant, moody, but there is an attempt to imply some wry humanity. Unfortunately the voice acting is the same for each character, which may be the point, but even the extras don't seem to have any more identity to them than the soldiers, in either voice, dialogue, or action. And in the end they all just end up being more or less clones of Zapp Brannigan from Futurama, minus the great writing.

What you have here seems to be, in my opinion, a great frame for a show. The setup is perfect, the angle on the character is funny. But unfortunately nothing else about the show aside from the concepts are genuinely funny. There are some textbook references to movies and pop culture, and then obscure pop culture, as outlined in the Family Guy playbook, but the end result is simply not that funny. Not to say this formula can't work, but in this particular case, it isn't.

Some may say I may be asking too much of you to offer a show as good or better than those on television. Some may say it is just a flash cartoon, and it should be expected to not be as good. But so many artists exist in this world writing amazing stories, shooting amazing photography, and creating amazing low-budget films. And most of the time it is better than comissioned art. Since we have the freedom as flash artists to create something totally uncompromised then it should be expected that we create better work. I don't think most of us know the magnitude of opporitunity we have. We have everything we need in this stupid little program to create some of the most meaningful, visceral, funny, poigniant, what have you, work in existance. It's cheap. It's power is nearly unlimited. Our power as artists is then nearly unlimited.

Don't get me wrong. The animation here is fantastic. The art is top notch, the animation and visual nuance of the characters is great. But that's technique. Without a really good gag it's just a utility. It's superficial, unless you have something more to it.

I feel you're creating out of necessity, not because you have something cool to show. The writing comes more from your obligation to release a new flash cartoon than it does from the desire to exibit something you've tooled around in your head for a while that you think is funny. That may have been how the series started. It may not have. I don't know.

It may be confident, but that doesn't make it effective. It may look great, but that doesn't give it substance. It may be popular, but that doesn't make it good. I think they've been voting on the potential the work exibits, not the work itself. What we have here isn't bad by any means, but it's not really that great, either.

Raise the bar, Johnny. You have it in you, bro.

Much love :)

JohnnyUtah responds:

"I feel you're creating out of necessity, not because you have something cool to show. The writing comes more from your obligation to release a new flash cartoon than it does from the desire to exibit something you've tooled around in your head for a while that you think is funny. That may have been how the series started. It may not have. I don't know."

huh?

"It may be confident, but that doesn't make it effective. It may look great, but that doesn't give it substance. It may be popular, but that doesn't make it good. I think they've been voting on the potential the work exibits, not the work itself. What we have here isn't bad by any means, but it's not really that great, either."

what?

and please don't compare me to family guy

[My New Grounds]

Ovaltine? A crummy commercial?

It was well made, but it really doesn't translate to anything more than a commercial. It's a nice integration between film and flash, but I don't understand why it would recieve so many awards.

What about everyone who's writing stories and putting depth into their work? Don't you guys understand that you have all the tools you need to create interesting pieces of work? I don't think this should really recieve awards over other contributions.

It was well made, and entertaining. But it makes me feel like that scene in A Christmas Story when Ralphie realizes he was just ripped off by the Ovaltine company.

By the way, "What's your Newgrounds?" doesn't mean anything, nor does it pose a real question. It's just a catchphrase that doesn't really make sense.

Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.

[Awesome Compilation Vol 6]

DELICIOUS!

So poigniant! So right! And so funny!

As always.

You make all the other crap around here look like SHIT :D

Ha!

[It's a Halo Thing]

Well animated, but ultimately unfunny,

As I said, it's well animated, but not that funny.

The voice acting was good, the animation was very good, and the timing was very good, but nearly all of the gags you decided to go with were sub-par.

But, of course, you're popular. Get some better writers and you'll deserve it!

[The Hobbit - Act I]

Funny, and well narrated, but stale at times.

Despite some of the malfunctioning jokes, and lazy sounding deliveries, the majority of this piece drives home some great humor while still narrating a surprisingly faithful telling of The Hobbit.

Being a fan of the book, which happens to be my childhood favorite, and having read the book five or six times, I was very happy with the way you told the story. More especially, I loved the fact that you told it through Tom Bombadil's worthless, allbeit beloved ass. It was disappointing not seeing Tom Bombadil in the Lord of the Rings, but let's face it. He was a jackass. He is a fantastic tool for the telling of this quirky, random, and very funny piece.

The jokes were all well written, but I think the voice actors could have spent a little more time on a couple of the gags. The deliveries were rushed and it leaves the audience feeling a little stale. You should have caught it yourself, though, being the director. A good director will obsess on something until it is at the very least adequate.

The animation leaves a little to be desired, and in that sense it mirrors the voice acting. But it has its charm, and your voice actors have their moments. I enjoyed this one alot, so much so that I felt the desire to write a review... something I don't do very often. In fact, I don't watch much on NG anymore at all, so thanks :)

NOW GO WATCH NUGGETS!

["Waterman" Ep. VII]

Ambitious Writing, Lacking Good Delivery

To best improve this series you guys should work on your voice acting. I think most of this stuff would be immensely funnier if you had better deliveries. I've watched a number of these cartoons from the series, and nothing has made me laugh out loud yet. Not to say that the writing isn't decent, it's well organized, but does lack that ZING I hear so much about. Seriously, if you work on the voice acing, the delivery, and the overall effect of everything that you've written you will do much better. If the comedy doesn't punch you in the gut, record it again, until it does.

["Target Practice"]

Well...

It was well animated by a kid who never had the chance to mature as an artist. Was this a sign that he was going to shoot a bunch of people and then off himself? I don't think so.

Is it common for smackheads to start by smoking weed? Sure. Doesn't mean smoking weed is a sign. There's a huge matrix of steps to take to get to any point in your life, and being stupid and emotional (as well as being a pothead) is one of the bottom rungs, just above being born. After all you need to be human to be able to shoot people in the first place. Maybe that was a sign.

By the way (for you lamens), I'm just using the weed and heroine thing as a metaphore for this film and his actions.

This was an expression of emotion. Do content and happy people kill others? Not very often. But that doesn't mean someone who's pissed off is going to kill anyone. It's no suprise that a kid that screwed up animated something like this, but in reality this could have been done by any emotional kid. I'd be suprised if kids didn't express themselves. Then again, this did seem a bit mindless.

In my opinion everyone is capable of anything. It just depends what you adopt to be your morals, what you are taught to be your morals, and how far you are pushed. Then again some people are born screwed up, some aren't.

It sucks that he shot a bunch of people, including himself, but he deserves neither damnation or empathy. He's just another stupid kid who went down another stupid path in the big stupid web of possibilities.

Anyway, it's not like people haven't been killing eachother since the beginning of... yunno, whenever it began. I just find it interesting that these kids are killing people in something other than the name of God. Kinda refreshing.

[The Secret Speech]

:D

This is the first movie I've seen in a while that deserves the title "The Shit". Most movies on this site SSSUCK now adays, but this was damn funny. Good job.