JackBz's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[U: First Thing Game]

So bad it almost becomes funny

As in it just makes me amused that anyone actually considers this to be funny in any sense. And just the fact that like...did you guys honestly not notice that there's extremely noticeable background noise for each of the sound clips? I questioned if it was meant to be coming from the tv before realising that it stops and stars with every new voice clip.

Usually when reviewing things, I generally have to compare and contrast what I think the intentions of the cartoon were with how well it pulls things off, though obviously it varies from cartoon to cartoon (I wouldn't highly rate with a pointless spam cartoon because it succeeds in being pointless), but here I don't even know where to start. What was the intention? Was seeing someone play a game meant to be comedic in any way? Was some of the things being visualised by the other guy (the simpsons/halo/shitload) meant to be the crux of the humour? Why don't you just make your next cartoon these guys playing I spy and call it a comedy, since I guess that's all your stuff needs.

I mean just...holy shit. The punch line of the whole thing is that someone likes Justin Bieber. How did you need a writer and editor for that? It straight up baffles me. And I haven't even touched on the graphics/animation/execution at all. The premise alone is just so...NOTHING.

Blakant responds:

wow, u must be a big fan of jb to write this long & pointless essay to me xD
thx for ur time anyway man :D

[Sonic Shorts: Volume 6]

*puts prick hat on*

I lost all hope that this was going to be an above average flash during the animations everyone did on the menu of various characters running across the scenery (I actually burst out laughing at the shadow one), but that IS a pretty cool remix there. There are some serious sound issues in this. I mean the volume of the music to the "sonic paradox" logo thing, and then the endless possibilities remix...come on, guys. Don't do this shit to my ears. Have a somewhat consistent volume throughout.

First short by "GF": There's no joke here. Like, I'm geninely confused at what is meant to be the funny part here. Sonic is mad at Tails? Is that the crux of the joke? A really bad skit to open with.

2nd short by Cacti: Eughghghghg fuck off, ok. This isn't funny. This isn't anything. This is an attempt to reference something from the past and hope that that in itself is hilarious. It's not. MORE EFFORT INTO THE JOKES THEMSELVES OTHER THAN "Eggman dancing topless...he's fat...the other characters will think it's gross!!!!!!!!"

3rd short by "Bit": This is the first decent short of the whole thing, just in its absurdism. For some reason I find Eggman missing the first shot oddly amusing, mainly because I thought it was going to divulge into some lame thing with Eggman constantly missing, but it surprised me and was silly and fun. But still...not actually that good or funny. Just a massive step above the 2 previous shorts.

4th short by Link Kokiri: We go back into lame. Ok, we get it, Sonic characters have super saiyan tendencies. That doesn't mean a short can just consist of characters powering up in stupid ways and be excused as a parody of anything. Guess you had to add Tails losing his head to stop people falling asleep, or to add some randomness, or whatever.

5th short by Flash Twister: I chuckled at this one. It was really awkwardly drawn, but hell, it was fun. I thought it could have probably ended in a funnier way than a giant spoon crushing him, but it was still ok.

6th short by Comick: It looks really inconsistent in proportions and what not, and I just plain don't understand who that dancing hedgehog is (nor did I find it funny)...but I really liked Super Sonic's voice acting. "Who threw that", i dunno why, I find it enjoyable. Still, not exactly funny.

7th short by thewax: This was really great. Definitely one of the funniest of the lot for me. I don't really have much else to say except poor Eggman, the fucker.

8th short by Wonchop: Ahahaah, I found this funny. You can't really give this one a review. It's got a youtube poop vibe.

9th short by Atomic Bottle: Bad. It's really really slow paced, and not that amusing or well drawn. I actually really like the voice acting though, I can't quite pin point why.

10th short by Flash Twister: HAHAHA ok, definitely the funniest of the whole thing. Well timed, good idea, nicely voice acted and drawn.

11th short by Gust198: Nicely drawn and animated! Moderately funny! It was done really well, I just didn't find the idea all THAT funny. But it's one of the best here.

12th short by Stasis: I liked their attempts to get the barrel to move, and the retro sonic style. Ending on the "Time Out" was also a pretty funny idea. This is the kind of short that "does the job", but isn't that memorable or outstanding.

13th short by thewax: ahhaahah, nice idea. I would have loved more shorts like this, the kind that will make be go back and play the games and laugh. The voice acting for pretty much everything was great, and the futurama reference. My favourite.

Chakra-X's finale: I wish the shorts would steer away from "sonic fan culture" and just focus on humour within the games themselves. That said, this was done well. It was animated pretty poorly, but I'll be damned, I actually chuckled at him shooting "balance" and "sensibility" in front of the kid, and the big fat green fusion mess that wanted to fuse with tails. It's a step above most of the rest.

Summary: consistently bad to average in both humour and animation, with some well thought out but not amazing shorts scattered around.

[Ransom!]

Hahahaah crap

This was...god damn, I actually laughed a lot. The joke itself is really good, and the voice acting just makes it so much better, and is a quality above a lot of other flashes. "Aw crap, he wants proof" was delivered so well. I think this did pretty much exactly what it wanted/needed to do, with great timing, but there were some minor things that hurt the quality slightly, the biggest being the almost identical looking characters. I also felt like I really wanted this to be part of something bigger, like a would be scene in a longer cartoon. I think it was because no explanation was given for anything, so it made me feel like I'd just kind of started watching in the middle.

Uhhh in short: very funny, minor faults that don't hurt the intentions of the cartoon, will watch more of your stuff now.

zigilante responds:

You make a very valid point about the identical characters, so just a little back story on that (not shooting down your critique):
When I started drawing the "Pib" comics, it was a little doodly-side project that had simplified art . . . essentially a take on stick figure comics. They were just a bunch of identical bald guys, (or bald guys with a wig and lipstick for women). When Pib became my main project, I cleaned up my drawings a bit, and made the backgrounds a bit more complex, but I retained that base, "stick figure" look.

As for the sense that is was something bigger, we actually create comics with the intended feel that they are a page out of a much larger story. This animation was based almost word-for-word on a comic we drew, so that would probably explain that feel. I can say that animations in the future will definitely be longer (as length has been a popular complaint). I can't state exactly what they will be like because I honestly have no idea.

Thank you so much for your helpful review! It gave me a lot to think about and reflect upon!

[Awesome Reach]

AHHAHAH HOLY CHRIST

There could not be a more perfect way to do this. Good job. Christ, how it just ENDS like that.

[WGJ4K: Confirmed 4 Brawl]

Great, obviously

but this is the worst episode so far. The genius of this show was (not that I'm implying you're not aware or anything) actually the comedy/drama happening behind the scenes. But this was just straight up videogame parody. That said, I did I found a lot of it funny, and I can see loads of effort was put into it (both for pun ideas and the drawings). Brawl the King's men made me lol.

[Charmander and Squirtle]

Unimpressed overall

You said it was made in 7-8 hours, and it's really apparent. It's sketchily drawn, with a noticeably low frame rate, but it looks more "rushed" than a stylistically driven choice (and I don't understand why the brush smoothing seems to have been lowered a lot). I guess a lot of that doesn't really matter given the context of what this cartoon is: a silly little Pokémon parody/comedy. But the humour was not very effective (ho ho ho), at least for me. It seems to be poking fun at the logistics of the franchise at a very base level, the example being how the bubble attack really wouldn't do shit against just about anything, but yet it does.

I think the only saving grace of this cartoon was the expressions/voices of Charmander and Squirtle. Particularly when they're just gazing in aw at the bubbles. I smirked. But that itself isn't noteable enough to carry the whole cartoon.

I feel this review's a little pointless seeing as this was obviously just a quick cartoon to make for fun or whatever, but it's just how I feel I guess.

vlaktemaat responds:

:(

.....

[Sonic X: Cosmic Chase]

Ok first off

LOOPING MUSIC IN A RELATIVELY BIG MOVIE'S PRELOADER = ARGHGHG PLEASE DON'T DO THAT. And also not having the option to alter the quality is equally very VERY frustrating.

Now for the actual review:

I think this flash is quite a good indicator of how I've changed as a person, slightly. When I first saw the trailer, I was convinced that this was going to be the greatest thing ever, back when I was 14. And, watching this now, it's not any worse than the trailer in terms of animation, but it's probably the most underwhelming experience I've ever had on this website. With time grows expectations, and this couldn't match them.

And my standards for what I find enjoyable have inevitably changed. Part of me thinks that if this were released soon after the trailer, I would've enjoyed it a lot more. I might have even enjoyed it more if the trailer never even existed, because it made me, and most other people, make some awesome assumptions. Like a desperate fight between normal Sonic and Super Shadow, a city that is eventually destroyed due to Shadow and Chaos teaming up, but most importantly, some kind of length and decent story.

It was more of a direct sequel to chaotic battle than I was hoping for; I was really hoping for some kind of clear motive between Sonic and Shadow fighting this time. The characters are awkwardly proportioned and drawn.. For just one example, look at sonic's legs in the pre loader when he turns Super Sonic. And drawing the characters with the pencil tool is a really really amateur looking method. Granted, you've really nailed some effects, in particular the water animation of when Chaos reveals himself to Knuckles looked really nice man. And some of the cinematography was also really well done and looked nice.

But the pacing was really off. The ending happens so amazingly quickly in such an unsatisfying way. And the Nu Metal Sonics were basically minor annoyances and really didn't do much of anything at all. There's also some really questionable design choices, such as why Knuckles is wearing some god damn stupid brown cloak and living a mysterious life of secrecy or whatever. Did you expect everyone to go "WHOA!! KNUCKLES? NO WAY. I HAD NO IDEA". If not, then why do the whole cloak thing.

But, despite all the bad things I've said, it probably is one of the best Sonic flash cartoons I've ever seen. That saddens me more than anything else.

[Narration]

Incredibe

High art.

[Super Smash]

Decent really well animated cartoon

But often the way you integrated tweens with your flawless frame by frame style was really distracting and not well done. It's actually quite bizarre how great you are at frame by frame but yet the tweening was really clunky and badly done in a lot of parts.

Minus that, I enjoyed it a lot. I love the alternate design of Luigi the best. Funniest parts were smoking the fire flower and Peach getting knocked aside at the end. Can't really complement you for story or originality though. It may be different to the rest of them, but at the end of the day it's still just a fun silly Mario parody.

[it'll be okay in the end.]

Not very good

I kind of liked the style, and how everything inverted when they met. But I don't really like the story at all. So what, the girl leaves the guy for an annoyingly stereotypical jock (flexing his muscles in every instance involving him), and then eventually goes back to the first guy in the end, making everything ok? I'm not sure what kind of message this is. This is the kind of flash that's meant to be very, for lack of a better word, "sweet", but this story isn't very sweet at all. It's just like... a typical thing that happens in other relationships, and just makes the guy look like a pushover and the girl as shallow.

And also, I'm really not a fan of the ever growing-then-shrinking heads thing you've got going on here, or the lack of really any scenery and copy/paste featureless people. Especially how the people at the start are moving their legs but not moving anywhere. I liked the music, though.

It's a pretty good try, but not a good cartoon. There wasn't anything objectionably bad, I just wish it was done better. It's the kind of movie that tricks people into thinking it's sweet when it's really just pretty generic.