So, exciting past two weeks! Not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but FIVE regular readers are now doing their own liveblogs of crappy animated products. So if reading rants by terrific tropers about miserable movies is your thing, check out Michael Dj 54’s The Little Panda Fighter
, Gentlemanorcus and Randomtropeloser’s Pocahontas, and Freezair for a Limited Time Only and Pirka’s Dalmatians 2/3/4.
Oh, and uh, mine. Check that one out, too.
Part 5: Under the Watchful Eye of Comrade Puss
(Clever sentence encouraging you to follow along here!)
FADE IN as OMINOUS JUNGLE MUSIC plays over this weird electric keyboard marching tune. You gotta wonder where Dingo gets its music.
Puss in Boots (SIGH!) walks down a street, with Candy Bear following behind. Candy Bear seems to be limping, like he’s got blisters on his feet. Maybe he should also invest in GIANT RED BOOTS WTF I CANNOT GET OVER IT WHY ARE THERE RED BOOTS WHY IS PUSS IN BOOTS HERE?!?!?!
Also, the street they’re on has houses. The question about who lives in them remains unanswered, but I‘m beginning to suspect the animals killed everyone in the town in a vicious uprising. Obviously the revolution that didn’t happen in Anastasia’s world was transferred to Animal Soccer World.
The marching music stops suddenly. I guess it just didn’t like the competition from OMINOUS JUNGLE MUSIC.
“Hey Samson,” says Puss. The bear breaks the fourth wall to give the audience this hammy ‘Woah!’ look that serves no purpose. Maybe he‘s worried Puss knows the secret to his super strength and will shave him and have him murdered. Animal Soccer World is a savage land. “Have you heard about the soccer game?”
“Of course,” says a deep-voiced Candy Bear, trying to play it cool. Puss doesn’t know about the family of humans I’ve been hiding in a cave since the Great Cull, he thinks. Just play it cool, bear. Really cool. “Everybou-dy’s talking abowt it.”
“Fabulous!” says Puss, hand clenched firmly behind his back. It’s a stance he learned back in the Tierewehrmacht. “That means there will be a lot of spectators. And so, that means, you have to make a lot of candy for them!”
Just play along, thinks Candy Bear, and he will be none the wiser. “I’m going to make the sweetest, and best, candy, you ever taste, before.”
Puss accepts this response without question and leaves at last. The inquisition is over—for now. “MmmmmMMMMMMMMMMM!*” growls Candy Bear, finally able to vent his anger and fear. He walks back to the cave to check on the human family, but knowing Puss’s spies may be anywhere in town, he mumbles to himself, “Popcorn, and shocolates, and kendies mmmmmm…”
* Note: I have no clue about that sound. It's just weird and terrifying.
We now keep following Puss, Animal Soccer World’s Minister of Peace and Propaganda, as he continues his daily inspection. He walks past a haystack (more evidence of an animal farm) and some traditional German timber-framed houses, although I don’t know how these houses stay up— timber-frames do not work that way!
Some jaunty midi country music plays, with a midi banjo or something. The scene shifts, and we see four animals playing music— a dog playing a tom-tom, a white cat on a violin, a donkey on upright bass, and a rooster playing saxophone. Figures— cocks love their sax.
I question the donkey’s ability to play bass— he cannot pluck with hooves! How silly.
The music cuts so quickly you could carve a turkey with it. “Yeah, that doesn’t sound badly,” says the donkey bassist, obviously in denial. “Only the gui-tar sola, that is still a problem.”
“The guitar solo” is a problem? Problem as in, you don’t have a guitar in the band? Yeah, I can see how that might ruin the solo!
Seriously, writers, animators, voice actors— did you ALL miss that there was NO GUITAR in this band?!
“Once again please,” says Donkey, over a shot of the dog playing his drum. No sound comes out except the ever-present OMINOUS MIDI BONGOS.
“Oookay,” says Puss, hands on his hips, “stop stop stop stop.” His voice sounds like a rusty gate. “We need a soccer song. You have to rehearsal right away!” Do as he says, band animals— you don’t want to get the Minister of Peace and Propaganda angry. The blood will flow like honey.
“What do you think what we are doing here?” says donkey, heedless of my warnings. Perhpas he thinks speaking in nonsense will save him. It will not. I get the feeling next time we see him, he’ll just be a head in a bed. “We already have an idea.”
“Oh I’m serry! Oh I’ll sury!” he says, but we know he isn’t sorry, not really. “I thought you didn’t know anything about the game yet.” Really? How could he not know, you’ve dropped flyers, you’ve told everyone, you’ve picked soccer teams, you’ve got four reporters reporting it— plus there’s the little fact that it’s the only thing anyone's been talking about for the ENTIRE MOVIE! Get on with it!
“That is kinda hard, that pelican is dropping all those flyers all around the forest,” says the rooster, who can obviously read my mind. But, like, before I even think of it. So like... a future psychic? He knows what I will be thinking? Does that even work?
“And noa leave us alone," says donkey, thankfully interrupting my reverie. "We must work.” Ass.
The cat fiddles. Amazingly, violin music comes out.
In the deadest, least-enthusiastic voice the actor can muster, donkey says, “And-a one, two, three, four—”
And the clip they used to show them playing the first time around plays again. Whoop-dee-friggin’-doo.
Finally, FADE OUT as the jaunty country music plays over the OMINOUS MIDI BONGOS. Is anyone surprised?
What have we learned so far? Dingo Pictures sucks, Animal Soccer World is boring, and tomorrow I will wake up to find my eyeballs have jumped out of them sockets in disgust. Also, this movie becomes much more awesome [[:strike:mildly more watchable]] slightly less painful if you read it as an animal parable about a totalitarian dictatorship, with the soccer match organisers as government officials who use entertainment to control the masses and distract them from the evils going on in the country.
YOU KNOW, FOR KIDS!
