At 2 in the morning, while trying to sleep, an assassin calls a party and tells them to turn down the music. They refuse, so he barges in and kills everyone, which is all the more impressive as the party was being held by armed killers themselves.
Now picture that every single character in this confrontation is a bean. An anthropomorphic coffee bean.
That should give you an idea of what you're in for with this CGI animated independent film. Jeff Lew, a special effects artist who worked on numerous Hollywood films including well-known ones such as The Matrix, decided to make this film entirely by himself after being turned down repeatedly by movie producers.
Interestingly, the idea didn't come out of nowhere. Jeff Lew originally created an animated short about Killer Bean in an attempt to learn animation back in the late 1990s. He used him in a sequel short, and then finally made this full-length animated movie mostly by himself.
Even though Killer Bean is essentially an artifact character and a personally nostalgic creation from his own maker's past, it's still a strange premise for a movie. You have conspiracies, double-crossings, and all manner of carnage (minus the blood), but exclusively involving beans.
At the least, humor could have been used with the premise. Absurd things happen as it is. Killer Bean throws a bullet and then shoots another bullet into it, knocking the first bullet out of its trajectory and into another bean's chest. Killer Bean, strapped to a table for interrogation, maneuvers the table into the path of a bullet so the strap can be torn free. Cappuccino, the Big Bad, hits his underlings out the windows of a tall building as punishment for You Have Failed Me, and each of them simply just takes it and doesn't fight back or try to flee or even act scared.
Despite the absurdity, no jokes are made about the whole "bean" thing. Every character has the surname "Bean", but no other food items appear as characters. Characters get shot, but they don't even get chipped, despite being beans. Almost no puns are made, unless using "bean" instead of "person" counts as a pun.
It feels as if Jeff Lew simply wanted to make an animated action movie. The result is incredibly generic, but admittedly well-made overall. Even with its cast of beans.
WesternAnimation A true labor of love, but... why BEANS?
At 2 in the morning, while trying to sleep, an assassin calls a party and tells them to turn down the music. They refuse, so he barges in and kills everyone, which is all the more impressive as the party was being held by armed killers themselves.
Now picture that every single character in this confrontation is a bean. An anthropomorphic coffee bean.
That should give you an idea of what you're in for with this CGI animated independent film. Jeff Lew, a special effects artist who worked on numerous Hollywood films including well-known ones such as The Matrix, decided to make this film entirely by himself after being turned down repeatedly by movie producers.
Interestingly, the idea didn't come out of nowhere. Jeff Lew originally created an animated short about Killer Bean in an attempt to learn animation back in the late 1990s. He used him in a sequel short, and then finally made this full-length animated movie mostly by himself.
Even though Killer Bean is essentially an artifact character and a personally nostalgic creation from his own maker's past, it's still a strange premise for a movie. You have conspiracies, double-crossings, and all manner of carnage (minus the blood), but exclusively involving beans.
At the least, humor could have been used with the premise. Absurd things happen as it is. Killer Bean throws a bullet and then shoots another bullet into it, knocking the first bullet out of its trajectory and into another bean's chest. Killer Bean, strapped to a table for interrogation, maneuvers the table into the path of a bullet so the strap can be torn free. Cappuccino, the Big Bad, hits his underlings out the windows of a tall building as punishment for You Have Failed Me, and each of them simply just takes it and doesn't fight back or try to flee or even act scared.
Despite the absurdity, no jokes are made about the whole "bean" thing. Every character has the surname "Bean", but no other food items appear as characters. Characters get shot, but they don't even get chipped, despite being beans. Almost no puns are made, unless using "bean" instead of "person" counts as a pun.
It feels as if Jeff Lew simply wanted to make an animated action movie. The result is incredibly generic, but admittedly well-made overall. Even with its cast of beans.