A Progress in Work…

Cloudy with a Chance of Overacting…

October 2, 2009 on 8:04 pm | In Ramblings, Rants | No Comments

Well, I’ve just finished my third week at SCAD, its crazy to think so much time has past, and that we’re so far through the quarter already.  I’ve always been on Semesters, so the idea of a term  being over in just about 10 weeks is crazy to me, hehe.

Anyhow, some update.

Been keeping rather busy since school started….assignement-wise things are not as demanding as at my last school, but since I’m learning Maya from scratch, there’s really no excuse for me to not be using it every second of the day trying to improve.  Beyond that, there are a lot of lectures, tutorials and student groups to attend that keep me pretty occupied.

I was, however, able to steal a couple days to visit my sister and nephews (my brother’s kids, not hers) in Charlotte, and we all went out to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.  So, some thoughts.  I am a huge huge huge fan of the original book, sooooo I’m gonna have rather biased opinions here.  The style and mood of the movie is decidedly NOT that of the book, but that only took seeing the trailer to recognize.   Instead, this is a zany, kooky, over-the-top comedy.  Admittedly, when we’re talking about food raining from the sky, this isn’t that outlandish of a direction to take the story….so I’ll try and swallow my distaste for abandoning the original tone and look at the movie on its own merits.  Now, I laughed at loud at more than a few moments, and I think that the movie was ridiculously imaginative, especially towards the climax (which I thought I was gonna hate)….that being said, I think this movie went TOO far with the silly.  The characters were too outlandish in their kooky behavior…its really hard to take a conversation seriously at all when the animators are busy proving how many REDICULOUS things they can make the person listening do!  Look how far his face stretches!  Look how kooky and spaghetti-like we can make him walk!  It was just a little too over the top in the end…too gaggy.  I did, however, get the impression that this movie would be one of those ‘the more you watch it the funnier it is’ ones, with a lot of quotes and in-jokes between your friends who’ve seen it, etc etc.  Oh, and I also wasn’t a huge fan of the character design….too big of eyes :\  But like I said, it was overall enjoyable, I laughed, and as long as I put my childhood nostalgia aside I could appreciate it.

My sis and I read our nephews the book before we went to see it, and then afterward talked about what was the same and different about the two, what we liked more and less.  Thankfully the boys said they liked both, and couldn’t choose because they were too different.  I will make animation experts out of these kids if it kills me, mark my words.  Oh, and sister fell in love with the movie, and she was possibly a bigger fan of the book than I am, haha.  So maybe in the end I’m just overly critical?