Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

letmepasttheagerestriction went to my uncles house, was looking for some crappy movies to watch, just to pass the time and fill the silence. found this, saw how ridiculously bad it looked, turned it on... couldn't sit through 10 minutes. it felt like hours. i was determined. determined to see the end. i finally decided it was time to throw in the towel when my uncle looked at me and said his first words in the last ten minutes, "I think I hate this." i couldn't agree more. maybe there's something im missing that was lost in translation, but the 3d models alone are enough to make me incredibly uncomfortable, paired with awful voice acting. not even good for a "bad" movie.

dben-21589 The 1.4/5 Star rating on Netflix should have been a dead give-away that this movie would not be that good. The animation was good, the story line was extremely cheesy but was bearable, the music was really good, but there were just a few weird things that made me want to turn it off multiple times.The dad was a failure and was trying to live through his son, and held his son to unfeasible standards, causing his son to feel like a perpetual failure. A great message for the target audience, and a very real issue. Those unrealistic standards that the dad had for his kid i this movie was to be like Tarzan: to climb trees, ride a bike, be strong, and read books. The kid wanted to ditch school to go dumpster diving to collect trash to build uber creepy "garbage friends" that he stored in an abandoned warehouse. Usually these types of movies encourage kids to "be themselves", and encouraging parents to accept their kids for who they are. But, the dad's "encouragement" was uncomfortably extreme for a children's movie, and was downright abusive at times. In risk of sounding like an authoritarian, no parent should encourage their kid to be like Ivan. -I have no idea why the animators decided to give all the women really weird boobs.-I have no idea why girls in Ivan's grade were old enough to have boobs, drive vehicles, look like teenagers, yet be barely learning how to read. It's like they were all 15 year-old learning how to read for the first time.-I don't know why Ivan had to chase letters around the room to represent his dyslexia. That scene didn't make much sense to me. -His creations were EXTREMELY creepy. It was even weirder that the girl like them.-I know that the witch was representative of his fairy god mother. Yet, she was really creepy. He found her drinking in the middle of the woods, got naked, and slept in her clothes. Then he drank weird potions she gave him. I think it was supposed to be funny, but it was weird.-The kid's life was a living hell. Why would she give him a potion that would make his pain go away for only a day? To send him back to the pit of despair?-The years of abuse the dad gave to the kid ended with a simple talk?-At the end, he never really overcame being bullied, or learned how to read.There were other things off about this movie, but these were some of the highlights.

kourosh-2 This movie started off interesting but it took forever for the plot to develop. The child was subject to bullying from everyone including his father and by the end he decided it was better to continue being bullied. What was the character arc? Nobody learned anything or did anything different by the end. I think the writers were trying to make a point but run out of ideas and continued to keep prattling on about Tarzan. There was also the issue of his dyslexia that never got resolved. I was left scratching my head at the end. It also seemed to me that the makers of this movie had a weird breast fetish. At first I thought that characters were a little goofy looking but as more of them made an appearance the started looking creepy and not at all endearing. This is not a suitable movie for children or adults for that matter.

cjturino I found the movie to be a little drawn out and mildly boring. They spend the majority of the movie showing a kid getting bullied. I think the point was clearly made by the second time the kid had been cruelly bullied. The movie kept pounding that same theme over and over and over. I asked my 11 year old if she enjoyed the movie and she said it was only OK. She didn't seem too enthusiastic about it. I might be unfairly comparing this movie to other animated movies like Finding Nemo, The Lion King or The Jungle Book. By those standards this movie was awful. I'm trying to write this review without spoiling anything but I wasn't happy with the ending and the kids acceptance of his situation. If I were to try and pull a lesson out of the movie it would probably have to been that it is better to be bullied than be the bully. That's not a lesson that I would want to impart of my kids. I rather empower my child to stand up for themselves than accept the situation and the fact they will be bullied. In the movie the kid visits the United States to be interviews. The interviewer is wearing a cowboy hat and waving a gun around during the interview. I found this depiction of Americans insulting. BOTTOM LINE, your time is better spent watching paint dry.