Jungle Master 2: Candy Planet

When I saw this on television, they just called it "Candy Planet" so I was kind of weirded out by the jungle characters but now I know it's a sequel, I can factor them in. That was the least of this movies worries though. I can believe China could create a magnificent and lyrical animated movie maybe sort of like Takahata, but they have tried the American style of animated movie. Now, the American style is great, but it works best when you're just working in your element, this movie appears to be more strictly imitive of what these Sinitic executives think mainstream animated movie should look like. And this is one for particularly small kids. You know how the Emoji Movie just sort of felt like a mobile phone game for most of its runtime? Well imagine that without the sense that it was written by professionals. The main characters in this do one Candy Crush style task after another and don't really question it. Our Antagonist is even stranger, he has some pretty abstract motivations that come in line with the movie's attempted theme of love and family and it is hilarious how badly handled it is. I saw a dubbed version and it feels dubbed. I suspect the original had so much untranslatable word play that they tried to compensate by shoving in a pun whereever they could: typical dialogue: "you donuts do not know who you're dealing with". These characters have no lucidity about how lame their jokes are. I like the kitsch visual style, capturing that intentionally addictive Candy Crush aesthetic though it can get a but much. There are three things I really like about the movie: 1) Rainie. She is a delightful heroin with a fresh personality. Her character animation including her rich facial expressions, carried this movie a long way. 2) The jaw dropping shoddiness of the script. You watch with that "I could have written this" amazement. Seriously, That "I hate everything" guy needs a look at this. 3) At least one sort of good twist. This is the least "popular" thing on my whole watch list or it was and there is a good reason no one ended up really talking about it.