Now as optimistic as I want to be about Wreck-It Ralph winning best animated feature this year, I have heard from my brothers that ParaNorman is likely to win (even though they have not seen Wreck-It Ralph). Since they were really sure about this (mainly my youngest brother), I decided to try to see the movie before the oscars come. So when when I found out that my dad just got the movie via Red box, I didn't hesitate to seize the opportunity to see it for myself when I got back home from class last night. So let's take a look at Para Norman.
Plot. Norman is a young boy who has the ability to speak to the dead. Everyone else in his town doesn't believe him and thinks he's a freak, including his family. But when his crazy uncle dies and comes to him dead to tell him that he has to read a book at the grave of a witch to stop a curse before sundown, he attempts to do so only to be stopped by the school bully which causes the curse to raise the dead.
Okay while I wasn't super impressed with this movie, I do have to say that it has some pretty smart moments. While the script has some unoriginal moments, there were some moments in the script that were actually rather clever. Some of the dialogue was well thought of, there were jokes that were actually very smart - heck there is one in the end that was the best part of the movie, and they took some things in an entirely different direction. What they did with the zombies especially-without giving anything away, was a little different and how they did was actually well thought of in a very considerate way. I only have two sorts of downs with this movie. First is the characters. I thought most of them were very cliche. Sure they weren't always cliche, like Norman had a couple of interesting characteristics and another character did kind of steal the show with that joke in the end, but honestly, they weren't anything that special to me at all. They seemed to be more like characters from movies like Goonies or something like that - which isn't completely a bad thing per say since people would probably enjoy it that way, but that didn't really help in terms of giving me something unique or just a plain good reason to really like these characters. The second reason is the message. It's an issue for the same reason as the characters: it was very cliche. One of my brothers (the second youngest) felt that his experience with this movie was ruined because he especially thought that it was very preachy. Would I say it was preachy? Eh...I guess they did give it to us a little too much, but I think the bigger problem was that it's a message that has been used plenty of times LONG before this movie was made. But I would say that ultimately the movie is still good. If there's any real reason why this would win best animated feature this year, I'd say it would be that it has the smarter moments then the other nominations did. That hardly means that it really is the best of this year in my opinion, but I would theorize that it could be a good enough factor for the academy to give it the win. Nothing much else to add except that, of coarse, this film has some very well done animation.
And that's my review for ParaNorman. While every part of me that shows that I'm a Disney kid at heart for the most part really, really, REALLY hopes that Wreck-It Ralph will be the one to give Disney their own oscar for best animated feature just ever so much, ParaNorman seem to show that despite having some lack of originality at some points, is probably the strongest among the nominees in terms of having some slightly smarter dialogue, jokes and one or two other aspects of the film. It's a good film whether it wins or not or even if it wasn't nominated, so if you haven't seen it, I think you might enjoy it.
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