Esn's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Monkey Island Flash Movie]

Sorry, just not my thing.

You get some stars for creating an easy-to-view hint guide for the entire game, but other than that I just see no point to this.

It's crude entertainment for the ADHD generation. You just retold the entire story, adding almost nothing new, and I thought that the humour level was about equivalent to when someone quotes a Monty Python joke.

The drawings were crude, but that didn't automatically make them funny for me. You had a few nice things in there (I liked the depiction of battles, for example; one case where you actually did something which wasn't in the original game by making fun of how silly such battles actually would have looked).

The narration, likewise, did little for me - again, I find nothing funny in a simple very fast retelling of jokes thought up by other people. I liked LeChuck's voice, though.

That's about it. To the folks reading this, I think that whether or not YOU like it depends on whether you can watch MTV without getting ill. I can't, so there's that.

Most of you will like this flash.

[Bang!!!]

For what it is, good job.

Your friend made a pretty good audio track, and you have a real talent for drawing. The body poses here are amazing. Great colours, too.

The concept of the Big Bang is widely misrepresented among the public, and this film is no exception. Common sense is only usefull for situations pretty close to a typical human being's environment; if you think that common sense can succeed in explaining anything in the science of quantum physics, for example (which until recent discoveries by mankind has been completely invisible to any animal), you will be sorely disappointed. The same holds true of extremely large things like the universe, especially its early stages.

Easy catchphrases like the one in your film ("from nothing, nothing comes") are popular with the public because "they make sense", but they are utterly useless and misleading in the more complex branches of physics, where even the concept of "nothing" is a very complicated one.

If you wish a more thorough answer, I recommend searching for the keywords "Defender's Guide Science" on google - there are some answers there about the Big Bang, and the allegation in this film in particular.

[The Persistent Widow]

Nice

Am I right in assuming that the judge was probably not very kind during the actual case (after the movie ends)? I can't imagine him being lenient to the poor woman, since he only agreed to hear the case (he never made any promises about what the verdict would be).

If that's the wrong interpretation, then film contradicts its own point; it seems like the widow's nagging only led to the judge really hating her.

Now, the good points: great facial animations, nice graphics in general, good voices (although the judge sounds a bit too "acted" in one or two places), and good pacing. Your body animation still needs some work - it's a bit rushed. Oh, and nice musical choice.

It's a fairly good film from the technical side, but it is unclear which message it is promoting. It's either too subtle for its own good or sabotaging its real message.

[Nameless 6 Vol.1]

Points for effort

Although I admire the effort that you put into this, I won't apologize for my opinion; I simply didn't like the film. Now, on the positive side, you have appealing character design, fairly nice characters (I especially liked the girl who brought them bacon, and the turtle) and some amusing jokes (that thing in the pizza bucket at the beginning was pretty good, as were the traits of the women at the dating show). I like how you saved yourself some effort by making the characters bob up and down instead of walking; besides obvious benefit for the animator, it also gives it a certain style.

What I didn't like was the reuse of jokes until they were no longer funny, and the really obvious sections where you're "supposed" to laugh (e.g. that scene which was labelled "comedic" in big flashing letters, which was just a waste). The use of a robot voice for chocolate man somewhat annoyed me, though I've heard worse. Also, a lot of the voices sounded very similar. Most of all, though, I saw no reason to care for the two main characters - they were unappealing and immature. That would have been all right if the humour had been a bit more sophisticated from time to time, but too often, the film itself was also unappealing and immature to me. I found the ending cruel rather than funny.

LazyMuffin responds:

Thanks.
I think you just didn't really get the whole thing.

Comedy Moment was supposed to be obvious.
And I'm not the first human being to make the lead characters immature ( South park, Family Guy, Simpsons, Futurama and so on ).
I guess you're more of a drama type of guy.

[Dick Knows Best]

Not bad.

I do wish you had gone over the whole thing about how Cheney's now his own branch of government a little more, but I guess that would be treading over Daily Show territory. The animation was pretty good, as were your ideas and direction. I loved the evil robot thing that Cheney used, as well as his metamorphosis at the end.

It was a fairly simple flash overall (which isn't bad by itself), and the sound quality was rather uneven. In particular, I didn't like how some voices would come out of only one speaker; in real life, air diffuses voices, so you hear them more in both ears.

[Jerry]

Mixed feelings

This film was directed pretty professionally. It's a good thing to watch once. As other people have said, it did a good job of summarizing someone's typical daily life. The repetition means that it is a lot harder to enjoy the second time around, which will likely mean that its score will drop over time. I didn't find the ending particularly funny. On the contrary, it was a pretty grim scene followed by a mildly funny unexpected scene. Not enough to make the whole thing amusing.

My main reaction was surprise; surprise that you had all of that lead-up and then ended it so quickly. I also objected to you treating the end as a joke, and not sparing a moment to say something (even a small thing) about the family. The comedic tone just didn't seem appropriate. Perhaps it would have worked better if you had not made me actually care about Jerry. As it was, all of that build-up made me care about what happened to him and the ending seemed in bad taste.

The graphics were alright. They were quite rushed, but at least they were consistently average.

The sound was a bright point, especially how it began to seem like some kind of electronic song in one section.

And that is my (very short and inadequate) review.

[Furry Random Stuffs 3]

Sorry, this was just not funny to me

This was a collection of various crude, mostly videogame-related jokes. It wasn't a film as such, but rather a collection of random stuff with no real connecting idea. I liked the one with Sonic and Mario... there may have been some others that I thought were "ok", but most of them just weren't my thing. Some decent effort was spent on the graphics, although the submitter's own drawings are mostly not that great.

To the viewer reading this: Your viewing experience may vary. Most people here seem to like the humour, judging by the score and reviews.

To the artist: Yes, I know that it wasn't *meant* to be anything more profound than a collection of random dumb jokes. I'm afraid that I still don't like it much.

Sonucais responds:

First of all Thank you for the review since I see it's quite constructive.

I agree most of them are about videogame-related jokes since all I can animate is all about things that inspire me: 'Videogames, Anime and Parodies' I would like to know witch one you liked, the drawing one or the pixel fight. PM me about please. About the grafics I'm doing my best to make them better and better. I'm not great drawing, that's so far the best I can draw in Flash since it's digital and I mostly use mouse.

I don't think so, the movie is getting like a fail and I'm getting pissed off of stupid with abusive zeros and stupid reviews.

Thanks for the review.

[Mr Coo #4]

Quite cracking!

A jolly good show, my dear fellow! I've been waiting for a new Mr. Coo for a long time and it's everything I ever dreamed it would be! Not only is it incredibly creative and funny, but it touches issues that an abstract work like this conventionally shouldn't be able to portray. It's very interesting how it manages to come across as more than just a random string of images - it even has a good story, though it is one that obeys its own extremely twisted brand of logic. It's clear to me that there's actually a story arc happening over these episodes. I'm very curious about where it will lead.

One thing I couldn't help but notice is that the scene with the carrot is reused from part 3, but there's different animation leading up to it. I wonder how that will work when you combine #3 and #4.

Another great surprise was that this was longer than either of the previous three episodes by themselves, and it seemed about as long as episodes 1+2 on Newgrounds. It didn't feel short like episode 3 did.

Anyway, great job! And some very impressive animation (I especially liked how those little yellow blobs combined into a big one)!

[you can't kill me]

Not bad

Well, I'm obviously not the intended audience for this because I've never even heard of sheazyart. Having said that, I found the character animation and voice acting to be quite good. This also works as a commentary about censorship of ANY kind; you can censor someone but you can't make them cease to exist (well, unless you decide to up the ante...).

Good job. I think this is worth about a "6/10" - it's good (like all your work), but it's no masterpiece; nor was it meant to be.

[Sometimes I Dont 3]

Seriously disturbing

Well... that was unexpected - in a good way. It had a certain natural flow that was quite appealing, despite the dark Firth-esque subject matter at times. Frankly, it's among the more interesting things that I've seen on Newgrounds, and I've seen a fair few.

I think you should keep doing what you're doing, since I believe you've found a good path... just develop your skills some more. Practice drawing, I don't know, or perhaps experiment more with what Flash can do.

Your submissions, so far, have quite low ratings, but I think that they're undervalued. Keep doing what you're doing and keep getting better at it, and eventually (like a light bulb being switched on) one of your works will get acclaim here.

The key is to keep producing stuff, following your own path but not being afraid to experiment and see what works best. Eventually you'll hit something great and find your audience. Until then, I'll be watching your future efforts with interest.

Splinter6 responds:

Hi, Thanks for the great review. I only had a mouse at the time for drawing but Ive got a wacom graphics tablet now and eventually I'll make a new one. Ive had lots of screwed up dreams for inspiration!