Okay, so imagine you let your seven-year-old pick a random movie on Amazon. It’s appropriately child-friendly, and it has dragons. Good start, right? The trailer looks really bad, but you’ve seen Spy Kids 3, so you think you’re ready for it.
The movie begins. The production is even worse than what you thought from the trailer (you already thought it looked like a huge mess). The voice acting is beyond terrible, with noticeably different sound quality between actors. Every texture, 3D model, music loop, and sound effect looks or sounds like a free asset you’d grab for a quick placeholder in a game jam project. But that’s okay, you figure. After all, fun dragon antics are about to ensue. It should be silly and cute, if nothing else.
The premise is simple: a dragon village is going to have a firebreathing contest. This is explained in an overly long opening scene by a Sean Connery sounding elder dragon. The “crowd” (there are never more than a handful of 3D models in any scene, so it’s never convincingly a crowd) cheers excitedly.
The movie then cuts to some of its protagonists (or antagonists?), a couple of kid dragons who would like to participate in the contest. We get a close shot from the front. They sit on a rooftop and talk about how they haven’t learned to spit fire yet. They repeat the same animation cycles every time they exchange a few lines of dialogue.
We get a new shot, now looking down from above. They continue sitting on a rooftop and talk about how they haven’t learned to spit fire yet. They repeat the same animation cycles during their next few lines of dialogue.
A side shot. They talk about how they haven’t learned to spit fire. The same animation cycles repeat as they exchange lines.
Zoom. More talking. Same animation cycles.
Pan. More talking. Same animation cycles.
The camera is now rocking back and forth in a confusingly uneasy sway. More talking. Same animation cycles.
No, I did not write that too many times. The scene goes on for probably five minutes, just two zany characters exhausting every line the writer could apparently think of. And by “zany” I mean one has a lisp and the other talks like Pete Puma. They have nothing interesting to say, beyond the bare plot points that could have been expressed in twelve seconds of dialogue. 1) They don’t spit fire yet, 2) they want to learn how, and 3) they’ve decided to contact a dangerous dragon to help them learn.
And I could synopsize the rest of the movie for you, but it’s hardly necessary. That first scene is a perfect representation of the entire film in microcosm. Long, droning, unfunny, shallow dialogue that feels totally unedited voice acted by random people found on the street and being played against a repetitive animation loop with a camera that tries to trick you into thinking more is going on by shifting around with extreme frequency. It is a nauseating experience.
There is some firebreathing toward the end, and a climactic battle, but it all looks so bad that you can hardly tell what is going on. Ultimately the two dragons who began the story are relegated to evil sidekicks of the main villain while several other characters take the protagonist roles. This feels jarring because of how much time we spend with them at the beginning. And in the end, these two (very young child!) dragons are banished from their village forever. So um… at least it has a happy ending?
So okay, I know what you’re thinking. “C’mon, KNR, you have to cut them some slack! This is obviously just some student hobby project.” Yeah, okay, so that’s what I thought too at first. And I was not originally going to write the review. Until I decided to confirm this on IMDb. There I found that this movie’s director has 35 credits! They seem to specialize in no-effort garbage fests like this one.
Is making bottom of the barrel kids content actually a super lucrative business strategy? Uh… anyway, tune in next week for my first ever review of whatever’s popular with kids these days. As for Pixy Dragons:
Plot: 0
Characters: 0
Themes: 0
Spectacle: 0
Overall score: Watch paint dry instead (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLOPygVcaVE).
See better reviews at:
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pixy_dragons
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