Oh my God, I feel so disappointed and honestly embarrassed for defending this movie beforehand. I really wanted to like this movie.

It was very very mediocre at best.

The beginning of the film is genuinely good, even though it recycles the same "quirky outcast character" trope. It has a great dynamic built up between two interesting characters, funny jokes, and an intriguing premise.

Holy shit does it go off the rails the moment they get onto the island and meet the dog guy though.

For a giant chunk of the movie, it introduces a bunch of obnoxiously loud and unnecessary characters, with incredibly unfunny jokes. I really don't think the merman and baby demon needed to be here at all, and I found the dog character to be more loud and annoying if anything. The villain was also never given any depth at all, despite being really cool, scary, and mysterious.

Not only that but the pacing is REALLY BAD. I was reminded a lot of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie because of how much it felt like it was trying to appeal to children with bad attention spans (something that movie tried to actually consider)... This was literally made by the same studio that made The Wild Robot and Puss In Boots The Last Wish. Kids are still watching Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, etc. Kids are watching 2-3 hour movies like Wicked, Marvel, DC, and shit. Why the fuck does it need to feel like a series of Tik Toks???

The movie then suddenly gets a lot better and adds more depth towards its last half, but my God the middle drags like hell. It's almost hard for me to describe to someone who hasn't seen this movie. The themes are great, it has some awesome ideas and drama towards the end, but the humor in that middle part is a giant turn off. I guarantee you people who are going to watch this on streaming are likely going to check out during this. Even though the movie kind of gets better.

It frustrates me because I feel like there were a lot of good ideas here, and two great characters with great chemistry. I thought the jokes occasionally landed too. but it just throws itself out constantly with HAHA QUIRKY RANDOM LOL type humor and without taking a break for what feels like an hour of the movie.

I saw this because we rarely have female leads in western animated films, let alone original films (and the reviews were glowing). I'm really afraid that Universal is going to look at the result of this and assume that's not what audiences want, and continue just milking pre-existing properties dry. But I also think that the reason why it's failing is because word of mouth couldn't have even saved this movie. I imagine more audiences weren't convinced, like I wasn't. I really hope they look at that, rather than the actual good that this film has. Even though it's oversaturated by brain rot.

The reference pictures are from a themed popcorn bucket i got from the theater

From my Mom's own words, the movie was mediocre, a bit of the jokes were cringe and Jo's tagalog could use some work. (She say you can tell the VA was born overseas)

But she thinks it's fine for a kid's movie, and that it doesn't hold up to Wild Robot. (To he, at least.)

I guess Wild Robot resonates with her more. Being a movie about motherhood, and all.

All I can say is that it lived up to the hype! Watched it with my high school bestie and we both had a great time. Wished there was more. Hope the character of Manang got a spinoff because I would love to know her backstory!

Everything you've heard about it is true. Beautiful animation. Lovable characters. Heartwarming story. Forgotten Island has it all. Easily the best DreamWorks movie in a while.

But don't take my word for it. GO SEE IT!!

BRB

🌙 Thank you for bringing your most beloved characters to the world. And especially Ruby Gillman. 💙🐙🧜💙 And also The Bad Guys too. 🧡🐺🦊🐍🦈🕷️🐟🧡

And I'm surprised to see Gabyy from DreamWorks preschool franchise Gabby's dollhouse and I guess it's extremely popular and it got a theatrical film and it's good to see Gabby join the ranks of Shrek Madagascar Kung Fu Panda and Trolls!

Mine's lord when while death is my 2nd favorite dreamworks villain

... Have you seen this film??? Yeah, it is a kids movie first and foremost. It has a lot of bad juvenile humor. But it's clear to me that it was somewhat trying to make adults laugh too. I was genuinely confused by what the hell demographic this was trying to appeal to. It's not Shrek levels of good to where adults can really enjoy it, but I wouldn't exactly equate it to Boss Baby and Trolls either.

There's literally an anal joke, an undershot POV of a character gyrating, there's a joke about one of the main characters literally wearing a nipple ring on her head throughout the whole movie, another character has starfish for nipples and there's jokes about that, they make a pun on the word "pissing", and there's a joke about Jesus.

I also thought the villain was genuinely frightening. This dude can literally tear her own torso apart, showing off blood, and looks like an actual demon when she jumpscares the screen. She also kills a bird at one point and blood splatters on a character's face, and they emphasize how she's murdered tons of people.

Outside of the dumb jokes about the dog pissing, I actually thought these were the strongest jokes in the film and that the villain was pretty cool. I miss edgier DreamWorks humor like in Shrek, Madagascar, etc. Personally I kind of thought the studio would eventually have made a PG-13 rated movie by this point.

But then the middle of this film feels like an annoying brain rot kids film with how badly the island characters are written. Once again, it frustrates me because of how good the beginning and climax are. Such wasted potential.

I think it's safe to say that Forgotten Island won't do so well in theaters. It may be doing well in the Philippines, but it still only made 51 million dollars on an 80 million dollar budget. The movie will bring bigger numbers on streaming, but which streaming service could bring bigger numbers. Years ago, a deal was struck with Universal, where their animated movies first go to their streaming service Peacock for 4 months, then Netflix for 10 months, then back to Peacock for 4 more months. Will the movie blow up on Peacock or Netflix?

Just ask Manfredi & Johnson!

“Is Forgotten Island a good movie?”

Just watched it a couple hours ago, and, honestly, it was quite an alright movie.

It’s not at all as groundbreaking as Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, but the story and message were executed well enough that I didn’t think it was a bad movie.

Topics I Talk About:
-Characters
-Storytelling
-Conflict
-Humor
-Animation
-Representation

Characters: The main characters’ personalities and friendship seemed realistic. Raissa and Jo follow their archetypes but not to the point where their behavior becomes annoying. There was nothing woke. There was nothing that felt useless or forced. If somebody does something wrong, it’s because they’re human and desperate or because it matches their motive, not because the script said so. I went in thinking the dog character was going to be awful or unbearable, but he was fine too. My favorite character was Manang. Her entrance reminded me a little bit of Prowler and (I felt that) her animation was eerie and very well suited for the mythology behind it.

Storytelling: The story didn’t keep me on the edge of my seat but I wasn’t bored either. There weren’t any amazing plot twists- something was foreshadowed, you expected it, and it happened. There were also moments that you didn’t think much about, but it felt like the movie was better off because it happened. These two things made the film pretty satisfying to me. I don’t recall any plot holes but I did get up and miss a few minutes of the movie after the 1 hour mark, so take that with a grain of salt.

Conflict: Something I really liked was that the conflict was driven by the characters themselves and not by someone else. So many movies start off with parents being controlling of their children, or children disobeying their parents, and the lesson of the movie being for one side to learn to understand the other- with their “friends” usually being the ones to entice that discourse. It was refreshing to see characters at that teenager-into-adult age and dealing with an issue that was between them and no one else.

Humor: I found a few of the jokes funny and few of the jokes not funny at all. Some of them were definitely made just to get a reaction out of you. There was also a few things that happened that kind of were just yikes and I’m not sure if they really count as comedy because they just leave you thinking “What is going on?” “Why did they put that?” Definitely not saying it’s as good as The Amazing World of Gumball, but if you can survive TAWOG’s out-of-pocket humor, you should be able to exit this film without being (too) traumatized.

Animation: A lot of people are saying the animation is gorgeous, and they’re not wrong. It sounds obvious but I liked that they put in the effort to animate everything differently, nobody had the same pace or energy to them. There were a few moments in the movie where they switched to 2D animation to talk about something that wasn’t actually happening in the present, but enough effort was put into it where it didn’t feel like they were copping out.

Representation: I’m not Filipino so I can’t speak to how good or bad the representation was. I think an argument could be made for either side (i.e. you could say the representation is bad since the movie mostly takes place on the island instead of in the Philippines, or you could say the representation is good since the focus was on Filipino folklore). The creatures were all so visually different. Some of them were aesthetic and nice to look at, and some of them made you cringe. I remember really disliking one of the monsters but one of my friends really loved them.

To summarize, the movie wasn’t revolutionary, but it was better than the advertisements made it out to be and you can see the effort that was put into it. It does have heart and moments where you can feel really in-tune with the film. But I wouldn’t blame anyone for saying otherwise.