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THE BRAVE FROG (1989)
At the surface, The Brave Frog may seem like an innocuous animated time-waster for kids. It aspires to be a coming-of-age story of two tadpoles who struggle to maintain a friendship against the wishes of their stubborn parents. The cuddly appearance of the lead characters and the watercolor-style animation also provides promise. Unfortunately all of my hopes were completely dashed by the time I finished sitting through it. This is one of the most mean-spirited, badly written, poorly dubbed, and depressing films I have ever seen.
The leads spend most of the 91 minutes crying and crying and crying, which gets old really fast. It does not help that both are trapped in a story that wavers between frightening and weepy. The only joyful moment in the movie is a dance scene between the leads, but even then this scene is too short and does nothing to offset the confused nature of the plot. It bounces around from one scene to the next, with no coherent thread to accommodate it.
The film is basically an edited compilation of a 39-episode series, which probably explains the constantly "hopping" (no pun intended) plot and the even worse ending, which is both disappointingly abrupt and out-of-left field (an evil character suddenly decides to reform with absolutely NO reason to do so?). The voice acting is both grating and painfully shrill--the only time I ever laughed at all was a scene where a bully sings a mocking song to the tune of "Countdown Races" in a deadpan, unenthusiastic tone... but that was only funny for the wrong reasons.
A better title for this movie should have been The Stupid Frog, because that is exactly what it comes across as. There are far better choices for family viewing than this obnoxious, dreary, unengaging fiasco. It probably plays better in its uncut form, but as it is, The Brave Frog is absolutely ghastly in every way imaginable.
At the surface, The Brave Frog may seem like an innocuous animated time-waster for kids. It aspires to be a coming-of-age story of two tadpoles who struggle to maintain a friendship against the wishes of their stubborn parents. The cuddly appearance of the lead characters and the watercolor-style animation also provides promise. Unfortunately all of my hopes were completely dashed by the time I finished sitting through it. This is one of the most mean-spirited, badly written, poorly dubbed, and depressing films I have ever seen.
The leads spend most of the 91 minutes crying and crying and crying, which gets old really fast. It does not help that both are trapped in a story that wavers between frightening and weepy. The only joyful moment in the movie is a dance scene between the leads, but even then this scene is too short and does nothing to offset the confused nature of the plot. It bounces around from one scene to the next, with no coherent thread to accommodate it.
The film is basically an edited compilation of a 39-episode series, which probably explains the constantly "hopping" (no pun intended) plot and the even worse ending, which is both disappointingly abrupt and out-of-left field (an evil character suddenly decides to reform with absolutely NO reason to do so?). The voice acting is both grating and painfully shrill--the only time I ever laughed at all was a scene where a bully sings a mocking song to the tune of "Countdown Races" in a deadpan, unenthusiastic tone... but that was only funny for the wrong reasons.
A better title for this movie should have been The Stupid Frog, because that is exactly what it comes across as. There are far better choices for family viewing than this obnoxious, dreary, unengaging fiasco. It probably plays better in its uncut form, but as it is, The Brave Frog is absolutely ghastly in every way imaginable.