Review: Cowboy Bebop 286
First impressions: It's quite good, good enough to show even non-anime fans. Visually very pretty, plot is perfectly adequate, entertaining yet moderately deep, it's about all I ask for in an anime movie: it's fun.
The movie is strongly reminiscent of the animated series - if you lengthened and filled out one of the standard episodes, boom, you've got a movie. All of the Bebop crew are present, which would put it, time-wise, roughly in the middle of the series. Each of them plays a significant part in tracking their latest target, a bio-terrorist who plans to unleash an unpleasant plague on the population of Mars, but as in the series, they work side-by-side but not necessarily as a team, rather as a loose affiliation of, err, cowboys. The plot is simple but reasonably compelling. The antagonist's motivations are laid out; I didn't find them particularly sensible, but, ignoring that, the actions of the characters make sense and everything pretty much holds together.
The movie is significantly prettier than the series. Instead of the computer-generated beauty of Spirited Away, there are quite a few exquisitely drawn backgrounds. Most of the action takes place in a city on Mars which bears a strong - very strong - resemblance to modern-day New York City. Shadows are rendered with great care, leading to a number of scenes where the shadows play as much of a part in the scene as the character casting them. Although the rendering of Martian daylight is not, perhaps, very realistic (Mars is going to get a lot less light than Earth, even if it's massively terraformed...), the artists do take the opportunity to show us several beautiful sunset shots. The movie is worth watching for the art alone, IMHO.
Fans of the series will know that it's known for its jazz (or maybe jazz-like is more descriptive) numbers. The movie still has some jazz, but there's a lot more rock, leading to a more fast-paced feel. The soundtrack is quite good without being overpowering and without losing the feel that "made" the series. The voice acting is as good as the series, which is not surprising.
At least two of the showings in the movie theater I saw it in were sold out. I imagine that won't continue, since this is a bit of a niche market and the movie hasn't been advertised at all that I've seen, but perhaps it will be enough to get a wider U.S. distribution for the movie, and Spirited Away picking up an Oscar shouldn't hurt either. It's worth seeing in the theaters, I think, assuming there's one near you. If you've ever wondered what sort of beating Spike can dish out when he's really upset at someone, this movie will answer that question. :)
One thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Watch the episodes (Score:5, Insightful)
What I'm saying is, see the movie. But if you want some real fun, see the series too.
Damn critics... (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, I just don't get it. Cartoons are great for anything with a fantasy element.
Why?
'Cause you can do anything you want with cartoons...cheaply!
Live action has certain drawbacks. Sure, you can have beautiful people at which you can stare, but some things are difficult or downright impossible to do with live action.
The people who don't like cartoon movies are just snobs. Beautiful things can be done with the medium.
To simply deride something because it's a cartoon is so shortsided.
what about disney stuff then...? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm an avid anime fan, and it bothers me to see such meaningless reasons as to why the Bebop movie isn't good. The Cowboy Bebop movie does not have the best stand-alone plot (it goes well with the entire series), but I still think that it's a good movie for a one-shot and the animation did not get as much credit as it deserved in the negative reviews.
However, it is nice to see that a majority of the reviews of the film are mainly positive. It's not like everyone is against it, but the one's who are against it seem to have poor reasoning.
And this is why.... (Score:5, Insightful)
People have become way too dependent on what critics say about a movie. They go watch what other people tell them they should, possibly because it costs way to much to see a movie. Critics who diss the movie for poor animation and "Speed Racer" style action obviously never went to see the movie, and instead opted to read some online summary and diss what they do not understand.
So ignore (the vast majority of) the critics, and go see what is a GREAT action movie that actually has a plot.
Not continuity-bound (Score:4, Insightful)
Not just for kids? (Score:2, Insightful)
Cowboy Bebop doesn't come off as particularly adult. The characters can be described with 2 or 3 adjectives, Faye is around mostly to show off her animated ass, and in general it's not as intelligent as an Hollywood action flick.
Re:And this is why.... (Score:3, Insightful)
<sarcasm>That's right. And this internet thing will NEVER become popular. No one will EVER use a personal computer. And as for this new technology called "calculus", it's NEVER going to be accepted by the masses.</sarcasm>
As for me, I'm going to keep using linux, watching Anime, and using GPG to sign my email messages. The rest of the world be damned. They can catch up if they want, but I'm not going to wait for them.
I mean, do you wait for something to become mainstream before you jump on the bandwagon? Then why are you complaining that it is not mainstream?
Re:Damn critics... (Score:3, Insightful)
It does when you are a critic.
A critic's job (IMHO) is to judge a movie's merits within its genre. If you are a critic and don't like cartoons, to deride a movie on that basis alone is a failure to provide any useable insight on the movie's qualities to those who DO.
If a critic can't seperate their personal likes and dislikes from their reviews (and what I mean is stuff like "I don't like horror movies, therefore all horror films get a low rating, no matter how well it is produced") -- then they are a poor critic.
Re:And this is why.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you picked the wrong "ignorant masses" template to use for your reply. If you actually read the post and the links, you'll see that there are mostly positive reviews for both animation and the movie overall.
I see that this is your first post to Slashdot. You didn't follow the links, so that's good, with some more practice you'll fit in well here. The capital words for emphasis are good, however your spelling needs work. Too many correctly spelled words. As I said earlier, you need to select a better message template. I suggest one of the ones that go something like "Even though [insert topic] is criticaly acclaimned, the stupid masses will still ignore it because american culture is too pompus and ignorant to let it happen". That has a nice blend of spelling/grammar mistakes and still portrays you as one of the few who "get it"
Where's the anti-cartoon prejudice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail:
Jan Stuart, Newsday: Mick LaSalle, San Francisco ChronicleMaybe you could put down the end of that last quote to an "anti-cartoon" bias? But from the paragraph as a whole its clear that the reviewer thinks the animation is actually the only thing that the movie has going for it.
I don't mean to bash the movie. (In fact, I had to read through a lot of positive comments to get to the above quotes. Sounds like it might be a fun movie!) I just question the article's claim that the reviewers disliked the movie just because it's animated. Seems to me that does an injustice to the criticisms raised, criticisms which are actually repeated by a lot of reviewers, and which have less to do with the medium than with the dialog, the story, and the characters.
--Bruce F.
This is why the movie is mid-series (Score:5, Insightful)
The movie 'takes place' mid-series if I recall. It was really cheating most of the US to show them the complete series first- the movie should have been timed to premiere in the US around ep 20 or so, but well before the last episodes. Sadly, I think the only reason this is in theaters(and/or perhaps the reason it took so long) is because it's about terrorism; as a topic for entertainment, first it was taboo, now it's all the rage.
It doesn't have to have a sad ending to be good, by the way. Watch the third Patlabor movie some time if you like the whole political intrigue/detective story(which is part of what Knockin' on Heaven's Door is about.)
Personally, I would have been just as happy if Cowboy Bebop had a happy ending, since I enjoyed every episode. If anything, the sad ending was a huge let-down. Then again, the first episode in the series was a pretty tragic, and should have been a clue that they'd go any-which-way.
I've already seen the movie(it was fansubbed at -least- a year ago); I highly recommend it; everything you've come to love in the bebop series. There is a GREAT dogfight sequence, worth the cost of the ticket alone, and two great hand-to-hand combat scenes. I will probably go to see it in the theaters, since I a)support anime and b)I want to see the great artwork up close and personal.
(currently watching Read Or Die- let's hear it for secret agent librarians, yeah!)
Re:One thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah.
Re:Not just for kids? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Its just a long epsiode (Score:2, Insightful)
Bebop was a striking series mostly because you aren't *expecting* it to be so frighteningly good. "It's a half-hour cartoon. How could they possibly shock me?" followed by "WHAM!", followed by "what just hit me?"
The movie, on the other hand, carries with it elevated expectations, and it then needs to stand on its own (as a Science Fiction or Animated work) next to the (generally) profound works of Ghibli, and the gleamingly-polished works of Pixar. Cowboy Bebop the Movie, despite being of higher production quality than the television show, isn't as jaw-droppingly superior to its competitors as the half-hour episodes are to its own.
Powerpuff Girls suffered from the same drawback: what is perfectly paced for an 11-minute episode falls flat when stretched to 90 minutes, and darkened in tone considerably.
When turning episodic Sci-Fi into movies, there is the lazy way and the right way. It's like the difference between X-Files -> Fight The Futura and Star Trek (TOS) -> Wrath of Khan. It's a notch up, but the audience is expecting more.
Though, given the stunningly bad crap infiltrating theatres today wearing a cardboard sign labeled "Sci-Fi" like a forged press badge, Cowboy Bebop should blow people's minds anyway.
Ilan