Erma von
When "Ugly Doll" was released in North America in early May, the filmmakers had high hopes, choosing to release it in as many as 3650 theaters in the first weekend, but only won 8.51 million US dollars at the box office. Although the film still entered the top 10 of the North American weekly box office for three consecutive weeks, compared with the film's production cost of up to $53 million, the return on the cost is obviously no hope, can only earn a little, somewhat recover some losses.
It's not hard to understand why the film's release date in China has been changed again and again, from the original Premiere on May 31 to August 9, and then to October 4: It's really hard to find a good schedule!
Ugly Doll poster
It's reasonable that the film won't be seen by critics: the film received a gruesome 39 points on the professional media aggregation site Metacritic. But the film was somewhat unexpectedly rejected by the audience: the film had a user rating of only 4.7 on imdb. You know, the ugly doll is also an IP that has been operating for many years, and there is also a rather romantic exotic love story behind this IP.
Time back to 2001. Sun-min Kim, a Korean girl who was studying at the Art Institute in New York at the time, had to return to South Korea after 9/11 and was briefly separated from her lover David Horvath who remained in the United States. To pin down his lovesickness, David draws a little orange-red monster at the end of each letter he writes to Sun-Min-Kim, who sews it into a plush toy. This was the birth of the first ugly doll toy. After that, the couple created more ugly doll images.
In 2004, ugly dolls held a toy show in New York, and also participated in the San Diego comicon toy show, and began to sell in 7 countries including Japan. In 2005, David and Sun-Min Kim were married, and more ugly doll images were created. In 2009, when Obama entered the White House, he was photographed by reporters hanging an ugly doll on his bag. The president's ability to "carry goods" is unquestionable, which has contributed to another sales boom in ugly doll toys. It's hard to say whether the idea of making an animated film for this IP began at this time, but as the pioneering work of stx Pictures' "Family and Animation" department, the degree of attention of "Ugly Doll" is self-evident.
The reason why the film lost to Maicheng in North America may first lie in the unclear positioning of the target audience and the mistakes in the selection of the schedule. Although most buyers of ugly dolls may have long forgotten or even never known the romantic love story behind the toy, the main buying group of dolls is still young people, mainly women.
The film's MPAA rating is pg, which is obviously going in the direction of family fun - but the plot of the film is really pediatric for adult audiences, and it is even less attractive compared to the "Avengers 4: Endgame" in the same schedule.
As for child audiences, although the demand for movies runs throughout the year, the time period that can form a box office explosion is mainly around the summer and Christmas (such as last year's "Green Grinch"). As an hindsight, "Ugly Doll" is not an accident at the North American box office. But before Chinese audiences decide whether to go to a movie theater, it may still be necessary to understand the good and bad aspects of the movie. As the so-called "skinny camel is bigger than a horse", this movie is childish to adult audiences, and may be able to enjoy it for child audiences.
Stills from "Ugly Doll"
The plot of the movie begins with the ugly doll town where the ugly dolls live. There has always been a legend in ugly town that outside of ugly town, there is a real world, where all ugly dolls will be taken away by children and become beloved toys. In order to reach this real world, the ugly doll Moxy leaves the ugly town with her companions and comes to a place called the Perfect Academy. They found that the Perfect Academy was hosted by a doll named Lu Shao (Lou), and all the dolls of the Perfect Academy were exquisitely dressed and beautiful, and they had to be trained before they could be sent to the real world. Therefore, Xiao Xi and his companions made a bet with Lu Shao, vowing to undergo the transformation of the Perfect Academy and win the opportunity to go to the real world through the challenge.
The perfect academy for dolls trained and reinvented in Ugly Dolls
Lu Shao, voiced by popular singer "Little Joe" Nick Jonas
What a clichéd plot! It's 9102, and it's hard to imagine animated films that cost as much as $53 million to produce, and are still working around chicken soup themes like "The Most Beautiful Of Your True Self." The ultimate goal of the dolls in the film is to become a toy in the real world that can be held in the arms of children, and this intention is compared with the "Toy Story 4" that calls for freedom and independence.
The ugly dolls in "Ugly Dolls", the so-called "ugly", but because of the use of plush on the material, it is not fine enough; and the appearance is relatively simple and abstract, and the head-body ratio is exaggerated, so it is difficult to find the comparison in reality at a glance, but it is still "really fragrant" to see the habit. However, the plot of the movie is both old-fashioned and perfunctory, if the audience does not buy it, not because it does not know the goods, but because it is too knowledgeable - there are animated movies such as "Monster Power Company", "Monster University", "Trolls", "Baby Boss" and so on, "Ugly Doll" has many similarities with the above movies, and there is no clever and unique place, standing still, can not keep up with the improvement of the audience's appreciation level.
The film is only 87 minutes long, which is relatively short in mainstream Hollywood animated films, probably because the main plot is too simple, even if the characters are painstakingly arranged to sing and dance, they cannot support a longer length.
Some of the small bridges in the film, if not interpreted as "copying stems", but well-intentionedly understood as "burying Easter eggs", then these "Easter eggs" may be too outdated and too niche. Lu Shao's three female dolls are obviously from "Thunderbolt Baby" - although this best-selling movie has plans to be remade, the original work is already an "old" movie in 2000.
As for the crisis in ugly doll town, when ugly dolls line up to receive porridge, an ugly doll named Oliver asks the chef to "have another bowl", which is obviously from the famous plot of Dickens's novel "Orphans of the Mist" - but how many 21st-century child and young audiences can quickly recognize from the movie that this plot is from a 19th-century novel and laugh? "Ugly Doll" lacks the ability to create fresh jokes, follows the old practice, wants to tickle people and can't scratch the idea, and people want to yawn.
"Thunderbolt Baby" in "Ugly Doll"
The film wants to keep up with the trend of political correctness, the protagonist moxy is a girl, and the companions of the ugly dolls have different skin colors. Among the many Barbie dolls at the Academy of Perfection, the only one who expressed kindness to the ugly dolls was also a girl and a dark-skinned glasses girl, and the voice she found was Ganel Mona, a black female singer who starred in "Moonlight Boy" and "Hidden Figures".
The film may not first set the voice actors, and then design cartoon characters according to the voice actors, but the film is too deliberate to balance the gender, skin color, and personality of the characters, and it is boring. And the film makes ugly town and perfect academy form a confrontational situation, which is also overcorrected. Outward beauty and spiritual beauty are not indispensable, and if the film wants to express the view that "I am ugly but I am gentle", it is not necessary to set up a villain with a bright appearance and a dark heart as a target.
The film draws a satisfying end to the story in an unsurprisingly joyful atmosphere. Film director Kelly Asbori has directed Shrek 2 in the past, which is also an animated film that advises children not to judge people by their appearance.
However, the success of the "Monster Shrek" series does not lie in the theme of "Wei Guangzheng", but in the deconstruction and subversion of classical fairy tales. What the audience remembers is always those vivid character images and funny bridges. The characters in "Ugly Doll" are all cardboard characters, funny and nothing new, suitable for young children as an introductory movie choice for Hollywood animated movies, and adult audiences who have more involvement in classic animated movies such as Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, And Lighting Entertainment do not need to waste time in seemingly familiar plots.
The tradition of singing instead of talking, walking and dancing and singing, which Disney animated films have begun, is also concocted in "Ugly Dolls". Ganel Monay, "Little Joe" Nick Jonas, inaugural American Idol champion Kelly Clarkson, "Tea Wash" Charlie Xcx, and country singer Blake Sheldon are all well-known figures in the American pop music scene.
However, the saliva song in the movie is too salivating, in addition to listening to an ear in the theater with the development of the plot, there is basically no need to download the soundtrack music disc to relive after watching the movie. However, for primary and secondary school students who are still in the primary and intermediate stages of English learning, the advantage of "Ugly Doll" is that whether it is the dialogue lines of the characters or the lyrics of the songs in the movie, the sentence structure is not complicated, and the vocabulary is not large. Therefore, when I went to an 87-minute original English listening class, it seemed to be a gain for underage audiences.
This issue is edited by Zhou Yuhua