1995

Toy Story – JenEric Movie Review

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Hello Cinephiles,

Today we’re talking about the 1995 Film Toy Story.

Story

This is a movie about jealousy and mob mentality. It’s a terrifying look into the worst of humanity dressed up as a kid’s movie. The jokes and overall message of teamwork and accepting who you are are nice however.

Score: 0.5

Characters

This is a group or characters that belongs in a grimdark survival horror or maybe a Stephen King film. They are overall unlikable and cruel to each other. This works for the plot, but means that I’m almost cheering for Sid.

Score: 0

Dialogue

The dialogue is quippy and very well thought out. It has an almost Disney-style of multiple levels for adults and kids. It is a little heavy on the exposition, and the gags sometimes last way too long.

Score: 0.5

Visuals and Music

The movie is visually impressive for it’s time, but after almost thirty years I looks very dated. The lighting, liquids, and anything with fur is really plastic-looking, which works for the toys. The humans are weird uncanny valley rejects.

The music and sound mixing were clear and beautiful.

Score: 0.5

Fun

The movie was more fun than it should have been. Despite the despicable characters and forced story, the world building is great and everyone laughed a bunch.

Score: 1

Overall

This has all the wonder of future Pixar movies without the amazingly relatable characters. It’s a first draft for their formula and unfortunately doesn’t land as well as it could. Still fun and looks okay, considering it’s almost thirty.

Final Score: 2.5 Stars out of 5

Clueless – JenEric Movie Review

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Hello Cinephiles,

Today we’re talking about the 1995 film Clueless.

Story

The story is pretty faithful to what I vaguely remember of its inspiration (Emma by Jane Austen) with more slang and 90’s aesthetic than a you can shake a brick-sized cell phone at. It’s cringe and nostalgia all in one, but at its core, it’s sort of sweet.

Score: 0.5

Characters

The characters are mostly nice to each other, which surprised me. I expected mean girls level fighting. So they’re not mean, but they really are clueless. Completely privileged and so very young.

Score: 0.5

Dialogue

There’s a lot of iconic slang in this and lots that I think they invented, but there’s a lot of what was terrible about the 90’s. Diet culture and disordered eating is laced throughout, homophobia, classism, and more than a little racism. Some of which is shown to be bad, but a lot of it is shown as normal.

I did really enjoy how the characters said dumb things smartly and smart things in a valley accent.

Score: 0.5

Visuals and Music

There’s a little weird shaky cam at the start and some strange angles, but overall it’s pretty well shot and each frame has a lot of information it in.

The music is pure nostalgia and I loved it.

Score: 1

Fun

I both enjoyed and cringed at this movie. I think I would have loved it when I was a young teen, but now I see all the problems and roll my eyes at the drama of youth. (Whippersnappers!)

I did like the overall story though, and despite my angst, it was fun.

Score: 0.5

Overall

This is a dated classic that encapsulates everything that was wrong with the 90’s and captures its innocence.

Final Score: 3 Stars out of 5