JonBro's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Chicken tunafish gopher?]

Ever since this was released eight years ago, it's remarkable how many times this song has randomly popped back into my life, and how I've never become irritated by this fact. It somehow has the perfect softness and repetition to stay comfortably stuck in one's head for... well, forever, just about. The artwork is incredibly unique and memorable, too, complementing the song in a way no other style would. It's not that I love this animation, but I'm thoroughly impressed by how long it has rattled in my mind for no reason.

[Shit Advice]

You DO have to be most careful. I mean, what if you have a baby on accident? ...LUIS.

I won't lie, this is objectively terrible in basically every way (and you're aware of that), but it's also strangely enjoyable for reasons I can't even describe. I ended up hitting the Repoop button several times. Maybe it's the obviousness of the crappy pun and the level of personality the little turds have that cause this to be acceptable as art. Congrats on an impressively successful attempt at making an unsuccessful animation. You should not be ashamed by such a feat.

Bowel excrement.

[Plungerdog - 03: Dog Day]

I can't even put my finger on what the appeal of Plungerdog is. All I know is that in the past week, I've come back and watched this animation at least six or seven times. The characters, voice acting, artwork, and pacing are all completely unnatural in a way that's very charming, oddly humorous, and somehow cohesive. The scattered background details also give this already unique animation extra personality and cause me to notice something new every time I watch it. Everything about it just miraculously fits, like a pair of pants that fell from the sky.

Jae responds:

damn thanks a lot jonbro! big fan!

[Alight]

Visually beautiful, but mentally disorienting.

I like the emotion portrayed by the characters. Their innocent movements and expressions gave them a feeling of grace, and the animation with the fire and the water was impressively smooth. The piano music was pretty generic, but it fulfilled its intended purpose well enough with its simplicity.

However... I honestly felt the storytelling was awkward and the message was really unclear.

When Sparker meets Aquanna, they don't interact in almost any way aside from the momentary discovery that they can't touch each other. They pop into existence and meet within seconds, with no logical reason to have an extraordinary love connection with each other. A mechanical monster appears from out of nowhere, and then as much time is spent with Sparker fighting the beast than with the relationship at the beginning of the movie. Something about the pacing just made Sparker's actions seem unnaturally sudden and overreactive.

The ending seemed to imply that, after the obvious conflict, none of the characters actually died, seeing as there was a water flow that meshed together with the fire and the robotic creature to form a human being--except, in this case, it's a cyborg rather than a real human. Does this mean war is the key to new life? That seems like an odd message. The movie seems to take place in a post-apocalypse; does the message have to do with cyborgs retaining the cycle of humanity? That seems a little strange, too. It might be a much simpler message about love and determination, though in reality, slaying the murderer of your best friend doesn't bring your friend back. Or it might be a message about the inner conflict of a person reflecting who they are, though the post-apocalyptic setting seems like it would be a really cryptic way of sending such a message. With so little clarity, it seems like this wasn't made with a definitive meaning in mind in the first place.

I can see how you could find yourself connected to the simple charm of the characters, but this feels much less like a thought-out story than it does a mere special effects showcase. Understandably, that's all you might have needed to present this to a university, but it's important with an idea like this to know exactly what kind of metaphor you're trying to create, and to have some sense of realism in the events you hope to reveal. Even animations with a lot of heart lack true effectiveness without an equal amount of brain.

[Animating Boxes at 3am]

This gets greater every time I watch it.

Most music videos are considered 'great' because they have professional artwork and are packed full of eye candy, or their animation basically sucks and the reason they receive acclaim is because of the music it's animated to.

This, on the other hand, is unlike anything I've seen. Neither the artwork nor the music is particularly impressive, yet both fit together so wonderfully. After a while, you don't see lines on a screen or hear a person singing a song anymore. Instead, you witness a powerful metaphor.

The song by itself pretty clearly portrays the kind of mind-manipulation that goes on in society, where so many people spend years developing the same interests and talents, not a single person standing out from anyone else, and they grow up just to send their children off to be slaves to the common mindset of the ideal lifestyle.

The animation visually portrays everything that the song does very clearly and brings it to a new level all at once. The whole idea of the cookie-cutter society is very crude, mostly black and white. None of the sparingly-used colors ever deviate from the green, pink, blue, and yellow. Everything seems pleasant, but you slowly begin to realize how manipulative this world is, as the music and the artwork both get creepier and more intense. Even the fact that the animation loops contributes to the message and the mood; every time a shred of creativity tries to pave its own path in life, it is terminated, and the cycle of mediocrity repeats as if nothing ever happened.

Something the song itself didn't really suggest that the animation did was the idea that being unique was simply not permissible. People are meant to have different opinions and goals from each other, but the education system seems to lead many into thinking that the only way to have peace is through sharing opinions with the rest of the world. Those who dare to be different are rejected--or worse, they are severely punished.

It was also only through the decisions with the visuals of the story that I really found meaning in the 'boxes' of the song. Everyone started out with round faces, which could very easily represent freedom, just as a round ball or balloon is free. But all the adults with the box-shaped heads seemed very restricted to their brainwashed lives, none of them truly happy, their smiling faces deceiving. And I personally loved the touch of the one student, realizing while at school that he was contained in a little box.

Of course, I could be reading too much into this, since you made this in a state of insomnia. But this is still going straight to my favorites.

Comick responds:

Wow thanks for the thoughtful comment! I'm really glad you liked it and thanks for noticing the little details I tried to include to help convey the visual cues and the timing with the song while adding in my own little plot with the 2nd half and the meanings behind them. :D I appreciate the review and thanks for watching it!

[Salad Fingers Episode. 9]

The whole series built up to this finale.

When you take that into consideration, it's pretty much impossible not to laugh at the excellent comedic timing here.

[The Northern Incident]

Minimalistic perfection badly tainted by rainbows.

This is artistically excellent. The choice of colors is unique and fitting, the camera angles all work very well, and the lighting really sets the mood in several scenes. The buildup is great, the sparingly-used sounds added to that feeling of isolation, and I truly loved the way the bars around the screen were used to separate the cooped-up indoors with the endless outdoors.

The ending, though... That ending.

It's a fine ending with a clear message. Furries are scary, they do more harm than good, and nobody likes them. The problem with the ending is that it doesn't fit well with the rest of the movie. I could understand a huge, serious buildup to a humorous ending, but the whole movie remained serious even when it ended up being random, and I didn't know what I was supposed to think when I finished watching it. Not even after watching it a second time.

I feel like this lacks a 'proper' buildup. The growing tension with the persisting knocks at the door would have worked if the ending was more generalized--like, the furries could have been replaced with a bunch of criminal strangers, or the movie could have ended with a bunch of nondescript silhouettes with creepy eyes, and the storytelling would have fit. But, seeing as the great evil of the cartoon was very specific, I felt like the foreshadowing should also have been more specific. Not even remote hints are given that suggest the mysterious knocks are from furries. If even the smallest hints were dropped, like an ominous rainbow in the distance or a pair of pointy ears that disappear behind a window, I think the ending would have been better.

For the most part, this seems like a really well thought-out piece. But it feels like you made up the ending on the spot.

[garfrield da cat]

No review could do this masterpiece justice.

The loader itself holds unique appeal, particularly with its choice of color. The pink background suggests love, innocence, and unfamiliarity all at once, a mixture of emotions one rarely experiences in cinemas with the same subtlety and humbleness as this single frame. The white bars on the top and bottom of the screen are highly mysterious--do they exist for a purpose? Are they inverted widescreen bars, or are they portals into an infinite white void? They really set up a mood even before the movie begins. I could go on about the skinny preloader, the choice of writing for the title and caption, the perfect expression on Garfrield's face, and the black-lined rectangle in the corner, but it's likely I would run out of room in this review before ever reaching the greatest part--the movie itself.

I love the inclusion of the Newgrounds preloader notes at the very beginning, which are clearly meant not to be there. The existence of the notes obviously symbolizes rebellion and foreshadows Garfrield's actions in the animation. The rainbow shot had some of the most eye-opening special effects I've ever seen, even if it lasted a single moment, and I had to watch the movie again and again under the assumption that I'd missed something the first time through because of that shot.

Immediately after the door of Garfrield's house opened on its own, I felt the true magic and creativity of this movie. Doors never open out away from the house--therefore, something is different about this house than any other. And that difference is Garfrield da Cat. The wrinkles and infinite chins on Garfrield are very effective in expressing his obesity and his age. It's difficult to figure out what Garfrield's owner--whom I assume also has a different name from the newspaper cartoons, like Garfrield--is vocalizing until you learn to read his lips, and it is at that point the viewer feels a great sense of accomplishment and respect for the writing. There's also a lot of magic behind the sound effects of inconsistent sound quality that lend variety to this short creation.

Garfrield is really a character here. He cares more about the audience behind the camera than he does the hand that feeds him, evident by his beautifully-portrayed wink and his double middle-finger glare. The owner, unable to comprehend his own cat's awesomeness, grows furious and jealous. The best part of this animation, to me, was the rainbow lazanya (I can only guess that 'lasagna' was misspelled from Garfrield's perspective, and if that's the case, that was a lovely touch). The rainbow lazanya brought back the fleeting moment of the rainbow shot from earlier in the movie, yet at the same time, it represents the splendor of the morsel on the fork, which Garfrield proceeds to savor. The burp, after that terrific buildup, marked some of the best comedic timing I've witnessed on the Internet. The whiteness in the last few moments of the Flash leave the audience wondering what will happen next.

This is a historic day for the Newgrounds portal and movie-making as a whole. Nothing has been made for decades that could compare to the pure wonder of this spectacular work of art. I wish that I had half the talent you have, sir, for creating such an excellently-animated, exquisitely-written, expertly-timed comedy Flash. You have done what no great movie producer has yet done, and that is take a daily newspaper cartoon, add an R to its protagonist's name, and turn the comics into an entertaining animation with a brand new storyline.

[WGJ4K: Hottest GameChicks]

There is really no reason to dislike this series.

You pull off camera angles, voice acting, characters, and writing like nobody else does. Clearly a lot of effort was put into this series, but you make it look so easy all the same.

This episode is a perfect end to the season, maintaining the classic humor of the other episodes with those absolutely shocking twists that every great season finale to a show should have. I was simply in awe of the rapidly-building tension in the confrontation, which was presented in a more effective manner than anything I've ever seen online and many things on television or on the big screen. It was that kind of tension where you get lost in the scene, your heart starts to beat a little faster, you temporarily forget about everything that has led up to this point and you have no idea how the tables will turn or how things are going to end up.

And then, after that intense sequence, the drama continues with a very different kind of shock--a truly curious twist in the viewer's knowledge. The whole mood of that cliffhanger is mystifying. You really worked wonders with the lighting and color in that scene.

The characters in this series have become increasingly impressive. Originally Mickey, Eric, June, and the Boss looked like nothing more than morons and jerks. Over this period of ten months, the characters have been given senses of rivalry, many contrasting emotions, and in general a lot of characteristic depth. Mickey is now an independent, remorseless, fearless soul with a mysterious past. June and Eric are revealed to be gamers at heart, but despite their disagreements with Mickey, they'll easily put down their Wii remotes and work together to make attempts at comforting him (even befriending him), a man who considers himself their enemy. And the boss is now clearly overly adamant about the work of those he has the authority to 'boss around'--and he's almost like a dictator in that sense--but even someone as serious as he is won't go to the extreme to force work on someone else, not even under unbelievable pressure.

Now, for the fun, I'm going to add my own thoughts to theories in reviews:

Mickey and the Boss have a lot more in common than just the dark circles around their eyes. They may have completely opposite views on video game videos, but taking their attitudes into consideration, they are quite similar. In the Robert Burgless episode of WGJ4K, a simple argument turned into a rage for Mickey. In this episode, a simple disagreement sent the Boss aiming a gun at his own. They both overreact to great lengths given a particular trigger, far beyond the point most 'dicks' react to greater issues, they both hold ultimate opposition to opinions they find to be 'wrong facts,' and they both think higher of themselves than they do others. Though I have nothing to back this idea up, I think if Mickey was in the position to start his own company with slaves at his own disposal working against VGV, that's exactly what he would do, just like the Boss.

At this point, however, I don't think it would make a lot of sense for the Boss to be Mickey's father. My reasons for saying this stem mostly from the way they talk to each other. Neither one of them seems to even remotely recognize the other as a relative, meaning it would be illogical for Mickey to acknowledge family relation as his reason for being kidnapped by VGV, and the reason is probably entirely different. Of course, Mickey's statement about knowing why he was the one taken away by VGV in this episode does contrast from the first episode when he said, "I don't even know why am I here." This could mean anything, really. Maybe Mickey didn't yet want to let people in on his personal life and thoughts, maybe he learned his reason for being taken away later on, maybe he half-lied and he only knows part of the story of why he's there, and maybe this is a continuity error. Perhaps time will tell.

Though short, this is an eventful and masterfully-done finale. Only one thing could substantially improve this series... and that is continuation with a new season.

[Awesome Reach]

This is now one of my favorite Awesomes.

I was expecting more parodying of the game itself, and I was slightly disappointed by the abrupt ending. But in the end, I laughed, I watched it several more times, I plan on watching it even more times, and I thoroughly enjoy talking about this movie to my friends.

No one on this earth will ever portray a better picture of obsessive fanboys.