- Released: March 25 2014
- Directed by: Richard Rich
- Running time: 45 min
- Rating 0.5/5
Synopsis
Claudette and her brothers wish to participate in a sports events called the Great Wolf Games, but training and putting together a team proves more difficult than she initially thought.
My Thoughts
I can’t believe I have to say this but … this is even worse than A How-liday Adventure. Yep. It is, and it is by a landslide. Let’s just … get into this thing, okay? I wanna get it out of my system. I feel dirty. I feel unclean.
The plot is very bare bones. Just the general “it doesn’t matter who wins as long as you have fun and team spirit”-shit. There’s a minor antagonist in the father of Fleet (Nars) but he wasn’t the main focus of the plot, that was the Games and the race between Claudette.
The characters were absolutely cardboard. The originals are barely even here anymore (just Paddy, Marcel, Humphrey, Kate and Mooch), as they use the shitty excuse that the Alpha’s are all gone for “five moons”, however long that might be. That excuse really is only used to get the plot going and have the conflict where they need to look for a coach while all alpha’s are gone. The original characters have very little of their original personality left. Kate is just the capable mother, Humphrey the fun-loving and slightly-too-goofy father, M&P just do their regular unfunny comic relief routine, and Mooch really doesn’t add … anything to the story.
The pups are still very basic, though at least Claudette gets a little more focus and to her character here (it’s still horrible, dgmw, but it’s at least something). There’s new characters, such as Fleet and Nars, with the former being a generic love interest, and the later the generic “sports mom” (or father I guess). Then there’s Brent and Agnes … who are among the very worst. Brent’s only trait is that he is afraid of birds, something that gets resolved within minutes of it being introduced, and Agnes (for some unholy reason) tends to float off into the air when she runs too fast. It’s never given an explanation, it just happens. And gets resolved. Somehow. They are barely even characters at this point, just cardboard with one or at most two traits applied to them.
(Also, is no one going to talk about how having literally all alpha wolves gone on a hunting trip for a long time is a horrible idea? Any villain could attack the Western pack at any time and easily take over. King is still roaming free after Alpha and Omega 2, right? Right?!)
Something I forgot to mention in my Howl-iday Adventure review and still counts for this one, too, is the horrible sound design. It’s very bare and quiet at most times, and the sound effects used sometimes feel horribly dated and are of terrible quality. Just not like something that would be used in a movie released relatively recently. Please, Crest, just pay a bit more for better sound effects. You’re making a fool of yourselves with whatever this is supposed to be.
The animation is (I can’t believe I’m saying this) even worse than in the second movie. While there is less face-stretching, it’s still downright sucks, even for direct-to-DVD animation. The models also really don’t help here. Since this movie involves a lot of running and other actions (which the pup models simply cannot pull of correctly), it looks like utter garbage. Weird movements aside, when running, the pups also look like they’re either going way too fast for where they’re planting their little paws, or they (and other characters) look like they’re running on ice. It’s just utter garbage. Granted, the visuals (screenshots alone, not the animation) is very very slightly better than in Howl-iday Adventure (where everything looked like it had a kind of a misty blur on the screen), the rest of it is utter garbage and I recommend you don’t even subject yourself to this animation out of curiosity. It’s that horrible. There’s also still quite a few mistakes, one of which is actually really obvious (where the sky background changes for whatever fucking reason) and it’s just so lazy… I’m somewhat out of energy to describe my hatred for this animation and these models.
The voice acting was very meh. It’s just very basic and doesn’t convey too much emotion. I think Nars’ voice might’ve been pitched down at some points because it sounded somewhat off. Brent’s voice is an absolute pain to the ears, and also doesn’t make any sense. So far all bear cubs we’ve seen talked with a young child voice, but then there’s Brent who somehow has this deep, whiny grown-man voice. Fleet somehow has a young-adult sounding male voice…despite being the same age as Stinky and Runt (who have normal kid voices). It’s just trash. But Runt at least has a less annoying-sounding and high-pitched voice, so that’s a plus, I guess.
There’s also the weird plot hole where Humphrey explains that their pack doesn’t join the Games before they used to be for all kinds of animals, not just alpha wolves, but this is literally retconned within the span of a few minutes (actually, before Humphrey brings it up) by Fleet and his sister, who are already participating, and clearly state that the rules say that it doesn’t just have to be alpha wolves who can compete. Just … weird? Also, why would you call it the Great Wolf Games if it’s for all kinds of critters?
The music is still horribly recycled, and I’m starting to get damn sick of it already. One of the few things the first movie did have going for it was a pretty easy-on-the-ears soundtrack, but now even that is being ruined by the lack of original soundtracks. When you hear the same pieces of music being re-used again and again without any variation, it gets old really damn fast. Is it really too much for them to hire a new composer to at least add one or two new soundtracks to the mix to distract from this blatant cheapskate recycling?
There’s also another inconsistency where, without having made any amends with the Western pack after the events of the previous movie, King is just sitting in plain sight watching the Games. It’s never even addressed. It would’ve taken hardly any effort to simply swap out his model for another of the dozen generic background wolves they have and make this make sense? Someone had to have consciously put him there, and someone else left him there during quality control (bold of me to assume this piece of shit had any quality control).
Finally I’d also like to address the fact that Nars, the villain/antagonist of this movie, got away with his shit without comeuppance. He’s an piece of crap abusive father who forced his children to compete and terrified them so much that one of them even refuses to speak directly to others anymore, only using Fleet as a means of communication. He already was verbally abusive, and it’s even implied that he might turn physical if Fleet loses the Games against Claudette. They give him (Nars) a backstory, but no amount of tragic past can save an abuser from being redeemable. Nars’ backstory is that he competed against Kate in the Games when both were younger, has a father who might’ve also been abusive, and lost against Kate, which scarred him. At the end of Great Wolf Games, when Claudette and Fleet tie (of course they do, because having a conclusive race in plots like this is unheard of), he somehow gets forgiven and redeemed, despite the fact that he’s a fucking abuser. You cannot just let someone like that get away with it, especially with zero repercussions, like he has here. This guy should be in wolf jail or something. I don’t give a shit where, but don’t let him near his pups ever again. Just awful to have plots where abusers just get forgiven and have no punishment afterwards.
Conclusion? Great Golly this is by far the worst movie I’ve seen this year. The fact that I’ve seen it more than one already and came back after that makes me sick. Not like you need it, but let’s have a look at the final score anyways.
The lowest rated Movie Thoughts movie so far, hehe. Please, for the love of all things you hold dear, do not watch it. It’s really that fucking awful. Everything looks horrible, most things sound horrible, the plot is a mess, there’s dumb mistakes that could’ve easily been solved with just the slightest bit of effort, but we got this piece of fuck. Not a good movie in the slightest and the lowest in my 2019 Watchlist so far.
(Also, is no one going to talk about how having literally all alpha wolves gone on a hunting trip for a long time is a horrible idea? Any villain could attack the Western pack at any time and easily take over. King is still roaming free after Alpha and Omega 2, right? Right?!)
Something I forgot to mention in my Howl-iday Adventure review and still counts for this one, too, is the horrible sound design. It’s very bare and quiet at most times, and the sound effects used sometimes feel horribly dated and are of terrible quality. Just not like something that would be used in a movie released relatively recently. Please, Crest, just pay a bit more for better sound effects. You’re making a fool of yourselves with whatever this is supposed to be.
The animation is (I can’t believe I’m saying this) even worse than in the second movie. While there is less face-stretching, it’s still downright sucks, even for direct-to-DVD animation. The models also really don’t help here. Since this movie involves a lot of running and other actions (which the pup models simply cannot pull of correctly), it looks like utter garbage. Weird movements aside, when running, the pups also look like they’re either going way too fast for where they’re planting their little paws, or they (and other characters) look like they’re running on ice. It’s just utter garbage. Granted, the visuals (screenshots alone, not the animation) is very very slightly better than in Howl-iday Adventure (where everything looked like it had a kind of a misty blur on the screen), the rest of it is utter garbage and I recommend you don’t even subject yourself to this animation out of curiosity. It’s that horrible. There’s also still quite a few mistakes, one of which is actually really obvious (where the sky background changes for whatever fucking reason) and it’s just so lazy… I’m somewhat out of energy to describe my hatred for this animation and these models.
The voice acting was very meh. It’s just very basic and doesn’t convey too much emotion. I think Nars’ voice might’ve been pitched down at some points because it sounded somewhat off. Brent’s voice is an absolute pain to the ears, and also doesn’t make any sense. So far all bear cubs we’ve seen talked with a young child voice, but then there’s Brent who somehow has this deep, whiny grown-man voice. Fleet somehow has a young-adult sounding male voice…despite being the same age as Stinky and Runt (who have normal kid voices). It’s just trash. But Runt at least has a less annoying-sounding and high-pitched voice, so that’s a plus, I guess.
There’s also the weird plot hole where Humphrey explains that their pack doesn’t join the Games before they used to be for all kinds of animals, not just alpha wolves, but this is literally retconned within the span of a few minutes (actually, before Humphrey brings it up) by Fleet and his sister, who are already participating, and clearly state that the rules say that it doesn’t just have to be alpha wolves who can compete. Just … weird? Also, why would you call it the Great Wolf Games if it’s for all kinds of critters?
The music is still horribly recycled, and I’m starting to get damn sick of it already. One of the few things the first movie did have going for it was a pretty easy-on-the-ears soundtrack, but now even that is being ruined by the lack of original soundtracks. When you hear the same pieces of music being re-used again and again without any variation, it gets old really damn fast. Is it really too much for them to hire a new composer to at least add one or two new soundtracks to the mix to distract from this blatant cheapskate recycling?
There’s also another inconsistency where, without having made any amends with the Western pack after the events of the previous movie, King is just sitting in plain sight watching the Games. It’s never even addressed. It would’ve taken hardly any effort to simply swap out his model for another of the dozen generic background wolves they have and make this make sense? Someone had to have consciously put him there, and someone else left him there during quality control (bold of me to assume this piece of shit had any quality control).
Finally I’d also like to address the fact that Nars, the villain/antagonist of this movie, got away with his shit without comeuppance. He’s an piece of crap abusive father who forced his children to compete and terrified them so much that one of them even refuses to speak directly to others anymore, only using Fleet as a means of communication. He already was verbally abusive, and it’s even implied that he might turn physical if Fleet loses the Games against Claudette. They give him (Nars) a backstory, but no amount of tragic past can save an abuser from being redeemable. Nars’ backstory is that he competed against Kate in the Games when both were younger, has a father who might’ve also been abusive, and lost against Kate, which scarred him. At the end of Great Wolf Games, when Claudette and Fleet tie (of course they do, because having a conclusive race in plots like this is unheard of), he somehow gets forgiven and redeemed, despite the fact that he’s a fucking abuser. You cannot just let someone like that get away with it, especially with zero repercussions, like he has here. This guy should be in wolf jail or something. I don’t give a shit where, but don’t let him near his pups ever again. Just awful to have plots where abusers just get forgiven and have no punishment afterwards.
Conclusion? Great Golly this is by far the worst movie I’ve seen this year. The fact that I’ve seen it more than one already and came back after that makes me sick. Not like you need it, but let’s have a look at the final score anyways.
The lowest rated Movie Thoughts movie so far, hehe. Please, for the love of all things you hold dear, do not watch it. It’s really that fucking awful. Everything looks horrible, most things sound horrible, the plot is a mess, there’s dumb mistakes that could’ve easily been solved with just the slightest bit of effort, but we got this piece of fuck. Not a good movie in the slightest and the lowest in my 2019 Watchlist so far.
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