- Released: March 9 2016
- Directed by: Andrey Galat, Maksim Volkov
- Running time: 1 h 25 min
- Rating 1.5/5
Synopsis
A wolf named Gray is accidentally turned into a sheep and must find a way to make peace between both species.
My Thoughts
Okay so let’s get this elephant out of the room: the character designs. I know I’ve said the Alpha and Omega ones are bad but…hoo boy. These wolves hardly look like wolves anymore. The males are at least a slight tiny tad closer, but the females just look like your generic female wolf fursona. They have human hair for some reason (which the males don’t) and all have nearly the same body/face type, making them hard to distinguish. It’s also kind obnoxious how all males come in great variation of shapes and sizes, and the females just look like the same model re-used with only slight alterations. The only males who are close to resembling are one another are the main villain (I think his name was Ragear) and the old pack leader literally share the same model with only slight variations, and that being less than the females. The she-wolves at least got unique hair styles and sometimes colors…these two are literally the same, except for Ragear having a more wild fur and a very tiny piece of one ear missing. The rest is the excact same, and he does share scenes with the pack leader, so it’s very distracting to see two wolves that look nearly identical like that. I can get it if it were a background character, but these are the chief wolf and main villain… The sheep look kinda eh. Sometimes too human, which gets a very uncanny valley vibe. But at least (not speaking for all of them, but the majority) they are closer to resembling their source animal than the wolves most of the time. The animals also walk on their hind legs, and their anatomy is suited to that, too. But then there’s scenes where they run on all fours and it just looks very off. Can’t we like just…stick to one? It just looks weird otherwise (also the case in Alpha and Omega and Roadside Romeo).
Sorry for my huge ramble on the character designs there, but I just had to get it out. I usually don’t have that much to say about it but…here I do. Now onto the rest:
The plot was very generic. Really, you could see each beat coming from a mile away. Of course the old leader is going to be killed by the main villain so he can actually be influential as a villain and not just be there in the background. Of course Love Interest (I know she has a name, but really, that’s her entire personality) is going to get back together and marry Gray. Of course he will make it up with his best friend sheep. Of course he will transform back into a wolf. Of course the sheep and wolves will make peace in some way at the end. It’s about as predictable as you can get.
The visuals were all right. It’s from Wizart, the same people who are behind the Snow Queen movies if I’m not mistaken. The animation is just kinda standard. The textures do look nice, I must say. The backgrounds were just generic forests and meadows. Not much noteworthy going on visually aside from the character designs.
The characters were very bare bones, too. Gray is just your generic fun-loving protagonist who of course becomes leader by the end, matures and does the right thing. Love Interest is…Love Interest. Ragear is villain. He do evil stuff. That’s all there is to him. A motivation? Look elsewhere. There’s more characters but I honestly forgot the names of nearly all of them because they’re so unmemorable. I guess there was Gray’s best sheep friend, but he stood out in the worst way. The “annoying and won’t shut the hell up”-way. Yeah.
The voice acting was all right but again, nothing special. I guess they got some decent voices in there but it was pretty bland. That’s really a recurring theme with this movie. Bland.
So yeah, this was definitely a movie. That’s really all I can say. I don’t feel like I’ve gained anything from watching it. It’s so boring and generic that I really couldn’t give less of a fuck about it. So, for sheer blandness and giving me actually really not much to talk about other than the character designs this movie gets…
If I had to pick between this one and Alpha and Omega, which I gave the exact same review score here and on Letterboxd, believe it or not, I’d pick Alpha and Omega to revisit. As fucking awful as that movie is, at least I have more to say about it and I do have some kind of really weird nostalgia for it, as back in my wolfaboo phase it really was my favorite movie (yes, I really was that blind. Protect me). This movie just gave me really nothing to work with? The other Wizart films I’ve seen so far, while being bad, still at least gave me just a little more…anything. This movie is just a generic blur of nothing with furry bait mixed in. Skip this one. Apparently there’s a sequel coming and I’m NOT looking forward to that.
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