Bobbleheads: The Movie

Bobbleheads: The Movie is a 2020 American direct-to-video computer-animated movie directed by Kirk Wise (known for directing Beauty and the Beast), written by Karl Geurs and Tab Murphy, and produced by Lawrence Kasanoff (known for directing the infamous Foodfight!) and distributed by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. It is based on the Bobblehead novelty toys.

The film premiered on December 8, 2020 in the United States on DVD, and digital. It was released in 2021 everywhere else only via digital.

Plot

When threats to their home arise, a group of misfit Bobblehead toys must band together to defend their collector's house when greedy relatives barge in to steal from his prized collection.

Why This Film Does Not Bobble At All

1. The movie overall feels too similar to Toy Story, in terms of its characters, settings, and rules within its universe, with the bobbles coming alive and interacting inside the house when the humans are away and have to be in position once the humans come back, almost like a word by word copy of the aforementioned movie.
2. Very poor and dated CGI that looks as revolutionary as a 2006 film more than a film released in the new decade. Most of the character designs look like they came from a low-budget film by Splash Entertainment]] or Xing Xing Digital.

• • To add insult to the injury, the movie was animated by Threshold Entertainment, the same company behind the infamous Foodfight!.

1. A lot of things the bobbleheads say like “bobble high council” or “bobble creed” or “prototype” is only said by the characters, and does not show up in the movie anywhere. Don’t the writers know what Show Don’t Tell means? Because you need to show what those things are instead of just telling it to the audience.
2. Every character except for Earl and Deuce (to an extent) is either unlikable or irrelevant to the story. You know they're badly written when even the bobbleheads themselves disagree with each other.

• • Ikioi is really annoying, aggressive, and rude to her peers throughout the movie's runtime. She's also an offensive Japanese stereotype.
  • Purbles is the most unlikable out of the cast, as he is selfish and irritating, and treats the others around him like inferiors.
  • Kelani is the blandest character out of them all since she doesn't have that much of a personality.
  • Deuce is not much more than the generic underdog we see in many other animated movies and only serves as a love interest for Kelani.
  • Binky, the main antagonist, is irredeemably greedy, and stupid, to the point she ditched her husband to steal Purbles and make fakes of him to sell them for money.
  • Bobble Cher does absolutely nothing in this movie besides compliment the main characters. You can easily remove her from the movie and nothing would've changed.

1. False Advertising: Bobble Cher herself is heavily marketed in the trailers and posters of this movie, yet she only appears for one scene in the movie, and a second time during the credits scene.
2. Every pop-culture reference makes zero sense to the story.The bobblehead jokes. Whether consisting of the characters bobbling their heads, or making bobblehead puns, this is easily THE most annoying part of the entire movie. In fact, the bobbling gag is in almost every scene in the movie, which gets old really fast. In fact, they beat that joke to the ground so hard, that some extra frames do nothing other than show the heads bobbling.
3. There’s a scene in the movie where Ikioi uses an aluminum soda can inside a moving microwave as a projectile once the microwave door is open. Doing this in real life can not only cause a real fire, but it can teach a bad lesson to kids.
4. The music is rather mediocre.
5. Some scenes are overly drawn for no reason other than to make the film hit around the 80-minute mark, with the biggest example being the part where the bobbles move around the house but have to avoid being seen by Binky and Earl, and this scene goes on for 20 minutes, which is an 82-minute movie. It is way too long, and that takes up like 16.4% of the movie.
6. The original song "Born to Bobble" is terrible, consisting of heavy use of autotune, nonsensical lyrics, and an awful end-credits dance number to go along with it.
7. Very predictable and cliched plot; in fact, the movie seems to have next to no stakes at all, outside of the moment where Binky and Earl go into the house.
8. It lacks the proper charm that both Toy Story and The Lego Movie had, making it feel more like The Emoji Movie given the low amount of charm it has.

Redeeming Qualities That Do Bobble

• The voice acting is passable.
• There are two likable characters:
  • Deuce; while forgettable, he is the most tolerable and likable bobblehead in the entire movie.
  • Earl is easy without a doubt, the best character in the entire movie. Not only is his goofy moments entertaining, we learn that the entire time, but he is also trying to make amends with his brother and apologizes for stealing his brother's bobblehead collection 15 years ago, and succeeds.

1. A heartfelt moment where Earl and his brother make up and become friends again at the end of the movie.
2. The character development is okay, compared to several other movies where this is non-existent.

Reception

Bobbleheads: The Movie received enormously negative reviews from critics, audiences, and longtime Universal Pictures fans. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an audience score of 22% from 5 user reviews and 3 critic reviews. IMDb gave it a 2.6/10 out of 20 user reviews.