Moshi Monsters: The Movie
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 This is a monster of a movie and not a very good one.
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Moshi Monsters: The Movie is a 2013 British animated movie based on the now-defunct popular British online game Moshi Monsters developed by Mind Candy (who was part of the production of this movie). Distributed by Universal Pictures in the UK and animated by Spider Eye Productions, an animation studio in Cornwall, this film was released in UK/Ireland cinemas on December 20, 2013, and Australia on February 20, 2014 and received mostly mixed to negative reviews.
Plot
When filming a documentary about Monstro City, Katsuma finds out an important egg is stolen by Dr. Strangeglove who is using it for malicious purposes, so it’s up to Katsuma and Poppet and the rest of the other Moshi Monsters to retrieve the egg in a race against time.
Why It's A Monstrosity
- Predictably bland storyline, which is nothing but a generic "race against time" movie with nothing new to the genre.
- It was clearly made for Moshi Monsters fans, and it shows. Since it downright refuses to explain to the world how it works, such as refusing to explain what the Moshi Monsters are, what the Moshlings are, and other things, this would confuse people outside the UK since the game wasn’t that popular outside the UK around the film’s release, and especially now that the original game no longer exists due to the game's closure in 2019.
- Cheap animation that was clearly made with the least amount of resistance line. Almost all of the character movement is so stiff and awkward looking that it is baffling how this got released in cinemas instead of a DVD release, this movie tries to replicate the Flash animation from the online game, but it manages to poorly replicate the fluid animation of the website since the website was suited for smooth Flash animation since it was built off of Flash, but in this movie, it was poorly replicated mostly due to the lack of smoothness in it, and that Flash animation isn’t really suited for a theatrical film.
- There are a few CGI/cel-shaded shots to give the movie more theatrical vibes, but they rarely appear in the movie to worth justifying it being released in cinemas. The shots themselves are poorly made and still look cheap like the actual 2D animation already used.
- Overly saturated color palette, which every single scene using overly bright rainbow colors that make the film more garish and ugly than before, with Jambareeqi stating in his review that it feels like the animators were brainwashed into thinking the colors were the only rainbow.
- It uses the same structure over and over again, which gets repetitive very quickly since it doesn’t change once in the film. The structure goes like the monsters are tasked to get an item, a musical number comes out, the item gets retrieved, then Strangeglove gives a video monologue talking about the next item, and that’s how all of the scenes are played out, with no new additions.
- The characters aren't any better:
- Katsuma is a downright insufferable protagonist with no redeeming qualities about himself. He’s written as a narcissistic show-off who only cares about himself and attention than anyone, in fact, the main reason he wanted to be on the documentary was to show off his fighting skills, he also has next to no remorse for anyone around him.
- A sign of him showing no remorse is when he has the moment where he realizes how much of a jerk he was. Not only does the moment literally come out of nowhere, but it also doesn’t want to make you feel sorry for Katsuma, as it comes up in the story and is never mentioned again.
- Speaking of the other characters, the other Moshi Monsters except for Poppet serves little purpose to the story and are largely forgettable, as they have a few pieces of dialogue and barely contribute to the film outside of tagging along with Katsuma and Poppet since they are also part of the main characters on the website.
- Katsuma is a downright insufferable protagonist with no redeeming qualities about himself. He’s written as a narcissistic show-off who only cares about himself and attention than anyone, in fact, the main reason he wanted to be on the documentary was to show off his fighting skills, he also has next to no remorse for anyone around him.
- Sub-par voice acting, with most of the actors being poorly directed at times.
- Katsuma’s voice is annoying for the most part, which makes him more of an obnoxious character.
- Poppet’s voice (while better than Katsuma) tries to sound cute and sweet, but her voice comes off as kinda irritating, and bland as if the voice actor was forced legally to voice her.
- Dr. Strangeglove’s voice, while the best of the voice actors, can get overly hammy at times.
- While the musical numbers aren’t bad, most of the background music is lazy, as it is ripped straight for the website, which feels like the composer didn’t feel like making new background music, so decided to rip them from the website. The idea itself is poorly executed, as the background music ends up feeling cheap for a theatrical film and feel like they belong to a bad TV show (such as Peppa Pig).
- It tends to feel like a blatant advertisement for the game itself, since the plot is so clearly lazily-written as an attempt to sell more toys and since the game itself was extremely popular back then, it was obvious that the filmmakers wanted to cash-in onto it's success, and some parts of the movie are only in the film to prompt the game and the only reason why this movie exists in the first place is to sell more toys and profit off of the game's popularity. In other words, the film was purely made for the sake of making more money.
- This obviously backfired though since the film was a box office bomb and negatively affected the popularity of the game itself, and since Moshi Monsters nowadays is mostly a pretty obscure online game that not many people in the video game community remember that well, it makes the film come off as outdated and irrelevant for the most part and puts a negative light on both the game and the movie itself.
- A few things/characters come up but serve little purpose to the story. An example is that the world is operated by whistling for some reason, and Katsuma can’t whistle, which leads to a predictable "believe in yourself" moment, but Mr. Snoodle does the whole thing, making that moment feeling wasted, the reason why the world is operated by whistling is never explained in the movie and is almost completely forgotten about until the climax. Another example of characters being introduced but completely forgotten about is Sweetooth, where the scene with him is basically to sing a musical number, then a chase scene where the monsters get separated, and that’s really it.
- It's way too short in length, only lasting a total of 81 minutes with rushed pacing that feels very inconsistent and as no build-up nor character growth to give the movie some charm to it, and only makes the plot feel more half-baked and underutilized overall as the game itself didn't even have a story at all since it was more of a Pokémon clone that had a very similar gimmick with it's breedable monsters considering that it was meant to be an MMO for kids, thus it results in the movie trying to come up with a plot with multiple failed attempts, resulting in the movie feeling unfinished as a result.
- The movie has an extremely childish tone with annoying dialogue and extremely dumbed-down material that was meant to appeal to children aged around 2-7 and that's it, and it tends to feel like a terrible Disney Junior movie at times for it's sickeningly atmosphere and being so colorful and bright that it could make a lot of adults and non-Moshi Monsters fans cringe at times, which is a problem with this movie as it's very similar to A Troll in Central Park (a movie infamous for how sickeningly sweet and colorful it is and it's terrible relationship with it's audience and how it treats them like idiots with zero intelligence) in how it's structured and how it panders to young children with zero effort, thus making the movie have no timelessness to it and instead feel like an outdated cash-grab made to cash-in on the success of the game itself.
- It steals numerous elements from other animated films, such as Surf's Up (the documentary-like style), Megamind (Dr. Strangeglove having the same character essence as Megamind does), Ice Age (the adventure aspect of the film is very similar to the aforementioned film), Aladdin (the egg plot is essentially the same as the third act of the aforementioned film where Aladdin had to get the lamp back in a race against time, with Moshi Monsters: The Movie doing the exact same thing with the entirety of it's runtime) and so many more. Thus, it makes the movie feel unoriginal and lazy for the most part and doesn't innovate at all in that field, making it like every other animated movie released during the mid-2010s with bad writing and generic stories with zero effort put into the actual films themselves, which thankfully isn't the case anymore and animated films seem to have a good reputation nowadays with great storytelling and beautiful animation in general.
- It was obvious though since it was only made as a cash-in with the game it's based on as stated in WIAM#9, thus this flaw more obvious with how the movie is structured and how bad the writing is in general.
- This movie possibly led Moshi Monsters to stop production, as Mind Candy stopped updating the website (not counting Egg Hunt and Moshi Twilight content) and new merch was discontinued the following year.
Redeeming Qualities
- Poppet is a tolerable character, despite being a bit generic, as she is actually likable and cares for people, unlike Katsuma.
- Some of the other characters can be tolerable too.
- Some of the musical numbers are actually catchy and kinda decent, such as the song for introducing Strangeglove more, with some passable lyrics, and a Sweetooth introduction, however the former was not created for the OST, and instead came from the Moshi Monsters YouTube channel.
- Dr. Strangeglove is an entertaining villain, not only because his voice actor gave so much charm to him and had lots of fun (even if he is a bit hammy at times), but also the dialogue with him, such as when Fishlips asks if he could press the button, Strangeglove responds with "Yes Fishlips, you can press the button. BUT YOU MAY NOT!".
- At least it does stay true to the game.
- It does tend to have some funny and humorous moments here or there that might delight some fans of the game itself, since Moshi Monsters is meant to be a kids game after all.
- Has some occasional fan-service from the games at times that could make fans of the game excited to see the film, despite being used as shameless advertising and are only in the film to prompt the game itself and sell more toys.
Reception
Moshi Monsters: The Movie received mixed to negative reviews from critics. Despite a Rotten Tomatoes score of 60% with an audience score of 78%. It received a 3.2/10 on IMDb and a 1.1/5 on a website called On the Music. The Telegraph gave the film a 3/5, stating that "The film was lulling and sweetly harmless; the franchise's 80 million global subscribers can't all be wrong."
Box Office
Moshi Monsters: The Movie opened with £472,742 in the UK box office and placed eighth at the box office, it would later make a total of £2,059,666 (roughly $2,807,041), which was considered a box office bomb. The film opened in Australia on February 20, 2014 for a limited release, and reached nineteenth with a gross of A$102,712.
Reviews
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