The Rodfellows Movie

The Rodfellows Movie
If you thought The Rodfellows was bad, then wait until you see this poor excuse of a film.
Genre: Comedy Action Adventure Animation Directed By: Dan P. Lyons Darren A. Nichols Produced By: Dan P. Lyons Sam A. Webster Lamont Meeks Written By/Screenplay: Dan P. Lyons Alexander Mortensen Darren A. Nichols Based On: The Rodfellows by Dan P. Lyons Starring: Dan P. Lyons Alexander Mortensen Glidefan C. Mikkelson Matt Crowley Julianna DePallo Darren A. Nichols Almir Velovic Joshua Escobedo Distributed By: Fredbear Entertainment Group LMNB Films Release Date: November 25, 2020 Runtime: 117 minutes Country: United States United Kingdom Language: English

The Rodfellows Movie is a 2020 animated comedy action film based on the web series The Rodfellows created by Dan P. Lyons featuring characters from Alexander V.A. Mortensen's The Data Crew.

The film was supposed to have an edited remake under the title The Jungle Forest Movie using the updated visuals seen on season 9 of The Rodfellows, removing the stolen content and copyright infringement from the original, recasting voices for certain characters as well as inserting additional content. However, due to the controversy surrounding the producers (especially Darren Alexander Nichols), the remake has been cancelled.

Plot

The Rodfellows/Jungle Forest Gang's lives go upside down when Zander and Zayden, two chipmunk twins start a dangerous prank war with the Rodfellows/Jungle Forest Gang. It's up to the Jungle Forest Gang to stop them before everything gets worse.

Why It Had No Fun Anyway

1. The film's plot is too slow, and the pacing is also very sluggish, even for a film that's almost two hours long. We don't get to see any action until an hour into the film!
2. The film is literally chock-full of padding, with the original theatrical cut of the film being over 2 hours long. Thankfully, later releases and the DVD version have it cut down to 1:57:00
3. The animation can go from being very good to being very sloppy, especially the shoddy lip-syncing.
   • Speaking of the animation, it feels more like an episode of the show rather than updating it for a more theatrical feel. This can be evidenced by the lack of shadows, ray tracing, gradient effects (despite the poster having gradients with the buildings) and fluidity in the animation.
4. Some of the characters look way too inappropriate for a kid's film, such as Bunty Roo with her humongous belly along with Samantha with exposed breasts (yes, we mean it).
5. Speaking of the characters, they're bland, dumb, and unlikable.
6. Just like As Aventuras de Gui & Estopa, The characters are also very stereotyped and one-dimensional as well, but The Rodfellows did much worse than Gui & Estopa.
   • Bunty Roo is a stereotype of a southern Australian.
   • Kody is a stereotypical overweight glutton that is obsessed with eating.
   • Finto is a Gary Stu and literally the creator's own self-insert. He could also be seen as a rip-off of Reader Rabbit.
   • Widenar is the stereotypical smart child in personality while the only defining trait of Jimmy is his use of technology.
   • Alex's self-insert is the guy that rages a lot. You can read more about himself in real life in the “Controversy” section of this page.
7. It also uses copyrighted characters and references without legal permission such as Nature Cat appearing in one scene, Sylvester the Cat in another, and even a Fortnite reference using audio from the game itself (Even though it may or may not be copyrighted, it still counts).
   • Jimmy and especially Widenar in particular are literal rip-offs of PaRappa the Rapper.
8. The voice acting is abysmal with some lines being recorded in good quality and some recorded from poor quality microphones.
9. It can be hard to hear what some of the characters are saying, especially Finto.
   • Dan in particular is a horrible voice actor, his voice is too monotone and doesn't have much variation to the point someone mistook his voice for a robot/text-to-speech's.
10. What's even worse is that the three of the film's crew members (Dan P. Lyons (who is the creator of the original show), Darren A. Nichols, and Alex V.A. Mortensen) were discovered to have committed acts of pedophilia, grooming, homophobia, bigotry, bullying, abuse, harassment and racism. More information will be in the "Controversy" section which can be read here on the article covering the show before the movie is based.
11. As a follow-up to WIS#10, there was originally going to be a sex scene for a 15-year-old crew member working on the movie, which actually is very disgusting and pedophilic to think of. But it was thankfully scrapped.
12. The ending is stupid, lazily written, and “ops” for an easy Deus Ex Machina for the ending, which is basically everyone's self-inserts using overpowered techniques and weapons to defeat Zander and Zayden. The attacks include Snickers Bars to calm them down and Alex's self-insert doing a Gurren Lagann reference involving him drilling some random background character, flinging them into the air and then causing a huge explosion, not only that, but the film also ends with a dance party scene, which in of itself, is lazy.
13. Due to the film's slow pace, some scenes take too long to finish, such as the medal scene near the end of the film. It is HIGHLY recommended to watch the film at 1.25x speed for how slow it is.
14. It overuses copyrighted songs without permission, such as Baby by Pitbull in the dance party scene at the end and Aquarella by Alain Morisod in Hashbrown's dream sequence.
15. The DVD for the movie is also horrible as not only is it false advertising (It teased the thankfully cancelled short "Life of Danny Cat") it is a vanilla DVD with no subtitles, and only intros for The Rodfellows: Back Again and Comix Minis.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The animation can look somewhat passable sometimes and has improved from previous series.
2. The aforementioned sloppy-at-times animation and abysmal voice acting can make for unintentional comedy. It's even better if you watch it with friends.
3. The soundtrack, despite the majority of the songs being stolen, is pretty decent.

Reception

This film received mixed-to-underwhelmingly negative reviews from audiences for its animation, plot, voice acting, rather slow pacing, and scriptwriting. Most of the people who watched and hated the film claimed that it makes The Emoji Movie look like an Oscar winner in comparison. It currently holds a 1.9 out of 10 on IMDB.

Brony T. Pony of BTP Enterprises gave an extremely negative review of the film, calling it "vile, disgusting, evil, demonic, putrid, and just plain terrible". Nakiebra "Keebie" Palmer (Mr. 64) found this film very nonsensical as the majority of the film didn't include sound effects or even music to denote the tone of each character.

Shortly after the film's release, lots of drama circulated to the "employees" of Harmonic Entertainment and the fans who watched the movie. Many people who previously worked with Harmonic, especially its own "employees" and fans, cited The Rodfellows Movie as "the film that is responsible for Harmonic's shutdown.". In 2021, an ongoing controversy with its creators started around, in which you can read the details above this section.

Controversy

To read the controversy on Dan Paul Lyons as well as the other LMN pioneers, please visit: The Jungle Forest Show.

DVD

https://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00ZWFJ1G&pp=1

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