Mortal Engines Review

Illumination brings us their first live-action/animated movie since Hop. They wisely decided to not include themselves in the logo showcase, due to their reputation of making films that bring the death of cinema. We do have proof of their involvement however, as they manage to shove their dern Minions in our faces not even 10 minutes into this film.

At least the animation looks phenomenal for once, as it should, considering that this is Illumination's first film with a budget that exceeds $100 million. Or at least I think it is? I don't give enough of a crap about Illumination to look it up. Anyway, I can say that at least it looks good and we only briefly have to see those yellow turd burglars. Of course, the animation is the only good part of the movie, because it is simply impossible to take this ULTRA GRITTY and over-the-top YA movie seriously.

Apparently, it's not enough for it to be about city-cars. It's gotta be about city-cars and spaceships and politics and robot-zombie-people who want to clone human girls and turn them into robot-zombie-people. It's impossible to understand what the heck is going on most of the time because of poor editing, over-abundance of characters, and overall ineptitude.

It's still hard to believe they spent $100 million on the DOA box-office poison. Imagine what good could be done with $100 million dollars. Now stop imagining that, because that $100 mil was spent on the Mortal Engines.

Of course the dialogue is awful. There's a line in the film where Twinkies are called "the food of the ancients". Oh yeah, and it's suspicious that they chose a Twinkie as the focal point for a conversation. Because what does a Twinkie look like if you put goggles on it? That's right: Illumination confirmed.

For some reason, Illumination thought they could make a profit from a $100 million production by having barely any recognizable actors. Like, I only recognized two actors: Hugo Weaving and Robert Sheehan. And I only recognized Sheehan because I happened to watch The Umbrella Academy (great show on Netflix) before this. Otherwise, I would have been clueless.

I'll give it this: it's so dumbfoundingly ridiculous that I did have fun watching this. I got quite a few laughs out of it. Of course, it was all unintentional comedy, because wow, this movie takes itself entirely too seriously.

SCORE:2/10

It's bad. It's crap. I don't know why they even bothered making this. There was never a hope for this being profitable.

And don't think for one second that I was lying about the Minions.