Comments on: Save A Dollar Disappoint A Kid

Save A Dollar Disappoint A Kid

c0nsumer — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:05:31 -0800

Did you know that the distributor of Bill Plympton classics such as The Tune, Guard Dog and Guide Dog, and Plymptoons also do full-length CGI animations? Presenting Branscome International, LLC, your source for unique animations

...such as:

· Ratatoing (Trailer: WMV · YouTube)

· The Little Cars (Trailer: WMV · YouTube)

· Gladiformers (Trailer: WMV · YouTube)

· Little Bee (Trailer: WMV

Available at fine online retailers and your local supermarket.

By: Uther Bentrazor

Uther Bentrazor — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:17:15 -0800

Seriously?

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:22:38 -0800

Some of those seem oddly familiar. What, no "Game Story" or "The Awesomes"?

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:24:12 -0800

Wow. These are just tremendously bad. If these were less bad, I'd be inclined to complain, but, no: these are sufficiently awful.

By: mumkin

mumkin — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:24:43 -0800

Wow. I was afraid you were posting some PlymptonBlue, but that's some spectacularly terrible knocking-off highlighted here. Well done, Branscome International! Spot on title, too: how awfully sad would it be to unwrap a copy of Ratatoing on Christmas morning?

By: maryh

maryh — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:28:26 -0800

Is that Borat doing the voiceover for The Little Cars?

By: itchylick

itchylick — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:39:11 -0800

W.T.F. How does something like Ratatoing make them money? Who buys that? Granted, it probably cost less than $300 to produce.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:51:33 -0800

God those are horrid. The trailer for "Ratatoing" looked like a student art project. Are they really trying to fool people into buying these things, thinking their getting pixar stuff?

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:52:04 -0800

I smell a tax write-off.

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:53:19 -0800

I imagine they sell to the old and bewildered buying 'that rat movie' for their grand-kids. I like how the rats suddenly start adventuring in 'white-out' and the Little Cars world outside of the race track is basically flat-green to the horizon. But Plympton is like this semi-genius. May be it's all some sort of meta-joke. Or not.

By: dansdata

dansdata — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 11:46:47 -0800

It's good to see that the Carmageddon II engine is still getting work. But these guys have a long way to go before they can match live-action "Mockbuster" specialists The Asylum.

By: Down10

Down10 — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 11:52:13 -0800

See, I knew there was this whole after-market cash-in of direct-to-DVD imitations of currently released movies (see "Snakes on a Train"), but I really hadn't seen trailers for them, much less the animated variety. Aren't these just the most crappy, artless and pathetic productions imaginable? Yet these studios keep making them, because I guess there are enough senior citizens with cataracts in Walgreens to buy them.

By: jbickers

jbickers — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:39:24 -0800

My local Kroger had about 100 copies of "Ratatoing" on one of those wire shelves the week that "Ratatouie" came out. I seriously considered dropping the necessary $5 on one, just for the humor value. But thought better of it.

By: krinklyfig

krinklyfig — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 19:03:53 -0800

jbickers writes "My local Kroger had about 100 copies of 'Ratatoing' on one of those wire shelves the week that 'Ratatouie' came out. I seriously considered dropping the necessary $5 on one, just for the humor value. But thought better of it." That brings up an interesting point. There are always knock offs whenever there's a successful film, especially in kids genres. But I seldom see any this blatant and questionable. The titles are meant to confuse people, not remind them of some other successful version of the idea, which is what most legitimate knock offs try to do. This is more akin to dealing in counterfeit knock-offs of brand names, like you see in the fashion world. As a fan and sometimes collector of b-movies, I'd be very tempted to try and pick up a few of these, just because it's such a strange sort of market they're trying to work here. It's not just crap or second rate entertainment. It's deceitful to begin with. But, yeah, Plympton. Is this a Kaufman-esque stunt? Well, if they're selling them at the bargain bin at Kroger's in time to compete directly with the release of the movie they're trying to rip off, there's probably not anything that clever behind it. Surprisingly enough, over the last year I've found Dr. Strangelove, Shaun of the Dead, SLC Punk, a couple old Pink Panther movies and The Iron Giant at the Smith's impulse movie display. Over time, I picked them all up at $10 each. None of them were knockoffs, but they weren't in the dollar bin, either.

By: Dr-Baa

Dr-Baa — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 14:13:41 -0800

I think you guys are misunderstanding the Plympton link. The distributor who... err... distributes Plympton's cartoons also distributes this other junk. Plympton himself has nothing to do with them. I'm going to go get a thesaurus now.

By: Dr-Baa

Dr-Baa — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 14:18:34 -0800

In other news HOLY CRAP ~~GATCHAMAN~~ BATTLE OF THE PLANETS

By: alexei

alexei — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 03:36:35 -0800

Hah-- the 'gladmorphers' trailer avoids showing any transformation sequences. Presumably because they'd, you know, actually take effort. The anime star wars-knockoff did not seem spectacularly awful... There, I said it.

By: zoogleplex

zoogleplex — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:29:24 -0800

Wow! Actual film that uses Hash Animator!