User:Jaden628/sandbox/The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Golden Films)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is the 1996 Golden Films animated adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel of the same name.

Summary
The "story" is about the hunchback bell ringer of Notre Dame, Quasimodo, and a gypsy girl called Melody. Their troubles are caused by Jean Claude, an arrogant, greedy killjoy, who wants to stop Melody because he thinks she diminishes the taxes.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) This movie was made to cash in on Disney's version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which was released into theaters at the same time. It also can be seen as a cash-in to Disney’s "Beauty and the Beast", since Melody’s talking musical instruments feels like a rip-off of the talking household item staff in Disney’s version of that film.
 * 2) God awful and choppy animation, with overly-bright colors and strange and jerky movement.
 * 3) The lip-syncing is extremely bad beyond belief that at some points, they don't even bother moving the characters' mouths, especially in most of the scenes involving the laughing bats.
 * 4) Completely disloyal and an absolute disgrace to the source material. While Disney's version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame tones down most of the dark content of the original Victor Hugo novel and changes the original morbid ending to a happier one, it at least still retains some of the dark elements of the original source material. This film, however, is way too colorful, syrupy, and saccharine to the point that it is nothing like Victor Hugo's classic novel at all.
 * 5) *Perhaps the worst part of this is the fact that every single mature elements from Victor Hugo's classic novel and every single film adaptation of the story (including Disney's 1996 animated adaptation) are completely glossed over in favor of sugar-coated replacements.
 * 6) Terrible and poorly done character designs, especially Quasimodo who looks far too good-looking to even be considered "ugly" and also Jean Claude who looks like a Gaston knock-off.
 * 7) *Speaking of Quasimodo, his character design looks uncannily similar to a muscular hunchbacked version of Shaggy Rogers from Scooby-Doo.
 * 8) The characters barely act or portray anything as they did in the novel.
 * 9) The premise of singing, dancing and music being banned in France is obviously a rip-off/rehash of Footloose.
 * 10) Misleading title and poster: The film is called The Hunchback of Notre Dame (who’s aka Quasimodo) yet he‘s barely in this movie and serves little to no purpose whatsoever. In fact, the film centers more around Melody than Quasimodo.
 * 11) For a strange reason, several names have been changed in this film, like Esmerelda’s name is changed to Melody (possibly due to the creators wrongly assuming that the name Esmeralda belongs to Disney) and Claude Frollo’s name is changed to Jean Claude.
 * 12) Pierre is nothing like he is in the novel where he’s a poet that falls in love with Esmeralda; while here, he’s been reduced to Jean Claude’s goofy sidekick.
 * 13) Jean Claude is an extremely watered-down antagonist.
 * 14) Quasimodo and Melody's romantic chemistry, for the most part, is incredibly bland and forgettable, as their love story is quite rushed and cliché because they don't take their time to know each other and get married too soon; the two first met at the Notre Dame cathedral for one musical number and the latter spends the rest of the film looking for her mother and getting imprisoned and executed by Jean-Claude. The two meet again when Quasimodo saves Melody from execution and get married at the end of the film, even though that they've known each other for only one day.
 * 15) *Not helping is the fact that Quasimodo himself barely has any involvement in the story whatsoever and only plays a rather supporting role.
 * 16) Stiff and edgy voice acting.
 * 17) Forgettable and cringe-worthy songs.
 * 18) *The opening song "Welcome To Paris (Dance To The Music)" is basically a reworked version of Jacques Offenbach's song from Orpheus In The Underworld Can-Can (a.k.a. "Infernal Galop") with substitute lyrics.
 * 19) This film uses way too many cartoony stock sound effects (including Hanna-Barbera sound effects) and even uses them at inappropriate times.
 * 20) As with Golden Films' other animated mockbusters, the film tends to overuse way too much royalty-free classical music as its music scores and even uses them at inappropriate times.
 * 21) The film is so agonizingly happy all the time, to the point that it gets annoying, irritating and tiring.
 * 22) The characters have very disturbing movements and sometimes pause for a few seconds before doing anything.
 * 23) The characters are incredibly bland and empty-headed compared to the ones from the novel.
 * 24) Idiotic dialogue, especially the "Doing anything against the law is illegal" line.
 * 25) The anthropomorphic characters are all very annoying, especially the bats who laugh at literally EVERYTHING, even though not every line they say is a joke and not everything they see or hear is funny.
 * 26) *To add salt to the wound, the film barely even focuses on the main characters Quasimodo and Melody. Instead, it shows more of these anthropomorphic characters who are annoying and aren't interesting or well-developed either, such as how the film has a bad habit of constantly cutting from the lead characters to either the talking musical instruments, the laughing bats, or both, for no discernible reason other than for cheap jokes. Does that sound familiar?
 * 27) A very pointless, unfunny running gag of Jean Claude’s father being very overweight and always eating.
 * 28) Boring and pointless slapstick and one-liner humor that takes up an enormous amount of the film itself, leaving less time for the actual story involving Quasimodo, Melody and Jean-Claude and more time for pointless subplots involving the annoying anthropomorphic characters that barely have any impact on the entirety of the actual story and end up going absolutely nowhere, especially on all the scenes involving the laughing bats. Again, does that sound familiar?
 * 29) *Not helping is the film's rather short 45-minute runtime, the common minimum running time used for direct-to-video animated feature films in order to qualify as "feature-length", hence resulting the film's story and pacing to feel very rushed.
 * 30) Very lazy editing with heaps of noticeable errors, mostly involving continuity errors within scenes, as well as animation errors.
 * 31) *Because of the non-stop errors, the film tends to have out-of-nowhere jump cuts everywhere throughout the film which can be distracting, such as how the scenes frequently cut back-and-forth from night and day despite that said scenes are supposed to take place at either day or night and not both at the same time. A good example of such is how the scenes set outdoors at night suddenly cut to the scenes involving the laughing bats which is set during the day due to the non-stop recycled animation which wasn't even good in the first place.
 * 32) Constant use of recycled animations, such as the "dance circles", Melody dancing with the tambourine, and the scenes featuring the laughing bats.
 * 33) Numerous plot holes, like how can objects come to life around Melody.
 * 34) The film's logic makes absolute zero sense, even by the lowest of mockbuster standards, like how the film features talking household items with no explanation whatsoever on how they're able to come to life for no particular reason other than in order to copy Disney' s formula without even understanding why Disney's formula worked so well.
 * 35) Making Quasimodo and Jean Claude brothers in this film instead of father and son are just a dumb, unoriginal idea.
 * 36) Very little to no story development.
 * 37) Very random moments that are very stupid and unnecessary, such as a boy wearing modern-day clothes with an animal randomly running and jumping away.
 * 38) The "jump-the-shark" moment, where the film officially gets to flip it's middle finger to its source material, is when it's revealed that at the end of the movie Quasimodo becomes normal, with no explanation at all it just happens.
 * 39) *This ending where the hunchbacked Quasimodo suddenly loses his hunchback and magically becomes a handsome man is an incredibly stupid and idiotic ending, even by the lowest of lowest of mockbuster standards. Quasimodo sprouting angel wings on his back at the ending of UAV Corporation's The Secret of the Hunchback (another low-budget direct-to-video animated mockbuster of Disney's version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame produced and released on video at the same time) is a way less idiotic ending than this, and that's saying something.
 * 40) *Because of this ending, the film overall gives a bad message where physically disabled people are often viewed as nothing more than inferior and lesser beings or even complete monsters unless they got their disabilities removed from them for good, which can be extremely offensive towards people with disabilities, especially given that some disabilities are permanent and incurable (chronic) in real life.
 * 41) *Overall, the film tries too hard to utilize the standard "beauty on the inside" moral as established in Disney’s "Beauty and the Beast" but fails miserably due to this reason above.

The Only Redeeming Quality

 * 1) It's one of the very few adaptations that Quasimodo does get the lead girl in the end.

Videos
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