Today I’m going to review Youtube Reviewer LazerDude99 as he reviews  Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame mainly because they are at lot of problems with it. I’ll start with negatives and end with positives. (and just for the record, I know I’m not a perfect reviewer so take what I say with a grain of salt when I review reviews.)

 

LazerDude99 Hunchback of Notre Dame Disney

LazerDude99 Hunchback of Notre Dame Disney

My first problem is on the technical end. The Sound mixing is  not very good. His voice is too quiet while the film’s audio is too loud, the point of the review is to hear the review.   This could be a problem with compression or microphone. The visuals of the DVD is also not that crisp and washed out again this could be a problem with video compression.

 Painting of Esmeralda as she is being taking to the scaffolds with Sachette by Nicolas-Eustache Maurin

Painting of Esmeralda as she is being taking to the scaffolds with Sachette by Nicolas-Eustache Maurin

However my biggest problem with is review is the fact checking. He does admits that he didn’t know that story and got it wrong in the comments but if your going through the trouble of writing a review, recording it, ripping the DVD, editing the video taking 5 minutes to read wikipedia or just a summary  doesn’t seem like that big of a task. In the video he says that he thinks that Quasimodo kills Esmeralda in  jealous rage.  However he also didn’t know that Djali was original to Hugo or Clopin’s voice actor. Not knowing that Paul Kandel did Clopin’s voice won’t have been a problem if he hadn’t mention Kevin Kline voicing Phoebus. While mistakes are likely to happen just make sure that if you can Fact check, do it.

Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise

Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise

I also have problems with  the ascertain that he made about “Director losing his vision” . First there were two directors (Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise { Fact Checking). Now I can’t know what happened behind the scenes but I think they bought into that mindset that films are a collaborative process. Maybe it was too collaborative as there were 18 writers on Hunchback but it seem from the commentary that studio was behind the dark tones of the film and didn’t try to rain it in. (Now I’m making ascertain based on the commentary). I do know that they wanted to make Hunchback as mean to push CG animation and because they felt at it’s core that Hunchback had fairy tale archetypes.

 

Frollo singing Hellfire Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame picture image

Frollo singing Hellfire Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Old Heretic Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame picture image

The Old Heretic Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame

Hugo A Guy like you Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame picture image

Hugo A Guy like you Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another problem was the discussion of  the Tone. Hunchback does have a lot of tones. It’s humorous and dark But is that actually bad in a film to be multi-toned? NoIdo not think so. I’ve watch a tons film/tv series that are multi-tone. Take a Bollywood movie, one minute you can have crying the next dancing. The trick to a multi-toned  film is good transitions from one tone to next i.e flow which Hunchback does have. It’s not like Hellfire goes to the gargoyles’ annoying antics to someone being fatally wounded to a silly song. It has good flow thou I do wish the “child-friendly” stuff was toned (no pun intended), the kids would have been fine. I also think Phoebus’ humor and the Old Heretic help to bridge the gap between the dark elements and kid-friendly stuff. As Phoebus is sarcastic and the old heretic is a running gag that reflect Frollo’s insane control.  Also I would point as dark as people say the book is it does have a lot of funny moments.

 

LazerDude99's Barney/Die Hard joke

LazerDude99's Barney/Die Hard joke

 

Also the jokes he makes are not that funny (at least to me). They feel really forced. The clip of the  pumpkin dropping on the car was too long it should have ended on impact or after the screams but it  felt forced joke. The Hellfire as camp song joke was forced too. Maybe if he had gone over the top with it (Green Screen) or sang to it to “Kumbaya” (cliche camp song) it might have been better. The Barney/Die Hard joke might have been funny but I couldn’t tell because I couldn’t make out the picture (making it bigger didn’t help). Admittedly he did this review a year ago and this is the only one I’ve watched so he might have learned from mistakes and these negative at mute points and not really need the repeating.

Ok, positives and these are things I agree with.

Xed Gargoyles Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame image picture

Xed out Gargoyles Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Gargoyles, yeah he hates them too. Does any out there like them? I mean I’m sure they are some people but rarely do I ever see a defense for them. I’d be curious to hear from gargoyle supporters

 

The Old Heretic Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame picture image

The Old Heretic Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame

He likes the Old Heretic, he was may favorite gag in the film.

Frollo Hunchback of Notre Dame with Clopin Disney picture image

Frollo with Clopin Hunchback of Notre Dame Disney

 He praises Frollo and hellfire. Everyone seems to but in this case everyones right. Frollo and Hellfire are the highlight the movie. He also enjoyed Phoebus and Clopin, and I can’t argue with that. Phoebus maybe a little too pefect but at least he’s amusing and I liked Clopin a lot.

 

Quasimodo Hunchback of Notre Dame Disney picture image

Quasimodo's Reveal Hunchback of Notre Dame Disney

I do have to agree with him about Quasimodo is boring. Like Esmeralda, he is a little too perfect of a character. He’s not really flawed like he is in the book or in other adaptations.

LazerDude99's rating of Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame

LazerDude99's rating of Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame

Now I don’t watch many reviews on youtube but LazerDude 99 does seem to try to make a decent review of the movie that for the most part is well made. I mean video compression is a hard thing to master, camera/microphone can be expense. I just wished he had fact checked better, Quasimodo Killing Esmeralda is wrong on some many levels. And the jokes need to tighter and clearer because I feel that they fall flat. I suppose in the realm of the youtube reviewer his probably is good, I mean he did book effort into it and did back up his thoughts in an intelligent way.

Watch the Review for yourself by clicking  HERE

4 Thoughts on “A Review of a Review by LazerDude99

  1. LazerDude99 on 05/14/2012 at 8:39 pm said:

    don’t sell your self short you have a great eye for mistakes and tone even if you don’t have anything to do on cammera you could just put a image on the screen and talk about whatever you are reviewing you have a great eye for facts and things to critaize…

    • jess on 05/17/2012 at 4:34 pm said:

      Thank you that is nice of you to say. I dunno about doing voice-over videos, I think for now I’ll just stick to writing ^^

  2. LazerDude99 on 05/11/2012 at 2:17 pm said:

    well… I want to thank you for being so critial and not pulling your punches now I bet that you never thought that I wouldn’t have read this but I am glad I did and to tell you yeah you brought up a lot of good points I always regreated not making the barny joke more visable… but as for the humor and dark punt togeather yeah I wasn’t trying to say that no movie can do that i was just saying that I didn’t think the movie did it well. but you are 100% right about not checking the facts since I didn’t know anything of the story my self I should have looked things up on it or not talked about it at all.

    nice review thanks…

    • jess on 05/12/2012 at 8:10 pm said:

      Thank you for your comment ^^”. You’re right didn’t expect you to read this XD. I’m glad you’re cool enough to take my critique in good spirits ^_^. To tell you the truth I’m rather envious people who can do video reviews, I certainly don’t have it in me to do one.

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