Writer: Jhonen Vasquez
Directors: Hae Young Jung, Young Kyun Park, Jhonen Vasquez
Studio: Nickelodeon Animation Studio, Maven Animation Studio
Watched on: 12/12/2020
Review contains ***SPOILERS*** for Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus
Ratings:
What a pleasant surprise. Went to watch this for some nostalgia and a bit of a laugh but it turned out to be way more fun than I'd anticipated. It's top quality in every department and so well considered throughout. I have no idea why this wasn't more of a hit.
The movie (short film?) starts strong, with a quick recap monologue set over a sick anime-style opening scene. That there is a masterstroke, right off the bat: it gets the viewer interested, explains the basic premise of the show but also makes it clear that this is years later, so distances this particular story from the main series. No need for you to go back and watch 27 episodes of Invader Zim - you're already in and it looks fantastic. (The sequence was also animated by Spencer Wan!)
The animation is very bloody good. Every pose, motion and expression has clearly had thought put into it. It's flash animation but from what I could tell, they didn't just have 1 rig for each character/face - when they wanted to exaggerate expressions (which was often), they redrew them and really pushed the boundaries, which worked amazingly well, without ever going off-style. Then obviously, there was a nice mini-love-letter to animation towards the end, with all the different animation styles being showcased as the 'alternate realities'. The best of the bunch was the genga/key animations, which still had timing charts and notes on them; really let the animators have their moment.
Action-y sequences were also great. They used simple but clever methods to make things feel quite dynamic, like the warped, stretched dimensions of the backgrounds. In addition to that, effects animation and the few CGI spaceships etc. all blended well with the style of the film.
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| Some of those simple tricks to make their flash animation feel really dynamic |
Maybe I'm just dumb but the story was actually good enough to keep me really entertained. Stuff fit together, made sense for all the different characters and even caught me out once. That's not to say it was perfect - there were definitely a fair few things that didn't need to be in there - but it was surprisingly good.
The directing was pretty great as well. Stuff only made sense for the characters because we had each of them showcased nice and plainly and they even managed to do it all in funny ways. The genuine lunacy of the show is still there too, which you have to give props for. I laughed a fair few times watching it and as mentioned, everything's really thoughtfully done. Lots of nice little details. All the animation goodness is of course encompassed in the direction as well, so lots of points for that. Side note - with the anime bit and the crazy, strong poses, I did get slight Jojo vibes from this. I wonder if it would be the same for the original.
So yeah, a nice surprise on a boring saturday. Would recommend.
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| A still from Spencer Wan's wicked opening scene. |
