Gauri Ram Mohan

A very boring predictable movie. At the beginning I was actually intrigued what they were going to do with the father-son dynamic but it all felt extremely one dimensional. Literally every single character can be explained using two defining traits. Making the characters feel real and relatable is something the movie tries very hard to do but fails to achieve. Something that Disney has been usually good at doing. This time they tried too hard to make everyone "nice" and perfect that nobody feels like a person. Just caricatures. There's also way too many people in the expedition that was unnecessary. I barely remember anyone. I hate that they had a whole new beautiful world to explore and the movie does nothing to have us go through the excitement of meeting all the different creatures. Having characters that have literally never stepped foot out of their small mountain town only be weirded out sometimes by the fantastic nature of the new world. They could have had a "cloudy with a chance of meatballs 2" moment by introducing us to each and every creature and making them likeable and interesting but they only do that for about 2 minutes and then its back to the same old tiring father-son battle. Also a rather specific issue I had was this one scene where Searcher and Ethan try to explain that they saw a giant monster when they went out of the mountain and the rest of the explorers scoff as if that makes no sense. WHEN THEY HAVE LITERALLY BEEN SURROUNDED BY BIG "MONSTERS" THE MOMENT THEY STEPPED FOOT INSIDE THIS PLACE!! Why wouldn't they believe them? Makes no sense. Another annoying scene was when Ethan explains that Pando was the thing that was killing the giant mountain thing but we had no reason to know this. For a movie made for kids, they should've showed it a bit more rather than have the characters just explain the whole thing to us. Have the audience find it out on their own and THEN have the characters find out the climax as that makes for more of a satisfying ending. Always SHOW not TELL!! Basic story-telling tip. The only thing that made this movie refreshing was the inclusiveness and the diversity. I appreciate the writers and director trying so hard to do that but that was the only reason which made the movie watchable for me. It was also visually stunning but also plain. IDK how they managed to do that. Could've done a lot better for the creatures. The humour and dialogue also falls very flat. I laughed ONE time.