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Reviews
CarGo (2017)
Bound for Clunker Island
Well, this was a bit more interesting than I thought it would be. Not that it's saying much.
Story: Cargo was made to capitalize on the release of Cars 3, since they were both released in 2017 and have similar concepts; car crashes and even a demolition derby thrown in there. I'm not surprised; Asylum's films are very often derivative of others. What isn't similar is just how awkward Cargo can be. A lot of the dialogue consists of bad car puns, some pop culture references, and some lines sound like weird innuendos. One aspect of the story that I want to point out is Clunker Island. When cars are too damaged, they are sent to said island to be dismantled and reused. Imagine if people were forced to essentially become organ donors when they are at retirement age. And this isn't a little throwaway. Instead, it's a major plot element when the main character's father gets wrecked and sent there. I suppose that concept would make for an intriguing horror movie. But are also some antics that serve as little more than filler. They don't advance the plot, like the "spirit of the forest" scene that only exists for comic relief. Despite the dark undertones of Clunker Island, most of the plot is uninteresting, derivative and somewhat embarassing. 2/5
Animation: Whenever Asylum does an animated film, there always seems to be a problem. It's not the worst animation in the world, but it's very low-tier, especially for 2017. Even the Cars movies have expressive animation, which I may get to in a different review. But the only thing expressive about the animation in Cargo is how much it wants to die. Textures glitch out, the nonexistent lip syncing makes anime English dubs look accurate, and while they sometimes implement some decent facial expressions, they are still unable to animate expressive movement. Again, at least the Pixar movies can have their characters move like characters. The closest we have here is the fact that the characters' whole bodies move along with their mouths. The backgrounds probably look even more ugly than the characters. Most of the city of Cargo has less texture than a PS1 game, any nature consists of what look like tree models from the Unity Asset Store or an out of place jpeg, and Clunker Island itself looks like it's made of nothing but badly textured rocks. For 2017, this looks extremely cheap, especially when we already got Zootpia the previous year. 1/5
Characters: Getting this aspect out of the way, many of the characters' names consist of car puns, adding to just how awkward it is. Comparing this to Cars one more time, at least the character names in the Pixar movie are natural. This cast consists of Danny Carbuncle, a rebellious and naive car who has a caring side; there's Cabagail, who serves as a typical love interest and actually seems pretty pointless; Vin Diesel, (Haha, get it??) who's the epitome of peer pressure; and Arthur Carbuncle, the Uncle Ben type character who serves as a mentor to his son. While some characters are a bit more complex, others are one note automobiles, especially the side car-acters. If there is one interesting aspect, it's that the voice acting is surprisingly top notch for a mockbuster. The main character is played by the same man as Sora from the Kingdom Hearts games, and he's joined by Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Jay from Jay and Silent Bob, Santa Claus, and even Hermes Conrad! Despite the awkward scripts, they do their best to sound pleasant and expressive. In one scene, one of the side characters panic upon being told they're going to Clunker Island, and one can really hear the fear in their voice. Sadly, though, not even formidable voice acting can save these characters from being hit with the lame pipe. 2/5
Songs: What's really confusing about this film is the inclusion of musical numbers. I can't recall Cars ever having an original song with lyrics in its soundtrack, so maybe the Asylum was trying to offer something unique, at least? The songs themselves range from awkward to actually kind of catchy with some awkward lines. The songs in the latter category are the intro song and What You Do, which at least have some Broadway level music. There's also Go where The Fun is, played by Jason Mewes, because of course it is. The rest of the songs are baffling, and they may consist of lines like "I wanna begin where you end" or just sound generic. "Where the Autos are" also sounds sounds similar to "Part of Your World" from Little Mermaid. I will give them credit for being original with some of them, at least, but more often than not, they're more flat than a loose hubcap. 2/5
At the end of the day, Cargo is yet another film from Asylum's roster that tried to appeal to fans of an official IP, despite being potentially worse than a Video Brinquedo film. The only aspects that save it from being that bad are the voice acting and a couple catchy tunes. But with the garbage animation and unfocused story, what we have is collection of cars bound for the junkyard of obscurity, coming in at 2 unsettling chop shops out of 5.