JDR: Revived and Exhilerating

JDR Revival
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by Daniel Martin

Dan's asked me awhile ago to give this a review, and I've been putting it off so that I could rewatch the movie before I came out with the review. It's 1:30AM PDT, and I've finally managed to get around to it.

JDR Revival is an action flick that boasts the animation and quirky humor as its main draw, and it is its great strength. Though thin on the plot line, JDR Revival manages to be an entertaining action movie throughout the majority of its forty-minute reign of the screen.

Story
The story of JDR involves 3 guys fighting evil stuff. That's as basic as it gets, and that's about as developed as it gets. JDR was nearly completely wiped out at the conclusion of the last movie, with only the D (of course Dan would let himself survive) remaining. D revival would be a boring movie, so the other ones find ways of coming back to life, such as appealing to a handmade God. One can only assume that the guy upstairs has done this before.
The villain is Boundless Ben. Why? Ummmmm... cause he is. This is a big plot hole. What the heck is wrong with Ben that he'd want to take over the world/kill JDR? We never find out. In fact, it seems to be so irrelevant to the show going on that Martin doesn't even try and explain it.
The fact that there's a villain that we have no reason to hate makes sticking with the movie to have a great plot fly out the window before it even starts. There doesn't seem to be any motivation whatsoever.
Thankfully, Martin manages to make JDR more than just a Pointless Action Movie. How? The villain can't be killed, and there has to be some sort of "weird, dodgy" way to kill him. It adds variety, and saves Revival from being a straight-out PAM, albiet narrowly.

Presentation
But it's FUN to watch!
I've heard tell that Martin doesn't use SceneED to get things done, and does it the old-fashioned way. It works in this movie, because all the action is that frenzied, motion-blurr sort of action that doesn't need razor-sharp panning or motion.
Martin's camera is slick and skillfull. I was going to say creative, but the slo-mo thing's been done before. Of note is that Martin's skills at implementing slo-mo and other camera effects are very good. Martin's camera is very well suited to an action movie, especially one that gets to go into space.
Martin does revert to a lot of standard angles, and some of the scenes do jump around from take to take, but that's sometimes unavoidable. Martin's animation is great fun to watch. There's a lot of energy in this movie, most of it coming from the camera. It doesn't look like the director got bored at the end, like some movies tend to do. Martin keeps the high energy level he reaches (takes a bit to get to) up until the credits.

Visuals
To go along with the camera are some very sound visuals. The composition of everything from space ships to... space ships are very good looking. There are some texture problems that we should notice. The big ones occur in some of the pans and zooms. There is a lot of texture flickering in these scenes. This is easy to ignore for most people, as it's a pretty common occurance in 3DMM, but it does tend to get intrusive at some points.
There are also some pretty sterile environments, such as hallways and generic rooms, but they're interspersed with places that really shine.
Some scenes are really composed great. Rory's rebirth includes some very slick and great to look at visuals, and there are other scenes as well, but you're better off watching for yourself.
Also of note are some great visual gags that Martin throws all over the place. Especially funny is the reappearance of Jeffrey, and Dan's hillarious reaction. There are also several little gags involving doors opening and such, and they're also funny.

Sound
I was bugged by some of the music. Whenever it came in, it was vey loud, to a point where I was often adjusting my speakers between scenes to keep the sound balanced. Overall, it wasn't bad. Some of the pieces went great with the scenes, but there were a few that didn't really click.
I think it was Goro who mentioned that JDR Revival contains the worst use of the Godzilla sound effect EVER, and I'd have to agree on that. There is a lot of use of the standard 3DMM sound library, but always in just the right places, with a lot of Martin's own sounds interspersed throughout the movie to keep things fresh and interesting.
The voices were also well done. Jon Barton comes off the best of the cast with his portreyal of Dan. Jon seemed very aware of the contexts of the line and his character as a whole. He fit with his part the best. Jaymond also comes through well in this one too. However, his lines were often very soft and, yes, Waumsley's voice does completely change halfway through the movie. The explaination seems to be written in the credits, where there was a break between the lines, and Jaymond simply forgot what voice he was using. It didn't bother me too much, though. Both voices were interesting to listen to.
This was definitely written by a Brit, noting from some of the terms used in the movie, and it was entertaining listening to Justin and Jaymond saying the British dialect in more American sounding ways. I laughed out loud when Boundless Ben said "Ahh! Bollocks!" It sounded very out of place, but it just made Ben's character even more absurd, which you could say was the point.

The Final Word
Normally, thin-plotted action movies don't fare very well in my review system. This one, however was just so much fun to watch, thanks to Dan's keen eye of what's entertaining. It seems to delight in the fact that it is a pure animation piss contest taking the easy win, and the energy that flows through the movie is infectious and fun. It improves bounds and leaps over Revolutions. I look forward to more from Dan Martin.

******** (8/10) Great