5DMM

This review contains some spoilers.

Let's use our imaginations here a little, and pretend that it is just this one factory that creates movies instead of the hard-working directors. As the year goes on, the factory consistently does final checks on each of the to-be-released movies, and the last test is the defect check. No, the factory isn't filtering out imperfect movies as such. That would be stupid. Instead, it's checking for movies that horribly stink and should come with a warning sign. All the terrible, half-arsed, unfinished films where the directors blatantly didn’t care much about them at all, and every single, damn unoriginal chain movie will be labelled with bold red letters "STAY CLEAR". Mike Storch's Missing passes the little test with ease, and Liquid Sunshine DVD Edition follows in similar fashion. A couple of months later, Desert Eagle is cleared. After Desert Eagle comes the 2005 Summer Film Festival's second release: 5DMM. Amazingly, the chain movie passes! "WHAT? Is there a huge flaw in the defect test? Why didn't it fail 5DMM?!" Believe it or not, 5DMM is actually decent chain movie.

Dan and Denny make a mean pair, don't they? Are you dying to know what would happen if they were melded together? Well, here's your answer. 5DMM takes inspiration from Mike and Justin's Who's the Director Anyway?! series, and WTDA Doraemon Edition, the only WTDA I've seen, is the only other chain movie ever that I remember enjoying. The formula works; the first person animates their part before sending only the last frame to the next person, who has to continue the movie from that point. The process is then repeated many times for however long the directors want the movie to be. This opens up for some comedy changeovers, and 5DMM does boast some of this. Humour also manages to slip itself in all sorts of places as well as the changeovers. Take the 3DMM Chess for example. However, if I'm honest, most of the jokes are very hit-and-miss. You'll laugh out loud at some and you'll cringe at others. Being a chain movie though, you can't really expect anything else, humour-wise, other than hit-and-miss jokes, can you?

And while we're on the topic of 5DMM being a chain movie, just so you know, the lack of direction, the mindless action, the complete randomness of it all, the seemingly incomplete scenery and the odd scraps of laziness are all there like any other chain movie. Nothing is different there. So what makes it that little bit more unique and special compared to the rest? 5DMM seems to do everything that little bit better. As I've stated earlier, the majority of its jokes are amusing, and as for the action, wow. Dan and Denny's final two parts are plain awesome. Seriously, the finale to all this (I don't quite know how they managed to reach there, but they did!) was the most fun I have had since JDR Revival's nexus battle between Dominant Dan and Boundless Ben. They go that little further than all the other chain movies, and as a result, you see a fresher and more enjoyable movie. Even the credits have been polished up (and they look amazing). It really does show that so much more effort has been put into 5DMM than the average, pointless, waste-of-space chain movie.

Frenzied action scenes and bursts of excellent animation aside, the main other difference between 5DMM and WTDA is that 5DMM is a whole lot longer, with the pair doing ten parts each and with a total runtime edging towards an hour. Depending on how you see it, it can be either a good thing or a bad thing. At times, it feels like the film drags on for way too long, but in other sections, where the action is packed or when you immerse yourself in one of Dan or Denny's little, yet hilarious, stories, the time flies. That's the thing about 5DMM though; it's far too inconsistent. I really did love many parts of the movie, such as 3DMM Chess, the Vlarion-styled battle and the whole ambulance chase, but there were also many parts (just look at the start of the movie), in which I was relatively bored. Why is there so much inconsistency? Simple, each part is pretty much a fresh new start, forgetting everything that happened before that point. While the changeovers do have their great points like I mentioned earlier, they also create such drastic changes that disrupt the flow of the movie.

If I don't cover what I'm going to cover in this following paragraph, there's going to be a debate, so I'll get to the point. I know what you're saying: "This is the guy who hated Diabolical Delightment, yet he loves the JDR series. This is the guy who complained about Diabolical Delightment's lack of sense, and he still likes 5DMM? He makes no sense!" I'm going to be daring and I'm going to give it a go explaining this. Yes, both DD and 5DMM have a stupid amount of deaths, but 5DMM's deaths are usually (but not always) there for humorous reasons, unlike DD, in which Maltby seems rather easily amused (and he's obviously not the only one seeing the huge DD fan base) killing off characters in a completely random style. I think that makes sense. 5DMM's action scenes are far more impressive than DD's too. I found DD's action scenes rather dull and unoriginal, killing person after person, whereas 5DMM offers something new. Dan's final part shows this. Then there's the annoying amount of irrelevant swearing that crops up in DD. Please correct me if I'm wrong, because I could be, but DD didn't offer much else new. 5DMM, on the other hand, boasts original, funny ideas (the totem poles come into mind), and animations worth gawping at (DD's animations does not look as impressive when compared to another 2000 release, say, Bodily Functions).

If your movies must absolutely have some sense of direction, you probably shouldn't gamble on this. But if you're flexible, and don't mind the odd mindless action scene, take a risk. Yes, it's a chain movie, but it's a unique one. It can be long and tedious, and it can also be amusing and fun. It is capable of both boring and amazing you. No-one is denying that it has its ups and downs, but for a chain movie, it is a treat to watch. However, if they both spent that time concentrating on two separate, solo, epic projects, I would admittedly be more satisfied.

Score: 75/100