Lock 'N' Load 2

Clip movies- I think it's safe to say we've all been guilty of throwing together at least one. After all, who doesn't want to put clips from all of their finished and unfinished movies together into a big orgy of personal memories? Most of the time, these can be thrown together in ten minutes. Add a catchy soundtrack to it and "VIOLA!", you have an effective tribute to yourself. Rarely, if ever, does anyone actually put any thought into them, so most of them turn into not-so-memorable music videos. Gorosaurus, one of the most popular directors in the community, decides to take the idea one step further, and not only puts some time and effort into this "clip movie", but actually manages to back it up with a (semi) cohesive story. What results is one of those movies where, if the screen saver turns on half-way through it, you jump up and viciously attack your mouse until the image comes back onto the screen- you don't want to miss a second of it, it's just that fun to watch! You can't bring yourself to look away from it...and this is just the director working with a bunch of clips from unfinished movies! Goro is a master of infusing any movie with a huge amount of entertainment value.

The story that the director uses to tie everything together has the evil wizard "Ashtar" (who has one of the most hilarious voices in 3dmm history) and his henchman "Hench" attempting to achieve stardom by pasting together their own version of the cancelled movie "Lock N' Load 2". So, the whole movie has them throwing together Goro's unfinished movies in an attempt to create a new one with a coherent story. The story they come up with is hilarious- Lock and Toad realize that only one person can save the world. Their solution? Beat up everyone on the planet (including each other) until there is only one person left to save it, or at least that's what *I* got out of it. Part of what makes the movie Ashtar and Hench put together so hilarious is the fact that none of it makes sense (for instance, Lock and Toad are constantly switching voices). Sure the whole plot is just a reason for the director to show off his old animations, but it does make it all much more entertaining and funny. The extra entertainment value this movie gets out of it's story is mostly due to the voices and comments the "directors" make throughout, which are great.

In a review of any movie made by Gorosaurus, you have to talk about the animation. Goro has mastered the art of making 3dmm look like a Saturday morning cartoon. Even the earliest of the clips shown here have bits of animation in them that make you think "whoa...why didn't I think of that?!". Normally when you watch a 3dmm movie, you recognize bits of animation being as 3dmm directors have been learning from each other for years. When you watch Goro's movies though, it looks completely unique. He has his own kind of cartoony style that makes his movies so much more interesting to watch. Few directors have their own easily recognizable style, and out of the ones that do, his is easily my favorite. Especially the scenes that are in "2d", make an entire movie like this dammit!

The music picked in this movie was great, every song fit perfectly. I have no idea where he found the song that played at the end, but as weird as it was, there isn't a better song he could have chosen. Also, just by using that one "Green Day" song, this movie easily earns an extra 10 points from me (not that I'm actually doing any math or calculating to decide the score here...). Once again, the voices were awesome. Beast does a good job playing Lock, and all of the voices Goro does himself are great, and very funny! One slightly unrelated thing I've gotta mention- did anyone else think that Toad sounded a lot like Sonic from the Sonic Adventure games?

If this movie has a problem really worth mentioning, it's that towards the end it gets a little fuzzy as far as "what's happening in the 'movie' and what's happening in the 'real world' with Ashtar" goes. Of course, maybe I'm just easily confused- but I was sitting there thinking "Wait...I thought Toad was fighting someone...what's he doing hiding in a bunch of tall grass all of a sudden?". Still, it's easily forgivable. This is one extremely entertaining spin on the usual ho-hum clip movie. It's an essential download for fans of Gorosaurus' unique style of animating. For me, it easily is entertaining enough to be worthy of a 90% out of 100%. Oh yeah, and Goro, remind me to rip you off when I decide to put my unfinished movies out there before I leave the community one day (I don't want to risk being original).