Doughboy's Hair-Raising Tale of General Enthusiasm

Seasonal movies, you gotta love 'em. They give you an oppurtunity to get into the holiday spirit with minimal effort- "Yeti and Squidworth" puts me in more of a halloween mood then any overpriced costume or even the most heavy amount of pumpkin carving (which I didn't do by the way......seriously.....STOP LAUGHING AT ME). That said...well..."Doughboy's Hair-raising tale of General Enthusiasm" (enjoy seeing the full title, that's the last time I'm writing it) doesn't have much of a halloween mood to it. It DOES however feature the song "Monster Mash" and one ghost, which is good enough I guess. What was the point of the whole seasonal movie rant then? I have no clue, but my backspace button is broken so I guess you're just going to have to read it (alright, fine, I'm too lazy to type out a new opening paragraph, THERE, YOU BEAT IT OUT OF ME). I think I can still salvage some kind of point out of this whole rant- though not a halloween classic, or even really a halloween movie at all, DBHRTGE is a fun watch with a great ending that anyone can sit back and enjoy.

DBHRTGE has a simple plot that nonetheless works very well- a kid named Marc is visited by a ghost from an afterlife-based corporation known as "Last Wishes Inc." who tells him that he has exactly one day to live, so he better go live it up. It's an interesting premise, and makes for an ending that's great and very memorable (if only just slightly predictable). Doughboy still has room for improvement, but considering that the last movie the director worked on was "Killing Ramza Brave", this is a HUGE jump in quality, like, the kind of jump that sends you into the stratosphere and makes skyscrapers seem like ant hills. That said, let's get on to the technical stuff.

Animation-wise, I'll be honest- I was really suprised at just how good the characters in this movie moved around. Doughboy has proven to be suprisingly skilled at animating hand-made characters, at times the animation measures up to the great cartoony stuff that Jon Barton pulls off in his movies. However, there is also an over-abundance of close ups throughout the movie, which is an obvious cop out for when you don't feel like animating the character's entire body. Still, I won't hold this against Doughboy too much, for the most part this is great stuff which is a blast to watch (though I still like Jon Barton's cylinder headed cast of characters better than the bald sphere people found here).

The sound category is good for the most part. "Monster Mash" is probably the most overused halloween song ever (I remember walking through "frightfest" at a local amusement park and hearing that song so much I just wanted to shout "PLEASE GOD, MAKE IT STOP!!"), but the use of "Green Day" gives this movie a few extra bonus points from me for this category. * makes a movie with an entirely "Green Day" soundtrack just to spite anyone who disagrees *. The only real problem I had in this catergory was with the voice acting. It was all good as far as the actual acting part goes, it's just that some lines were extremely loud while others were whisper quiet, making conversations play out something like:
Marc: Hey...who are you, why are you here?
Zandar: I'm Zandar from "Good Wishes inc."
Yeah, a little annoying, especially since you'll have to crank up your speaker ridiculously loud to hear what Marc is saying, only to have Zandar's reply make your ears bleed.

Overall, this movie suprised me alot. Doughboy has proven to be a very promising up-and-coming director for this community, and he deserves a lot of encouragement to keep going. Enough animation tournaments Doughboy (though they can be fun), keep cranking out actual movies and continue to improve where it counts- in directing and storytelling. This one isn't perfect, but it's a fun little short that shouldn't be overlooked. I give it a 79% out of 100%.