Shit Happens

This review contains minor spoilers.

Ah, Shit Happens! The famous Jeff Ching Movie, well-known for its poor animations and scenery, and its tearful, engrossing drama, according to many comments and reviews. I was expecting this to be what the majority have said, and they were kind of right. Half-correct in fact. The animations and scenery in Shit Happens were horrendous, and no-one can argue against that properly. If you think differently, you might as well be blind - you're obviously not using your eyes as you should. However, the "drama" aspect of this movie was also unconvincing. Put frankly, I was bored by it. It was uninteresting and unmoving, leaving out a few tiny exceptions, until the final five minutes, and by that time, too much damage had been done.

I won't go into TOO much detail about the quality, or lack of it, of the animations and scenery, as you can read many paragraphs about this in nearly every single review, so instead I will just briefly say what I think of it. To be blunt, it was poor, atrocious, abysmal, messy, diabolical, crap and unbelievably rubbish. Or to put it nicely, it was too lazily done and obviously hardly any effort has been put into making buildings, fluent character actions and such look nice. What was OK though was the voices, with the exceptions of the female voices and the fact that Jeff Ching had to change voice-actors on numerous occasions. I didn't really notice much of the latter, but it just makes it more clear that the director has no intention of working hard on the technical aspects of any movie he directs. Off-putting indeed to say the least.

But I'm relieved to say that the writing was nowhere near as pathetic as the scenery. Yet it you think it is deserving of the Best Drama 2003 award, I am afraid that I have to strongly disagree with you. It was average, full stop. Yes, Shit Happens, looking at the drama aspects, is better than quite a few dramas released this year, such as The World Around Igby and Jake, but is nowhere near as strong as Gnomes, also a 2004 release. And if you want an earlier example, take a look at Doom 2. Shit Happens falls in the middle. I definitely admire the way Jeff has tried to weave together many sub-stories into one, and it certainly makes a change from the linear-stuff we get nowadays, but it could have been done SO much better. If only Jeff worked more on the direction, I could have sympathised with the different characters more. Not only does the direction falter, but also the content. I find it hard to sympathise with some homeless, orphan when he acts all stupid and retarded. If you think I have a cold heart, watch it. He lies so blatently in a work interview, he writes his own resume on a napkin (surely it can't be THAT hard to find paper), and he doesn't even react like a normal human being! It just doesn't work.

There were times though where I did feel for the characters. Well, some of them. Hang on, one. As much as I admire Jeff's hard work into writing the very non-linear script, barring the last five minutes, I only felt for one character. ONE. And if you're wondering, it's the constantly nagging boy. At times, his character worked, but at others, the "sympathy" I was supposed to feel just felt so forced. "Hey, look at me! I want to kill myself!" How about "no"? One thing that absolutely staggers me is that this is supposed to be a comedy. Seriously, if you cracked up at anything that is meant to make you laugh, you have a problem.

So, the first three-quarters of an hour or so weren't that impressive, and then we finally get something that, script-wise, is a hell of a lot more moving and, dare I say it, emotional. It annoys me a lot, because despite a really strong finish, too much damage has already been done beforehand, and nothing in 3DMM history can redeem all that. All in all, Shit Happens, with a more polished script and with a more effective direction, could have been one to remember. It's sad really, because it is hard to take seriously a movie in which its events are pretty unrealistic and where its direction and animations are scarily bad. It is hard not to focus much on the overwhelming amount of negative points, but weirdly enough, it does something that many dramas fail to do - finish on a high. The monologue at the end, voiced by Jaymond, was extremely touching, and if only, IF ONLY, the rest of the movie was just as good, who knows what I would be typing at this very moment?

Score: 58/100