Immunity

Immunity is good, very good. It's one of those Tuna or Sandford action movies that seemingly can do no wrong, entertains for the entire runtime, and sits at the back of your mind comfortably afterwards...only it's better than most of its predecessors. It passes a certain threshold that puts it in a similar camp as Handsome Man in Japan: it's fun community fluff, but it has surprises and lasting appeal. Tuna isn't just making an action movie, he's making a movie that is genuinely entertaining and fun to watch. This is a much more difficult balancing act.

The premise is not something I would've thought worth devoting a movie to, not even a short one. Tuna and Sandford are pissed about Harris voting them off in Popularity Survivor and go to his mansion to get revenge. At first blush, that sounds like a sniper movie, and certainly the motive trends in that direction. But along the way, Tuna (the director) is clearly constructing a comedic narrative of sorts, having them run into a few community personalities and stopping the action periodically to have them awkwardly point things out to each other. It has freeze-frame jokes. It has lame jokes that are made amusing by having Tuna (the character) second-guess them and rationalize putting them in. And it has an impeccable sense of comedic and action timing.

I knew Tuna was decent at action from Tuna is Also in Mexico, but I also knew he was notoriously lazy. He has the skill, but not the drive, to achieve the kind of exquisite perfection of 3DMM's legends. I say this not really as a criticism -- 3DMM has wound down in the past few years, and Michael Sandford's workman animation style has struck a brilliant compromise, achieving grandeur without ever being concerned about making it perfect. It's a compromise Tuna obviously took notice of in his previous outing, because I keep coming back to Sandford even though, as I understand it, he's nowhere to be found in this movie's production. This is all Tuna, including the 4-part Michael character wielding the staff. The angles, timing, and punchline-driven fight moments also bring to mind a more controlled (yet also more restrained) Dominator Dan, as characters flip, spin, pivot, launch, kick, and crash through five, six, seven consecutive walls. I knew Tuna was good, but there's a vision behind the way this movie's action scenes are staged. It's impressive.

The animation style I mentioned -- grandeur without perfection -- is one that at first bugged me. I'm going to digress into Sandford territory one last time to make this point. When I saw his early stuff, I recognized the imaginative strength of his ideas, but thought he needed time to improve. He has, but to my mind never seemed to pass a certain competence threshold. I now realize that it was a finesse threshold, of ensuring that the scenery stays consistent, of making sure each frame of motion flows perfectly, of always having every movement the exact right speed. There's a light sloppiness to much of it, one that Tuna has maintained. But it's done in the interest of capturing these very ambitious camera arcs and ideas without having to toil for hours over getting it exactly right. There's enough competence and persistence here to communicate the animation. Sandford (and I suspect, Tuna) are satisfied with that. And after watching so many short, extremely entertaining, well-made action movies come out with such regularity, I confess it's a style that's grown on me, even as my perfectionist nature as an animator wants to criticize it.

Let's end on specifics, because I'm betting Tuna prefers reading about those over analysis of style.

-The Jamie stuff was meh.
-Something about seeing a Sandford being pulled toward a giant penis, and shooting a giant penis in the "head", trigger some kind of disturbing reactions. Same with the pubes, though them becoming spikes was great.
-I don't get the toaster joke. I know there was one in Also in Mexico, but I don't understand what Tuna was doing by going after it.
-No movie can have too many blimps.
-I liked Dominator Dan as Bown. I hated it the first time I watched this, because the character was more like Dan than Bown. But any movie is better with Dan in it. His groan when the totem pole falls over on him the first time was hilarious.
-The split-second rooms were fucking awesome. Never shrink from this kind of detail-oriented joke, because they're almost always the best parts.
-The audience cheering "Dan! Dan!" at the end was great.
-So was Tuna explaining the movie's jokes to Qaz. It's too bad the credits weren't longer, I'd liked to have seen that keep going.
-Xenogears sucks.

Critical Score: 86/100.
Personal Score: 80/100.

[Aaron Haynes]

BTW, Tuna, you should make Qaz watch more than just your movies. Twist his arm and make him gradually go through the library adding comments.

[Tuna Hematoma]

I made Qaz watch a good chunk of the nominated movies of 2007 and he didn't like any of them, so I don't really bother. I am pretty sure he won't like Saradomin/Vlarion type movies. They're super long and not a type of movie that he would enjoy. I can give you his comment right now, "Animated really well and the story was really thought out, but I thought the story was kind of silly and too RPG like." or some variation of that.


Xenogears is awesome
- Sandford did a couple of the gun effects and a good chunk of the blood effects. I was having huge issues making it look like regular bloody-fun you see in most 3dmm movies... which helped me a ton for getting the movie released during the fest.

- are you saying that I shouldn't have bothered making a movie based on the popularity survivor? or do you mean something like you don't understand how I could make a plot based on popularity survivor? Cuz if it's the first one, that makes me sad

- I agree with you about the beginning... I originally was making the movie as a "Happy Birthday Sandford" movie and then it just kinda evolved from there. I didn't really have any idea what I was doing when I first started making it.

- "without perfection" stuff you're talking about, it just makes making action scenes so much easier to do. (lazyness) Some scenes are only on the screen for 3 frames. I didn't want to bother making sure every little detail is perfect. For this type of movie, I feel as long as the viewer sees there's a white wall/floor and the character is on screen, people shouldn't really care too much. They'll forget soon after as the movie is moving at a fast pace and they just forget. The last fight scene was filled with errors and "goofs".

- I've only made 2 action movies :P This is the only one I've ever spent longer than a week on

- toaster "joke"... I needed a way to finish Tuna is Also in Mexico and Sandford movies almost always end with a very abrupt ending, so I did the same. I got many positive comments about the toaster (especially Goat) so I felt it'd be a nice silly way to have the fight with Andres end.

- little credit thing was just me explaining what I'm doing in my movie and Qaz giving his comments on my ideas... just something to put in with the credits.

- the ending, if you didn't notice, was pretty much scene-for-scene from the blimp scene in Indiana Jones where he throws the Nazi guy out of the blimp and says "no ticket"

Thanks for the review!!!!


...now what about the other film fest movies? OOHH

[Dominator Dan]

Originally Posted by Aaron Haynes

any movie is better with Dan in it

quoted for future reference

thanks so much