|
|
|
|
Part 2 - An Actual Review...How 'Bout That Pop singer Aloncé (Cree Summer Francks) is coming to town, and it's a big opportunity for both Bratz Magazine and super-Aloncé-fan Sasha (Tia Mowry). However, the Bratz have quite a hard time getting their interview, between Sasha losing her voice and the rival magazine's writers stealing their time slot and getting thrown out. In the end, though, the frustrated pop star and her fan bond in their misery, and Bratz gets the interview after all. Meanwhile, Cloe (Olivia Hack) is (barely) sick and being waited on hand and foot, but she miraclously recovers for a shopping spree. The reason that the play-by-play blew up in my face was because of a host of small sub-plots that had absolutely nothing to do with anything. Aloncé (yes, it's an-almost-but-not-quite clone of Beyoncé Knowles) gets an ankle injury somewhere in there, but given that the plot gives enough examples of the harder parts of a star's life anyway, there's no real reason to pile an injury on there other than to pad the running time. Cloe's subplot does nothing but supply light comic relief every couple of minutes. There's a couple of Bratz guys running around, supposedly having their own adventures trying to become Aloncé's backup dancers, but they're really just there for Sasha to scream at. Even the main plot stalls itself every once in a while to pad things. Sasha is apparently nervous about doing the interview, so we get two segments totally devoted to her choosing what to wear. The twin writers for the rival magazine screw up enough that we get a few segments for them to engage in comedy. (Supposedly. One of their segments is in the middle of a plot point, where one of them 'comically' plucks a leg hair. Huh?) Heck, outside of taking the time slot, the villians as a whole are pretty useless; they're walking jokes about superficial beauties who get too much screentime. Come to think of it, none of the characters really do much of anything other than Sasha. Heck, I even left two of the Bratz out of the episode description: Jade (Soleil Moon Frye, who doesn't even get named until an indirect mention 12 minutes in) is around mostly to be Sasha's voice and calm center, and Yasmin (Dionne Quan) gets to be Cloe's babysitter. I already mentioned both the guys and villians, so that's it. Ten characters, and enough plot for three. Yeesh. I'm getting tired of ragging on the lousy writing, so let's go to the other side of things and bring up the actors, about which there's less to complain about. Really, they all do fine, if unspectacular. Tia Mowry has the big part (well, when Sasha has a voice) and does perfectly fine with it, managing to make Sasha sound somewhat convincing. Cloe isn't exactly a broad part, but Olivia Hack manages to make her sound petulant and whiny without being overly nasal about it. The other voices don't really stand out, but they don't really grate either, so they're miles ahead of the dialouge written for them. The only one I really have any kind of complaint about (brace yourselves) is Jade. Soleil Moon Frye's voice cracks a fair bit doing the voice, and I'm still trying to figure out why. Either the voice director told her to make her voice a big higher, or maybe she's trying too hard to do an accent. Either way, especially when Jade gets excited, there's voice cracking going on. It's not major, but it is noticable. As far as the visuals go; they're decent. We're all CGI here, rather than hand-animation, though it doesn't make a huge difference. The background are too flat in more than a few scenes, but the character models are faithful enough to the doll style that it works, and the characters move smoothly enough that there's no noticable problems. Fittingly, in a series about a fashion craze, the hair probably gets the most attention, with realistic movements and shading. Odd that such a detail is the only real outstanding thing, but at least the rest doesn't look bad. The sound isn't really worth mentioning; there's forgettable pop tunes everywhere. Oh, and one nice visual touch I should mention; the Bratz' visuals appear to be patterned somewhat after the voice actors. Not a huge point, but I've got to give credit where it's due. Ultimately, though, the decent graphics and voicework can't make up for the haphazard editing and sloppy writing. Just because it's a kid's show doesn't mean that the writers can mail it in; heck, even in the area of girl-specific shows, there's much better examples (Totally Spies! is the one that comes to my mind, and that's just in recent programs). Bratz therefore stands accused of being a quick toy cash-in, and there's few labels worse than that. Soleil Moon Frye fans should watch "Sabrina" again, Lacey Chabert fans should go watch some of her six zillion movies, and Bratz fans...well, you can stick around, but there's no guarantee that it'll be pretty. I don't like the Bratz concept in the first place, but I'd have to admit that their fans have a right to be insulted. The Big Story is a bust. - Jimmy Vibes |