Sebastian Farias

Think of your favorite animated movie. “Kung Fu Panda?” “Ratatouille?” Well, there exists such movies as, “Little Panda Fighter” and “Ratatoing” that try to ride off of the success of the original movies, and I will be reviewing these awful, animated disasters. Graphic by Sebastian Farias

Ahhh movies. Most people would rather watch something good, but oh boy, I’m totally different. Of course I love watching quality content, but I also love watching the trashiest movies that rip off my childhood memories. It can be really funny, especially with friends.

I will be discussing the absolute worst, horrendous, hilariously bad knock-offs of the most popular films of all time, so that way you can watch it with your friends and potentially have a good laugh.

1. “Little Panda Fighter”

Let’s start off with probably the most horrifying and crazy thing I’ve ever seen; the best of the worst of my list of movies.

This movie is about Pancada, a panda who works at a boxing bar that no one goes to because the bear “Freak Teddy” has kept winning the boxing matches for over two years, so the owner of the boxing bar, Polaris, disguises himself and competes against Freak Teddy, winning the match. However, his disguise shrinks during the fight and it makes him look like Pancada. Everyone thinks Pancada won the fight and everyone starts praising him and he gets with his crush, who has two sets of hair because the animators didn’t know how to animate. Pancada ends up deciding to fight “Freak Teddy” on his own because he wants to earn the praise. He loses, but it doesn’t matter because Polaris bet against him and Pancada becomes the new owner of the boxing bar and turns it into a dance club. 

I have lots of questions. Why is the movie called “Little Panda Fighter?” He’s pretty fat and he doesn’t even like fighting; he wants to be a professional dancer. I’m not even sure where he would even do that because there’s only like two buildings, and the movie’s backgrounds make it look like it takes place in a deserted wasteland.

The characters are ugly as well, because when they talk you can see their poorly rendered teeth bulging out of their mouths. Pancada is the worst offender of this; when he smiles or makes any expressions it looks like he is going to eat your soul.

The cinematography in this movie is also really questionable, as there are scenes where it’s just Pancada walking up to an office or walking up the stairs for like 20 seconds with either really suspenseful music in the background or oddly cheerful music.

I am convinced that the creators of this movie haven’t even seen the original “Kung Fu Panda.” I think what happened was that they saw the trailer and made this movie to confuse relatives into buying it, mistaking it for the new panda movie the children were begging for.

Go watch it with your friends or significant other! It’s so bad it’s good.

        2. “Ratatoing”

Let’s get something out of the way, this movie is PRECISELY worse than “Little Panda Fighter” despite the fact that the animation is only slightly better, and the plot makes some sort of sense. Mostly, however, this movie is mind-numbingly boring.

The plot of this movie takes place in the marvelous city, land of sun and heat; this is a prosperous city. That’s where our story takes place, in the heart of this city. That was word for word of how this “movie” starts, they don’t ever explain where it takes place. The restaurant is called “Ratatoing,” and apparently, they serve the most delicious rat food. Marcelo is the small blue rat who is the head chef of the restaurant, Carol is the pink rat who is a waiter and is animated like a strange robot, and Greg, the green mouse…I’m actually not even sure what the purpose of this guy is. Every once in a while, Greg will say “PRECISELY!” and be some kind of comedic relief character.

The word “precisely” is repeated about nine times throughout the 40-minute film and is said only by Greg. That’s at least one “precisely” every three to five minutes. It’s funny, but I question why they added that to the movie.

Marcelo, Carol, and Greg steal their ingredients from the house that the restaurant is in, and a couple of other rats that are secretly owners of competing restaurants come in to eat. They place traps to try to kill the main cast, and at the end of the movie they are sent off to be experimented on, from what I can tell; it’s mentioned in passing.

The only way I can describe this movie is that a third of it is entertainingly awful, another third is extremely boring and the last third is weird, filler, James-Bond-like suit up scenes. Every other complaint I had with “Little Panda Fighter” applies to this movie too.

3. “What’s up: Balloon to the rescue!”

This movie is straight up awful. There is nothing ironically funny about it, it’s just bad. 

The only similarity with the popular movie “Up” and this film is that there is a house, and it goes up. Everything else is completely different. That’s a trend I’ve noticed with these movies; the cover and main art piece are meant to trick you into thinking it’s similar to the original movie, but the plot in these knock-offs are entirely different.

This movie is apparently a sequel to a movie called “Little Big Monsters,” which if you couldn’t tell by the title is a rip off of “Aliens vs Monsters” by DreamWorks.

The movie starts off with a broadcast talking about a family of scientists that save the town from the monsters that come from space. There’s Professor Crumb, Amanda, Guto and Uncle Crumb’s partner. However, for some bizarre reason, the broadcast diverts its focus from the space monsters, and instead focuses on Uncle Crumb’s pretty niece, and highlights how she’s flirting with a kid from her theater class, which, in the grand scheme of things, is probably not as important as the monster stuff.

The main antagonist is Jean-Pierre de la Croix, who wants to use the magical rock to hypnotize the world. He pretends that he saw a monster in the Amazon, so the monster hunters travel there using their magic rock. Jean-Pierre then tries to trap them in a cave so he can steal the rock; once he has it he tries to hypnotize them but it fails, because he can’t say the word “Lavender” because he’s French.

This movie is oddly racist, calling people names of food in their culture and undermining its characters. The movie is full of stretches of painfully boring screen time with absolutely no jokes, to bits of scenes with this type of joke:

“I don’t want that Chinese guy in there with my monsters, he didn’t even say anything when I showed him the cookie!” To which, another character responded, “Did you try showing him a fortune cookie? That could have worked.”

There is a Chinese stereotype character that literally only exists so the writers can make racist jokes. He adds nothing to the story, and it’s infuriating. Every complaint I’ve had with the previous movies applies here to this film as well, and you know what? Multiply it by 10. You thought “Little Panda Fighter” was terrifying? Well, this is way worse. Having human characters definitely worsens it.

Now that I am done reviewing these movies, I need to say this: if you in any way are now interested in viewing these films yourself, please do not buy a physical copy of these movies. They are free to watch on YouTube and this studio (yes, one singular studio is responsible for every movie on this list) does not deserve your hard-earned money. I need to track down every physical copy of these movies and throw them into a volcano so that no one else can be scammed by this studio.

And, with that, this is my review of terrible, horrible animated movies.