Month: July 2025

Moomins on the Riviera (2014)

The Moomins are a topic that I feel I understand less the more I try to get my head around them. I tackled another Moomin film, Moomin and Midsummer Madness, around ten years ago so I should have been ready for this. And yet, here I am, looking at this film all…

A brief refresher, the Moomins are a multimedia franchise created by Finnish author Tove Jansson that encompasses picture books, novels, short stories, TV shows, movies, theme parks and a comic strip written and illustrated by Jansson herself. The comic strip that inspired today’s film, Moomins on the Riviera, began in 1954 and ran until 1975. This was actually the second Moomins comic strip, the first having appeared in a left wing newspaper but which failed because the readership considered the Moomins to be “too bourgeois”, because even in the late forties there were people who needed to touch some fucking grass.

So what’s it all about?

The series features things called Moomins doing stuff.

I can’t really get more specific than that.

Sometimes they don’t do stuff. Sometimes they just chill.
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Runs in the family

My brother has done a video ranking every Dad in the Disney canon, check it out.

@smameann

Best Disney Dads! Ranking 30 of the Dads from the Disney Animated Canon! My list is a bit arbitrary, so who would you have added instead. Part 2 is next. #disney #disneydads #fathersday

♬ original sound – smameann
@smameann

Part 2 of my ranking of the Disney Dads from the Animated Canon. See part 1 on my channel. I made this Tier list online so you can try it yourself here: https://tiermaker.com/create/disney-animated-canon-dads-18333903 #disney #disneydads #ranking #fathersday

♬ original sound – smameann

Sharpsons and Ranking Disney Things. Name a more iconic duo.

Lu Over the Wall (2017)

Okay, I gotta be careful here. Last time I reviewed a critically acclaimed 2010s animé I did an almost complete 180 on my opinion of it in the process of writing the review with the result being the most schizophrenic thing I’ve ever written on this blog.

“Mouse. You know that’s not true.”
“Yeah, you’re right, picture of a map I’ve been talking to for thirteen years.”

My point is, I’ve been holding off on writing this review just in case I have a similar reversal in opinion on Lu Over the Wall, but I’m pretty certain that my feelings on it are settled:

I think this is a mildly charming (if frustratingly unoriginal) “lonely boy makes friends with supernatural creature” story that is thoroughly undone by disastrous visuals and animation.

This is entirely subjective. I’m not saying the art style is bad per se. I’m just saying I hate it with every fibre of my being.

Also, at times it’s pretty fucking bad.
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