Let's Watch This: "Frog Kingdom" (2013)

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

NOTE #2: No disrespect is meant towards anyone who worked on the movie I am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.

NOTE #3: If you like this movie, that is great. Go ahead and like it. I'm not judging you.

There are probably better things I could be doing with my time than watching direct-to-video schlock like this. But I knew the job was dangerous when I started this blog... okay, "dangerous" isn't the right word, but you know what I mean.

This is another animated movie from another country that we, the United States, found out about and said, "We want it." Directed by Nelson Shin and Melanie Simka, the film was originally released on December 28th, 2013 in China, but took until June 30th, 2015 to be released in the US.

Frog Kingdom is, as you might have guessed from the disclaimers at the beginning of the review, crap. Why do I say that? Let's get the review started, shall we?

It's a beautiful morning in the city of Frogville. The frogs of Frogville are all getting ready for the Froglympics, which are (as its name suggests) like the Olympics but for frogs. The ruler of the frogs, the creatively named Frog King (voiced by Keith David), is not pleased to learn that his daughter, Princess Froglegs, has run off again. Sorry, Frog King, but she's a princess in an animated movie. Being rebellious is kind of mandatory for her.

First complaint: the lip-syncing in this movie is really off. I know those are the risks you take when you give an animated movie from another country an English dub, but it's very distracting.

I'm gonna try not to make too many Amphibia references, but I find it funny
that Keith David voiced an amphibian king in this movie and then voiced an amphibian
king in that show too.

Why has Princess Froglegs (voiced by Bella Thorne) run off? Because the winner of the Froglympics gets to marry her, and she doesn't want to get married. Her solution? She and her best pal, Bestie (Dallas Lovato)... I guess whoever wrote this English dub wasn't very creative when it came to names... will enter the Froglympics disguised as males and win it themselves. Call me crazy, your highness, but I don't think you're gonna fool anyone into thinking that you're a guy. For one thing, you're wearing a dress.

And who names a frog "Froglegs" anyway? I've never heard of a person named
"Humanarms".

As Froglegs and Bestie explore the market, we are introduced to our OTHER lead character, Freddie (Cameron Dallas). He and his tadpole buddy Boogie (Nathan Barnatt) are selling wings - not chicken wings, since chickens are much too big for frogs to cook and eat, but rather insect wings. Then ANOTHER character shows up - a frog riding on a turtle who dubs himself Prince Froggie Ababwa. No relation to Prince Ali Ababwa, of course. He's here because he wants to compete in the Froglympics, but Freddie tells him he has no chance.

"But I've faced the galloping hordes! A hundred bad guys with swords!"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you sent those goons to their lords. Now make like a fly
and buzz off."

Freddie and Froggie get into a fight over Freddie's pet housefly, who Froggie wants to eat for breakfast. Eventually, Froggie takes Boogie hostage and threatens to make him go "swirly down the toiley". Wait, is he going to drag him into a human household, climb up a human's toilet - which would be much larger than him - and flush him? Or is he implying that frogs have little frog-sized toilets? Either way, Freddie tricks him into letting Boogie go, and they make a run for it, Froggie in hot pursuit aboard his surprisingly fast turtle.

As for Froglegs and Bestie, they arrive at the Froglympics and sign up. Their flimsy disguises actually work, with nobody even questioning how these two frogs supposedly grew facial hair. "Let the qualification round begin!" the Frog King shouts. First, we get some frog boxing, an event easily won by this amphibian who has clearly been taking frog steroids.

I know simply putting the word "frog" in front of words like "boxing" and
"steroids" isn't funny. If YOU can think of a funnier joke to make here, I'd
love to hear it.

Next, it's time for frog ping-pong... with the ball being an EYEBALL. Okay, ew. Why are they using an eyeball? Is it a FROG's eyeball? Where did they even get it?

We also get frog pole-vaulting, frog fencing, and frog archery, but the Froglympics are suddenly interrupted by an evil toad and his toad minions with their machine guns and bees, but their interrupting the games is interrupted - interruptception! - by Freddie, Boogie, and Froggie. "I guess Prince Ababwa lost his magic carpet when he divorced Princess Jasmine," the announcer suggests, saving me the trouble of making another Aladdin joke myself.

Froggie continues to chase Freddie and Boogie around, and as a result Freddie manages to win the frog high-diving event. This makes the toads (remember them? They're still here) MAD! They head back to their evil lair to tell their boss, a snake, about it. Why does this snake want to ruin the Froglympics? Because he wants revenge on the Frog King and Queen for... something he's not going to tell us about. Sheesh, they were spitting out exposition left and right a few minutes ago, but now they can't be bothered to give us a LITTLE backstory? 

By the way, one of those toads is clearly a poison dart frog... which are, as their name suggests, frogs, not toads.

Snakes get no respect in animation. Yeah, some of them are venomous, but you
shouldn't paint ALL snakes as evil just because of a few bad apples.

The Frog King gets a letter from his daughter telling him that she doesn't want to get married so she's getting out of there ASAP. So he assigns a frog named Inspector Noggin (Gregg Sulkin) with finding her. And what does Inspector Noggin do? He makes a reference to Pinocchio. Yeah, something tells me this guy is gonna be about as competent as Inspector Gadget (see? I can make pop culture references too. Doesn't make me funny).

Then we cut to all the contenders in the Froglympics marching onto the field. A photo op has been set up where they can kiss a painting of the princess and get a photo of it. This irritates Froglegs, especially when Freddie makes the painting kiss his butt. So she throws the camera at him and calls everyone out for thinking it's funny. Good on ya, Froglegs.

"She's muh waifu!"

And believe it or not, Froglegs STILL has everyone fooled with her pathetic disguise. Even after she almost calls herself the princess, nobody - not even Noggin - puts two and two together. The frogs in this movie are so stupid, it's practically offensive to real frogs.

Then a lizard shows up and gives Freddie a flyer for some sort of "froggy boot camp". He, the frog who's clearly on steroids (Drake Bell), Prince Froggie, the Richard Simmons Frog, Boogie, the frog with sunglasses and what looks like a mowhawk (Brandon Hudson), and the frog with six eyes (which is just as if not more disturbing as them playing ping-pong with an eyeball before) are all on board with that.

Seriously, WHY does that one frog have six eyes? And why are four of his eyes
in his STOMACH?

Froglegs mopes about how there's no way she can beat those other frogs... I dunno, I think she could at least beat the one who inexplicably has six eyes... and then she and Bestie decide to go to the boot camp themselves. A boot camp which, according to Bestie, looks more like a five-star hotel. Problem is, the rooms are all booked up, which means Froglegs will have to share one with... take a wild guess...

"U MAD, FROGLEGS?"

After another unfunny sequence involving Noggin, the frogs wake up the next morning and meet Captain One-Eye (Rob Schneider), your typical drill sergeant who doesn't know the meaning of the phrase "use your indoor voice". But hey, he DOES feed them an extremely large breakfast, so he can't be all bad.

In fact, all he seems to have them do is eat and sleep. I've never been to a boot camp, but I'm guessing none of them are actually like this.

"I want to see those plates cleaned, you maggots!"

That night, Freddie does some sleepwalking and walks into the strange tarp-covered thing that we saw some lizards wheeling into the camp in an earlier scene. When he enters the machine, he finds himself in... Happy Feet?

"Cute and cuddly, boys! Cute and cuddly!"

After Freddie's acid trip, it's revealed that the machine's purpose is to trap frogs in blocks of ice. We previously saw the snake use this machine on one of the toads. Suspicious, isn't it?

Fortunately, being frozen in a block of ice doesn't prevent Freddie from continuing his sleepwalk, and by the time he wakes up the next morning, the ice has melted. So, yeah, I'm not sure what the point of that was. Anyway, Froglegs demands to know why Captain One-Eye is trying to fatten them up. Instead of answering, he force-feeds her cheesecake, and she kicks him. So he punishes them all by dragging them out to the desert so they'll be nice and crispy for the lizard he's totally not going to feed them to. Yeah, spoiler alert: he's in league with the snake. I don't know why the snake needs to go through all the trouble of having them fattened up and baked in the sun when he could just show up, grab them in his coils, and gobble them up one by one, but just go with it.

Fortunately, after Captain One-Eye leaves to fix up some frog-marinating sauce, Freddie discovers that the desert is actually a beach. There's water close by. And thus, everybody has some fun in the water. "Ain't nobody gonna be servin' frog legs today! Not on MY watch! This ain't no French bistro!" Froglegs snaps.

Apparently there exist little frog-sized speedboats. Who knew?

The snake is very angry when he finds out that ain't nobody gonna be servin' frog legs today. Speaking of frogs getting eaten, Froglegs and Freddie run afoul of some "venus frog traps" and after that they randomly start to like each other. They even go for a ride on the back of a bat.

"I can show you the world..."

Next, the snake gives One-Eye some of his venom and tells him to use it on all those puny frogs in Frogville.

"Oh, right. The poison. The poison for the frogs. The poison chosen specifically to kill
the frogs. The frogs' poison... that poison?"

"Yes! That poison!"

It seems that all the frogs have to is SMELL the venom and they're out like a light. Fortunately, Freddie's pet fly finds him and Froglegs and goes all Lassie to tell them that the other frogs are in danger. Oh, and Noggin is there too. He has a whole army with him, and he thinks those two frogs on a bat might know something about the missing princess.

They manage to save the other frogs, but will be they able to save themselves from the snake?

The animators of Rango never should have allowed these guys to copy their homework.

Most of them get away, but Freddie isn't so lucky. The other frogs want to make a run for it, but Froglegs gives a big speech about loyalty and bravery and blah-blah-blah. Meanwhile, Noggin builds a robotic duplicate of the princess so the games can go on as planned. Wow, who knew frogs were so good with technology?

Back with the snake, he gives us some explanation as to why he wants revenge. Years ago, a mighty war was raged among the kingdom of frogs, led by his parents. But the frog king and queen took them down. Then he hypnotizes Freddie, as snakes in cartoons are known to do.

We cut to the Froglympics, with everyone, even Freddie, there. Froglegs realizes that One-Eye is controlling Freddie and demands, "What did you do with that frogolicious frog?!" Oh, and the robot may or may not be evil now too, because it lures them into a trap.

Hello, nightmare fuel.

After Froglegs manages to KO the robot, they have to deal with crocodiles. One of them eats Freddie. "Even though I hated you, I still loved you," Froglegs sobs. But what's this? Freddie getting eaten by the crocodile snaps him out of his trance... I don't know how, in case you were wondering... and he emerges from its mouth.

They go back to the Froglympics just as One-Eye is being dubbed the winner. Noggin now thinks that One-Eye is the princess in disguise. Jeez, this frog makes Patrick Star look like Albert Einstein. But the Froglympics aren't over yet - the event wraps up with a friendly game of Frog Quidditch (the fact that it's a knockoff of Quidditch is even lampshaded). By the way, I notice nobody finds it at all weird that the robot princess is competing in the game. If she was allowed to compete all along, why did Froglegs even need to disguise herself?

"Eat your heart out, Michael Jordan!"

Froglegs wins the game, which means that she won the entire Froglympics. Ha! Suck it, One-Eye! But then the snake shows up... wow, he sure took his sweet time getting there to enact his revenge... and he's all "I'M GONNA EAT YOU ALL!" and has One-Eye suck the frogs up into his weird machine that freezes frogs in blocks of ice. Freddie, Froglegs, the king, and everyone not already stuck in an ice block fights him in a battle scene that I'm sure was intended to be cool but is hard to take seriously when the characters say things like "It's time to pay the froggies!" and "You're a bad, bad king!".

So what was the point of hypnotizing Freddie again?

After a fight that goes on for what feels like an HOUR, Froglegs manages to trap the snake in his own ice block machine, freezing the stupid serpent solid. I suppose I should say "I WAS FROZEN TODAY!" here, but I won't.

Now that the snake has been defeated, Froglegs reveals that she's the princess. "I'm sorry. Your life is yours to live as you wish," the Frog King tells her. "You can marry who you want." Boogie hooks up with the robot princess... even though A) he's a tadpole and B) she's a robot. And Freddie and Froglegs... actually DON'T get married yet. Freddie heads off to do some more wandering, but says he might return. Huh. That's something I wasn't expecting them to do. Okay, I'll give 'em credit for not going the cliched route...

What's the Verdict?

...but that doesn't mean I'm going to give this a positive review.

Frog Kingdom blows. It doesn't even feel like an actual movie, it feels like a gag dub of a movie you'd find on YouTube. The lip-syncing is extremely off, characters frequently speak without even moving their mouths at all, and most of the dialogue is cringe-worthy. I didn't even mention half of the stupid jokes in this film. There are references to Superman and Indiana Jones and even Vanilla Ice of all people. Yes, yes, I know what these things are, it's still not funny.

The plot is disjointed and stretched out far too long - so many scenes and plot points are dragged out, then resolved in the blink of an eye (Freddie getting eaten by the crocodile? Yeah, that was totally needed) or even discarded without explanation (Freddie getting captured by the snake and Froglegs urging everyone to help save him... only for the snake to hypnotize him and just let him go off-camera). The characters suck too. Froglegs is just another generic tough, rebellious princess who don't take no crap from anyone. Freddie is just annoying and can't go five seconds without making a stupid wisecrack. They barely even have a romantic arc. The villain is tremendously lame, between the goofy voice and the incredibly stupid lines he spews out you can't take him seriously at all. He feels like a teenager in high school trying to be scary as he's stealing your lunch money. Everyone else is either dull, annoying, or gross.

Combine all this with some mediocre voice acting and character designs that range from okay to ugly and you've got another film that's not worth your time. Maybe this was better in the original Chinese, I don't know, but somehow I doubt it. Ah well, at least there weren't any sequels...

You have got to be kidding me.