Metropia (2010)

Please don't spend money on this.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Having dabbled in filmmaking myself, i will not make any disparaging comments about the 3d production of this movie. So, yes the animation is clunky and far from perfect, but what do you expect from an independent film with a low budget?The main issues i have with this movie are the silly plot and the characters, and the political propaganda embedded within, something that no amount of 3d effects and fancy production can fix. Let's start with the director, Tarik Saleh, a Swede of Egyptian descent,who may or may not be a practicing Muslim, but he certainly is of middle eastern descend and (for obvious reasons) a fan of multiculturalism.Why does this matter, you ask? Well let's run through the never- ending neoliberal and socialist stereotypes portrayed in this movie:01 - the white male protagonist and his voice are both portrayed as weaklings, indecisive, insecure and impotent losers. 02 - The white protagonist has a tattooed, useless, black girlfriend, a caricature of a woman, as if this was normal in Sweden.. so yes Swedish men.. it is perfectly normal to mix races, to think otherwise you would be a .. RACIST!!! LOL03 - Apparently in the future, those evil racist Swedes will run TV shows, where poor Muslim refugees have to compete to stay there.. oh yes, those poor big eyed refugees, so innocent and defenseless, one can only hope the future will be so kind because now, most of the Muslim "rapefugees" who have invaded Sweden thanks to the complicity of the Marxist neoliberal Swedish government, are too busy living on welfare, burning cars and throwing hand grenades converting parts of a once peaceful, low-crime country into Muslim- only infested, crime ridden ghettos. Poor critters.05 - The rest of the characters are just silly caricatures, including Asian military men, the evil white millionaire and the obligatory manipulative blonde white woman, because we all know that most white people are evil.06 - Capitalism and corporations are all evil, but no mention of the government of course, because we all know Sweden is a socialist country and i am sure Tarik didn't want to upset his multicultural masters.I won't go into details, but the plot of this movie is just so silly, that one has to wonder how this movie got made at all.. no wonder the voice acting on this stupid movie is so inane and lifeless.. as if the actors reading the script just could not believe the idiocy they were reciting.. i am sure they were just doing it for the money.

(spoilers are a real time saver)...Imagine a world, in the not so distant future, where people resemble CGI renderings of the "Team America: World Police" puppets...So lemme get this straight - natural resources dried up and the global economy collapsed as the 3 sentence text intro narrates for us. And yet, they were able to link up a continental metro system and keep it up and running? mmkay.Dandruff shampoo is used to read and manipulate the minds of the masses. Altho the shampoo doesn't eliminate dandruff, it is used by everyone (actually half of everyone), including bald people, ... unconditionally. (What did you think of my conditioner pun?) Maybe that shampoo is their only option because of a future shampoo monopoly. I mean, You can't just not wash your hair in grungy dysfunctional dystopiaville. Or maybe the hot blonde in the brainwashing ad was just too convincing. I don't know, everyone uses the same shampoo, just go with it.And listening in on your thoughts (as provided somehow by shampoo) from the other end is some dude at a desk. There's a one-to-one ratio between people on the shampoo and people being controlled. Half the population controls the other, but hey, they just work there, what else can they do?Look, I understand it's an art form and you gotta take liberties, but c'mon, this is just too dumb to be serious. I dunno, maybe I'm just too left brained for this one.The main character is just a "normal" guy us simpletons in the audience can identify with. Ah, how pleasantly belittling.The music was as empty as the blank expressions on that blonde girl's face.It was so dark I could barely see half the time.Some of the voice acting felt flat, forced, like read from the script. Comparing it to a cheap video game would be a slight exaggeration, but it made me think of such nonetheless.I used to enjoy dystopian movies, but I guess I'm getting burned out. What are they supposed to represent? The evil corporations? The ones that put high fructose corn syrup in everything? Little known fact - the only reason we know about high octane sugar is because they're required to give us an ingredient list.

can't quite understand the negative reviews on this movie. yes, the animation isn't 'high tone' but the story line will keep you glued to the movie.the other more positive reviewers have finely analyzed and explained this short movie so i will not repeat their efforts. but i do suggest to give this most unusual film a look.there are some weak spots in the story but as a whole it all works! it's different in look and atmosphere and isn't that what movie buffs seek out.please don't approach this little gem of a movie expecting a wow wee in special effects. that's not what it's about. i believe the director is making a subtle comment on our times.

So. Metropia. Well, I really wanted to like this film. I love science fiction, especially intelligent science fiction, but Metropia does not cut it. I didn't like the flat, one dimensional way they did the CGI, but that's just me. They wanted to try something different and it didn't work for me. However, I didn't find the whole thing visually interesting. The grayish, sepia tones helped establish the mood of the film, but too much of anything can become monotonous. In the first 'Alien' there's an undercurrent of dread, even before anyone dies, but the lighting changes depending on what part of the ship they're in. Even '1984' changes lighting more often! The dialogue is good, but hardly remarkable. The main character didn't evoke much sympathy. He's a bit TOO much of a schlump. Too much of an everyman to be interesting. The voices in his head do a good job of confusing him and the audience. Are they actual voices, or is he slowly losing his mind? However, that too is a bit confusing. And not in a good way. It turns out the corporation, run by an old, crusty, almost decrepit old businessman is in fact monitoring us all. They are feeding us instructions when we stray from the path of conformity and obedience. However, we don't learn to what end. It wasn't clear what they wanted to accomplish. If that was mentioned anywhere in the film, it was not clear. And to me, that's poor storytelling.I rented this on a Friday night, got about 45 minutes in and fell asleep. Never a good sign in a movie. A movie can be slow paced, but there still has to be dramatic tension. Or suspense. This movie did not have it. Of course, I should realize; any movie Vincent Gallo's involved in is going to plod along unbelievably slowly. The premise is good. The average person needing to wake up and not be controlled by corporations or advertising or whatever, is a good idea. I give the movie credit for what it attempts, even though it's been done many times before. However, the execution of this idea was pretty poor. Kind of like when the blonde tries to alert the protagonist to the danger and get him to help her. She tries to seduce him, unfortunately in her underwear instead of completely nude. (And since there was nudity earlier, the movie didn't hold back to be a nice PG film.)If she'd approached him stark naked, he might have found her impossible to resist. She too had a good idea, but it was very poorly executed.