Directed By Ryan Crego

Starring – Laila Lockhart Kraner, Kristen Wiig, Gloria Estefan

The Plot – Gabby (Kraner) and Grandma Gigi’s (Estefan) road trip takes an unexpected turn when Gabby’s prized dollhouse ends up with eccentric cat lady Vera (Wiig). Gabby embarks on a adventure to reunite the Gabby Cats and retrieve her beloved dollhouse before it’s too late.

Rated G

Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie | Official Trailer

POSITIVES

Working constructively against some of the year’s most annoying trailers left my expectations feeling grim for this children’s franchise, but there are some endearing elements to the film that help to keep it on the superior side of the year’s worst releases, beginning with the vibrancy of the animation, in all of its three-dimensional radiance. When the film beneficially deviates away from its live action enveloping, it’s able to lose itself in the fantastically imaginative elements of its energetic escapism, featuring lavishly colorful canvases and endlessly extensive detail in the shifting scenery that inscribe a lot of artistic integrity to the film that dazzles masterfully on the big screen, but beyond that an exhilarating emphasis in the underlining of Crego’s adventurous direction during action sequences that do surprisingly lead to some enticingly fun set pieces to the chaotic conflicts. While it’s never on the consistent level of signature studios such as Pixar or Laika, it’s breezily captivating in ways that play intoxicatingly grand on the biggest screen possible, producing what is a seamlessly elevated transition from the roots of its popular TV show, to justify the cause. In addition to stellar animation, I have to give a lot of credit to Kristen Wiig, who is limitlessly dedicating herself to no end to produce a kookily quirky character who maximizes influential presence not attained by anyone else involved in the experience. Wiig voraciously chews the scenery with the subtlety of a Mack Truck plowing into a garbage dumpster, and while that lack of nuance might prove to be distracting in other films, here it’s everything necessary to brandish a calculatingly conniving antagonist who feels like the embodiment of the societal cat lady, with her interactions alongside four-legged feline, Marlena, to be the closest that this movie had towards summoning an effective laugh out of me. Wiig is joined by memorably energetic and familiarly obscuring turns from Kyle Mooney, Ego Nwodim, and Melissa Villasenor, to name a few, making this a full-blown Saturday Night Live reunion that prove so much talented versatility in the personalities of Gabby’s miniature cohorts, especially in the sugary sensibilities that play purposely to the film’s distinguished tone.

NEGATIVES

Having rarely seen the TV show of the same name, I can’t exactly comment on the authenticity of the product, but I will say that there is more than enough evidence in this cinematic rendering to inspire me to never want to experience anything with the Gabby’s Dollhouse title again, beginning with the plot and ensuing storytelling, which immediately feel dead on arrival with such an uncompelling outline. While I don’t exactly watch these kinds of movies to be moved profoundly, I will say that even meeting this film at the eye level that it appraises enacts bouts with scatterbrained sequencing, stunted pacing, and flat characterization to anyone uninvolved with its televised origins, serving as a confrontationally compromising engagement for the inexperienced seeking a bridge to a new fantastical world of imagination. The film is obviously improved upon, whenever Wiig’s Vera pops on-screen, but just as quickly as she’s introduced, she’s sidelined for prolonged bouts of the film’s 90-minute duration, and it not only noticeably drains the movie’s momentum throughout these subsidized missions that intentionally pad the product with so much excessive fat on the patience of the audience, but it also corresponds with a massive abundance of musical numbers that lyrically or instrumentally add very little context to what’s transpiring on-screen between its characters in focus, in turn feeling like more of the shameless shilling of studios opting for downloads, instead of taking their time to properly materialize a product that adult audiences can enjoy just as much as their children. Beyond this, the film also decides to shift up its tone around the movie’s midway point, opting for more of a serious sentimentality in ways that obviously derive from something like “Toy Story”, where Andy’s aging leaves his toys forgotten about in the priorities of adolescence. Because it’s so transparently obvious and upfront thematically about what it’s attempting, yearning for the same kind of emotional profoundness towards drama that it doesn’t even come close to even remotely attaining. This wouldn’t even be a problem if the other side of the emotional dexterity landed effectively, but the dominant humor felt consistently throughout the movie’s first half is so absolved of opportunity, thanks in part to the aforementioned G-rating that can’t even summon bodily humor to squeeze even an accidental laugh out of its audience, but made even worse within the quirkily chipper demeanor that floundered any semblance of appeal towards the titular protagonist, especially in crucially overlooking the breaking of the fourth wall, where Gabby’s speaking directly to the audience could’ve elicited more of the articulated insight into the evidentially social awkwardness of the character. Instead, it’s an alarmingly obnoxious engagement, full of boisterous sound edits to the aforementioned bombastically intrusive soundtrack, as well as an overwhelming essence of artificiality in the atmosphere that transpires an inescapable phoniness to any momentary conflict failing miserably at appraising stakes or urgency to such a brutally paced experience. That phoniness is felt the loudest in Laila Lockhart Kraner’s return as the titular protagonist, Gabby, with her inescapable aging off-screen transpiring an awkwardness to delivery on-screen that lacks the kind of genuineness that makes her dialogue feel naturally spawned from within her. This isn’t a mean-spirited rant meant to sling mud at the 17-year-old actress, as her energetic exuberance during animated sequences inspired an affectionate appeal that plays particularly well towards Crego’s direction, especially in her periodic interactions with the audience. But her emotionality during key interactions with Wiig brought out the most lumbering and lethargic inexperience with range that couldn’t hold her own charismatically against a veteran of the screen, and as a result directly undercuts the momentum of these scenes during their most integral, conveying a complete lack of cadence that made Kraner’s work disrupt with discomfort. Finally, even the film’s technical components aren’t entirely free from critique, as the inconsistencies in the frame rate during scenes pertaining to animated characters crossing over into the real world garner with them a choppy consistency to the outer presentation that lags noticeably to the clarity of the imagery. This is obviously nothing new, as many films face a freneticism when something artificial is typically enacted to the initial photography, but here its lagging stands out abrasively in ways that frequently take away focus from the integrity of the animation that demands it, resulting in an unforeseen inconsistency that seems especially amateur for Dreamworks Animations.

OVERALL
“Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie” is on one hand a colorfully chaotic and harmless diversion for childlike audiences, but on the other a tedious labor of love for unlucky parents who find themselves regretfully subjected to blandly flat humor, disfigured storytelling, and a soundtrack of top 40 favorites that hold no bearing or relevance to what’s transpiring. While the film’s candy-coated animation inscribes a big screen appeal that flourishes vibrantly on the big screen, the 90 minutes entailing them is a derivatively evident successor of the “Toy Story” influence, ripping off every emotional beat from its predecessor, except for the desire to dish out a profoundly sincere slice of life.

My Grade: 3.4 or F