While the cuteness it still has makes it difficult to hate, this would be more tolerable if the penguins, CG or not, were just being penguins and not the Seven Dwarfs. A penguin acting like a penguin is fun enough as it is - what need is there to make everyone a Happy Feet reject?

What do you get when you find it possible to make a movie out of hand-drawn, outsourced Korean animation, stop-motion, Toon Boom puppetry, cut-out photographs, live-action, cartoonish CG from Australia and photorealistic CG all at the same time?

You get SpongeBob 2 of all films.

A film that provides some decent chuckles, impressive design work, diversity and sweetness, although it might just come to prove that DreamWorks have tried so hard that they've finally lost it.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the whole Rihanna focus was another one of their attempts at saving their company from bankruptcy.

You can tell a type of comedy has died when it intends to spoof comedies while being as repulsive and unfunny as humanly possible.

But then it goes as far as to spoof a spoof movie.

You can't hit rock bottom any harder than that.

Bonkers, brutal violence in a church.
People's bodies being sliced in every way imaginable.
Reckless, 20-something behaviour.
Dogs being murdered.
Hard-working mothers being possessed to try to kill their own children.
Politicians' heads exploding to classical music.
The president's head exploding.
Sexism galore.

Oh, yes.
I like this.

What's so unique about this and Slick Hare is how they express WB's change in style throughout the years - numerous of the earlier "inanimate animated" and "caricature party" cartoons had humour that dated faster than Merrie Melodies in the Golden Age and consisted mainly of skits. This, for example, would be seen by people who aren't animation enthusiasts as simple and cute today if it weren't for Bob Clampett letting his psyche loose and Daffy Duck in a zoot suit. The "living book shop" story to beat.

Ain't it a shame that even Chuck Jones lost it over the years? While some of his shorts from this era were decent, like his attempt at doing Feed the Kitty with a huge asshole as the lead, they just weren't witty enough. Take this short for instance, a short that seems to emphasize the "one-joke premise" schtick heavily and relies too much on cameos and recycled gags for its own good. Stupor Duck is superior short here.

Remember when Daffy Duck was paired up with Taz for a change? It was fun to see what would happen if his prey was someone who wasn't the mastermind that Bugs was. Now he's paired up with Witch Hazel! And Speedy again? Gawd, there is such wasted potential here.

Re-used Chuck Jones animation, pathetic concept, unfunny, boring writing, absolutely no reason for Speedy to be there, sigh. As stupid as See Ya Later Gladiator is, this laziness makes that look like Duck cluckin' Amuck.

Regardless of its occasional fakeness, American Sniper is a tense, shocking and thought-inducing biopic that is one of Clint Eastwood's better works since Invictus even though I'm going to be pissed if the Academy loves this movie so much that it gets the Best Picture award over Boyhood and Birdman.

It's strike three for Sony Pictures Animation, and it doesn't help that their first film since this one is undoubtedly going to be a strike four. This is why I have mixed feelings about the LEGO sequels - Horrible Bosses was hilarious, but the writers of that also wrote Burt Wonderstone. They eventually moved on to this, a sequel to a wonderful movie with intelligent writers and directors that thinks rehashing the jokes from the first one will keep it witty.

Remember when Brent was that manbaby mascot for seafood? Let's throw him in there so he can utter "uh-oh" every time we see him and make fun of how fat he is!

Remember when everyone took a few seconds to realise what Steve did with his poop? Let's have him smear his poop on a piece of paper that will later get dumped into delicious, edible liquid!

Woah. People actually laughed at that leek joke we just came up with. Hey, let's do it again but with Flint's dad! Same with the Mr. T......erry Crewes cop tears gag! It's always funny the second time around!

The problem here is that Lord and Miller were there to provide the story and executive approval, but not much else. And with the scribes of, um, The Internship and, eh, Girl Most Likely as the scribes of LEGO 2, I'll have doubts for the next few years if the producer credit is really worth it.

Basically, this does to the original book what Illumination did to The Lorax. Alongside environmental propaganda, it just concentrates on being wacky and cartoonish rather than clever. That, and the performances of Kristen Schaal and Will Forte are unusually boring. If this meddling is the same case with Genndy Tartakovsky's future projects after Hotel 2 and Lauren Faust's Medusa, then I've lost all faith in Sony.