The Fuzzi Movie Has No Fuzz At All

Oh, fuzzis. These Colored Brothers aren't really as popular as their Skittles-colored counterparts, but somehow became the most iconic emoji-like things on Marcanese social media since 2015. And guess what? They now have their own movie (aside from their rarely unique 2016 film starring the two most ubiquitous goofballs since SpongeBob & Patrick, Lene & Fuzz) from the studio that brought us the atrocious kid-friendly crudeness and debauchery of *Food Wars* two years earlier. Originally titled *Fuzzi Movie: Fuzz Yourself* (yep, exactly as you read it), Sony saw this as a great opportunity to rake in overloads of product placement into an already existent icon, mercifully abandoning this title for the more simpler, less eyestabby *The Fuzzi Movie.* Sounds familiar, right? If *The Emoji Movie* seemed terrible enough as the movie centering on the yellow smileys inside your smartphone, don't expect this to be two times better... because it's actually much worse than expected. It's actually pretty much more of an insult joke than a movie.

You know what else seems familiar? The great Sir Patrick Stewart voicing an anthromorphic dried piece of snot this time around. Upon the arrival of the film's promotion posters and teaser trailers, everyone knew it was gonna fail severely. Maybe it could've mixed some interesting social critique into a CG cartoon like last summer's *Swig Party* (something that *Food Wars* could've done better), but Tony Leondis and his execs at Sony opted to take the less subversive route when it comes to making a movie about the personal lives of well, fuzzis. By having an exuberant red fuzzball named Lene (voiced by TJ Miller) taking center stage, I doubt the film's clichéd storylines wouldn't be about him being an outcast who's trying to be normal. Like, who the heck cares?

#### *The Fuzzi Movie* is heavy on product placement, light on story and character development.

Still, as a critic, you walk into every movie — even the ones you’re pretty sure are going to include overused tropes — with a sense of hope and willingness to be amazed. And *The Fuzzi Movie*, my friends, is certainly amazing. It's amazing that Thomas Edison invented the electric lightbulb but somehow movies like this get made. It's amazing how Sony thought "oh, *this* would be such a good idea!" when the script's too low with jokes as bland as Fuzz attempting to chew a Jenga block and lines such as "hey, throw some mustard on that hot dog." It's the more amazing - or maybe not - that Lene, our main character who wants to act normal, is actually gay. That's a shame. You know what could possibly be the most amazing aspect of this 88-minute long endorsement? Having us witness the shady commercial attempts to shove as many recognizable corporate propaganda as possible into *The Fuzzi Movie's* sad excuse for a plot: Facebook, UNO, Simon Swipe, Jenga, Twitter, Instagram, Dropbox, Super Mario Bros, Connect Four, Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution... and the list goes on (sorry, no Clash of Clans, no Angry Birds... where are the mobile games anyway?)

But... onto the story, shall we? The fuzzis obviously live in Fuzziopolis, where everyone is supposed to act "normal" according to a generic set of rules each fuzzi has to follow in life: Mr. Booger and his son are supposed to make nasty booger puns, Mr. Clock Scattergories has to check everyday what time it is, and Ms. Phone (a pretty "smartphone" who's in charge of the fuzzi world's Internet, voiced by Maya Rudolph in yet another bad movie) must wear plenty of filter to look like an Instagram celebrity host. Get the joke? She's so smart at technology that the screenwriters saw Maya Rudolph fit as a perfect smartphone. These stereotypical on-the-nose jokes continue as we get introduced to Lene, who's having a problem as he wrecks havoc on his first day at work. Basically, the fuzzi has to show itself in a designated box on a big grid to be "fuzzed" by some anonymous hacker (oh, now we see where this is going), but Lene fails so hard by making the wrong fuzz to everyone's apathy, especially from his exhausted uncle Armand (Mel Gibson, in a deadpan sense of humor). Ms. Phone rejects Lene immediately, and that's where... Aha! Lene is now being labeled as a "malfunction" and someone out there wants to delete him forever. Academy Award winner Robert De Niro voices Paperman, the film's thin-as-paper antagonist, who seeks to take over Fuzziopolis and destroy Ms. Phone for a generic Disney type of motive that could've literally been well-executed on paper. When Lene stands on his way, Paperman accuses him of "hacking into his kingdom" and thus wanting to kill him. We aren't on a dystopian animated movie for kids about the dangers of paper-fold psychopaths and hungry hackers, are we?

This is where James Corden's Fuzz comes into play. Trying to escape from his own cruel world, Lene teams up with the annoying orange blob, who has recently been downgraded from the VIP "favorites" section and is pretty sore about it. Following one harsh joke about the fish fuzzi with a disability and another BS gag with a bull playing cards, the two attempt to reach the Great White Cloud in order to fix Lene's problem while Paperman makes his move towards screen domination (not really). But the good guys plan requires leaving Fuzziopolis and venturing out into the wide world of mobile games, games, games... and it's dangerous out there.

#### *The Fuzzi Movie* wants to be a *Marco* movie. It lacks the elements that makes the *Marco* movies so great in the first place.

The visualization of Fuzziopolis and its surrounding apps is the film's high point, by a long shot (if you were expecting its high point to be Sir Patrick Stewart as Booger, you should be disappointed; he has eight lines in this whole entire film, all lame booger quips plus "we're number one!"). It vaguely recalls the memories of Marco and his buds going through some life changes, the journey of the Colored Brothers into a girl's subconscious mind, the creative innovation and solid message on tech dependency of the *Lego* films, and the gaming experience of *The Actors Movie*... wait, now that we mentioned something about mobile games earlier, let's take a look at the unstimulating "gaming app-venture" Lene & Fuzz play upon getting to the cloud. They spend most of their time chatting with strangers on Facebook, pretending to be *Guitar Hero* rockstars, following the Twitter bird through Pinterest, suing Uncle Pennybags for some *Monopoly* cash (trust me, that was the only fun experience I had here watching this film), and for some reason, reaching the Great White Cloud via Dropbox. By this point forward, we can now assume Lene is expressing the whole audience a lie - turns out, he has no abnormality issues, but rather trying to shove down our faces with the same assumption that he's gay (even going as far as literally saying it!). How can we trust a fuzzi who's longing to be like the rest of his friends, if he tells us a lie? Things don't get better as the film paces: Lene & Fuzz meet some anonymous hacker they claim as a "god" (how can hackers be gods? Please, this isn't *Food Wars*), Paperman replaces Bowser with the Iron Shark as his deus-ex machina, Pandora saves the world, and the fuzzis dance party together like in most CG animated fare these days. How ridiculous.

#### *The Fuzzi Movie* lacks any originality, is full of derivative ideas and overused pop culture references.

To start things with, it wasn't really a good idea to cast Robert De Niro as the film's villain (thus being his second time playing an animated character since DreamWorks' *Shark Tale*), since Paperman feels miscast throughout the film. The other voice actors don't give a fuzz either, not even Sir Patrick Stewart and Bill Hader (who voices a workaholic stapler). The film clearly has a desire to say something about the modern day world, that be the increasing lack of complex emotional discussion between people -- when conversations nowadays can just be comprised of smiling fuzzies and digital high-fives -- or the surprisingly feminist stance of Lene's smartphone girlfriend, ironically being put with the film's sexist representation and *The Handmaid's Tale* (yep, just like how *The Emoji Movie* posted a similar Tweet before the film's release). Even more irritating is the sick joke of SpongeBob performing as the king's lingerie-wearing clown, and how this film makes a joke about Buzz Lightyear's existential crisis in his first movie. Heck, even Marco himself had that same problem, and he wouldn't be amazed to see his space ranger friend being insulted by shameless corporate product. BuzzFeed describes fuzzis as "semi-competent emoticons of Marcanese digital media that are as numerous as the many young children and teens who appreciate their uniquely colorful designs at the easy touch of their fingertips". Not exactly how fuzzis act in this film. They just don't seem to care about Lene's problem. Besides, it's hard to care what happens to Lene (even making him "abnormal" seems like a weirdly easy gimmick for the most unabashed critics) though a more disciplined screenplay could have trotted out the tired but still accurate children’s movie sentiment about always being true to yourself. Possibly *The Fuzzi Movie's* only great contribution to society, alas, would be a new dance called the "Fuzzi Pop", in which you do whatever you want and cross your arms above the face repeatedly, in a kind of strange game of peek-a-boo, whenever you make a new expression.

With such a sticky pile of germ, what can you possibly do? You can’t review it in all fuzzis — that’s too easy. You can’t explore its interesting ideas about fuzzis, language, emotions, and Jenga blocks, because it doesn’t have any. You can’t even fully describe in words, or fuzzis, the frustration of seeing money blithely poured into a film that’s one massive, uncritical ad for something nearly everyone in the theater already owns, dressed up as family-friendly entertainment. The only scene I found intriguing was when Armand & Ms. Phone, the only two decently developed characters in this film, shared their feelings of love and misery via Phone's Instagram account in Paris. Nothing else here seems captivating for the typical fuzzi lover. *The Fuzzi Movie* may be as depressing of a film experience as its politically correct 2017 predecessor but if the reaction of the kids that I saw it with is any indication, there may be hope for the future after all.