Oh come on now??
Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)
Directed By: Victor Cook, Mike Disa, Sang-Jin Kim, Shuko Murase, Jong-Sik Nam, and Lee Seung-Gyu
The Prologue
Wow that’s a lot of directors isn’t it??? Anyway, what we have here with Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic, is an animated spin-off of the video game of the same name that was released by Electronic Arts. Now of course I’ve never played the game, but I have seen the commercial for it, so that counts right? As a matter of fact I’m not much of a gamer. I play sports games, I play old school stuff like Double Dragon, but as far as something like this, nope. But I’m not above watching an animated feature, especially when it has blood..and um..nudity?
The Movie
I think you already know the plot to this old tale, but for those of you not “in the know”, here you go. Dante has to go through all nine circles of Hell in order to save his love, Beatrice, who has been sucked down to hell upon her death by no fault of her own. Of course when the devil snatched her and ran with her, then tossed a large line of demons at me right at the very start would have been the point where I said, “Yeeah, see ya Beatrice!”, but then again that’s me and clearly I’m not as heroic as Dante, and I also lack his outrageous vertical leap and horse that seems to be able to turn flips..more on this later.
Well it is animation and I’ll happily admit to you that the animation is great. I thought it all looked really good, and was very well put together. Also they manage to make the animated violence (and there is a ton of it), and the monsters/demons look very good. Since these are creatures from Hell you expect them to look like that’s where they came from and for the best part of it, the film does that well. There is also a lot of very weird and creepy visuals that come and go as we dip into all the circles of Hell and what comes with them. The “lust” section was especially loaded with what you’d expect in a very creepy fashion.
Now I know I’m primarily a horror movie fan. I am supposed to let logic go and go with a lot of things. I’m supposed to believe a man that works at the S-Mart can use a boomstick and kill demons, but I just had a hard time buying a lot of this. Dante isn’t just slaying lower level minions of the Devil here. He’s going toe to toe with circle leaders and head honchos from the very deepest, darkest, pits of Hell and he is killing these mofos off with ease..EASE?? I just have trouble buying it. I mean, yeah, I can deal with him taking them out and moving along and all, but could he at least seem to have some trouble while doing so?? I’m not wanting to spoil anything for anyone who may want to see this but there’s hardly a hiccup along the way..That in it’s self can make the journey you watch at times see boring.
So you get cool graphic violence, the story has a very good turns but is still rather ridiculous for the most part, and there’s no real drama. I’d also add in an ending that I found more along the lines of just being there to possibly set up a sequel rather than being truly fulfilling. When you add it all up I believe you get more reasons to skip this rather than watch it. I mean if you just want animated nudity and graphic violence, there’s a ton of Anime out there that gives you all of that plus a much more worthwhile story to sit through along the way. So unless you just looove the game soo much that you just have to see this, I’d say let it set there on the shelve.
The Conclusion
I liked the violence, but that was about it. You could probably make a drinking game out of the number of times Dante encounters a creature and says “Whats this!?”, because I believe he sure does say that an awful lot as he goes along his journey. He also has a horse that seems to be a ninja, doing very un-horse-like jumps..Shame he isn’t around more than he is. Oh well, skip it, folks!
The Rating (5.5/10)
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