Magic Tree House

First of all, you should not watch this if you are expecting a mature, serious movie, this here is a movie to a series of books for children. So this movie is directed at children. I will write this review (which is actually my first, but i'll try my best) with that in mind.

Story: 6
I would say that the story is a typical moden fairy tail of a boy and his sister who find a magical tree house and do magic things with it. There were a lot of things that you could expect but after all it is a story for children and as ... such, it did a good job. It reminded me a lot of some other movies that i watched when i was younger. The only thing i really disliked was the end but i wont spoil anything here, you just have to see for yourself.

Art: 9
I personally loved the art. In the first minutes i was already thinking to myself "well, this looks pretty good". The animations were pretty good, i loved that scene at the beginning in the classroom (you will know what i mean when you see it).

Sound: 7
I dont really know what this category is all about, if it's just about the soundtrack or the voice actors too. I will just write down my thoughts on both.
The soundtrack was not that special but there were scenes when i thought that the music was pretty cool. It also reminded me of some other movies, sometimes it even reminded me of some soundtracks of movies from studio ghibli.
In my opinion, the voice actors did a good job. At the beginning i was thinking that Annie's voice was a little strange but i learned to love it while watching the movie.

Characters: 6
The characters themselves were nothing special, either. They were just some mainstream characters in a story for children. (I don't really know what to say to this)

Overall i liked it. I don't think that i liked it because of a unique story or anything (because there is no such thing here) but because i felt really nostalgic while watching it. In a way it was like those movies i used to watch all the time while i was a kid. And i bet, if i had watched this when i was younger, i would have loved it.

I hope i could help anyone with this...

Magic Tree House is an American fantasy series by Mary Pope Osborne. The books have done very well, having been translated into over thirty languages. In 2011, Ajia-do animation works produced the first film based on the series. I'll be completely honest, I haven't read these books. I'm not going to know if the film version stays true to the original. I'll be looking purely at how well it stands on its own. With that in mind, let's take a look at Magic Tree House.

Story:

We open with a sorceress helping some children in a library. Once they're on their way out she's attacked by a ... mysterious wizard and turned into a mouse. We cut to a more recognisable world where our heroes, Jack & Annie experience an incident at school involving chasing a frog. Apparently their teachers are very bad at maintaining order. On their way home, the two stumble across a tree house filled with books that can take them through time and space based on where they want to go from the books. They discover that there are four hidden medallions that they can find to make a miracle happen. While in pursuit of the second they encounter Morgan Le Fay, who tells them of her troubles and enlists their aid. Can they find the medallions and return Morgan's powers?

The big failing of the narrative is that their visits to the various locations while they're searching for the medallions aren't that interesting. Most of them involve the kids wandering around, locating the medallion and getting chased by something. It gets pretty repetitive for a film that doesn't even run for two hours. There's also a lot of bluster surrounding whether or not Jack will play Romeo in a play but there's no reason to get invested in it since there are no real stakes to whether or not he does. Really, the whole thing amounts to a kind of heavy-handed illustration of his whole character arc and how he's learning to be more adventurous. There's also the whole de-powering and transformation of Morgan that kick off the adventure. The most intriguing narrative aspect throughout is wondering why. When the answer does come out it's a big let-down.

That being said, the whole concept is a good one. The disparate settings are also interesting, even though most of them follow the same basic formula.

Characters:

The cast doesn't have that much to them. Annie is adventurous. Her brother is more reserved and bookish. They're character types we've seen before but there's nothing really wrong with the portrayals here.

Art:

The artwork is a bit mixed. I'll use the dinosaur setting as the big example. When they travel to the world of dinosaurs the flora looks good, the scope is grand and the dinosaurs themselves look like they didn't have much effort put into them. Even ignoring the fact that they forgot the feathers, the dinosaurs have blank looks and just look like they were drawn in five minutes. The same holds up throughout the film. You have some stuff that's nicely detailed and others where the art team doesn't seem to have tried.

Sound:

The acting is perfectly passable. The kids are voiced by Ashida Mana & Kitagawa Keiko. They aren't the best performances but there's also nothing really wrong with them. I could say the same basic thing about the music. It's fine.

Ho-yay:

There isn't any, nor would I expect a children's film to have any.

Final Thoughts:

That's Magic Tree House. How does it hold up? Well, I can't call it a good film. There are much better out there, including films made for children. That being said, I also wouldn't call it bad. In terms of kids' films it's pretty average. While it has an interesting concept and the visuals can look nice at times, the story is also kind of dull. The characters are over-used tropes and there are just a lot of points where they decided not to bother putting in much effort. My final rating is going to be a 5/10. Tomorrow I'll continue film festival week with Hanare Toride no Yonna.

this is my first time writing movie review
this is non spoilered review so i'll just say what i think about this movie

story : 5

story is quite bad for some reason
what i can say is this anime is too straightforward and have not so appealing climaxes, well at least the story is really easy to follow and just right for its target audience, but not for me

art : 2

... i don't like the art style, too americanish for an anime, the character expression is rather plain and not really enjoyable for me

sound : 6

the sound is the only thing good in this show, even tough the sound is the only thing good, it is not as good compared to others but it is quite enjoyable, the bgm, sfx all pretty good

character : 3

the main character here is the little sister and the big brother, the little sister act as she knows everything and act as she wants, i kinda hate this
the big brother is a passive boy (a bookworm i think) but the character development for the brother is quite good

enjoyment : 1

not much i like about this show, i feel like it is not for me, it is for kindergarten, even i dont think a kindergartener will like this

overall : 3

overall i dont like this show because this show is kinda plain and too straightforward.
i have wasted 2 hrs of my life for this show


i hope i can help with this review,