Review:

Life's A Jungle feels like movie that you watch while you are in a dream. It has a very vague plot where nothing really happens. 90% of the scenes don't exist to further the story, they are just there to fill time. Life's a Jungle is 100 minutes long (although the box says it's 70 minutes and the disc says it's 88 minutes) with about 18 minutes of actual plot and 82 minutes scenes that only exist to waste time; it's all filler. This entire movie is filler. The purpose of this film is obviously to distract stupid children from the fact that their parents don't love them. The animation is sub-PS2 level. The animals all walk like they are holding in a giant shit (or a Poopy Loopy, if you will) with very stiff and jerky movements. For some reason, all the animals are bipedal, which is an unnatural stance for creatures such as rhinos and dogs. This leads to our main character, Pip, looking like he's jacked and about to rip out of his sweater vest and salmon pink T-shirt and the rhinos appear to be morbidly obese space aliens. Notice that Life's a Jungle came out in 2012. So, its peers are ParaNorman, Brave, and Wreck-It-Ralph. Life's a Jungle has wonderful animation features such as background textures glitching out and changing colors right in front of our eyes, chairs that have grass cutting through them and characters walk right through rocks and walls because none of the animators care, and the worst running animations scene in human history (like alligators who run on all fours without their front legs touching the ground). Many times, everything looks sun bleached and over exposed). There are a set of houses that have a texture that makes it look like the buildings are made or termites because anytime the camera moves, the texture readjusts itself. They even make it seem like the film is actually being filmed with a camera. The "camera" will be smoothly moving toward our characters and them abruptly stop and lower just a bit to get them in frame. The entire movie feels like it was recorded within a video game, like if Rooster Teeth used The Simpsons: Hit & Run instead of Halo. The "camera" apears to be dragged across the screen and adjusted. All of the character models are static textures that don't move. That sheen you see on the dog's nose in the poster is always there, in that exact same place. It's not there because of a light system, it's part of his character model. It's a perfect example of how lazy and cheap the entire movie is. There is no physics system in place here. Characters don't effect the grass (neither do chairs, as I previously mentioned) and the water doesn't ripple. If you imagine the wire frame story boards they used to use, but paste of whatever textures came with the animation program they bought from Amazon, that's what this movie is. They do the bare minimum every time. There was no attempt to sink the character's mouths with the dialog and we even get multiple situations where mouths move and they aren't even saying anything. But, honestly if they took out all of the dialog, Life's a Jungle might even be a better movie. The voice acting is terrible. All the human characters have voices filtered through a tin can and all the animals have voice actors who are half asleep. Every line is devoid of emotion. The rest of the sound has to be stock effects and music that came with their animation program. The score is repetitive, generic, and often at odds with the tone of the scene. The sound effects are public domain Foley effects that feel lifted straight from the Three Stooges. There is a young panther(?) that can talk, but is constantly given stock human baby sounds. The animal is too old or those sounds, even if it was a human baby. All of these things show absence of shits to give. What is confusing is that they made 100 minutes of this shit. Why is it so long? If we cut out all the filler scenes, like watching Pip walk towards the "camera" for a solid minute or the multiple shots where the characters repeat the same dance move for three minutes or entire sequences like Pip showing his friends the joys of howling at the moon, we could have about 20 minutes of terrible, but eventful story. Why do we need a ten minute segment of the characters playing a confusing version of American Football? It doesn't have any character building, nor is it at all interesting or remotely important to the story. I don't get it. No one involved cared about the movie, so why did they make so much of it? I can't even imagine a child enjoying this movie. It's not funny, it looks terrible, and it's not even colorful enough to keep anyone's attention. This is a full price movie. If any parent is buying this instead of Madagascar (which it clearly is hoping you confuse it for), Toy Story, or any other animated movie, CPS needs to be notified. Madagascar is a terrible movie, but at least it has a plot with scenes that progress it and voice actors who know what they are doing. Life's a Jungle only has any value as a terrible movie that you make fun off while you suffer and slowly die inside. I can't even say it's worth it for that. It's and hour and forty minutes of what has to have been created using some kind of Animation for Dummies program. It's never funny on purpose and only occasionally unintentionally funny. It's full of long, drawn out scenes that are boring and often not even accompanied by score or background sounds. It's 100 minutes you will never get back. This is one of the very few times where I would recommend just watching a review of the film rather than the actual thing. Seriously, this isn't like Unfriended or Wishupon where you can get real enjoyment out of how hilariously bad it is. It does have some scenes that are so bad and incompetent that they are hilarious, but not nearly enough to validate the running time. You can find Shrek on DVD for like five dollars, just buy that twice instead of Life's a Jungle. Hell, make your kids watch Cars 2, even that is better. Planes! I recommend Planes over this.