Director: Juan José Campanella
Distributor: Splendid Film
Duration: 106 minutes
Underdogs (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
When you set foot into a bar, one of the first thing’s you’ll see is a foosball set-up. A lot of guys are interested in mastering this game and play loads of hours on it. There are some questions though. What happens when you get too fanatic or when you defeat a way-too-competitive guy? Underdogs is an animation movie that will give answers to these questions in an unexpected way.
Note: As this movie is originally Argentinian, we’re going to use the original character names in the review.
Underdogs starts with a father telling a tale to its son who is in love with his (gaming) tablet. As the tale starts off, it seems that you will need a lot of imagination. The story takes us to a small town where Amadeo (Luciana Falcón/David Masajnik) is working in a quiet bar. He doesn’t like his work much, as he rather enjoys playing foosball. His skills are unseen and he doesn’t have any problem defeating opponents. Even more, he has changed his players and given them names and personalities to make his imaginary matches more lively. One day, he sees the love of his life: Laura (Lucía Maciel). She’s quite intrigued as well as she forgets everything around her and starts to get interested in Amadeo’s foosball skills. At this point, Grosso (Mariana Otero/Diego Ramos) enters the scene and bullies everyone in the bar as he is the best football player at the moment, in the small village. Eventually, Grosso and Amadeo end up playing a foosball match in which Grosso bites the dust. This is too much for the competitive guy and he leaves the bar in agony. Everyone is in a good mood with the barkeeper’s victory but there are others that want to take advantage of the situation.
After several years, it seems that Amadeo is still into foosball as this is the only thing he’s good at. Laura has other plans as she wants to travel to the big city and attend an education there. Their plans and ideas are interrupted when the best football player of the world appears in the quiet village. It seems that he wants to build the biggest stadium whilst wiping the town away. He doesn’t care what happens to it, as he wants to get even with his rival Amadeo. To do this, he gets a grip of the foosball set-up and due to circumstances, Laura gets dragged along with Grosso. It seems that the protagonist is all alone.. or so it seems. His beloved foosball character that was left behind comes to life and they tackle the problem together. This is the start of quite an adventure.
The story itself might seem a bit dull at the start of the movie but you’ll get sucked in soon enough as it contains a lot of funny moments and quotes. Amadeo can be seen as the standard silent boy with a secret love while there are loads of other stereotypes used as well. It is great to see that the characters really evolve in this movie, especially the protagonist, which makes it a great video to watch with your children although some of the quotes might be more addressed to adults.
Underdogs is one of the better animation movies we’ve seen so far. You can see that the animation team did their best to deliver top notch quality and they succeeded most of the times. Some parts might seem a bit off but is made up with the rest of the video. The wooden figurines for example still have their original look though they have a lot of humane characteristics as well which makes it such a joy to watch.
Acting wise, there are a lot of big actors that have used their voice to give the movie that bit extra. Since it is originally Argentinian and is dubbed in American and British English, Dutch and Deutsch we’re going to give you a summary. For example you have Rupert Grint, Fern Deacon and Anthony Head in the British version, while Ariana Grande, Matthew Morrison, Nicolas Hoult and John Leguizamo fortify the American dubs. Overall, the voices are top-notch and really fit the animated character(s).
You can take a look at other animation movies but that is as far as the extras go.
Conclusion
Underdogs is an animation movie that shows the amazing story of someone that needs to overcome several obstacles while finding friendship and love on the way. It is a great idea to watch this with your family, although some of the jokes might be addressed to the more aged public. At any case, you will have 106 minutes of fun.
Underdogs (Blu-ray) - Movie Review,
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