Titus Banks

The way this would’ve made for an insane centerpiece on an episode of *Smosh Reads Reddit Stories*.

I guess if you can’t recreate the magic of Pixar from 20 years ago, you might as well just make a bug-nuts insane one for today. I can’t deny, I kinda loved this one though. Probably the first one of these in the last 10-15 years that genuinely surprised me in terms of plot and second-half turns, which is a pretty welcome change in my book!

Less a movie and more a series of set pieces stitched together between moments where the audience goes either “aw cute!” or chuckles slightly. At a certain point, you gotta hand it to Illumination, those motherfuckers have cracked the code on making billion dollar mega-hits without having to rely on anything but the bare minimum every single time. I did sit next to a Nintendo superfan who ate up all the dangling key references and was having the time of her life throughout, so at least my experience wasn’t a total loss