My Thoughts on Papelucho y el Marciano (2007)
I know that this movie is hated af, but despite being obscure as shit, it was dealt with executive meddling that it became infamous for how it disrespects the original Papelucho books.
I wouldn't say that the hate that P&TM got is 100% justified, but I did like SOME qualities of it; its that its still a mid as hell mess.
This isn't as awful as fucking Animal Farm 2026, bruh.
I need to admit that I used to like this movie when I was a kid. Specifically that my aunt gave a DVD of this movie back in the early 2010's, and that DVD stayed with me for the longest time.
That said, I still find this movie to be a hot mess, even when taking the bad reception from book fans and critics.
Basically, the movie is about this boy named Papelucho, who has always been fascinated by aliens that decides to catch one and sets a trap in order to prove his teacher wrong that there are actual life in other planets.
Amazingly it succeeds, and the lost Martian child Det ends up living through Papelucho via his bloodstream right as Papelucho accidentally swallows him after Det was scared by Papelucho's dog, Choclo. Funny shenanigans ensue and there's also this new character named Tita who acts as the rival and bully to Papelucho that she stole his diary at one point in the movie.
Then the movie takes a weird turn as once Papelucho decides to build a spaceship and travel to Mars to bring Det back home, although they retreat back to Earth since the Great Leader of Mars threatens to eat them...yeah this movie is insane.
And speaking of insane, Det eventually takes over the body of Choclo and Papelucho decides to use Det's powers to grant every wish he can make to even saving the world by having world peace, preventing whaling, etc.
But when Choclo’s health is put at risk, Papelucho has a difficult decision to make. And this is where Tita starts to become more relevant to the plot.....in the last third of the movie, and she's suddenly good now with no explanation given. Heck, there was one line saying that she wants to see her dad again after he left to Mars, but it was never mentioned again afterwards.
Yeah, I just like to get this out of the way; the story is an absolute mess. Not only its' painfully predictable it is with a ton of cliches used thousand of times before, to even times where the movie clearly felt completely nonsensical because of the confused narrative, but the worst part of the movie it's the frantic pacing that goes so frigging quick that it would never give the audience a chance to breathe from all this needless chaos.
Sure, the voice cast did a good job as they had plenty of Mexican voice actors that have been prevalent to many Latin American dubs of cartoons and anime, but they feel entirely wasted due to the shoddy script.
Also, I get that the movie is trying to blend 2D characters with the cel shaded CG background, but the way its executed is just off that it just completely clashes, it hurts.
And don't get me started the CG aliens in general, including Det himself.
It generally has more of 90s CGI feel (including CG Det and the entire sequence in Mars) so late in 2007 where the animation is the 2000's when its like Ratatouille had better CGI than this.
Don't get me wrong, I still love the freaking artstyle that kinda has a Don Bluth influence, which is actually done by Rommy Rivera, one of the character designers that eventually illustrated the Papelucho books since their 2009 reprints. It's just that it doesn't mesh well with the unrefined rendering.
Heck, even Chicken Little did at least tried with the CG despite being ROUGH. You know what? I'm actually making a perfect analogy here:
I often call this the Chilean equivalent to Chicken Little, mostly because of the bad CG, but also because of the similar sci fi themes, and the fact that a bespectacled character plays an important role.
Although in Tita’s case, she was going to be more involved, but they decided to not do anything with her other than being the bully and then haphazardly being redeemed with no explanation.
And given that the behind the scenes details being scarce, the ones that we do have info at least (including a comment from an animator in a Reddit post on the film), paints a pretty depressing picture as they were cut out due to time constraints or because of Canal 13 saying, "Why would we need to animate this when we can have the characters mention it instead?"
I honestly think that's a huge waste of time and money more than it is cost cutting, because you invest all this time story boarding, animating, editing, etc and you just cut it. Of course, movies need to be trimmed and edited but cutting entire sequences that clearly add context to "save money" doesn't actually seem like something that saves money.
Most of the characters are either bland and one dimensional, annoying (especially Det…) or horribly wasted. I mean, believe it or not, the reason why I feel that Tita fits the latter category to me is that she was actually my fav character as a kid. I mean, you have this girl who is not only into science and loves anything space related (especially Mars) and just wants to be friends with Papelucho.
And to add from we saw from the deleted scenes, she wants to see her dad again after he left to Mars. I mean, there is a lot of potential to have with this nerdy girl. But the movie never really does anything to do with her than be the "bully who is actually nice to the main character later on" sort of archetype. They literally had a good concept with Tita and they wasted her, that's friggin sad.
To be honest, I know there are a lot of people who saw this movie that are like "OMG this is a middle finger to Marcela Paz!", but here's the thing though: I honestly have a love/hate relationship with this movie. Yes, on a technical level it's not really a great adaptation to one of the best installments of the book series that it's based on because it took many liberties from the original source material, yet at the same time I don't really feel that it's an abomination as others made it out to be because I am fascinated for how strange it is, even as someone who did grew up with this movie as a kid.
I know it has taken a lot of liberties from the original book to the point its pretty much a Disneyfication, but there isn't much enjoyable moments in it either to make it rewatchable. It honestly has some good parts like its hand drawn animation (animation errors aside), voice acting, cute references to the book series, and some decent songs, but the rewatch for this review doesn't feel much different compared to my original review on the movie.
This movie is basically like CineAnimadores seemed to have surrendered and simply said, "We want to be Disney.", and it's sad because there are moments that could've made the movie better. The whole thing with Tita and the whereabouts of her father would've been a great parallel to the main story if they found a way to work it in there, but likely because of executive meddling and forced this movie to be rushed, there's only a mention of it in the final film.
Even the more simplistic movies from Studio Ghibli such as My Neighbor Totoro, Ponyo, and even The Secret World of Arrietty, or with most Disney movies from classics like The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, to the more modern ones such as Encanto, Tangled, or more recently, Zootopia 2, have managed to gain an audience that Papelucho y el Marciano failed to accomplish in that there was a lot of care in the story, characters, animation, as well as it's main themes that when all of them work together, create emotionally iconic moments that makes us rewatch them again and again.
And like I said, while the movie isn't as bad compared to shit like Sharkboy and Lavagirl where it's best to skip the whole movie entirely unless you want to experience Robert Rodriguez's drug trip filled movie, but it could've been something if it introduces relatable themes in a kid’s story based on Marcela Paz's characters. Something with a bit more weight and depth to it, ya know?
Does it need to be a complex thematic story? No; but it needs to have at least something worth investing in to warrant it being a movie even if it’s simple. And that’s just something I don’t think the movie really had. But overall, it's not a terrible movie as I thought it was like in my original review, it's just a harmless film that's so average, it's OK. I even consider it to be my guilty pleasure.
If you're curious to at least watch the film for yourself, the whole movie is available on YouTube in its original Spanish audio.
(Anyways, here are some Tita GIFS bc she's honestly my comfort character of sorts mostly given the deleted scenes being more sympathetic, and also that her design reminds me of Tish from The Weekenders.)
