Definitely not as keen on this as some people, but yeah, it's not as terrible as the trailers make it out to be. It's still not all that good though, writing is very thin, jokes are very hit-or-miss, the animation style on the main cast just sucks (I understand budgetary restrictions, but sorry, celshaded 3D just doesn't look like 2D). Needlessly reverent in parts and overall still pretty corporate friendly. It acts as a lampshade on franchise marketing and tie-in products the same way Enchanted and Frozen were for Disney Princess movies, it lightly elbows the practices but never goes full out on some of the deeper aspects that an independent parody would be able to. It is riding the line for edginess in Disney cinema, but it is firmly in defense of the empire. Almost all the targets of humor were at non-Disney properties, and the main antagonistic force is illegal bootlegging of movies and evasion of copyright law. A fun bit of clever writing? Sure, but it still does leave that taste of plastic microwaved tv dinner in my mouth.
I felt like most of the humor was still going for the "Haha i know that!" style that all these corporate plug movies have. The only times I really laughed were the more absurdist elements where TLI really got to shine like the Main Street bit. Otherwise, I guess it's neat to see B.O.B or a Transformer in a Disney film, it definitely isn't a joke though. Free Guy felt the same way to me. I know Fortnite and Star Wars exist, do you wanna do something with that? Not really. If I'm being honest with myself, while it was noteworthy whenever a non-Disney property decided to pop in, I can't even really say it was ever that shocking to me that any of these characters were in this film. The only one I was kind of surprised by was
Ugly Sonic, they didn't do too much with him really, but just seeing that they were able to play with that design in the way they did was certainly interesting.
I just think I'm getting pretty jaded by "crossover" movies, which is ironically also the subject of one of the other funny jokes in the film.
There are elements here that I thought were interesting or neat, and I was never bored or agitated like I was with Free Guy, Ralph Breaks, Ready Player One, but it also isn't anything to write home about. Thoroughly average, and really the kind of film that feels like the essence of media in 2022. 5/10