Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
"Monster High-Scaris: City of Frights" is an American 1-hour movie from 2013, so this one has its 5th anniversary next year. And with one hour I actually mean one hour. i guess the person who wrote 44 minutes here on IMDb thought there were commercial breaks included in this one and it is actually a short film. But at 58 minutes, it is indeed a full feature movie, just not a very long one. I cannot say I am familiar with any of the writers, directors or voice actors here, but I see they are all fairly experienced and most of them worked on other Monster High projects too. For those who do not know the series, let me say that this is about a group of girls from Monster High, all looking more or less scary and their adventures. And adventures here actually refers to the whole wide world as three quarters of the film take place in the city of Scaris (reference to Paris, you understand the comedy). I personally felt this was a pretty entertaining watch most of the time. I have seen maybe 1 or 2 other installments of Monster High and honestly I felt many of the characters were interchangeable, but maybe you need to have seen more to really see the differences. So it may be just me. One think I did not like is the animation here. It looks pretty weak, especially the characters, for a film from the 21st century, even if it is just a small screen movie. So the visual side is absolutely not on par with the story and comedy writing for this one, which is definitely on a really good level. The only criticism I have about the story is that it should have ended over 10 minutes earlier. The ways in which they travel the world were honestly enough material for at least two more films. Or for a separate short film. What happened after minute 45 just didn't fit in this one and the contrast is too big compared to everything that happened before. It feels like a different movie really. Nonetheless, the positive outweighs the negative and this is apparently an animated series that is still going strong despite how many installments already exist. I recommend checking this one out.
