- Studio: Destination Films
- Release Date: Apr 4, 2003
- Critic Score
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80Has something for everyone.
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80There's something to be said for watching an animated movie not with the eyes of a child, but with those of a turned-on grownup.
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Demonstrates how exciting and vital contemporary animated filmmaking is in Japan. The characters may not move with the fluidity of their American counterparts, but the story unfolds with a sinister grace that any live-action director might envy.
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75Magnetic, beautiful stuff.
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75Isn't exactly adult animation but it's more complex and ambiguous than the usual Hollywood live-action blockbuster, and just as splashy.
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70There are so many good ideas at the visual level that you can't help wishing the narrative elements had been more cleverly worked out.
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70The atmospherics are wonderfully dark and film-noirish, if overly violent.
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70It certainly fulfills all the conventions of the genre: sci-fi premise, noir stylings, martial arts, snarky dialogue.
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67These visual techniques also serve to emphasize the Japanese anime fetishes for violence and female body parts -- you can always count on a gun or a breast to be in the foreground' but I'll take this opportunity to again stress that this is an adult cartoon.
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63Despite the spectacularly cool opening credits and some first-rate animation, the story starts to flag about halfway through.
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63If you want state of the art anime that comes within spitting distance of escaping the limits of its genre, this might be your cup of bootleg sake.
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63There's much visual inventiveness and a good sense of fun here. But I was expecting something more spectacular.
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63With all due respect to Japanese animation fans and pop-culture enthusiasts, life may be just too short to plunge into the busy world of Cowboy Bebop.
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60Brisk, engaging story.
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60When the action sequences work, they work well; the climax cribs heavily from 1989's "Batman," but improves on Tim Burton's finale.
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60Notable chiefly for its eye-catching urban backgrounds and an eclectic score that ranges from jazz and country to classical and choral.
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60Though it isn't the entirely original creation "Metropolis" was, Bebop is more satisfying.
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58It's a stylish work, seeping with brilliant animation and potentially interesting characters that didn't need so much time to establish themselves. It's worthwhile, but it's a good thing there's a television show to refer to.
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50Overlong, overplotted and underdrawn.
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50When Bebop's anime characters stand still, chirping their strangely stilted, dubbed talk and not moving their strangely blank faces, I feel lost on Mars myself.
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Americanized through western showdowns, shadowy film noir, gangster shootings, sci-fi, Bruckheimer explosions, slapstick, and soaps, Bebop aims to transcend its own genre by emulating all genres, and it falls short only in the melodrama.
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40The ambition is laudable, but the execution is wanting, and the attempt itself may indicate that Watanabe and company have forgotten what made Cowboy Bebop so much fun.
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30Good news is that most of the marvelous English dialogue cast from the Cowboy Bebop series has returned for the film. The bad news is that the heart and soul of the series hasn’t.