Fixed: The Worst Movie I'll See All Year

Written by: Jon Vitti, Genndy Tartakovsky (allegedly)
Directed by: Genndy Tartakovsky (allegedly)
Starring: Adam DeVine, Idris Elba, Kathryn Hahn, Fred Armisen
Shat out by: Sony Pictures Animation
Spread around by: Netflix
Runtime: mercifully under 90 minutes

I watched an animated movie about a talking dog and I didn't like it.

I'm not especially given to conspiracy theories, but there's a pet one I've had for awhile: Rob Zombie didn't actually direct The Haunted World of El Superbeasto. It's not just the fact that he's lazy, incompetent, and ignorant (if anything that'd convince most people that he did direct it). It's just inconceivable that he looked at the drawings, heard the voices, followed the editing, and gave input. It's far more believable that he put a couple million dollars behind it, saw like five minutes of the movie and said "yeah that's good enough" before walking out of the screening room. Couldn't even give it a "hell yeah brother, that's badass." In a similar vein, I can't accept that Genndy Tartakovsky directed Fixed.

Not a good sign when this is the first movie that comes to mind.

Some backstory: Tartakovsky is one of the most beloved directors in the history of animation. His filmography includes Dexter's Laboratory, Hotel Transylvania, Primal, and Samurai Jack. Fixed is a movie he's apparently been trying to make for years. It's no surprise studios balked at it: the basic idea is a dog is going to get neutered and decides to spend the last 24 with his balls on a sexbender. Definitely more adult-oriented than his previous work, but I'm no prude—far from it; I enjoy adult animation and have few if any qualms about sex, violence, nudity, and/or horror in the medium. It just has to be in service of something. E.g.: there's an erotic moment in Season 5 of Samurai Jack (the best season of any show I've seen) that's possibly the most romantic thing I've seen in 2D animation, a moment for which you can practically hear the audience standing up and cheering. On the other hand, there are explicit moments of sex and gore in Felidae that make it one of three movies I've given a trigger warning for, but it's worth it because it's all in service of a great story. Like a dementia patient driving a tractor trailer down a one-lane road directly into the side of an orphanage, Fixed goes in a different direction.

This movie's got some extremely gross scenes, ostensibly in the service of "jokes," none of which are funny. Of course there's shit and piss jokes, but there's way more dog sex in this movie than you're expecting and even more shots of hairy dog testicles. I get it: Tartakovsky's a grown man, he's got interests, thoughts, and comedic sensibilities outside of children's cartoons, and I know he's listed as one of screenwriters, but these just don't seem like his scenes or his words. There's so much cursing, and none of it feels natural. Again, not a prude, nothing against swearing in movies, but this isn't how people swear. Tartakovsky at one point said "it's really funny and heartwarming, it's not all about balls, we're trying to make it a character comedy." One suspects he was talking about some other movie, because there's nothing funny or heartwarming here and 90% of the runtime is jokes about dog testes or fucking. More likely that was his initial conception of the movie before the four (4!) story writers deformed it beyond all previous recognition. I'm not inclined to blame actors for the writing, but it almost feels like Adam DeVine and Kathryn Hahn were ad libbing constantly in the recording booth. The call here shouldn't have been "yeah, let's keep all that, go nuts," it should've been to throw a chair through the dividing glass and tell them to never say that shit in front of another human being again.

The visual design of the movie might be the most damning point. This just doesn't look like Tartakovsky's art style. Apparently he was going for a look that was meant to emulate Lady and the Tramp and One Hundred and One Dalmatians, mixed with the expressive facial animations of Tex Avery cartoons, but it looks like the art department took that as a light suggestion rather than a direction. It looks more like Spümcø (and the dialogue/gags seem more like John Kricfalusi's as well) (pejorative). The animation isn't bad—it's even mildly impressive at times—but it's all in service of seeing what the audience will tolerate. No one's laughing at the shots of the protagonist's balls (where you can see each and every hair). No one's laughing at the dog getting run over, its guts splattering the pavement. Someone may have laughed at the sodomy rape scene (which is played for laughs), but that someone should probably have their hard drive confiscated. None of this is funny. None of this is heartwarming, endearing, charming. What the fuck was Genndy doing while this was being made?

Probably making this face a lot

Here's what I think happened: he had an idea for a movie, he pitched it, and no one bit. He worked on some other projects, got his name back out there, and some sucker eventually greenlit the project. Being a known mensch in the industry, Tartakovsky then hired a bunch of people trying to break into the animation business to work on the movie and encouraged them to go nuts, get their ideas out there. He then made the biggest mistake a person in charge can make: he didn't say no. He opted instead to let these other people get as much of a taste for the work as they could, to get something prominent on their résumés, and to give himself some time to work on something respectable, like Season 3 of Primal. I don't know what he was doing, but he wasn't directing. He was just letting it happen. Then he saw the finished product, smiled weakly, excused himself, went to the bathroom, threw up a little, called up his agent, and said "fuck it, let's just get it out the door so I won't have to think about it anymore." And thus we have almost certainly the worst movie I'll see all year. A movie from one of my favorite directors in animation (at least that's what THEY want you to believe).

It just doesn't feel like his work. I'm not even attaching any screenshots because I don't want Parker to get in trouble for running this website; I'm not taking any chances. Maybe I'm being dramatic. Maybe I've lost it. Maybe I'm rationalizing. I don't know what the next stage of grief is, but I don't know if I'll ever get to the last one. I can accept that Genndy Tartakovsky made a bad movie. I can't accept that he made this movie.