Okay...review of the review time. Eegads...

I'm sure this Matt (or "Mat") Brunet may well be a nice guy in person, and surely he handled this particular review fairly (I haven't seen even a single one of his others, nor do I know him or his review site from a hole in the ground). I have nothing against this guy at all...except one thing, and while it's not a character assassination (though I am sure I'm going to be slammed for doing just that), I had to bite my lip to sit through this whole thing. Why? That freaking squeaky voice. I mean no slight against him or Karlamon, and I am not trying to start a flame war. At all. But I am reviewing, and that's that.

The image that popped into my head, upon hearing this guy's voice throughout this video, was a western ghost town, circa the turn of the century (the 19th into the 20th XD ). The wind blows tumbleweeds down a lonely dirt road, past crumbling buildings. And just at the edge of town sits an abandoned wagon, turned on its side...one wheel remaining on the side turned up...while it turns slowly upon its axle, driven by the wind...squeaking incessantly...

I salute him for the mostly acceptable and thoughtful review...but I had a HARD time getting past that squeaky, sing-song voice of his, along with the slow and deliberate read...as if he were either trying too hard to keep a slow, even pace (presuming that people might have a difficult time following him), or that he was reading from a prepared script he made for his review. Because people just don't talk that way generally. It's too robotic.

As a person who has worked in professional and community FM and AM radio, I can say that the tonal qualities of his voice (and his sing-song and unnecessarily-slow and deliberate read) made it VERY difficult to sit through. And, I'm sorry to say, not really very professional sounding. I know he was TRYING to give a good read, but it just doesn't work here. And probably not in his other videos either, I'm guessing.

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On a separate note (which most Balto movie fans probably don't care about, unless they appreciate and respect the accomplishments of the actual mushers and dogs of the actual serum run, and what a substantial impact it made on immunization, dog sledding, etc.), as usual for most Balto fans and those who don't know the real history, he made some critical mistakes in laying out how this movie compared to the actual events it is loosely based upon, and I have a few observations:

In the first section of the review, he said: "This just goes to show that, with the right amount of emotion and intensity, you can make a predictable story an enjoyable one." I certainly hope he is referring to any hypothetical animated story, and not the actual serum run. Because, as I have often tried to let people know here (and elsewhere), the real events were at least as dramatic as what played out in this movie, and Spielberg and his team at Amblimation could easily have told a far more historically-accurate story by just sticking to the real events, and would not have had to sacrifice anything except the apparent need for a romantic subplot (and that whole wolfdog nonsense). The Balto movie IS an emotional and intense movie. And a good one! But what Matt fails to understand is that the emotion and intensity are present when the story and script are written. Or they are not. You don't inject it after the story and script are written (rewrites and revised drafts notwithstanding)...they are either present in the initial concept (and then built upon as the story and script develop) or they are not. How a critic doesn't understand that boggles my mind.

He refers to the real events, in relation to the movie being "loosely based" upon the real events, this way: "It tells the story of the 1925 serum run to Nome Alaska, where Balto led a team of sled dogs, traveling more than six-hundred miles to get some antitoxin." Uh, no. Wrong. I realize that Matt doesn't know the history (it's very apparent), and I'm not holding that over his head but, firstly, if he's going to make a point of how the movie is "loosely based upon the real story" (his own words), and he also notes that he hadn't seen or heard of the movie until Karlamon asked him to review it, then how could he know how factual (or not) the movie is? In fact, on the cover of the Balto DVD, the tag line reads, and I quote: "the true story of an American hero". It doesn't say anything about being "based upon a true story" (loosely or otherwise). Secondly, Balto and his team didn't run "more than six-hundred miles to get some antitoxin". They ran 53 miles to get to the roadhouse at Bluff, to wait for the antitoxin package to be handed to them, and then ran 53 miles back to Nome, bypassing the last team in the process (without handing it off to them as the musher, Gunnar Kaasen, should have).

I know I know...for a review of an animated movie, this is all not important, right? Wrong. He opened the door, and so it is his responsibility to get the facts straight before posting a review...as any professional critic would.

This took ages for him to make.